U.S. Naval Training Center, Great Lakes, IL
Morris Upper Right
1945 - Morris during the war
Morris
was a junior in high school at Redick High School near the end of World
War II in 1945. Upon turning 18 he joined the Navy Reserves and
then to boot camp for about 12 weeks at the Great Lakes Naval
Training Center. After a nine day leave, Morris went to Camp Braford in
Virginia Beach for amphibious
training. Morris got assigned to ship Company 1009 for training on the
Chesapeake Bay. On January 4th, 1945 he got liberty in Baltimore and
then returned to Camp Bradford. On January 18th he left to go to
Pittsburg where he stayed in the dorms at the Carnegie Institute of
Technology until he got his assignment to the
LST-1041
which was being built at the shipyard in Pittsburg.
Launching of LST-1041, Jan. 20, 1945
Morris
boarded the LST soon after it was launched January 20, 1945. From Pittsburg
they then traveled down the Ohio river to the Mississippi River to New
Orleans where the LST-1401 was commissioned on February 19th.
Soon afterwards the LST with Morris onboard went on a shakedown cruise in Saint Andrews
Bay where the did practice landings on the beaches there. On March 1st they were back in New Orleans where they
loaded four
Higgens PT boats on March
26 though 28th
(see photo).
LST
1041 With PT Boats
The
ship left port on April 4th passed through the Panama Canal and then on
to San Francisco arriving in Bremerton Washington where they unloaded
the PT boats for transfer to Russian crews who took them to Russia at
Winslow ship yard. From
Bremerton/Seattle the ship sailed with a convoy of 88 ships to
Pearl
Harbor and then on to the
Marshall Islands arriving on June 13.
Harbor
Patrol in Guam
The ship was mostly based in
Guam and from June
through August 1945 the ship sailed back and forth between Guam and
other islands including
Saipan,
Eniwetok,
Okinawa and stopping in
Agrihan Island North of
Iwo Jima to pick
up Marines. On July 8th 1945 Morris recorded in his journal “All excited
about new bomb” in reference to the news about the U.S. dropping the
atomic bomb on
Hiroshima. His ship got the word the war had ended on
August 15th. Near the end of the fighting, the LST traveled to China to take
parts to U.S. Marines stationed there. Some crew got leave in
Tientsin
but Morris had to stay on board. With the war over Morris transferred to
LSM 64 for the returned to San Pedro California where the LSM was
decommissioned. Morris tells how in the after the war
had ended they were going to use the LST as a floating post office and
they built a post office building on the tank deck but a typhoon delayed
the ship and it was tore it down before it was ever used.
Morris then transferred to the
LCI 689
for about 20 days in San Pedro California where he got discharged and
then took a train for a 105 hour trip
back to the Yukon Naval facility near Jacksonville Florida from where
he then returned to his home in Micanopy Florida. After his return he
finished his high school and attended
Massey Business College for a
short time in Jacksonville Florida. After the war jobs were hard
to come by so Morris registered for unemployment which found
him what they told him was a short term job at the University of Florida Chemistry Department.
Morris worked at the Chemistry Department for 41 years until
he retired in
1989.
Read Morris's diary aboard the LST-1041 during the war: WWII DIARY
Read Morris' answers to Proctor Oral History Program Interview