War made local teen into a man

By BARBARA S. ROTHSCHILD
Courier-Post Staff

GLOUCESTER TWP.

If William Scott can't remember exactly where he was the moment he learned that the war in the Pacific was over, it's not surprising.

When news of the Japanese surrender filtered to the troops on Aug. 14, 1945, Scott was an 18-year-old kid in the U.S. 6th Marine Division, fresh from battle in Okinawa.

Too young to enlist when Pearl Harbor was bombed, Scott -- born and raised in Westmont -- had dropped out of Collingswood High School and was serving as an apprentice tool-and-die maker when he decided to beat the draft board to the punch.

"I was 17 1/2, and I enlisted in the Marines. That was the best outfit in the country. They made a man out of you," said Scott, now 80.

After training at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina, Scott got 10 days' leave before taking a train to California and then shipping off to Okinawa.

Iwo Jima, an island south of Okinawa, had already fallen to the Allies in March 1945.

Then came the Battle of Okinawa in the Ryukyu Islands from late March through June. This was to be the Allied troops' staging ground for the invasion of Japan that never took place.

"When we landed, I asked what all those holes down there were. My commanding officer said, "When you get down there, you're going to live in one of those holes.' We got into the battle area and we all dug holes. We did battle on all sides. I had two buddies shot within eight feet of me," Scott said.

"When the shooting would start, it sounded like the Fourth of July. When you're young, you think it's neat, but I was scared, too," he added.

"They had us from all sides and would shoot at us, but we would squeeze them down," said Scott, who remembers taking few prisoners.

"The Japanese would commit suicide as soon as we secured the island," he said.

More than 500,000 Allied troops fought on Okinawa, versus about 100,000 Japanese. The combatant death and missing toll was 12,500 for the Allies and 39,000 wounded. Only about 7,500 Japanese were taken prisoner.

Scott was a member of Task Force 31, which participated in the initial landing and occupation of the Tokyo Bay area as well as the capture of the Imperial Navy battleship Nagato on Aug. 30, 1945.

On Sept. 2, he witnessed history as he looked down from his barracks in the hills of Yokosuka, Japan, above Tokyo Bay. From his vantage point, he watched as Gen. Douglas MacArthur and Japanese foreign minister Mamoru Shigemitsu signed the formal surrender on the deck of the battleship USS Missouri.

"It was something. It was unbelievable. MacArthur had his pipe, and he was real sure of himself. We wondered how the Japanese head honcho was being treated. Some of the guys didn't want to look, but I was a teenager and I thought I'd better look. I might never see anything like that again," Scott said.

Scott, who became a corporal, went on to do guard duty. To this day, he can bark orders in Japanese as he did during the occupation to the natives who cooked and cleaned for the Marines.

But toward the end of 1946 and into 1947, the U.S. government decided there were too many Marines in Tokyo Bay.

"They asked who wanted to go home, and they asked me, "Scotty, how old are you? You're not old enough to be here.' I thought about it, and knew I was ready to come home. I'd seen enough fighting anyhow, and I was scared at night when I was standing guard. You didn't know if any Japanese were running around out there," he recalled.

A ship took Scott back to California, and it wasn't long before he was honorably discharged and back in West Collingswood, where his family had moved before he joined the Marines.

"I knocked on the door and said "Mom, I'm home.' I bought a car, took some time off and then resumed my tool-and-die apprenticeship," Scott said.

In 1948, he began dating a neighborhood girl. He and his wife, Jo-An, 76, wed in 1950 and moved to Woodlynne. They raised two children, and now have six grandchildren, five great-grandchildren and a sixth on the way.

Scott retired from his own tool-and-die business about three years ago. After living in the same Woodlynne house for 56 years, he and Jo-An recently moved in with their son and his family in Sicklerville.

The former Marine said he doesn't dwell on his time in the South Pacific.

"I don't think about it that much. It does no good," he said. Still, he noted, he entered the war as a cocky teenager and emerged from it a man.

Reach Barbara S. Rothschild at (856) 486-2416 or brothschild@courierpostonline.com
Published: August 14. 2007 3:10AM

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