Eddie's WWll Photographs showing captured and dead Japs in the Marshall
Islands in the South Pacific. Eddie confiscated camera's from Japs,
developed and made prints from someof the photos taken by the Japs prior
to capture.
My Story
by Edward W. Haywood
USMC, South Pacific, Aeriel Photographer, WWll
ORAL HISTORY MEMOIR
AMERICAN AIRPOWER HERITAGE FOUNDATION
of the Confederate Air Force Flying Museum
Date: 28 July 2000
Place: Vista, California
Interviewer: W. J. Bill Shinneman
I joined the Marine Corps when I was 19. I joined in Chicago, Illinois
because I felt we were all going to be drafted and I didn't exactly want
to be in the Navy or the Army.
I joined with a friend of mine and we were sent to San Diego, California
for Boot Camp training. I enjoyed that as I was in pretty good condition,
nothing fazed me as far as it being strenuous. I know it bothered a lot of
guys. I didn't gain or lose an ounce in Boot Camp.
We had a wonderful drill instructor. He wasn't what they portray in
television or movies - where they are yelling at you in your ear and
calling you by all kinds of names. He was a wonderful person, from
Mississippi. The only problem I had with him was that I couldn't
understand his drawl at times.
Our very first morning at Boot Camp - we were still in our civilian
clothes - and he took us over to the barracks. We all got out of our sacks
and he said, Tomorrow morning we are not straggling over for breakfast, we
are going to march over there.
So we all stood up and formed a line and learned how to come to attention,
how to make a left and right face, and forward march, and stop. When we
went to breakfast the next morning there were probably about 7 or 8
platoons with 60 men each, straggling over there like sheep, and we
marched over there. We felt proud of ourselves that we did that.
When we went to the firing range he evidently had a bet with the other
drill instructors as to which platoon could outshoot the other platoons.
Our platoon won. I had never fired a pistol in my life and I shot expert
with the pistol. He showed me how to do it and I did it exactly how he
told me. The same thing with the rifle. It worked out perfectly.
When we got out of Boot Camp at that time we were given a choice as to
whether we wanted to go into the Marine Corps Aviation Branch or the line
branch at Camp Pendleton. I didn't even know the Marine Corps had an
aviation branch to begin with. I thought, "Gosh, I have never even
been to an airport. I don't know anything about airplanes. That sounds
interesting to me.
I opted for the air branch and was sent to North Island. About 500 of us
were sent there. The other guys were sent to Pendleton and they found
their asses in Guadalcanal in a few months.
We were in a huge circle there in North Island and there was a Marine
officer there a captain, lieutenant, or major - I have no recollection.
The rest of my life I owe to him for what he did for me.
He said, everybody here in Aviation goes to school. We will name the
school as we read the names, speak out and you are going go to that
school. Now I don't want anybody to ask for Aviation Aerial Photographer
because that school is full. We don't have any more openings and have a
waiting list. So pick out the other schools."
He read off the list one by one, and groups of people would go. Finally he
got down to where there was nobody standing in line but myself. He asked,
what is your problem, Mac?
I said, Well, I want to go to your Aerial Photographer School. I am just
an amateur photographer, it was my hobby, and I had a little darkroom in
my basement.
He said, Okay, I think I will give you a chance. Go over to the photo lab
and tell them I sent you."
I went over to the photo lab and they were surprised to see me. There was
a bunch of guys there waiting to go to school.
A few weeks later they sent me to Pensacola, Florida to Photo School. [The
school was] four months: basic photography, copy work, still work, and
finally, aerial photography.
After the fourth month, I went up in an airplane to take a picture of the
city of Pensacola, FL.
[Much earlier, however,] I found out we could go over to the airfield and
go up for an airplane ride as a passenger. [In fact,] on the very first
day we were there [I did so]. It was a Sunday and I couldn't get anyone to
go with me.
I said, "I understand you can get airplane rides here.
Sure can. Go over there and get a parachute and put in on and get in that
plane over there"
So I put on a parachute and went over to the plane. The pilot came over.
He got in. I got in. We took off and I was surprised how bumpy the ride
was down the runway. It was a thrill.
We got up to 1 or 2,000 feet and I looked down. It was a wonderful sight
from the air, seeing Pensacola and the ocean out there. We continued
circling, circling and I was watching the altimeter and we got up to 9,000
feet and the plane dipped over and we went straight down straight,
straight, down about 2 or 3,000 feet. I was scared to death but the pilot
didn't seem concerned. So I thought if he wasn't concerned and bailing
out, I wouldn't either.
We pulled out and started circling again and went up to 9,000 feet again
and I realized what he was doing - practicing bombing, though I didn't
know if he was ping anything. The G forces on your body would just jam you
into the seat and make your skin on your cheeks pull down. It was quite a
thrill for a kid from Illinois just out of the cornfield.
That was my first airplane ride.
After graduation we were sent to Boston where we went to school at the
Polaroid factory and learned the process to photograph from the air and
look at it in three dimensions. It sounded good but overseas when you
needed the pictures now it was absolutely worthless because you couldn't
wait for the developing process to take place. The negatives had emulsion
on both sides and it was just a mess to see - you had to look at it with
lens that reflected one side and the other lens reflected the other side,
your mind put it together like a stereoscopic picture. We never used it
overseas, we used just plain black and white pictures.
I was sent to Miramar Naval Air Station CA after the school in Boston and
from there they sent us to Pearl Harbor. We were there about six months.
We were then sent to Midway. This was way after the Battle of Midway. I
didn't see any action there. They were expecting that the Japanese might
sabotage the island by putting guys ashore from a submarine. Our barracks
was right along the beach, maybe 15 yards from the water line. We all
slept in the barracks with our M-1 rifles hanging on our beds, ready to
go. Just in case something happened, we could grab our rifles and do
whatever was necessary.
Occasionally one of the guys would forget to turn out the lights. There
were curtains on the windows so the lights wouldn't shine out. One of the
guys whose bunk was above the light volunteered to turn the light off
because the first night we were there we forgot to turn it out and some
guy said, I will turn it out - the light.
He took his rifle and shot it out. It made a big hole in the ceiling and
sprayed glass all over another guy's bunk.
Then we went back to Pearl Harbor after six months and the sent us
overseas to Eniwetok Atoll. Up to this time I had only been training and
learning how to be a Marine photographer. I think they also taught me how
to obey orders, etc.
We went to the island of Engebi. [This was about February 17, 1944.] We
went over the side of a boat, climbed down a net into a Higgins boat. They
took us ashore and [we saw] an American plane that was flying down the
beach, he was very low and all of a sudden he exploded and crashed into a
ball of dust on the beach.
Then I heard a bing, bing on the boat that was taking us ashore. I asked
the sailor who was steering the boat what it was and he said, "Oh
they are still shooting at us once in awhile."
When he said that we all ducked down low in the Higgins Boat. I picked up
my rifle and wiped it off with my skivvy shirt because it had gotten sea
spray on it. I wanted it to be clean and dry if I had to use that
son-of-a-gun. [The sailor] was standing up there, his whole body exposed,
while he drove us to the beach. He was one of my heroes of the war.
We pulled up on the beach and jumped out. The first things I saw were
damaged trucks and half-tracks. Also there was a Japanese soldier laying
there. He was dead, of course, but that kinda shook me. It was getting
dark. The sailor had told us that we were the fifth wave he had brought
into the island.
They told us the island was not secure and we should not go beyond the
other side of the runway. The fellows I was with were all photographers
and we all hiked over to our side of the runway where there was a big
shell hole and we all just jumped into it. We could hear rifle fire on the
other side of the runway but we weren't there to fight, we were there as
back-ups, I understand - now. That night we could hear the rifle fire all
night long [though] no one was shooting at us.
A few days later they said the island was secure and we could go to the
other side of the island if we wanted to. The equipment started coming in.
We had been eating C rations and K rations - no hot meals. There were no
johns. No place to sleep except on the dirt. But that was okay. We weren't
dead.
Then they brought in a photo trailer, kinda like a trailer that guys pull
around behind their cars now. It had two rooms in it, it was very
efficient. It had everything we possibly needed and all the cameras in it
we could possibly use. We had the Seabees dig out a little hole and sort
of hugged that trailer into the hole so if we were ever bombed we would be
protected a little.
And we were bombed. I don't know where they came from. When they bombed us
I had dug my foxhole right outside of our tent. I rolled out of my bunk
and into my foxhole. One of my buddies said he didn't dig one and had no
place to go, so I said, "Come on Dutch, come on in with me"
We both spent the night there in that foxhole, he was on top of me. I was
kinda glad to have him there. I figured if something accidentally came in
there he might have taken the brunt of it, not me. When we did get out I
found a hole in the tent above my bunk. I had left my helmet not on
purpose at the end of the bed, and there was a piece of shrapnel through
the helmet. It ended up on the bed and burned a little hole in the bed. A
few days later someone took that helmet, I guess as a souvenir.
Then they came and said, "We need some aerial photographers".
They were Army and the Army didn't have any aerial photographers, nor did
they have a camera that worked in their B-25's. They were supposed to use
the B-25 and take pictures of the Japanese Islands that were by-passed.
They either forget to turn the cameras on, or they get conflicting reports
on what happened from the pilots.
So they asked if we could go and take pictures. There were seven of us.
Myself and two others volunteered. The other guys were Dick Parks and
Gordon Salenberger, whom we called "Dutch*.
So every third day we would go. They left the tail gunner at home. They
come to our island to refuel and pick up their 500-pound bombs. Then take
off in the morning to fly to Ponapa, I think it was about a 2-hour flight.
They ped their bombs. Twelve planes all together.
I rode in the tail of the plane that had the bombardier. When he said,
'Bombs away!" every B 25 would their bombs. I watch the bombs go down
and then and take pictures of the bomb hits.
It was kind of exciting.
The Japanese would shoot at us. They never even came close to us. I
stopped worrying about their gunners. They had our altitude but they never
gave us enough lead. They were always behind us. I don't think our pilots
and the other crew members saw what I saw. They were looking up forward
and to the side and I was looking back. The shells were coming up and
exploding but they were too far away from us. One time, they were much
closer they cut the distance in half with another shot, then in half with
the next shot, and in half with the next shot.
Oh - oh, this is going to be it' I thought. I started reaching for my
parachute. But then they stopped firing. They never fired more than four
times at us. I guess they were trying to conserve ammunition. Nobody in
the B-25s ever got shot down.
At one point one of my pilots found out that I did not know how to run the
machine gun back there, nor did I know how to run the radio. So he said no
more photographers were going until we were trained to take the place of a
tail gunner. They improvised a little school where they taught us how to
use the .30 caliber machine gun, and they taught us a little Morse Code.
The only thing I learned about the machine gun was the nomenclature of a
piece of the gun.
[Our instructor] was from Boston and [explained] one of the pieces was an
Earl buffer group. I thought that was Earl Buffer Group. And one day he
said, 'Keep this piece clean with an early rag'.
I asked, is that the Oil buffer group?
He said, Yeah, the Earl buffer group"
I found out "Earl' was "oil" in Bostonese.
At Engebi there were millions of fish I had never seen before. The
chaplain got a mask, one that I had never used that you could put over
your eyes. I used to float out there for hours watching those fish swim
back. and forth.
We had one bomb hole outside our tent and when the tide was in it would
fill up with water and when the tide went out it would leave water with a
lot of trapped fish. I would go swimming almost every night with these
fish. It was like swimming in an aquarium. All different kinds of species
of fish. Once in awhile there was some big sucker in there and when that
happened I got out of that hole.
When I got back to the States [in December 1944] I got my 30 day leave and
went back to Joliet, IL and my childhood sweetheart and I got married.
I was transferred to El Centro, CA. At that time I was a staff sergeant,
and NCO in charge of the photo lab. I had master sergeants that worked
there and I got along fairly well in the long run.
I found a house in El Centro and my wife joined me. Shortly after that the
war ended and as I had enough points I could get out. They didn't have
anyone to replace me so that delayed my getting out. I liked the Marine
Corps but I didn't want to make it my career. I just wanted to get my
civilian life started.
We spent a little time in California on vacation and a friend of mine in
the Marine Corps told me if I wanted to go to work to contact a neighbor
of his who was a business agent for the Film Technicians Local. I did call
him and he told me to go to Technicolor, as they were hiring people who
knew how to handle negatives. If it hadn't been for that Marine officer
who let me go to Photography School I couldn't have done that. It led to a
varied career in the motion picture business in Hollywood.
keywords: Jap Japanese Nip Nips World War ll World War Two Eddie Haywood
Eddy Haywood United States Marine Corp Photographer photo photos
photographic combat photographer combat photography u.s.m.c U.S.M.C.
Grunt Grunts Girines Girenes
Ed's 36+ Dead Jap Photos
WWll