From The Record, November 1, 2009 by Evonne Coutros, coutros@northjersey.com
N.J.'s WWII-era seamen honored
HACKENSACK — Members of the American Merchant Marine Veterans may be in line for medals for their service during World War II — from the Russians.
About 30 members of the Dennis A. Roland Chapter of the Merchant Marines met a representative of the Russian mission to the United Nations on Saturday at the offices of the New Jersey Naval Museum in Hackensack, where they learned of plans to honor them for the often lifesaving shipping convoys and runs through dangerous waters during the war years.The merchant marine is duly credited for providing the necessary manpower and fleets to carry supplies, cargo, equipment and personnel during the war when Allied vessels were made targets by Axis powers."I was stuck there in February, March and April," said Bassini, who already has two medals from Russia and the former Soviet Union. "I went to Russian language school every day I was there. I was 20 at the time."
"I would like to thank you for the job you did long ago," said Vladimir Belyaev of the Russian Mission. "You did your job, and you did this job well. It was very important for my country."As Belyaev collected the names of the merchant mariners on hand, he said the plan is to collect the same information on a national scale so the honors could be bestowed. Next year marks the 65th anniversary of the end of World War II."We are planning to organize some kind of reception in our mission," at which time the men will be awarded their medals for participating in the convoys, Belyaev told the men.
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From the Covington Maple Valley Reporter
By DENNIS BOX, Editor
October 9, 2009
Maple Valley, WA - A group of courageous men and women served their country in the U.S. Merchant Marine during World War II. Their service was crucial and thousands lost their lives, but the story of these mariners is seldom told.
The battles fought in the South Pacific and on the European continent were supplied by merchant mariners serving aboard ships in extremely hazardous conditions. About 250,000 served as merchant mariners during World War II, and 9,497 died, 3.9 percent, the highest ratio of all the services according to the American Merchant Marine at War Web site.Of that 250,000 about 3,400 came from Washington state. While the numbers of merchant mariners who served during the war are dwindling, there is still a group around the area who are able to tell their stories.
Gomer Evans, 82, from Black Diamond served in the Merchant Marine, and Marvin Perrault, 84, who lives near Covington did as well. Perrault gathered together a group men and their wives at the Covington Library Aug. 22 to give the men an opportunity to tell the story of the war years.
The group included Hank Harrision, 83, and Brian Kirkpatrick, 84, who were both members of U.S. Navy Armed Guard, serving on the Merchant Marine vessels manning the few weapons on the ships.
Peter Chelemedos, 87, a Seattle resident, was already serving in the Merchant Marine when the war broke out. In 1944 he received his captain’s license.
Evans couldn't make the gathering at the Covington Library, but he told his story later at his home in Black Diamond.
In the first months of the war the Merchant Marine ships had no weapons. Kirkpatrick, who lives in Burien, said crews put telephone poles on the ships “to look like guns.” Eventually the ships were rigged with 20 mm machine guns, most had eight and 5-inch-38 anti-aircraft weapons in the stern and 3-inch-50 in the bow. The ships were still not armed like a war ship, but Kirkpatrick said it was “a lot better than a telephone pole.”
In the early years of the war, hundreds of Merchant Marine ships were torpedoed by German submarines within a few miles of America’s coastline.
According to information from A.J. Wichita, president of the American Merchant Marine Veterans, the average length of service for Merchant Marine Liberty ships was four trips. More than 2,700 Liberty ships were built to transport supplies for the battles during the war. The ships could carry about 10,000 tons of cargo. Many were sunk on the first trip.
Wichita said in the first 10-11 months after Pearl Harbor, Dec. 7, 1941, 356 Merchant Marine ships were sunk off the East Coast of the U.S. by German submarines
“The Germans started sinking every vessel in sight of the East Coast,” Wichita said. “People would go down to the beach and watch the fires and listen for the explosions. One sub went inside the New York harbor and sunk a tanker. It was really a horrible thing.”
Perrault described how the mariners would watch for submarines at sea. He said all that could be seen at night was a “periscope sticking up that would leave a phosphorous trail in the water. At night time they would come up in the middle of a convoy and start firing.”
Chelemedos was on a Merchant Marine ship carrying the first troops to the war in the South Pacific. He was aboard two ships that were sunk. The Cape Decision was struck by a torpedo from a German U-boat crossing the Atlantic Jan. 27, 1943. Chelemedos spent 10 days in a lifeboat with 42 other men from the ship before getting rescued. Chelemedos said his girlfriend thought he had died. Once she found out he was alive she decided it was time they get married. She went from Washington D.C. to New Orleans to tie the knot. Earlene and Peter have been married for 66 years.
She knew he was committed when he called her and spent $23 on a long-distance phone call. “My mother kept saying it was ‘too expensive, you better bring the conversation to an end’ but he kept talking,” Earlene Chelemedos said.
Peter Chelemedos was aboard the SS John A. Johnson when it was hit by a torpedo between San Francisco and Honolulu at about 9 p.m. Oct. 29, 1944. “I had a bad cold and the skipper told me to drink three fingers of whiskey and go to bed,” Chelemedos said. “We got torpedoed that night and I didn’t have a cold for five years after that.”The ship broke in half and the ship burst into flames, Chelemedos said, which became the saving grace for the survivors when the crew aboard a Pan American passenger plane spotted the flames and radioed for help. Chelemedos and the other surviving crew members were rescued the next day.
Many who served in the Merchant Marine had already tried to join one of the four branches of the military, but were turned down. “Anyone who said they knew how to hang a rope they (Merchant Marine) hired,” Wichita said. “Legally they could go into a town and hire 16 year olds. There was a lot of esprit de corps in those days. We all just had to get into it.”
Perrault said he, “went to enlist in the Navy, but I had a slow heart rate and they wouldn’t take me. The Merchant Marine took me.” He served as an oiler in the engine room from 1942 through May 1945 aboard four vessels.
During the American invasion of the Philippine Island of Leyte, Perrault was aboard Escanaba Victory, which was carrying 10,000 tons of ammunition. “They threw everything they had at us,” Perrault said. “The kamikazes started coming at us when we were anchored. We (the American forces) brought in P-38s (fighter aircraft) and that saved our bacon.”
Evans said he went to join the military when he was 17 while living in Black Diamond. He went with a buddy who was listed 4-F, not fit for military duty, so Evans decided to join the Merchant Marine with his friends. “It was different atmosphere,” Evans said. “Everybody was gung-ho. They were taking our country away from us. That was the way it was then.”
He served for three years, going to Japan after the fighting had stopped. “The war was over, but we knew what was out there,” Evans said. “Everybody carried a gun.”
Despite the dangerous conditions and courageous service of the merchant mariners, the men and women who served were not recognized as veterans by the government after the war. They could not get benefits from the G.I. Bill of Rights passed in 1944.
In 1988 President Reagan signed a bill recognizing the Merchant Marine World War II veterans and allowing some benefits, but the big ticket benefits of home loans and money for college had already passed by these men and women who were in their 60s.
U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Neb., introduced bill S-663 titled “Belated Thank You to the Merchant Mariners of World War II Act of 2009. It was co-sponsored by this state’s U.S. senators Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell. If the measure passes it would provide a monthly cash payment of $1,000 to the Merchant Marine veterans and recognized their role in war.
Covington Reporter Editor Dennis Box can be reached at editor@maplevalleyreporter.com or 425-432-1209 ext. 5050.
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By Precious Petty/The Express-Times (August 28, 2009)
Some of the men who as Merchant Marines ferried gasoline, tanks, ammunition, K rations and railroad engines to war zones during the 1940s were honored Thursday for their service. U.S. Rep. Charlie Dent and maritime officials from the federal Department of Transportation handed out certificates, medals and flags flown over the U.S. Capitol to about 25 veterans at the ceremony.Merchant Marines were classified as noncombatants during World War II, but roughly 5,600 of them died in the conflict because their lightly armed ships made ideal targets for German planes and submarines. Another 600 men were taken prisoner during the war."I never saw action, but I felt it," Bethlehem resident Roland Graver said, explaining that his ship, the SS Luckenbach, was in Antwerp, Belgium, when a German dive bomber attacked.Merchant Marine Albert Heimbach, of East Greenville, Pa., and others listen as they are honored Thursday during a ceremony at Northampton Community College's Alumni Hall.
Express-Times Photo KELBY ANDERKO
Merchant Marines honored for World War II service
at ceremony in Bethlehem Township, Pa.
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Congressman Charles Dent, second from the left, and some of the Merchant Mariners honored at the ceremony.
Merchant Mariners Honored In Pennsylvania
From The Pottstown Post (August 29,2009)
GILBERTSVILLE PA – Gilbertsville resident Arthur S. Hand was among more than 40 Merchant Marine veterans who served during World War II and who were honored Thursday (Aug. 27, 2009) with medals and certificates by U.S. Rep. Charlie Dent.
Dent, who said the honors were long overdue as a result of the Merchant Mariners’ important contributions and sacrifice during the war, held his presentation ceremony at Gates Hall of Northampton Community College in Bethlehem (PA) Township.Merchant Mariners were called to service in numerous ways, helping supply the armies of the free world at great peril, often with little or no armed protection. Merchant ships faced danger from submarines, mines, armed raiders, destroyers, aircraft, and the elements.“It is high time that our nation properly honors veterans whose efforts played an indispensable role in assuring our nation’s victory in the Second World War,” Dent said. Mariners who attended the ceremony each were presented with a Congressional certificate, a Maritime Administration medal and citation, and an American flag that had flown over the U.S. Capitol. Others will receive theirs at a later time.
He’s hoping for a thank you
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MUNCIE, IN – For the first two weeks after leaving port, Richard G. Blair was unaware the shelled-out battleship he was helping tow from Washington State to the South Pacific carried 58 rail cars of dynamite.
Muscling a payload that explosive across open water would be dangerous enough. But this was 1944 and Japanese submarines had earned a well-deserved reputation for sinking U.S. Merchant Marine supply ships like Blair’s.
“The scuttlebutt goes around fast,” Blair said. “But there wasn’t a whole lot you could do then. It's not like you could get off and walk back.
Merchant mariners expected to be left in the dark during some sensitive operations. What they didn't expect, according to Blair, was how the government would leave them in the cold after the war ended.
About 250,000 merchant mariners volunteered for service between 1941 and 1946, shipping troops, jeeps, oil and other crucial supplies across the Pacific and Atlantic. Many were Americans who had tried to enlist in the armed services but were too old, too young or too disabled.
According to the American Merchant Marine Veterans organization, more than 1,500 Merchant Marine ships were sunk and 9,400 Merchant Mariners were killed, resulting in the highest casualty rate of any service branch during World War II.
But because the mariners worked for private shipping companies on civilian-owned ships, the government did not grant them veteran status, at least not immediately. So while soldiers and sailors received tuition assistance, Veterans Administration home loans and preference in hiring through the GI Bill and other government programs, Blair said all he and other mariners got was a “kick in the pants.”
“All we wanted was to be treated the same,” Blair said.
Mariners finally earned veteran status in 1988 after a long legal battle. But by that point most were too old to take advantage of most benefits offered through the GI Bill.
Now Blair and other World War II mariners hope Congress will give them the compensation and recognition they deserve. The “Belated Thank You to the Merchant Mariners of World War II Act of 2009” would pay $1,000 every month for the next five years to the estimated 10,000 surviving merchant mariners who served between 1941 and 1946.
The congressional budget office estimates the measure would cost $485 million over five years.
Some form of the Belated Thank You bill has appeared before Congress every year for the past 10 years, according to Lisa Wilken, an Indianapolis Air Force veteran and volunteer who is helping the surviving World War II mariners lobby lawmakers and mount a public relations campaign.
It has passed the House three times, but then stalled in the Senate, Wilken said.
Sen. Evan Bayh has signed onto the bill as a co-sponsor. Efforts by the mariners to recruit Sen. Richard Lugar as a co-sponsor have so far been unsuccessful.
A representative of Lugar’s office told The Star Press on Friday that the senator had not yet taken a position on the bill.
According to Wilken, this session provides some reason for optimism. The mariners are more organized. They are writing letters to editors and reaching out to other veterans organizations for support.
Furthermore, Congress earlier this year passed legislation in which Filipino scouts from World War II were awarded lump-sum payments of $15,000 for U.S. citizens and $9,000 for non-citizens.
Wilken and other Belated Thank You supporters hope that congress will feel compelled to compensate the mariners now that they have compensated the Filipino scouts.
“It’s really not even a money issue at this point,” Wilken said. “It’s the principle of the matter.”
But critics argue the Filipino legislation set a precedent that the government cannot and should not live up to.
If payments are made to Merchant Mariners, according to Rep. Steve Buyer, R-Ind., they should also be paid to other groups such as the Flying Tigers and the Women’s Air Force Service Pilots.
Supporters of compensation respond that each group should be evaluated by its own merits and that the mariners’ service and casualty rate earn them high marks.
When Blair returned home in 1946, he had ambitions of attending Rose Polytechnic Institute (now Rose Hulman Institute of Technology) or Purdue University to study engineering, but couldn’t afford school.
After failing to get back on at Alcoa, where he worked for a few months before the war, Blair took a job as a laborer with a small carpenter crew.
He retired from carpentry in 1975.
Blair wonders how life might have been more comfortable for him, his wife and his four children if he would have gone to college.
In his spare time, he collects obituaries for successful men who belong to his generation.
The collection serves as evidence for his argument that veterans of the armed services were given a leg up on life while merchant mariners were left to fend for themselves.
The men range from actor Jack Palance to GM CEO Roger Smith to administrators at Ball State University. All of them, according to their obituaries, fought in the armed services during World War II before going on to college – one can assume – with the help of the GI Bill.
“I don’t begrudge them,” he said about the men in his obituary collection. “They earned everything they got. But we earned it too and we didn't get a penny.”
From the IndyStar, October 11, 2009, By Will Higgins
Merchant Marine vets see proposed stipend as long-overdue recognition
Many dangers, few rewards for Merchant Marine
When the troops came home from World War II, they got not only parades, but perks: They went to college on the GI Bill, and they bought houses with low-interest VA-backed loans.But all Jack Cochran took away from the experience were his tattoos -- on his right arm a seahorse, on his left a ship and the initials "USMM."Now, he and the other 10,000 or so surviving World War II-era veterans of the U.S. Merchant Marine want a makeup call. They back a bill in Washington that would pay them $1,000 a month for five years.It would cost about $120 million the first year and diminish in following years, since the recipients are in their 80s and 90s."This isn't about the money," said Cochran, who lives comfortably with his wife of 60 years, Nona Joan, in a three-bedroom ranch in Perry Township. "It's about the recognition."The bill cleared the House and is now before the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee. Sen. Evan Bayh, D-Ind., has signed on as a co-author. Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., is uncommitted. "We're awaiting the committee's recommendations," said Mark Hayes, a Lugar spokesman.The 250,000 merchant mariners who served during World War II were civilian seamen. Many, like Cochran, joined because they were too young to join the military. The minimum age was 16; Cochran slipped in at age 15. "I turned 16 in Naples, Italy!" he said.Merchant mariners didn't carry weapons or wear uniforms. But they sailed the submarine-infested waters of the Atlantic and Pacific, delivering troops and supplies to war zones. More than 6,000 were killed; thousands more were injured or captured.Don Ellwood, Pendleton, was in a convoy that lost 30 ships to German torpedoes in one attack. "For some reason, it didn't feel scary. I didn't know any better."The ships were lightly armed -- practically defenseless."Our drill was, if you saw a sub, you turned right for it and hoped to sink it by ramming it," said Gene Taylor, Fairland, who was a helmsman on a ship in the Pacific as a merchant crewman. "It was basically all you could do."When the war ended and Taylor and the others came home to no fanfare and no benefits, they didn't react to the slight. "Back then, you just got on with life," he said. "We were Depression people," said Cochran. "You just tried to get your life back together -- you moved on. You didn't complain."
Four decades later, though, the merchant mariners did complain. In 1988, after a long legal battle, they were officially classified as veterans. That allowed them access to Department of Veterans Affairs medical care.A bill to give them $1,000 a month has failed in Congress each year since 2004, but earlier bills allowed a veteran's widow to receive the money. Under the current bill, the payments would cease with the veteran's death.Besides the cost, anticipated at $440 million over five years, the other stumbling block has been concern that other, non-U.S. military World War II groups would demand similar payment, such as the Flying Tigers airmen and the Women Airforce Service Pilots, or WASPs."That could be true," said Sindy Raymond, a spokesman for the Ferndale, Calif.-based American Merchant Marine Association. "But that shouldn't be held against the mariners."Regardless of how things turn out in Washington, Cochran said, he has no regrets about his service in the Merchant Marine. "I did my part," he said, and he saw the world in the process.But he does feel snubbed. "We just want people's respect."In August, he and a handful of Merchant Marine veterans buttonholed people on Monument Circle, getting signatures for a petition in support of the pending legislation.Few in the lunch-hour crowd had even heard of the Merchant Marine. They stared quizzically at the veterans."That was pretty sad," Cochran said. "No one seemed to know what we were talking about."Many photos were published with this story.To see them, please click here.
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George Vas, 90, also of Bethlehem, described his experience aboard a Merchant Marine vessel navigating the Atlantic Ocean between Finland and Russia."Icicles were hanging from my nostrils," he recalled in a description of the extreme cold.Legislation passed in the House May 12 that would give Merchant Marines benefits equivalent to those other veterans already receive. House Bill HR-23 must also gain Senate approval."It's well past the time our nation pays honor to our Merchant Marines," said Dent, R-Lehigh Valley. "Turning to the mariners, he added, "We owe you a measureless level of gratitude." Congressman Bob Filner, D-California, sponsored the bill. Dent is one of 168 co-sponsors.Merchant marine veteran Sam Bassini, left, listening to a Russian delegate at the New Jersey Naval Museum in Hackensack.
Leslie Barbaro/Staff Photographer
"More than 240,000 men volunteered for the merchant marine during World War II, and roughly 9,000 were lost," said Hank Kaminski, president of the Dennis A. Roland Chapter based in Midland Park. "Our number of veterans from World War II is getting smaller."There are about 3,100 members of the American Merchant Marine Veterans nationally and 290 members in the state, said Kaminski, a graduate of the Merchant Marine Academy in Kings Point, Long Island.Sam Bassini, 85, of Dumont was part of a Murmansk convoy in December 1944 aboard the 440-foot Liberty ship SS Willard Hall. The ship carried two steam locomotives as part of a cargo run to Archangel. Bassini was iced in for a few months and had to make the best of the situation.Established August 23, 1984
From the Mooresville Tribune, November 19, 2009
0397852996
8 Raven Close
Carrum Downs 3201
Victoria Australia
December 10, 2009
In the Pacific, we were together as one brotherhood of the sea, thanks to America we were victorious.I hope you like my attachments. To get the complete picture, go to You Tube, William Andrews merchant seaman.
The seasons greeting to all our American Veterans and all the very best for 2010.
Very truly,
William Fredrick Andrews, WWII Merchant Navy
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The voice of the American Merchant Marine Veteran
