Irving Bennion

Birth date	June 8, 1918
Age they entered the service	24
Hometown	Spokane Washington
Branch of the service	I was the Navy housekeeper, who takes care of the crew, pays them. I was paymaster, in charge of mess, 1200 men aboard the ship. I was in charge of laundry, dry cleaning, supplies, soda fountain, ship stores, and decoding officer. I stood watch as decoding messages in code. You had to be able to type, all supply officers had to type. I usually didn’t stand watch except at General Quarters. You use every man aboard ship for contact…so the supply officer has lots to do. You aren’t ever bored to death. I had 4 enlisted men that worked for me, they helped keep pay records for me, I actually handled the money, I would have records, they filled out a slip for what they would receive. They would give their slip of how much they’d want to draw, then the storekeepers would count it again and give it to the man, it was a large job.
Rank	Lieutenant JGSCR
Name of their unit	Escort Carrier 113 Supply Officer
When they served	About February 1943 to about June 1946.
Where did you serve?	I started in Sand Point Naval Air Station, then Harvard to Navy Supply Core School, Bremerton Washington, in free commissioning detail commissioned in Tacoma…aboard the USS Puget Sound, we went down to San Diego for shakedown, then to Hawaii and then to Tokyo Bay, then to the Marianas, then to the Philippines, then to Hong Kong, then back to the Philippines, then back too Guam, and then to Honolulu, back to the states, then back to Honolulu, to the states, then back to Pier 91 in Seattle. Then San Diego when the Japanese surrendered would’ve been an invasion force to Japan. We were ground support for marine landings, first charter if it had been.
Did you enlist or were you drafted?	I was enlisted. I knew I was going to be drafted. It came four days after I enlisted…You were classified to age, then rules regarding who would be exempt from the First Draft, if you had a Pre-Pearl Harbor Baby, then you were exempt, I was kept out of the First Draft…but I’m listed as a volunteer.
How did you feel about going to war?	I was not happy about going to war, none of us were, World War Two was a little different than the ones since, because we were all involved…we all had friends that were in combat and had been killed, I had friends and relatives that were killed in the war, I had a family so I was not anxious to get killed…we weren’t happy…it had to be done, it was a risk that I had to take…I wasn’t happy about the fact that I had to go, but my turn came and so I went…I always felt like I was a civilian…I felt like I was a civilian in ship’s clothing…many others did too, they didn’t think of themselves as military people. That wasn’t their real job, they were something else, all the officers in charge of me were Navy Reserve. We we3ren’t pros at all. How you found a place to live in Boston, housing was extremely scarce, because a lot of the people stopped building new housing, not much of any place to put up anybody, and then a big draft would come in…I went back to Harvard to get my training as a Supply Core Officer and my team went along with me, Kathy [his daughter] cam as a two year old, there wasn’t any place for us to live, the housing wasn’t provided, except a one room barracks somewhere, we looked around to find a place to live with the help of members of the church…this one lady had a room we could have, Mrs. Cone’s house. She lived in a two apartment house, she had the upstairs, and she rented out the bottom house, and the boys were all away in the Service. She looked at me though, and I had my Naval uniform, she said it was just too much, she had one room, she fell in love with Kathy, and she moved Kathy in with her in her room in a crib. She sat…and counted her rosary beads and said her prayers, so Kathy would sit with her play beads, so she would go pray, her and her “Mr. and Mrs. House” book. [Jean] apologized but she really enjoyed Kathy…she was a perfect stranger. That was common, wherever we went that’s how it was. I went to shakedown in San Diego. We came and they set up a cot for us, Jean was seven months pregnant with Roy. There was no way to get there except there were trains heated with wood stoves, and she sat on a wooden seat from Washington to California with a two and a half year old, almost three…there were no cars because gas was rationed. A lot of stuff was rationed. It was very real to each of us. Big headlines every day, and on the radio, no TV, on the radio it was, a broadcast, which was something really new, we had a broadcast directly from England, Honolulu, Australia, direct broadcast. To movies with black and white news programs, the news reels were fairly old by the time they got into theaters.
Did you have any family members that went to war. If so, did they survive?	I had a cousin, my dad’s first cousin that was killed at Pearl Harbor, Captain Bennion, captain of the West Virginia. He received Congressional Medal of Honor. I had a number of classmates, kids that I went to high school with that were killed in the war, that’s kind of hard to take actually, some kids I played football with, some kids that Jean and I were very close with. I had a brother that was in the Air Force, he survived, he ended up mostly training other pilots.
Were you ever wounded? How and where?	Not in combat.
Did you receive any medals? Which ones?	No, just for being there, just the medals of what you get for presence in area and whatnot, but that’s not really a medal, just a record.

Do you have a war story you would like to tell?	Mostly of conditions of the way things were. Like when we got to Tokyo and I went up to Tokyo we went through miles and miles of burned down squares…really horrible thing to look at…sort of thing that turns your stomach at the thought war. I was very fortunate, I didn’t actually [go to] what would’ve been a really terrible thing in Japan, and I would’ve been right at the beginning. When we first went to Pearl harbor, a Marine Captain came aboard ship…he came in to see me as he came aboard. When we left there we went right to Tokyo. He came around, John Adam, he asked me if I was going ashore, but I was very busy. He told me to go ahead, so he waited for me. He waited and went ashore with me , nice guy, when we were leaving Manila Bay. I managed to get a state room. I asked John if he wanted to room with me. He put a book on the shelf, Book of Mormon, and I said, “Oh, where’d you get that?” He picked it up in Honolulu. I said, “Well I’m a Mormon.” He knew. He said he believed it was true. “Why didn’t you say something?” He says, “that’s why I came in to see you.” He just wanted to watch for awhile. About two years later, I got an announcement of a wedding in the Idaho Falls Temple, girl from Boise, I said, “How did this happen?” “I guess I told someone else that the Book of Mormon was true.” He had four or five kids, sent four boys on missions, Now he’s in California.
What was your reaction when you found out the war was over?	I was hilarious, everyone was, we were down in San Diego, we were getting ready to head out. We were just, it was wonderful, because the Japanese were so stubborn. It would’ve been terrible, they were decimated with some fire bombing, they had three hundred casualties, the two atom bombs had 100 thousand, this is civilian death, it gave then something to say thanks for so they quit. Everybody was involved, it affected the life of everyone in the country, everybody was involved personally, it was a horrible thing actually.
What was the most frightening event of the war for you?	I had the responsibility of 150 spaces aboard ship, in all the spots I had I had to make a report to a First Lieutenant. I had to give a report every month. One of them was down in the bottom, five decks down, cargo areas, and there’s hatches over each of the five doors, you have a little round hole, I went down with my chief and I went down with him making the report, we knew in this bottom hatch they had dropped some five gallon can of carbon tetra chloride. They had vented the area to clear it out. We could smell it and when we got at the bottom, there was a wooden deck, the carbon tetra chloride, it had soaked into the wood deck. I came down and the lights began to look out, and he was staggering, we were being poisoned with the gas, I grabbed him, forced through the hole, we got up. We would have died if we hadn’t got out of there; that was scary. I was really lucky to pull out of this that’s all. I had an awful time making him move, I was so scared, I had enough adrenaline, I was about blind.
What was the most cherished memory of the war for you?	The most cherished memory was going home, that was the most cherished memory, no doubt about it. I was halfway between Tokyo Bay and Saipan and near the area of Iwa Jima, I found out Roy was born, and the ship was scheduled to go to the Philippines, the ship was loaded up with jet planes. They held up the gang plank for twenty minutes so I could go home. They were close to San Francisco. I had to report there to get orders. As I went, Jean didn’t know. That was even better, the first time I saw Roy, she came to meet me. That doesn’t seem that long ago to me now. I was older than most of the fellas.
Do you have regrets about your service in World War II?	No, I can’t say that I have any regrets. I feel very fortunate. It was a waste of time, but it was a waste of time for everybody. I felt that I was so blessed that I avoided being killed. I had nothing to be regretful about, I didn’t avoid anything…I have great regrets about the whole war, there were a lot of mistakes made, but there is in every war.
How do you feel about America today?	I feel like America today like I did when I came back to the U.S. I felt, “boy is this the country,” and I still feel that was, I couldn’t put it any other way. All kinds of things wrong with it, but oh boy are we fortunate to live here. I saw Chinese boys carrying things, so their muscles were lopsided, in parts of China I’m sure it’s still the same.
How do you feel about the war with Iraq?	We went into it, I think that was a mistake. I think we went in ill-prepared. It is very wasteful, but this one was a mistake to begin with and it was done without proper preparation, and we’re paying for it.
Is there anything else you would like to add?	No, I’m very pleased that we came through the war, and that I was able to raise my kids without them going through war, your dad did, no, your grandfather did, but he went to war and he fought. It was bad enough by the time it was over, but it was not as all encompassing as World War Two.