GAMBIA AT SEA

Greymouth Evening Star, 18 September 1945, Page 3

GAMBIA AT SEA

JAPANESE ADVENTURES Some of the adventures of H.M. N.Z.S. Gambia before she entered Tokio Bay with the Allied surrenderceremony force are told in a letter which has been received from one of the New Zealand officers on board. The Gambia, as he shows, shared fully in the naval events which immediately preceded the collapse of Japan (says the “New Zealand Herald”). Writing on August 19, the officer cays: “The British Pacific Fleet has been employed to the limit of naval endurance since we began with the Sakashima job in March, and so we have been in among reasonably exciting events almost daily since then. It has not been an endurance contest from the human point of view—-con-ditions in the trenches must have been immeasurably worse and more dangerous—but the ships themselves have been pushed to the limit to keep the attacks on the Japanese going almost continuously. “After being a part of Admiral Raymond Spruance’s Fifth Fleet from March to June, we joined hardhitting Admiral W .F .Halsey’s team, and we knew at once that this meant business close to Japan because Halsey has always believed in going in close. Halsey has a wonderful record and it is grand to think he has survived it all and seen the Japanese fold up.

“We have been with him off the coast of Japan since July 12, continuously at'sea, hitting these devils whenever the weather has allowed, for it is the typhoon season up here. “The highlight of it all from my point of view came on August 9, when we went in two miles off the coast and shelled hell out of the Kamaishi steel mills, 250 miles north of Tokio. We stood there for over two hours, and bombarded them all the time. We were at one end of a great line of naval might, which included three huge American battleships, four heavy U.S. cruisers, destroyers and another British cruiser like ourselves.

“Gambia began the bombardment, firing the first shell. The New Zealand Battle Ensign was at the foremast and the White Ensign at the mainmast. I felt very proud to think that we from such a small country as ours were thus able to strike a really active blow for ourselves and for the general war effort. “Of course, we had no inkling then that the Japanese were considering surrender, the first suggestion of that coming next day. It was my first sight of the land for over a month. We could see the land as clearly as one can see the hills of Lyttelton Harbour from the ferry boat. We met no shore fire, although we expected to get some, and I cannot understand why we did not. We were in close enough for even small guns to reach us easily. “As we drew away in the afternoon—the bombardment took place from noon until after two —we had one or two scares from suiciders, but our air cover chased them off. Actu-

ally, we chased one of them away with our own ack-ack fire, and that made the day a little bit more thrilling. NEWS OF SURRENDER “The next day, August 10, we continued to bomb them, or rather, oui airmen did. Everyone was quite prepared to go on hitting them day in and day out in this great pre-

invasion bashing campaign, and my guess is that the invasion was set lor October. But right out of the blue at 9 p.m. that Friday we heard the B B C. news-flash that the Japanese were offering all but complete unconditional surrender. I have never been so amazed in my life. We all had a whisky and soda to .celebrate that The main comment was: ‘Wouldn’t it have been bad luck if the surrender had come two days earlier. We might then have missed that beautiful bombardment.’ “No one look much notice of the surrender offer, however. Bill Halsey ordered us to oil and to carry on the air-strikes as usual. We did and the Japanese came out on Monday, August 13. like a hive of bees. Twenty-one or them were shot down over the two fleets. I saw one of them go clown n ‘flamor’ and explode on the sea and burn furiously for minutes. The Japanese planes were of all types—Zekes, Judies, Jills, Nicks and a Francis or two. “We oiled again on Tuesday, August 14, and went to action stations as usual at dawn on surrender day, August 15, and I saw the bombers go out from our fleets as on any other day. “At 8 a.m. the cease-fire order came, and our planes came back at once. Not so the Japs. At 11 a.m., three hours after cease-fire, We heard a furious rat-tat-tat right over our heads and there was a Japanese having a go at us. Two. Seafir.es swooped on him and blew him to bits directly over the ship, and large pieces of Jap. plane landed on our deck and are held as souvenirs. He made a dent in the deck with a cannon-shell.” “As you can imagine,” the writer says in another letter, “I am getting an enormous kick out of all this. The air strikes, the bombardments, and now this ride of the conquerors into the Japanese capital, are all worth the long, dreary months of looking at nothing but the blessed sea. When next I write I shall tell you how beautifully battered Hirohito’s capital looks after the thrashing it has had. Poor General Buckner, who died in the last week of the Okinawa i fighting, used to have a toast, ‘May you walk in the ashes of Tokio.’ I think I shall, and I shall think of him then and be grateful to him. The Okinawa show led the way to all this.”