Salute to a Veteran
From His Cruiser, He Saw Hundreds of Bodies Floating on the Sea Robert D. Wilcox hen Vernon Barker was still a junior in high school in 1943, he enlisted in the Navy. His brother had joined the Navy earlier and had told him about the high adventure of life aboard ship. And we were at war, and everybody else seemed to be going, so he couldn’t wait to become a sailor himself and see some of that action. He sure got his wish, since he later served in most of the major invasions of the war in the Pacific. His boot camp was at Naval Station Great Lakes in northern Illinois. Then he was sent to Newport News, where he was assigned to a brand-new light cruiser, the USS Mobile. In those days, the Navy was scrambling to build and man the hundreds of ships it would take to stand up to the powerful Japanese navy. So crews were being sent into combat as quickly as combat ships could
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come on line. extreme importance After a shakedown to Japan. Admiral cruise in the William F. “Bull” Chesapeake Bay to Halsey had spurred check out the ship’s his men on by guns, radio, and many saying, “We’re going other systems, the to show the Japanese Mobile sailed through what the Fourth of the Panama Canal to July is all about.” Hawaii, arriving there And they did, in June 1943. pelting the island After a month of with everything they training, they were had. deemed ready for The Mobile then combat and joined Task joined the fifth fleet Force 58 for a July 4 for the Gilberts Vernon Barker in boot camp at raid on Marcus Island, campaign. There, Naval Station Great Lakes. an isolated Japanese she screened the coral atoll some 1,150 ships of Task Force miles southeast of Tokyo. It was the 15 as they struck at Tarawa Atoll in the easternmost territory belonging to Japan. first offensive in the critical central And, although it was small, it was of Pacific region.
It was also the first time in the war that the United States faced serious Japanese opposition to an amphibious landing. The 4,500 Japanese defenders were well supplied and well prepared, and they fought almost to the last man. Barker remembers it best for the shock that came to him one morning when he went to go on deck for a little fresh air. “All I could see was bodies floating all over the place,” he said. “Tarawa was so small that they had no place to bury the Japanese, so they took the bodies out to sea 5 or 6 miles and dumped them into the sea.” Barker manned a 40-mm gun position that helped defend his ship from air attack, and in all the campaigns they were involved in, air attack was continuous. His ship’s major responsibility was to soften up the Japanese defenses against amphibious assault.
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