Published Monday, July 07, 2008

Wasson served with troop carrier squadron in Pacific

The Times-Herald

During almost two years of fighting in the Pacific, Jim Wasson dodged everything the enemy threw at him. But his luck ran out on the island of Biak when he was attacked by something even stronger than the forces of Imperial Japan.

Wasson was charged with keeping the power flowing to the command post that housed the communications equipment for the Army Air Corp's 58th Troop Carrier Squadron. In the best of times, electric power was sporadic.

One night, the power continued to fade in and out and Wasson went to investigate. The hut housing the generator was dark and Wasson became disoriented. He grabbed the wrong wire by accident, and the resulting jolt of electricity knocked him half unconscious and halfway across the room.

The resulting injuries earned Wasson a ten-day trip to Australia for rest and recovery. The people were friendly and the country was pretty, and Wasson recuperated quickly. But on the flight back to his unit, problems developed with his plane's carburetor and it was forced to make an emergency landing. The plane was repaired, and Wasson made it back to his home base only to learn he was luckier than he thought.

"When we got back our crew took a look at that plane and said it was shot," he says. "They said the plane just came on its reputation. It was a pretty scary proposition."

Wasson was born in Shelby County, Indiana in 1920. His parents rented a small farm, and Wasson and his nine siblings all worked the farm to help make ends meet. What schooling the children got was delivered at a one-room school in rural Shelby County.

In 1938, Wasson left school and joined the Civilian Conservation Corps, a depression-era program aimed at teaching skilled trades to young men and women.

Wasson studied communications and learned to put up phone poles, climb them, string wire and set up switchboards and private service lines.

His pay was a dollar a day. He sent $25 home each month and kept $5 for himself.

"That's all I had to live on. But my family needed it more than me so I didn't mind," he says.

When his two-year CCC hitch ended Wasson couldn't find any telecom jobs and went to work for the E.C. Atkins Co., an Indianapolis-based saw company.

Atkins made everything from small hand saws to huge timber saws taller than Wasson. He enjoyed the work. But once the war began, Wasson knew he would be called for duty and enlisted in the Army Air Corps.

Duty began at Fort Benjamin Harrison in Indianapolis, then Wasson went for more training at Bowman Field, Kentucky and Sedalia Air Base in Sedalia, Missouri. The Army put Wasson's CCC training to use and he spent weeks in the field installing field telecommunications centers, then packing up, moving on and doing it again.

"You never knew where you would be or what you'd have to do, so we trained for anything that might come along," he says.

What he wasn't taught by the Army, Wasson learned on his own. He recalls learning teletype systems from a book.

"I just got that book and read it and learned it all just fine," he says. "That taught me you could learn anything if you put your mind to it."

When training ended Wasson was assigned to the 58th squadron of the 375th Troop Carrier Command and headed for the war in the Pacific. His unit was stocked with C-47 cargo planes nicknamed "biscuit bombers," because in addition to troops and supplies, the planes hauled food to remote locations.

The unit was always on the go. And always a top target for an enemy that knew fresh troops and supplies were crucial to keeping America at war an ocean away from home.

Wasson's unit arrived in Port Moresby, New Guinea in June 1943. The area was still being built up, and Wasson's unit was housed in what he generously refers to as "shacks." They weren't there long before the 58th was moved out to make way for a bomber group that commanders said needed the runway space more than the supply planes.

Wasson's unit started the first of many relocations to places that included Dobodura and Nadzab, New Guinea, where the 58th took part in an airborne troop assault.

Every time the unit moved, Wasson's crew was charged with setting up field communications. That meant moving equipment forward or back depending on how the fighting was going. And the fighting was constant.

"We were always getting shot at or bombed," Wasson says. "There wasn't a place we went where somebody wasn't after us. It didn't take us long to set up field operations, but it didn't take long to move out, either. We got used to packing it up and doing it somewhere else."

No matter where they went, Wasson's group had a bullseye on its back. He remembers one night when -- shortly after an outdoor movie ended -- a lone Japanese plane bombed the base, killing one man.

"That wasn't unusual," Wasson says. "You could hear bombs falling and shrapnel flying just abut every night."

The fierce fighting took a toll not just on men, but the environment. At the site of one battle so many trees were destroyed by artillery exchanges between the Americans and Japanese that the government asked the Americans to pay for the lost trees.

"They didn't want us tearing up the trees and we understood that," Wasson says. "But you couldn't just stop the war. If we got shot at we shot back and that's all there was to it."

Once the unit reached the island of Biak in mid-1944, Wasson found that short supplies were as big a problem as enemy bombs. His unit was scrambling to set up communications stations, but telephone wire was scarce. Wasson spotted some wire on an abandoned installation and decided to get it.

As he climbed up, the telephone pole swayed. But Wasson wasn't worried. He would have been more concerned if he had known the pole was unstable because termites had eaten it almost half in two at the base.

He cut the wire loose and was ready to go back down when the phone pole creaked and groaned and fell over, dumping Wasson on a corrugated metal building. His slide off the rough metal building caused severe injuries and left him lying on the ground alone and vulnerable.

"That was a bad spot," he says. "My back was torn up from hitting that corrugated building and I didn't know who might be coming along."

Wasson was picked up by some Australians who took him back to base for treatment.

After the accident Wasson's physical ability was limited. That was overlooked by a junior officer who walked in one day and told Wasson a new officer was coming and Wasson needed to install a telephone and light in his tent.

Wasson tried to explain he couldn't do the work because of his injuries. The junior officer ignored Wasson and promised to bust him from staff sergeant to private. Wasson's commander understood the situation and knew Wasson couldn't work, but the commander knew he had to back the officer to keep order in the ranks.

The commander didn't reduce Wasson's rank. Instead, he put a notice on the bulletin board saying Wasson had been confined to hard labor for ten days.

"Of course I never did any hard labor at all," Wasson says. "But for the next ten days when they asked me to do something else I'd say I couldn't because I was confined to hard labor. That commander was smart. He made the officers happy and took care of me at the same time."

Another problem that plagued the Allies was tropical disease. Wasson contracted malaria and spent one Christmas overseas in the hospital. Even after he returned home, the aftereffects lingered.

Wasson's unit eventually arrived in Manila. The capital city of the Philippines had been taken by Allied forces, but Wasson was astonished by devastation.

"You've never seen anything so torn up in your life," he says. "All the big buildings were knocked down or burned out. You had to feel sorry for the people who lived there."

One day as he was pedaling a bicycle up a hill in the Philippine countryside, Wasson saw a suspicious movement in the tall grass. He screeched to a stop and went to investigate. His blood turned cold when he saw what looked like an alligator.

It turned out to be an iguana, but Wasson didn't want any part of the overgrown lizard. "It looked big enough to do some damage," he says. "I got back down that hill pretty quick."

Wasson was still in the Philippines when the Japanese surrendered. Months later he headed for home and says the voyage was notable for its lack of food choices.

"All the way back all we had was lima beans and moldy cheese," he says. "It didn't take long to get tired of that."

He remembers cruising under the Golden Gate Bridge 27 months after he passed beneath it on his way to war.

"I've never been so glad to see anything in my life," he says. "There were times I didn't think I'd ever get back."

After his discharge Wasson returned to Indianapolis and went back to his job with the saw company. His first wife died of diabetes; and a decade later Wasson married Dana Williams, who brought two children to the marriage. Eight grandchildren followed.

Wasson worked for himself and several Indiana businesses until he retired in 1982. He and Dana moved to Coweta in 2002 to be closer to children and grandchildren.

"The conditions and the enemy attacks were bad over there," Wasson says, "but that telephone pole almost did me in. You just never knew what was going to happen."