- Collection:
- Veterans History Project: Oral History Interviews
- Title:
- Oral history interview of Sebastian G. Miller
- Creator:
- Lacy, Margaret
Miller, Sebastian G., 1918- - Date of Original:
- 2004-08-18
- Subject:
- World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American
Catalina (Seaplane)
V-2 rocket
PT-13 (Training plane)
Stearman airplanes
Miller, Mary Geisreiter, 1890-1986
Geisreiter, Mary Merrill, 1856-1878
Geisreiter, Sebastian, 1840-1936
Miller, John Alexander, 1918-2007
Quackenbush, Robert Stewart, 1904-1985
Nimitz, Chester W. (Chester William), 1885-1966
Halsey, William F. (William Frederick), 1882-1959
Fitch, Aubrey, 1883-1978
Rochefort, Joseph John, 1900-1975
Gay, George Henry, 1917-1994
Sprague, Thomas L., 1894-1972
Spruance, Raymond Ames, 1886-1969
Georgia Institute of Technology
College of the City of New York (1926-1961). City College
Commodore Hotel (New York, N.Y)
Ticonderoga (Antisubmarine warfare support aircraft carrier)
Indianapolis (Cruiser)
Franklin (Aircraft carrier)
Intrepid (Aircraft carrier)
Buzz bombs
V-2 rockets
Consolidated PBY (Seaplane)
Ticonderoga (Aircraft carrier : CV-14)
Indianapolis (heavy cruiser : CA-35)
N3N Stearman N2S (training plane)
Franklin (aircraft carrier : CV-13)
Intrepid (aircraft carrier : CV-11) - Location:
- Japan, Tokyo, 35.709026, 139.731992
Japan, Yokosuka-shi, 35.2730564, 139.6653829
Micronesia, Ulithi, 9.9613889, 139.6036111
United States, Alaska, Aleutian Islands, 54.7208948, -164.040866211618
United States, Arkansas, Sebastian County, Fort Smith, 35.38592, -94.39855
United States, District of Columbia, Washington, Joint Base Anacostia–Bolling Heliport, 38.84289, -77.01553
United States, Georgia, 32.75042, -83.50018
United States, Georgia, Atlanta Metropolitan Area, 33.8498, 84.4383
United States, Hawaii, Honolulu County, Pearl Harbor, 21.34475, -157.97739
United States, Kentucky, Bell County, Middlesboro, 36.60842, -83.71658 - Medium:
- video recordings (physical artifacts)
mini-dv - Type:
- MovingImage
- Format:
- video/quicktime
- Description:
- In this interview, Sebastian Miller recalls his history in the Navy in the Pacific during World War II. He recalls his family's history in Atlanta. He describes his education and how it led to his entry into the Photographic Interpretive Services. He describes his training and recalls several incidences while serving during the war in the Pacific. He describes his post-war education and career.
Sebastian Miller was in the U.S. Navy in the Pacific during World War II.
Sebastian G. Miller Veterans History Project Atlanta History Center With Margaret Lacy August 18, 2004 [Tape 1, Side A] Interviewer: This is August the eighteenth and we are at the Atlanta History Center interviewing Sebastian G. Miller, who was a lieutenant in World War Two. And I'm Margaret Lacy and we're recording the video. Thank you for coming, Mr. Miller. Miller: My pleasure. Interviewer: Where do we want to start this morning? Miller: Well, actually, I grew up in Atlanta, and my grandfather on my father's side was stationed here in the Civil War. He was in the cavalry with Morgan's men stationed in Decatur. And he was in the Civil War. He joined when he was fifteen years old and he had to furnish his own horse. He was from Millersburg, Kentucky. And he brought his horse down and joined Morgan's men and was in the cavalry during the Civil War. Interviewer: So you grew up in Atlanta, didn't you? Miller: Yes, and my father grew up in Atlanta and all my roots are here since the Civil War. My mother grew up in Pine Bluff, Arkansas. Her father was Sebastian Geisreiter [spelling confirmed with veteran] and he was in the cavalry for the Union people. He had come over from Germany when he was thirteen years old and he didn't want the Union disbanded, so he joined the Union cavalry. And the Southern people forgave him because all he did was chase the Sioux Indians up into Canada. And he was stationed at Fort Smith, Arkansas. And he married Mary Merrill from Pine Bluff and her father had five thousand acres in cotton. And she died from eating strawberries shortly after they married. And he, my grandfather, Sebastian Geisreiter, lived with his father-in-law, Mr. Merrill. Interviewer: Can we go back to why the strawberries hurt her? Miller: I have no idea. And my mother couldn't understand it either. But she was named after Mary Merrill. My mother's name was Mary Merrill Geisreiter. And the Merrills were quite prominent in Pine Bluff, Arkansas. Had all this land on the Arkansas River, the levy, they grew cotton and rice and that sort of thing. Interviewer: So you were a pioneer in farming and the military. Miller: Actually, my mother decided that farming was not what I should do. She wanted my brother, I have a twin brother John Alexander Miller, she wanted us to go into architecture. Interviewer: [referring to picture] This is Mr. Miller and this is Mr. John. Miller: We're identical twins. Interviewer: [pointing out for video] This is our speaker this morning, Sebastian G. Miller. Miller: That's right. Interviewer: What's the “G” for? Miller: Geisreiter. My grandfather was named Sebastian Geisreiter. He was from Munich, Germany. And he came over here when he was thirteen years old and he joined the Union cavalry in the Civil War. And he was a captain in the cavalry. But as I say, the Southern people forgave him because all he did was drive the Sioux Indians up into Canada. He didn't fight any of the Southern people. Interviewer: When the war started, were you grown up already or were you still in school? Miller: Actually, I got two degrees from Georgia Tech. I got a Bachelor of Science in my graduating year, 1941. All my graduating class went either in the Army or the Navy. And I went back another year to Tech to get another degree, a Bachelor of Architecture, which I have here. Interviewer: Oh my. These are hard earned, aren't they? Miller: And I was deferred twice by the draft board in order to graduate. But the Navy had sent a letter to us in the fall of '41, before Pearl Harbor, that if we graduated we could get a commission in the Navy on the strength of our degree from Tech. Interviewer: I'm reading this, ninth day of June, '41. Your Bachelor of Science and then in '42, architecture. Miller: Right. Got two degrees. And when I graduated in 1942 in June, they sent me to Harvard indoctrination school and this is the little album they put out from just—the indoctrination school was two months at Harvard and in that short time, they put out that album, which is fantastic. Interviewer: [refers to album name, the Scuttlebutt] That's a good word, Scuttlebutt. Started with that first cruise. Miller: Yeah. Interviewer: That's quite a manual. Are you in it? Miller: Yes. I'm in it. Interviewer: Great. I've got to look for the M. Miller: End of company five there and I'm also written up. I was head of a crack drill platoon and I was the leader of the crack drill platoon. They've got a picture of me and my commanding officer. What happened was that they took part of the graduating class at Annapolis and had them come to Harvard and be in charge of us and they have those pictures. You see. That's the Annapolis man, and that's me with the company commander. Interviewer: Really? That's you. Miller: [laughs] You can't tell it. Interviewer: Oh, but you're standing so trim. Miller: This picture…is that me, Miller? Sebastian. It's probably on the next page. Next page. Interviewer: I don't know if the video'll be able to pick this up or not. Miller: Well, it's in there. Interviewer: Yeah, it's here. Miller: Well, you got it? Anyway, that… Interviewer: They're already at war and you're in the Navy. Miller: They taught us all about the Navy in two months. And then they actually were sending us to photographic interpretation school at Anacostia Field in Washington, D.C. But they had a flood on the Potomac and the building was not finished, so they didn't know what to do with us. So they sent us to City College, CCNY in New York. We had no commanding officers. There were four brand new ensigns and we got an apartment there. And we went out every night on the town for two months [laughs] and just had a ball. They had a—the Commodore Hotel, the one that Donald Trump redid after the war, this was the officers club during World War Two. And you could go to the officers club and get passes so you wouldn't have to pay cover charge at the Stork Club and El Morocco and Café Society and [inaudible word] all the night clubs. So we knew that we'd never be in a situation like that again, four brand new ensigns. So we just made a point of going out on the town every night, because we had no commanding officer and we had no duties. We didn't have to stand watch. That was in—I stayed two months in New York. Then they finally sent us to Washington Photographic Interpretation School and I've got pictures here of our class. This is when I was in New York. This is the Photographic Interpretation School in Anacostia. Interviewer: We might want a photo copy of these. I don't know. Miller: That's our class there. Actually, what happened was this fella here, Commander Quackenbush, Bob Quackenbush. This is Admiral [William] Halsey here and that's Bob Quackenbush there. This is a picture of Admiral [Chester] Nimitz and Admiral Fitch and Admiral Halsey and one of the photographic interpreters. That's at Espiritu Santos in the South Pacific. Interviewer: We might want a photo copy of those. Miller: Okay. Well actually, I've got…I was in photographic interpretation, so I came out with a lot of pictures. That's Pearl Harbor. A lot of little things of interest. This is…I showed…I got some Japanese money when I was in Tokyo at the end of the war. As a matter of fact, they had printed up some occupation money for Tokyo and Japan, but they never used it. They had regular currency with Hawaii written on it. And they never used it. They used the Japanese money instead and we got some of it. Then that little sidelight is interesting…this is a little package I picked up at Guadalcanal. The Japs had some vitamin pills or something. I happened to just hang onto that. This is a picture… Interviewer: You know, the only thing I heard about the Japanese was when they did those kamikazes. Is that you? Miller: Yeah. That's me. I got hit twice. I was on three different aircraft carriers, the Essex class. That's the biggest carrier we had at the time. And I was on the Intrepid. This is the ship that I was on first. And I was on her until she got hit so badly that we had to send her back to Pearl. And I transferred to… Interviewer: You've had so many adventures, maybe we better start at the beginning. Miller: Well, I will try. I was giving you some of the…just rough pictures. But actually, what happened was… Interviewer: Is that Hawaii? Miller: That's…I was…no. That's Guadalcanal. I was on the beach, and that's Savo Island and this is where all those ships were sunk. This is Iron Bottom Bay. And the Atlanta was sunk there, the Quincy, Vincennes, Canberra and Astoria were sunk. In the first six months of World War Two, we were not doing too well until the Battle of Coral Sea, which Admiral Fitch was on the Lexington. The Lexington was sunk at the Battle of Coral Sea. We were fortunate. Being in air intelligence, we were on a lot of admirals' staffs. I was on four admiral staffs and secretary to General Twitty, who was number two on intelligence for Admiral Nimitz and Pearl Harbor. You may remember the incident of Commander Rochefort [who] broke the Japanese code, and he was there in this building [photograph] when he did it. Interviewer: How did he do it? I've never heard that. Miller: The Battle of Midway, we knew that they were coming. But it was super top secret and Commander Rochefort, who was code man there in Pearl Harbor, had said that the Japanese were coming to Midway. In Washington, they insisted that the Japanese were coming to San Francisco on the West Coast. Interviewer: Why? Miller: Well, they had already hit Pearl Harbor and they had been so successful at Pearl Harbor and they had this tremendous fleet and we did not have any fleet except the aircraft carriers that were left over. We had three aircraft carriers that were not in Pearl Harbor when they hit. So they were real nervous in Washington. This was early in the war. And they thought that…as a matter of fact, some of the submarines did shell San Francisco and some of the other West Coast cities. And so they were real nervous about it and they thought they were going to try and invade California. But Admiral Nimitz, through Commander Rochefort, who was his code man there in Pearl Harbor, knew that they were coming to Midway. So his sent his carriers out to intercept them. And they sank four of the Japanese carriers at Midway and the Japs turned back. They had the whole fleet coming in and they were going to invade Midway and probably come on to Pearl Harbor and invade the Hawaiian Islands. But the Battle of Midway was the turning point of the whole war really. It wasn't the end of anything, but it was the start of the end. Interviewer: Because they lost four of the aircraft carriers. Miller: Four aircraft carriers [the Akagi, Kaga, Sorya and Hiryu] were sunk at the Battle of Midway. Interviewer: And then they turned the whole thing around. Miller: Well, they had five fleets coming in from different directions. They had the invasion fleet. They had Admiral Yamamoto, who was head of the navy, with all the battleships and cruisers. They had a feint, they went into the Aleutians and hit Dutch Harbor in the Aleutians the same time as a feint. And then they had another group and the group that we hit was the aircraft, the ones…the Jap aircraft had bombarded…had a strike against Midway. And they were coming back and they were reloading and they had all the planes gassed up on the deck and so forth. Torpedo planes went in and they shot down all our torpedo planes [35 out of the first group of 41]. We had one man that survived, Ensign Gay. He was on the cover of Life [Magazine], because he was one of the torpedo bomber pilots. And he was shot down and he watched…he was in the ocean. He put a cushion over his head so they wouldn't pick him up. But he watched all those aircraft carriers burn and sink. And then a PBY patrol plane came out and picked him up and he was a big hero first part of the war because he'd been in the Battle of Midway. The dive bombers were the ones that actually sank the Japanese carriers and the reason they did was because the torpedo bombers had already gone in and all the Jap fighter planes protecting had come down to shoot the torpedo planes. So when the dive bombers came in, there was nobody up there. And they dove on the…and dropped bombs on those aircraft carriers and won the Battle of Midway. But I was not…I was actually still at Tech. I was just graduating. This was in May of…well, the Battle of Coral Sea was in May of '42 and Midway was in June of '42. Interviewer: Six months after Pearl Harbor. Miller: Yeah. Just about. But up until that time, the Japs had taken over New Guinea. They had gone and bombarded Ceylon and India. They had invaded Burma. Of course, they'd already been into China and they had all the islands. They conquered Wake Island, Guam. Everything except Numea and Australia. They were worried…Australians were worried they were coming in. Australians had sent all their men to fight with the British in Africa. And the Australians didn't have too many soldiers to help, but they did. We fought alongside the Australians, the coast watchers and so forth in the Solomons. One thing leads to another, as you can tell. I'll get back to what I was doing though. When I went to Anacostia Field, I graduated in photographic interpretation. And they sent me…well, this was just before Christmas of 1942. So I went home for Christmas. I was home…I was in the Navy four years, but I was home every Christmas, which was unusual. But it's just because of unusual circumstances. Most people went overseas and stayed a year or two and it was very boring. Whereas, I mean, “Mr. Roberts”, that story was written about the supply ships that went back and forth. He said from tedium to monotony and back again. Anyway, I was in such a position that I was either on an admiral's staff or in the photo interpretation department. Of course, my commanding officer, Mr. Bob Quackenbush, of whom I've got a picture there, he went to England when England started fighting Germany and they were well advanced in radar and photographic interpretation. Now there was a lot to interpret in Europe. A lot of cities. A lot of things like that. And the British were well advanced in this art of photograph interpretation and also radar. And Bob Quackenbush went over and studied with them and came back and offered commissions in the Navy to all graduate architects and graduate geologists. And that's how the photographic interpretation unit was formed with graduating architects and graduating geologists. All the same age. And at Tech, we had studied under the Beaux Arts School, and the Beaux Arts School had about ten different colleges. The University of Pennsylvania, all the big schools used the Beaux Arts system. And we would do projects and send it to New York to be judged by the Beaux Arts Institute. So when we got in the Navy, we knew a lot of these people that were in photo interpretation because they had been architects in other schools. So we were a very compatible group. And it was interesting to have young fellas, same age, same background, all of us brand new ensigns and so forth. Interviewer: Is photographic interpretation…that must have been a very new field. Was it real difficult to learn? Miller: All the admirals had never heard of photograph interpretation. They didn't know anything about it. As a matter of fact, when I got on Admiral Sprague's staff, after the Intrepid was hit, they sent me back to Pearl Harbor and I joined Admiral Sprague. Admiral Sprague was the man in charge of the baby carriers at Leyte Gulf when the Japanese fleet caught the baby carriers at the Battle of Leyte Gulf and chased them for two hours. Battleships, cruisers, destroyers shooting at these baby carriers. Admiral Sprague, my, the fella I reported to, was the admiral of that group. And he had three destroyers sunk and one small baby carrier sunk. Anyway, I went on his staff after the Intrepid was hit. I went back to Pearl, joined Admiral Sprague's staff there and he went out on the Ticonderoga, which was the sister ship of the Essex class carriers, all the same big carriers. And the pilots were new on this particular sortie. He sent his planes out to bomb a bypassed island, a little island in the Quadjalean group, Miloalap [phonetic]. And they, just on a practice run, would go out and bomb it and come back. And they went through the routine of a normal strike. What they did, they sent the photo planes in first. Then they sent the strikes in all day long. Then they sent the photo planes in last to see what had been done. Interviewer: Before and after. Miller: And then they sent the pictures to the photo interpreters. Interviewer: That was you. Miller: That was me. And the photo interpreters would tell the ACI officer, which is air combat information. They briefed the pilots. So the photo interpreters worked right in the same office with the ACI people on the ship. And as a matter of fact, we… Interviewer: It sounds very efficient. Miller: Well, it worked real good. As a matter of fact, these are some of the maps we drew for the pilots so they would know what they were hitting. And I just happened to hold onto some of those. Anyway, to get back to Mr., Admiral Sprague, we bombed Miloalap, which was just a small island, and the photo officer happened to be a commander on the Ticonderoga. And I told him to send the pictures, you know, as soon as they got developed, send the pictures to me and I'd take them to the admiral. Well, he took them directly to the admiral. The admiral, Admiral Sprague, who'd been through all this battle of Layte Gulf, had made orders to wake him up if even a fishing boat was sighted. So he got no sleep. He looked like a bloodhound. He was just groggy. So this was practically the first week we were on board. They sent the photos up to…he had a little sea cabin up in the island on the carrier, had an island, and the captain is up on the bridge and the flagplot, which is the admiral's quarters right below that. He had a little sea cabin so he didn't have to go down. And they had sent these pictures us to his sea cabin. I went in there. It was about two o'clock in the morning. “Ensign Miller, lay up the flagplot on the double.” And I went up there and here's Admiral Sprague, like this. Got a little bitty desk and a little bitty flashlight with a magnifying glass. Big roll of film like these all rolled up, still wet with hypo. He had them pulled out, one thing. And he says—he'd never met me. I'd never met him. He was the admiral. And he says, “What are all those teepees down there?” And I said, “Admiral, those are bomb craters.” He said, “God damn it, look at it.” He says, “Those are teepees.” You see that. Do those look like teepees to you. Interviewer: No. Miller: Those are bomb craters. Interviewer: They look like bubbles but they're sunk in places. Miller: Yeah and that's what he…see, he was looking at it, but he had this dim little light. And I said, “Admiral, let me go get some scissors and I'll cut ‘em and we'll put ‘em in stereo.” Everything we looked at was in stereo, three dimensional. He says, “Don't cut ‘em.” I said, “Well, that's the only way I can show you that those are bomb craters.” And he said, “Well, never mind.” So he never looked me in the eye after that. [laughs] But we got along great. But it just shows you that the admirals, they knew nothing about photo interpretation. They didn't know what a photo interpretation officer was. They knew just, you know, the line officers, gunnery officers. Interviewer: That's why you were there. Miller: Yeah. Right. I was on his staff for photo interpretation. Interviewer: Did you put in long hours like he did? That sounds heavy. Miller: Well, actually, this [picture] is the Joint Intelligence Center out at Pearl Harbor. What that is, they had Army, Navy and Marines, all in one outfit in intelligence and that was called the building they built right after Pearl Harbor. And Admiral Nimitz was there. And they called it JICPOA, which meant Joint Intelligence Center Pacific Ocean Areas. But everybody…and then they had FRUPAC, which was Commander Rochefort's code breaking building, just like that right next to it. The history of the Navy in World War Two, we were right in there with them. Being photo interpreters, we were in air intelligence and we knew what was going on. Whereas a lot of people had no idea what was going on. As a matter of fact, we had to censor the mail when we would sit down. We had tablecloths, mess attendants, best food in the world. We had all the food that they didn't have like eggs and steaks and bacon. Everything that was restricted in the United States, we had it. And we had refrigeration on the ship, so we had real good food. And they would put these letters, so many to an officer, and we would have to censor them. And one man was just having a hell of a time. Another guy's having a ball. [laughs] And you just didn't know, you know, depending on the personality of the person or what was going on during the war. But I guess maybe you saw “Jaws”, the movie “Jaws”? Interviewer: I don't believe I could hack “Jaws”. Miller: Well, they showed a fella and he was explaining when the cruiser Indianapolis was sunk by a Japanese submarine at the end of the war. The Indianapolis had taken the atomic bomb from San Francisco out to Tinian, Saipan, Tinian, where the B-29s were loaded up with the bomb. And that's where the Enola Gay took off and dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and also on Nagasaki, which ended the war really. But the war, they figure, was coming to an end anyway. But the first test of the atomic bomb was July of 1945 and they dropped it on Hiroshima on August the ninth and then they dropped…August the sixth, rather, and August the ninth they dropped it on Nagasaki. And August the fifteenth, the Japs surrendered. And then we went in and I have pictures of the prisoner of war camps. We told them to paint PW on the roofs and to open the gates so that they would…so the prisoners would…let's see if I can find some of those. Interviewer: You had a lot of those? Did the Japanese have a lot of those? Miller: Quite a few. They had them all around. This was on the main island of Honshu. We were with Admiral Halsey with the Third Fleet and we were protecting…we were actually bombing the homeland at the time, when the, they had sent a notice out, “Don't hit certain target.” They had ten targets. And they told Halsey to stay away from those. Interviewer: Because of the prisoners? Miller: No, because of the atomic bomb. That's where they were going to drop the atomic bomb. And they had warned the Japs that they were gonna do that. But they didn't pay any attention to it. So they dropped the bomb on Hiroshima. Three days later, they hadn't made any signs of surrender. They dropped in on Nagasaki. And then, August the fifteenth, Hirohito, the emperor, made a recording and surrendered. And all the Japanese surrendered. I went into Tokyo right after the war. Went on a train from Yokuska, which was the naval base, all the way up through Yokihama to Tokyo with all the Japs. This was two, three weeks after the war was over. Everybody's peaceful. And we said, “Good Lord.” You know those Japs were so radical in all their other battles. Fight to the death, you know. Interviewer: Yeah. How was that change achieved? Miller: The emperor said…the emperor told them to behave and they did. And then MacArthur moved in and was in charge of Japan during the, before Korea. Actually, I had some friends that were in World War Two and Korea. They went back in. Bill Finch, who was one of the prominent architects here in Atlanta, was a Marine. Went back and he was in on the Iwojima invasion. He was in the Marines. And he went back to Korea. Then he came back after that and formed the architectural firm of FABRAP, which was Finch, Alexander, Bonds and Pascal…Rothschild and Pascal. And they did the stadium and a lot of things in Atlanta. Very prominent. John Portman was an architect. He graduated ten years after I did and he's done things all over the world. Just amazing, the number of buildings that he's done. And he's a prominent architect. I'm a founding member of the Sea Island Club and John Portman had built a house down there and he spent twelve million dollars building his house and I spent a quarter of a million building mine. [laughs] And I'm having probably more fun that he is, because everybody got upset. He built a super modern house and it was not in keeping with the Sea Island homes down there. So they kind of ostracized him a little bit. But he's a nice guy. He just…and he's done a fabulous amount of architectural work. Of course, it all ties in with the history of Atlanta. He did the… Interviewer: I see the name in the paper every so often. Back to the ending, where were you when the war was declared over? Miller: I was with Admiral Halsey on the Ticonderoga. Admiral Halsey was in charge of the Third Fleet. Actually, what they had…we had basically one fleet. When I first went overseas, we didn't have any fleet. They were all at the bottom. All those battleships. We did have—when I got to Espiritu Santos, we had two aircraft carriers, the Saratoga and the Enterprise. Both had been hit and had to be sent back to the States. And we had some cruisers and destroyers, but that was about it. But the Japs had their whole fleet. So the first six months, even when we went into Guadalcanal, which was in August, August the seventh, 1942. The Japs won practically every battle we fought for six months. Interviewer: Do you think the Japanese thought that they had won? Miller: They thought that they could get…they didn't think the people of the United States had the stomach to fight a war. And they thought they could compromise. They never thought they would conquer the United States. But they thought they could form an agreement and settle and keep all their…it was the…what was it? Co-prosperity sphere… Interviewer: Never heard of that. Miller: They wanted all of the countries they conquered, they wanted to be… Interviewer: Wanted to keep them? Miller: Wanted to keep them, yeah, and form Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. That's what their theory was and they did. They conquered Burma and they even went into India. Admiral [Chuichi] Nagumo, who had just come from Pearl Harbor, went over to India and bombarded Ceylon, a little island off of India, called Sri Lanka now. But actually, it was such a contrast being overseas the first time with no navy to speak of, and the second time I went overseas, we had the biggest Navy that's ever been or ever will be probably. We had twenty aircraft carriers of the large [sic]. We had ten converted cruiser carriers. They called them light carriers, but they oughta call ‘em fast carriers cause they could go thirty knots. We had all the cruisers and we had the new battleships. We had eight new battleships. We had… Interviewer: In just four years. Miller: And it's just amazing the production. That's what really won the war for us. Interviewer: Around the clock. Miller: Oh, the production was fantastic. And we were fighting two wars at once. We were fighting Europe and the Pacific. And we did them both at the same time. Actually, Roosevelt wanted to concentrate on Europe. But Admiral King wanted to concentrate on the Pacific. And the people of the United States wanted to concentrate on the Pacific because of Pearl Harbor. In other words, Hitler declared war on the United States after Pearl Harbor. We didn't declare was on Hitler. But we did help the British. Interviewer: Which would you say was the…you were there…the biggest threat to the U.S. of A.? Miller: Biggest threat? Interviewer: The war between, the European or the Japanese? Miller: Oh, the European. Much bigger. Yeah. The Japanese were unbelievable. We thought they had nothing. But they had everything. Now, Europe, if Hitler had concentrated on atomic energy and come up with the atomic bomb, we would have lost. Interviewer: He tried, didn't he? Miller: Yes, he did. But as a matter of fact, we bombed some of his plants that were developing the atomic bomb. That's one thing I studied in the Pentagon in bomb damage assessment school was some of the bases, the Fenamonday [phonetic] and where they had the buzz bomb and the V-2 rockets that they were bombarding England with. We were studying those bases and so forth and how to bomb those. The Eighth Air Force of the United States used the B-17 bomber. They bombed in the afternoons and the British bombed at night. The British did not believe in daylight bombing. They did their bombing at night and we did our bombing in the daytime. And of course, we lost a lot and they lost a lot in the first part of the war. And the United States wanted to invade Europe in 1943, but Churchill said, “No, we don't have the power. We've got to go in the Mediterranean and fight in Africa and then come into Italy and go in the soft underbelly,” he called it. Interviewer: That's where that expression originated. Miller: Churchill. What happened… Interviewer: When he said, “We don't have the power,” did that mean materials or territory or personnel? Churchill said they wouldn't go in in '43. Miller: That's right. The British didn't have…they were…the German submarines were sinking all the ships and the British depended on their freighters for survival. And during…actually, before we actually got in the war, the Germans were winning the battle of the Atlantic, sinking all those freighters. And the British, if we hadn't come in, would've lost to Hitler. Interviewer: Didn't the Germans send word to the USA not to send ships because the Germans were going to sink them? Miller: The reason we actually got into the war, World War One, was because the German submarine sank the Lusitania. That was World War One. And Woodrow Wilson didn't go in until 1917. Actually, I think he declared…we were in the last two years of…seventeen and eighteen. And when the Americans got over to Europe, the Germans decided to surrender. They weren't completely defeated in World War One, but they decided that the Americans had come over and they had…they were gonna lose, so they surrendered. The eleventh of November, 1918, Germany surrendered. I was born three weeks later, December the seventh, which was Pearl Harbor Day, 1918. I was the perfect war baby, because I graduated from Tech in 1941 and if I hadn't gone for my second degree, I would have gone in before Pearl Harbor. Interviewer: Well, you needed that second degree to do what you did. Miller: Well, Georgia Tech had decided that to be a real good architect you ought to go five years and to do that you get a degree, a bachelor of science, at the end of four years and a bachelor of architecture at the end of five years. And this Commander Quackenbush sent out these letters to all the class of 1942 people. The class of 1941 was not in photo interpretation because they had not gotten the letter from Quackenbush. If I hadn't been in the fifth year, I wouldn't have gone into photo interpretation. But I joined in the fall of '41. I applied for commission in the Navy and they sent it back in the spring of '42, and as soon as I graduated, they sent me immediately to indoctrination school in the Navy. I hadn't taken Navy. Georgia Tech had a great Navy unit, students. And a lot of… Interviewer: I think they called it V-5. Is that correct? Miller: V-5 was aviation. I did join V -5. I got…I thought there wasn't enough going on in the South Pacific and I volunteered to go into flight training. And that's one reason I was home for that Christmas. If you had been overseas a year, they would let you go through flight training and keep your commission. But if you hadn't been, you had to give up your commission and go in as a V-5 cadet, aviation cadet. V-12 was a system where they took people that were in college and let them graduate and called it the V-12 program. But it was a Navy program and as soon as they graduated they went in the Navy. So the V-5 was flight training. The V-12 was college graduates. And that was very prominent. A lot of people did that during World War Two. Shall I go into all my ramifications of flight training? Interviewer: I don't know. What stands out, what do you remember? [discussion of time left on tape] Miller: Well, I learned how to fly in the Navy and naturally that sticks with you. But the reason I didn't get my wings was because I had been overseas six months and they sent me back here to Atlanta to go into flight training, but it took three months. They sent me to the University of South Carolina for pre pre-flight . . . [Tape 1, Side B] Miller: and the University of Miami for actual flight training and flying “Y.P.s.” I got fifty hours in a “Yellow Peril,” a bi-plane, but we were able to do stalls and spins and loops and rolls and touch-and-go landings and all that. So I learned how to fly in this “Yellow Peril,” but actually, when I got to pre-flight at the University of Georgia, I had signed up to stay in the Navy, after I got my wings, for four years. Because they had taught me how to fly. But Eisenhower had said the war's gonna be over by Christmas. This was in August of '45, I mean ‘44. So I thought, “Well, I don't want to stay in the Navy after the war's over for four years.” So I asked them to give me my commission back. They said, “We don't need any more pilots.” They gave me my commission back and I was sent to Washington where my brother had an apartment and we went to bomb damage assessment school there at the Pentagon. But then the Battle of the Bulge came in December of 1944 and the war wasn't over. So here I am in Washington and they're having the Battle of the Bulge in Europe. So they sent me back overseas again. And I got on the Intrepid with a friend of mine that was in bomb damage assessment school. And we went aboard the Intrepid as shoremen in the ship's company, no admiral involved. No admiral involved. But this was when Admiral Stewart had the fleet, the 6th Fleet. When Halsey had it, it was the same group, they just called it the Third Fleet. When I went aboard the Intrepid, the experience on an aircraft carrier was fantastic because we were photo interpreters. We were intelligence officers. So they wouldn't let us fly over Japanese territory because if you got caught and they started interrogating us, we knew too much. So we would go up on the flight deck—we had no battle station during an engagement—and watched the guns and the Jap planes getting shot at. And over here's a battleship and over here's another aircraft carrier. See, we had four groups at that time. Four groups. Each fifty miles apart. Each group had four aircraft carriers, two battleships, eight cruisers and about fifty destroyers. And they all stayed together in one big ring. Task force thirty-eight one, thirty-eight two, thirty-eight three, thirty-eight four. Fifty miles across the Pacific. And that was the biggest fleet that's ever been. And then even toward the end of the war the British sent another fleet ‘cause they wanted to get in on the action because they wanted to reclaim all their foreign territories. They wanted to say that they had helped defeat the Japs. Admiral King didn't want them. He told them that. He said, “Don't want you over there.” But Churchill insisted. He said, “We've offered you the fleet. Do you accept it?” And Roosevelt said, “Yes, we accept it.” So they came over. So instead of having four groups, we had five. But the British aircraft carriers had an armored flight deck, three inches of steel. If a kamikaze hit the flight deck of a British carrier, it'd just bounce off. When they hit our ship, they'd go right through the flight deck. And the hangar deck was armored with two inches of steel. But that's where they had…it was like a big garage where they repaired the planes and put the planes in bad weather, called the hangar deck. When the kamikaze went through the flight deck and exploded on the hangar deck, it'd start a tremendous fire because they had, you know, all the aviation gas on the plane plus there was a big 500-pound bomb would explode. And not only that, but our ammunition would start exploding and catch fire. And we, they kept it a secret from the public, but we had some awful problems with the kamikazes. They caused a tremendous amount of damage. And as a matter of fact, I think half of our carriers were hit by kamikazes. Interviewer: Half? Miller: And the destroyers, what we would do in the Battle of Okinawa, we would send destroyers out and draw a picket line and our planes would go and strike the…say Okinawa, and come back to the picket and they would send us in so that the Japanese planes wouldn't hit the carriers. The Japanese planes hit these picket destroyers and they'd . . . One destroyer was hit by five kamikazes at one time. Most people don't know what damage that these kamikazes caused. But what they would do, for instance in the Battle of Okinawa, every third or fourth day they would have a fleet. Half of the planes would be kamikazes and the other half would just be regular fighter planes. They would come up, they would start out as a group. You'd see them on the radar screen. And then they would divide and they would come on down and they would divide. And pretty soon they circled our fleet with kamikazes. Some of them would be high in the sky and come out of the sun. Some of them would be low on the water. It was coordinated. And they all came in at one time. And you might shoot down two or three kamikazes, but the fourth one would probably hit the ship. And when they hit the Intrepid, it knocked a hole in the flight deck and knocked out the number three elevator. So they had to send it back to Pearl. The first time I got in action, the first time I was on an aircraft carrier, we had rendezvoused at Ulithee with the whole fleet and we were going out to hit the homeland. This was at the time of the invasion of Iwojima, February, 1945. And I was on the Intrepid. We had come down from Pearl Harbor. The Intrepid and the Franklin had been hit and had to go back and be repaired. They were coming back from Pearl to go down to Ulithee to join the fleet to hit the homeland. On the way, the Franklin and the Intrepid had the new…what they called Tiny Tim rockets. These were rocket-fired projectiles, brand new, that they were gonna use. And they also had the napalm bomb, which was a bomb with a big tank of gas, jellied gas, that would drop and when it hit it would be an instant fire. Interviewer: I heard of the other but I never heard of Tiny Tim. Miller: You didn't hear of the Tiny Tim? Interviewer: No. Miller: Well, they were brand new and the Franklin and the Intrepid were the only carriers that had it. They joined the fleet and as soon as we joined the fleet, we were out past Iwo to hit the homeland. And that morning, the Franklin, it wasn't a kamikaze, it was a plane that came in low on the water, dropped his bomb and went on back and escaped. The Franklin started burning. And all day long, our pilots were coming back and, “The Franklin is still burning. The Franklin is still burning.” And it was the worst hit ship. It didn't sink. But it was just awful. You may have seen pictures with it completely burned out. They still had the engines and they took it all the way back to New York and they just used it for scrap. The Franklin and the Intrepid were together and I was on the Intrepid rather than the Franklin. So I was lucky there. And I had some friends killed on the Franklin. But at supper that night, somebody said, “You know, we were hit by a kamikaze this afternoon.” And I said, “I didn't know that.” And the reason was the guns, these five-inch guns, on the ship were so loud, it was like being in a garbage can with somebody hitting it with the full force of a baseball bat. That ship was just “blam!” like that and it would shake. Well, the kamikaze, when it hit, it was a twin-engine bomber that hit, and half of it went into the hangar deck and half of it went into the ocean. But it didn't make all that much noise, so I didn't know we'd been hit until suppertime. [laughs] That was the first time… Interviewer: Large ship. Miller: We were…what we did, the way they worked it, the fleet would go up and get outside of the Japanese planes the night before. Then they'd make a fast run in, send our planes in and bomb the target. And while they were bombing, we had to worry about the Japs coming and hitting us. And then we would stay there one day until dark. And then the photo planes would come in, bring the photos back and they would, maybe about two o'clock they'd get the pictures and we would interpret them and then tell the ACI officers so they can tell the pilot. We always had two days for a strike. The first day they would go in and strike, then we would, at night, we would retire. Then we'd go back in and hit them again in the same place because the pictures had shown what damage was done and where to hit and so forth. So that's what we had the biggest ability, you might say, was at night on strike day. Then we would retire on land-based planes, so they couldn't get to them. And we had a…we never went to port. We stayed at sea because they had a supply fleet that met us with all the replacement planes, with the food, the mail and everything. And then we would refuel. We didn't have atomic energy then like they have now. We had to refuel and the destroyers had to be refueled quite often. And they were refueled from the bigger ships, the battleships and the aircraft carriers. While they were doing that, we were, you know, away from harm. We would watch movies on the flight deck, on the hangar deck and sunbathe on the flight deck, things like that. It was the South Pacific so it was beautiful weather. The only time it really got cold is when we went up to bomb the northern island of Hokkaido, and that's up toward the Aleutians. And it really got cold up there. When we came back we were in good weather. I did have one funny experience. This fella was with me on the Intrepid. We went out on the flight deck. It was a beautiful day. The ocean was calm. Beautiful, sunshiny day. All of a sudden the ship turns into the wind and it blows this guy's hat off. Blew it into the ocean. You see, we had the…those ships could go thirty knots, which is about thirty-five miles an hour. And if there was any wind blowing at all, they would head into the wind and that would be added to it. So the planes would have thirty-five or forty knots of wind to help them take off, you see. So now we'd had to turn into the wind. Interviewer: Let's see. After the war, did you continue with the architecture? Miller: Actually, the State of Georgia, the only way you could get your architectural license was to go to an accredited school and serve three years apprentice with an accredited architect. So when I got back, I went to work with Logan [?] and Williams architectural firm in Atlanta. And after serving with them three years, my brother and I started our own architectural firm, Miller and Miller Architects. And we bought a building between Thirteenth and Fourteenth on Peachtree, the old King residence. The [inaudible] family had built it, and the King Hardware people [had owned it], and they had sold that. It had become a boarding house during the war. We bought it and turned it into an office building. We had about ten tenants there. We had the Buckeye Cotton Oil Company, which took the whole second floor of this big, six column mansion on Peachtree. Called it the Miller Building. Interviewer: And do you keep up with veterans organizations? Do you have time to do that? Miller: No, I didn't. I guess I did go with one group right after the war, a veterans group. They met at the Georgia Terrace Hotel. For about a year they had a meeting every month. Interviewer: Looking back, how would you say your service experiences… [video tape runs out] Notable Pages: p. 6—photos identified p. 10—photo interpretation school p. 12—photo interpretation routine p.14—Admiral Sprague anecdote p. 28—USS Intrepid hit p. 29—USS Franklin burns p. 30—explaining the process of a strike - Metadata URL:
- http://album.atlantahistorycenter.com/cdm/ref/collection/VHPohr/id/263
- Additional Rights Information:
- This material is protected by copyright law. (Title 17, U.S. Code) Permission for use must be cleared through the Kenan Research Center at the Atlanta History Center. Licensing agreement may be required.
- Extent:
- 1:02:26
- Original Collection:
- Veterans History Project oral history recordings
Veterans History Project collection, MSS 1010, Kenan Research Center, Atlanta History Center - Contributing Institution:
- Atlanta History Center
- Rights:
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