If anyone has listened to WWII stories from there family members or acquaintances, please post them.
A good friend told his wife (as I recall it):
He was aboard a ship right after the end of the war. They got word of a prison camp that had not been liberated yet. They headed that way, despite MacArthur's orders that he wanted his troops to liberate it later. When they arrived they talked with the prisoners. The prisoners had been forced to offload supplies for the Japanese troops. They were supervised by a Filipino. They made a deal with the Filipino to put a grain of rice in a can each trip they made. They would get back half of the rice, cooked. One day they purposely put an odd number of grains in the can and counted what they got back. The extra grain was in their share.
The Filipino insisted the rescuers share a meal with him and his family. The friend said it took all his will power to eat--the cleanliness of the meal left much to be desired.
After the war there was an effort to recognize the crew for their rescue. As he told it, MacArthur pulled political strings to quash the effort.
I posted this years ago on another forum and got an angry reply from one of the members. It seems MacArthur was one of his heroes and he did not appreciate the slam. I took it to mean MacArthur was a military genius, but had normal human failings, too.
My uncle was a Pearl Harbor survivor. Later in the war he had two ships that he was on sunk. One was during the battle of the Coral Sea. The order was to fire the guns at will, instead of synchronizing them. The idea was that synchronizing the firing made it harder for enemy submarines to find a target. They were sunk by torpedoes.
I found it interesting that I found in my mother's papers a chit he had to allow him to wear dungarees on the base after one of the sinkings. That kind of BS is one of the reasons I was glad to get out of the Navy.