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My name is Emiliano (Emil) Gimeno. I was born on January 24, 1921 in El Paso, Texas. About March 1944, I received greetings from the then President, President Roosevelt. At that time I was married with three children and was working at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal in charge of the disposal of chemicals.
Rather than be drafted into the army, I enlisted in the Navy and attended boot camp at Farraught, Idaho. I boarded the U.S.S. Yorktown on September 1994 at Bremerton, Washington. Before that time, the biggest boat I had ever set eyes on was a rowboat at City Park Lake in Denver, Colorado. As I recall I, along with fellow sailors, was marched in the direction of where the ships were docked. I noticed destroyers at dry dock. They looked big! Looking about 1/3 of a mile away, I observed a two-story building and behind the building I could see a steel, gray painted monster. The size of that steel monster staggered my imagination! It was the U.S.S. Yorktown. I thought to myself, "It sure would be terrific to serve aboard a carrier, to be a part of the first line of attack, ship duty, airplanes, and the glamour of the movies." I thought, "No, it couldn't happen to me!" We came alongside of the dry dock that held the carrier. The flight deck must have been some 60 to 70 feet above where we stood. The ship was a monstrosity! When the petty officer made a right turn along the carrier, my heart skipped a beat. I couldn't believe that I might be aboard a carrier at war time and be a part of the action. The petty officer walked up the gang plank and boarded the ship. He told us men to wait where we stood. From where we were standing, the ship was so huge that we could not see the bow or the fantail of the carrier. After waiting for about a half hour, the petty officer returned and ordered us to pick up our sea bags and to go aboard the Yorktown. This was a dream come true! An opportunity of a life time! I came aboard the ship as a Seaman 2nd Class and, when I was discharged, I was an Aviation Ordnance Man 3rd Class.
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While serving aboard the U.S.S. Yorktown, sometimes we had reporters who came aboard to report about the war. Ernie Pyle, a journalist and correspondent, came aboard the Yorktown and stayed aboard about one week to observe the men at work, watch airplanes taking off and landing and observe life aboard an aircraft carrier at war. One time he walked over to me and we visited while I was sitting between the wheels of an airplane. The conversation was brief. The next day Ernie left the ship and headed to the islands. A few days later we heard that he had been killed by a Japanese sniper on the Pacific Island of Ie Shima which is located next to Iwo Jima. What a great loss to journalism!
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One memorable event was the time that an air plane, all shot up, attempted to land aboard the Yorktown. The air plane's tail hook missed the arresting cable and crashed into the crash barriers. The plane almost flipped over on its back. I was the first person to get to the plane. I started to open the 50 caliber gun bay. That was when the stretched 3/4" barrier cable snapped and struck me on the forehead leaving a big gash. Observers related that I flipped over once and landed face down on the flight deck. I was later told that I was lucky to be alive.
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"Scared like all get out" is what my buddy Kenny Glassman used to say. Seeing a kamikaze is, or was, one of the scariest things ever imaginable because kamikazes were on a one-way trip. One day I witnessed 24 aerial attacks by kamikazes, ten of them directed at the Yorktown. The gunners on the Yorktown shot down 14 of them. The other remaining ten kamikazes then aimed their attack toward other ships close by. One kamikaze crashed into the side of a cruiser that was about a city block distance from the Yorktown. The kamikaze bounced off the side of the cruiser and fell into the ocean. In this particular instance, there were no casualties aboard the cruiser.
This one time we were under attack by kamikazes. I was outside my armory with the flight deck over me when I heard our carrier guns shooting. I was so damn tired that I did not go to the catwalk to see what they were shooting at. I was facing forward when I saw a flash of light to my left, and I felt the heat of the airplanes gasoline burning. The kamikaze hit the water about fifty feet from where I was standing. Was I scared? You're darn right I was!
Day after day we attacked the Japs in what I referred to as the triangle. The triangle was the area between Okinawa, Iwo Jima and Japan where our task force could attack one area one day and another the next day. One time we stayed within the triangle area for sixty-six days, and another time we stayed in the area for seventy-seven days, pulling out of the triangle only long enough to refuel, take on supplies, armaments and, the most welcome, mail from home.
As an Aviation Ordnance Man, we had to get up at three in the morning, eat a fast, tasteless breakfast and then report to the flight deck to load the airplanes with bombs and four inch rockets on the wings of the airplanes, accomplishing this in the dark. We used red lens flashlights. The airplanes would then take off from the flight deck in the dark in order to bomb the Japanese at daybreak, coming in with the sun rising to the airplanes rear in order to make it more difficult for the Japanese to aim their guns. The kamikazes would either try to follow our airplanes that were returning to our carriers or fly at a specific height to scout for our carriers. Other times the kamikazes would fly from cloud to cloud, or come at us at a very high altitude (the kamikazes would fly so high that I could not see them, while many of my buddies could). There is nothing more frightening than being under attack by Kamikazes.
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The guys in our Division were tired and worn out all the time. I was exhausted all the time. We hardly spoke to each other – we were so tired! We did our work and helped each other without saying a word. We could anticipate what needed to be done, and we did it without being asked. Once our airplanes were in the air, we dropped down on the flight deck, or in the armory, and immediately went to sleep. As soon as the planes returned, we loaded them again. In the evening, after all of the planes had retuned and landed, we swabbed their guns and reloaded them with ammunition for the machine guns. We checked all the electrical systems to the guns and to the bomb racks. Then usually sometime after midnight, the "Charlies" would be off the radar screens, and we went to our respective compartments and slept in our sweaty, foul smelling bunks.
We had been at sea for over two months without dropping anchor. It seemed that, whenever we were scheduled to go to the Philippine Islands or to Ulithy for repairs and R&R (rest and relaxation), another carrier would get hit by a kamikaze, and we would have to take its place in order to not give the Japs time to regroup. Many of our carriers that had been hit by the kamikazes had returned to the war zone. The U.S.S. Yorktown was the only aircraft carrier that had not been hit by kamikazes. All of our carriers were attacking Iwo Jima pretty hard, pounding the strongholds where the Japs had dug in.
Tokyo Rose announced that there were only four American carriers remaining in the Pacific and that, before long, there would not be any American carriers remaining because Japan's "divine wind" would annihilate all our carriers in the near future.
Emil Gimeno
