- 6 weeks ago
Of the more than 11 million American armed service members who served during World War II, only about 66,000 are still alive today. Chief video correspondent Graham Flanagan interviewed 106-year-old Navy veteran William McClintick, who commissioned as an ensign in the US Naval Reserve in 1939.
After conducting Neutrality Patrols in the Atlantic Ocean aboard the battleship USS Idaho, McClintick served aboard the escort carrier USS Savo Island in the Pacific theater during World War II. In 1945, McClintick and his crew survived the impact of a Japanese kamikaze plane that crashed into the ship's mast during operations in the Philippines.
McClintick shares detailed stories from his Navy career, his candid thoughts on current US leadership, and his experience his experience living past age 100.
After conducting Neutrality Patrols in the Atlantic Ocean aboard the battleship USS Idaho, McClintick served aboard the escort carrier USS Savo Island in the Pacific theater during World War II. In 1945, McClintick and his crew survived the impact of a Japanese kamikaze plane that crashed into the ship's mast during operations in the Philippines.
McClintick shares detailed stories from his Navy career, his candid thoughts on current US leadership, and his experience his experience living past age 100.
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FunTranscript
00:00I know that you were involved in a kamikaze attack.
00:06Come on, I'll show you.
00:09See right here, there's your kamikaze.
00:12You can see a little bit of the mask.
00:14I was right there, where it was hit.
00:17Wow.
00:18What happened to your finger?
00:22Snowbill.
00:24What happened?
00:25He cut off the tip of the snowbill.
00:27So, you survived the kamikaze attack on a ship, but the snow blow got you.
00:33That's not right.
00:38Oh, man.
00:52What is your age right now?
00:54106.
00:57106.
00:58Yeah.
00:59How do you feel?
01:01I'm here.
01:02I get up in the morning.
01:04I can't do a lot.
01:06You behave yourself?
01:08No.
01:09No?
01:10Of course not.
01:11No.
01:12Dad, who is this young man?
01:15My baby.
01:18He's my baby.
01:19I'm the babysitter.
01:20Now, roles are reversed.
01:25Right?
01:26Well, I stopped driving at age 95.
01:31Birthday gift to my kids.
01:33They were getting real excited about me in 95 driving a car.
01:38So, I gave up my driving and car.
01:42You're bound.
01:43No place to go.
01:44No place to go.
01:45No place to do.
01:46No place to do.
01:47Can't play bridge anymore.
01:49Your social life disappears.
01:51And I mean it disappears.
01:53About three, maybe four years ago now, I was doing really great.
01:58And all of a sudden, I had a very major heart attack.
02:02Tick bite.
02:03Fortunately, two of my grand-sons were here.
02:06Big Husky, 6-5-1.
02:08They could pick me up and finally they slapped me into a rescue wagon.
02:11I left with them.
02:12I really did.
02:13They pulled me out.
02:15And if they wanted to, I was shocked.
02:17And they opened their eyes.
02:19Oh my God, it's the brightest light.
02:21The most intense color you'll ever see.
02:25It made me know there's a God.
02:28I know there's a God.
02:30They can't convince me otherwise.
02:34600 landlubber civilians are ready to up anchor and see the Navy.
02:39It's all part of the gigantic new volunteer training program
02:42to bolster fleet reserves as we near a two ocean Navy stream.
02:46I got in the Navy Reserve in 1939.
02:50When I was growing up, a friend of my dad's, next door neighbor actually,
02:55any Navy magazines he got, he gave me to read.
02:59And that's about all I did.
03:01I must have been a hell of a nerd.
03:03Women had never heard of them.
03:06Never heard of them.
03:08Franklin Roosevelt makes a momentous declaration.
03:11The U.S. Navy will find ways to help British convoys cross the Atlantic.
03:16The Navy could see they were getting into a bind for the number of officers they had.
03:21They established a series of schools.
03:23The one I attended was the very first of these schools.
03:27264 new ensigns commissioned as the first of 5,000 volunteer officers to complete training.
03:34I knew I was going to have to join something, and you might have joined first class.
03:38It had a lot more comfortable and reasonable than pound big ground.
03:42In landlocked armories, the Naval Reserve Cadet learns the essentials of naval routine.
03:47Engine room, standard speed, 25 knots.
03:53Standard speed, 25 knots, sir.
03:55First tour of duty was on the USS Idaho.
04:01Big old time job.
04:03We got sent up to Iceland.
04:07Undisclosed units of our American Navy landed the Advanced Force.
04:10Britain is three hours flying distance.
04:13Three and a half hours away is German-occupied Norway.
04:16And Iceland guards the vital Atlantic shipping lane.
04:19Roosevelt and Churchill had gotten together on what they call the Neutrality Patrol.
04:24We joined several British battleships.
04:30We were trying to keep the Bismarck and the German cruiser ashore and keep them there.
04:36We didn't want them coming out.
04:37But that's how I happened to be in Iceland when the war broke out.
04:41State line, Pearl Harbor, December 7th, 1941.
04:46And with that, we loaded up and were headed to the States as fast as we could get there.
04:51We kicked around the Bay Area for a short time.
04:54Then we got involved in the Aleutians.
04:56Stretching out from the mainland is the 1,200-mile chain of U.S.-owned Aleutian Islands.
05:00Its westernmost tipped, Attu, is nearer to embattled Japan than Hawaii, Guam, or the Philippines.
05:06The Japanese at that time had moved to Nikiska and Attu, the two end islands in the Aleutian Islands.
05:13We did not like that.
05:15And we're going to make sure they didn't go any farther.
05:17We got radar.
05:18Nobody had ever seen radar before.
05:21But radar we got.
05:23All of a sudden, she sees bip, bip, bip on her radar in Gunnery Range.
05:28Wombo.
05:29Wombo.
05:30She fired every damn bit of ammunition she had.
05:34The guns were so hot.
05:37She was firing at the top of mountains, three skip distances away.
05:42She had to be re-gunned.
05:45And that made them a very unhappy man.
05:49I was kicking around on the small aircraft carriers as a gunnery officer.
05:56The Savile Island, they were carrying fighters to the Marines in Guadalcanal.
06:01We had as many fighter planes as you could possibly squeeze.
06:05One thing would work, say, we're going after an island.
06:08They're like, okay, we're going to do it.
06:10We're Japanese.
06:11They're like, okay.
06:12All right.
06:13All the drug in caves.
06:14They've been burnt gunned in place and stuff like that.
06:17The big ships, the battleships, and a certain number of the aircraft
06:21would have the duty of wiping those people out before the invasion.
06:28A vast American naval force.
06:30Battleships, cruisers, destroyers, submarines, and swarms of planes
06:34patrolling Pacific waters for hundreds of miles around the Philippine Islands.
06:38The Navy is looking for trouble.
06:43You were involved in a kamikaze attack.
06:53It was removed from the eastern part of the Philippines through the canal down there
06:58and over the south of China Sea.
07:00We thought we were going to get covered.
07:02I, being a gunny officer without a carrier, had the topmost pilot on the ship.
07:07They hit our ship about over five feet above my head.
07:11The plane was badly damaged.
07:13It was a fire.
07:15And obviously the pilot was gone.
07:17Fortunately, we were wearing helmets.
07:20So all we got was a huge rain of Japanese rivets.
07:26It took all the radar off.
07:28All the radios right on the top of my head.
07:32This is a picture of the Saibo Island.
07:35You can see, see right here, here's your kamikaze.
07:41You can see a little bit of the mask.
07:43I was right there when I was hit.
07:47What was going through your mind during that attack?
07:52You're busy.
07:53You're busy.
07:54You're busy.
07:55You might have ten guns on one side shooting with that plane.
07:59And you're watching the plane.
08:01Coming in like this.
08:02That's all you see.
08:04Fortunately, not a person got hurt.
08:06Did you feel lucky?
08:08Oh yeah.
08:09Oh yeah.
08:11We only had one guy come up and say he wanted a Purple Heart.
08:15He was up topside.
08:17He was getting hit by a few rivets.
08:19But he came around and thought the Chinese at the rivets had wounded him.
08:24Everybody else had the same thing.
08:26But he was supposed to be an engineer down five decks down below.
08:31Were you scared or fearful?
08:34You're too busy.
08:35You don't have time to get scared.
08:38You said that that plane was not far from you.
08:43Right over the top of my head.
08:44So had that plane been a few feet lower,
08:48you wouldn't be sitting here right now.
08:50If we had been five feet lower, you wouldn't see me.
08:53I am intensely proud of the successes our fighting men have won over the Japanese.
09:00And I am sure all of you share this feeling.
09:06Did you lose any friends in World War II that were killed in combat?
09:11Oh yeah.
09:12My closest friend, he ended up getting shot down in the islands down there.
09:17He lived for three weeks eating plants and grubs and stuff.
09:21Finally the natives found him, hauled him out, turned it over to the Australians.
09:26The natives down that way in general were friendly to us.
09:31We did a lot of shore bomb all my work.
09:34I was a big old ship like this with five dockers on board.
09:37And a big ship bag.
09:38We saw them with no legs and no arms and stuff like that.
09:41Does that stay with you?
09:43Oh yeah, to a degree, yes.
09:45We can't forget stuff like that.
09:47Are any of your buddies from the war still alive?
09:54No.
09:55They're gone.
09:56I had no hope for we fighting them.
09:58What is your advice for young men and women thinking about joining the Navy?
10:07If I were a young man starting to think about the Navy career,
10:10the first thing a young officer should consider,
10:13he's got to marry a wife who's a pure A.
10:16They've got to be pure A because of the brutal life they lead.
10:20My wife thought nothing happened in a car with two kids
10:24and drive from San Francisco to here.
10:28Think nothing of it.
10:29But you've got to be an A to do it.
10:31Now what do you mean by a pure A?
10:33Very strong.
10:34Strong.
10:35Not afraid of anything.
10:39Was your wife a pure A?
10:42Oh yeah.
10:51What brings you joy?
10:53What makes you happy?
10:55I follow more sports than anything.
10:57Regular TV to me is horrible.
11:02You ought to turn it off the air.
11:04It's just junk.
11:06Do you follow the news?
11:08Follow the news?
11:09Yes, sir.
11:10Oh yeah.
11:11That's the only thing I've got left.
11:12And I don't like it.
11:14What do you think of the Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth?
11:19I don't like to think about him.
11:21I better keep my mouth shut.
11:23Don't be investigating me.
11:29No.
11:30I am not a Trump fan, to put it that way.
11:32Seriously, I'm not a Trump fan.
11:34Why not?
11:35He's not doing the right things.
11:37He's getting rid of democracy.
11:38I call him King Trump.
11:40The first.
11:42Are you optimistic about the future of the United States?
11:48Not as optimistic as I'd like to be.
11:51Okay, so Trump won.
11:53According to the New York Times, the few units that pushed him over the top were the population
11:59in the late 20s and early 30s.
12:02Okay, so it happened that way.
12:04But what caused that group to vote for Trump?
12:07To me, I look back and I recall my own high school training.
12:12Or your mandatory had to have a civics course.
12:15I mean mandatory.
12:16I didn't like it.
12:17But at least I learned how the government is supposed to run.
12:20That group of people in there have never had civics.
12:23They have no idea of how the power spoke for the distributed.
12:28So the guy could put it on the latest show once and all.
12:33After the war, you stayed in the Navy.
12:36At the end of the World War II, I couldn't make up my mind while they were going to stay
12:42in or get out.
12:43I retired as a commander.
12:45I was only 41 when I retired.
12:47At 41, I had no problem getting a job with an outfit called Sea-Along.
12:54We were basically manufacturing material for the space industry.
12:59So I worked for them for 10 years.
13:01My Social Security.
13:03So I got Navy retirement, Social Security retirement.
13:06I'm a triple dipper.
13:09The way I get along now, my capabilities are limited.
13:14One day a week, I have 9 o'clock, the door will pipe open,
13:19and some lady will come in and say,
13:21if I need something at the store, she'll drive me up to get what I want.
13:25Go to the post office and stuff like this.
13:28I do all the little odds and ends.
13:30Then on 9 o'clock in the morning on Friday, up pops the nurse.
13:34I'm going to give you a basic physical exam every Friday morning.
13:39And she's out the door.
13:41That's the way I keep going.
13:44What kind of camera you got here?
13:46So this is a little 4K gimbal camera.
13:51So it's got this stabilizer.
13:52Yeah.
13:53Yeah.
13:54I take it when I have to move around a lot.
13:56Yeah.
13:57So say hi.
13:58Yeah.
13:59This is my nest.
14:04These are the letters I wrote my mother during the war.
14:09You've got to copy every one of them right here.
14:12What is that?
14:13The White House.
14:14What was in that envelope?
14:17President Biden sent you a letter and a picture?
14:23It is.
14:25Oh, wow.
14:26The congressman.
14:28The governor.
14:32I'm just trying to sort some of this stuff out.
14:38Sure.
14:39A lot of them I don't need, but a lot of them I want to keep.
14:42But a little bit of everything here.
14:44That's great.
14:45I enjoyed.
14:47Yeah, it was wonderful.
14:48You behave yourself?
14:49No.
14:50No.
14:51Well, of course not.
14:52No.
14:53He was artificially grounded by his nurse.
14:56No more working in the yard.
14:58Oh.
14:59It kills him.
15:00Oh.
15:01Yeah.
15:02It got me all wrapped up.
15:03You don't want ticks.
15:04Yeah.
15:05Well, remember that's how you got your heart attack was a tick working out in the yard.
15:09That's right.
15:10He told me.
15:11Yeah.
15:12So it goes.
15:14So it goes.
15:23Yeah.
15:24I've been talking about
15:30Yeah.
15:32Hey.
15:33Hey.
15:36Hi.
15:37I'momed.
15:39Hey.
15:40Hi.
15:41Hi.
15:42Hi.
15:43Oh, so there's some Sir.
15:47Yo.
15:48Now I'm not going to call me.
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