Shot down japs aboard USS Yorktown.
World War II became personal for V.A. Cooper when Pearl Harbor was attacked by Japan on Dec. 7, 1941.

His mother's two youngest brothers, Cecil and Milton Kennington, were among 1,177 sailors and Marines who died when the battleship USS Arizona was sunk during the attack.

"It hurt me real bad when we heard the news," Cooper said. "We were raised together because my mother had 14 brothers and sisters. Cecil was only four years older than me and Milton was two years older. When they got killed, it made me want to get in the war."

So he joined the Marines, became an anti-aircraft machine gunner on the USS Yorktown and downed numerous Japanese planes.

A Bemis boy

Raised in Bemis, a cotton mill village on the south side of Jackson where his father worked, Cooper's exposure to guns as a boy was limited to a .22-caliber rifle and the kick of a shotgun. Officers wouldn't let him drill with a gun because of his age when he joined the Army National Guard in Jackson at 15. But he still enjoyed it.

"I had friends in the guard, and I liked it," he said. "But I also learned what it would be like to be in the Army."

At 18, he joined the Civilian Conservation Corps and was sent to Berkeley, Calif., for 18 months. The Corps was a public work relief program resulting from the Great Depression. It provided jobs related to conservation and the development of the nation's natural resources from 1933 to 1942.

By December 1941, Cooper was back in the Malesus community working odd jobs and helping on farms. When he received his draft notice, he knew the path he would follow.

"I didn't think I'd like the Army, so I went to Memphis and joined the Marines with a friend," Cooper said. It was Oct. 21, 1942. He was 20 and ready for adventure. He found it in a hurry.

At Parris Island, S.C., the new Marine learned to drill and fire a weapon and discovered he was a fair shot. During testing, machine gunners fired at targets towed by airplanes. Cooper excelled as a gunner and was qualified as a marksman in December 1942.

He said he volunteered to be assigned to an aircraft carrier, and that landed him on the USS Yorktown (CV-10), one of 24 Essex-class aircraft carriers built during World War II.

It was the fourth U.S. Navy ship to bear the name Yorktown, which was taken from the Battle of Yorktown in the American Revolutionary War. Cooper's ship was named Yorktown to commemorate the USS Yorktown (CV-5), which was lost at the Battle of Midway in June 1942.

Commissioned in April 1943, the Yorktown (CV-10) sailed out of the Chesapeake Bay from Norfolk, Va., on July 6, 1943, bound for Pearl Harbor. The ship arrived on July 24 and saw its first combat on Aug. 22.

The war years

Cooper was among 40 Marines assigned to the machine guns on the Yorktown. He fired the same 20 mm machine gun throughout his 26-month war experience.

"It was on the right rear side of the ship, where our planes would land," Cooper said. "You had to be very careful when our planes came back from battles to be sure you didn't fire on one of them."

A history of the Yorktown's war record shows it was involved in 39 battles, shot down 472 enemy planes, damaged 1,886 planes, sank 119 ships and damaged 329 more.

The 20 mm machine guns expended 472,757 rounds of ammunition, and Cooper estimates he fired 46,000 rounds at enemy aircraft.

"When you were in a war zone, you slept right behind your gun," Cooper said. "We usually knew they were coming, and we would wait on the planes to try and bomb us."

"We shot down every plane that tried to come down on us," he said. "The closest a plane got to me was about 60 feet before it hit the water. The pilot parachuted out, and I shot him. I sort of wish I hadn't done it, but he would have died in the water. We wouldn't have picked him up."

Cooper doesn't know how many planes he shot down because numerous guns were often firing at the same aircraft.

"Thank God I wasn't hurt," he said. "I was scared but not hurt. But I had a guy on each side of me loading the gun, and one of them got shot in the legs."

Cooper said the ship's food was "very good," and the Marines had fun playing cards and relaxing when the ship wasn't in a war zone. But they stayed close to their guns, waiting for an attack.

"I was dreading it at first," he said. "We had been told all about it. But we had practiced so much and knew our jobs. We more or less got to where we weren't afraid. We kind of looked forward to it because the fleet was so strong and had so much firepower. We wanted to get the war over by shooting down all their planes."

The worst moments came when the enemy planes attacked straight down from above, he said.

"The other ships had to fire on them then," he said. "But we didn't have that happen too many times."

According to a history of the Yorktown, a bomb hit the ship and exploded near the hull on March 18, 1945, killing five men and wounding 26. But the Yorktown remained fully operational.

During the war, the Yorktown had 176 men killed and 60 wounded.

Cooper got his only furlough of the war on Aug. 17, 1944, when the Yorktown returned from battle for a two-month overhaul at the Puget Sound Navy Shipyard in Bremerton, Wash.

"It was a 20-day leave, and I came home and dated every girl I could find," Cooper said.

Coming home

When the war with Japan ended in August 1945, the 40 Marines on the Yorktown were taken off the ship to Japan's mainland on Aug. 16, Cooper said. After a week, they were told they had to find their own transportation back to the United States.

"It took us four weeks to hitchhike back to the U.S.," Cooper said. "The last two weeks we were on this small ship and hated it. But we finally got back to San Diego."

Cooper had signed up for four years in the Marines and couldn't be discharged. They wanted to keep him in San Diego, but he asked to be assigned to Parris Island, which was closer to home. He was a drill instructor for 13 months before his discharge came through on Nov. 27, 1946.

His discharge papers show he was paid $94.50 a month. He received a travel allowance of 5 cents a mile to go from Parris Island to Memphis.

Cooper was a door-to-door salesman for 11 years in Bolivar, Covington, Selmer and McKenzie and retired at age 64 after 26 years in the insurance business.

He married Bonnie Marie Moore of McNairy County on a Sunday morning in July 1951, and they live in Jackson. They have a son and grandchild. Their daughter was killed in a car crash by a drunken driver when she was 32, Cooper said.

About eight years ago Cooper and his wife went to Charleston, S.C., to visit the Yorktown, which is now a floating maritime museum.

Cooper, 87, is proud of his service to the country and knows how fortunate he is.

"There were a lot of battles, and I was real lucky; sure was," he said.

- Dan Morris, 425-9756
Additional Facts
About Cooper

# Name: V.A. Cooper

# Age: 87

# Residence: Jackson

# Military service: Marines, October 1942 through November 1946.

# Final rank: Corporal

# Where served: Machine gunner on USS Yorktown, Pacific Theatre