Willie also remembers our beloved US Marines on the USS Yorktown:

In Aug 1944 we stopped in Pearl Harbor on our way to Bremerton. We were only there a day or two and picked up many ambulatory wounded men some of whom were Marines. We had room since we would be coming to the states without our planes.

At an evening meal one of the men sitting next to me asked if I would cut his meat for him. Before I asked why I noticed most of one hand was missing. He told me he was hit as he stepped out of the landing craft at one of the islands (could have been Tarawa but I'm not sure) and was taken back to the APA. He commented his war had lasted about one minute.

Keeping the crew in food between the battles

During my time aboard Yorktown I was somehow spared duty on the mess deck, in the galley or in the scullery.
I never dreaded the prospect however, because having done a stint of messcooking in boot camp I learned any duty in the Navy was more or less what you made it. There were always advantages if you looked for them and attitude could make or break the experience. If you went in looking for and expecting shxt that’s usually what you would find.
I was assigned to the breakout gang for a three month stretch which would satisfy the messcooking obligation most all unrated men faced during their time aboard ship.
This was the group that broke out all of the food for the next day and brought it to the galley and the bake shop.
My two main objections (not that objections made any difference whatsoever) were I would have to temporarily move out of my sleeping compartment and because of this change, re-assigned to a new battle station in a damage control party below decks. The reasoning being I would be one deck lower and further away from the guns.
The first didn’t matter very much because we hardly ever slept in our bunks. The second was resolved early on when one of the 40MM gun captains said he needed my experience on his gun mount. I had served with him on mt. 5 before he was promoted. The gun was on the port side gallery deck level and the only drawback was having the four 5" guns of mts 5 and 7 firing over us when they had to fire to port. It didn’t happen too often during my stay there but when it did it was brutal.
I guess you could say I wound up with what I considered the best of possibilities, a straight day job and a battle station on the guns.
We usually finished our day’s work before noon and nobody messed with us when we were through. We had no cleaning chores and in the absence of GQ, spent leisurely afternoons and evenings almost like passengers.
The work wasn’t easy, like carrying 100 lb boxes of potatoes and 50 lb sacks of flour up three or four decks to the galley and bake shop, but then again, work for deck division sailors was seldom easy.
We had a lot of time to conjure up our little schemes to pilfer whatever goodies were available and to gather the makings of raisin jack. We occasionally had a batch or two working in one of the dry store rooms in one gallon mustard or mayonnaise jars. All that was necessary was some raisins, sugar and sometimes cornmeal, a safe place for fermentation and a storekeeper with a taste for wine. It took ten days from mixing the ingredients to filtering and drinking
The result tasted like a sauterne wine and good enough that I have made some since leaving the Navy.
Our most memorable caper was stealing beer out of the chill box. This was where fresh fruit and vegetables were stored if and when we had them. It was a huge refrigerated compartment down at the lowest level in the after part of the ship and kept at about 38 degrees. In the center of the compartment were several hundred cases of beer neatly stacked in such a way they could be counted by eyeballing.
By switching padlocks on the door we were able to sneak in one night and removed two cases from the middle of the stack. The hardest part was moving the cases around in such a way as to cover up the empty space.
As expected, we were spotted as we made our way to the fantail and were joined by several others looking for a beer.
Nobody ever said anything and to the best of my memory the missing beer was never discovered. Not like another beer stealing episode that was discovered but the culprits were never identified.
Did we have a craving for the taste of wine or beer? No, we could have easily done without it but we knew the officers up in officers country had access to booze so why not us. The real boozers aboard ship in those days were drinking stuff like aftershave lotion and vanilla extract. In fact, one concoction they made with Aqua Velva and orange juice wasn’t too bad except it had a soapy aftertaste. I only tasted a sip but some of the old timers drank it. Aqua Velva was a hot item back in those days
In spite of all the warnings, a few men on other ships and stations still drank torpedo alcohol with some suffering terrible consequences including death.
After three months I went back on the 5" guns where I remained until the end of the war. The other men I served with in the breakout gang have remained among my best friends to this day.
 

By March 11, 1945 we had seen several of our sister carriers hit and set aflame. As the war was winding down we all suspected the worst was yet to come as the Japs were getting desperate and intensifying the kamikaze attacks. As it turned out in the weeks ahead over a thousand men would die on Franklin and Bunker Hill alone.

See Victory at Sea "Suicide to Glory" 20 minute movie click here

Other ships crews sometimes called us the Lucky Y and I suppose luck had a lot to do with us still being alive but who’s to argue? Most of us didn’t dwell on the possibility of dying and if we had an option, many would have been chosen death over getting f...ed up. If it was luck keeping us alive the luckiest of all days was upon us.
On the evening of this date I drew an anchor watch. It was the only one I ever drew and I pissed and moaned because they were going to show a Betty Grable movie and I wanted to see it.
Up on the foc’sle I could hear the crew whooping and hollering back on the hangar deck and figured Betty was showing off her million dollar behind and legs.
I stepped out on the “chains” platform to observe the angle of the anchor chain which would indicate if the anchor is holding the bottom. No angle or vertical meant the ship was free and drifting. As I moved out I heard a plane fly by that sounded like an OS2U, a float plane carried by the battleships and cruisers. I didn’t pay any attention to it because when the fleet was at anchor these planes were always flying around. It didn’t dawn on me that they wouldn’t be flying at night.

What happened next was an unforgettable (for me) example of the difference between the speed of light and sound. I was observing the chain when the side of the ship began glowing a bright orange. As I began to wonder “what the hell is going on” I heard an explosion. That plane flying by was a kamikaze, suicide pilot.

He passed close enough to our bow that had I seen him I could have probably hit him with a baseball. He had his sights on Randolph which was anchored next in line to us a few thousand yards away. He passed up the forward part of Yorktown and the opportunity to kill as many as two thousand Yorktowners including me.

He went on to hit the after part of Randolph causing 25 dead, 106 wounded.

General quarters was sounded along with the call for “special sea details”. Some of us were confused not knowing which call to answer first. Needless to say pandemonium erupted on the hangar deck as two thousand or so men scrambled to get to their battle stations.

During all the firing we did while I was in 3rd division I was behind the muzzles of the 40 MM's and it wasn't until I was transferred to 2nd divisions and Mount 6 and 8 gun deck that I learned just how loud these guns were they were if heard anywhere in front of the muzzle.
I don't suffer from any noticeable hearing loss, but hearing test indicate I no longer hear higher frequency sounds. I believe I lost that to the 40MM mount just forward of our gun deck. This gun can be seen in the 6&8 gun crews picture. It was a piercing sound that actually hurt the ears. The only hearing protection we had was wads of cotton and often not even that.
Supposedly the ship's strongest firing point was in the port quarter quadrant. I don’t know if this changed after the three quads were added to the starboard side along with four others in 1944. The three on starboard side were midships and no doubt deemed necessary after that Kate was able to bore all the way in though he failed to release his torpedo.
Whatever, we sometimes had that mount firing over us. It had been mount #6 before they added the extra guns and I had occasionally stood watches on it when I was in 3rd division.
On one of the three days I thought would be my last I was nauseated with a sick headache, made worse by breathing gun smoke and stack gas. All the starboard guns were firing when we got the order to standby. As soon as I took my position behind the gun the ship heeled over from a sharp hard right turn and not having anything to grab onto I went stumbling across the deck and until I hit a bulkhead.
When we steadied up on a new course the other Essex with us was out of our view and a Baltimore heavy cruiser was on the port quarter. Our division officer whose battle station was in air defense aft main fire controller hollered over the PA to get on any target manually and fire on it. One of the few times this happened.
5" guns were not designed for close in air defense. Using them against planes flying low on the water inside the force where gun elevation is near zero is very dangerous. A five inch projectile would do considerable damage and kill many people if we hit a ship. The Marines on Wake island sunk two Jap destroyers with guns the same size as this one.
I could see a kamikaze flying very low on the water that appeared to heading between us and the cruiser* possibly going after the other Essex. Either our pointer and trainer or Pops on the Mark 51 director was tracking and getting on target and I was watching Rosie’s right hand. We were using proximity fuses which means the powder case and projectile were already in the loading tray and would be rammed and fired when he pulled the ramming lever.
Time for a prayer I thought but I was so sick and miserable I said "God if I’m going to die in this war make it today." Then quickly added, "scratch that out God, hear my mother."
Just when I thought Rosie was about to pull the ramming lever there’s the cruiser in the line of fire.
We couldn't fire at him nor could the cruiser. When it was clear to fire he was too far aft for us but the forty next to us got off a few rounds.
When the plane was almost astern he turned and started gaining altitude, the sunnavabich wanted us all along. All of our planes were loaded with ordnance and gas. I don’t remember if the pilots were in them but we had 500lb bombs and hundreds of gallons of avgas within 25 ft of us.
It was up to the two quads on the fantail or the two twenties aft of us and manned by the commissary stewards to stop him or we all die. After he made his turn I couldn’t see him anymore.
They got him and we were told it was the twenties manned by the black stewards that did it. God love ‘em!
It was one of the kamikazis that broke through our combat air patrol, and all the guns of our screen until nothing was left to stop him but Yorktown’s guns.

*I don’t know exactly at what point or in what frame of mind time perception changes but memory records such events in "slow motion" and they are recalled as such. I’m sure the effect of this phenomenon is unique to the individual observer.  Actual clock time from sighting cruiser to splash was probably sixty seconds or less.