Memories of war are strong in summer

PHIL McDONALD...downed 4 of enemy
NEWS PHOTO

Memories of war are strong in summer
By WILLIAM B. TREML
NEWS STAFF REPORTER

Forty-five years is a long time to remember. But where he was and what was happening to the world almost a half-century ago remains a vivid vision for James Lau.

On Aug. 15, 1945, Lau, now a retired business executive for the Vokar Co. in Dexter, was a young man aboard the aircraft carrier USS Bon Homme Richard on a combat run off the coast of Japan.

A native of Hollywood, Calif., Lau transferred to the University of Michigan from UCLA as a junior, earned a business degree and was working as an accountant for a Muskegon firm when Pearl Harbor was bombed. He enlisted in a Navy officer program, earned an ensign’s commission and after serving as a gunnery instructor at Notre Dame was assigned to the Bon Homme Richard.

The 27,000-ton carrier had that summer been sending out Navy Hellcat fighter planes on bombing and strafing runs against an array of Japanese targets, including Tokyo, Kobe and Osaka. Lau was a junior grade lieutenant in the combat information center of the fighter director’s office on the ship, and his job involved vectoring in returning carrier planes.

While attached to Admiral Bull Halsey’s Third Fleet in the final phase of World War II, the Bon Homme Richard participated in 15 air operations involving more than 7,000 individual landings. The high spot for individual performances on the carrier came in late July 1945 when a baby-faced redhead named Phil McDonald shot down four Japanese planes in the first 38 minutes of his mission. The mark by McDonald still stands in carrier pilot records. For that mission, McDonald received the Navy Cross, the Navy’s highest award for valor.

Of the 15 operations the Bon Homme Richard recorded, Lau recalls the last — and how it was interrupted — most clearly.

“Tokyo had been the target on our 14th run on Aug. 13,” he says. “On the 15th, our planes took off again for targets in Tokyo. But shortly after the mission was under way, the communications officer on the Bon Homme Richard received a four-line message. It brought our fliers back to the ship.” That message read: “Cease offensive operations against Japanese forces. Continue searches and patrols. Maintain defensive and internal security measures at highest level and beware of treachery or last movement attacks by enemy forces or individuals.”

The war was over.

Sept. 2,1945 — the day Japanese officials and Gen. Douglas MacAr-thur signed the official surrender papers aboard the battleship Missouri — was a time of dizzying exhilaration for the pilots aboard the Bon Homme Richard, Lau remembers.

“It was like a holiday,” he says. “All our planes and those from other carriers went aloft in a massive celebration of the surrender signing. I remember I was standing on the stern of the ship and some of our pilots came down at wave-top height and flew under the stern. There’s not much clearance there but I could look down and see into the cockpits, see the flyer maneuvering his plane. It was a wild time.”

Two weeks after the peace document was signed, Lau and many of the Bon Homme Richard’s crew were walking the streets of bomb-shattered Tokyo, the first Americans other than prisoners-of-war allowed in Japan since the Pearl Harbor attack.

Mid-August holds no significance for most young Americans. This year it will come and go as usual. But for James Lau and combat heroes like Red McDonald, it will always be a time of special remembrance.

When they were young. And a war was ending.

Articles and photos help James Lau, left, recall the eventful summer of 1945 aboard the aircraft carrier USS Bon Homme Richard. The day Japan surrendered 'was like a holiday, he says. 'All our planes and those from other carriers went aloft in a massive celebration of the surrender signing ... It was a wild time.'