HomeMy WebLinkAboutEddie Thompson Radio Transcription #2City of College Station
Heritage Programs Oral History
Interviewee: Eddie Thompson
Interviewer: Tom Turbiville
Place: College Station, Texas
Project: Veterans of the Valley
Transcriber: Brooke Linsenbardt
00:00: Tom Turbiville (TT): Yesterday we introduced you to 97 year old Eddie Thompson of College Station. U.S. Navy retired. He served us in World War II aboard the U.S.S. Birmingham.
One of the most active and famous cruisers of the Pacific Fleet. Hi I’m Tom Turbiville. This is Bravo Brazos Valley brought to you by Meis and Associates. We’ll be back and talk to
Eddie Thompson, among other things, the suicide attack plane in May of 1945. All that’s comin’, right after this.
[Meis and Associates commercial]
TT: From the deck of the Birmingham, his Pacific tour took him to or past a list of islands that he can still raddle off with remarkable recollection.
01:05: Eddie Thompson (ET): (mumble?) Saipan, (Tenyan?), Guam, Ulithi Iwo Jima, (Kamretarito?), Hiroshima, and Okinawa.
TT: Well near war’s end waiting to go home, he found himself spending a good amount of time camped on a hillside in Okinawa.
01:23: ET: And we got uh, 30 man tent pitched on the side of a hill on Okinawa. And lived there about ten days waiting for a troop ship to bring me back to the States. And finally I
got back to San Francisco.
TT: Yeah. Good conditions? [chuckle] Hardly.
01:40: ET: Rainy and it was humid. That was truly the worst thing. God, those mosquitos nearly drug us off.
TT: [chuckle] There was constant danger aboard the Birmingham and this crew of more than 1300 stood ready to face it. It had been attacked by Japanese suicide planes twice before and
there was always that danger.
02:02: ET: We were just leery all the time that they were gonna dive into us, scared of it you know. So, we, we had to live with it. And finally one did. Like I told you, it killed 51
men and wounded 80 and, and when, that, that’s one suicide plane.
TT: And that was May 4th, 1945, Eddie Thompson will never forget it.
02:24: ET: I remember I was just scared to death nearly I didn’t know what was goin’ on. We heard, we heard the alarms and things on the ship that was danger out there. And we just was
walking around in a daze because we didn’t know what to do. And, all of us watched this, ship next door to me. I mean this plane, hit, carrying a 500 pound bomb. And it dove in. And
even the, medical department, hospital part was, hit. And killed some men that was in there as, patients. It’s just, it’s unbelievable, how things happened out there.
TT: Eddie Thompson turns 98 years old this fall. He lived 60 of those years with his wife Betty, who he lost in 1996. He’s proud to be part of the greatest generation. And knows the
significance of that time.
03:24: ET: I’m proud (mumble) to say that I was a veteran of World War II. And they say that the World War II, families, did well, the, the generation of, the World War II generation.
Did the greatest thing that ever done for this country. They won World War II. And that’s, act-, act-, right too.
TT: We salute you World War II veteran Eddie Thompson and on an upcoming Happy 98th Birthday. I’m Tom Turbiville, this is Bravo Brazos Valley.