An Early History of the Crew of LST1090 in World War II
Contributed by Bob Kendall, Motorman
Hi Brent:
I knew your father,but I was not close to him because as you know he was a deck officer and my duties as a MOMM3/c were all below deck, either in the engine room or the boiler room.
You may have heard the story about the air raid, the day after the war ended. As I remember it [ sixty three years later] we had been watching movies on the tank deck before the war ended for obvious reasons, because you could not have lights on the weather deck, but because the war had ended while we were anchored in the harbor at Okinawa when they dropped the bomb, the Captain gave us permission to watch movies topside. As we were watching the movie, someone sounded General Quarters and we first thought somebody had been celebrating a little too much, but quickly we realized it was the real thing. We were being attacked by Japanese Kamikaze planes.
My general quarters station was the forward bilge control room. We had a small diesel engine that we used to pump ballast from one tank to another , in case we got hit, my job was to start it and with headphones on I waited for instructions from the bridge.
I am sorry to hear that your father has passed away. At 18 years old I was probably one of the youngest of the crew.
I will be 82 this coming August. We started out with 125 men and 9 oficers and I am almost sure that most of them are gone.