Preserving The Oral HistorIES of Combat Veterans
5:46 | Cook Alex Nuckles was stationed on Saipan with a quartermaster unit. He thought that one of the white lieutenants was the finest officer he'd met in the service. Dengue fever sidelined him for a while, but he recovered. There was some friction between the captain and the first sergeant and once they took off the bars and stripes to fight.
Keywords : Alex Nuckles cook race segregation Japanese prisoners Dengue Fever Red Cross
As a black soldier in World War II, Alex Nuckles was assigned to a support role. He was already a cook and a baker, so once they made a soldier out of him, he assumed that role. When he shipped out to the Pacific, he saw a rope stretched right through the deck, dividing it. Why was that?
When he got to Hawaii, Alex Nuckles had to go through all his basic training again. At least the weather was nice. His eventual destination was Saipan, where there was no more training. There was Japanese artillery hidden in a cave and strafing, but his quartermaster unit avoided any casualties.
Alex Nuckles reflects on being in a black support unit in the Pacific. He didn't understand why there had to be segregation. We were all fighting for the same thing, weren't we? Still, most of the soldiers respected those who were different and got along.
There were some women prisoners on Saipan, recalls Alex Nuckles, but you better not go messing with them. Some guys did, anyway. They also made up bad hooch with bad results. He was the cook and he tried to make the powdered eggs taste like something, but that was a tall order.
Most of the soldiers got along, regardless of race, but there were always some who couldn't get over it. Alex Nuckles recalls some incidents, including the soldier who refused a blood transfusion.
When he returned from the Pacific, Alex Nuckles was unfairly fired from his first job, but he got a little satisfaction, later, when he saw the man responsible on the street. Using lessons taught to him by his father, he made his mark in his community after the war.
Thinking back on his time on Saipan, Alex Nuckles remembers the awful smell of dead bodies and the sight of Japanese bullets from a plane churning up the ground. He was disturbed that a fellow soldier was court-martialed unfairly, but what could he do about it? On the trip home, he was still a cook, which was good on the ship and bad on the train.
He got homesick sometimes, but Alex Nuckles was encouraged by the letters from his wife while he was deployed in the Pacific. Returning home required some transition time, getting used to the food and talking to people who weren't engaged in a war. He made it through with help from his faith.
