Show lives to tell story the following account is a letter received by mr and mrs james T palmer from their son quenton J palmer S ac who has survived t two lv typhoons off okinawa buckner bay okinawa october 11 1945 dear morn horn and dad well I 1 have survived another typhoon I 1 told you how bad the last one w was s and it in no way compared to this one jt it was centered directly over this a red area the other one abne was miles away I 1 have never seen anything in all my life to compare with the wind it was a knot gale the other one was only 95 knots the death toll here at the bay has reached so far and thousands injured the damage is set at T they he aha had d a la large rg e working party doing n nothing oil ng all I 1 da day e except digging graves and b burying r n g t the he dead the hospitals on the island are all full and they have had to fly a lot of the casualties to guam they have men sleeping everywhere e ery r where r on our ship whose ships ws were 0 flieg sunk n in in the storm every ship in t the e bay either sunk or went on the rocks with the exception of ours which has been on the rocks since the last typhoon and those in drydock dry dock boy did we do some tall praying im satisfied all that saved us we got rammed by several different ships one caught on our anchors and dragged us within 30 yards of the beach and then in broke loose I 1 hate to think what holud have happened if we broken loose one ship sank with 43 men on it they are picking bodies up all around the bay Yest erady afternoon they g got ot a dead fellow just a few bev yards from our destroyer I 1 had to help take him to the beach it was surely terrible he was all black and I 1 got so sick I 1 make it it all just makes me sick to think that a fellow can go clear through h the war without being hurt and then t ten a dam mess comes along like this and takes unnecessary lives we lost two of the boys ii in our outfit they were both 19 our ogiver was on the southern seas when the storm struck it sank and they of course had to abandon ship the water was so rough that when they jumped in they were thrown into the coral beaches and just cut to pieces his skull was fractured his shoulder badly cut and his leg lee was broken lie ile was flown his leg lee was broken lie ile was to a hospital on guam but he died it sank all our bots this time we had 40 the beach all around the bay is just as thick as possible with wrecked ships in several places close to the beach all you can see is the stacks sticking up oh how I 1 hope we can get out of this godforsaken god forsaken country before another typhoon zomes comes its just impossible to explain to you just juet how it is they expected our ship to capsize at any time the swells would completely go over us so you can call imagine the size of them two I 1 ships rammed each other one a transport and one ohe a destroyer the destroyer had some depth charges on her stern and it blew the whole stern off the transport I 1 sure hope they get some movies of the storm and make newsreels news reels of them I 1 would just like you ou to see it have you had any I 1 luck bucky getting films if I 1 had some I 1 could take some pictures that would knock your eyes out they had another at brown beach yesterday where we stayed in the tents for a couple of weeks when I 1 arst came to the island the japs had bad evidently buried a large amount of dynamite there and it been discovered yesterday someone was burning trash and this stuff exploded it completely cle cleaned aried out everything around for two miles they have no idea how many were killed and hundreds are injured I 1 was talking to a kid who went down to see it and he said it blew a hole in the ground big enough to put a large sh ship r i in n we are about 30 miles front from tte there re and it shook the ship like an earthquake it shot dirt and rocks into the air for thousands of feet if anyone tells you the war in the pacific is over just send them to Okin away and soon change their minds admiral king was here during the typhoon so maybe they will get us out of here before the next one I 1 guess it will be sometime before I 1 hear from you as the post office was completely destroyed and mail strewn from one end of the island the other to about all I 1 got from the storm is i a cold so I 1 was really lucky come to 0 o think of it though its more than uck luck we have survived that storm but tor for the help of god take rood good care of yourself for me and dont worry im sure gure I 1 will be okay til next time love quenton |