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Welcome aboard the USS Sumter, APA-52 web site. Here you will find a
considerable amount of information about the "Lucky Ship" Sumter.
Perhaps a few short words from a letter written by the late Pete Roche, one of the
co-founders of the Sumter Reunion would be appropriate.
"We, as young men of the early forties were united by World War II.
As sailors in the Navy, we became a part of something that had never been
tried before, Amphibious Warfare. Our
particular group of the Navy Amphibious Forces manned the small boats that took
the men and materials ashore on enemy held islands in the war against Japan.
We made assault landings at places that most people today have never heard of or
have long ago forgotten. Places
like Attu, Kiska, Kwajalein, Eniwetok, Anguar, Leyte, Luzon, and Iwo Jima.
We sailed the Pacific from the frigid Aleutians to steamy New Guinea.
We anchored in places with strange sounding names like Manus, in the
Admiralty Islands, Ulithi, in the Carolines, Apra-Guam, in the Marriannas,
Hollandia and Sansopar in New Guinea, and many more.
We were the Gypsies of the Pacific, with no mama and no papa most of the
time. The Navy Department called us
“casuals,” but there was nothing casual about the task we performed, and the
conditions under which we performed it.
At
times we lived in the boats for days and nights, never going aboard the mother
ship. We ate cold food, when we ate
at all, food that was lowered down to us on lines. We tied up to buoys at night, sleeping when we could, with
life jackets for a bed on the deck or on the engine cover.
We retook the first American soil from the
Japanese at Attu in the Aleutians. We
liberated the Philippines and received a medal for it from the Philippine
government. We were there when the
flag was raised atop Mount Surabachi on Iwo Jima.
Without the “Amphibs” there would have been no victory in the
Pacific. We took the war to
Japan’s front door, island by bloody island.
We helped make history."
(For
the complete text, hit the, Why A Reunion Tab. This lists the complete
"Why A Reunion" letter by Pete Roche" and "How the Sumter
Reunions Began" by the other co-founder of the Sumter Reunions, Melvin
Burks.)
If you have any
questions suggestions or comments, please feel free to e-mail me. Just hit the e-mail
indicator below.
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