Obituary of John W. James

John W. James John Wiley James, age 101, a resident of Olympia since 1954, died August 15, 2013 at home in Olympia. He was born February 23, 1912 in Seattle, Washington to George P. and Linnie (Wiley) James. Mr. James graduated from Roosevelt High School in Seattle and the University of Washington with a degree in Civil Engineering, class of 1932. He was also commissioned an Ensign USNR after four years of Naval ROTC. Later he did a year of graduate study in Engineering Management at MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Mr. James was married to Mary MacIlravy in Everett, Washington on June 19, 1935. After their marriage, he worked five years in the Midwest for B.F. Goodrich Co. in Akron, Ohio, General Tire & Rubber Co. in Wabash, Indiana, and Gulf Refining Co. in Youngstown, Ohio. In 1940, the family returned to Seattle where he worked for Boeing in the Production Department. During WWII, he served four years in the Navy, the last two years in the Southwest Pacific aboard the USS Sanders (DE40) and the USS McCoy Reynolds (DE440), which he commanded. After the war, he served in the occupation of Japan, making biweekly trips from Okinawa to Nagasaki and Sasebo, carrying mail and passengers and escorting larger vessels. After WWII, Mr. James worked for Boeing and Graystone Concrete Products Co. in Seattle, and moved to Olympia as manager of Graystone of Olympia. After Graystone was sold to Boise Cascade, he started his own general contracting business, working in Southwest Washington for 12 years. Mr. James was a past president of the Magnolia Community Club in Seattle, the Olympia Rotary Club, and the State Association of Intermediate (ESD) School Boards. He was active in Toastmasters, Salvation Army Advisory Board, the Westminster Presbyterian Church, and the OMUG computer users group. He played golf for many years. John’s wife Mary died in March 2005, after 69 years of loving marriage. He is survived by a son, Stephen P. (Meg) in Lake Oswego, Oregon; three grandchildren, Jeni Howland (Douglas), David James, and Adrienne James (Clayton Binkley); and five great grandchildren, Joshua, Campbelle, and McClane Howland, Sierra James, and Fergus Binkley-James. A son, William D. predeceased him in 1993. A memorial service for Mr. James will be held at Westminster Presbyterian Church on Saturday, September 14, 2013 at 2:00 p.m. Donations may be made to the Salvation Army, The United Way, or to a favorite charity. Please leave memories of John or condolences for his family in the Guestbook below. Timberland Regional Library’s Veterans’ History Project JOHN WILEY JAMES ~ LIVING HISTORY Local Citizen Approaches Age Ninety-Nine John W. James, a World War II Navy Commander who once maneuvered his ship into the eye of a typhoon with sixty-foot waves, has been invited to participate in the Timberland Regional Library’s Veterans’ History Project. His stories will be recorded as living history for the benefit of future generations. Born in Seattle in 1912, James grew up when horse-drawn buggy was still a common mode of transportation. He remembers the coming of crank-started Model T Fords in Seattle, when electricity was fairly new. As a kid he made a crystal radio for his family and neighbors to listen to. And all the way into the fifties, there were still live telephone operators at switchboards. “To call a number you used a crank,” says James, “and out in the country lots of people picked up on one call. ‘This is Mrs. James and I’ve got personal things to say to my daughter ~ so please ~ everyone else, hang up.’ And most people did, but there were always some hangers-on listening for any juicy tidbits.” As for TV, it wasn’t until 1948 when the first television station was broadcast in Seattle. Nowadays, at nearly one hundred years old, James is amazingly savvy with his computer and printer. In ten decades, James hasn’t seen just huge technological changes, but financial changes as well. In the Twenties, an ounce of gold was valued at $20.68. “Roosevelt inflated that value to $35.00,” says James, “more cash for no more value. He made it illegal for US citizens to own any gold. It was international bankers who owned gold and set dollar values, which is still true today. Gold now is more than $1450 an ounce. There was no income tax until the 1% tax of 1913. Government officials of those days promised it’d never get above 2%. But Roosevelt made income tax a big part of his financial base. And people now dread April 15.” James graduated from high school at sixteen and took a degree in civil engineering from the University of Washington in 1932, barely twenty years old. He took his first ocean journey south from Los Angeles, through the Panama Canal to several ports in South America and the Caribbean, landing in NYC the day before Franklin D. Roosevelt was inaugurated. Along with hundreds of others, he slept in the street because banks had been closed the day before, and no one could cash his Traveler’s Checks. He lived on credit at hotels, mainly eating doughnuts from local shops. James went on to complete a year of graduate work in industrial engineering at MIT in Boston, later working for BF Goodrich Rubber Company in Akron, Ohio, then on to Wabash, Indiana and Youngstown, Ohio. A Model T Ford in those days started at $500.00, (and it took years to save that much cash). James and his wife Mary began their life together in 1935 with a Model A sedan. In 1940 James turned in their Ford for an $800.00 Chevrolet. He and Mary, with their first son Bill, left the Midwest behind, driving to Seattle. There, James supervised 600 men at Boeing, building three of a worldwide total of nine pontoon airplanes (called flying boats) for Pan American. “In those times,” he says, “no one carried enough gas to get across the Pacific, so planes had to land on water and reload at Pearl Harbor, Hawaiian Islands, Midway, and finally Japan.” People tried to fly around the world but the Pacific was just too big – people crashed on islands and never knew where they were. Their second son Steve came along in January, 1942, just before James entered the Navy after four years of Naval ROTC training. “The Navy had no money to pay for reserves; they had no budget. The government had no money to build a Navy, and we Americans were not interested in going to war with anybody. But once Pearl Harbor was bombed, we couldn’t let that go by. “Out of the Navy yard in Bremerton, we went aboard the ships and right into the middle of unknown waters – the Marshall Islands, Taroa and the Gilbert Islands, deep in Japanese territory below the equator. We were as green as grass but spent two years on the other side of the dateline, sailing 180,000 miles – enough to go seven times around the world.” James was made captain of the USS McCoy Reynolds DE 440, which was manned by twelve officers and two hundred men. “Some of my ensigns did not take responsibility to read night orders, which created difficulties for us. Some knew nothing of working as a team. But the crew came together when we were caught in a typhoon off Okinawa.” About that experience James delivered this speech to his ship’s Denver Reunion, Sept 12, 1998: I don’t know how many of you have had experience with a typhoon or hurricane but the McCoy Reynolds and her crew went through a most difficult time when we were caught up in a typhoon off Okinawa. Let me describe it from the perspective of the Captain standing on the open bridge. It was June 5, 1945, a bright sunny day. Our ship was part of a circular anti-submarine screen around the supply fleet which serviced the carrier attack force bombing Japan. We were about 100 miles northeast of Okinawa and the carrier fleet was with us, Admiral Halsey was in command. We had been out in the area quite awhile, in all kinds of weather, but on this day a strong typhoon was approaching and we were sailing upwind in a southeasterly direction, hoping to get out of its path. Typhoons are circular storms spinning counter-clockwise in the northern half of the world. In the Pacific they normally start in the Philippine Sea, follow a path north past Taiwan, swing northeasterly past Japan and die in the colder waters near the Aleutians. That is, normally they do, but they are unpredictable. Sometimes they swing east or west, stop or even buttonhook. The path is very erratic. About 5 o’clock in the afternoon the air patrol covering us sent a message that the storm center was east of its previously reported position. That sounded like the storm might be turning, even button-hooking and we could be heading into its path. So Halsey changed our course to the north. That made us run downwind, not a good choice as it turned out. The first winds of a typhoon are very strong but they have not had time to build up swells. They just knock the tops off waves creating a fog of spray. After we changed course this spray built up around us higher and higher until the ships were covered. We lost visual contact so our only communication was through voice radio, TBS. Radar was hampered by the spray and station keeping was difficult. Then the swells started to build up. Suddenly over TBS, “This is Banjo Eyes in station B3, we have lost two men overboard, will ships astern keep a sharp lookout for them?” The men undoubtedly had on life jackets but to see them in all the spray was nearly impossible and to get them aboard was almost hopeless. Ships with anemometers were reporting wind speeds of 50 knots, 60 knots, 70 knots, the swells were building, the wind howling, the barometer falling. We were having more trouble keeping station. Then over TBS, “Banjo Eyes this is Handcar, (Handcar was a destroyer in the screen astern of Banjo Eyes) we have picked up your two men and they are in good condition.” This was a miracle, the impossible had happened. They say there are no atheists in foxholes and I believe that. There were no atheists in the fleet that night. The winds were battering the ship, swells were getting larger, the rain was coming down in torrents. Going downwind as we were, a wave would catch up with us, ride us forward with it until the crest would come. Then we would fall back into the trough, rolling and yawing. We would go ahead on one engine, back the other, ahead both, full rudder. One of the helmsman said afterward that I was hard on him and I am sure I was, but we fought just to hold a course and keep the ship from yawing and rolling over. Too, there was a thumping aft on the fantail. We couldn’t hear but could feel the thumping on the deck. Then over TBS, “Boxer, this is Staircase.” Boxer was Admiral Beatty, Supply Fleet Commander, and our boss. Staircase was an ammunition ship. “We have a fire.” A fire at sea is always frightening but on an ammunition ship it can be deadly. We did not need to have an ammo ship blow up in the midst of all that was happening. For all of us the war got personal sometimes. The captain of Staircase was Flave George and I had gone to school with him and through Naval ROTC. I hated to see him in this fix. The winds were now reported over 100 knots. One of the two baby flattops with the Supply Fleet reported that a plane had broken loose on the hangar deck. You could just imagine the plane sliding across the deck, crashing into other planes as the ship pitched and rolled, crewmen trying to secure it. I don’t know how they kept afloat but they did. The waves were getting higher, the wind stronger, we were rolling and yawing more and the rain was coming down by the bucketful. Then over TBS, “This is Staircase, the fire is out.” That was good news. Pretty soon Boxer called on TBS and said he was heaving to. That is stopping his engines, letting the ship just drift and ride with the wind. That was fine for a tanker or cargo ship with a deep draft. For us, with our flat bottom and cutaway stern, I felt we were apt to broach in one of those troughs and turn turtle. We kept on using our engines. What this also did was break up the formation. We were crowding the destroyer next to us so we pulled further outside to give her space. A cargo ship came on TBS and said they were leaving the formation. I suspect others did the same without saying anything. You may wonder why we kept formation. There were about 125 ships in the two fleets and we could not just each go his own way so some grouping needed to be maintained. Intervals between ships were doubled but otherwise we kept our regular box within a circle. Ships reported their anemometers at maximum readings of 120 knots, that is 138 miles per hour. Finally they reported their anemometers were spinning so hard they tore themselves to pieces. I had heard that typhoon winds had been reported at over 200 miles per hour and I can believe it. That wind and rain just hammered us. You might want to know about the setup of the open bridge. The night was black as pitch but on the bridge we had the glow of the binnacle lights, and the forward range light, a white all-around light, was on a short mast welded to the top of the pilot house. It was not bright but the Officer of the Deck and I could see most objects. Also the bridge was actually a grid about 2 feet above the deck so the water would slosh across under us but we were not standing on it. We had a sloping glass and steel windscreen along the top of the pilot house supported by short stanchions. Those were the stanchions we hung onto. It was now past midnight, the watch had just changed and a new Officer of the Deck was with me. I was wedged into one corner of the bridge with my arm hooked around a stanchion and the O.D. was wedged into the other corner. I looked across to see how he was doing and right behind him was a green light. This was the only night in the entire war when we turned on our navigation lights and I was not too familiar with them but a green light at sea means only one thing – it is the starboard running light of another ship and it was right there! I grabbed the voice tube and changed course 15 degrees to the right, increased speed to 15 knots, slid over to the TBS and called “Unknown ship, this is Paul Pry, we are close aboard your starboard side.” I hoped they would look out, see our lights and veer off the other way. A wave came under us, then up to the crest, the screws came partly out of the water and with the increased power, the ship just shuddered like a terrier shaking a rat. After two or three waves I looked across and no green light. We slowed some but kept going away from the formation – we needed sea room. We went probably five miles away from the group before we reduced speed to steerage way. That was the reason we were alone and the McCoy Reynolds was the only ship to go through the eye. The hours went by, we were rolling and yawing and struggling in those troughs. Our clinometers showed we rolled fifty-seven degrees from vertical. That’s a lot but what worried me was that the ship was critical at seventy-two degrees. If we reached that the ship would keep right on, and turn upside down. The barometer was another amazement. Normally we read the barometer each hour and logged changes one, two and three hundredths of an inch. This night the barometer began falling a tenth of an inch each fifteen minutes. We ran through the twenty-nine, twenty-eight, and almost through twenty-seven inches of mercury. I didn’t know the barometer could get so low. Shortly after five o’clock, out through the voice tube, “Captain, the barometer is rising!” I looked around, it was still dark, I couldn’t see any difference, the wind and rain were still beating on us. Pretty soon though, it seemed a little lighter ahead and all of a sudden we broke through the sheets of rain and spray into the eye of the typhoon. A calm, flat sea with little lumpy swells, no wind, a black cylinder of rain and spray around us. It was now past dawn so a murky sunlight was coming down through the clouds overhead. The eye was maybe three fourths of a mile in diameter. I don’t know what guided us into that small target. I doubt if we could have survived going around the eye trying to turn into the wind to get away. We stayed in the eye for half an hour. We did not know where we were nor where the typhoon would take us except closer to Japan, so we had to leave. We had our choice of direction, however. The northwest quadrant of a typhoon in our hemisphere is supposed to be the safest. (That is the wrong word, nothing is safe about a typhoon.) Least hazardous is maybe all that can be said. Anyway, about six o’clock we went out to the northwest making turns for six knots, just barely steerage way against the wind. Through the veil of rain and spray into the first swell, up to the crest and SLAM – down into the trough. Then plow into the next swell and solid water would rush across the forecastle, hit the forward gun turret and blow sheets of water and spray over the bridge. The ship would fight her way up to the next crest, the wind would howl and drive spray at us. Then over and SLAM into the trough and dig into the wave. The ship would just shudder. Those rollers coming downward into us were expected but the winds of a typhoon come to the center in a kind of a spiral and build up cross troughs which I had not expected. So, when we would drop into a trough, the swell ahead would have a cross-trough in it and a huge mountain of water would come rushing at us, surrounded by troughs. I just knew it would slap us and maybe can in the side of the ship. But the slope of the wave was so long and its power so great that it just slid under, picked us up like a chip and dumped us into the next trough. We would dive into the next wave, the sea would crash into the turret and blow over the bridge. We would fight up to the next crest and slam into the trough, then up the next wave and one of those cross-troughs would open up alongside of us. The wave would drop out from under us and we would slide and slam to the bottom and I would look up at that mountain of water rushing at us. Our height of eye standing on the bridge, a figure used in calculating star sights, was twenty-eight feet above the waterline and I swear those waves were twice as high as I was . . . that is, fifty-five or sixty feet. They were awesome! This kept on until seven o’clock when things eased somewhat. About eight o’clock the storm was down to a size we had seen before, so we started checking for damage. Our depth charges were gone. That thumping on the fantail we had felt, those were two hundred and fifty pound cans of dynamite being tossed off the racks and rolling across the deck. Some of the cans were even gone from the storage under the racks. Our K-guns were empty. These were tubes set at a forty-five degree angle and were used to fire depth charges tied to mandrels off to the side in a pattern. We had rolled more than forty-five degrees and the mandrels had simply slid out of the tubes. The steel cart used for loading torpedoes was ripped from the side of the deckhouse and lost overboard. We broke two insulators in the stays supporting the mast. That was all the ship damage. Someone gave me the colors – the flag that flew from the mast. All that was left was the selvage, that is the canvas strip on end of the flag with two grommets to hook onto the halyards. It was clean, like the flag had been cut off with a knife. The flag had been whipped to absolutely nothing. There were times when I wondered whether the ship could stand the pounding or would come apart. Some of the rolls went so far I wondered if she would come back, but that was a good ship. They used to talk about wooden sailing ships being well found, meaning well-built and well-equipped. The McCoy Reynolds was well found, and she was well-crewed. About ten o’clock we found the rest of the fleet. The cruiser Pittsburgh had lost her bow. The bow section just broke off forward of the deckhouse. The miracle of that was that all the men got off the bow before it broke loose and the rest of the ship did not sink. The aircraft carrier flights had been crushed down. They were draped over the bows like wet dishrags. The forward gun tubs had dipped into the waves and were torn off, ripping great chunks out of the sides of the carriers. Hulls were split, propeller shafts bent, all kinds of damage reported. I went aboard a destroyer escort afterward where the entire hull had bent and made a wrinkle in the main deck. The thing that really hurt, however, was that with the damage to the carriers we lost our carrier plane attack force. Something the Japanese had not been able to destroy in nearly four years of war. That typhoon was a once-in-a-lifetime experience, we will not forget it. James, with his wife Mary and their sons Bill and Steve, moved to Olympia in 1954. His neighborhood near the Pioneer School was then the city limit, beyond which there was nothing but forest. Lacey was a railroad station, West Olympia and Tumwater were small, separate cities. I-5 was built – but Olympia did not grow; it was Lacey, Tumwater and the Westside that expanded into Olympia. There is no part of the original forest remaining except for Black Hills. Neighborhood life in the days before TV and computers was very different than today. “I don’t know the names of all my neighbors now because we used to have contact – parties, good food and talk. We always had bridge clubs – people from church, business, politics, we’d all get together and play. In Seattle, my wife always bought from a farmer who drove his wagon in from Puyallup; we always had good fresh foods and vegetables. Everybody used to have a garden. We used to have people go from house to house to sell milk and other things. And with my boys, we didn’t rely on entertainment, we did things, we were doers, we made things. We spent good times swimming, fishing and camping in the Cascades and Olympics.” James managed his own business as a contractor, making concrete blocks and cast pipe which were used for building in the area (the Safeway in Tumwater was built from James’ blocks). About a hundred people worked for him. There was a plant with machines and offices, a steam plant, and his company owned their own trucks. He stayed in Navy Reserves, doing weekend cruises and weekly meetings for 29 more years after the war, retiring at age 62. He met with his companions from the USS McCoy Reynolds and gave many speeches at their conventions. Nowadays James is an avid reader, frequently visited at his home by family and friends. “He’s sharp as a tack,” says his cleaning lady, “always kind and a lot of fun to talk with. He loves to laugh. It’s amazing to see a man of ten decades still doing his own dishes, keeping his affairs in order and taking good care of himself!” Words of wisdom from a ninety-nine year old: “I believe there is never any good reason for war; it’s never a solution to your problems. Being neighborly is one thing we should all be.” Please leave memories of John or condolences for his family in the Guestbook below.