Saving Captain’s Memories

The mortar shell has his name on it.

It didn’t come that way, of course. Still, there’s no telling whether the old man would be alive today if the Japanese ordnance that hit outside his tent had not failed to explode.

“They shelled us for 21 nights. They were hitting the runway to blow holes in it. Once in a while, one went astray. I saw it the next morning but didn’t touch it. I called ordnance and they disarmed it.”

He saved the nose section and had it inscribed:

J.S. Hightower

Captain, USMC

1943 Bougainville 1944

The memento felt heavy in the palm of my hand. “Hi” Hightower, now 82 years old, smiled as he told his stories, reminiscing in a way my father seldom did.

We were here, my mother and I, for a gathering we wished my father had lived to attend. My column last Dec. 7 had described my ailing father’s memories of Pearl Harbor, prominently featuring his buddy Hightower. It was on Memorial Day that a friend who noticed Hightower’s name had given him a copy of the column. Hi Hightower and Dawson Harris had not seen each other in maybe 20 years, but soon Hightower’s daughter, Cindy DuPont, and I were making plans to get the two old friends together.

We had set a date, but then my father’s failing heart finally gave out. The Hightowers came to the memorial service and we made plans to get together just the same.

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I already knew some of Hightower’s stories. A couple of years ago, worried that her aging father’s memories would go with him, Cindy DuPont had set a portable typewriter and paper on a card table in her parents’ La Mirada home. Whenever you remember something, whatever stories pop into your head, she told her dad, write it down.

He did so and his daughter shared them with me.

I enlisted in the United States Marine Corp on July 16, 1940. I reported to Dallas, Texas, and knowing that I was underweight I went out and bought a dozen bananas and a quart of milk. About five minutes before being called into the Doctor, I vomited everything up. After explaining this to the Doctor, he said if I wanted to be in the Marines this bad he would approve my enlistment and the good old Marine “chow” would put the necessary meat on my bones . . ..

Boot Camp was tough and hard work from early morning to late at night. Discipline was especially tough. One day on the rifle range I had a really bad day, I could not hit the side of a barn. I was really down. We always marched back to our tents from the rifle range and prior to this return Sgt. Dack called Private Hightower front and center whereby he said take charge of the recruits and march them back to camp. Believe me that restored my confidence. . . .

On December 6, 1941 my friend, Dawson Harris, and I bought a case of beer and took it out to a civilian friend’s house in the village of Ewa. The three of us sat around the table and drank it all. We did not get back to camp until about two or three in the morning. . . . At about 7:50 we heard all these planes flying over. We all went to see and the planes were flying so low we could see the silly grins on their faces. . . .

“I’d swear up and down,” he told me, “if we had a long fishing pole we could’ve touched ‘em.”

Hightower and my father became friends as sergeants working together in Ewa’s command headquarters. Hightower’s duties required him to be Ewa’s liaison to the civilian community, and this made his friendship all the more valuable. Whenever the Honolulu Women’s Club staged a dance and sent 20 tickets to Ewa’s enlisted men, “I’d set two aside--one for Dawson and one for me.”

My father, I’m sure, would have admired the initiative Hightower demonstrated in his last month at Bougainville Island, after American forces had secured the air base for its South Pacific operations.

Top brass had issued a directive whereby any unit with at least 200 officers could buy liquor at the big Officer’s Club in New Caledonia. Capt. Hightower and his cohorts decided Bougainville, with 400 officers, needed an “O Club” of its own. Seabees put three Quonset huts together, and Hightower collected $4 from each officer and was assigned a cargo plane and a pilot for a mission that was deemed critical to the Marines’ morale.

He bought 115 cases of whiskey and was given two broken quarter slot machines, which the Marines soon had in working order. Now Hightower needed to hire bartenders.

One young Marine seemed perfect. Before the war, he told Hightower, he had been a bartender at Danny’s Bar in Brooklyn. Hightower asked if he knew of any other candidates.

“Yes,” came the reply, “Danny’s in line behind me!”

*

My mother told of her memories of V-J Day in Washington--of the joy of the celebration, the hugs and kisses, the report that the only arrest that was made concerned a young woman (not my mother) who made good on a promise to greet peace by walking naked down Pennsylvania Avenue.

Interesting how the stories of World War II seem to carry more resonance now, more than 50 years later, than they did in the ‘60s, ‘70s and ‘80s. Younger generations whose attitudes were shaped by the nightmare of Vietnam have matured and are better able to appreciate the sacrifice of their parents and grandparents.

Cindy, her husband Andre and I discussed how America now seemed to be giving the World War II generation a final hurrah. The film “Saving Private Ryan,” with its unsparing portrayal of the way war kills, was such a salute. Meanwhile, so many years after the erection of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, efforts proceed at long last to build a World War II memorial in Washington--a lasting tribute.

Cindy DuPont understands that her father’s memories, spoken and typewritten, will always mean more than any film or memorial carved in stone. Her daughters, Amy and Kristen, had joined us and listened as the stories flowed.

There was the story of how, at a dance in San Diego, he met Dorothy, now his bride for 52 years. There was the story of how, passing through Albuquerque, Hightower chatted with Army Air Corps Lt. Ronald Reagan. And there were those few months, years later, when Hightower was stationed at Kaneohe, Hawaii, and assigned to work with John Ford’s crew as it filmed “Mister Roberts.” And it was in Kaneohe that the Hightowers helped establish the community’s first Methodist Church.

Now Amy, grinning, professed confusion.

“Papa,” she asked, “which came first--the church or the Officers’ Club?”

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Scott Harris’ column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays. Readers may write to him at The Times’ Valley Edition, 20000 Prairie St., Chatsworth, CA 91311, or via e-mail at scott.harris@latimes.com. Please include a phone number.