Minnesotans fight the rising sun

This article originally appeared in the Fall 2025 issue of Thinking Minnesota magazine.

Our state’s good guys in WWII’s Pacific Theater

Pearl Harbor

At 4:00 a.m. on Dec. 7, 1941, the USS Ward, crewed by men of the 47th Naval Reserve Division of the 11th Battalion, 9th Naval District from St. Paul, was guarding the entrance to the naval base at Pearl Harbor when it received a message: “SIGHTED SUBMARINE ON WESTERLY COURSE SPEED NINE KNOTS.” After two hours of searching, the Ward spotted “what looked like a conning tower,” Russ Reetz, who was stationed on the Ward, remembered. The Ward’s Number 1 gun fired and missed. “When they gave the order to fire, we were kind of dumbfounded,” Ray Nolde on Number 3 gun recalled. “We thought the dang captain was crazy.” But, with the next shot, Nolde scored a direct hit. At 6:45 a.m., the Ward radioed: “WE HAVE ATTACKED, FIRED UPON AND DROPPED DEPTH CHARGES UPON SUBMARINE OPERATING IN DEFENSIVE SEA AREA.” The message was ignored.

Those Minnesotans had fired America’s first shots of World War II. An hour later, Japanese aircraft attacked Pearl Harbor. After the USS Arizona was hit, Nicollet’s Ed Wentzlaff recalled seeing the head of its Marine detail. “He was a huge man and he had a chunk missing on his forehead, and another chunk missing on his cheek. He was yelling over and over again, ‘We’re going to get those SOBs!’ And then he died.” Four battleships were sunk, and 2,400 Americans were killed; the first reported casualty was Ira Jeffery from Minneapolis. “There was a lot of oil on the water, and about half of it was burning,” the Ward’s Richard Thill recalled of the harbor later that day. “I remember we were all pretty quiet as we saw the destruction along Battleship Row.”

Leon Frankel and his brother were in Bilbo’s pool hall in St. Paul when the news broke. “We both looked at each other and more or less with the same thoughts, that it looks like, being of eligible age, sooner or later we’re going to wind up somewhere in the military.” At Bridgeman’s ice cream parlor, Bert Sandberg heard, “They bombed Pearl Harbor!” “And nobody knew where Pearl Harbor was,” he recollected. Japan’s declaration of war arrived the following day; those of its allies, Germany and Italy, on Dec. 11.

Bataan

The United States entered the war at an inauspicious time for the Allies. In the summer of 1940, Germany conquered France and expelled the British from Europe in just six weeks. Benito Mussolini brought Italy into the war. In June 1941, Germany attacked the Soviet Union, and on Dec. 7, German troops were in Moscow’s suburbs. Recent British successes in North Africa hardly balanced the scales.

In the six months after Pearl Harbor, Japan emulated Germany’s successes. The East Indies, Hong Kong, Malaya, and Burma fell within weeks. On Dec. 8, Japan attacked the Philippines. “At about noon we looked up and saw a flight of planes coming over and we said, ‘Oh good, it’s okay now because the Air Force is here,’” remembered Ken Porwoll of the 34th Tank Company, composed largely of men from Brainerd. Within an hour, the airfield they were defending was destroyed: “What wasn’t blown up was on fire.” On Jan. 7, a retreat to the Bataan peninsula was ordered, but supplies were short. “As soon as we arrived, they put us on half rations,” Porwoll recalled. “Then in February, they cut our rations again. They had armed guards on the chow wagons.”

The Americans surrendered on April 9. Fifty-nine men from the 34th were marched into captivity on what became known as the “Bataan Death March.” “Anyone who lagged behind on that first day was shot,” Porwoll remembered. “After the first day, they just bayoneted you. They didn’t think you were worth a bullet.” In 1942, Fred Kuznia, also captured in the Philippines, wrote to his mother in Strandquist: “Please do not worry as I am in the best of health. Give my regards to all of my friends. All my love and best wishes. As ever, Fred V. Kuznia.” It was the last she heard from him. In October 1944, he was one of 1,800 prisoners aboard the Arisan Maru for transport to Taiwan — men were jammed in so tightly on such ships that they frequently died of asphyxia. On the 24th, the ship was torpedoed. The escaping Japanese cut the rope ladder to the hold, trapping the Americans below. Those who reached nearby ships were beaten away.

“[T]he crew had long poles and poked them off,” a survivor, Urbank’s Anton Cichy, remembered. “They poked them in the eyes.” Those who remained on board raided the galley, filled their bellies for the first time in three years, and sang “God Bless America.” Only nine survived. Fred Kuznia was among the dead.

Midway

Japan’s triumphs came to an abrupt, decisive halt in June 1942. Their target at Pearl Harbor had been America’s aircraft carriers, the keys to success or failure in the Pacific, but these had been absent and survived. A plan was hatched to lure them into battle by landing on Midway Island in the Central Pacific and, on June 4, Midway was bombed as a preliminary. However, unknown to the Japanese, the Americans had cracked their codes and prepared a trap of their own. As Japanese planes returned from Midway, American planes from three aircraft carriers, which the Japanese thought were still at Pearl Harbor, swooped.

Richard E. Fleming from St. Paul was among these pilots. The only recipient of the Medal of Honor for actions at Midway, his citation reads:

When his squadron Commander was shot down during the initial attack upon an enemy aircraft carrier, Captain Fleming led the remainder of the division with such fearless determination that he dived his own plane to the perilously low altitude of four hundred feet before releasing his bomb. Although his craft was riddled by 179 hits in the blistering hail of fire that burst upon him from Japanese fighter guns and antiaircraft batteries, he pulled out with only two minor wounds inflicted upon himself.

In one of the most incredible victories in naval history, American pilots sank three Japanese aircraft carriers in five minutes and a fourth later in the day. The following day, they sought to press their advantage. “[A]fter less than four hours’ sleep,” Fleming’s citation continues:

…he led the second division of his squadron in a coordinated glide-bombing and dive-bombing assault upon a Japanese battleship. Undeterred by a fateful approach glide, during which his ship was struck and set afire, he grimly pressed home his attack to an altitude of five hundred feet, released his bomb to score a near-miss on the stern of his target, then crashed to the sea in flames. His dauntless perseverance and unyielding devotion to duty were in keeping with the highest traditions of the United States Naval Service.

Japan’s bid to win the war in a single stroke had lost it instead.

Guadalcanal

Much fighting remained before Japan would accept this, beginning with the grueling campaign in the Solomon Islands in the Southwest Pacific. The Japanese aimed to make these islands part of a defensive perimeter around their conquests with one, Guadalcanal, providing an airbase. To prevent this, the Americans mounted their first ground offensive of the war in August, quickly seizing the airfield. The Japanese fought hard to recapture it.

Conditions were atrocious. “I remember it was very hot,” Anoka’s Bob Johnson said, “and it rained all the time.” Lack of supplies exacerbated this. “[T]here was a constant food shortage,” Johnson recalled.

The gravest danger was the Japanese, who were liable to attack at any time. They “would get all sakied up as the night went on. Then they would charge en masse, yelling ‘Banzai,’ and screaming like you’ve never heard before,” he remembered. “The resourcefulness of our men was incredible. I didn’t have to give one order. They knew what to do. The fuses were set for minimum and we just kept firing. I don’t know how many rounds we fired.” Guadalcanal was finally secured in February 1943.

Okinawa

Victory in the Solomon Islands and New Guinea stymied Japan’s strategy. American forces moved north into the Central Pacific, capturing the Mariana Islands in June and July 1944, and northwest toward the Philippines, which were invaded in October. This brought the Americans to Japan’s doorstep.

The invasion of Okinawa — the largest air-sea-land battle in history — began on April 1 and met little initial resistance, but the Japanese had fortified the south of the island. Fighting became intense. On May 20, Howard White took part in an attack on Ishimmi Ridge. “After taking a heavily fortified Japanese position,” his Silver Star citation reads:

…Sergeant White’s company was cut off from supplies for two days and repeatedly subjected to savage enemy counterattacks. Casualties reduced the company strength to 31 men…[and] the noncommissioned officer strength to two in addition to Sergeant White, and the company commander and one platoon leader were the only officers remaining in action. Sergeant White assumed command of the depleted squads, kept them organized and encouraged the remaining men to hold their ground. While the enemy laid down a heavy mortar barrage in preparation for his seventh counterattack, Sergeant White left his position in order to observe and relay adjustments of fire to the company commander for transmission to our mortars. From his exposed observation point he effected such accurate fire direction that the counterattack was broken up. Sergeant White was killed while directing this fire.

White left a six-month-old son, Gene, whom he had never met, back in Squaw Lake. He was one of 12,500 Americans killed, with another 37,500 wounded, by the time Okinawa was secured on June 22. This was roughly 35 percent of those engaged.

Japanese casualties were even heavier. “[T]here were Japs piled up, I’m telling you, I’m not exaggerating — for two square blocks there wasn’t a place where you could walk unless you walked on bodies,” Coleraine’s Nick Zobenica recalled. “And then what [our guys] did, they took the flamethrowers, and they burned them all. They were all smoking. Their clothes were burning and everything.” Only 7,800 Japanese surrendered; 110,000 were either killed or committed suicide.

Victory

In summer 1945, Japan’s war in China — which had consumed an estimated 20 million Chinese lives since 1937, the true beginning of World War II — raged on.

So did fighting in the Philippines, where, on May 21, Darvin Lange from Wanda “died of injuries, which he had received at the explosion of a Japanese cave,” a letter to his parents explained:

This explosion was a terrific one and claimed the lives of several other American soldiers. Your son was injured by flying rocks, from which injuries he later died…His comrades and superior officers alike tell me that he conducted himself according to the highest standards of our soldiers in battle and that he quit himself like the man that he was.

So did the air campaign, which claimed the life of Gordon Nelson from Strandquist on June 22. “Captain Miller’s plane was at the assembly point when enemy fighters came through the formation and attacked his plane,” an eyewitness reported.

Approximately 350,000 Allied prisoners continued to suffer; of the 59 men of the 34th Tank Company captured in April 1942, only 32 remained alive.

On July 26, the Allies called on Japan to surrender, but this was rejected. The invasion of Kyushu, scheduled for November, promised horrors even greater than Okinawa. Gen. Douglas MacArthur, commanding the invasion force, predicted 95,000 American casualties — a third of them fatal — in the first 90 days; the Joint Chiefs of Staff calculated that conquering Japan would cost 1.6 million American casualties, including 380,000 dead. The losses among Japanese civilians would be even higher.

Then, on Aug. 6, Hiroshima was incinerated with an atomic bomb, killing between 80,000 and 156,000 civilians. Three days later, Nagasaki was obliterated, killing between 60,000 and 80,000 civilians. Japan surrendered on Aug. 15. The war was over. Paul Norby from Minneapolis was on his way to bomb Tokyo. “We received messages, ‘No go, return to base,’ and ‘No go, war is over.’” “V-J Day was the happiest day of our life,” Cloquet’s Bob Drannen, training on Guam for the invasion of Japan, remembered. “We knew that a lot of us would never be living if we’d had to land on Japan.”

There would be no more letters like that received by Darvin Lange’s parents, nor that written by Richard E. Fleming to his fiancée, Peggy Crooks, six days before Midway for delivery in the event of his death:

Letters like this should not be morbid or maudlin and we’ll let it suffice to say that I’ve been prepared for this rendezvous for some time. I hope that you will not entirely forget me, but I also hope that you don’t let this cause you any lasting sorrow. You’re the finest girl I ever knew and I know that the future years hold much for you. This is something that comes to all of us; we can only bow before it…we really had something. Always regard it as such and don’t let any of it cause you sorrow. All my love, Dick

Peggy died in 1997 without ever marrying.

In all, 304,100 Minnesotans fought for their country in WWII, and 9,797 died in the line of duty — equivalent to about 23,000 people from today’s population. Shortly after the war, Fairmont’s Byrl Carson, a veteran of Pearl Harbor and Guadalcanal, wrote: “Was not needlessly wasted time or effort that I spent while in the service of this wonderful free country of ours.” These men and women had helped to ensure that a war started by Japan on their terms was ended by America on theirs.