When we lived in Alaska, I was a freelance reporter for the Mat-Su Frontiersman, a weekly newspaper in Wasilla. I wrote a series of articles for a Veterans Day insert telling the stories of World War II veterans in the area. Writing their stories was one of the best things I have ever done. Below is one of the articles, which can be found here.
“It was a shock to all of us,” said Bill Mitchell of Palmer. He was going to college at the University of Montana in Missoula studying wildlife management.
At the age of 18, in January 1942, Mitchell was sent to boot camp at Camp Matthews in San Diego, Calif.
“Right after we finished camp, they sent the whole battalion out to the Pacific,” he said.
In March 1942, his unit was sent to Samoa, where he was assigned to a defense battalion. After a few months there, he was sent to occupy Wallace Island, which was under French control. He was there for 18 months. Mitchell was then sent to the Gilbert Islands, where he was assigned to a British controlled island — Tarawa. There was a base there for “Billy Mitchell bombers,” the B-25.
“We had some bombing attacks ourselves,” Mitchell said. “They diminished as [the Japanese] air force diminished.”
Mitchell was not injured in any of the bombings, however.
“We had foxholes,” he said. “We were well protected.”
After spending two years and four months in the Pacific, Mitchell was sent back to the states.
“There were few left of our original battalion,” he said. “Most had been transferred or sent back to the states because of diseases.”
Mitchell said many men contracted filiarisis, a mosquito-borne disease where a worm would attack a person’s lymph nodes, resulting in swelling and pain. Others would get Danube fever. Mitchell managed to stay healthy during his tour.
Mitchell then went to a B-12 college training program with the military at Colorado College in Colorado Springs. He was there when the war ended. When that semester ended, he was discharged in March 1946 and went back home to Montana.
“I was pretty lucky going in early,” he said. Mitchell thinks that if he had enlisted later, he would have been assigned to a unit that had to invade islands instead of being part of a defense battalion.
Mitchell eventually finished college with degrees in the study of grasses and came to Alaska in 1963 to work at an experimental station.
Serving during World War II affected Mitchell for life.
“It gives you a little different perspective,” he said. “It affects different people in different ways.”
His message to today’s generation would be to be prepared.
“It’s a good stance to take,” he said. “It applies to the nation as a whole and the individual as a whole. You have to be ready to be called upon for whatever reason and accept the responsibility.”