Last of two parts; read part 1 here.
A zigzagging troopship was carrying musician and Navy weatherman Robert Pearce to the Philippines early in 1945. He and many others were seasick and faced the threat of Japanese torpedoes. But there was one sweet surprise.
A Steinway upright piano was aboard. It was moved up onto the deck and secured so I could play it. There were a couple of band players aboard, and we were able to play a little music for the guys.
One morning, I headed topside to make weather observations that would be radioed to all ships and air bases in the Pacific. I saw a huge wave heading for me and wrapped my arms around a pole for dear life.
I was safe, but the storm gods weren’t satisfied. They ripped the Steinway from its moorings and sent it flying across the deck. It hit the side rail and broke into a hundred pieces. No more Chopin for the devoted crew, and a wild ride for all.
In April, we arrived safely in the harbor of a small Filipino town, Puerto Princesa, on the island of Palawan. That night, the Japanese welcomed us with a small air raid. It was frightening, but they hit nothing of value and no one was hurt.
Four months earlier, the Japanese murdered over 100 American prisoners on the island. It’s detailed in the book “Last Man Out.”
Puerto Princesa had an airfield the Japanese built. It was captured by our Army about six weeks before we arrived. To improve it, our Seabees laid down hundreds of interlocking sheets of perforated steel. There were no buildings to speak of. The Seabees literally built a town of Quonset huts in several days.
I was put in charge of the office force of six enlisted men. Our aerological officer turned out to be Art Lund, lead singer of the Benny Goodman band. He was a brilliant young man who graduated from Annapolis with a meteorology degree and did all of our weather forecasting. He was a nice guy and had a great voice. When you hear an old recording of “Mam’selle,” that’s Art Lund.
We became good friends. I had a portable reed organ I played for chapel services. It was put to work for popular music. The Navy supplied Art and me with a twin-engine PBY amphibian. The pilot would take off from the bay, fly out to sea and land next to a ship. Accompanied by the little church organ, Art sang the pop songs of the day to cheering shiploads of men.
I have to jump ahead and tell you that after the war, my wife and I drove to hear the Goodman band in the SunnyBrook Ballroom in Pottstown. While singing, Art spied me on the dance floor and waved. After the song, he brought us both up on stage to meet Benny and that great jazz pianist Mel Powell.
Back to the island: I needed a jeep to move stuff into the weather office. I went over to the supply dump, and the guy said, “OK, take that one there, but make sure you have it back here by 5 this afternoon. That’s when we close the gates.” I “forgot” to do that. It was my personal jeep the whole time I was on Palawan.
Army and Navy planes were constantly taking off and landing at our airstrip. Pilots and flight commanders would stop at our office for weather briefings. Four-engine bombers, in that hot weather, loaded with armament, needed all the power available and every inch of the short runway to get airborne.
I witnessed three tragic accidents, because our office was right on the strip with the tower.
One P-38 pilot returning from a successful mission turned too tightly to final approach. The plane stalled and cartwheeled down the field, killing him. Then on two occasions, I heard that ominous pulsing sound that occurs when one of a bomber’s four engines fails to maintain power. In both cases, the fiery crashes took all lives aboard, quite close to our office.
In addition to office duty, our staff served as air crewmen aboard daily reconnaissance flights. The Navy used PB4Y-2’s for this work. They were a four-engine Navy version of the B-24 and known as the Privateer. We would take off before dawn, head west to the island of Hainan, just off the coast of China, then turn around and come back. For me, the trip was every other day and 14 hours of boredom. Very seldom did we see anything.
The food the Navy fed us enlisted men was poor. We’d often go through the chow line with our trays and dump the meal in the trash. Then at night, we’d go to the supply dump and dig a tunnel under the fence. The most precious thing inside was K-rations: a box with a can of Spam and some crackers and cookies, two cigarettes and a drink. We’d take them back to our barracks. It was a feast.
Finally, there was that great news: The Japanese had surrendered! We’re on our way home.
Not so fast! Fleet Air Wing 10 wasn’t going home for some time. We were assigned to “typhoon hunting” to gather weather data. It was the most exciting thing I did. I was weather observer on five or six missions flying directly into the eye of a typhoon.
There’d be radio reports of a storm, and we’d set out to look for the center of it. We needed the PB4Y-2 because it was so solid. It bounced up and down violently in winds as high as 130 knots [150 mph].
Our navigator used the recently developed radio navigation system called LORAN. With the wind behind us, we flew below the clouds at 500 feet or lower. The air wasn’t as turbulent there as it was up high. I’d look down at the windswept waves through the plane’s drift meter. The water’s surface looked like blowing snow.
Measuring the drift — how much the plane veered from its heading — allowed the navigator and me to calculate wind velocity and direction. We gave that information to the radioman, who put it into code and sent it out to the entire Pacific.
One day on Palawan, I found an old rowboat. With the help of a guy at the dump, I acquired a jeep engine, a shaft, some bearings and a propeller to convert it into an inboard motorboat. My buddies and I went fishing in it, but what I remember most was looking down from my military transport on the first leg of our trip home.
I had sold the boat to an Army friend, and there it was below me, being towed along a dirt road to the bay. I’m sure that in the end, it became the property of a Filipino family.
Epilogue
Pearce acted as weatherman on the troopship that took him from Manila to San Francisco. He declined an offer from the captain to stay aboard in exchange for a promotion and a free college education in meteorology. Back home, he turned down a similar offer from the commander of the Willow Grove Naval Air Station.
While playing the organ at Trainer’s Restaurant in Quakertown, he met waitress Angeline “Jo” Grida, who worked long and hard to help her parents make a decent living on their Milford Square farm. Her chores included milking cows before school — where she became a champion speller — and guiding horses pulling a plow. Later, as a worker in a plant that made clothing for soldiers, she brought money home for her dad.
She and Pearce married in 1947 and had two children. Robert A. Pearce is a retired dentist in California, and Joanne Pearce Martin is principal chair, keyboards, with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Both fly their own planes. Joanne is experienced in aerobatics and skydiving, having made hundreds of jumps.
Pearce worked for Allen Organ in Macungie for 49 years and was vice president of sales, a job that took him around the world. In 1971, he provided two organs to composer Leonard Bernstein for the world premiere of his “Mass” at the opening of the Kennedy Center in Washington.
In 1984, Pearce and his daughter wrote the song “We Love Allentown” in response to Billy Joel’s “Allentown.” It’s been performed by the Allentown Band and Allentown Symphony Orchestra.
A longtime member of the symphony association board, Pearce was its president for 14 years. Angeline was also active in the group, heading the Symphony Ball one year and hosting countless other social events that raised many thousands of dollars for the orchestra. Her hobby was oil painting, and her works hang on the walls of family and friends.
“Angeline was very beautiful and proved to be a wife who exceeded all expectations,” Pearce wrote for their two grandchildren. “Mother, artist, cook, hostess, you name it. She traveled with me and helped me in my work.”
She died peacefully in her home in 2013 at age 91.
Pearce was a pilot and Lehigh County representative on the Lehigh-Northampton Airport Authority board. He received the Federal Aviation Administration’s Wright Brothers Award for more than 50 years of aviation safety.
“If I could become young again, I would hope that I could follow exactly the same path. It has truly been an unbelievable adventure.”
Part of it was a flash of fame just after his Navy training began.
In January 1943, an Associated Press story about a burst of song-writing by sailors at Bainbridge, Maryland, ran in newspapers across the country. The writer called Pearce’s “I’d Love To Be Home for Christmas” the top tune of the boot camp’s Hit Parade.
“If sailors could whistle while they work, its easy-to-whistle melody would be chirped by half the sailors at the station. And its popularity shows no signs of flagging.”
C. David Venditta is a freelance writer.
