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Ellsworth R. "Bud" Quam saw action in World War II from both sides of the Pacific Ocean – above the water line and below it.
Quam was on board the carrier USS Yorktown when it was sunk by a Japanese
submarine at the Battle of Midway. Switching to submarine service, he was aboard an American submarine that sunk six Japanese merchant ships and a host of smaller vessels.
Born in 1922 and a native of
Willmar, Quam almost didn't survive long enough to serve in the military because of a couple of dangerous hunting episodes.
When he was 15 and out plinking with a buddy, an errant shot hit Quam in the
elbow. The wound wasn't life threatening, but the healing was a long process. In the end, Quam had to walk around with a bucket of sand in order to straighten the arm out.
Then, in 1940, Quam and his
friends were out hunting when they were caught in the famous Armistice Day blizzard, one of major snowstorms in the history of Minnesota.
The young hunters were trapped in a whiteout, but managed to
find a farmer's fence and follow the fence line to a barn.
Recuperating from the first hunting incident had put Quam behind his class, and when they all graduated in 1941, Quam instead joined the
Navy – signing a six-year enlistment.
After training at Great Lakes, Quam was sent to the East Coast where he was assigned to the Yorktown, an aircraft carrier. America was not yet in the war, but
U.S. ships were providing escort duty for the British convoys across the Atlantic.
Carriers, making such big targets, were not ideal for this type of duty. Adding to the difficulty were the high seas
in the North Atlantic that prevented the carriers from using their aircraft. "We had 100 knot winds in one storm. The water was coming over the flight deck."
Yorktown came back to Norfolk, Virginia,
for a much needed overhaul at the beginning of December, 1941, but on Dec. 7 the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor.
"I was out roller skating, and we heard about Pearl Harbor over the loud speaker at the
roller rink," Quam said. "They told us all service personnel were to return to base immediately. We stopped at a bar for a quick beer on the way back, but the shore patrol were there to make sure it was
really quick."
Instead of an overhaul, the Yorktown got a quick paint job and headed through the Panama Canal to become active in the Pacific theater. By February, 1942, Yorktown was escorting a
convoy of Marines to Samoa. Not long after, the carrier's air wing was the first to attack the Marshall and Gilbert islands.
Quam had reported aboard the carrier as a deck hand, the lowest spot in
the Navy's organization ladder. He was immediately sent to the ship's kitchen where he scrubbed pots and pans for three months.
Quam applied to be an electrician's mate and was accepted, but his new
division was obliged to send somebody to the mess decks, and Quam found himself back in the scullery. "When it got wavy, it got a little slippery in the scullery. It could be an exciting place to work."
Quam spent the first six months of his shipboard experience in the scullery.
By the time of the Battle of Coral Sea in early May, Quam's battle station was as an ammunition handler for a five-inch
gun. He was stationed below decks, taking the shells out of the magazine and putting them on an elevator that took them up to the gun.
"There's more terror being below decks and not know what's going
on," Quam said. "You can hear the attack and feel the attack, but you don't know what's happening.
"First the ship goes to flank speed, and the whole thing vibrates. Then the five-inch guns start
firing; that must mean the planes are in sight. Then the smaller guns start firing, and you know they're close. But you never know when you're going to get hit.
"You're scared as hell. You're really
shook up over the ones that miss as well as the ones that hit you."
In the Coral Sea, the Japanese and Americans fought the first sea battle in history where the ships never saw one another.
The
USS Lexington, a sister carrier, was sunk in the battle. Yorktown took a direct hit by a bomb, but was able to keep operating, although severely damaged.
"We knew we'd been hit, but it didn't stop
us. We heard the bomb had hit Repair 5, and all the guys were killed. Later on, they let us go up a few at a time to get some food. For me, that was a mistake. I walked into the mess decks, and they had
all these guys laid out, mangled. Needless to say, my stomach wouldn't take food after that."
Yorktown limped back to Pearl Harbor where it was expected that temporary repairs would be made in order
to get the ship back to the United States for a complete overhaul. The ship had been to sea for 101 days with only a brief stop for provisions during that time.
Admiral Nimitz had other plans. After
Navy code breakers told Nimitz that the Japanese were coming to Midway, he ordered his three remaining carriers, Hornet, Enterprise and Yorktown to a position off the northeast coast of Midway.
Nimitz gave the dock workers 72 hours to get the Yorktown operational, and they did.
During those 72 hours, the ship's officers allowed the crew some liberty. "I suppose a lot of the guys got boozed
up, if they could."
Heading out to sea again was not a happy thought for Yorktown's crew. "They told us that the Japanese were coming to Midway, that we were just going to repel them and then head
back to the states. We were pretty disheartened."
On June 4, the Japanese fleet arrived and immediately attacked the American forces on Midway. A Navy flying boat found the enemy carriers, and the
three American carriers launched their aircraft. By the end of the day, the Japanese had lost four major carriers and a cruiser — and their ability to control the high seas.
During the battle, though,
planes from the Japanese carrier Hiryu sent 18 dive bombers that found the Yorktown. Seven made it through the U.S. defenses and three scored hits on the American carrier.
For Quam, with his station
below decks, it was a repeat of the Coral Sea battle, except worse. The three bomb hits left the ship dead in the water, and when the Yorktown did get up steam and begin to move, it was hit by torpedoes
from Japanese submarines.
"There was an immediate 25 degree list, and all the guys knew we were in a multi-million dollar coffin. They ordered abandon ship, and we were more than happy to open the
hatches and go up on deck."
One difference for Quam in this battle was that he was wearing anti-flash coveralls. Several ammunition loaders during the Battle of the Coral Sea had been burned, and the
Navy now required its ammo handlers to wear the coveralls.
Quam, whose nickname was "Whitey" because of his blonde hair, scrambled to the deck and then began climbing down a rope. "I had suffered a
really bad sunburn some months before and I knew we'd probably be in the water for a time, and so I left the anti-flash coveralls on. It was a big mistake."
Quam hit the water, and the sailor entering
the water above him pushed him under. "There was a thick coating of oil on the water, and I got it in my mouth and throat. The coveralls were dragging me down. I was having a hell of a time staying
afloat."
It was Quam's 19th birthday, and it looked like his last. He was in the water with 2,300 other sailors, and he was barely keeping his head above the surface.
And then a miracle happened.
Or maybe it was just a high school reunion.
There were three Willmar men aboard Yorktown. They knew each other fairly well, but with their different jobs, they didn't see each other all that often.
All three entered the water from different parts of the ship.
Harold Wilger was a bomber pilot aboard the Yorktown. After the order was given to jump in the water, he went and got a two-man life raft
from his plane. Wilger was floating on his raft when he saw Pete Newberg from Willmar swimming. Wilger got Newberg aboard and they started to keep an eye out for Quam.
The odds of finding Quam in the
confusion of the oily water was remote, but Quam's white hair stood out from the spreading oil slick, and Wilger and Newberg spotted him. The two were able to get Quam to the life raft. Quam said they
may have saved his life.
Quam had made it about 10 yards from the sinking ship when he was rescued by his friends. They helped him get the sodden coveralls off that were dragging him down.
After
some time in the water, Quam and the others were picked up by a destroyer, the USS Benham. The "tin can" had a crew of 200 and took over 700 sailors on board.
"I spent a lot of time just trying to
scrape the oil off myself. There wasn't any room to even lie down, but I finally found a spot in a passageway where the deck was warm. It felt really good to lie down."
The rescued sailors were
highlined over to the USS Portland, a cruiser, the next day, and then transferred to the USS Fulton, a submarine tender, two days later. "I was nauseous for a few days. That oil just isn't very tasty."
Quam finally worked his way back to Hawaii where, after a rest period, he was put on board the battleship USS California, a victim of the Pearl Harbor attack. The ship was headed for drydock and
repairs in Bremerton, Washington.
"While I was there, they had a call for volunteers for submarines. I volunteered, don't ask me why. Maybe it was because a sub sank my carrier and got away with it,
and I thought I could be aboard a submarine and get away with it."
He took three days of exams and got into sub school. "Although one of the doctors looked at me and said I wouldn't last six months."
The school was tough, with a 60 percent washout rate, but Quam hung in there. One of the tests was being able to swim upwards through 100 feet of water wearing a Momsen lung, a primitive aqualung.
"We had to stop every eight feet to depressurize. They told us if we went straight up, we'd die. It was a relief to get up there."
The submariners were also expected to know every piece of machinery
aboard their boat and to be able to use it. Those that couldn't master the whole package were sent packing.
After the basic school, because he was an electrician, he was sent to battery and gyro
school. In late 1943, he was assigned to the crew of the USS Pilotfish. Part of his job was to tend and water the sub's batteries. The submarine had 252 batteries, each weighing 1,700 lbs.
Quam made
one patrol on the Pilotfish. It was his introduction to life below the seas. "For one thing, you only get a little basin of water to wash in every day. No showers. After a long cruise it didn't smell
very good any more."
Actually there were two showers on board, Quam said. "But the captain filled them with beer. He'd let us have a beer now and then."
The Pilotfish's sister subs had good luck on
the patrol. "Later they told us that we had a noisy reduction gear, and that may have scared away any ships. They were able to evade us, and then come back and depth charge us."
Quam's experience with
depth charges is not quite what the movies have portrayed through the years. "We had some close ones, but we never had the ones where the lights pop out or anything like that. Once we had to stay down
for 14 hours."
Staying submerged for long periods was difficult because the sailors had to keep breathing the same air. By 14 hours, the air is pretty rancid. The sailors laid special devices out on
their bunks to soak up the CO-2.
Back in port, Quam had an opportunity to rotate to another sub called the Seawolf. The orders were all set to go through, when another electrician with more seniority
filed a complaint. Quam was bumped.
Several weeks later, the Seawolf went down with all hands. "In fact it was sunk by one of our own destroyers. I guess I was pretty lucky."
In all, during the
war, the U.S. lost 52 submarines and over 3,500 sailors. It was the highest casualty rate in any area of the military service.
Quam's next boat was the USS Segundo (SS-398). On the Segundo's second
patrol, accompanied by two other subs in a wolfpack attack, seven Japanese merchant ships were surprised, and all were sunk. The Segundo got two.
"One of the ships was an ammunition ship, and it blew
up just like a fire cracker. One second it was a radar contact, and the next second it was gone. Just like that."
Segundo sank six merchant ships during the war, and a host of other smaller Japanese
sailing vessels.
In one incident later on, the Segundo had come up to take on a Japanese patrol boat on the surface. "I was a pointer on a gun, and I just couldn't make out the patrol boat. And then
one of the other gunners lit up the target. I was able to see the bridge, and I blew it up."
Another time, the Segundo got caught in a typhoon. Submarines can usually weather storms by staying
submerged, but at some point the batteries must be recharged, meaning the sub must run its engines on the surface for a time.
"We had two lookouts who were up on the conning tower. It was everything
we could do to keep the submarine afloat, and they were getting tossed around pretty good. The other guys told me they heard one of the lookouts scream and then hit the deck. He was gone in seconds."
Quam's bunk on the Segundo was near where a spare torpedo was stored. When it came time for bed, he would pull his bunk out next to the torpedo – 600 lbs. of explosive. "I could feel it gently nudging me
throughout the night."
The breaking of the Japanese merchant marine code during the war enabled American submarines to find their prey with extraordinary accuracy. By the end of the war, over 90
percent of the Japanese merchant fleet had been sunk, and that nation's ability to wage war was greatly diminished.
"They never told us about the code breaking, but we always thought it was more than
mere coincidence that we were able to intercept these convoys the way we did."
Sometimes the Segundo would stay out for two months at a time. "If you didn't have a job topside, there was no reason for
you to be up there. Some guys went two months without seeing the sky. Sometimes they would let guys go up at night one at a time to get some fresh air. When the sub would surface, and they would pump
fresh air in, it was one of the most exhilarating feelings in the world."
The crew worked four hours on, eight hours off for the most part. Food was good and fresh for the first few weeks of a patrol,
and then powdered eggs, powdered milk and other storable provisions took over. "We missed fresh fruit a lot. And we missed ice cream and veggies."
During the war, the SS Segundo had to surface four
times to take on enemy ships. Those were difficult times. The last time, Quam came on deck to man his gun during combat, his heart began racing and he couldn't make it stop. He told his chief about the
problem, and the chief must have told somebody else, because sometime later Quam got orders away from submarine duty.
He was transferred to "new construction" and was assigned a new small carrier as
the war ended. His one regret was the Segundo was one of the ships chosen to be in Tokyo Bay when the surrender was signed.
Quam had been awarded a degree by his high school in Willmar, but when he
enrolled at the University of Minnesota, he was short some classes in math and English, and so he attended Marshall High School in Minneapolis for a short time. He earned his degree in chemical
engineering in 1952, and enjoyed a 28-year career at Univac in Eagan. He supervised the main chemistry and spectral chemistry labs.
In 1986 he retired. He and his wife, Rose, have three children, 10
grandchildren and six great grandchildren. The couple lives in a town home in West St. Paul.
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