PREFERS JAP FLEET TO TYPHOON, SAYS SIOUX CITY SAILOR
After being aboard ship during a typhoon in the Pacific in December and taking part in three invasions, Jerry Chicoine, soundman third class on a destroyer escort, remarked that he’d just as soon sail into the whole Japanese fleet, as to be in another typhoon.
“We were really scared,” he said. “An there wasn’t much we could do about it.”
The young petty officer is spending a 30-day leave with his parents, Mr. and Mrs. C. A. Chicoine, 1507 W. Fifth street, after 12 months duty in the Pacific. His duties were to detect enemy submarines. “I only heard a submarine once and then we didn’t drop any depth bombs because we weren’t sure whether the submarine was our own or whether it belonged to the Japs,” he explained.
A graduate in the May, 1943, class at Trinity high school, Soundman Chicoine enlisted in the Navy in September of that year and received his training at Farragut, Idaho, and Mare Island, Cal. During the summer of 1943, he was employed by the Cudahy Packing company.
He wears the American defense and Pacific theater ribbons and has earned three stars to wear on the Pacific ribbon for his participation in the invasions of Palau, the Philippines and at Iwo Jima.
At the end of his leave, he will report to school at San Diego, where he will receive advanced sound training.
Source: The Sioux City Journal, April 9, 1945 (includes photo)
