John V. Gillen

John V. Gillen was born in College Point, Queens, New York City, in January 1926. His father was a Navy veteran of World War I. Despite his desire to join the military after the Pearl Harbor attack, Gillen was initially too young to serve. He eventually followed in his father’s footsteps, and those of an uncle who served in the Army during World War I, in 1943. That winter, Gillen left for Navy basic training at Great Lakes Naval Training Station in Great Lakes, Illinois. There he learned the basics of being a sailor and, as he put it, was “straightened out,” since he had described himself before boot camp as a “wayward kid.” After boot camp, Gillen returned home for a short leave, and then continued to his next assignment at gunnery school in Gulfport, Mississippi. 

In Gulfport, Gillen got his first extended taste of life outside New York, which he described as, “a different world down there for a Yankee.”  He completed his training in Gulfport on various naval guns, and reported to his first ship, the cargo craft S.S. Marina Raskova, as a Gunner’s Mate in the Naval Armed Guard. It was the Armed Guard’s job to maintain the armaments aboard the Raskova, and to defend it against enemy attack. Her Merchant Marine crew operated the rest of the ship on its voyage from New York, through the Panama Canal, then across the Pacific and Indian Oceans.  

Gillen visited Australia, Tasmania, and Bombay India, where he experienced a new and quite different foreign culture, and, along with several shipmates, got tattoos. The Raskova continued to Africa, and made a port call in Beira, a city in the neutral Portuguese colony of Mozambique, where he had a peaceful encounter with sailors from a German submarine. From there, the Raskova continued to Madagascar, Lorenzo Marques, Cape Town, Brazil, Trinidad, and finally back to New York.

On Gillen’s return to New York, he was assigned to the minesweeper USS Hambleton in Newport, Rhode Island, as a Seaman First Class. He worked in the Deck crew for two to three months, while the ship conducted training and minesweeping drills. Gillen was then transferred to the Amphibious Landing School in Little Creek, Virginia, where he trained to serve on landing craft in rigorous, Marine Corps-like training. After Amphibious School, he was assigned to the USS LSM 24, a Landing Ship Medium bound for the Pacific fleet in Hawaii. After a rough voyage across the Pacific, the LSM 24 participated in the invasions of the Philippines. Gillen served on a 20mm anti-aircraft gun aboard the LSM 24 during the invasion of Leyte. He remembered the tremendous noise of combat, from which he suffered a hearing loss and received a lifelong ten percent disability classification. 

The LSM 24 moved on to a smaller landing at Ormoc, and then to Lingayen Gulf. It was there that his ship, carrying a large cargo of explosives, was nearly hit by Japanese artillery, but saved by speedy maneuvers to avoid the enemy fire. Compounding the threat was the possibility of being hit by friendly fire, as ships were shooting at anything moving in the water. Gillen remembered that this fire caused friendly casualties, as nervous crews shot into the water at night, and friendly ships were accidentally hit. He witnessed the shore bombardment by the allied fleet during the invasions, the sound of aircraft overhead, and the experience of fending off enemy planes: “We were all scared… but you gotta do what you gotta do.” 

From the Philippines, LSM 24 arrived at the Invasion of Okinawa on March 27, where Gillen saw firsthand the terror of the Japanese Kamikaze tactics, as well as Marines ashore using flamethrowers to clear caves. He could still remember the smell of the flamethrowers, the hunger from being unable to resupply, and the stress of being constantly under ‘General Quarters’ or battle stations. The LSM 24 left Okinawa in May, bound for the invasion of Japan that would never come.  Following the Japanese surrender, Gillen’s ship stopped in Yokohama, then Sendai, where he saw the devastation of allied bombing. He spent time ashore with Japanese citizens who graciously welcomed him and his crew, and gifted him pieces of traditional Japanese clothing.

Though Gillen made it through the war uninjured, several sailors who served with him did not. One, Bill O’Brian, was injured several times over the course of the invasions in the Pacific, and was finally transferred to the hospital ship USS Comfort. Gillen remembered seeing that ship then severely damaged by a Kamikaze plane. He would find O’Brian sometime later recovering in a hospital in Guam.

Before departing from Japan, Gillen transferred to the LSM 97, and sailed aboard that ship to Astoria, Oregon. From there, he took a troop train across the United States to Lido Beach, Long Island, where he was discharged in 1946 as a Petty Officer. Gillen reenlisted after time home with his family and was assigned to the submarine tender USS Orion in Panama. Shortly after, he transferred to shore duty and was assigned to the Sonar School base in Key West, Florida, as a Master at Arms. Gillen worked there in base policing and security, as the Commanding Officer’s driver, and finally as the base photographer. He intended to have a career in the Navy, but his father pulled strings with friends in Washington and got him honorably discharged, so he could come home and help the family wholesale fishing equipment business. 

At the time of his interview in 2007, Gillen lived in Port. St. Lucie, Florida, and had returned to Key West for visits several times. He was incredibly proud of his Navy service. Gillen remembered it fondly as the best thing he could have, or anyone can do, especially for a wayward young person like himself.  

John V. Gillen passed away at age 86 on March 30, 2012.