Memories of war remain bright for 102-year-old WWII veteran
TEXARKANA, Texas — Jesse Linam is now slightly more than a century old, but there was a time when he thought he would not live to see 30.
Born in 1920 and raised in Mississippi, Linam eventually came to Texarkana to join the Navy — which he did on Aug. 7, 1940, for $19 a month.
However, it was the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor the following year that gave Linam doubts about his longevity.
“As it turned out, I got to serve six years in the Navy, but during that time (World War II) I didn’t expect to live through my enlistment,” Linam said as he spoke to a recent gathering of Texarkana’s branch of Military Officers Association.
At the time of Pearl Harbor, Linam said the combat vessel he was assigned to, the heavy cruiser U.S.S. Chicago, was conducting exercises about 40 miles from the harbor.
“We were out there learning how to practice firing the cruiser’s big guns, as well as how to stay on sailing course and keep up our speed,” said Linam, who was a gun fire control mate, second class.
Over the next weeks, Linam said he and the rest of the vessel’s crew continued to practice combat firing until they help land the U.S. 1st Marine Division on Guadalcanal Island in early August 1942. During the early hours of Aug. 8, Linam and the rest of the crew learned that an enemy battle fleet was heading to their location.
“The night sky soon became illuminated by star shell fire and search lights,” said Linam, who has been married to Irene for 77 years. “Our ship’s bow got struck, and our captain said he wanted to try to run the ship aground but at the time there was no nearby island ground to run ashore on.”
Eventually a sea going tug helped the Chicago get to an Australian seaport for repairs.
Linam said once the Chicago got back on even keel, two recruits from Mississippi joined the ship’s crew.
“When they asked me for advice, I told them that if our cruiser gets hit again and starts to go down, they would need to swim as fast as they could in order to avoid the ship’s rapid water intake as it was going down, because that would also pull them down.”
However, Linam, the new sailors and the rest of the crew eventually were issued inflatable life jackets.
The life jackets were put to use after the Chicago was sunk by four torpedoes dropped by twin-engine warplanes near Guadalcanal on Jan. 30, 1943, in the Battle of Renell Island.
“My thoughts at that time were about heaven, and I asked God to help me swim, and what I’m telling everyone here actually did happened” Linam said. “I am here to tell you that there is a God, and he is here to save us.”
Linam was reassign to the light cruiser U.S.S. Vicksburg before the war’s end.
“By that time, we were being deployed to bombard the Japanese home islands when we got the word that the atomic bomb had been dropped, and the war ended shortly after that.”
At the end of the war, Linam made a cautious visit to the Japanese shore.
“I saw a Japanese Army soldier, in full uniform, walking toward me, but he was not armed, Linam said. “As he came right toward us, he suddenly jumped right out of our way, bowed down politely to us and just went on his way.”