We then hit the China coast and Formosa from China Sea. Our planes ran up quite a staggering total of ships and planes of all types. We had very little air opposition over the fleet. We hit Hong Kong on January 16 and then other ports around the coast of China until January 20 when we left the China Sea and once more moved north to hit Formosa and remained there for only a day and then moved north to Okinawa Jima Where we sent air strikes out and they hit gun emplacements, strafed and bombed ammo dumps hit air fields as well as military installations. After two days of continuous air strikes we started for port on January 24.
We arrived in port on January 27 and once more we had the same old thing in port. Work form morning till night getting the ship painted and cleaned up. We remained in port until February 10 and again shoved off for the most important target in the pacific, Tokyo.
After several days of steaming north our task force hit the Japanese mainland with air strikes for two days. The Japanese as usual did not know we were anywhere around until they saw our planes overhead. After two days of continuous strikes we then dropped down and hit Iwo Jima which is a small island 735 miles southwest of Tokyo. We steamed around there for quite sometime as the marines had invaded Iwo Jima on February 19.
Iwo Jima has on large mountain, Mt Surabachi. It cost the fighting Marines many men because the Japanese here had a plentiful supply of arms and all kinds as well as shore batteries. Then too the hand grenades were more than plentiful. The marines flew the flag on Mt Surabachi Before the entire island was taken. The entire island was secured after twenty four days of the roughest fighting the marines ever encountered.
We left the force that was supporting the invasion of Iwo Jima and headed for Port on March 2, and after four days of steaming arrived in port.
As usual we remained in port for a week and as usual the same old story, work was the general plan of the day.
During our stay in port we had several G.Q.’s as unidentified planes came in. The third time we had general quarters late one night just before the movies started and a converted escort carrier blew up from unknown causes. We were at general quarters nearly an hour. It really was a pretty sight to see the ships black out all their running lights and hear the General alarms on all the ships start sounding. When condition white was set again it really was beautiful to see a perfectly black harbor suddenly come alive like a city after a sudden awakening.
On March 13 we left for Japan once more hitting Kyusu, Honshu, and Kobe. While were sending in strikes a torpedo was fired at us and crossed our bow very close. All the time we were close to the homeland the Japanese kept coming in and trying to polish off our task force. Then on plane dropped a 100 LB bomb on the Franklin and seriously damaged her. As it left the formation, it was burning furiously. While we were there our planes sank three carriers damaged two more, sank 6 destroyers, 1 heavy cruiser, and seriously damaged two more, so our score was more than even. The fires on the Franklin were finally brought under control and she was taken in tow by the cruiser Pittsburgh and we escorted her out of the danger zone while the rest of the task force stayed in that night so that we might escape with the crippled ship. There had been many explosions on board as she was rearming the planes preparing for another strike and she suffered more casualties than any navy ship for a long time.