Jack Houston was born in Rochester, New York in May 1926. His father was a foreman in a foundry and was able to maintain employment throughout the depression years. Houston had a wonderful life living in the suburbs and did not know they were poor. They had great outdoor opportunities close to home like parks, forests, farms and stables. He feels that he and his brother came up at a perfect time. Houston grew up in the town of Irondequoit [Annotator's Note: Irondequoit, New York]. He has one older brother who served as a night fighter pilot in the Marine Corps. Both of the Houston brothers were serving in the Pacific at the same time. On Sunday, 7 December 1941, Houston was playing in a band concert at Benjamin Franklin High School in Rochester and had gone out to the van to get something when someone approached him and told him about the attack on Pearl Harbor. He immediately went inside and told the instructor who announced the news to the audience. Houston did not know anything about Pearl Harbor or the Japanese. Houston was very young when he started school and all of his friends were older than he was. After all of his friends went away to war he decided to change his birth date on his birth certificate and enlisted in the Navy. He had just been sworn into the Navy when his father arrived and got him out. After that, he and his father had an agreement that if he finished high school his father would sign the papers for him. Houston was 17 when he graduated in December 1943. His father signed for him to join the Marine Corps. He was sent to Parris Island for boot camp. While there, he broke the record with the M1 [Annotator's Note: .30 caliber M1 rifle, also known as the M1 Garrand] on the firing range. He was held back as an instructor after completing boot camp. He was also promoted to PFC [Annotator's Note: Private First Class]. A combat list went out looking for volunteers to join a unit that was going overseas. Houston signed up and was sent to Camp Lejeune. There he took additional training, including firing the BAR [Annotator's Note: Browning Automatic Rifle] and Reising submachine gun. He also learned to make C2 bombs. From there, he went to San Diego where he boarded a ship to Hawaii. In Hawaii, the antiaircraft guns all over the island began firing at what was thought to be an enemy attack. It turned out to be a friendly aircraft. One day a carrier came in that had a huge hole in the side of it. Houston saw it and told another Marine that he thought that meant they were getting close. When they pulled out of Hawaii they were paid for the first time in months. The only thing they had to do with their money was gamble. They were taken to Guadalcanal where Houston joined the 6th Marine Division. They continued training and learned how to operate in the jungle. The living conditions were not bad and the food was good. Houston was assigned to the 22nd Marine Regiment, 2nd Battalion, George Company [Annotator's Note: Company G], 3rd Platoon as a rifleman.

[Annotator's Note: Jack Houston served in the US Marine Corps as a rifleman in 3rd Platoon, Company G, 2nd Battalion, 22nd Marine Regiment, 6th Marine Division.] When their training on Guadalcanal was completed they boarded ships and steamed for Okinawa. As they neared Okinawa they transferred from the troopship to LSTs [Annotator's Note: Landing Ship, Tank] in Higgins Boats [Annotator's Note: Landing Craft Vehicle, Personnel or LCVP]. As they headed toward the LSTs, a geyser of water flew up right in front of Houston. A plug had blown out. The coxswain stuffed his shirt in the hole and told Houston to stand on it. Houston went ashore on Okinawa in a DUKW [Annotator's Note: an amphibious truck]. As they were waiting to go in, he saw a battleship firing its main guns. When it fired, the entire ship rocked. They plastered the landing area. When they landed, there was nobody there to oppose them. They all gathered together and started moving out to their first day's objective. When they stopped on the first day Houston and his friend Tony were in a foxhole together. Both of them were shaking as a result of the cold and fear. They also had to contend with fleas crawling all over them. They ended up advancing too far and had to pull back. When they did, they were hit by a mortar barrage. Houston does not know if it was American or Japanese shells that were landing around them. While they were digging in, one guy hit his foxhole buddy in the head with his shovel. He injured the man so badly that he had to be evacuated to a hospital. The man returned later and had a bandage on that was so big that he could not wear his helmet. Houston asked him why they let the man go in the condition he was in and the guy told him that he had run away from the hospital because it was too dangerous down on the beach. Some of the men Houston served with the in the 22nd Marine Regiment were veterans of previous battles like Eniwetok and Guam. During part of the advance they rode on tanks. One location they stopped at for the night had been a Japanese position and there were bunkers. Two Marines decided to sleep in one of the bunkers. The following morning Houston was awakened by two loud thumps. He learned that there had also been two Japanese soldiers in the bunker where the two Marines had slept. The Japanese soldiers slipped out of the bunker and killed themselves with hand grenades. Houston does not know why the enemy soldiers did not kill any of them. A little further on they captured two Japanese officers. Houston believes that they were Okinawans who had joined the Japanese. Before they could be interrogated, someone told the two officers to go back to the farm they had been captured at. As they were heading back they were shot. They did not take any prisoners at that time. They continued on and came across a barn. One of the Marines, who was carrying a machine gun with a round magazine, approached the barn and fired the entire magazine into the building. When he stopped shooting a cow walked out of the building.

[Annotator's Note: Jack Houston served in the US Marine Corps as a rifleman in 3rd Platoon, Company G, 2nd Battalion, 22nd Marine Regiment, 6th Marine Division.] They got to the end of the island [Annotator's Note: Okinawa] and were stationed on a plateau. While they were there two Jap [Annotator's Note: derogatory term for Japanese] planes flew over. One of them was an old biplane and the other was a fighter. Right behind the fighter was a Hellcat [Annotator's Note: Grumman F6F Hellcat fighter aircraft]. The Hellcat opened fire on the Japanese fighter but over shot it. Then a Corsair [Annotator's Note: Vought F4U Corsair fighter aircraft] pulled up behind the enemy fighter and shot it down. The enemy plane nearly landed on Houston and another Marine. It hit the ground about 15 or 20 feet behind them and slid into the cook shack. It destroyed a lot of the cooking gear but no one was hurt. The second plane had continued on along the coast. Houston's unit had a machine gun set up on the end. The Corsair opened fire on the enemy plane at the same time the machine gun did and the plane was quickly shot down. From there, they went to the very tip of the island. As they walked across some of the farmland the fleas were a huge problem. Houston looked down at one point and saw hundreds of fleas on his boots. When they got to the end of the island they found a huge pot that they used to boil their clothes in. They managed to get rid of the fleas. As they headed south, Houston got very sick. He was put in a DUKW [Annotator's Note: amphibious truck] for much of the trip south until he felt better. Houston went on a three day patrol to Awa. They had taken enough k rations for three days but the patrol ended up being out for four days. One of the guys who was from Tennessee found a small pig and they had stew. Eventually, a small boat was sent to pick them up and bring them back to their unit. From then on they started heading south where they took over for the Army. On the way down they passed areas where there were Okinawans lining the road. The Marines walking past would throw candy to the kids. The Okinawans were surprised by the way the Marines treated them because the Japanese had told them that the Marines would kill their babies. Houston did not have much interaction with the Okinawan civilians. While they were there, a Piper Cub came over very low and slow. The plane passed over some woods and when it did Houston heard two rifle shots and saw oil coming out out of the little plane. The pilot swung the plane around and landed it on the road near Houston's position. That was the first firing they had heard from the Japanese. Finally, they arrived at a hill that was to be the jump off point for the entire division for the movement south. While there, his squad leader asked him if he wanted to go to the front. Houston got to the front and learned that he and the other volunteers were to be point guys. They were given red and green flares and told to go out as far as they could. If they saw anything, or were fired on, they were to throw the green flare. If they did not see anything, they were to throw the red one. Houston headed out. He did not see anything so he threw the red flare and everyone else moved down behind him. They continued on to a flat area where a machine gun opened up on them. They had no cover at all. The firing continued for a while but Houston does not recall anyone getting hit. He stuck a rifle grenade on his rifle and fired it at a nearby pump house. The firing continued for a while but later stopped abruptly. Houston believes that they ran out of ammunition. The Japanese gunners may not have been able to depress the gun low enough to hit the Marines. That same thing happened to Houston later on. They continued on until they came to a large stream. When they crossed the stream, a sniper opened up on them. The enemy soldier was shooting at the men behind Houston from a chimney at a sugar mill. The Marines kept on moving. One time they walked through a mortar barrage. This was around 11 May [Annotator's Note: 11 May 1945].

[Annotator's Note: Jack Houston served in the US Marine Corps as a rifleman in 3rd Platoon, Company G, 2nd Battalion, 22nd Marine Regiment, 6th Marine Division.] They arrived at a small knoll in a valley where they set up their command post. The next day they tried to move out of the valley and, as they moved between the hills, they were hit by murderous enemy fire. Tanks out in front of them were trying to support them but they were knocked out by mines. Houston never saw any of the Japanese who were shooting at them. A lot of Marines were killed and wounded. Houston and a buddy were able to get behind a tank that was moving back. A lieutenant from another platoon named Dale Barry [Annotator's Note: unsure of spelling] was out in the open with a machine gun firing it from the hip at the hills. He got hit and fell into a shell hole. Houston pounded on the tank with the butt of his rifle in an attempt to get the tank to stop but the guys inside could not hear him. Moments later, Dale was running behind the tank with them. They got back to the knoll but the tank stayed on the road. The driver stopped long enough for Houston and the others to make a run for the knoll. As they took off, Dale was hit again and went down. Then the guy in front of Houston was hit and killed. Houston felt something hit him in the leg and looked down to see that a round had slammed into his rifle and broke it. A piece of the rifle stock had hit him in the leg. Eventually, they all got into a ditch. Houston's buddy saw a guy walking by who was clearly suffering from combat fatigue. Houston's buddy took the man's rifle and took it apart and they made Houston a good rifle from the parts. That night was the worst Houston experienced. A machine gun was put out on the flank and Houston was sent out to man it by himself. Flares were being firied all night that would hit the ground all around Houston's position. The ground was so wet that the impact of the flares hitting the ground caused it to shake like Jello. In the morning they went back behind the knoll. Houston got mad at two guys on the knoll who were shooting their pistols at something on the road. He chased them off twice but the third time they went up they were both shot before he could chase them off again. One guy was killed immediately. The other started ordering Houston to grab his knapsack and was yelling at him. The next time Houston saw the man was in China after the war. The man apologized to Houston. He thought Houston had been the one who shot him. The next day they tried again to get out of the valley but the results were the same. They got shot to pieces. They had very little cover. There was a little bit of a mound and there were some tank tracks that were sunken in the ground. They got into the tank tracks and started crawling. The Japanese could see the packs the guys were carrying and fired at them but they were not able to hit the Marines. A sergeant told each man to cut the pack straps off of the guy in front of him. After all the packs were cut off, they managed to crawl close enough to the tank to run to it for cover. Then they followed it back to the command post. They had been annihilated in the valley.

The day after this last action there was hardly anyone left in Jack Houston's company [Annotator's Note: Company G, 2nd Battalion, 22nd Marine Regiment, 6th Marine Division]. When they got orders to move over to Charlie Hill to provide covering fire for another company, Houston was about the only man left who could go. When he got there, he saw a bunch of guys huddled at the bottom of the hill. He walked up to the top of the hill and found himself looking right at a Japanese soldier running down a trench toward a machine gun. Houston took a couple shots at him but was nearly hit by a bullet so he jumped down to the bottom of the hill with the other guys. That was when Houston started smoking. On another hill 600 or 700 yards away, Houston could see a Japanese officer with a sword giving orders to several soldiers. It was starting to get dark by that time. A major walked up and started talking about how important the hill out in front of them, Sugarloaf Hill, was to them. Finally the major [Annotator's Note: Major Henry A. Courtney] had the Marines with him ready to go. Houston was preparing a smart answer for the major, whom he expected to tell them to move out. Houston was shocked to hear him tell them to follow him. It was dark when they took off. They started taking fire from a machine gun, which they knocked out with a couple grenades. As far as Houston knows, everyone he set out with to go up the hill made it to the top. At the top, Major Courtney spaced the guys out how he wanted them and they dug in. Houston saw a Japanese soldier appear on top of the hill but before he could get a shot off at him another Marine got him. The Japanese threw grenades and knee mortar shells on them. One of the rounds from a knee mortar hit next to their BAR [Annotator's Note: Browning Automatic Rifle] man and scattered his magazines all over the place. After a while, Courtney decided to give the Japanese a banzai attack of their own. The all got up and headed to the top of the hill. Just before they got to the top two Japanese soldiers jumped out of a cave. One of them threw a grenade which landed right between Houston and Major Courtney. Houston jumped back and yelled to let everyone know about the grenade. He landed on top of a machine gunner. The major did not move. They continued up the hill. Courtney told the men to throw their grenades. The last time Houston saw Courtney, he was going over the top of the hill yelling that he could see the Japanese. Courtney was a brave man. Houston had angled off to the right a little. When he got to the top, he found himself looking straight down a Japanese trench. He could see Japanese soldiers getting up out of the trench and running across a road. The closest Japanese soldier was only about 35 feet away from him. Houston stood up and started shooting. He aimed his rifle at the center of the backs of the Japanese soldiers in the trench and fired off two full clips of ammunition, 16 rounds. He was firing the third clip when the top of the hill blew up, throwing him back into a hole with another Marine. Houston believes that he decimated a half of a Japanese platoon.

Jack Houston and a buddy who had been cut by a bayonet stayed in their hole for a while. Houston had a buddy named Joe who was wounded and was way down the hill. Finally, Houston went down the hill to look for his friend. As he was heading down the hill a Japanese knee mortar round detonated in a shell hole next to him. For two years after that Houston picked slivers of brass out of his face. Houston made it to the bottom of the hill and found his buddy who had been hit in the back. He had just finished patching his buddy up when a platoon sergeant came up and told him that they needed men up the hill. He took his buddy's BAR [Annotator's Note: Browning Automatic Rifle] and his rifle and headed up the hill. When he got to the top he lay down in a depression in the ground. Suddenly, artillery fire started coming in from the coast or the ships offshore. After the rounds stopped Houston saw three Japanese soldiers walking toward him. He started firing at them but does not think he hit any of them. When he started shooting, a Japanese machine gun on an adjacent hill opened fire on him. Houston cursed the League of Nations for not allowing the use of smokeless powder. The enemy gunner was literally blowing away his cover. Eventually, Houston was able to clear the area. He threw himself off of a little ridge. When he hit the ground he found himself face to face with a Marine pointing an M1 [Annotator's Note: .30 caliber M1 rifle, also known as the M1 Garrand] in his face. He started cursing at the guy to make him realize that he was a Marine. [Annotator's Note: Houston and the interviewer talk about the interview program for a couple minutes.] Houston wandered off, looking for someone to tell him what to do. He came across four Marines sitting in a little knoll sleeping. Seconds later a shell landed right behind them which knocked them all over. At that point Houston realized that they were all dead. He continued down the hill until he found a hole next to a cave. The Japanese continued throwing grenades and dropping knee mortar rounds on them. When the sun started to come up they could actually see the knee mortar rounds. Houston saw a round coming in toward him. He tried to jump out of the hole but his legs were asleep. The mortar round hit the exact spot where he was trying to jump.

When the morning came, someone told Jack Houston that he 22nd [Annotator's Note: 22nd Marine Regiment, 6th Marine Division] had been relieved. Houston started heading down the hill. He was the only one. There were guys going up the hill to relieve them. He saw one kid carrying a very small pistol and asked him where his rifle was. When the kid replied that he did not know, Houston gave the kid his rifle and BAR [Annotator's Note: Browning Automatic Rifle]. As Houston neared the CP [Annotator's Note: command post] he realized how tired he was. He came across the body of his captain's runner who had been killed a couple days before. As he neared the CP, a rocket truck pulled up and fired all of its rockets. One of the rockets fizzled and flew right over Houston's head. When he got back to the CP he saw two of his platoon mates and the company sergeant. The sergeant told him to get his gear because they were heading down the coast. Houston told him that he had lost three packs in three days. Then, Houston asked how they were going to get there. The sergeant said that they were going to walk. Houston was in no condition to walk. The sergeant wrote Houston and the other two men up for combat fatigue. In a matter of hours they were off the island and on a hospital ship. That was 15 May [Annotator's Note: 15 May 1945]. It was the end of his tour on Okinawa. Houston feels that that sergeant saved his life. Houston was sent to a hospital on Saipan for two or three weeks of rest. From there, he was flown to Tinian and then Guam where the 6th Marine Division was reforming. When Houston got there he worked 18 hours a day unloading ships and loading all of the equipment into Quonset huts. All they did was eat, sleep, and work. Once the division was reformed they were sent to China. There, they took the Japanese who had surrendered and sent them back to Japan. They would take the Japanese troops from the prison camps down to waiting LSTs [Annotator's Note: Landing Ship, Tank] that would take them back to Japan. They spent six months in China. One time, they were at the airport and could hear the communists and the Nationalists fighting out in the mountains. They drove out to the mountains where they ran into a Chinese officer who invited them into his house. All the guy wanted to talk about was politics and how communism was so much better than democracy.

Jack Houston had three reasons for enlisting. The first was patriotism. The second was that all of his friends were gone. The third was that he wanted to be a hero and come back with medals but that did not work out. When they got back to Guam, Houston learned that some of the guys got medals for delivering ammunition to Sugarloaf Hill. Houston asked his lieutenant why none of the men up there got a medal except the major [Annotator's Note: Major Henry Courtney] who received the Medal of Honor. The lieutenant later told him that the reason none of them was awarded a decoration was that there was no one left to recommend them. Houston's boot camp training was tough but he thinks that current boot camp classes have it tougher. They were rushed though the training in eight weeks but now it is much longer. The worst thing Houston remembers from boot camp was the blisters. Houston did not like one of his drill instructors. The man tried to make amends with Houston but was unsuccessful. Houston thought the Japanese were bad for having attacked the United States. By the end of the war he hated them. After the war, he learned that they were just doing their job. In China, after the war, Houston did his job of overseeing the Japanese troops who were being shipped back to Japan. When he was able to shoot the Japanese soldiers on Sugarloaf he felt that he was getting revenge for what had happened to his friends. When Houston shipped out, he was sent to Hawaii then to Guadalcanal. During those trips, he stayed up on deck as much as he could. All they had was salt water to bathe with. When he was on his way home from China the ship he was on, the Simon Bolivar Buckner [Annotator's Note: USAT Simon B. Buckner], caught fire five times. They were watching a movie in which Humphrey Bogart played a Merchant Marine captain when the screen suddenly burst into flames. The film stopped running but the audio continued. Everyone topside heard Humphrey Bogart yelling for all hands to abandon ship.

When Jack Houston arrived off Okinawa he was not as afraid as he should have been. In the hours before they left the transport they checked their equipment again and again. He had some impression of what combat would be like. There were many instances that Houston felt that he would not survive the battle. Everyone felt bad learning of the death of President Roosevelt [Annotator's Note: President Franklin D. Roosevelt]. He recalls hearing about the death of Ernie Pyle but cannot recall how he heard about it. On Guadalcanal they listened to Tokyo Rose. They liked the music. It rained a little while Houston was on Okinawa but he was gone by the time the bad rains came. The Japanese troops Houston encountered were good shots and they did not give up. Houston heard about Japanese troops mingling with Okinawan civilians then when they got close to the Marines they would throw grenades at them but he did not see it for himself. Houston did not know at the time of the battle of Sugarloaf Hill that Major Courtney [Annotator's Note: US Marine Corps Major Henry A. Courtney] had been killed. At reunions after the war he learned about his death. Houston's most memorable experience from Okinawa was being able to shoot the Japanese [Annotator's Note: see segment titled Sugarloaf Hill]. While he was shooting, his friend started pulling on his pant leg and yelling at him to get down but for him, it was like shooting fish in a barrel.

When Jack Houston was evacuated [Annotator's Note: from Okinawa] he was taken first to Saipan then to Guam. While they were on Guam they trained for the invasion of Japan. They did not like the idea of having to invade the Japanese mainland. Houston's brother was a night fighter pilot who was all over the Pacific. He spent time on Peleliu and several other smaller islands. They never got to see each other but did they write letters to each other. Houston and the guys he was with were glad to hear about the atomic bombs being dropped. Life in China after the war was great. They lived in a college and had clean bunks to sleep in. The Chinese were separated by class, just like back in the United States. That surprised Houston. From the photographs he had seen before going there he thought all of the Chinese were poor beggars. There were a lot of modern buildings in China and the food was great. Houston was under constant strain on Okinawa. No one who goes into combat comes back the same. Everybody had PTSD [Annotator's Note: Post Traumatic Stress Disorder]. After he got back he had a lot of problems. His mother convinced him to talk to a psychologist which helped him a lot. Houston did not talk about his experiences on Okinawa after he got home. He regrets not talking to his father about it. His father would have been proud of him. What got Houston started talking about his experiences was a letter he received in 1995 from a former captain from his battalion who was looking for information about Courtney on Sugarloaf Hill. Houston responded with a 19 page letter about what the troops were doing. The letter was later copied and passed around. Houston's father was in the Army Air Corps during World War 1. Being a veteran, his father understood Houston's desire to enlist at the age of 16. Houston had been home for about four months when his mother convinced him to seek professional help. He knew something was not right.

Jack Houston returned to the United States around May 1946. He was discharged at the end of May or beginning of June in Bainbridge, Maryland. During the trip to Maryland, the train derailed in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. One man, who was a sergeant from New York City, was scalded by steam. He had been through Guam and Okinawa and was killed in a train wreck. It was the most unfair thing Houston ever experienced. Being back in the United States was a great feeling. The first thing he wanted to do was see his girl and his family. When he walked into the living room it seemed so small to him after living outside for so long. His girlfriend was a nurse who he had met in high school. They were eventually married. Houston was discharged as a corporal. He was going to take advantage of the GI Bill but when he went to register at Syracuse University there about 400 people in line ahead of him so he got back in his car and drove home. Houston took six months off after getting out of the service. He travelled a little and visited relatives. When he ran out of money he got a job. While he was overseas, he saved most of his money. He did not have any place to spend money until they got to China. Houston grew up a lot during the war. After the war he appreciated things a lot more. The war was a great adventure since he survived. Houston went on an Honor Flight to Washington DC. It was a great experience. Teaching World War 2 to future generations is important. To future generations, Houston says to follow your heart. During his time on Guam and in China he was a squad leader. That gave him experience in dealing with people. After the war, he went to work for an industrial engraving company as an apprentice. Over the years he was able to work his way up to superintendent. He feels that being able to work with people was something he learned in the Marine Corps.