Prewar Life to Demolition Training

Forming the Underwater Demolition Teams

Invasion of Guam and the Battle of the Philippine Sea

Invasion of the Philippines

War's End and Decommissioning the Team

Recon and Rescue Off Guam

Fear, Saipan, Guam and Okinawa

Neptunus Rex and Shipboard Entertainment

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Martin Jacobson was born in Zurich, Montana in 1921. He attended college and got a deferment from service until he received his degree. After graduation, he volunteered for the Navy. He was taking engineering courses so that is why he got the deferment. He intended to go into the Seabees [Annotator's Note: members of United States Naval Construction Battalion] but did not stay with it. He volunteered in 1942, just after registering for the draft. He was sent back to college then and received his degree in May 1943. He received orders to Notre Dame Midshipmen School [Annotator's Note: US Naval Reserve Midshipmen School at the University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana], where he was commissioned in six weeks. He then went to Camp Peary [Annotator's Note: Camp Peary, Williamsburg, Virginia] for about a month and a half. He did not like the climate there. He got a chance to go into a new branch of the Navy - demolition. This was new. Draper Kauffman himself [Annotator’s Note: US Navy Rear Admiral Draper Laurence Kauffman was an American underwater demolition expert] made the pitch for volunteers. They went to Fort Pierce, Florida for the actual demolition training. The physical training at Camp Peary was carried out by Marine Corps drill instructors who Jacobson describes as sadists. The training was just as bad at Fort Pierce. It was very rough and rigid physical training. Jacobson went to a UDT-3 [Annotator's Note: Underwater Demolition Team 3] reunion in San Diego, California recently and watched some Navy Seal [Annotator's Note: United States Navy Sea, Air, and Land (SEAL) Teams special operations force] training and saw that it is still very hard.

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Martin Jacobson underwent demolition training at Fort Pierce, Florida. He also learned sneak and peek, or surreptitious, training, some small boat training, and how to row rubber boats. He was there from November [Annotator's Note: November 1943] and left at the end of January 1944 to go to San Francisco, California. There, they went aboard a destroyer to go to Pearl Harbor. Near the Golden Gate Bridge, the captain received a dispatch to put the men ashore. Once ashore, they boarded a PB2Y-3 [Annotator's Note: Consolidated PB2Y Coronado patrol bomber flying boat] and flew to Honolulu instead and arrived the next morning. UDT [Annotator's Note: Underwater Demolition Team] work had just started there. The Marshall Invasion [Annotator's Note: the Marshall Islands Campaign was two separate invasions of the Kwajalein and Eniwetok Atoll groups between 31 January and 22 February 1944] had just happened and the admiral of the amphibious forces there [Annotator's Note: US Navy Admiral Richmond Kelly Turner; Commander V Amphibious Corps] saw that they needed some kind of beach reconnaissance. He put together a couple of demolition teams made of up Army, Navy and Marine Corps personnel that he could get at the time. They had very little training. Fortunately, the invasions there were relatively easy as far as beach landings go. Once Jacobson arrived, UDT teams 3 and 4 [Annotator's Note: Underwater Demolition Team 3 and Underwater Demolition Team 4] were formed out of his group and the recent Navy personnel from the first makeshift teams. At that time, they were organized as a unit which consisted of five enlisted personnel and one officer. But they could not operate that way and formed the teams with 85 enlisted and 15 officers. This would be the basis moving forward for the remainder of the war.

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Martin Jacobson arrived in Honolulu, Hawaii soon after the Marshall Islands Campaign in 1944. He underwent more training there in blasting coral and night operations. [Annotator's Note: Jacobson looks at some notes he has about the dates of his activities.] He left for the invasion of the Mariana Islands on 18 April [Annotator's Note: 18 April 1944]. The invasion occurred in July [Annotator's Note: the invasions of Saipan, Guam and Tinian occurred on 15 June, 21 July and 24 July 1944 respectively]. They went down to the Solomon Islands, Turner Island across from Guadalcanal, for two or three weeks doing training and holding for the armada to build. His team was on standby for the landings on Saipan but did not go ashore. They then moved onto Guam. They arrived and started to do their reconnaissance when the invasion was called off due the Japanese fleet leaving the Philippines. The American fleet went to meet them in what is now called the "Marianas Turkey Shoot" [Annotator's Note: the "Great Marianas Turkey Shoot" was the nickname for the aerial battle part of the Battle of the Philippine Sea, 19 and 20 June 1944] where they slaughtered the Japanese Navy. They then went back to the Marshall Islands and back to Guam on 14 July [Annotator's Note: Second Battle of Guam, 21 July to 10 August 1944] and did their first reconnaissance. One of their landing craft got hung up on a coral reef and a lieutenant was shot and killed. That was the only fatality in their group. Other than that they never suffered any wounded. They spent several days blowing up obstacles on the beach, 500 plus on a 2,000 yard stretch of beach. The Japanese would make wire baskets and fill them with coral to stop the boats. It took four trips to remove them. After the landings, they went along with the Marine forces going in and would take out coral heads for them. They also found about six mines on the beach. They took them out on a boat and pushed them overboard to destroy them. Then they returned to their base at Maui, Hawaii.

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Martin Jacobson returned to Maui, Hawaii after the invasion of Guam [Annotator's Note: Second Battle of Guam, 21 July to 10 August 1944]. The Navy was forming more Underwater Demolition Teams there when they got back. Jacobson was put on the training staff there. He stayed there until September [Annotator's Note: September 1944] when his team [Annotator's Note: UDT-3] was assigned to be part of the landings at Leyte Gulf [Annotator's Note: Battle of Leyte, 17 October to 26 December 1944]. They ended up in the Admiralty Islands, Papua New Guinea, where the staging for the invasion of the Philippines was happening. On the day they were to leave, they sat in their ship and watched the armada going by for hours. He had never seen so many ships. They came in behind and headed for the Philippines. On the way there, they were caught in a typhoon for two days. His ship was small and had to refuel. When getting refueled, the ships have to pump their ballast water out first. Two destroyers pumped their water but did not get refueled. They capsized in the storm and were lost along with all of their personnel. The night before the landing they were still in the edge of the storm. As they came into Leyte Gulf the next morning, the water was as calm as glass. His team did reconnaissance on the beach. It was easy as there were no obstacles. This is where MacArthur [Annotator's Note: US Army General Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander, Southwest Pacific Area] made his "I have returned" speech [Annotator's Note: 20 October 1944 on the beach at Leyte after troops of the US Sixth Army had landed] after they had already cleared it for him. [Annotator's Note: Jacobson laughs.] Jacobson's team was put on patrol after the landings. After a day or so, they returned to the Admiralty Islands. They left just ahead of the Japanese Naval Fleet coming into Leyte Gulf so they did not take part in what was one of the biggest Naval battles in the war. They returned to Pearl Harbor and went back onto the training staff.

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Martin Jacobson was back in Pearl Harbor, having just missed the Battle of Leyte Gulf [Annotator's Note: Battle of Leyte Gulf, 23 to 26 October 1944]. In April 1945, he was ordered back to the United States for 30 day leave. After the leave ended, he went back to Fort Pierce, Florida for more training and a regroup. He was there until August 1945 then went to Oceanside, California before shipping out for Japan. He was the executive officer of the team [Annotator's Note: UDT-3] at that time. He could not leave the team without a replacement. A Marine Corps officer had gotten permission to stay with Jacobson's Underwater Demolition Team and became executive officer of the team after Jacobson left. The team went to Japan and did reconnaissance at Wakayama on 25 September 1945. They decommissioned in March 1946. Since then, they all went their own way. 25 years later, a couple of the guys decided they ought to try and get together again. Some had stayed in touch and they began to get them together. Their first reunion was in 1970. [Annotator's Note: Jacobson shows the interviewer a picture of his group.] They started having them yearly recently. Jacobson says he would not trade the experience, but he is glad he does not have to do it now.

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Martin Jacobson feels that what the Navy SEALS [Annotator's Note: United States Navy Sea, Air, and Land (SEAL) Teams; special operations force] do now is very different from what he did as an Underwater Demolition Team member. They cannot equate it. They have better equipment and better training. When Jacobson was in the water, he carried a Marine combat knife [Annotator’s Note: 1219C2 or USMC Mark 2 Combat Knife, better known as the Ka-Bar] and explosives. The knives were mainly to cut primer cord and he did not want to think about having to use the knife in combat. They were issued .45s [Annotator's Note: .45 caliber M1911 semi-automatic pistol; standard-issue sidearm United States Armed Forces, 1911-1986] and .38s [Annotator's Note: Smith & Wesson Model 10 .38 Special double-action revolver] but they did not carry them. Aboard the landing craft, there would be men with carbine rifles and a machine-gun. The teams would come in on landing craft for reconnaissance. They used rubber boats to go blow obstacles up. They would hook the rubber boat on the side of the landing craft and the craft would drop the team off at intervals on the offshore side of the boat. The demolition team members would swim in to do reconnaissance. When they were ready to be picked up, the craft would come back by and they would hook their arm in to a loop that rolled them up and into the boat. They tried to do reconnaissance and obstacle destruction at night, but it did not work well so they switched to daylight operations only. They could not use lights at night. Jacobson went in on one night reconnaissance with four others in the boat. There was a strict timeframe so that they were off the reef before the Navy started shelling the beach. The signal for that was a flare. When the flare went up, Jacobson and two of the team did not find their way back to their boat, so the boat left. Jacobson thought they heard machine gun fire, so they decided to swim out to sea. This was around midnight. The next morning, the USS MacDonough (DD-351) was about a half a mile away and saw them. They picked them up out of about five mile deep water a couple of miles offshore. They were given a shot of medicinal brandy, some uniforms and a bed. Jacobson fell asleep but in 30 minutes, his own ship came to retrieve him. He was unable to go back to sleep again for another 24 hours because the invasion of Guam [Annotator's Note: Second Battle of Guam, 21 July to 10 August 1944] was still going on.

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When Martin Jacobson and his Underwater Demolition Team [Annotator's Note: UDT-3] did reconnaissance, they did not go ashore. They stayed just inside the reef. At Guam, the reef was several hundred yards. They used tetrytol [Annotator's Note: Tetryl, 2,4,6-trinitrophenyl methyl nitramine is a compound similar to TNT] in two and a half pound blocks as an explosive. It was a stable, high-explosive charge. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks Jacobson about his baptism of fire.] Jacobson's baptism of fire was when he rode into Saipan [Annotator's Note: Battle of Saipan, 15 June to 9 July 1944] and was under air attack almost every night. The ships would make smoke and the men would try to hide under it. He was often under fire when being dropped off or picked up from reconnaissance. Off of Leyte, Philippines, they had four boats in the water, and no one got hurt. The team next to them lost a craft and some men. His team was very fortunate. Jacobson says the Japanese were shooting all the time. His interest was getting in the water and getting back out of the water. He cannot say if he was ever close to being hit. A couple of the men chickened out and could not perform their duties there but most did not look back. One man deliberately broke his foot, so he did not have to go into battle. He was dismissed from the group at Pearl Harbor. Only one member of their team died in combat. One other died of a heart attack in training at Fort Pierce, Florida. Those were their only two casualties and they had no injuries. There were several of the teams that were caught by kamikazes off of Okinawa. [Annotator's Note: Jacobson shows a picture of the ship he was on, the USS Dickerson (APD-21), to the interviewer]. That ship was damaged at Okinawa by a kamikaze attack and then sunk by the Navy. It was an unsightly ship, so they called it "The Dirty Dick". There were two men who had been on the Alabama [Annotator's Note: University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, Alabama] football team and they were both named Cain. One they called "Hurri Cain" and the other they called "Killer Cain". Killer Cain was the captain of the Dickerson [Annotator's Note: US Navy Lieutenant Commander John R. Cain commanded the USS Dickerson (APD-21) from November 1943 to January 1945]. The commanding officer was T. C. Crist [Annotator's Note: US Navy Lieutenant T. C. Crist] until they reorganized in 1945. He lived in Dallas, Texas and Jacobson worked with him after the war.

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A typical day aboard ship for Martin Jacobson consisted of reading and PT [Annotator's Note: physical training] on the bow of the ship. [Annotator's Note: Jacobson shows some pictures to the interviewer.] It was mostly boring as they had no duties. They played a lot of cribbage and bridge [Annotator's Note: card games] and did a little boxing. They did Neptunus Rex [Annotator's Note: line-crossing ceremony; initiation rite that commemorates a person's first crossing of the Equator] when they crossed the equator [Annotator's Note: Jacobson shows pictures to the interviewer.] Jacobson never had contact with any Japanese soldiers. Everything he heard of them was awful but was all hearsay. He feels that our people were likely as bad, it was war. [Annotator's Note: There is a long pauses as the interviewer flips through papers then asks when Jacobson first heard about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor]. Jacobson was going up to his room when someone told him that Pearl Harbor had been bombed. His duty in World War 2 was a great experience, but he is glad he does not have to do it again.

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