Sterling Cale was born in Macomb, Illinois in 1921. Shortly after birth, he went into an orphanage for four years. After he was adopted, he grew up in Galesburg, Illinois. The Depression hit when he was ten years of age. His father lost his business at that point so the family moved to a farm with cattle, hogs, and other animals. The day would start early for Cale so he could do his farm chores then walk five miles to school. Cale asked his father to get a different job because farm work was difficult. His father got a job in Moline, Illinois for the John Deer farm implement company. His father worked for John Deere for 30 years. Cale graduated from high school in Moline. When Cale was a sophomore in high school, he talked to a Navy recruiter about enlisting. At that point, Cale wanted to work with dirigibles. That was before the Hindenburg blew up at Lakehurst, New Jersey. [Annotator's Note: The Hindenburg was a massive dirigible that was the pride of Germany before its tragic explosion on 6 May 1937]. After that incident, Cale's training was cancelled. Instead, he went to San Diego and was trained as a Navy corpsman. Cale remembered hearing of the Hindenburg accident but never made it to the site of the incident. Cale graduated number two in his training class. He was given the choice of any place worldwide. He was interested in the intriguing island paradise of Hawaii and its beautiful girls in grass skirts. He requested Pearl Harbor and sailed from San Diego on an old diesel vessel. He was given the job of painting the mast from a bosun chair. The ship listed back and forth so it was rough assignment. After several days sailing, he reached Hawaii and was stationed at the old Navy hospital. Cale was in charge of the officer's ward. There were no Navy nurses at the time. This was before the time of Tripler Hospital. Fort Shafter Flats hospital was in operation at the time and had been since 1919. Before the war, life in Hawaii was not so much different than today. There were luaus, people visiting each other and site seeing. There were fewer white people on the island at that time compared to today. Relations between people were very good. There were feelings of being secure and less worry of theft. Hawaii was even more than he thought it would be. He was befriended by a group of men that took him to a black bar, but there were no issues or problems when he enjoyed his new friends there. He had no issues with race relations because he always thought of others as just people. Leading up to the Pearl Harbor attack, there was the Black Cat Bar and next door a tattoo shop. Cale got a tattoo there. He observed other personnel having a rough time after getting their tattoos. They would pass out or stagger. He thought it had to do with the tattoo. He vowed to get a hula girl tattoo. After getting the tattoo, he was told the military did not allow tattoos except if the girls were clothed. He returned for a second working of his tattoo to have clothes applied. What also helped Cale enjoy Hawaii was the local YMCA where a cot could be rented for a reasonable price. Down the street was the YWCA where a meal could be obtained. Cale enjoyed Honolulu. The Japanese he met in Hawaii were local boys. He had no problem with them. When the war started, many of them volunteered to serve with distinction in the 442nd Regiment [Annotator's Note: 442nd Regimental Combat Team] in Italy. There was no problem with the Japanese before the war. The only issue was that some of the families sent their sons back to Japan to be in the service after the war started.

Sterling Cale was on night duty at the shipyard dispensary in the Navy yard before the attack on Pearl Harbor. He had finished his shift at about 7:30 in the morning. He had been treating civilians and military personnel for minor injuries or ailments. He signed out with the master of arms and was walking toward the main gate when the action started. He saw planes diving on the battleships in the harbor. He knew something was wrong but felt there might be a logical explanation. When he spotted the Rising Sun on the fuselage of the aircraft, he knew they were Japanese planes and an attack had started. He grabbed a fire axe and broke into an armory at the receiving station. He began to distribute the old Springfield '03 rifles. The single shot, bolt action rifle was all that was available to him. They were a good rifle so he gave one to anyone looking to fire on the attackers. He came out to the Ten-Ten Dock and was watching the action. [Annotator's Note: Ten-Ten dock was a long pier in the Pearl Harbor repair yard.] The Kate torpedo bombers [Annotator's Note: Japanese Nakajima B5N torpedo bomber, known as the Kate] came out of the sun toward the battleships West Virginia and Oklahoma [Annotator's Note: USS West Virginia (BB-48) and USS Oklahoma (BB-37)]. The shallow water torpedoes that hit the Oklahoma caused it to capsize in 12 minutes with the loss of 429 men. Cale had managed to get a barge and was headed to the Oklahoma before it rolled over. He had been studying to be a frogman so he was used to swimming underwater, but he had not completed his training. Diesel was leaking out of the stricken ships and the oil was on fire on the water. Cale was in the water swimming under the flames and reaching for bodies. Even with the added difficulty, in four hours Cale picked up 46 people from the water. Some were dead. Some were badly wounded. Others were just very fatigued. Cale was becoming very tired himself. He returned to the shipyard main gate and told the master of arms that he wanted to go home to rest. The master of arms told him he could not go home. In fact, he was going to be court martialed for breaking into the armory. He was going to be taken to task because the Navy regulations demand that weapons were to be signed out as was the ammunition. When the firing was over, regulations said that the weapons had to be signed back into the armory. In the haste to defend Pearl, Cale and others immediately dispensed with that formality. Instead of being released to go home, Cale was told to maintain guard watch over the receiving station and not let anyone into it that did not belong there. Cale agreed. As he was standing watch, an admiral asked him what he was doing there since he was a pharmacist mate. He was not supposed to be assigned guard duty. The admiral told him that he would give him a more appropriate job. Later, Cale would be commended for breaking into the armory and given a carton of cigarettes as a reward. Many young men began to smoke early in life during those times. When the admiral returned on Wednesday, he assigned Cale to get ten men and begin removing bodies from the Arizona [Annotator's Note: USS Arizona (BB-39). That ship had been devastated by an aerial bomb. Cale agreed to his assignment despite never being aboard a battleship. The admiral told him he would learn the ship when he got out there.

Sterling Cale was assigned to recover the dead from the Arizona [Annotator's Note: USS Arizona (BB-39)] after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Cale gathered ten men to support him. They stepped aboard the aft portion of the ship on the Friday after the attack. One of the first things he noticed was something black blowing off the ship. He came to realize that it was the remains of Arizona crewmen who had burned down to the deck. The ship was engulfed in fire for two and a half days after the strike by the Japanese on Pearl Harbor. This posed a problem for Cale in trying to identify the remains of servicemen who had completely burned in the inferno. He initially meditated on the issue for about ten minutes then remembered he had men waiting to hear his orders. He sprang into action and told the men to locate the dead and put the remains in a sea bag for transport to Red Hill for temporary burial. The next thing Cale noticed was several helmet liners on the deck with no bodies near them. The recovery crew opened a hatch and saw a headless body below. They came to understand that the ashes that had blown off the ship were part of the remains for the man below the hatch. Cale ordered that the body be recovered for transit to Red Hill. As the recovery crew approached the ship's guns, they noticed piles of ash near the guns and assumed that the gun crews had been burned down to the deck. They went about recovering the ashes and put them in a sea bag for transport to Red Hill. Cale said not to combine the ashes in order to keep the integrity of each set of remains. One of Cale's recovery crew had been on the Pennsylvania [Annotator's Note: USS Pennsylvania (BB-38)] in the drydock. Cale asked the Pennsylvania crewman if he had been issued dog tags. The Pennsylvania crewman had not received tags. Cale would go on later to create 54,000 dog tags out of heat resistant Monel. Half of those tags would never be picked up by the assigned serviceman. When the recovery crew went to the forward end of the ship, men had been reduced to solid charcoal about three feet tall. Cale and his crew tried their best to keep the individual remains intact but did not always succeed. Multiple remains had fused together and body parts would separate when an attempt was made to keep one individual's remains together. Cale told his men that since the bodies were in the water from Sunday to Friday, other types of damages to the remains could be anticipated. A body could be expected to swell up and inflate over that period of time. There were numerous types of fish in the water that may have scavenged on the human remains. About two weeks into his assignment, the Master Sergeant told Cale to not go out to Arizona the next day because he was going to be court-martialed for yet another reason besides breaking into the armory. He was keeping records of the remains and this was prohibited by Navy regulations during wartime. Detailed records of personnel assignments and dispositions were not allowed for secrecy reasons. Cale's commander demanded his notes from his recovery efforts. Cale found out that he had been turned in by a Chief in the shipyard dispensary. Cale had been supplying a monthly ration of ethyl- alcohol to the Chief, and he missed his alcohol ration and wanted Cale back in the dispensary. Cale vowed to get the Chief for his accusations. The commander found out what the circumstances were behind the charges and nevertheless demanded the notes from the six weeks of efforts during which Cale and his team recovered the remains of 129 people. The efforts of the recovery team were restricted to second deck and above because of the ship being submerged below that depth. At the time of the search of the ship, Cale did not know how many people to anticipate being on a battleship. After Vietnam, Cale went to the Arizona memorial and looked at the roster of those lost on 7 December 1941 and found out that he had left some 700 people aboard the ship. [Annotator's Note: United States Navy records officially indicate that 1,177 servicemen lost their lives aboard the Arizona as a result of the attack.] Cale's recovery records were eventually destroyed. That saddened him. After looking at the list of the dead sailors and Marines lost on the day of the attack, Cale also came to realize that some of the survivors of the attack had requested that their remains be interred with those lost during the attack. Divers would place the urns with the survivor's cremated remains inside the ship. As a hospital corpsman, the most striking memory of the day of the attack to Cale involved picking up the wounded and dead. As a corpsman, that was his duty. He has told his story of the attack to thousands of people, both young and old.

Sterling Cale was assigned to the 1st Marine Division right after Pearl Harbor. He did not have a proper Marine uniform but was told that he was going to get one and then be sent to Guadalcanal with the 1st Marines. Arriving on Guadalcanal with only his Navy issued white uniform, Cale stained the whites with coffee grounds so he would not stand out so clearly to the enemy. Cale set up a triage and was there for three months helping the wounded. He would separate the dead or near dead from the badly wounded and the lightly wounded. He prioritized getting the lightly wounded back in action so they could return to the front lines to fight the Japanese. It was difficult, but he had been trained in San Diego on treating incoming casualties. It was different from the experience at Pearl Harbor when he had to swim under the water to recover the dead and wounded. Cale had been flown to Guadalcanal after the battle had been underway. He had never heard of Guadalcanal before landing there. He would later stop off on Saipan, Tinian, Espiritu Santos, and Bougainville before his return to Hawaii. Cale never realized that there were so many places in the South Pacific. Today, lessons on Pearl Harbor are not treated with the significance and scope that the story deserves. While on Guadalcanal, Cale maintained his triage position and did not go out on patrols. His most common injuries involved gunshot wounds to the arms or legs. The badly wounded with chest wounds or extensive bleeding required him to supply blood plasma, contain the bleeding, and prepare them to move out for more intense treatment. Cale never experienced shortages of supply on Guadalcanal. There were bad diseases there, particularly malaria. Cale never personally contracted malaria, but thousands did. There was an orange pill issued to the men to help prevent the disease. [Annotator's Note: The orange pill was Atabrine.] The weather was hot on Guadalcanal with little rain while he was assigned to the island. The area where Cale had his triage was near a jungle in a beach area. His most difficult decision was determining the lightly versus the critically wounded. He stayed with the 1st Marines for three months.

Sterling Cale returned from the various Pacific islands where he was stationed to Honolulu and the hospital at Fort Shafter. About a year after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Cale married his wife. They had been married for over 70 years at the point of the interview. The couple trusted one another and built a loyal life and family together. Cale was at Fort Shafter for a short time, and then he was assigned to start a hospital at Tripler on Oahu. He had become a registered nurse and pharmacist during that time. He was given the duty to start up the pharmacy at Tripler. He had it for about three months until a civilian was brought in to replace him. He was offered several other positions including OB/GYN or physical recon. He did not want to do the first and had not been swimming since 7 December [Annotator's Note: 7 December 1941] and could not go in the water. The Army decided to send him to Schofield Barracks to join the 5th Regimental Combat Team Medical Company. After Guadalcanal, Cale had gotten out of the Navy and went into the Army. Beforehand, he had gotten to the rank of Chief Pharmacist Mate, but was reduced and given a temporary warrant officer rating. He left the Navy as a First Class Pharmacist Mate and went into the Army as a Tech Sergeant, E-6. When he reported to the captain at Schofield Barracks, he was recognized as an NCO, First Sergeant. Cale had no idea what his duty was at that rank. The captain told him that he would have to pass his orders to the enlisted men. He would be replaced by a Master Sergeant. Cale asked where all the Master Sergeants were. The captain replied that they had been busted to corporal when they left Korea. Cale went to receiving and collected his gear and vehicles. He was told that he would be going to Korea as part of an advance party. He asked why he was part of the advanced party. He was told that because he was in the Navy, he could handle the shipboard voyage. Cale replied that he was a farm boy and could get sick like any of the other men aboard the ship. He was shipped out right away for Korea.

Sterling Cale was sent to Korea near Pusan while the rest of the transferred troops went to Sasebo, Japan. He was with the liaison with tanks and mortars. Cale had been out on forced marches by the time the troops from Japan arrived. He fought his way north in Korea until he was ten miles from the Yalu River. That was when the Chinese troops came across in human wave attacks. The Chinese were like the Japanese. They did not know when to stop. They just kept on coming. The Americans kept mowing them down. The Chinese would attack with only one enemy soldier carrying a real weapon. The rest had farm implements. The enemy attacked and watched the soldier with the weapon. When he fell or was killed, one of the other attackers would grab the weapon. The weather in Korea was bitter cold. Both of Cale's feet felt like they were frozen. The Americans were driven back down to Seoul during this time. Replacement troops were arriving from the United States and Cale was to train them. Some of the new corpsmen had helmets with a big Red Cross indicating their duty. Cale told the new medics to get rid of their helmets or they would be targeted by the enemy. He told them to take their bright shiny buttons and push them into the mud to prevent them from being seen from a distance. He learned that many of them had no field training nor even knew how to administer blood plasma. Cale would interact with the local population of Poop-Yang [Annotator's Note: cannot confirm location]. He would have a luau for the population to build loyalty with them. Cale had transferred to the Army during the middle part of World War 2 [Annotator's Note: Cale transferred into the Army in 1948]. He wanted to stay in Hawaii after returning from Guadalcanal and thought the Army hospital work at Fort Shafter would help him achieve that goal. He had no idea that it would result in him shipping out to Korea.

Sterling Cale fought in Vietnam. He was in Da Nang during the Tet Offensive. Cale had a nice home that was protected by a defensive perimeter of Bangalore torpedoes surrounding it. He also had an early warning system made up of ducks that were within his fenced area. If anyone came in during the night, the ducks would create quite a racket. Cale was stationed in Da Nang where, because of enemy offensive actions, he was flown out three times but returned each time. He served in I Corps during his stay in Vietnam. [Annotator's Note: I Corps was one of the four South Vietnamese Army Corps that defended South Vietnam]. While in Quáng Ngãi, his man blew up the place. Cale was first sergeant in Monterrey at the Langley School with another sergeant serving under him. That individual was promoted to lieutenant while in Vietnam. Afterward, the lieutenant went about blowing up old people and children in Quáng Ngãi. [Annotator's Note: Cale is obviously frustrated with the ineptitude of the individual who remained nameless in the interview.] Under the leadership of that lieutenant, the troops shot the whole place up. It was terrible. Cale was in Da Nang at that time. Cale started duty in Vietnam in 1955. Iron Mike O’Daniel [Annotator’s Note: US Army Lieutenant General John W. O’Daniel] was the lieutenant general at Fort Shafter. O’Daniel brought Cale to Vietnam to observe what the French were doing. They spent nine months there. Cale dressed as a civilian and observed medical practices there. Right after the two men left, the French suffered their defeat at Dien Bien Phu and left Vietnam for Laos. Cale then signed on with Air America with the CIA and returned to Laos and Vietnam for a year of service. Cale maintained medical supply dumps on each side of Dien Bien Phu. He traveled the world to obtain those supplies for the French. Cale could not understand why the French continued to train the Laotian Army when they failed to successfully do so with the Vietnamese Army. When he later returned to South Vietnam, Cale was in charge of the ammunition dumps in the country. He would have to comply with the International Control Committee [Annotator's Note: International Control Commission, or ICC] requirements. When American supplies would be brought in, French munitions would have to be removed or destroyed to compensate. There were ways around the requirement. Cale recounts an injury he experienced while under attack by Vietcong. There were established buffers with local police to protect the Americans from enemy attack, but it failed to protect Cale. A fire followed. Cale had a second degree burn on his finger. When he flew to Hong Kong shortly thereafter, the finger was painful. It was swollen and he had to have it treated. He never got his rest and recreation in Hong Kong as a result. The finger got so infected that eventually, the last joint of the thumb was lost. Cale received a Purple Heart for the wound. Cale spent 26 years in the service and was ready to retire. Looking at the retirement income that he would get, he decided it was not time yet. He continued on as first sergeant at Fort Ord in California, but the State Department approached him to return to Vietnam. He had advanced linguistics training in both Vietnamese and French. He was told that he needed to return to Vietnam to help them with a dilemma. The general in charge of I Corps was saying one thing and his men were saying something different. They wanted Cale to listen in and report to the Americans what was really going on in I Corps. He spent the next nearly nine years with the State Department, USAID. At one point, after being flown out of Da Nang, Cale was a province senior advisor in one of the southern provinces. That was during the time when a State Department man stayed aboard a ship offshore and would go on to write himself up for a Purple Heart because he got a sliver in his finger. [Annotator's Note: Cale does not name any specific individual as the culprit here but chuckles over it.] Cale tried to stay in service long enough to retire as a GS-14 to benefit his income. [Annotator's Note: A GS-14 is a General Schedule (GS) advanced pay grade within the civil service that is reserved for supervisors or highly technical individuals.]

Sterling Cale received several different military decorations. He received multiple Purple Hearts, a Bronze Star, and a Silver Star plus a Legion of Merit. The Silver Star was for action in Korea. He was with a medical company that was ambushed. He helped fire an automatic weapon to drive the enemy away. He and his comrades were able to escape as a result. Korea was a crazy experience. At times, troops had to shoot women and children aiding the enemy. Females or youngsters would fire machine guns or throw grenades at the allied forces fighting the communists. At times in Korea, Cale would go to sleep with a grenade in each hand. He knew that he would take his attacker or attackers with him if they snuck up on him in his sleep. That was in Korea, not Vietnam. In Vietnam, Cale dealt more with medical personnel and did not experience similar situations as Korea. The ambush in Korea resulting in Cale's Silver Star was by North Koreans as they made their way to Pusan before the allied forces pushed them back. Cale feels both Iran and North Korea should be bombed out of existence in today's world. Instead, there is nothing but talk. One day, the sneak attack might be on the United States by its enemy. Cale does not have any bad memories of combat. There were times of extreme action such as a prisoner interrogation at 5,000 feet and pushing the captive out of the aircraft. The memory does not bother him. [Annotator's Note: Cale chuckles at the memory of this extreme action.]

Sterling Cale served in World War 2 because he got caught up in it while he was in the service. While Cale was in Vietnam, his son was in the service in Germany. Cale reached the rank of Eagle Scout and is proud of that accomplishment. When he is on the Arizona Memorial or at Red Hills, he enjoys seeing Scouts and taking pictures with them. The governor of Illinois gave each veteran of the Second World War a four year scholarship. His wife only discovered the letter recently. Too late to use the scholarship, he has already received his Masters of Business Administration Degree when he was 75 years old. People tell him today that he is too old and educated to be hired for a new job. Cale ran a restaurant near Schofield Barracks for years. Afterwards, he decided to return to the Arizona where he first started. He signs pictures and does video conferences. In 1975, Cale used the G.I. Bill for his education. World War 2 changed Cale's life because he was gone so much of the time. His wife was by herself so much. Cale managed a restaurant with his wife in an old gun emplacement on Ewa beach. Later, Cale rented the facility to someone who stole all his equipment. He gave the location back to the community. To Cale, after his service, he can see that the conflicts that go on today are combat that will result in someone dying. Too many people do not see that and we go back and fight in spots where we should finish the work. His most memorable event of World War 2 was the attack on Pearl Harbor. He had no idea of what war was like until he was in the middle of it. His most memorable event of all his service was when the ashes blew off the deck of the Arizona and he had to stop in his assignment. [Annotator's Note: Cale led ten men to recover remains off the topside of the USS Arizona (BB-39) after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941.] It is necessary to talk about the history of the war because the situation may repeat itself in the future. Like the Scouts - be prepared.