Veteran remembers unloading atom bomb - Army News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Army Times

Veteran remembers unloading atom bomb

CENTRALIA, Ill. — Bethel Chapman was doing his job at the dock that day, operating a crane to unload supplies from a ship, when he noticed something “special.”

“I was a little ways off the dock. The (military police) had it surrounded. My outfit took it off the ship. We unloaded part of it and they had part of it somewhere else. Nobody knew what it was. They didn’t tell us what it was,” Chapman said. “It was very secret because they had 300 MPs there, a whole company or more of MPs. We figured it was something special.”

It wasn’t until a few days later that Chapman realized how special what he had witnessed at the dock that day was.

“We knew what it was after they dropped it,” he said.

The top secret shipment was the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

“We were surprised because we hadn’t heard of an atomic bomb too much, and we knew it was a secret weapon. We were glad we were going home,” he said.

Chapman, a technician in the U.S. Army’s 159th Port Battalion, was stationed in the Pacific where his duties included getting food, ammunition and other supplies to soldiers. His unit was delivering supplies to the Mariana Islands of Guam, Saipan and Tinian when the B-29 Enola Gay launched from Tinian to drop the bomb on Hiroshima.

Chapman also operated large cranes and received training as a skilled rifleman. As a service section, his company was also responsible for setting up camp, which involved pitching tents, establishing command posts, setting up the mess halls and digging holes for latrines.

He said he saw soldiers battle much more than the Japanese. In addition to the mosquitoes, jungle heat and deadly snakes that crept into their foxholes, soldiers suffered from diseases such as malaria and scabies.

He said suffering was simply a part of the experience.

“It’s a suffering thing when you go into service,” he said. “It gets in your blood.”

And death was something Chapman said you just got used to.

He recalled his arrival on Guadalcanal, where he set up camp on rough terrain after the Marines secured it.

“When we had to pitch tents, we had to pitch them over dead bodies,” he said.

The bodies of Japanese soldiers lined the shore. Sometimes he still has flashbacks to the stench.

“When you first get over there, the first raid, your hair is standing on your head, and after a while you get used to it. We had one man hit with shrapnel who had a nasty wound in his chest, and we lost one man. I saw a lot of people who were cut in two and so forth,” Chapman said. “You move on and you keep moving.”

After spending two years, 10 months and 20 days overseas, Chapman received an honorable discharge Nov. 24, 1945.

His unit, entirely made up of black soldiers, didn’t see much fighting action unless they were attacked. He said most of the black fighting units were in Europe, like the 66th Tank Destroyers, the unit his brother, Ivory Chapman, fought in under Gen. George S. Patton.

He said race was never an issue until he returned home from war.

“You’re all the same thing when you’re fighting in the Army,” he said. All his unit’s main officers were white and everyone “got along just fine.”

But segregation awaited him when he arrived at Camp Chafee in Arkansas after his discharge.

“They segregated you when you got off the boat,” Chapman said of his arrival at Camp Chafee. “That’s when it really hit home, when we got back there.”