Robert Robisch
J.R. Robisch
Mr. Thomas
U.S. History, period 2
9 April 2006
Robert Robisch
My grandfather, Robert Robisch, currently lives in Indianapolis, Indiana. In the early 1940’s he graduated high school from Cincinnati Elder and decided to join the navy before college. He was sent to boot camp at Great Lakes naval base in 1945. During his last weeks of boot camp the peace treaty was signed. He was a surgery technician in the hospital corps.
In this interview, “J” stands for J.R. Robisch and “R” stands for Robert Robisch.
J: Tell me about your experience in World War II.
R: I signed up for the navy before I was drafted into the army. My father had a client who told him to put me in the hospital corps because I would receive my training even if the war ended.
J: When did you enter the war?
R: Well in my last week of boot camp they told us that the war had ended in the Pacific.
J: What did you do then?
R: Well since I was enlisted in the hospital corps I was able to still receive my technical training. I was then assigned to Oakland on the new hospital ship. We spent two weeks getting ready to head out to sea and I held sick call everyday.
J: What did you do during sick call?
R: Every morning if a sailor was sick and I checked him out and he was I would write pass giving him release from his duties for the day.
J: When did you leave the country?
R: Well instead of going and picking up injured soldiers from the islands the navy decided to use this ship as the vessel to have all the admirals and generals to watch the testing of the new hydrogen or atomic bomb. Because this was the newest and nicest ship in the navy so they decided to use it.
J: So you gave sick call to all these top officials?
R: No, I decided to transfer, because I asked a guy if I should stay because the testing was history. But he told me that he would leave as soon as he could because I would have to salute an officer around every officer and I couldn’t relax or screw up and everyone was going to be on edge.
J: So where did you go after that?
R: Well I was reassigned to basic duty and I went over to the Oakland base and started painting ships but about 20 minutes into my painting the officer came up to me and told me I was reassigned to the USS Hanna which was leaving the next day to pick up soldiers on a three month trip.
J: So what happened?
R: Well he had a sailor drive me over to the base to get my things and I got on the ship and held sick call everyday like I did on the hospital ship.
J: Where did you go?
R: Well we stopped off at Pearl, and then went to Guam, picked up some soldiers and then picked up some more at Okinawa and Japan. We stopped off in Shanghai and let the soldiers out for some free time and to have some fun.
J: So you just held sick call everyday?
R: Yeah, except the captain wanted the boys from Okinawa to be able to go on shore-leave in China. So we had to inoculate a couple thousand of soldiers in 3 days. So we did it all-day and around the clock and got them all good to go.
J: When did you leave the navy?
R: After our three month travel across the Pacific and back my time was up and I was able to go home.