BOB WELLS
Age: 86
Born: Oct. 30, 1923
Hometown: Long Beach
Residence: Indio
Military branch: U.S Navy; USS Auriga (AK-98)
Years served: 1943-1946
Rank: Radarman second class
Family: First wife, deceased; present wife, Sandra Wells; five children, Rod Rankin of Cave Creek, Ariz., Hawley Morton of Huntington Beach, Helen Cords of Lake Forest, Cindy Rowland and Shelli Handy, both of Saugus; six grandchildren
About this series
Staff writer Denise Goolsby will profile desert veterans from World War II through the end of 2010 — the 65th anniversary of the end of the war. Contact her at (760) 778-4587 or via e-mail at denise.goolsby@thedesertsun.com
Coming tomorrow
U.S. Army Air Corps veteran Ken Woodward of La Quinta.
LEARN MORE: Read about other Coachella Valley residents who served in World War II at mydesert.com/wwii.
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Growing up in Long Beach in the 1920s and 1930s, Bob Wells got to go aboard some of the ships of the U.S. Pacific Fleet stationed just offshore.
That experience — and watching the sailors in action after a 6.4-magnitude earthquake in March 1933 — inspired him to join the Navy during World War II.
“That (earthquake) was scary as the Japanese war,” said Wells, who later served in the Pacific.
Wells and a sister were playing baseball in the street when the early-evening shaker hit.
“We ended up in the gutter,” he said. “My older sister was in the house on the toilet. The house got up and moved to the left, off the foundation. When the house moved, she went about three feet up in the air.”
“Within an hour after the earthquake, the Navy and Marines were on the street corners in full battle dress,” he said. “They stopped any kind of looting going on.”
The city avoided being ransacked, “Thanks to the U.S. Navy,” Wells said.
“When I was growing up, they would accept kids aboard the fleet,” Wells said.
When the sailors came ashore on leave, “Shore boats took the kids back out to the ships,” he said.
The USS West Virginia was among the ships he toured when he was a youngster.
Years later aboard the USS Auriga, he found himself doing battle in Okinawa about 300 yards away from the ship of his childhood.
“The West Virginia was in there shooting 16-inch shells,” Wells said.
Wells graduated from Woodrow Wilson High School in 1941 and joined the Navy two years later.
After completing basic training at Great Lakes Naval Training Station in Illinois and graduating from radar school in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., Wells was assigned to the attack cargo ship, USS Auriga (AK-98).
The ship delivered troops, goods and equipment to locations in the war zone.
Wells' departure was delayed after he came down with scarlet fever. He spent a month in a hospital on Treasure Island, near San Francisco.
He finally shipped out and joined the USS Auriga at Eniwetok in the Marshall Islands.
“The radar aboard the Auriga was quite elementary a hand-cranked radar that set out on the bridge — not very sophisticated for a ship that was island-hopping.”
After spending time in the Philippines and the island of Ulithi, the ship returned to Alameda for repair work and the installation of new radar.
“We had a pet dog (named Soupy) on board that jumped ship at Alameda and we found her pregnant by the time we got back to the war zone,” Wells said. “The dog had problems, so the ship's doctor performed a C-section on Soupy.”
All five puppies were stillborn, but Soupy was OK, he said.
“A signalman from Boston took the dog home after the war,” Wells said.
Six dog trainers and six Doberman pinschers — the canines would be used to sniff out the enemy — joined the crew on the return trip overseas.
“They were trying to capture Japanese hiding on the islands,” Wells said.
The ship received its only Purple Heart of the war when a Betty (a Japanese fighter plane) flew by and strafed the ship.
“A gunner's mate was drinking coffee from a porcelain cup in the forward gun tub,” Wells explained. “A bullet hit the coffee cup, sitting on an ammo box, shattering the cup.”
“Our ship's doctor removed the cup from the mate's backside,” Wells said, laughing. “Our only injury.”
The bad feature of the war in the Pacific was the information, he said.
“Okinawa was supposed to have 45,000 Japanese, but there were 83,000,” he said.
The USS Auriga arrived at Okinawa two days after the invasion.
“That was crazy,” he said. “It was a hell of a lot of ships. The Japanese on the beach were taking a lot of shots from the battleships.”
During the battle, the USS Auriga nearly missed being hit by a kamikaze.
“It hit the Merchant Marine ship next to us,” he said. “It tore the bridge out of the ship,” killing some of the crewmen.
At one point, the USS Auriga was ordered to go to Iwo Jima — a typhoon was coming in and some ships in the area were not equipped with radar.
“They needed some guidance out,” Wells said. “We guided them out during the typhoon and got 'em back to port.”
After atomic bombs were dropped over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, bringing the war to a close, the USS Auriga was ordered to Yokosuka, Japan, in Tokyo Bay.
“We were there when the (USS) Missouri came in for the signing of the peace treaty,” he said. “It took about 15 minutes. The Japanese wanted to get the hell out of there.”
