Ray Edwards / Provided photo
Ray Edwards and wife Editha on their wedding day. / Provided photo
RAY EDWARDS
Age: 92
Born: Aug. 21, 1918
Hometown: Glendale
Residence: Rancho Mirage
Military branch: U.S. Navy
Years served: Dec. 8, 1941 - Oct. 45, 1945
Rank: Lieutenant
Family: Wife Editha (deceased); two children, Joanne West of Lincoln, Tom Edwards of Lancaster; three grandchildren; three great-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 Wednesday
U.S. Marine Corps veteran Tom Buchanan of Palm Springs.
LEARN MORE
Read about other Coachella Valley residents who served in World War II at mydesert.com/wwii.
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Ray Edwards graduated from the University of California, Berkeley in May 1941 and was working at Bethlehem Ship Building Company in San Francisco — hiring ship fitters, welders and other tradesmen for the shipyard — when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941.
Edwards, who had plans to attend Officer's Candidate School, found himself in a U.S. Navy uniform sooner than he expected.
“I got my orders on Dec. 8, 1941,” Edwards said.
In January, he was sent to graduate school at Northwestern University, where he spent three months training to become an officer.
The men studied subjects including navigation, seamanship, ship handling and battle conditions.
“You come out as a ‘90-day wonder,'” he said, referring to an unflattering term used to describe an OCS graduate. The usual requirement to become an officer was four years at the U.S. Naval Academy.
His first assignment was on the West Coast.
“I had visions of cruisers, destroyers or battlewagons,” he said.
Instead, he was put in charge of the USS San Giovanni: “A fishing boat being converted into a picket ship on the mine force,” Edwards said. “They were still scraping fish out of the hull.”
Edwards would soon become captain of the San Giovanni — and would later take the helm of two other U.S. Navy mine-sweeping vessels.
As part of the mine force division, Edwards and his crew would “sweep” the water in search of mines.
When the mines were detected, someone was assigned to blast the cable anchoring it, cutting it away from the mine. Edwards' job was to find any mines that had been cut.
“The mine floats to the surface, and you shoot it,” he said.
Edwards said they used shotguns or a machine gun to blow up the explosive.
“During that time there was a real frantic cry — ‘Where is the Japanese fleet?' It was lost. We didn't know where it was.”
Ships were sent out a distance from ports all over the Pacific to protect the areas from attack.
“We were assigned to an area 600 miles off the coast of San Francisco,” he said.
“Our orders were to ‘sight, report and engage the Japanese fleet.'”
“They were just trying to find the ships,” he said. “They found the ships at Midway.”
Soon after, he was transferred to a 90-foot “AMC class” — a coastal minesweeper. Now, instead of looking for mines, he'd be the one cutting the mines free from the cables.
After more sweeping off the coast of San Francisco, Edwards was transferred to mine warfare school in Virginia, on Chesapeake Bay.
“Another three months learning about mines and the intricacies of sweeping,” he said.
Edwards was then assigned to a yard-class mine sweeper, YMS-158, which was being built at a shipyard in Wisconsin.
The ship, with Captain Edwards and his crew aboard, made its way to the sea by way of Lake Michigan, the Ohio River, then down the Mississippi River to New Orleans.
But it wasn't all smooth sailing on the muddy river. At one point, the ship went through a flood area on the Mississippi, where just the upper half of houses, trees and barns could be seen poking above the surface of the swollen flood waters.
“Everything else was calm water,” he said. “It was beautiful, but tragic.”
Another time, the ship just missed crashing into a drawbridge that crossed the river.
“The drawbridge keeper was either asleep or in the bathroom,” Edwards said. “He didn't raise the bridge. We had to try to back up this ship. We backed it up into the mud.”
The drawbridge was finally raised, and the ship continued its voyage to the sea.
“We got to New Orleans — we haven't fired a shot yet,” he said, laughing.
“We spent a year in the Caribbean — based in San Juan,” he said. “We traveled around the islands. We were a presence. The Germans had some subs coming in and blowing up oil transports coming into Aruba,” he said.
Edwards emphasized the word, “presence,” as the small, lightly armed minesweeper was not big enough to fight a submarine, he said.
After a year in the Caribbean, Edwards was ordered to go through the Panama Canal to San Diego.
“They were forming a 30-ship group of minesweepers in preparation for going into the Philippines,” he said.
In San Diego, the ships tested their equipment by practicing with U.S. submarines.
“I was testing and making a run at a submarine, and my chief boatswain's mate,” pulled 25 albacore aboard. “He was fishing. I'm looking at submarines, and he's looking at fish,” Edwards said, laughing.
The fleet of 30 yard-class mine sweepers, escorted by three destroyers, was soon on its way across the Pacific, bound for Hawaii.
From Hawaii, “we were on our way to the Philippines, and as we passed Manila, two Japanese destroyers came out, and a (U.S.) Fletcher-class destroyer engaged the two Japanese destroyers.”
The enemy ships retreated, and Edward's ship didn't get fired on, he said.
The U.S. was assembling its naval power for the planned invasion of Leyte Gulf, and the minesweepers were an integral part of the plan.
“We were in there two days sweeping like crazy,” Edwards said.
When the battle began, the kamikazes flew in by the droves. Edwards watched as a destroyer — about 500 yards away — was hit by a kamikaze.
“I saw the explosion of the plane hitting the fantail — the thing just exploded,” he said. The destroyer, “broke in two and sank in seconds.”
