Ohio War Stories: Share Your Memories

Courtesy of the electronic version of Mansfield News Journal
Written by: By RON SIMON • News Journal • May 19, 2008

CRESTLINE — By a matter of days, Stanley Schneider, 86, missed spending World War II in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp.

Schneider, a civilian mechanic working for the Army Air Corps, left Pearl Harbor on Nov. 29, 1941, aboard a ship bound for Manila.

“We were part of a nine-ship convoy and for some reason I will never be able to understand, we turned south and that’s what saved our hides,” Schneider said.

That long detour meant the convoy was far enough from the Philippines to get word about the attack.

“Everyone talks about Dec. 7, but for us it was on Dec. 8. We turned back to Fiji and eventually landed at Brisbane, Australia,” Schneider said. “We were just about the first Americans to get there.”

For a short time, Schneider and other civilian Army Air Corps employees lived at an Australian air base at Ipswich. Fearful they had been forgotten, Schneider and the others made some noise and were able to catch an American Navy transport, the U.S.S. Republic back to the United States.

Schneider said the ship was so short of crewmen that he and other civilians wound up standing watch and learning how to use the ship’s anti-aircraft guns.

The Republic traveled alone to South America and then up the Central American coast to San Diego.

While on night watch, Schneider said he was sure he saw the wake of a torpedo speeding toward the Republic. The ship veered off its course but Schneider said nobody believed his story until a Japanese submarine surfaced one night later near Santa Barbara and fired shells into a shore oil refinery.

As soon as he got back to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Schneider joined the Marine Corps.

“I may have been working for the Army Air Corps but I was a civilian and I didn’t want to spend the war at home or look like a draft dodger,” he said. Keep reading…