WWII veteran comes to terms with memories of combat

James Roscoe Tankersley, (Rocky), who is 98, has vivid memories of his almost instant transition from teenager to World War II sailor.

His life was changed dramatically when he and three friends were hanging out in a popular Kansas City hamburger joint on Dec. 7, 1941.

As they talked, laughed and played pinball machines a man came running down the street screaming that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor.

“It was the first time we heard anything about it,” Tankersley said. “From then on it changed our lives forever. All four of us ended up enlisting in the military, three of us in the Navy and one in the Marine Corps.”

Tankersley was working in a machine shop when the war started as a machinist apprentice. He became an electrician when he got aboard his first ship.

He soon found himself in North Africa where he saw combat. His ship was one of 102 assigned to that invasion, which included landing craft, supply ships, destroyers and aircraft carriers.

He later was part of the escort for President Franklin D. Roosevelt on the USS Iowa when the president was traveling to a peace conference in Tehran, Iran.

Tankersley became a first class electrician’s mate in France.

“Our guns fired so much in southern France it blistered the paint on the barrels,” Tankersley said. 

He had the opportunity to get to know Humphrey Bogart in Dakar, Senegal.

“They invited him to come aboard our ship,” Tankersley said. I set him up with a sound system so he could speak on the ship.”

Tankersley also went through U.S. Navy Gunnery School with the actor Victor Mature.

“I talked to him a lot, Tankersley said. “You would have never known he was a big wig. He was very nice.”

One tragic incident made a deep impression on him. The destroyer he was on stopped to refuel and they were told they would have to lay anchor and wait until morning.

“A German submarine got in that harbor with us and they shot a torpedo through the ship,” Tankersley said. “I was very lucky I wasn’t on the ship at that time.”

His ship was converted to a minesweeper and it was sent to the Pacific near Okinawa. The minesweeper swept around Okinawa and Tokyo Bay and located and cut the cables of more than 200 mines. As they popped to the surface they blew them up. On May 3, 1945 the ship was hit and 10 men were killed.

“When the Kamikaze plane hit the whole rear end of the ship was on fire so we had to fight the fires,” Tankersley said. “I was on the fire hose and one of the officers yelled for an electrician to kill the power to the back end of the ship so I handed the hose to another guy and I had to go around on the other side of the ship to get to that panel to turn the power off so they wouldn’t squirt water on all those electrical panels. When I went in I saw this guy laying there and I didn’t realize who he was at the time, he was so badly injured and burned. So after I got the power turned off I went back to see if I could help him. I tried to move him and his skin just came off. The only clothing he was wearing was his belt. The rest of his clothing had burned up. I tried to get him on a stretcher by myself. I hollered for help and another guy came in and we were able to get him up. We carried him down to the sick bay but there was nothing they could do for him. Some people were screaming. It shakes you up. We went into the port in Okinawa and they sent in barges to pick up the dead bodies. When you saw all those bodies in the canvas bags on the barge and you knew that some of them were your friends, it was a touching moment. They took them to shore to be buried at the beach.”

When he was headed back to Japan to sweep around the southern tip he found out  the United States was planning an invasion. “When we got to Okinawa they made the announcement that the Japanese had surrendered,” Tankersley said.  “We were there for the peace treaty and we were about 1,500 feet from the Missouri. We could see all the high officials coming aboard to sign the peace treaty. It was a really historical event.”

He also has lasting memories of the victory flight over Tokyo.

“When you see hundreds of airplanes in the air — I like to say the sky was black with airplanes,” Tankersley said. “Everything they could get in the air was flying over. All types of aircraft, it was like a swarm of bees coming over. As we were sweeping Tokyo Bay another event that was really touching was seeing the American prisoners of war. For a long time they had a building they had taken over right down on the waterfront and they had put huge white letters on the building that said “Cheers US Army and Navy.” That was really a blessing to see that.” 

He and his three friends survived World War II and returned to Kansas City. Tankersley stayed in the reserves and when the Korean War began he was called back to active duty for 16 months.

He was a second class electrician’s mate in the reserves and stationed at Pearl Harbor where he worked on floating drydocks, which have tanks that are filled with water and are placed under a ship in need of repair to raise it out of the water. “It was a comedown from working on destroyers,” Tankersley said.

“I was in the control room at my docking station which I like to describe as being like the bridge of a ship facing out,” Tankersley said. “The skipper was right down below me with a bullhorn and if I wasn’t bringing the ships straight up he could tell. He knew his stuff. If I had a little bit of tilt on the ship he would holler at me on that bullhorn. I controlled the air in those tanks. I had all these consoles. I stood in the middle and they were on both sides of me. They had all these switches that controlled air in the tanks. But I went from a destroyer to that so it was kind of like shore duty.”

Tankersley believes that World War II was very important and that Germany and Japan had to be stopped. But the toll was immense and he will always remember the POWs he encountered.

“My chief petty officer during the Korean War was a prisoner of war for 57 months,” Tankersley said. “He was captured on the Corregidor death march. He told me a lot of the stuff that went on. They treated the medical personnel really badly. It was a result of his suffering that he became an alcoholic. He was able to stay in the Navy but he would come in and he would be suffering from alcohol and I would take him downstairs to the storeroom and I had a cart down there and I let him lay down and sleep it off. Another POW was a friend of mine and he was captured in Germany. He survived and made it back to the states but never got his weight back. He was always skin and bones after being a POW. 

After the wars, Tankersley worked for General Motors as a quality control supervisor. He was also a fire chief. When he retired he and his wife, moved to Lake of the Ozarks where he got involved with the volunteer fire department. He also served as deputy sheriff.

He now lives at Senior Star at Wexford Place assisted living in Kansas City with his wife Mary. They have five children.

He has come to terms with the bad memories of his time in the service and he said he doesn’t really think about them anymore. 

“War is hell but somebody’s got to do it,” said Tankersley.