Reviewed by William H.A. Newport
Mr. Newport is Head of Archives & Special Collections at MPMRC.
Born May 19, 1922, Oliver Bullard “Ras” Rasmussen was by his own account “3/8 Chippewa, second generation out of the teepee.” Ras spent much of his youth on the Bad River Reservation in northern Wisconsin, where in the lean years of the Great Depression his grandparents taught him about his Chippewa history and culture, and outdoor skills that would prove valuable later. Despite the family’s poverty, education was valued and Ras graduated from Ashland High School near the reservation in 1941. Planning to follow in his brother’s footsteps, he had obtained an Ordinary Seaman’s certificate in 1939 and hoped to ship out on a Great Lakes ship after graduation. It proved too late in the season, and by the fall Ras found himself in the U.S. Navy, where he had applied a year before and been turned away. On October 7, 1941 Ras was sworn in and departed for basic training. Required to choose a career field, Ras opted for quartermaster. His company commander, himself a chief quartermaster, advised him to “pick something else–quartermasters spend all their time at sea,” so Ras switched to aviation radioman. It was to prove a fateful choice.
Ras was eager for action once the war began, but spent the next several years on the East Coast flying dull anti-submarine patrols. Finally an opportunity for relief arose. Stuck at a dead-end post repairing radios in Wildwood, New Jersey, Ras bluffed his way as a replacement aircrewman into a bomber squadron. Ras embarked on the USS Shangri-La in January 1945, headed for the Pacific. By the spring the carrier was in action supporting the Okinawa invasion.
The increasing threat from Japanese suicide attacks sent the ship to raid kamikaze training bases in Hokkaido. On a combat mission July 14, 1945 near Chitose, Ras’ plane collided with a mountain, killing the pilot and severely wounding Ras. His skills as a woodsman learned as a youth on the Bad River Reservation served him well, allowing him to avoid enemy contact, construct shelter and find food. For the next 68 days, severely wounded and hungry, Ras avoided capture entirely. Only when he finally approached a Japanese civilian in September did he learn the war had ended over a month earlier. In the excitement surrounding the end of the war, Ras’ adventure was of minor interest. Although a handful of newspaper articles were published at the time, most were insulting and as a result Ras rarely spoke of his harrowing ordeal.
After World War II Ras made a career in the Navy, flying in support of the Berlin Airlift and combat missions during the Korean War. After many adventures and close calls he retired from the Navy in 1962 as a Chief Petty Officer (“Chippewa Chief” in the title refers not to his status in the tribe, but rather to his rank in the Navy). Ras settled in California, working as an electronics technician for Lawrence Livermore and receiving a degree from University of San Francisco in 1978. On March 7, 1980 Ras died in his sleep, after a yearlong battle with cancer. With his passing the little known tale of his epic survival from the final days of World War II was nearly lost forever.
Enter author Donald J. Norton, who trained as an Airman Apprentice under Chief Rasmussen in 1951. Norton never forgot Rasmussen’s story of his time on Hokkaido and set out late in life to document it. Unbeknownst to him, by this time Ras had been dead nearly twenty years. Ras’ widow Eddie related to him that in the late 1960s a family friend had recorded interviews with Ras with the intention of writing a book on his experiences.
This friend died without beginning the project, but Eddie still had the tapes and agreed to loan them to Norton to support his effort to publish Ras’ story. Norton obviously made great efforts to fill the gaps in the story left by these interview tapes from 30 years before. In addition to research in libraries and archives, Norton contacted Ras’ friends and relatives to flesh out missing details. An “airedale” himself during the 1950s, Norton is obviously familiar with the daily life Ras would have experienced in the Navy.
However his attempts to bridge gaps in the available information and interweave historical narrative lend the book an uneven quality. The strength of the book is Ras, and the story only comes to life when he does his own talking. Approximately 60 pages are in Ras’ own voice. These and other sections composed largely of his lengthy quotes are the highlights of the book. By all telling, Ras was a modest man contemptuous of braggarts, and what he relates of his ordeal on Hokkaido and the knowledge that much of his suffering remains unspoken is impressive and humbling. Despite enduring a 68-day struggle to remain alive, recover from serious wounds and avoid capture, Ras extracts humor.
He tells of proselytizing crewmen leaving religious pamphlets in the cockpits of combat aircraft in the middle of the Pacific. He laughs at himself for engaging in a life-or-death battle with a 20 pound squash on a dark, rainy Hokkaido night. Through his eyes we see an angry Japanese farmer berating his nonproductive cow, which we know Ras has milked dry every night for days. All in all, the reader is left wishing Rasmussen had been alive for the author to interview personally. Sadly this was not possible. Norton did the best job possible given the limitations of thirty-year-old third party interviews and a deceased principal and he deserves praise for rescuing this heroic tale from potential obscurity. Despite the unevenness of the narrative, Ras is an interesting character whose story makes this book a worthwhile read.
|
