Seventy-five miles from Japan on VJ Day -- Pete Graff, 1923-2013

Naval officer Pete Graff in World War II

By the end of April, 1945, World War II (in Europe) was coming to an end.

Over 1.5 million Nazi German soldiers had been taken prisoner by the Allies on the Western Front and 800,000 Nazi German soldiers had been taken prisoner by the Russians, on the Eastern front. On the 30th day of April, Hitler took his own life in an underground bunker in Berlin, as the war raged on the streets above. By the 8th of May the Nazi German President Donitz threw in the towel, and signed a peace agreement with Gen. Eisenhower, resulting in the unconditional surrender of all remaining Axis Forces in Europe.

The fall of Nazi Germany freed almost all of the American Forces in Germany to redeploy to the Far East for the invasion of Japan. During the summer of 1945, the United States put together, under the leadership of Supreme Allied Commander Gen. McArthur, the greatest fighting force the world has ever seen, for "Operation Downfall" -- the invasion of Japan.

Pete Graff, at work at McCook National Bank.

One of the American warriors, poised to strike the mainland of Japan that August of 1945 was Pete Graff, whom we knew in later years in McCook as the quiet, unassuming President of the McCook National Bank.

Pete was the son of immigrants from Belgium and Luxemburg, who settled on a northwest Iowa farm before Pete was born. Up to Dec. 7, 1941, Pete grew up as a typical Midwestern farm boy. He attended school in Northwest Iowa, at Akron, taking part in school activities, including the Akron High School football team. He graduated with the Class of 1941, and then went home to "help Dad on the farm." That all changed with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December of that year. Immediately, Pete and most of his team mates found themselves volunteering to serve in one or another of the Armed Service Branches.

Pete had always liked airplanes and thought that he would like to fly fighter planes. He got his wish to fly planes -- in one of the Navy's Flight programs, but instead of fighters he became a pilot of TBFs (Grumman) or TBMs (General Motors), the Navy's Torpedo Bomber, and after his training in the mainland U.S., was sent, via the Aircraft Carrier, Shangri La, to Hawaii, to learn to fly aerial missions on sub patrol.

Pete Graff in his Old Reliable TBM.

Part of Pete's training in Hawaii was to learn to land his torpedo bomber on and take off from the deck of the U.S. carrier, Saratoga. This part of his training nearly resulted in his death. He was practicing his carrier landings, at night, in a rolling sea.

This was particularly difficult, for three reasons: 1. From the air, the moving carrier, with its deck looking like a postage stamp, was not that easy to even find at night. 2. The deck did not stay still. The rougher the sea, the more the deck moved around. 3. If there was any trouble at all, it was exaggerated by flying at night.

In a conversation shortly before his death, Pete pointed to a small scar on his forehead, above one eye.

"This," he said, "is the result of one of those night time landings. The engine of my plane quit just as I was making my approach for the landing. My plane went into the sea. Fortunately, I was flying alone and the ship's rescue crew was able to fish me out in just a short time, and I merely suffered this little cut on my forehead."

Pete spent his time in the Pacific protecting the fleet from Japanese submarines. Cruisers and Destroyers protected the Aircraft Carriers; the Torpedo Bombers protected the Cruisers and Destroyers; and the Fighters protected the slower Torpedo Bombers from enemy aircraft. McArthur's combined troops invaded island after island on their relentless journey toward Japan -- from the "Mariana Turkey Shoot," to Iwo Jima, to Okinawa, and finally to Japan. Pete and his mates supported those invasions, at first from Carriers, and as they got closer to Japan, from the island of Saipan (Saipan is near the island of Tinian, where the Enola Gay took off to deliver the first Atomic Bomb on Hiroshima.).

Over time Pete became very fond of his Torpedo Bomber. "The TBM was a very fine plane, maneuverable and well-armed." The plane had a wingspan of 54 feet. Those wings folded up when the planes were stored on the deck of the Carrier. The TBM normally had a crew of three -- a pilot, a radio man / turret gunner / bombardier, and a rear gunner. It carried 30 mm machine guns for firing straight ahead, a 50 mm machine gun in a revolving turret in the middle, and 30 mm machine guns in the back, to shoot below the plane and to the rear. The TBM could carry one torpedo and one 2000 pound bomb or four 500 pound bombs. Its 700-gal. fuel tank allowed a 1,000 mile range. It could attain an altitude of 30,000', and could stay in the air for a maximum of nine hours. The TBMs were normally the first planes off and the last planes to land because of their ability to fly so long.

With the exception of part of the British Far Eastern Fleet, Operation Downfall was to be entirely an American Operation, consisting of the entire Marine Corps, the entire Pacific Navy, including the Naval Air Force, elements of the 7th Army Air Force, the 8th Army Air Force, recently redeployed from Europe, and the American Far East Air Force---more than 1.5 million American boys, plus another 3 million in support. This was more than 40% of the American military men still in uniform---all with one aim---to bring down the military led Japanese Government.

There were no delusions in Washington, or among military leaders, that such an invasion would be easy. Conservative estimates among US military leaders said that there would be between 1.7 and 4 million American casualties, including some 800,000 deaths. This would be in addition to the 100,000 American prisoners held by the Japanese, which Japanese Prime Minister Tojo promised to execute immediately should the Americans launch an invasion.

An invasion of Japan would produce 10 times as many casualties as the invasion of the Japanese island of Okinawa, which, up to that time was the deadliest battle of World War II.

On the Japanese side, Tojo promised that one million suicide fighter pilots would defend Japan, and if necessary, all 80 million Japanese citizens would die in defense of Japan. (It was estimated that by dropping "the Bomb," 5 to 10 million Japanese lives were saved. (Recently an aged Japanese professor stated that by the end of the war, food rations for Japanese citizens were so sparse, that had the bomb not been dropped he could not have survived another month.)

On that fateful day in August, when the Atomic Bomb was unleashed upon Japan, Pete was among the throng of 1.5 million American troops who were steaming toward Japan for the invasion. Only 75 miles from Japan, he was on alert, ready at a moment's notice to take to the air to do his part in the well-rehearsed "Operation Downfall." It was with considerable relief that they received the news of the big blast, which brought Japan to its knees, with pleas of unconditional surrender.

Who can say how many of those 1.5 million American troops would have been killed had not the bomb been dropped. Instead, those boys came back home, to lead the Post War recovery of our nation. That horrible blast ended the war. It saved more lives than it took. One of those lives saved might well have been Pete Graff. Pete sure thought so.

Source: Operation Downfall; Oral conversation with Pete Graff, by Steve Batty