What a mission for man who witnessed the end of WWII

Seventy-five years ago Tuesday, Fremont Piercefield was an 18-year-old lad from Rockford, Ill., who had been drafted into the Army and was facing his first combat mission.

What a mission it was. Piercefield was to be part of the invasion of Japan as part of the 1st Cavalry Division, but after the United States dropped two atomic bombs on the country Emperor Hirohito capitulated.

The troop ship Piercefield was on was headed to Tokyo Bay, and on Sept. 2, 1945, he and his fellow soldiers were on hand as history was made. That was the day representatives of Japan and the U.S., including General Douglas McArthur, signed the official surrender documents ending World War II.

“There were battleships all around, planes in the sky,” Piercefield, 93, recalled as he sat in the living room of his Town of Belgium home. “We were one ship in a convoy of ships. The battleship Missouri was the biggest one. I was able to see it, but we were in the back of the group.

“We were signalled (when the agreement was signed). That meant the war was over. There wasn’t any celebration, but we were all elated we weren’t going to be fighting the Japanese. There was a sense of relief.”

After all, he said, fighting the Japanese in their homeland would have been “murderous on both sides.”

Instead of invading Japan, Piercefield and his fellow soldiers occupied the country.

“We were the first ones to land in Japan,” Piercefield said, adding he wasn’t among the first wave of soldiers because he had a case of jaundice.

A little while later, he joined the troops working to ensure there was no resistance.

“We didn’t know what to expect,” Piercefield said. “ There was no resistance. When they surrendered, they surrendered. It was very peaceful. The people were very kind to us, very polite. The emperor said to them, ‘The war is over. Be nice to the people.’”

Hirohito had instructed his people to turn over their weapons, and they complied.

“They were piled up, not only military weapons but fancy heirlooms,” said Piercefield, who came to Japan as a private but was promoted to operations sergeant. 

Piercefield stayed in Japan for a year-and-a-half before being sent back to the U.S. He was discharged, then attended college at the Wisconsin Institute of Technology in Platteville, where he studied engineering.

It was there he met Ann Randall, who was studying to become a teacher, at a dance.

“She was a senior and I was a sophomore,” Piercefield said. They married six months later, on Aug. 26, 1948, and had four children, two of whom died at birth. 

But Piercefield always wanted to be a soldier, and he decided to make the Army his career. 

Piercefield, who was born in Platteville, spent his youth in Rockford. He turned 18 on Oct. 1, 1944, and was drafted soon after. He was sworn in at Fort Sheridan in Illinois in December.

“I wanted to be a soldier,” he recalled. “The war was on. I had a couple relatives who were soldiers, and I wanted to be one too.”

Despite the fact there was a war going on, he said he was happy to serve. He was sent to Fort Meade, Maryland, where his unit was preparing to be sent to the European Theater.

“Then Germany surrendered,” he said. “They took away my wools, gave me cotton khakis and sent me west.”

He went to California, then to Manila,  Philippines, which had been largely decimated by the war.

“Everything was exciting to me,” he said. “I was 18 and it was my first time out of the country.”

The atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki “saved a lot of lives,” Piercefield said.

“The Japanese recognized with the amount of power we had with those bombs, we would have devastated them, city by city,” he said.

He enjoyed his service during World War II, and in 1948 he re-enlisted, serving 34 years in the Army before retiring.

He served in the Korean War and the Vietnam War. In Korea, he said, it wasn’t just the fighting that killed his fellow soldiers, it was the weather, particularly frostbite.

He was the transportation official for the Army in Vietnam, and was there when the decision was made to pull out of the country.

He spent six months at the Army Language School learning Spanish, then was went to Puerto Rico with the transportation corps, serving as fort commander. He also earned a degree at the Navy War College.

And he was fort commander at Thule Air Force Base in Greenland for a summer.

He attended the Army’s transportation office course and served stints at the Pentagon twice, the second time as a logistics officer assigned to the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Through it all, Piercefield rose through the ranks, retiring as a colonel in 1980. His last assignment was as commander at Fort Sheridan, where he started his career.

He later worked as a special projects officer for the City of Rockford before moving to the Town of Belgium with his wife, who died in 2015.

Piercefield said he has had a good life, and he encourages youths today to give the military a try.

“I talk to young people and I ask them, ‘Did you ever think about the armed forces as a career?’” he said. “I’m very satisfied with our military services. I served at all levels. 

“I had a great military experience and a great vet experience too.”