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USS Missouri: VJ Day, 1995
 

Aboard the USS Missouri
VJ Day September 2, 1995

Robert Scholler, USNR (ret.)
The following are thoughts of retired WWII Destroyer Escort skipper, Robert Scholler, while attending the 50th anniversary of the Japanese Surrender Ceremony aboard the USS Missouri in Bremerton, Washington.

It was like visiting an old girlfriend and finding her as beautiful, trim and shapely as you remembered her.

She was dressed up in colorful naval signal flags and red, white and blue bunting as she lay peacefully in the quiet waters of the Bremerton shipyard. Thousands of her friends were there to admire her.

Tears come to my eyes as I thought of our last contact fifty years ago. We were operating at night with Task Force 58 in the rough seas near Okinawa.

So many U.S. Destroyers had been damaged or sunk by kamikaze suicide attacks that the fleet needed to use Destroyer Escorts to form the anti-Submarine screen and also to provide picket ships for advanced enemy contact and warning to the fleet.

We felt like little kids in short pants defending our much bigger sisters with a longer reach and a more powerful punch, but our job was to see that no enemy submarines got under their skirts.

The shapely silhouettes of the Iowa Class Battleships, Aircraft Carriers, Cruisers, Destroyers and support vessels on the Pacific Ocean horizon as the morning sun came up, was a sight to behold. Ships were everywhere, in every direction for as far as the eye could see.

The USS Missouri, USS Iowa, USS Wisconsin and USS New Jersey are all engineering masterpieces and should be spared from the scrap yard.

I stand ready to be a volunteer to preserve these old gals out of pure love and admiration.

  

movj96t.jpg (13199 bytes)

USS Missouri on display for the 50th anniversary of VJ Day Ceremony.

scholle2.jpg (18685 bytes)

Above: Robert Scholler over the Surrender Plaque o
the USS Missouri on September 2nd, 1996. At At the age of 22,
Lt. Scholler was the youngest commanding officer of a
Destroyer Escort in the Pacific Fleet.
movj95t.jpg (11467 bytes)

The USS Missouri awaits visitors on VJ Day, 1995.

 

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Last modified: Thursday, June 29, 2000