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Hell-Diver's Vengeance

by Buck Buchanan

278 pages; quality trade paperback (softcover); catalogue #01-0074; ISBN 1-55212-675-7; US$25.50, C$30.00, EUR21.00, £14.50

So traumatized by the attack on Pearl Harbour was the author, that he vowed to "get" a Japanese battleship in retaliation. On April 7th, 1945 he fulfilled that vow!

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About the book      About the author      Table of Contents      Catalogue info

About the Book Ford Island barracks, 2300 Hours, Sunday, 7 December 1941:...in a state of delirium, cold and clammy from shock, I mumble into my pillow: "I'll get a Jap battlewagon if it's the last thing..." Midway Battle, June 5, 1942: The big one, Admiral Yamamoto's flagship...world's largest, most fearsome dreadnaught...the mighty Yamato, gets away unscathed. That's IT! Now IT has a name...IT replaces my imagined, nameless, hulk...the battleship I swore to get." CASU 24, Wildwood, NJ, September 1944: I hook up with the Navy's finest dive bomber pilot, Lt. Hugh Grubiss, as a CAC in the SB2C Hell-Diver. Sunday, 7 April 1945: Lt. Grubiss pushes over into our dive on the zig-zagging Yamato. I yell, "Squirm, you _ _ _, that's more than the Arizona could do." Seconds later..."

About the Author When Jim Buchanan, nicknamed "Buck" while serving in the U.S. Navy, retired from the Navy in July of 1962, his wife, Cleo, son Douglas and daughter Judy, ages 13 and 5, respectively, settled in Marion, Iowa. His naval experience in electronics, reviewed by the owner of Collins Radio Company, Mr. Arthur Collins, himself a non-degreed Electrical Engineer (EE), hired him as an EE, specifically as a technical writer. Twenty-three years later, Jim retired from Collins Radio Company and moved to Prescott Valley, Arizona, into a home that they built with the advice and assistance of Cleo's brother, Ron Michael (a construction contractor). As he grew older (starting with the early seventies), he started displaying signs of Alzheimer's disease. Given the advice by his doctor to do so, he started writing short stories; all of which led to the writing of a full length novel entitled, Back of Beyond, and this, Hell-Diver's Vengeance, his wartime autobiography. The writing experiment seems to have arrested the disease at a non-influencing level; and with medication, the results of the present tests conducted by Jim's doctor indicate that his memory has greatly improved. ---------------------------------- Reviews of Hell-Diver's Vengeance "I enjoyed the book thoroughly and found it hard to put down. The author did a fine job, has a good memory and nice writing style. It was particularly interesting to me because of my natural interest in the Arizona and the touch of Marine life I exerienced in the Marines as a chaplain both at Kaneohe and Japan during the Korean affair. My congratulations to Jim Buchanaan and god bless all of you." - A letter from Father Morris (a priest at Brophy College Preparatory School) ----------------------------------

By Dorne Goss The Daily Courier

One image of Dec. 7, 1941, in Pearl Harbour lodged deep in the soul of Jim "Buck" Buchanan and stayed. He was able to release the image, finally, early in 1945 when he was part of the "Hell-Diver's" crew that helped sink the Yamato. Japan's biggest battleship. His mind's eye never lost the picture of a volunteer treating a severely burned sailor from the USS Arizona on a mess hall table on Ford Island. His back blackened and burned to the bone, skin hanging almost to the floor, the sailor "yelled at the top of his lungs between coughs and gurgles. His yells were apparently driven by maddening pain and hateful rage: "Let me up... they killed my buddies... all my buddies... just wrap me up... let me get back.' A lengthy surge of gurgles, ending in a death rattle, choked off his piercing screams,;quot; Buchanan wrote in his memoir ;quot;Hell-Diver's Vengeance.;quot; After nurses wrapped the Prescott Valley resident's burned hands, he left the mess hall about the same time as the body of the USS Arizona sailor "who had screamed to be fixed up so he could avenge his buddies." The dead sailor and Buchanan parted ways when they cleared the doorway of the mess hall, but the sailor's raging left an image he has never forgotten. He vowed to get revenge for the sailor whose name he didn't know. He vowed to sink a Japanese battlewagon in memory of the Arizona sailor he watched die, and that vow became part of his dreams and nightmares for more than three years. "I carried the image of him and that poor old housewife who was trying to help him all through the war. It made such an impression. I couldn't get it out of my mind. It haunted me and created a rage that I can't explain," said Buchanan, now 82 and retired from a 22-year Navy career.

After the 20-year-old joined the Navy in 1940 and finished radar school in San Diego, he arrived in Hawaii in April 1941. When he went into the Navy he "didn't have any concern about getting into war," he said. He mostly wanted to help out his folks during the depression by "giving them one less mouth to feed." The Dec. 7, 1941, Japanese attack came "as an absolute surprise" to the radar technician and gunner. The horror of the attack, the agony of so many burned bodies, the futility of trying to fight back with any weapon they could salvage gave him nightmares and 'daytime hallucinations'. He started to wonder if he could ever keep his vow to pinpoint and help sink a Yamato-class battleship. "It was the biggest battleship in the world. It had four guns that could each fire a 250-pound missile at a target 22.5 miles away." At the beginning of the war, the Japanese had two Yamato-class battleships and they played a large part in the attack on Pearl Harbor. he flew patrol flights and worked in decoding in Hawaii before getting orders to go to flight school and become a pilot. He made it to Dallas, Texas, then the Navy sent him to Louisiana to the Naval Aviation Cadet Training Office. He felt he was getting closer to keeping his vow to sink a battleship. In spite of getting caught for being absent during bed check, he remained in the flight-training program. Then the Navy changed the rules and he found out he had to be a commissioned officer to fly a plane. That killed his dream of piloting a plane that would sink the Yamato battleship and avenge the crew of the USS Arizona. So he "purposely gave it a bad run' and flunked out of flight school. In July 1944 he got orders to report to Carrier Aircraft Service in Wildwood, N.J., and he got lucky again. The Navy teamed up the first class radioman in a new airborne radar class with a pilot named Lt. Hugh "Fred" Grubiss from the Bombing Ten (VB-10), a dive bombing squadron on the USS Intrepid. "What a character. What a great guy," Buchanan said of Grubiss. "He was a bulldog when it came to doing a mission." Grubiss was impressed with Buchanan's radar skills and asked him to fly with him in dive-bombers. Buchanan was able to get through the interference associated with early crude radar sets and accurately pick out targets for bombardiers. They flew together in the Curtiss SB2C Hell-Diver and Buchanan knew that "this is the outfit that will get us to the Yamato." On April 6, the Intrepid got the news that the Yamato battleship; a heavy and light cruiser and nine destroyers were steaming toward Okinawa on a suicide mission. Intrepid's pilots and radar technicians received orders to "intercept and destroy" the Japanese formation. "I went a bit numb... then came almost uncontrollable exhilaration. I had to clamp my teeth to keep from yelling out a big cheer," Buchanan wrote in his book. With Buchanan's radar skills keeping the fliers on course, they reached the Japanese ships and luck intervened again. The group leader assigned Grubiss and Buchanan to sink the Yamato. As the bombs fell toward the Japanese ship Buchanan thought: "It's payback time. Airmail special delivery." When he saw bombs it the ship, he yelled, "We did it. That's for you, mate." He'd kept the promise he made on Dec. &, 1941, to the dying sailor. "I can't explain it, but the rage left me. It dropped out of me after the Yamato sank," he says today. Buchanan left the Navy in 1946, married Cleo Michael and rejoined the Navy in 1948. He was part of the Berlin Airlift during the Cold War, flew spy missions over Russia and served in the Philippines during the Vietnam War. He retired from the Navy with 22 years of service. Then in December 1966 he returned to Hawaii to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the bombing of Pearl Harbor. That was when he found real peace. He went to the Punchbowl military cemetery to pay his respects to his buddies who had died on Dec. 7, 1941, and he met a man named Mitsuo Fuchida. Fuchida was there paying his respects to Americans who died in World War II. In 1966, he was a minister. But 25 years earlier he was a captain in the Japanese Navy. He had led the attack on Pearl Harbor and picked targets during the first wave of Japanese bombers. But Fuchida was eager to talk with a Pearl Harbor survivor. So Buchanan met with him and their four-hour conversation brought peace to both of the former warriors. "We talked freely and so amicably. It drained me of any hate I had left." Another circle closed. Now. A year after doctors diagnosed Buchanan with Alzheimer's disease, he has finished his book about his experiences in World War II. Cleo and his two children encouraged him to do it, both for therapy and historical purposes. Buchanan's son said it is easier for him to understand his father's experiences when they are put on paper. "It became clearer for them," the Prescott Valley man said. Medication has arrested the disease and Buchanan is working on two more books. One is a story about a family during the Great Depression and the other is a story set in Germany and the United States during World War II. Buchanan said his writing is great therapy, and it has given his children the family history they wanted. "Hell-Diver's Vengeance" also contains personal vignettes about people he met during the war, such as actor Fred MacMurray and Lui-Anne, a Chinese girl living in Hawaii. He also shares stories about fist fights, gambling, a broken engagement and a special WAVE he met in San Francisco. His book is also available at Bookends at 3040 N. Windsong Dr. in Prescott Valley.

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