Veteran ‘grew up’ during war task on Japanese island

By Peggy Ussery

Published: November 9, 2008

Dick Schoof was 18 when the Army Air Corps drafted him in 1943.

He went through his basic training, ship-loading school and weather training to become a weather observer. He spent time in Hawaii before arriving in Okinawa. In Okinawa, he volunteered to man a weather station on an island in the East China Sea.

Like many war veterans, Schoof recalls his time in World War II with the experience of his life since his three years in the Army Air Corps. Memories full of meaning, especially with Veteran’s Day approaching on Tuesday. Today, his time on the small island is one of the most memorable of his life. Back then, he was just a kid from New Jersey.

Schoof had no idea he would grow up in place called Tori Shima.

By April 1945, Allied troops had landed on the island of Okinawa. Japanese suicide air attacks, known as kamikaze, had repeatedly sunk U.S. Navy ships in the Pacific.

Schoof had been in the service nearly two years when he volunteered to go with 20 other personnel to the island. He was one of two Army Air Corps weathermen to join the group of Marines and Signal Corps.

Tori Shima means “bird island” and is actually used in describing a group of islands, some volcanic, between Japan and Okinawa that are part of the Ryukyu Islands. Schoof’s island was a mass of lava rock — jagged edges that wore out a pair of Army boots in 10 days. Long, narrow with steep cliffs, the island was home to terns and goony birds and two types of lizards.

The American soldiers had been told there were hundreds of Japanese on the island. But all they found found were birds and lizards. Not even a blade of grass. The group was dropped off in May 1945 about a month after U.S. troops landed on Okinawa. They had 10 days worth of supplies that included an odd assortment of peanut butter, tropical chocolate and plenty of boots. It would be the only supplies they would have during their time on Tori Shima.

Their orders were to observe weather coming from the west, monitor radar for any Japanese planes, and then report back to American forces in Okinawa.

“We were secret, obviously,” Schoof, now 85, said. “ ... We were the closest land-based service men to Japan.”

The island would become Schoof’s home for three-and-a-half months.

He and another weather observer, Ed Boucher, were responsible for sending encoded weather reports to Okinawa twice a day. They were also responsible for a 50-mm gun with ammo that was 10 inches long and about an inch in diameter.

“We didn’t know what we were doing,” Schoof said. “We were weathermen. We weren’t artillery.”

The soldiers made their camps as best they could on Tori Shima, considering the island didn’t have a flat surface. They made a makeshift bathroom with 55-gallon drum and two boards across the top. When it was time, they’d set the waste on fire. They created a desalination unit to make fresh water from the surrounding salt water.

They survived a typhoon and even managed to secure food when most their of supplies ran out. With plenty of peanut butter, the oil was used for cooking. They fished with grenades. When the regular food was gone, the soldiers ate fish for breakfast, lunch and supper. When they managed to get some bird eggs, the eggs tasted like fish because that’s what birds ate.

Schoof and Boucher even tamed one of the island’s small lizards with tropical chocolate, calling the lizard Stumpy because it was missing part of its tail.

They even survived a torpedo launch from a U.S. battle ship that in the dusk had mistaken the island for a Japanese ship. Of course, when the island didn’t sink, the U.S. ship went about its business. The story was later written up in “Life” magazine, Schoof said.

“I thought it was an earthquake,” he said.

War comes with its horrors, but Schoof remembers his time on Tori Shima with fondness. He spent much of his free time diving around the reefs that surrounded the island, collecting shells and encountering all sorts of sea creatures, including an octopus and a monstrous sun fish. He created a small boat out of two empty gas tanks and would paddle his way around the island’s shoreline.

“It had it’s own beauty,” Schoof said.

After more than three months, the soldiers received the call they were being picked up and taken back to Okinawa. They packed up, destroyed all their equipment and left Tori Shima.

Not a good student in high school, Schoof went to college after leaving the service in 1946, attending a number of schools and getting his master’s degree in biology. He became a science teacher in his home state of New Jersey and was a department chair before his retirement.

At 70, he bicycled from Vancouver, Wash., to Oswego, N.Y. — 3,000 miles in 61 days. He and his wife, Evelyn, call Dothan home now, but travel regularly in their recreational vehicle, teaching children about the outdoors.

Schoof couldn’t wait to get off that island in 1945, but all these years later he wouldn’t mind going back to revisit his memories.

“I was a young, carefree guy,” Schoof said. “I know I was a minor part of the war. I was anxious to get home. I grew up. I grew up in the service and in particularly Tori Shima.”