David Hardy

U.S. Navy
Pacific Theater

“…now they are starting to throw kamikazes at us. They came in and you could hit them, but even if you hit them, they are still coming with momentum….”

David Hardy enlisted when he was 19 (1942) an served as a Signalman in the U.S. Navy all over the Pacific Theater with some close calls with kamikazes in the Philippines. He came back home and attended the University of Arizona which led to his 35-year career as a teacher, coach, administrator, and principal in the Sunnyside School District.

I didn’t have any advisors or anything, in the Navy. So I went into education. I started at Sunnyside School District. I graduated in 1951 and started working in 1952. I was out there thirty-five years at Sunnyside, and I started as a sixth grade teacher. Then I went as a PE teacher, so I went to coaching tackle football, not flag football. Then I coached basketball, track and baseball. I was the only coach that had sixty to seventy students in a class. Then they would send me students in the afternoon, because other teachers couldn’t take care of them. They had discipline problems. I said I already had them and took care of them, so I decided to go back to fifth grade. Then I went into counseling and then into administration for the last fifteen years and ended up as a principal

I was 18 in April of 1943 and enlisted because I wanted to pick the branch of the service I wanted to be in. I did not want to be in the Army. When you enter the service, you have no rank, because you are a new recruit. So when I went to The Great Lakes Naval Training Station for Boot Camp, I became an Apprentice Seaman. After boot camp, I was a Seaman 2nd Class. Later, I went to Naval Signal School and became a Signalman 3rd Class.

Certificate of service in the U.S. Navy

We left the United States in December of ‘43. Marshall Islands were the first ones; we landed there in January or February of 1944. From there on we went to Marianas; those are the next islands going across the Pacific. Okay, then (within the Marianas), the first one was Saipan; we landed troops there. Tinian was next. After that, we went down to Guam, and then the Palau Islands; that was September. You see we were pushing the Japs back step by step like stepping-stones. As for General Macarthur, you’ve heard that expression, for when he was kicked out of the Philippines, he said, “I shall return!” He did return and I was there too. That was in October of 1944.

We were there through the invasion of the Philippines. Then going around to the other side, to the Lingayen Gulf, and that’s when we got clobbered. We had some near misses, because now they are starting to throw kamikazes at us. They came in and you could hit them, but even if you hit them, they are still coming with momentum. Within the Philippines we got hit twice. They killed our Admiral, wounded our Captain, and killed many signalmen like me. I had just had my battle station changed. I had been, two weeks before that, at the same place where they were. In other words I was fortunate to be alive. One of my best buddies that came into the service with me from boot camp, we always jumped around together. He was on the bridge. He got killed. His name was Fritz, from Cleveland, Ohio.

Hardy, Ardelen, Spencer, and Meredita at ‚’Men’s Night’ at the old Mission Manor School where he taught 6th grade.

Then, because we were hit so extensively, it crippled us. So we came home. We left in December of ‘43 came back in late January ‘45 so it was fourteen months all together. We were getting our ship repaired, and that’s where I met my wife. I love ice cream and couldn’t get ice cream at sea, so I would go to an ice cream store. Most guys would go to a bar, but I wanted ice cream. So I got ice cream and she was working at a dairy store back in Ohio. So I would go in there everyday to get ice cream. Finally I asked my mother, “Will you go in there and ask her out for me?” I wouldn’t ask her out because I was afraid she would say no. After that, she started to write to me at sea.

We were sent as a group, our ship anyway, to China to take over Japanese warships. Half of them came aboard from a price crew. A price crew is a certain amount of men that go aboard a ship, like six or seven. We were taking them from China to Korea over across the Yellow Sea to what would be Vietnam. I talked with their captain. I would go down into the hole, which means down inside the ship, where the crew is. They couldn’t speak English and I couldn’t speak Japanese, but they could have killed me down there and thrown me over the side. I could tell they were fed up with the war. They wanted it to be over; they wanted it done with. Their Captain was the same way—he was very cooperative, very nice.

Well then, let’s say it was towards the end of the war and it was time to come home. Then we were bringing people home, who were getting out of the service. Our ship became a troop ship back and forth. I developed a hernia at that time, and was told I couldn’t stay aboard. I wanted to stay to finish, but I had it so bad I couldn’t move anymore, couldn’t do anything. I had to lay down with my feet up, so they said I had to be in the hospital. So I left the ship and came back home. From that point on, I was inland. I ended the war as a Signalmen 2nd Class. I started in April of ‘43 and ended in February of ’46.

Family portrait taken during Christmas of 1990. Hardy, his five children, their spouses, and his eight grandchildren.

In the time after the war I did nothing. In fact at that time, the government had given you 52 weeks, twenty dollars for each week of unemployment. Each service man got that; we called it jokingly the “52/20 Club,” because you got twenty dollars for fifty-two weeks. Of course you had to try to find a job. Well, none of us were in any hurry right now to find a job. Things were settling back down. The thing I took advantage of and for which I was thankful, was the GI Bill. I was entitled to four years of college all paid for, all the books paid for, and tuition and, because I was married, a hundred and twenty dollars a month. Millions turned to using it for college expenses. I entered the University of Arizona. I waited a couple of years, I had two kids by that time too, and by the time I graduated I had three kids, in 1948.