After Okinawa, Bates sails calmly through life
Navy veteran split time between kitchen, machine gun
Bates relaxes in his den north of Azle.      Photo by Jeri Field
BY JERI FIELD

Bill Bates moved to Azle 53 years ago with his wife Nell. They raised three children -- Main, Lana and Kathy while managing a service station and backhoe service. Nell regards their life in Azle as "pretty good" – much better than the life on 60 cents an hour driving an oil rig in Odessa or 40 cents an hour hauling ice in Colorado City. They tried lots of things because in 1946, when they married, World War II had just ended and as Bill explains it, "The military was letting out mil­lions of guys every day," just like him – guys who had joined up as teenag­ers and had little or no life experience.  Everyone needed to work but "there were no jobs," Bates said.

As a result, no one had much to do or anywhere to go. And even that had one advantage, because "No one had a car," either, Nell said. "No one had any money and no way of getting any.
But Bill has never been one to sit around and hope for the best. He and Nell did "everything we could to make a living," he said.  Living -- now that was something Bill already knew a lot about.
At the tender age of 18 he was strap­ping himself onto a .50-caliber ma­chine gun on the deck of the U.S.S. Bering Strait and "shooting down ev­ery kamikaze the Japanese forces could throw at us," he said.
Survival in those days required a Jekyll-and-Hyde attitude.
When not under fire, Bates was in the kitchen measuring sugar, flour and powdered eggs into huge vats and making desserts and breads for nearly 300 fellow sailors. His specialty was chocolate pies.
"They really liked chocolate pies," he said. "And I made lots of 'em!" With a big grin, Bates said he still
bakes chocolate pies, "but not quite many.

"I also make lemon pies with graham cracker crusts and all kinds of stews when I'm deer hunting," he said At the age of 82, Bill Bates has still enjoys the calm, slow solitude of deer hunting. It's a lot less stressful than scanning the skies for diving, suicidal kamikaze pilots bent on destroying allied ships. But the stories of Bates-versus­ deer are not nearly as gripping as the tales of Bates-versus-the-Impe­ial Japanese Air Force in the battle of  Okinawa — the longest and one of the most horrific battles of World War 11. Besides all the action, Bates' WWII adventures are remarkably paradoxical. Through the horror and chaos he weaves a colorful rainbow of absurdity, satire and comic relief, describing those days through the .yes of an 18-year-old baker and machine gunner adrift in a sea of world-altering events.
It took a sense of humor to survive.

The three-month battle to win the stand of Okinawa from the Japa­nese left Bates and his shipmates at their battle stations some 400 mile off the coast of Japan, from April until the end of June, 1945. During 'hat time the Navy sustained its larg­est loss of ships in history and the death of almost 5,000 sailors, with an equal number wounded.
Bates, who describes the kami­kazes’ as "crazy" did his best to lim­it American casualties by firing that .50-caliber gun and defending his ship against all "incoming."
When the gun was emptied, an­other sailor was assigned to reload. During one attack when the re-load­er didn't do his job. Bates quickly turned his head to one side to see what the holdup was. The re-loader was "stuffln" his entrails back into his stomach," Bates said.
Just then a kamikaze bullet zoomed fight past his face -- in the very spot where it was before he had turned to look. Remarkably, both sailors lived through that one "and we corresponded for years after the war." Bate"  said.
During another kamikaze attack, a shipmate asked Bates for the location of the plane, which was al­ready nearly on them. Bates said all he had time to do was yell,  “He’s yonder! Way out yonder!"
"They never let me live that one down," he laughed. "But the kami­kaze was so close I had to think fast and strap myself in!"
With the island of Okinawa lying, only 350 miles off the southern tip of Japan, the Japanese were des­perate to defend their homeland and recruit­ing anyone who could fight.
One of those re­cruits, a 13-year-old pilot, was picked up by Bates' ship after he "laid his plane right down beside us." Bates said.
A sympathetic Nell quickly ex­claimed, "He just wanted to get out of there alive!" But such an event was rare. Most kamikaze went down in flames, taking as many Americans with them as pos­sible.
One day, almost three months into the battle, Bates said the front had gone quiet and "everyone thought the island was finally se­cure.
"So the Army set up a big movie screen on the beach and five of us Navy, the rest Marines and soldiers, sat down to watch the movie when a kamikaze came in, hit the screen and tore it to pieces."
"We looked around," Bates said, demonstrating with a turn of his head from left to right. "We five were the only ones left sitting. The others had all gone for cover."
He went on to explain that being Navy, he and the other sailors were So used to being on a ship with no-where to hide that they "just sat there!"
Bates was in the Navy for 23 months with no furlough. After months at sea he discovered just what an asset a good sense of hu­mor is, when his captain went "asi­atic."
"That's what we called crazy," he said. "The ship's doctor had to bring the ship back in."
Of course even a good sense of humor can use a good stiff drink now and then. Each sailor, Bates said, accumulated an allowance of three cans of beer a day while at sea. "But we couldn't drink it until we would go ashore," he laughed. "When we'd go onto an island we could (yet. all our beer at once.  “Meaning if they'd been out 90 days they could have 270 cans. "And most of us did!" he exclaimed.
During the occupation of Japan, whenever they weren't on duty, Bates said they could rent a para­chute for $1 and a seaplane would take them anywhere they wished.
"It was only 10 to 15 hours from Iwo Jima to Shanghai," and he and

another guy had  made plans to go when a big storm came blowing us.
The planes "would have been torn to pieces" so they headed for safety
"One took off from one end of the strip and another from the other end and they collided in the air, killing everyone on board," Bates said.
He and his friend each thought the other had been aboard one those planes until 5-6 years later when they ran into each other in the lobby of a movie theatre.
By 194, having survived Okinawa, Guam, Saipan, Iwo Jima an the third fleet air wing assault of Japan, Bates was ready to get on with the rest of his life which meant no more military. It took a while longer, after having his discharge delayed because of being a cook, and baker, he was released to civilian life.

(After captur­ing Okinawa, sailors enjoyed Thanks­giving dinner aboard the USS Bering Strait off the coast of Iwo Jima. Bates has kept the menu for 50 years).