JACK McGOWIN'S FORBIDDEN DIARY

IREDELLE MCGOWIN, a former schoolteacher and an avid reader, instilled a love of literature in her young son Jack. Even before his birth, Mrs. McGowin read literature and poetry to him, with the hopes that Jack might someday become a successful writer. When he grew up, Jack McGowin did indeed take pleasure in recording his thoughts on paper. While in the U.S. Navy, the young sailor originally from Chapman, Alabama, kept a diary, documenting the earth-shattering events he witnessed and survived during World War Two.

Although millions of Americans experienced the events that started and ended the "Good War," Jack McGowin is one of the few people who had a ringside seat for both. As a serviceman stationed aboard the cruiser USS St. Louis, McGowin survived the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Four years later, as the Japanese signed surrender documents on board the battleship USS Missouri, McGowin stood by, witnessing the war's end.

During World War Two, military personnel were strictly forbidden to keep journals or diaries. The Axis powers, according to the U.S. military, could use the information found in a diary-information such as ship movements, training missions, or other military operations-against the Allied Forces. Servicemen and women caught with a journal faced severe reprimands. Something of a daredevil, Jack McGowin ignored the dangers and set down on paper his impressions and thoughts about the historic events unfolding before his eyes. In an early account that he sent to his brother Clifford, McGowin conveyed the utter surprise of American forces at Pearl Harbor:

Having been on liberty and crawling sleepily in my bunk with the pleasant.. . thought that tomorrow will be Sunday and I shall sleep until my hearts content, I closed activities for Saturday, December 6,1941. The hours of sweet oblivion that ensued were brought to an end by a hazy faraway bugle call. ... It was repeated and after moments of groping, searching, and intense concentration, I realized startlingly clear what it was. It was General Quarters! I sat bolt upright, all sleepiness and drowsiness had vanished. This is instinctive of all Navy men. I glanced at my watch. It was exactly 0800. Upon seeing the time I unconsciously began to grumble and curse, Of all the lowdown tricks I have yet encountered this tops them all; sounding General Quarters to get men out of their bunks on Sunday morning!' I relaxed. . . and leisurely began looking for my shoes. . . anticipating an early return, I left attired only in my shorts. I was in no hurry. If they could sound General Quarters on Sunday morning, I could certainly take my time. Thus, I made my way toward my battle station. I had traveled from the 4th deck to the 2nd deck before the vague premonition assailed me that all was notas it should be. seconds later I heard a machine gun and the dull boom-boom of a larger gun in the distance. This melody was promptly joined by the distinct sound of our 1.1 pompoms. Only seconds later. . . I reached my battle station in the magazine of the 5-inch lower handling room. I was the last to arrive and found the others quite as wild-eyed and in the dark as /. The deck was filled with powder cases and projec tiles neatly stacked by the Gunners Mates who brought them down while welding was being done in the mount and upper handling rooms. This meant there was no powder or shells up above and with this realization every hand turned to with frenzied efforts to get them in the hoist and started up!

McGowin's ship survived Pearl Harbor, and he served on that vessel for four years before being transferred to the more modern, state-of-the-art battleship USS Missouri. On May 11, 1945, the Pearl Harbor survivor had another close call. As McGowin sat near his battle station, he was startled by a Japanese Kamikaze attack. In a letter to his father, McGowin recalled:

I was rudely interrupted by a blast from Mounts 7 and 9, which were right below me. I leaped up, grabbed my helmet and a clip of ammunition in one motion. 1 was ready. These two 5-inch mounts were firing continuously. I looked around .. .but try as I may, I could not see a plane. The guns were firing dead aft. I could see black mushrooms of smoke where the shells exploded. I followed the tracers of the 40mm and saw the plane for the first time coming through an inferno of ack, ack. Suddenly I realized he was heading straight at me. I froze in fascination, utterly unable to move. The firing reached a new frenzy. He -was bad hit now and started losing altitude slowly, inch by inch, but he was still coming straight at me. I was looking him full in the face and he was less than 100 yards away. Suddenly he veered slightly to the right. A 20mm pumped a burst of slugs in him. . . he made a valiant effort to nose up and bank more to the left. Then I saw he was going to hit us!

McGowin and others ducked behind the gun shield as the plane struck the Missouri. For some reason, the explosives-laden plane did not explode.

After a little while . . . I ventured to peer over the shield, I was greeted with large billows of smoke mixed with fire. One of the fellows in the quad broke the awful silence. . . . He said, 'I've got blood on me from somewhere. ' [The kamikaze] had crashed into the ship strikingjust aft of Quad 17. His wing had struck the side of the ship. This wing, the motor, and part of the fuselage had gone into the water. The rest of the plane. . . continued on its way and finally stopped on the Ol level between mounts 3 and 5.... The pilot had been cut in two [the source of blood on the gunner] with the impact and his top half was laying on the main deck. An examination of his remains showed him to be a kid of possibly 18. The skin on his face was soft and smooth as a baby. His head was shaved. A black silk kerchief was wrapped around his head and neck. He also wore a black silk flying jacket. This was the conventional attire for suicide pilots I had heard so much about. I knew now that they were no joke.

Several months later, McGowin and his fellow sailors heard that a powerful new weapon had been developed to end the war. They passed it off as a rumor, until it looked as though the Japanese would really surrender. McGowin wrote:

Finally, the day came when the news of the Atomic bomb reached the ship. This caused quite a stir. It was followed by Russia's declaration [of war against Japan], and then by the Japanese peace offer. I felt the end was near. It made me very happy. . . . The waiting lengthened . . . until 21 August. Bright and early on this day we met a [Japanese] destroyer about 50 miles off the coast, took on a pilot and a couple of representatives and steamed majestically into Sagami Wan Bay and dropped anchor. Right more battleships followed us in.

Finally the Missouri moved to Tokyo Bay and, as McGowin recalled, "Yesterday. . . the formal surrender took place on the Missouri. The war is over. That great day I looked forward to for so long came and went without the great rejoicing I thought it would bring. It caught me unawares."

When he was discharged from the navy in 1946, McGowin returned to Alabama to work with his family, helping to finish the construction of a motel and several cabins at Lake Guntersville. Although thirty years old, McGowin maintained his daring nature, occasionally bragging that he would dive off the Tennessee River Bridge at Guntersville, which loomed more than sixty feet from the river's surface. On a hot August night in 1947, with friends gathered to watch, McGowin turned his boasting into reality.

McGowin never came up from the dark waters, said to be as much as one hundred feet deep where he went in. Several days later his body was recovered, thirty yards from where he had entered the river. It was a tragic ending for one who had so often defied the odds and lived to write about it. In the pages of a contraband journal, now in the hands of his niece Betty Jones, the voice of Jack McGowin continues to tell a vivid piece of the American story.

Sam Duvall is a frequent contributor to Alabama Heritage.

Copyright University of Alabama Press Winter 2005
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