MANSFIELD — Norman Johnson was enjoying a typical day sitting in his oversized recliner when he heard a knock at the door.
At first, the 90-year-old didn’t recognize the man standing on the doorstep of his home on Duke Avenue in Mansfield. But once he introduced himself, Johnson’s memories came flooding back.
“When he told me his name, here he was my shipmate from 70 years ago,” Johnson said. “I hadn’t seen him since he was 20 years old, so when he showed up at my door he was a stranger to me.”
The man was John Tucker, who served in the U.S. Navy amphibious force with Johnson during World War II. The two men were shipmates on the U.S.S. Lenior, an attack cargo ship designed to carry military cargo and landing craft.
“I drove a landing craft into the beach and took the Marines in, and he was the boom operator that sent me in the water,” Johnson explained. “My landing craft was 62-feet long, and so he set me in the water every time I had to go to the beach, any time I had to go anywhere he was the guy that put me in the water.”
Landing crafts were boats and seagoing vessels used to convey a landing force (infantry and vehicles) from the sea to the shore during an amphibious assault. The flat-bottomed boats would land weapons, supplies, and Marines on enemy shores during amphibious operations. Many designs had a flat front with a ramp rather than a normal bow, making them difficult to control and very uncomfortable in rough seas.
“When we got all the Jeeps and tanks and troops loaded, then we set our landing craft on the top of the ship and tied them down, and went to the next island,” Johnson said. “He had the crane, and he moved the boom around, and I was hooked on the end of the crane — and he sent me in the water.”
According to Tucker, he was able to track Johnson down with the help of his grandson, who attends Ashland University. The two men spoke of the fun they had while visiting San Francisco, California, their other shipmates, and their time in the war.
“It was wonderful after all those years to be able to talk to him,” Tucker said via phone.
For Stormin’ Norman – a nickname he earned as a second grader after attempting to “whip” an eighth grader – simply talking about war stories from so many years ago is a pleasure. For nearly 20 years after his return from the war, he wouldn’t say a word about it.
“It was like they hypnotized me, so I didn’t remember anything,” Johnson said. “My sisters-in-law were always harping on me to tell them something about the war, and I couldn’t tell them anything because I couldn’t remember. Then 20 years later they started coming back.”
Johnson enlisted in the Navy in 1944 at only 17 years old, three years after the United States officially joined World War II after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. At the time he was living on the family farm in Johnsville, Ohio, and dating a girl named Lucinda from the village of Bellville.
“My wife was my girlfriend when I went into the military, and when she kissed me goodbye and put me on the troop train, she said she would send me a letter for every day I was gone,” Johnson remembered. “I was gone for two years, and she sent a letter every day.
“When I got home, the first thing I did was propose to her,” he said. “We’ve been married 70 years, and she’s still the love of my life.”
The day Johnson reported for boot camp, he was issued an M1 Garand .30 caliber semi-automatic rifle, the standard U.S. service rifle during World War II. He carried that rifle with him from the day he joined in 1944 to the day he was discharged in 1946.
“They had a rule that if you dropped that gun, you had to sleep with it,” Johnson said. “I didn’t drop mine, but I slept with it anyway because I wanted to know where it was the instant I needed it.”
Unfortunately, Johnson did end up needing to use his rifle – an experience he said he was not ready for at the age of 17.
“I found out that it’s hard to shoot another human being, even if he is the enemy,” Johnson said. “When I landed on the beach I had Japanese shooting at me, so I shot back. It put a lot of gray hair on my head.”
He also remembers visiting the Japanese city of Hiroshima, three days after the United States dropped an atomic bomb on the city on Aug. 6, 1945. Unaware of the effects of radiation at the time, Johnson stood in the middle of the city’s ruins to take pictures.
“It was terrible,” he said. “That radiation took people in there, and if there arms weren’t covered their arms were cooked, and the meat was falling off. It was sickening to see that, even though they were our enemy.”
Johnson’s war experience still haunts his dreams, more than 70 years later.
“I had a dream a couple months ago that I was back in Japan, and this Japanese man popped up like a toy, and he bayoneted me right through the heart,” he said. “I woke up sweating and shaking and going on something awful.”
Still, not all of Johnson’s memories are traumatic. He recalls the night he returned home from the war, the train dropping him off in Mansfield at 10:30 at night. With his parents not having a phone, Johnson had to take a bus back to his home in Johnsville and didn’t make it back until 2:30 the next morning.
“I tried to get in and sleep on the daybed until dawn, but the house was locked,” Johnson said. “I had to knock on the window and woke my mom up, and she got up and hollered, ‘Norm’s home!’ And everybody piled out of bed and we had a family reunion at 2:30 in the morning.”
Johnson returned home from the war in July 1946 and married Lucinda on Aug. 24, 1946; he was 19 and she was 16. Johnson worked as the Bellville chief of police for seven years and later served as a Richland County Sheriff’s deputy. During both of those jobs, he worked at Empire Steel – a gig that he maintained for more than 43 years.
These days Johnson spends his time relaxing in his comfortable chair at the house on Duke Avenue, where he and Lucinda have lived since 1959. Occasionally, he’ll tell his war stories to the students down the road at Madison Comprehensive High School, even the gruesome details.
“I tell it the way it is,” he said. “I tell them all about my travels, and they think it’s exciting, but it wasn’t as exciting as it sounds.”
