JOE S. CASTRO
Patriot, Chapter 1919
Army, WWII, Pacific
Joe S. Castro was born
in 1921, the next-to-youngest born into this large Castro family of Austin,
Texas that would send four sons off to war. His younger brother, also
wounded in action, was our late Patriot,
L.C. Castro (chapter
charter member and our first chaplain), featured in the PATRIOT BULLETIN
with a story similar to this in the August 1997 issue and that may also be
found on our website. We are overdue for saying more about Joe and L.C.’s
family, and will make up for that here.
Parents Ladislao and Leonarda Castro had come from Mexico
during World War I. They had two daughters and three sons when they
arrived in Austin, making their first home here in a downtown apartment that
was upstairs over a store in the block just west of 5th and Colorado. After
four or five years there they moved (a few blocks east) near where San
Jacinto crossed the railroad tracks (now 4th Street) and was very close to
the main train station. Three more sons were born to the Castros in Austin,
but shortly after the birth of baby, Ladislao (L.C.) in 1924, the father
died leaving Leonarda a widow with eight children.
Leonarda and the children made several other moves (again
a little further east) living near 10th and Navasota and then 7th and
Navasota. The family had regularly attended Our Lady of Guadalupe Catholic
Church since their arrival in Austin.
As the years passed, the older children left home for
employment in various places and faithfully sent money back home enabling
the family, for the first time, to purchase a house of their own on 8th
Street between Navasota and Lydia. It would remain the Castro family home
for many years to come. But then, one day the world suddenly changed.
News of the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor on December
7, 1941 instantly excited everyone, especially all the young men in Austin
that the Castro boys knew. Joe and all his friends went down to the
recruiting station and signed up without delay. The Army accepted him, also
without delay. On December 11th he was sworn into service and put on the
train to the Induction Center in San Antonio. Curiously enough though, Joe
says, “Our friend, the guy that was most enthusiastic and had talked all the
rest of us into enlisting, turned out to be the only one of us that didn’t
go in. He was rejected for flat feet.” Joe Castro was sent to Camp Barkley
in Abilene, Texas where he was rushed through training. In February 1942 he
completed training in Company A, 54th Battalion, Medical Replacement
Training Center, qualified as a Medical Aidman (at various times three of
Joe’s brothers also entered the service).
Upon graduation from the Medical Replacement Training
Center course, Joe now has this to say, “We were not granted any leave, but
were put on a train to San Francisco. After a few days at the port, we
loaded onto a large troop transport destined for the Philippines, a shipload
of reinforcements being rushed to the relief of General MacArthur. We sailed
out, but not far out into San Francisco Bay, suddenly turned around and put
back into port. Japanese submarines were known to be operating off the
California coast and it is believed that reported sightings led to the
aborted attempt to sail. This was repeated three or four times over the
next several days, with the ship turning back each time, never having gotten
far past the Golden Gate Bridge; before finally we sailed out and kept
going. By the time we reached the Philippines, General MacArthur had been
ordered out to Australia, and our transport was turned back and sent to
Hawaii.”
On April 12, 1942, Joe’s ship arrived at Hilo, Hawaii
where the 27th Infantry Division (New York Army National Guard) was in place
and assigned to the beach defense of the island. The new medic from Texas,
Private Castro,
was assigned to the Medical Detachment of Headquarters, 105th Infantry
Regiment. The men of the 105th Infantry had been known as the
“appleknockers” since Civil War times because most of that New York regiment
had been laborers recruited from the apple orchards in the Hudson River
Valley. That name has stuck with 105th for all time ever since.
The 105th Regiment was responsible for the beach defenses
of the eastern side of the island and their camp was very near the town of
Hilo. Joe says, “My second night on the island the volcano suddenly
erupted, the sky and everything lit up red everywhere, it was beautiful.
Everyone was scared, not knowing what to do.” Joe was a company medic
attached to Company A and he would remain with them throughout his two years
before being wounded. Operations on Hawaii required adapting to extreme
temperature differences, very hot at sea level, while at the same time
it could be freezing on the mountain
slopes, where there were conditions for year-round skiing.
In the fall of 1942, the 27th Division was relieved from their island
defense mission by the 6th Infantry Division. They departed Hilo and from
that point until the end of the war the division would be part of the
campaigns committed to taking the Japanese held Pacific islands. During the
next year and a half the Solomon Islands, then the Gilberts, and then the
Marshals were captured. For their part during that time, elements of the
27th Infantry Division took Makin Island in the Gilbert Island Group in late
1943. The island of Majuro was occupied without opposition and Eniwetok was
captured in early 1944. After that came the invasion of Saipan, in the
Marianas Island Group, where the entire division was committed together in
intense and prolonged fighting for the first time, and where Joe Castro
sustained the wound that put him out of the war for good.
Saipan was taken by three divisions during 24 days of
bitter fighting beginning on June 15, 1944. Following several days of
intensive naval and air bombardment, the 2nd and 4th Marine Divisions made
successful assault landings on the west side of the island on the first
day. The Army’s 27th Infantry Division, with Joe among them, landed the
next day, coming ashore through the southernmost beachhead and moved to take
Aslito, the Japanese main airfield on the island. Joe shares these
memories, “There were hundreds of ships in the invasion force that stood off
the island and the bombardment was still going on when we loaded into the
landing craft. We were held there for a very long time before being sent
ashore and the water being rough, everyone was sick. We came onto the beach,
behind the earlier landing when it was still littered with many bodies,
killed in the initial landing, that we had to move through, but we had to
keep moving forward. That first day was really rough for us, lots of
shooting.
It was seven days into the operation when I was wounded.
My unit was very near the front and we were moving forward in open terrain
that provided little cover. We were taking casualties and I had been having
a busy time of it applying bandages and tourniquets when I was hit in the
right leg by gunfire. I was unable to move and it took about an hour before
stretcher bearers could reach where I was and get me back to the Aid Station
set up on the beach. The heat was really bad, it must have been 120 degrees
on those stretchers laid out on the sand in the sun. I was at the Aid
Station the rest of that day and night and then was taken off to a Hospital
Ship the following day. After two or three days on the Hospital Ship I was
taken ashore and flown out on an aircraft with six or seven other wounded.
Upon arrival back in a hospital in Hawaii I was operated on, but they
couldn’t remove all the metal fragments. I had been hit with an explosive
bullet that had done massive damage after entry in my leg and it was slow to
heal.” (note: of the two battalions
committed, the 105th Infantry Regiment sustained 406 men killed in action
and 512 wounded in action in the 24 days of fighting on Saipan).
Joe continues, “After about three months in the hospital
they tried to send me back to my unit (the 27th Division having been
returned to Hawaii after the taking of Saipan), but they refused to accept a
combat medic that was still on crutches. After several more months I still
wasn’t getting any better, so in February 1945 I was medevac’d from Hawaii
to a hospital in Alabama. In September 1945, I was discharged from the Army
and returned home to Austin.”
Brother, L.C. was discharged and arrived back home in
Austin in October 1945, a few weeks after Joe, and so too did the other two
brothers, but considering their collective wounds it would be a bit of a
stretch to say they had come home safely. Arthur had been a Sergeant in
Company A, 5th Tank Battalion, 16th Armored Division, wounded during the
Battle of the Bulge; and Ladislao (L.C.) was a waist gunner on a B-24
Bomber, wounded when shot down over Occupied France. Ramon, the only one of
the four not sent overseas, had been an Army medic assigned to Bushnell
General Hospital at Brigham City, Utah. Joe says, “When discharged, I was
finally off the crutches, but walked with a limp with some difficulty, and
when seated, I could not sit straight upright because of pain from the shell
fragments still in my leg. Some of those pieces of metal migrated and were
causing more misery, but becoming more accessible to treatment and after two
or three years the Waco VA Hospital removed some more of the fragments.”
Each
of the six brothers married and most lived and raised families of their own
in the Austin area. Although the father had died early, the mother,
Leonarda, lived until 1987 and she was the oldest person ever to have been a
member of Our Lady of Guadalupe Catholic Church when she died at age 107.
Today, Joe is the only remaining survivor of Ladislao and Leonarda’s
children and this month PATRIOT BULLETIN proudly salutes
Patriot Joe S.
Castro.
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