Lyle Tennyson – Coxswain on Tinian Island during World War II

By Charity Maness

HOT SPRINGS – Lyle Tennyson was born in September 1925 in Quinn, S.D., the third of nine children in a farming family.

At the time of his birth electricity was relatively new to Quinn with street lights previously run by gas. Yet the town was booming with a general store, blacksmith, creamery, and more. 

However Tennyson’s earliest memory of the town and his youth was the devastation of the dust bowl and the ‘dirty thirties’.

“My parents took advantage of the government’s courses offered and supported the family doing a little bit of everything,” recalled Tennyson.

Tennyson enjoyed mathematics when he was in school but was on the sidelines at sports due to the fact that “the doctor said I had a heart murmur so I wasn’t allowed to play sports.”

However, a heart murmur didn’t hinder the military’s drafting policy and Tennyson was drafted in the United States Navy November 26, 1943 at the age of 18.

“I wasn’t nervous when I got drafted,” said Tennyson, “I was working as a mechanic but I was looking forward to doing what everybody else had to do; I wanted to serve my country.” 

“I remember after basic training I took a course in landing craft; landing craft school outside of San Diego. I felt like we wasted a lot of time waiting to get shipped out, I was ready to go.”

Tennyson was finally shipped out in November 1944 to Tinian Island as soon as the island was no longer occupied and an airstrip had been built.

The island is located in the Mariana Islands and was a Japanese stronghold during the Pacific Campaign of World War II. While Tennyson was “wasting a lot of time” he was actually eager to get in the game as the Battle of Tinian began July 1944 and concluded August 1944. 

“The island was taken shortly before I went over there. There were caves in the interior of the island where the last stand of the Japanese took place. They took up positions in the caves along a ridge because they thought that the enemy would use the only beach on the island as the point of attack. But the US invaded at Chulu Beach at the north with some decoy ships at the south point. When defeat was clear many of the enemy in the caves committed suicide dying what they believed to be an honorable death for their country.” 

“I was a Coxswain operating a LCM (landing craft mechanized) landing craft,” said Tennyson. “Because it was mechanized we hauled anything that would fit in it. The island had no docks so all the equipment that came in to the island for the Air Force had to be unloaded off the ships and hauled in to the beach with landing craft. The LCM was about 50 feet long and could hold about 35 tons. We even hauled bombs that were shipped in to the Air Force for their B29’s to haul ‘em to Japan. We had quite a crew, we would run ‘em day and night, that was all the duty I served on Tinian until I was discharged, I also had a little KP duty but everybody got that.”

The crew worked 24 hours on and 24 hours off, non-stop.

“During our 24 hours off we tried to relax and maybe played cards,” recalled Tennyson, “but there was no place to go on the island. We had outdoor movies on the island, we could go to them.  The Seabees built the screens for the movies and the Quonset huts and they even built the breakwater for waves for the docks that were eventually built. They did most of the work there.”

Tinian was a small island, but played a crucial role in the war as it was the launching point for the atomic bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

“At the top of the island along the Saipan Channel were the atomic bomb pits, it was secret and we weren’t supposed to know what they put there, but  we learned that the atomic bombs were put down over a pit and the planes were maneuvered  over the pits to load the bombs into the planes,” said Tennyson. This is where Little Boy was loaded aboard the Enola Gay.

“The largest plane we had at our air base was the B-29,” said Tennyson. “They would load it with as many bombs as they could get in it and just enough fuel to make it to Japan drop the bombs and get back to Tinian. Sometimes the planes couldn’t make it back to Tinian. They lost an awful lot of planes. In fact they lost planes right off the runway at Tinian.” 

“The planes didn’t take off like they do in the airport these days waiting for a plane to take off, they are all lined up one right after the other if one plane ahead of the other has problems the one behind it was bound to hit it. They realized that but they might have to send 300 planes up if they waited for them to take off one at a time they would lose too much time. They would never get a group together.”

“I was there until August 1945,” said Tennyson, “it’s too bad they finished the docks about the time the war was over.”

After serving in the Navy Tennyson returned to his hometown of Quinn where he worked for the local hardware store until they closed.

“Then I started to work for Birdsall Sand and Gravel, a good company. I was a shop foreman mechanic until I retired at 65.”

Not one to sit still he began the art of creating one-of-a-kind wooden clocks.

“I even made my own gears and all the internal workings of the clock,” he said with pride.

Now Tennyson enjoys his time living at Pine Hills Retirement Community and chatting with friends.

His word of advice for youth is, “education, education, education. I didn’t have enough and it would have made a difference in my life.”

Fall River County Herald Star

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