By Mike Morsch, Packet Media Group
On Aug. 6, 1945, the day suddenly and inexplicably turned to night for the crew of the USS Amsterdam.
Among the sailors and Marines aboard the ship that day, operating in waters just outside Tokyo Bay, Japan, was Anthony Galli, a 19-year-old radarman from Philadelphia.
A sleek carrier, the ship was in the Pacific during World War II as part of the force protecting the Third Fleet of aircraft carriers and battleships commanded by Admiral Chester Nimitz and Admiral William “Bull” Halsey.
It was a tense situation. The fleet, a naval bombardment and carrier strike force, had been pounding Japanese installments for three months ahead of what the sailors later learned was to be an impending invasion by American and allied forces on Japanese land.
Many of the U.S. sailors and Marines, though, already had resigned themselves to the fact they wouldn’t survive.
And then the crew aboard the USS Amsterdam heard it.
“We didn’t know what it was. We thought it was a mine that one of the ships had hit. But we radioed each other, and no one was hit,” Mr. Galli said. “We couldn’t figure out where that explosion, where that boom was from. And we couldn’t explain why the day turned to night.”
The United States had dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan. When it happened, the USS Amsterdam was 100 miles away in the waters of the Pacific.
“We didn’t see it, but we heard it. First thing you know, the squawk box went on, and the skipper said that an atom bomb was dropped on Hiroshima,” Mr. Galli said. “We had no idea there was such a weapon. It helped explain the strange boom we had heard earlier, the sudden morning darkness that enveloped us in a cloud of dust and the tumultuous waves hitting the ship.”
The U.S. had unleashed the power of the sun on the Land of the Rising Sun.
Three days later, on Aug. 9, 1945, another nuclear bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, Japan. Only six days after that, on Aug. 15, 1945, the Imperial Japanese armed forces announced a surrender, which was officially signed Sept. 2, 1945, bringing an end to the hostilities of World War II.
That was 70 years ago, and Mr. Galli remembers it like it was yesterday. That’s because the Pennington resident, now 89, was in the thick of things toward the end of World War II.
“I’m very much aware of the anniversary (of the surrender). And I’m always stunned by the fact that nobody else is aware of it,” Mr. Galli said. “Nobody mentions it. It’s hardly on the air, and people have forgotten. But I think about it a lot. In fact, I dream a lot about it.”
He attributes that to the atrocities of war he witnessed firsthand, the lasting effects those experiences have had on him and the fact he’s lived to tell about it 70 years later.
Mr. Galli suffers from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, which he has learned over the years is triggered by incidents he experienced during his involvement in World War II.
As a young radar operator on a cruiser in the Third Fleet, Mr. Galli was exposed to radiation leakage from the equipment he was using at the time. That, he believes, subsequently led to skin tumors as a lung mass that has been diagnosed as asbestosis.
In addition to being near where the first atomic bomb was dropped, Mr. Galli’s ship and the other U.S. forces in the region were subjected to continued assaults by the Japanese kamikaze pilots, who refused to admit defeat and continued to attack the Americans even after the surrender had been announced.
And then, after the hostilities ended, Mr. Galli was among those who collected the bodies of Marines in Okinawa and in Japanese waters for transport back home.
“Many people didn’t know that the kamikaze pilots didn’t give up after the surrender. People were celebrating all over America and everywhere else, and we were still fighting for our lives,” he said. “We kept fighting them off until they were splashed or ran out of fuel and crashed. They were pretty good at hitting ships at that time. They used to come low and into the hull of a ship, maybe into the superstructure. But late in the war, they would climb as high as they possibly could, and then they would just take a dive straight down. Even if you hit them, you’d get hit with all the burning debris.”
After the war ended, the USS Amsterdam set off for America where it was the first ship that returned home after the war, arriving to cheering crowds Oct. 15, 1945.
“People were lined up on both sides of the river, waving flags and shouting. We got to where we were going, and there was a big party out there,” Mr. Galli said. “We took off our wounded first and those that didn’t make it. And immediately shore leave was granted to some of the guys, and I was one of those guys. I got a 30-day leave, and I took the train all the way to Philadelphia to see my mother, father and sister.”
But before he left for home, one of the most amazing things happened.
Since he was in communications, he was among those assigned to take care of all radio, radar and everything electronic on the ship, including the switchboard. As soon as the USS Amsterdam docked in Portland, the switchboard needed to be manned, and Mr. Galli drew the first detail.
And the first call he got was from his mother.
“She calls up and says, ‘Is Petty Officer Anthony Galli there?’ And I said, ‘Mom?’ I don’t know how she did it, but somehow she tracked where the Amsterdam was. We had just gotten there that day, and I happened to be the first guy on the switchboard. It was a glorious telephone reunion. She was absolutely overjoyed at the fact that I was alive and well and that I was coming home.”
Mr. Galli was discharged from service June 9, 1946. After he got out of the Navy, he received a journalism degree from Temple University in Philadelphia and later an MBA. And then he married his wife, Venera. The couple will celebrate 65 years together Feb. 3, 2016.
Mr. Galli became a journalist for International News Service from 1950 to 1958, then joined United Press International when the two companies merged in 1958. He also worked at Time Inc. and Sports Illustrated.
While a reporter, Mr. Galli covered such events as the sinking of the SS Andrea Doria; the execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, American citizens convicted of treason and conspiracy for passing information about the atomic bomb to the Soviet Union; Game 5 of the 1956 World Series in which New York Yankees pitcher Don Larsen threw a perfect game against the Brooklyn Dodgers; the 1956 Olympic Games in Melbourne, Australia; and the 1960 Olympic Games in Rome.
He then left the news division and went into advertising and public relations, rising from a copywriter to senior vice president in charge of flagship account AT&T. He ended up responsible for all of AT&T’s print and television advertising and eventually became executive producer of the Bell Telephone Hour, a concert series on NBC Radio that showcased classical and Broadway music.
He has photos on his wall today of himself and the likes of Bing Crosby, Don Ameche and Harry Belafonte.
Because of his health issues, he has experienced difficulties with veterans benefits over the years, he said, and believes the Veterans Administration has put World War II soldiers at the bottom of the priority list.
“As the commander of my unit of the Disabled American Veterans says, ‘WWII veterans come last because they figure they’re not going to have that much longer to live.’ We’re put at the back of the line so all the Iraqi, Gulf War and Afghanistan veterans can get first dibs,” Mr. Galli said.
Despite his challenges, Mr. Galli maintains his sense of humor. For someone who didn’t think much about his future because he thought he was going to die in the Pacific during World War II, he’s happy to still be around to remember the 70th anniversary of the surrender of the Japanese that ended World War II.
“I didn’t think I would ever make it this far,” Mr. Galli said. “Like Mickey Mantle once said, ‘If I had known I was going to live this long, I would have taken better care of myself.’”
