Schuld Visited Atomic Bomb Sites a Year After Detonation
Pictured: Virg Schuld, now a resident at Edgebrook Estates Apartments, was stationed in Japan after WWII.
By Jill Fennema –
Virgil Schuld, the middle child of John and Lydia Schuld’s 10 children, enlisted in the United States Army Infantry after World War II fighting had ended.
Virg’s brother, Fred, returned home from the war that June. They farmed north of Edgerton on what is now the Dale and Orla Schuld farm. Dale is Fred’s son and Virg’s nephew. Some of our readers know Fred and Virg’s sisters Gale Achterhoff and Elaine Ressemeyer. They, along with Virg, are the only living children of John and Lydia.
Not long before he enlisted, Virg’s girlfriend at the time broke up with him. So, not feeling any reason to avoid the service, he enlisted in the army infantry.
The GI Bill of Rights was going to expire so there were a lot of young men enlisting.
Virg Schuld as a young army soldier.
Virg’s basic training was held at the Aberdeen Proving Grounds in Maryland, which is not far from Washington, D.C.
With the flurry of enlistees, the military didn’t have enough work for everyone. There were times they “mowed” the lawn by hand – they would crawl around the grass and rip it up.
“I’ll never forget that,” he said. “We didn’t have anything to do, so they had to have us do something.”
Virg was able to return home for Thanksgiving that year, but his basic training stretched longer than the traditional eight weeks. It was not until mid-December that he got his orders and was told to report to Fort Sheridan, Washington.
He had 10 days to travel from the east coast to the west coast, so he was able to stop off at home for a while again. But he would celebrate Christmas 1946 aboard a troop transport ship, heading for Japan.
The ocean was terribly rough for that trip and everyone got sick. The trip took seven days.
“When I got to Japan, I thought, I’m going to have to live here the rest of my life,” Virg recalled. “I’m never getting on another ship as long as a live.”
When he was not too sick, he did help in the kitchen on the ship. He remembers that they had galvanized trash cans for food waste. However, the cans were not tied down and they slid around and hit the walls and junk would splash against the wall.
Once he arrived in Japan, Virg was part of the arm of occupation. The barracks he lived in were relatively new. His work was relatively safe and simple. Sometimes he helped in the kitchen. He did not have to peel potatoes – they had a machine that did that work. They dumped the potatoes in a big machine that was like a washing machine and it scrubbed the skins right off the potatoes.
He remembers that they ate a lot of rice and there were no eggs, which everyone missed. They also ate mutton that came from Australia, which he said was kind of tough to eat and definitely not gourmet leg of lamb.
At other times Virg was on guard duty, which involved patrolling the area with his M1 rifle. What he remembers about that was that they were never given any ammunition for their guns when they were patrolling.
Virgil at ground zero Hiroshima
On Wednesday mornings they would have to go on a four-hour hike. One time their leader got them all lost. Pretty soon they stumbled across an airfield of American P40 airplanes. “There was row after row of those fighter planes,” Virg said.
While his work in the army was not all that exciting to him, Virg was able to visit the sites where the atomic bombs were dropped – both Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
They had a memorial marker there and he remembers that they were told that the bombs were detonated 10-15 feet off the ground to do the most damage. There had been a prison there but that was annihilated. Seeing those sights was one of his most memorable experiences there.
