Citizen Staff/Hank Snyder
Gordon Duer was in Pearl Harbor preparing to invade Japan when atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. "I'm glad we didn't have to do an invasion. A lot of guys would have been killed if we had to." Inset, Gordon Duer left high school in 1945 to join the Navy.
“It didn’t bother her any, and dad didn’t say anything,” said Gordon Duer remembering the day his mom took him to the courthouse so he could join the Navy.
It was Feb. 20, 1945, and Duer was a 17-year-old junior at Waupun High School.
When asked why his parents didn’t try stopping him, at least until he got out of high school, Duer said, “Perhaps it’s because it was war time and I come from a long line of service people. My great grandfather was killed in the Civil War in Atlanta. He was marching with General Sherman.”
Duer spent three months basic training at Great Lakes Naval Training Center and said he studied everything from gunnery to taking care of his clothes.
From there he went to San Diego, Calif. to join up with the USS Keith (DE 241) which was an Edsall-class destroyer escort that had just finished a tour in the Atlantic. It was part of a newly formed hunter-killer group patrolling the ocean for enemy submarines.
Duer’s job was motor machinist meaning he kept the ships four diesel engines running. He was also trained as a gunner.
“My friends called me Admiral because I ran the motor on the whale boat which took us ashore,” said Duer.
Once aboard, the USS Keith sailed for Pearl Harbor.
It was there, on Aug. 6, 1945, that they received word of the atomic bomb being dropped on Hiroshima. On Aug. 9 another atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki.
“We were at Pearl getting ready for an invasion when we heard the news. I’m glad we didn’t have to do an invasion. A lot of guys would have been killed if we had to. There could have been a million people killed,” he said.
With the end of hostilities the USS Keith left Pearl Harbor for Saipan to continue escort duties and to perform mop-up operations.
Duer said they also did air-sea rescue between Japan and Iwo Jima and several times they picked up downed flyers.
“We spent four months in Iwo Jima, where the famous photograph of the raising of the flag too place,” he said. “We were there after it happened.”
From there his ship sailed to China.
“In China we were in Shanghai and spent four months removing mines from the Yangzi River. We had mine sweepers locate them and we exploded them,” he said. “We put the mines in, and after the war we took them out.”
In the summer of 1946 the USS Keith docked at Charleston, South Carolina, and Duer was on his way home.
Back in Waupun he earned his high school diploma from Moraine Park Technical College, went to work for National Rivet, and met his wife Gladys. The couple have been married 60 years and had six children, one of whom has passed away.
Duer, now 82, retired after 29 years at National Rivet, but has managed to stay active in the local VFW Post 6709 and American Legion Post 210. Just this year he received a plaque for being on the firing squad.
Duer said he likes going to the reunions of his shipmates, “but so many have died it (the reunions) folded up. The last reunion was three years ago in St. Louis.”
He was also one of the vets selected this year to take an Honor Flight, along with other vets and family, to Washington, DC. There they visited the new World War II memorial.
“I think it was great,” said Duer.