WWII vet from Youngstown moved atomic bomb materials
YOUNGSTOWN — Art Mirto, 97, was 17 years old in January of 1945 when he enlisted in the military — like many of his buddies from Youngstown — and went off to war after three months of boot camp and training.
He was shipped to the island of Guam in the Mariana Islands in the Western Pacific in the spring of 1945 during the last months of World War II. He served with the Seabees, Naval construction battalions, for 15 months and believes he and his fellow sailors played a role in the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki that ended the war.
Mirto came home after the war, got married and worked as an optician while earning a reputation as a good baseball player, manager and umpire.
Mirto was playing football at The Rayen School when he decided to enlist. His parents did not want him to play football because they thought he would get hurt.
“They wouldn’t sign for me to play football. All of my buddies were going into the service, and that was the reason I went,'” Mirto said from the assisted living facility in Youngstown where he lives. “I went to the Navy. They did sign for that after me doing a lot of talking.”
He and 42 other enlistees left Youngstown in January 1945. Mirto was sent to Great Lakes, Illinois, for basic training at the Naval Station Great Lakes, then was sent to Camp Endicott in Rhode Island for eight weeks of Seabees training.
“Seabees were formally established on March 5, 1942, to meet the Navy’s growing need to build bases, camps and other structures as part of the war effort,” according to the uso.org website.
Mirto was then sent to Gulfport, Mississippi, where he shipped out through the Panama Canal to Guam, but the ship first stopped at Okinawa and Iwo Jima. The trip took 30 days.
“I had training on Guam. We were attached with the First Marine Division, who were preparing us for the invasion of Japan,” he said.
In the meantime, his unit, the Special 34th Battalion stevedores, was unloading ships on Guam.
“That was the time we unloaded for the atomic bomb on Guam,” Mirto said during a recent interview. “We were not allowed to wear skivvy shoes, our tennis shoes. We had to wear our socks. All they would tell us is no sparks. We didn’t know what we were handling. But that was being assembled there,” Mirto said.
“We were supposed to leave Guam on Aug. 16 to go to China with the First Marine Division. It so happened that the war ended on the 14th,” he said.
The U.S Department of Defense website states President Harry Truman announced Aug. 14, 1945, that Japan had surrendered, and the world erupted in celebration, Victory over Japan Day.
For the invasion of Japan, his unit was given a lot of cold weather clothing, but he was not going to need it because the war ended, so he sent it all home. It had Seabees written on it, he said.
But since the war ended, “We stayed on Guam. The Marines still had to go to China, but we were told it was a good thing the war ended because they said the harbor (in Japan) was so fortified, we would have never got in,” he said. “We were supposed to be the second wave in. We were supposed to get the equipment in. That is what the Seabees did.”
When Mirto was asked how he knew that he and the other Seabees were handling atomic bomb related materials, he said, “It was all mysterious. We don’t know. They couldn’t tell you.”
He said he wrote letters to his mother in Youngstown while he was gone for his military service. He said he and the other Seabees did not know what they were loading and unloading from ships, but it seemed the military was especially concerned that sailors would not reveal anything they were doing on Guam because the mail Mirto sent home was “all cut up. My mother would write back and say they cut it out if I would say anything that would lead to something. If I had any clue, I wasn’t allowed to say anything.”
He said he “wrote to my mother every day. I scribbled something because she would be nervous. She had to hear from me.” The letters were to his mother and father in Youngstown. They knew he was on Guam, but that is all he could tell them.
His unit remained on Guam for about nine more months after the bombs were dropped on Hiroshima Aug. 6 and Nagasaki Aug. 9, 1945, ending the war. It was understood among military personnel on Guam that bomb related materials had come through Guam, he said. Because of the no-shoes requirement, “We knew it had to be dangerous,” he said of the materials they unloaded.
Mirto remained on Guam until May of 1946, when they shipped home, stopping two weeks at Pearl Harbor, before arriving at the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco.
He was discharged from the military on his birthday in July 1946, he said.
OTHER DANGERS
There were other dangers on Guam besides the hard work and the materials they handled, Mirto said. The U.S. regained control of the island in July of 1944 from the Japanese after the Japanese had controlled it 31 months. One of the first things his unit did when they got to Guam was work to eliminate Japanese snipers who remained on the island in caves.
“They were hiding all over the place. We had to go inside these caves to get them out of there. The war ended, but they didn’t know it, so (the U.S. military) dropped leaflets over the jungle area stating to them strip down to the waist, put your hands behind your neck. We will not harm you. So that’s what we had to do. So even though the war was over, snipers were shooting. Guys were getting shot.”
He said one Japanese man snuck into line to eat in the American mess hall after he obtained the shirt of an American soldier that had been left outside to dry. He said the difference in appearance of the Americans and Japanese was not as great as one might think because the Americans had gotten so dark from the sun.
He was never shot during the war, but he did suffer hearing loss from “the sound of the 16-inch guns being fired on the ship,” he said.
When he returned home, he used the GI bill to become trained as an optician, making glasses and later fitting glasses, and worked in that field for many years for Youngstown Optical, where he got his training. He later worked for American Optical in the Sears on Market Street in Youngstown and later at the Sears in the Eastwood Mall in Niles starting in 1968 when the mall opened.
He was manager of the optical department there for 25 years. He repaired Perry Como’s glasses one time when the singer played a show at the Palace Theater in Youngstown. In all, Mirto worked in the optical business for about 40 years, ending in 1990, he said.
During his life, Mirto played, managed and umpired baseball in the Youngstown area. He was a pitcher. In 1955, he managed a Pony League team of 14-year-olds that went to the Pony League World Series. His team was national runner-up. He joined the Struthers VFW and has been a member for about 70 years. Early on, he played on its baseball team, he said.
He was inducted into Youngstown’s Curbstone Coaches Hall of fame in 2003 as a baseball manager and “one of the most respected umpires in the city,” according to a Vindicator article.
He and his wife, Donna, who died six years ago, raised two children in Youngstown.