Sweeping the sea

• Nielsen

Julie buntjer/Daily Globe Jackson’s Don Nielsen poses with his Navy uniform and a photo of him as a 22-year-old farm kid as he embarked on a tour of duty in World War II.

Talk about it

JACKSON — Don Nielsen graduated from Jackson High School in the spring of 1941, and by the end of that year, Japan had led an assault on America with the bombing at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, to spark America’s involvement in the Second World War.

Young men like Nielsen knew they would eventually be called to serve — it was a matter of when, where and for how long.

“With the war on, we were terribly undecided,” said the now 87-year-old.

Nielsen was the eighth born of 10 children, all raised on a farm outside of Alpha in rural Jackson County. Four of the six boys would ultimately serve in World War II — Howard in the Marines, George in the Navy, Floyd in the Air Force and Don — nicknamed Tiny by his fellow sailors, became a Radar Man Third Class after serving aboard the USS YMS-81 in the Navy.

YMS is the acronym for Yard Mine Sweeper, a wooden vessel sent to the high seas and coastal areas of Japan after the war had ended to detonate mines the Japanese had rigged in hopes of doing great damage to the U.S. fleet. The YMS was built of wood so it wouldn’t attract the magnetic mines that were typically anchored 6- to 10 feet below the water’s surface.

Nielsen doesn’t recall just how many they detonated, but there were several.

Called to duty

With brother Howard serving in the heart of battle as a Marine in the South Pacific, and brother George assigned to manage base laundry in San Diego, Calif., during the war, Nielsen left the family farm behind after harvest in the fall of 1944 to complete Boot Camp at Great Lakes Naval Training Station in Illinois.

He went on to Key West, Fla., for a six-month sonar school before being sent to San Francisco, Calif., for duty aboard the destroyer escort USS Martin-30. He waited there a few months, during which time Victory over Japan was declared.

Though the war was officially ended, there was still much work to be done, however, and Nielsen ultimately boarded a troop ship out of San Francisco for Okinawa. By then, he had completed radar school, because the ship he was supposed to serve on didn’t need a sonar man.

When Nielsen arrived at Okinawa, he was assigned to the minesweeper.

“We swept mines between Okinawa and Japan,” said Nielsen. “Two minesweepers would travel about 100 yards apart and drag a cable between them, which would bring the mines to the surface and we’d blow them up.”

It was typically the gunner’s mate who was assigned the duty of detonating the mines — a task often accomplished with the single shot of a rifle.

Perhaps more dangerous that detonating the mines were the massive storms their little wooden vessel endured.

“About a month after we were there, we rode out a big typhoon off of Okinawa that sank some of these (minesweepers),” Nielsen said as he talked of waves 20- to 30-feet high that would wash over the deck of their vessel.

There were 23 men who served aboard the YMS-81, including four officers and 19 enlisted men.

“Because I was the only one of the enlisted men who had typing class in high school, the skipper wanted me to do the Yeoman’s work,” Nielsen said. The assignment meant he would file orders and handle office work aboard the YMS-81. It was also his duty to take a smaller boat to one of the larger ships in the area to get their mail.

“Our mail was really bad,” he said, adding that his Christmas package from home in December 1945 arrived in February 1946. The fruit cake, popcorn, candy and nuts that had been carefully packed by his mom had a layer of mold growth and everything had to be tossed.

Short-staffed

When the war ended, a lot of soldiers and sailors had accumulated enough points to earn their honorable discharge — including the man who was to be the cook aboard the YMS-81.

“The gunner’s mate did the cooking,” Nielsen said. “Our food was real bad.”

He still grimaces at the thought of eating another fig in his lifetime, and said the rest of the food wasn’t any better. They lived on a diet of dried milk, dried eggs, canned vegetables and canned fruits — along with lots and lots of figs.

When a refueling ship arrived about every four days, Nielsen said they’d try to get meat from them, but often it was the “stuff they didn’t want.”

Crew members had to do their own laundry too.

“We had to wash our own clothes … and sometimes we’d tie our dungarees on a line behind the ship in the ocean and they’d get clean,” Nielsen said.

A sailor’s surroundings

The YMS-81 was just 136 feet long and 24 feet, 6 inches at its widest. It could float in a minimum of six feet of water, and had a designed speed of up to 12 knots.

To say it was close quarters onboard would be an understatement.

“Our sleeping quarters were pretty confined,” Nielsen said, describing bunks stacked three high in one long room.

Thinking about that confined space brought a smile to his face, though, when he reminisced about some of the “foolishness” they did to pass the time.

There were these flying fish in the ocean, and every once in a while one would land on deck. It didn’t stay there for long though, and not because it flopped itself back overboard.

The sailor shenanigan was to catch the fish, sneak it below deck and put it between the sheets of some poor, perhaps deserving shipmate to find when he wearily crawled into bed at the end of his shift.

It happened to Nielsen — probably more than once — but the prank was pulled on everyone else on that ship, too, he said.

“You had to do something (for fun),” he added with a laugh.

As for their bathrooms — called the head — there were two shower stalls with no doors, and the water that came out of the faucet was heated from the ocean.

“Salt water showers are about like smearing Crisco on your body,” Nielsen said.

Homeward bound

After three months at sea, the YMS-81 went into dry dock on Japan’s mainland, where its hull had to be repaired.

In February 1946, with the hull fixed but still minus one engine, the YMS-81 headed for home with stops at Taiwan, Eniwetok, Iwo Jima and Pearl Harbor. The trip took them two months with just one engine to power them, traveling at a maximum speed of eight knots (9 miles per hour).

They landed in San Pedro, Calif., and spent about a month there before traveling with their minesweeper to San Diego for the ship’s decommissioning. Nielsen was honorably discharged on June 16, 1946.

For service to his country, he received the Navy’s Good Conduct medal, the American Campaign medal, the Asiatic-Pacific Campaign medal, the World War II Victory medal and the Navy Occupation Service honor.

Nielsen returned to southwest Minnesota after his discharge and farmed the family farm for the next 13 years. He was appointed postmaster in Alpha in 1962, and worked there until his retirement in 1989. He also served on the Alpha volunteer fire department for 20 years, and is a lifetime member of the Jackson American Legion and VFW.

Nielsen married in 1949, and will celebrate 62 years with his wife, Arlene, this July. The couple has three children, eight grandchildren and one great-grandchild.

Next month, Nielsen will travel with approximately 110 World War II veterans on the third flight of Honor Flight Southwest Minnesota.

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