Oral History Interview with Charles Stackpole, January 20, 2005

The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an oral interview with Charles Stackpole. Stackpole joined the Navy Reserves before the start of World War II and was in the Hospital Corps. He went on active duty to Great Lakes and they put him to work in the recruit receiving line. After some additional work at the hospital there, he was sent to Alameda and put aboard the SS Matsonia which sailed for Espiritu Santo. From there they went on a coastal tramp steamer to Noumea, New Caledonia where they set up a fleet hospital, MOB 7, Mobile Hospital. It later became Fleet Hospital 107. Stackpole describes in good detail what they went through in setting-up the hospital, the excellent doctors they had, and the great leadership of their commanding officer, Captain Espaugh. They were receiving causalities from the Guadalcanal campaign. The hospital ships would stand-off Noumea, the patients unloaded onto barges, and then taken to either the Navy or Army hospitals on Noumea. Stackpole also describes in good detail the kind of work they did with the patients. Next, they started bringing in the casualties from Bougainville. He also talks about patients from the USS Gambier Bay which was sunk off Samar Island, Philippines. When the war moved further north, they decommissioned MOB 7, tore it down and shipped the equipment to where it was needed. Stackpole states the hospital treated over 18,000 patients and only buried one. They were coming back to the States when VE day occurred. After a thirty day leave when the ship docked in San Pedro, California Stackpole reported to the National Navy Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland