Oral History Interview with Joseph F. Malleske, September 27, 2007

The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an oral interview with Joseph Malleske. Malleske enlisted in the Navy in January 1944 at Great Lakes, Illinois and took boot camp there. After boot camp, they sent him down to Norfolk (Camp Bradford) for amphibious training where he got picked up to go to radar school. After that he was formed into a crew for LST duty and sent to Little Creek, Virginia for a two week training cruise on the Chesapeake Bay in a LST. In late May 1944, they sent them to Evansville, Indiana to pick up their LST (number 569), a brand-new one from the shipyard there. In late July 1944, they sailed for Espiritu Santo in the New Hebrides. From there, they went to Milne Bay, New Guinea, loaded up Seabee troops and then made their way to Tacloban, Leyte, arriving about D+4 (October 24, 1944). After a short stay at Leyte (until the battle was over), they headed back to Hollandia. They made several runs between Hollandia and Leyte and then landed troops on D-Day at Luzon. They also went to the Palawan Islands and Mindanao, landing supplies or troops. After more trips between the Philippines and Hollandia, they ended up in Manila about the middle of June 1945 and celebrated the end of the war while they were at Leyte. After the end of the war, USS LST-569 made several trips between Korea, China and Japan, taking home Japanese soldiers; from Japan they took Koreans back to their homeland. They also moved around Chinese Nationalists. They went to numerous ports including Shanghai, Peking, Hong Kong and Tsingtao. At the end of March 1946, Malleske was transferred to a transport and headed home. Malleske went to college on the GI Bill after the war, got a degree and went into accounting