Figure 1.--The press caption for this photograph read, "Pin-up Baby: Southwest Pacific .... Here's the otherside of the rip-snorting fighting men whose amphibious punches have knocked the Japs back on their heels across the Pacific. Three Coast Guardsmen and a Marine are lost in their admiration of a Chinese baby who is the center of attraction aboard a Coast Guard manned transport in the Southwest Pacific. The tiny refugee is from one of the battle zones. He seems bored with peace." Given the date of the photograph (November 10, 1944), it must have been the battle for Leyte in the Philippines. We can only guess how the baby got aboard the transport ship. We are guessing that Coast Guardsmen delivering supplies to the beachhead came across a pregnant woman and sent her and her baby back to the transport. Part of the story could be the brutal way the Japanese Army targetted the Chinese in occupied areas.

The Coast Guard supported the Army and Navy (Marine Corps) in landing operations. Some of these were in the Atlantic (North Africa, Sicily, Italy, and France), but by the great bulk of the landings were in the Pacific. Landing craft varied greatly in size from the huge LSTs to small small unit boats because of the number of landings, the crews were needed in large numbers. This would be he Coast Guards major contribution to World War II. Notably the United so massively expanded its amphibious capability that two massive landings were conducted simultaneously (June 1944). The attention was on D-Day in France, but at the same time another massive landing was conduced halfway across the globe in the Pacific--Saipan. And note that that these were not 1 or 2 day operation. The supplies for these operations had to be continued to be delivered over beaches, in some cases such as D-Day this lasted for months because the Germans held on to the Channel ports for months after D-Day. More than half of the CG's wartime personnel were used to man 802 Coast Guard, 351 Navy, and 288 Army vessels to support land, sea, and air forces in all the combat theaters. Coast Guard troopships, attack transports, cargo transports, fuel ships, and auxiliary vessels supported Allied amphibious operations, fighting fleets, and land forces around the world, but espcilly in the Pacific. It proved to be dangerous duty, specially approaching defended enemy shores. And their were inevitable accidents whenever explosives are involved. The CG–manned transport Serpens (AK-97) was destroyed when an accidental detonation of the depth charge cargo tore tragically through the ship and and killed all but two of her 200-man crew. It was the greatest single loss in Coast Guard history.

Created: 11:51 PM 11/4/2020
Last updated: 12:41 AM 2/25/2025