Comments by Dr. Dick L. Sleight

I am commanded to "Honor [my] father and mother"- which is the first commandment with a promise …   This I am happy to do.

I recall from Scripture:

My son, do not despise the LORD's discipline

and do not resent his rebuke,

because the LORD disciplines those he loves,

as a father the son in whom he delights.

Dad was not a gifted disciplinarian, but this did not prevent him from taking delight in the accomplishments of his children.  He was at times emotionally distant, but he was not an absent father.  He supported his kids — for example, Don with his ski racing, Randy with his athletics, and certainly me in Scouting.

Which of you, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone?   

Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake?    

If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children,

how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!

We kids did not get allowances – but we were never in want.  Dad was extravagant at Christmas.  He indeed gave good gifts to his children.

Dad may have been discharged a private from the Army, but over 70 years of marriage, he was the General in our home.  Dad was the son of an army officer . . . also Richard Riddell Sleight . . . who died during WW I.  And, for his own part, Dad was the proud father of one army officer, our sister, Captain Laurie Kleespies.

Few men today have the chance to follow their boyhood dreams as completely as dad did.  He certainly had dreamed, “When I grow up, I want to build airplanes.”  And for over four score years he modeled professional excellence in the quality of his work as a Boeing engineer.

No doubt he was proud of his sons who followed (at least in spirit) in the family business — with one electrical engineer, one civil engineer, and even one college engineering professor for a time.

He had a soft side that few saw, but it came out in the poetry he enjoyed, the songs he’d sing, and the hero’s he’d read to us about,  be they the Rover Boys, Tarzan, or Bob Son of Battle.

Although I can’t be sure that he heard me, on one of the last visits I had with dad, I thanked him for the name.  I am proud to be the last in a very long line of Richard Sleights.

RICHARD R. SLEIGHT AND THE WORLD WAR II YEARS

Recorded by Randy Sleight, Memorial Day 2008

◄ The ARMY flag was flown
at Dad's memorial service.

The following notes were based on an interview of Richard Riddell Sleight on his Military Service in the United States Army, following in the footsteps of his father, Richard Riddell Sleight, who had trained troops (doughboys) in their campaign hats and wool leggings at Fort Vancouver in preparation for World War I. His father died before he was born in October 1918, just before his officer induction papers arrived to be fully entered into the Army. Later, his step father, Kirby Kittoe, provided the new military role model for Dick and Barry, Dick's half-brother. Kirby had chased Pancho Villa in Mexico as part of General Blackjack Pershing's Punitive Expedition on horseback as part of the 6th field artillery and cavalry unit in 1916 and 1917. He later went with his troops to Europe in World War I as they were the first to fire a shell in anger as part of the American Expeditionary Force in France against the Germans.

Dad described a situation that occurred in Mexico where Kirby had broke a large black stallion that was a magnificent horse for his own, only to have his Lieutenant tell him that this horse was to be his.  As soon as the Lt. got on the horse it promptly bucked him violently off and the horse became Kirby’s once more.  They were unable to capture Pancho Villa at that time, but did curtail his marauding ways up in “El Norte” Mexico and along the border with Texas, New Mexico and Arizona.

Kirby passed away in the early thirties, but had instilled in Dick Sleight and his own son, Barry Kittoe, a sense of duty and patriotism.  Barry was the first to join the service with the Navy when he was quite young, he went to Florida for his basic training and then onto ships that toured the South Pacific, for awhile he was stationed in Australia.  Barry was a radioman for the Black Cats, an elite group that flew off the carriers at night. They harried and bombed the Japanese fleet and occupied Japanese Islands during WW II.  Dad, Mom, and Grandma Vi were working at Boeing initially, as this was the highest priority to build airplanes and bombers for the war effort after the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

Dad and Mom sent Velma Mail or V mail to Barry daily.  A copy of the paper, cookies and chocolates were regularly sent.  Barry sent letters back thanking Dad and Mom, but his location was never able to be discerned exactly from this correspondence.  About when Barry was being discharged from the Navy, Dad signed up for the US Army.  He first went for two weeks to Fort Lewis in Washington and took tests, got shots, had to show them his marriage license, outfitted himself for uniforms, and then was sent via a smoke filled steam train to Camp Roberts in California for 17 weeks of basic training beginning in April of 1945.  Dad had qualified at the top of the class in taking these two day exams and was asked to attend Officers Candidate School (OCS), he turned that down realizing it would mean an additional year in the Military and being away from his wife Jean and new born son Donald Dean Sleight, this was too much of a commitment at that time as he was needed also at home and later again at Boeing.

While at Camp Roberts, Dad trained as an infantryman at the rank of private.  He mastered the M-1 rifle, how  to throw hand grenades and blow up a quarter pound of TNT.  When another party could not light the fuse with three matches, Dad used the last match to detonate the explosive  for the group.  Dad said the other guy ran for cover after he had unwoven the fuse and that when lit, it went off like a sparkler as he picked up his gun and strolled back to the group for cover when it went off.  None of the group did as well with the bazooka training as they were to hit a target from a moving train and no one was able to do this. Dad was the only one that knew the relationships between the intersection of the grazing zone and cone of fire that was a danger zone.  He was a marksman sniper, rifleman and an expert machine gunner, missing expert rifleman by only 1 point.

Dad had a variety of stories to tell about his time in basic training from his athletic achievements of swinging on ropes like Tarzan and working out on the bars in his spare time.  He did not particularly like the live ammo drills where he had to crawl on his belly like a snake to be below the four foot high machine gun barrage of firing that was right over his head.  He crawled toward the guns with a heavy pack on, cutting his way through numerous barb wire fences.  He was usually first or second to arrive at the destination appointed for the end of war game and stripped down to shake the sand out of his pants, underpants and shoes before the rest of the guys even showed up.  One guy saw him do that and followed Dads lead doing this, but the rest of the platoon was so slow that they had to hike back to camp with their boots full of sand.  Dad said the fat guys had to be cut out from the barb wire as they got stuck and were told that they would be shot in real life if that were to occur on the battlefield.

Another interesting story was their regular night orienteering problems, they would go about a mile and have to do a problem with map and compass and then the next mile it was taken away and they had to orient themselves on their own.  This continued till they were over 4 miles from their base camp. Obviously, Dad and another guy were getting bored and ducked out of the last problem as they decided to sneak back to the Camp as their Sergeant did not seem to know where or exactly what the mission was suppose to be, and at that point it was past midnight.  Well, Dad and this buddy Smaby struck out over hill and just following the last vestige of the setting Sun and then got a fix on the North Star.  Dad knew that the road that they had been on was paralleling his shortcut route back to Camp, but Smaby thought Dad was going in 180 degrees in the wrong direction; he was totally lost at this point.  Smaby lost the argument and kept with Dad as he got them back to Camp by 1:00 AM, technically they were AWOL, but no one was the wiser as they hit their tent and went to sleep.  The rest of the group arrived at 5AM dead tired as their Sergeant had lost their way and no one was keeping track like Dad was with his dead reckoning skills.

Vi had sent her vacuum tube radio to Dad at Basic Training in the mail, he was one of only a few GI’s with a radio at Camp Roberts.  He packed it up in newspapers and mailed it back to Vi before he shipped out to Japan.  Two weeks before they completed Basic Training, we dropped the Atomic Bomb on Japan.

About this time he was shipped to Fort Ord after he had received “Salt Water Stripes”.  Mom had sewn on the 3 stripes on his shirt and he was justly proud of them. They had made Dad a Sergeant for the crossing of the Pacific, he was in charge of 4 platoons or 48 men for the next few months.  At Fort Ord, he was outfitted again with all new uniforms and this is where he had met Barry in his Navy uniform as he had arrived at Monterrey, California  and was getting out at the Naval Observatory there.  Barry was concerned for Dads safety and was thinking that he was being shipped off to the China/Russian/Japanese battle that was on-going at that time in the China Sea and up in the Northern Islands of Japan north of Hokkaido.  These islands were claimed by Russia shortly after the bombing took place in 1945.

Dad took off as a temporary leader on his troop ship and headed for what was left of Nagasaki, but they encountered a terrible typhoon and more troop ships were lost in that typhoon than in many of the North Pacific battles.  Dad was heading over to Japan as part of what would be known as the ”Occupation Forces” of the US Army.   Dad described the seas as being 40 to 100 feet in height at times and this was one of the only times he and many on board ever got sea sick during the 10-11 day trip.

Upon arriving at their destination in the pre dawn hours in Nagasaki Bay about 1 month after the Atom Bomb had landed there, the radiation readings were still being picked up on the ship.  Here he described the scene as tranquil as a man used one oar to move a boat slowly across the glassy bay and seahawks, kites or white faced owls were soaring overhead.  Dad can only recall that they were rerouted that morning to head north around the east side of Japan up to Nagoya where they disembarked and set foot on Japanese soil for the first time.  Here he was then assigned as a member of the 216^th Military Police (MP) Company and joined forces with the 720^th Military Police (MP) Battalion.

From Nogoya, Dad went with his 216^th MP Company to Otsu pronounced like “Oats.”  Here he worked on his language skills and fed small children an extra pancake of his as he was leaving the mess hall in the morning as the kids waiting outside were quite hungry. 

It was nearing Christmas and he and a buddy were asked to find a Christmas Tree for the base, they hiked to the top of the mountain near Otsu and Lake Bewa and they cut down a fine tree somewhat like a Blue Spruce and hauled it back down to the base.  The female supply officer was so pleased with their effort that she gave them the key to the locked store room and asked that they each get themselves some swords and guns or other item of interest for themselves.  This they both readily obeyed and Dad picked out 3 swords and 2 guns and several Japanese knives (hari-kari) for himself along with the authentication papers on these items for proper signature from the officers in charge.  The next problem was to figure out how to ship these reward items back home to Jean in the States.  He decided to hire a Japanese carpenter and a calligrapher for the price of several cartons of cigarettes for them.  They did an excellent job and Dad wrapped them in newsprint and sent them to back to the US, up to their home on Marine View Drive at that time in King County just south of the City of Seattle.  Dad considered his selling cigarettes as his idea of a free market, but to the Japanese the smokes were technically black market items that they could not readily get.  From Otsu, he moved onto Takaoka further to the north where he skied on a small hill in the city park and got help from a Japanese boy who provided the necessary wax to make his skis go or glide better.  From here he was assigned the duty of protection of a checkpoint in the Yokohama harbor area where he was hooked up to the USASCOM-C group or Casual Company, a fill-in group that did not have clear orders at that time.  Here he visited with the kids in the neighborhood and tried to better perfect his language skills and also was invited to a kids sing along.  They sang Japanese songs to him and he sang the current American songs to them, this reverie was broken up by several older Japanese ladies who came along and seemed to scold the kids for associating with the American Soldier.

In another instance Dad was working a checkpoint in the Yokohama harbor and they had four lines of dockworkers, coolies who were throwing contraband over the fence to waiting buddies on the other side.  This time Dad fired his weapon a .45 caliber pistol in the air as a warning shot for the escaping hooligans to stop and they did, as Dad took control of the situation and two lines were formed and everything was brought into order and the smuggling was halted during his watch. 

He was again transferred shortly thereafter to Tokyo area with orders to work on traffic control and the train station at the Tokyo Railway Station. 

Dad told me one story where he was at the Rail Station at a checkpoint for passengers loading onto the train out of Tokyo and a Japanese young lady had not got fully on the train with her mother as it was pulling away from the station her kimono was caught in the door.  A report rang out as Dads fellow MP had fired his gun into the air and through the corrugated metal roof of the station platform to signal the train to halt, meanwhile Dad had taken off his white helmet and frantically waived it in the uniform signalman language to halt the train as the girl was being drug to her likely death as she was fast approaching a building.  The train came to a grinding stop with only two feet to spare from her head to that structure.  Dad and his fellow MP had saved her life.

From Tokyo, Dad took a variety of short weekend trips, one was to Hakone a volcanic area where he again climbed up a peak and got a good view of Mt. Fuji which he later visited, just before he retired in 1981, with the West Seattle YMCA.  At Tokyo, he had a mix up in his orders and was sent via train down to Kure where his duffle bag got mixed up with a medical supply groups stuff, he ended up being picked up by a group of Aussies that night who fed him a good meal and also teased him during the skits that night about the new Yank in their midst.  He was fed breakfast the next morning when he fully realized he had been misdirected to Kure by a Lt. at the Railway Ticket Office (RTO) who had called the 720^th MP group to find out where the 216^th MP group had gone, had sent Dad the wrong way with only two candy bars to get him by on a day long train ride to Kure from Tokyo.  The next morning after breakfast with the Aussies, Dad had the opportunity to inspect the outskirts of Hiroshima via a truck ride north and found the city flattened with steel columns severely deformed from the firestorm of the atomic blast.  He described the columns as buckled and curving one way then the opposite camber at each floor up the skeleton of the structural frame.

Upon his return to Tokyo he was sent to Shinagawa or New River to join the 216^th MP group again, from here he was sent to Nagano for another short stint of duty. On an Easter Sunday Patrol in Nakano he was able to communicate a bit in Japanese on where the Sunday Church was.  KOKO SHE KIA DES KA, his lieutenant was surprised that Dad knew as much Japanese as he did by then.  

He took a two week Military Law class and finished at the top of his class in his Company and won a Class A pass and a special lottery ticket that got him his Air Force watch that he brought home.  The pass allowed him to get more free cigarettes which he figured out a way to sell to various parties for 300 yen.  He already had a pass like this from his Yokohama duty.  One Japanese businessman at the Laundromat would buy them from Dad at 300 yen and later resell them for 500 yen himself.  Dad had heard of this bartering when he was on board the ship and as the Sergeant with the stripes had made sure that he had 20 cartons of these in his duffle bag when he got off the ship at Nagoya, to start his trading venture to get a little spending money. 

Dad had some real problems getting paid for his service duty, his pay did not show up for 8 months after he had enlisted, but he was able to get by selling the cigarettes for far more than he paid for them at the PX.  He later learned that this trade was deemed illegal in Japan prior to his departure.

One of his last duties was at a bad place for the MP group called Sugita, he did not like the smell of the place and there seemed to be more health problems there.  At this location, Dad took another two week class that he did well in, and that was a Motor Maintenance class that stood him well in later years. 

Shortly thereafter, he shipped out on a troop ship as the last Army GI to get on that ship.  While the sea conditions were glassy and calm and the weather was sunny and hot, Dad, who was already bunking in the ships hospital, ended up needing to stay there because he had taken off his shirt topside and had got a terrible sunburn.  His commanding officer was so furious with him for getting so badly sunburned that he threatened to give him a Dishonorable Discharge, but he never followed up on that threat and Dad was Honorably Discharged in August of 1946 as Jean drove down to Portland to pick up Dad and his buddies who were so glad to be home at last.