WWII radioman recalls efforts

NORMAN As the nation remembers the 60th anniversary of VJ Day and the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, a quiet, unassuming Norman veteran has his own memory of dealing with the Japanese military.

Not with a gun, but a typewriter.

LeRoy Leech served in World War II as a U.S. Navy radioman. He had the duty of recording Japanese messages aired in their secret code.

Now 81 and retired as a federal government auditor, he spends his time gardening and taking it easy. He used to bowl frequently at the Family Life Center of First Baptist Church, where he and his wife, Darlene, are members, but he has slowed down that activity.

He wasn't slow about offering his service to his country. Exactly a year after Pearl Harbor, at age 19, he enlisted in the Navy and was sent to the Great Lakes Naval Training Station in Chicago for "boot camp.

"They got us up early one morning and a group of us were sent to the University of Chicago to take radio training, learning the Morse code. After four months some of us were picked out to train another month in a faster code.

This group was sent to Bainbridge Island, west of Seattle where "We had to catch a ferry to go to Seattle for liberty. There they learned to take down the Japanese code on the typewriter. The Japanese characters, of course, were different.

After three months, several of the trainees were sent to Imperial Beach at San Diego, where they intercepted Japanese secret messages in code.

"We were to be the first evacuated if we were attacked, Leech said. "We stayed there about two years, then they flew me to Hawaii, to a base at Wahiawa in the middle of a pineapple field in the center of Oahu island.

"We continued to intercept Japanese code messages for eight months. I understood that what we typed was sent to Washington.

Leech said that when he was discharged at the end of the war, the Navy warned him not to tell what his group had been doing. However, he figures the restriction is no longer in force six decades later.

The trip home took him first to San Francisco, then by train to Norman. From there he hitchhiked to Watonga, his hometown. After starting college at Weatherford, he attended the University of Oklahoma to study accounting. He received a bachelor of science degree with a major in accounting in 1951 and a master of arts degree with a major in accounting in 1956.

He worked as an auditor in the OU comptroller's office for 11 years then became an auditor for what is now the U.S. Department of Human Services. He retired from that position in 1983.

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