Fifty-four years ago, Kamikaze planes sink the USS Barry! Dr. Jackson was aboard.

The ship shook as though struck by a giant landslide. A loud explosion followed. Immediately. Lieutenant Senior Grade, Joseph Morgan Jackson, US Navy knew what had happened. A Japanese Kamikaze plane had broadsided his ship, the USS Barry, APD-29, a fast attack transport in the shallow waters off Okinawa. The invasion of Okinawa was underway. It was May 25, 1945.

Dr. Jackson was in the officer's wardroom of the Barry. It was a little after one o'clock in the morning when the Japanese suicide bomber dived into the Barry. Immediately those dreaded words: "Prepare to abandon ship" sounded over the Barry's loudspeakers. Dr. Jackson knew immediately that his ship was sinking in the shallow waters off Okinawa, an island still in the hands of the Japanese, who were fighting frantically to keep it from the invading Americans.  Kamikaze operations at Okinawa were the fiercest of the war. And the most frightening in view of their intensity.

That moonlit night Dr. Jackson found himself aboard a ship about to sink to the bottom in a hostile harbor. Dr. Jackson climbed aboard a small lifeboat. He and a handful of his shipmates headed to another nearby ship, floating nearby.  Dr. Jackson, a navy surgeon, would be needed to do surgery on the wounded. The senior surgeon aboard called out to Lieutenant Jackson, "start operating." Jackson mumbled, "It's a little different trying to operate aboard a ship that is rocking like a roller coaster." But, Jackson began to operate on the wounded sailors. In the Mediterranean Sea earlier, while Dr. Jackson's ship was off Italy, a sailor had been struck in the abdomen with shrapnel fragments.  It was Jackson's job to keep him alive. Now in the Pacific, more wounded found their way to Jackson's operating table. For some, it was too late.

War was not new to Dr. Jackson. He entered the navy just after finishing medical school at the Medical College of Georgia, and serving his internship. Doctors had little chance of escaping military service. Their skills were badly needed for American servicemen fighting all over the world.

Dr. Jackson had navy duty on the USS Barry in the Mediterranean off Italy early in 1944. With the war in Europe winding down, the "hot spot" turned to Japan and the Pacific war.

The Barry, with Dr. Jackson aboard made its way through the Panama Canal on its way to Okinawa, to take part in that invasion. The doctors aboard the Barry would be needed for wounded American servicemen fighting on those islands.

With just a brief stop over at Pearl Harbor, Dr. Jackson's ship headed westward to Okinawa, where the fiercest action in the Pacific was underway.

In a single week in May of 1945, 355 Kamikaze suicide attacks targeted the American fleet off Okinawa. The same night that the Barry was sunk, May 25^th, 1945, ten other American vessels suffered the same fate as the Barry, and sank to the ocean bottom off Okinawa, victims of Kamikaze suicide attack.

The Americans finally claimed Okinawa, but at a terrible cost in American lives. Okinawa was the closest stepping -stone island to the Japanese home island. The Japanese military defended it with every weapon at its command, including suicide bombers.

Following the sinking of his ship at Okinawa, Dr. Jackson, aboard other ships with medical facilities, continued to operate on the wounded, until the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, bringing an end to World War Two.

Japan's dreams of world domination, ended with the signing of unconditional surrender documents by Japan aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay in August 1945.

Doctor Jackson returned to his home after VJ Day, but was kept in the Navy Reserves until the late 1950's at the insistence of the Navy. He arrived in Folkston in 1947, and began a medical practice that would span nearly a half-century.

On April 18, this year (1999), Doctor Jackson will observe his 81^st birthday. He tells an interesting story about the sinking of his ship off Okinawa 54 years ago, just weeks after his 27^th birthday.

Following the crew abandoning the Barry, which was in relatively shallow waters, the Barry's crew decided to make the Japanese Kamikaze planes pay another price. The crew loaded inside the hull of the sinking Barry, hundreds of metal barrels causing the ship to rise almost normally to the surface. Dr. Jackson said at least three other Kamikaze suicide pilots crashed their Kamikaze planes into the sunken Barry after that, unaware that the ship had already been abandoned by the crew.

"I don't know what would have happened to me had I been inside one of those barrels," Dr. Jackson said with a boyish grin. "But, it's good to be here now… and alive" he chuckled.