Atkins, Fred

I Frederick Charles Atkins was born 22 October 1922, at Passaic, New Jersey. My hair was brown and my eyes were blue. I entered naval service at An Arbor, Michigan in September 1940. My service aboard USS FRANK E EVANS DD-754 became official on 3 February 1945. My home at that time was listed as Maplewood, New Jersey. My assigned duty aboard FRANK E. EVANS as LTJG, was Torpedo Officer. Our first captain was “high speed Harry” Smith.

I was one of those who commissioned the ship at the Brooklyn Navy Yard on 3 February 1945. We did shakedowns off Bermuda and then escorted the cruiser Amsterdam to Pearl Harbor, then to Okinawa for Radar Picket duty. I left EVANS in early July 1945 for briefing and training for Operation Olympia, the invasion of Kyushu. There were 220 of us sequestered in an old camp on Oahu island. Of interest, the FRANK E. EVANS was one of 11 destroyers scheduled for the first “close in“ shore bombardment. After the second atom bomb was dropped, we were ordered back to our ships.

While I was on my back, FRANK E. EVANS was part of a group that went to the north China to pick up General Wainwright who was in a POW camp in Mukden. The Russians had already flown him out. John Harrier or Druckenmiller are more aware of this.

We escorted the sixth? Marines into north China and the Army in Korea. From October 1945, until I left FRANK E. EVANS in January 1946, we acted as mail ship and courier between Inchon and Pusan, Korea, and Tsingtao and Shanghai, China.

Fred currently resides in North Carolina.