George J. Tkacs

George Tkacs was born in Perth Amboy, New Jersey in August 1921. Despite the Great Depression, Tkacs’ teenage years were happy ones. He had a paper route, worked in his father’s store and was a member of his high school track team. After graduation, Tkacs went to work as a laborer in Woodbridge Township.

Tkacs remembered when Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, initiating World War II. With the adoption of the peacetime draft in the United States in September 1940, he decided to enlist in the Coast Guard, but was rejected due to dental and cardiac reasons. After Pearl Harbor and the American entry into the war, Tkacs subsequently applied to join the Navy and was accepted on August 11, 1942.

The Navy recruiter asked Tkacs if he could type, and when he answered in the affirmative, Tkacs was assigned to the Navy Hospital Corps. He was initially sent to boot camp at Newport, Rhode Island for four weeks, then to the Brooklyn Navy Yard Hospital Corps School, and then on to the Navy Hospital in Annapolis for fifteen months of training as a Pharmacist’s Mate. Six of those months involved instruction in Naval forms and procedures.

In December 1943 and January 1944, Tkacs participated in amphibious training; and, in February 1944, he was sent to New York to board a troopship for transport overseas. He traveled in a convoy to Scotland, then via train to Clyde, England, arriving in March 1944, where he participated in training for the Normandy invasion. His ship, the USS Bayfield, was assigned to the invasion force as a supply and hospital ship in Plymouth. In an interesting aside, eighteen-year-old Yogi Berra was a member of the crew as well. Although there were some aircraft attacks on the more than 800 ships off Normandy, significant damage was avoided by an intense antiaircraft defense. Tkacs’ assignment was to go ashore and gather the bodies of soldiers killed in action for burial.

In September 1944, Tkacs was transferred to the Pacific theater of war, at the Admiralty Islands, where the task force for the invasion of the Philippines was organized. In January 1945, his ship, the USS Mount McKinley, transported troops to Luzon as part of the invasion. He remarked that the troops being transported for the invasion were plagued by skin rashes in the ship’s hold, due to the intense heat.

After Luzon, the Mount McKinley traveled to Okinawa, where it stayed in support of the invasion for fifty-eight days. There were no attacks from enemy planes, but there were many dead and wounded men to be brought back to the hospital ship, along with a few POWs. The next duty stations for the Mount McKinley were Saipan, Tinian and Iwo Jima in February 1945. At the end of May 1945, Tkacs received a thirty-day leave in San Diego, California, after which he was sent to China in support of United States Marines and nationalist Chinese forces. He returned to the United States for discharge in January 1946.

Tkacs had maintained a war diary aboard ship, where he had access to a typewriter. He spoke to the interviewer of his brother Henry, who served in the Fourth Marine Division. Tkacs showed photos of him and his brother, along with boot camp, military friends and Equator Crossing initiations. At the time of his interview, he was a member of both the Veterans of Foreign Wars and the American Legion. Tkacs had also attended a reunion of his Navy crew in 1992.

When the interviewer asked Tkacs how he would like to be remembered, he responded by saying “He performed his duty as best he could.” His final remark was that world problems should be resolved by diplomats negotiating with a potential enemy, rather than resorting to war to resolve political differences. 

George J. Tkacs died peacefully in his sleep on September 24, 2021 in Eagle, Idaho at the age of 100.

Additional Resources:

• WWII U.S. Navy Veteran Celebrates 100th Birthday In Eagle, Idaho
• WWII Veteran celebrates 100th birthday in Eagle
• George Tkacs’ 100th Birthday