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WWII Merchant Mariner vets ask for benefits

Former seamen who served in the Merchant Marine during World War II shared some of their war experiences Wednesday before asking a House committee to approve a $1,000 monthly pension for every surviving World War II merchant mariner or for the spouses of mariners who have died.

The aged seaman — the youngest whom his comrades called ‘Kid’ was 80 — spoke in impassioned but faltering voices about the need for Congress to right a historic wrong by paying the pensions, even as at least one congressman questioned whether that would be fair or affordable.

One former merchant mariner, Stanley Wilner, told committee members that he did not brush his teeth or shave for three years after his cargo ship was sunk by a German raider off Singapore. He said German sailors turned him over to the Japanese, who forced him to work for three years on a railway bridge that was popularized in the film Bridge over the River Kwai.

When he was released at the end of the war, he weighed 74 pounds and suffered from malaria, scurvy, ringworm and beriberi.

“The doctor told me that I would be the luckiest man alive if I lived to be 50,” he said.

Another former merchant mariner, Herman Rosen, said he spent 30 days in a lifeboat in the Indian Ocean after two Italian submarines torpedoed his ship. He said the 24 men on the raft subsisted on blood, urine and sea water. Only five people survived.

Brian Herbert, who has written extensively about the Merchant Marines, said they suffered the highest death rates of the war — 32 percent higher even than that of the Marine Corps, which had the highest fatality rate of the three military branches. More than 700 of their ships were sunk and about 12,000 mariners were injured.

But another former mariner, Ian Allen, said mariners were often maligned by service members because they were union members, had racially integrated crews, and were manned by volunteers.

“They were called slackers, draft dodgers and bums,” Herbert told committee members.

Merchant Mariners said they were intentionally left out of the bill because entry level mariners were paid about twice what entry level sailors were. But when dependent allowances, tax exemptions, and the fact that mariners were only paid when they were sailing and were responsible for their own medical bills when ships were sunk, the pay equaled out.

Mariners said they never doubted that they were part of the military, pointing out that they were subject to military discipline and orders, served on government owned ships, and shared shipboard duties with active duty sailors assigned to merchant ships known as the naval guard.

“When the war ended, the naval guard walked down the gangway as veterans, the merchant mariners who served on the same ship, did not,” said another former mariner, James Burton Young.

Despite their sacrifice, mariners were excluded from the 1944 GI Bill of Rights — an act that made more than 200,000 of them ineligible for educational, employment, mortgage and health benefits that helped move millions of other veterans into the middle class.

By the time mariners were finally granted veterans status in 1988, many were too old to take advantage of these benefits. Supporters say the pension would provide some comfort to mariners during their last years of life.

If the bill passes, the approximately 13,000 World War II mariners who are still alive and about 6,000 surviving spouses would automatically qualify for the stipend at a cost of about $1.4 billion during the next decade, according to Bradley Mayes, director of compensation and pension services for the Department of Veterans Affairs.

But the committee’s ranking member, pointing out that the United States has always relied on civilians to work with the military during wartime, said awarding a pension to the mariners could be the first step down a slippery slope.

“We have more than 60,000 contractors in a combat zone,” Rep. Steve Buyer, R-Ind.) said. “Are we going to face this question 20 years from now, 30 years from now?” he asked.

Buyer also wondered where the money to fund the pensions would come from, but another committee member scoffed at the notion that the pension was not affordable.

“Perhaps we should ask this administration to reconsider its compassion for Paris Hilton and her tax breaks and give it to our merchant mariners,” Rep. Phil Hare, D-Ill., said. “We will find it one way or another. We just have to have the courage to find it.”