Veteran rediscovered music after the war

Walter Schenkman was on a troop ship, headed for Mindanao in the Philippine Islands, when word came of the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt.

"GIs were not exactly known as being all that respectful, if you know what I mean, but there was just a silence that fell over the whole group," Schenkman said, talking about the announcement that came over the ship's intercom on April 12, 1945.

Schenkman, 83, was a freshman at Rutgers University in 1943 when he got his draft papers, and, following the war, he ended up teaching music at Colorado State College, now the University of Northern Colorado, for 28 years. He earned degrees from Harvard and Yale. He recently released "Beethoven's 32," his 12th CD since retiring from UNC 24 years ago. All of his recordings are classical piano works that he has produced with his daughter, Fay Schenkman, and Dan Matthews of Insight Sound in Loveland.

He was drafted into the Army Air Corps and admitted the Army didn't know exactly what to do with him. He was sent to basic training in Miami, where he was housed in a hotel with seven or eight other draftees.

"It was a little crowded, but not all that bad," he said. From basic, he went from base to base across the U.S. and finally ended up in cryptography -- writing and deciphering coded messages -- which he would continue through the remainder of the war.

That took him from the U.S. to Australia, New Guinea, the Philippines, and parts of Japan, including Okinawa.

He remembers his first trip on a troop ship that took him from California to Australia, landing in Brisbane about a month after the ship left.

"We hoped to get off the ship, but soon after we got there, an announcement came that said, 'All of you set on getting a pass to the main island' -- then there this pause -- 'will not be able to do so,' " Schenkman said.

Soon after, he was taken to a base on New Guinea and spent the next four months coding and decoding messages, before joining a task force headed for Mindanao in the southern Philippines. The beach landing off one of the Navy's LSTs --landing ships -- drew no opposition, he said.

"It was almost like a vacation," Schenkman said. He remembers the green bananas he and other troops could buy from the locals. "I don't remember how much they cost, but it wasn't much. They were just delicious," he said.

Soon after, however, he boarded another troop ship, this time headed for Okinawa, "where people were coming in day and night, getting ready for the invasion of Japan."

That invasion never came, however, as Japan formally surrendered on Sept. 2, 1945, following the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Four or five days after the surrender, Schenkman flew into an air base 15-20 miles outside of Tokyo.

Schenkman said he had studied some Japanese phrases in preparation for his first trip into Tokyo, which he said had been leveled by American bombing raids.

"I encountered a man on the streets of Tokyo and, in my perfect Japanese, I asked him directions. He responded, in English, 'I do not speak English,' " Schenkman said with a laugh.

Again, he said, the Army couldn't figure out what to do with him, and he ended up cleaning horse stables belonging to the emperor of Japan.

"I would imagine all the stables belonged to the emperor, but I remember working with another Japanese fellow who told me that all the medals he had won were useless," Schenkman said.

In November 1944, Schenkman was to board his last troop ship, this one bound for San Francisco, and he was honorably discharged in February 1946 at Fort Dix, N.J., not far from his hometown of New Market, N.J. He entered Harvard soon after, with an idea to get a degree in languages, but he returned to his first love of music -- he learned to play the piano as a youngster. After graduating from Harvard, he earned a graduate degree in music from Yale, then came to Greeley in 1956 to join the music faculty at Colorado State College.

He spent 28 years teaching at CSC/UNC, earning a doctorate in music from the University of Indiana along the way, before retiring in 1984. A distinguished scholar of UNC, Schenkman's recently published writings include studies on Bach and have appeared in Clavier, the Bach Journal and the Italian music journal Ad Parnassum. His latest of 12 CDs was recorded at the Union Colony Civic Center in November 2007.

WALTER SCHENKMAN

«Born: June 27, 1924

«Age: 83

«current residence: Greeley

«Military Branch: U.S. Army Air Corps.

«Rank/Assignment/Mos: Sergeant, cryptographic technician (communications).

«Served where during the war: Various bases in the U.S., New Guinea, Philippines, Japan

«Medals earned: Asiatic Pacific Service Medal, American Service Medal, Good Conduct Medal, Philippines Liberation Ribbon, World War II Victory Medal