Robert C. McGiffert

photo courtesy of Bob McGiffert	photo by Thais Boise
McGiffert enlisted at 21, after finishing his last two years at Princeton University in just a year.	A legend at the University of Montana School of Journalism, McGiffert says he probably wouldn't have become a journalist if not for the war.

Losing faith in war

by Katie Aschim
Veterans History Project

Robert C. McGiffert hasn’t taught at the University of Montana School of Journalism for years, but he is still a forceful presence there.

Tacked on a bulletin board are some of his frequent editing critiques, often signed “Cantankerous.” He rarely skips faculty get-togethers. And his colleagues have established a scholarship in his name.

The man who spent almost 30 years lecturing students on the difference between “lie” and “lay” might never have become a UM legend had it not been for a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor at the end of his third semester at Princeton University.

photo by Thais Boise

McGiffert, now 81, went to Princeton as an international affairs major and had considered becoming a lawyer like his older brother. While he was at Princeton, he said, his father gave him some good advice.

“He said to me, ‘Son, we’re going to be in this war’ – the war had started in Europe in 1939; of course it started in Asia before that – he said, ‘the United States is going to be involved eventually. You’re probably going to have to be in the service, and it’d probably be much better if you were an officer than an enlisted man,’ ” McGiffert said.

McGiffert joined the ROTC. During a midday meal on a trip home on Dec. 7, 1941, a friend phoned to tell him that the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor.

“Everything changed almost immediately,” McGiffert said. “People began dropping out to enlist and others who stayed, a lot of us changed our programs almost immediately to get into the accelerated program to speed up things to get our degrees before we went into the service. And attitudes, everything really changed. College was a matter of either getting through or dropping it until later – putting it on hold. We all became pretty totally absorbed with our future and the war.”

By taking a heavy course load and eliminating breaks from his schedule, he was able to finish two and a half years of school in just over a year. After college, McGiffert attended officer training school. While most of his classmates attended field artillery training in Fort Sill, Oklahoma, McGiffert, who had poor eyesight, went to Administrative OCS in Fort Washington, Maryland.

“It’s funny how it turned out – I got sent overseas and ended up doing nothing really connected with my officer training after that,” McGiffert said.

McGiffert was first sent to New Caledonia, an island off the coast of Australia, in March 1943. From there, he was shipped to Guadalcanal, New Georgia, and Bougainville in the Pacific.

McGiffert first served as an education officer, giving current events lectures to troops. While he was on Bougainville, someone noted McGiffert’s history in journalism: he had been involved with newspapers since junior high and had worked as a stringer for a number of papers to make money during college.

He was reassigned to the Americal Infantry Division and became a war correspondent. During his remaining time in the Pacific, he researched and wrote stories about the men in his company. He was also responsible for showing visiting reporters around camps.

“I was sort of my own boss, as much as you can be your own boss in the army,” McGiffert said.

photo by Thais Boise

In March of 1945, he was part of the assault force that retook Cebu, a cigar-shaped island about 100 miles long in the Philippines that had been held by the Japanese since early 1942.

The fighting on Cebu lasted several months and cost his division 600 men. His memories of the campaign are vivid.

“I went down to the line and was with a rifle company that got caught in a firefight,” he said. “I remember the aftermath of that. The Japanese took one of our people prisoner. We found him just a few minutes later and he’d been beheaded.” The man had also had multiple bayonet wounds, McGiffert said.

Somewhere in the Pacific, McGiffert lost his faith in the God of his childhood.

“I had no religious faith when the war was over, and I think the war had something to do with that,” he said. “I suppose that has colored a lot of what I am and how I approach things.”

But on the day the Enola Gay dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, the man who no longer believed found a jeep and went to the nearest church.

“I heard about this terrible bomb that had destroyed a whole city, and I just had the sense that we’d lost our moral position,” McGiffert said. “With all the pros and cons, all the arguments that it would save a lot of lives … it all may have been true. I don’t know if moral position matters in war. But I felt until that time that we’d held the moral ground, and we lost it that day.”

In the jumble of the next few days, another bomb was dropped and Japan surrendered to the United States. As a correspondent, McGiffert had the opportunity to witness the surrender of Japanese troops on Cebu.

photo and typewritten caption courtesy of Bob McGiffert

During the battle for the island, the Japanese had lost their radios and had no way of hearing about Japanese surrender. Through an exchange of notes, the Americans were finally able to get a commanding officer to come to headquarters to listen to a Japanese broadcast. After the broadcast, the Japanese soldiers arranged a formal surrender in which they handed over their sabers to American troops.

McGiffert and his photographer were there to capture the event, and McGiffert counts photos of the surrender among his possessions. He wrote a long letter to his parents describing the scene, which was later reprinted in his hometown newspaper. Fifty years later, he wrote about the event for the Missoulian.

photo by Thais Boise

McGiffert has several photos of the Japanese surrender on Cebu.

In March 1946, McGiffert was discharged as a first lieutenant and came home to Pennsylvania. While overjoyed to be back among friends and family, he found it hard to rejoin the world he’d left.

“Three years maybe isn’t that long, but it’s three years,” he said.

After two months of considering a career as a lawyer, McGiffert was eager to get back to work.

“I was a Depression kid, and part of growing up at that time was a desire to work,” he said. He went to work at a newspaper in Easton, Pa. In 1962, after 16 years in the newspaper business, McGiffert turned to life as a journalism professor at Ohio State, which led to his exodus to Montana four years later.

Looking back on his army career, McGiffert recalled a time when America united to fight a clear and common enemy.

“When Japan attacked the U.S., we wanted to be a part of it,” he said. “There was no doubt that we should be in this war.” The United States, he said, has not been in that position since.

“I’m glad to have had the experience of fighting for my country,” McGiffert said. “There were some pretty bad days … I really didn’t like being in the army, but I think I would have disliked not being in the army more.”

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