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Ted Kaplan recalls his Army stint
A challenging, frequently scary time, the events were always memorable
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Ted Kaplan thought he was going to be a lawyer, but World War II interfered.
Born in Brooklyn in 1923, Kaplan attended Boys High School. "A friend of mine's father was a judge, and after we graduated from high school, he and I decided to go to St. John's University to study law," he said.
The two young men joined the enlisted reserve and began their studies, but the war intervened, and halfway through their sophomore year, they were called into service.
"Guys from NYU, Fordham, LIU, City College and St. John's — we all had to go on the same day," Kaplan said. "I was the editor of the school newspaper at St. John's, and I wanted to cover a big college basketball doubleheader at Madison Square Garden on the night that I was supposed to report. I decided that I would go to the first game, then take the train out to Camp Upton in Yaphank. But St. John's was playing in the second game," he continued, "so I stayed for the first half, and by the time I finally grabbed a train it was almost midnight. It was snowy and cold, and I was wearing a camel's hair overcoat that my mom had bought me. When I got to the camp, the first thing I did was ask if anyone knew the final score of the game."
Kaplan found, however, that no one either knew or cared. He was assigned to a leaky tent in the windswept camp and noted that there was only one empty cot available. Cold drops of water dripped down upon it, and 19-year-old Ted Kaplan quickly came to the realization that he was in the Army now.
Kaplan's outfit was shipped out to Miami for six weeks of basic training. "The Army had taken over the hotels [to house the soldiers]," he explained. "We were in the President Madison. It was huge, a full city block. The water had been turned off, but it was due to come back on by the next day. I was given the job of getting up early and closing all the spigots in all the rooms. But nobody woke me up, so when the water came on, there was flooding everywhere. It took a week to clean things up. As punishment, I was given a toothbrush to clean the gigantic lobby. I guess it could have been worse, because, at first, I thought they were going to kill me."
Kaplan was assigned to the 91st Bomber Group (later the 484th Bomber Squadron). He received training in aerial photography in Colorado Springs, then went to jump school [paratrooper training] in Gainesville, Fla. "My best friend, Ted Komosa, and I both applied to OCS [Officer's Candidate School]," he said. "I got in. Ted did fine on the intelligence test, but missed by one point on the physical part." Kaplan argued his friend's case to the authorities and was able to get Komosa a retest, which he passed. The two friends therefore remained behind for further training while their unit shipped out for Europe. "On the way over, our outfit's ship was torpedoed, and all were lost," he said sadly. "To this day, Ted Komosa refers to me as the man who saved his life."
"[Komosa] was fixed on being a pilot, and I wanted to be a bombardier," Kaplan recalled. He was sent to McGill Field in Tampa, Fla., for bombardier training. A short time later, however, the decision was made to close down the school, and Kaplan found himself transferred again.
His training as an aerial photographer and his expertise with the Fairchild camera and the Norden bombsight qualified him to be an instructor, and soon Kaplan found himself making daily training flights with B-17 and B-29 crews to teach pilots and bombardiers to sight and hit their targets and rating them for their accuracy. "The camera was mounted in the base of the planes, and sometimes we sat in the open bomb bay doors," he recalled. "We always wore parachutes … just in case."
Near the war's end, Kaplan's unit was given special training for the B-29s that were to drop the atomic bomb, (although, he said, they did not realize it at the time), but the job fell to another unit stationed in New Mexico.
Throughout his travels, Kaplan kept in close touch with his mother. "I made up a code so that my mom would always know where I was," he explained. "I didn't want her to worry, so I would use different phrases in my letters to her, especially in my closings and signature. I wrote it all out for each of us before I left." Kaplan still has the sheet of paper listing the codes that allowed his mother to always know the location of her only child during the war.
On one memorable occasion, Kaplan's skill in photography was employed by the USO when the entertainment group visited his base. He still has a number of photos he took on the day when Jane Wyman, Jerry Colonna and Frances Langford came with Bob Hope to entertain the troops. His most prized photo is of Hope himself. Kaplan's photo scrapbook also contains pictures of boxers Joe Louis and Sugar Ray Robinson and of the famous B-17 bomber, the Memphis Belle and its crew. On a trip to Memphis several years ago, Kaplan came across the preserved aircraft in a museum and photographed it once again. "Here it is then, and here it is 60 years later," he said.
Kaplan was discharged in February of 1946 and returned to Brooklyn to a wife and a 5-week-old daughter. Using funds from the GI Bill, he started a photography business. Resuming his academic career, he went back to school at night and earned an accounting degree at LIU. Afterwards, Kaplan spent many years working for a firm on the New York Stock Exchange, a position he left only a year and a half ago.
Still vital at age 86, he has yet to retire and is currently serving as the marketing manager for a local business. He also continues to write his biweekly Investing 101 column for Times Beacon Record Newspapers. Kaplan has no intention of slowing down. "I need to be active," he said. "I still enjoy the challenges each day brings."
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