A Time for War, A Time for Reconciliation: Montana Cowboy Hall of Fame member fought in Okinawa

Durl Gibbs built a successful life ranching in Montana after serving our country during World War II. Now 99 years old, Gibbs served in the Pacific theater at the end of the war, enlisting right after he graduated from high school at the age of 19.

Durl Gibbs was born and raised in Idaho and came to Montana with his wife Lucille and their two young sons, Lee and Wes, in 1956 because he wanted to be a rancher.

“I had put an ad in the paper and had a regular ranch job, a milk cow, two little sons, a good wife, and $1500,” he said. “I had a letter in my hip pocket of recommendation from the Farmers Home Administration; they helped guys get started if you didn’t have enough money to qualify to borrow from the bank.”

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After about six months on his ranch job, Gibbs found a man he could partner with on a ranch.

“He had the land and was looking for somebody to work it, so I hooked up with him. Bill furnished the land, I done the work and we split all the expenses 50/50.”

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The partnership lasted seven years, and following this Gibbs moved his family up on the Green Ranch.

“I was there 14-15 years when I found a guy who wanted to sell his ranch because his kids weren’t interested in ranching,” he said. “I was able to wrangle a down payment and that put me in the ranching business.”

During his years on the Green Ranch, Gibbs started raising purebred Hereford cattle. Although Angus cattle were already popular and semen from exotic breeds was being imported, he chose Herefords.

“Being a little old-fashioned, I believed that a Hereford/Angus cross black baldie cow was the best all-around range cow a guy could get,” he said. “My idea of an ideal place is running black baldie cows averaging 1000 pounds apiece and weaning a 600 pound calf. That will keep a rancher in business!”

Gibbs was also a charter member in the Simmental Association, learned how to AI, and experimented with crossing Simmental with Hereford cattle. Later in life, he also built a herd of registered Angus cattle.

All of his cattle breeding decisions had the improvement of his livestock in mind. Gibbs studied genetics when he started in the purebred cattle business.

“Genetics is a wonderful thing, a must. It’s exciting! I found that genetics works the same with people as with livestock and people same thing. That don’t set with just everybody, but that’s the way it is,” Gibbs said.

Gibbs traveled to the Fort Keough station at Miles City on a mission to purchase a Line 1 Hereford bull to bring home to his cows.

“At that time, Joe Urick was the manager of the livestock at Miles City,” he said. “I spent half a day with Joe and got his ideas on the cattle there.  I came home with a Line 14 bull.”

Gibbs said that at the time, the station at Miles City was line breeding several different lines of cattle. Urick explained to him that they had taken the best producing cows out of those lines and started Line 14 right there. Gibbs decided then and there that he wanted a Line 14 bull.

Over the years, people working at the research station stopped by Gibbs’ ranch as they traveled from Miles City to the experiment station at Havre to check on how he was doing with his Line 14 cattle.

“That just made me feel good,” he said.

In Gibbs’s studies of genetics, he learned the value of inbreeding and linebreeding to both weed out undesirable traits and strengthen positive traits.

“With inbreeding you bring out the best and get rid of those recessive traits,” he said. “It worked for me. When I bred sires back to their daughters, if there were any recessive genes in that cow and that bull, boy it showed up. In the calves that dominant genes took over, that product was better than the mother or the dad.”

Gibbs’s calves were more consistent, something he felt was positive especially since he was selling breeding stock.

“That tells a story,” he said.

On one occasion, some repeat customers came to look at his bulls, and he sent them out to the pasture with his pickup and a list of tag numbers.

“They had been out there a couple of hours and I was wondering if everything was ok when they pulled into the yard,” he recalled.

“They just shrugged their shoulders and said, ‘Durl, we want four bulls, you just bring us four bulls.'”

The cattle were so uniform that they couldn’t pick one above another.

“That didn’t happen very often, but it was one of the highpoints in my life,” Gibbs said.

Before Gibbs moved to Montana, he worked in security at a site where the military was building an atomic submarine in the desert near Arco, Idaho.

“They built a scale model with all the working parts and tested it out there,” he said. “The crew that was on the first atomic submarine that was put in the ocean got their training out there. Admiral Rickhoven was out there every week or so. I observed all that while I was in security.”

Gibbs chose to leave this fascinating – and good paying – job, all because he wanted to be on the ranch.

“What I was learning in genetics in cattle was so exciting; in a way I was doing the same thing with cattle that they had done when they were building the submarine,” he said. “I was experimenting to build something better.”

A true stockman and horseman, Gibbs always enjoyed riding.

He discovered the sport of team penning after he was 70.

Gibbs had three horses that he was competing on, and no one else rode them, so they were completely in sync with him.

“That horse knows you just as well as you know that horse,” he said. “There’s a feeling between you and that horse that can’t be described, that horse knows exactly what’s coming off before he gets a signal with the reins.”

This harmony came in handy when competing against the clock in the sorting pen.

“It’s good to be around any animal and have that feeling that they know you and you know them almost like another person,” Gibbs said.

He rode – and competed – till he was 90, only quitting when he had trouble mounting.

“I had kinda made fun of some of those guys who had to lead their horse up to the fence to get on,” he admitted. “I always rode horses that were pretty leggy, good traveling horses. When I got to where it was hard for me to get on my horse, I decided it was time to quit riding.”

Gibbs’ cows knew him pretty well too.

“One time I had a group of cows in a pasture and I wanted to go over and put them in another pasture,” he recalled. “The cows were laying there chewing their cud, they was full and content when I rode down there. I got them up, opened the gate and tried to put them out. As long as I was behind one she’d go a few steps, but when I went to chase on another cow, she’d stop.”

Getting frustrated because his project wasn’t progressing, Gibbs rode to the gate.

“I just called ’em, ‘Co boss. Co boss.’ Those cows just strung right out behind me, and I went over and put the cows in the other pasture.”

When Gibbs rode back to shut gates, the neighbor lady, who unbeknownst to him had been watching the whole procedure, said, “Durl, what is it with those damn cows? You can’t chase them but you can lead them anywhere!”

Another example of how well Gibbs’ cattle knew his ways occurred when he was summering them in a community pasture on the Wyoming border about 80 miles from home.

“In that pasture there was about four different herds of cows. One day I went up on a rise to put the salt a little higher to encourage the cows to graze up there,” he said. “Just for the hell of it, I parked the pickup, put salt out, and called my cows. Pretty soon a head raised up, then another head raised up, a cow started walking up, and in 20 minutes time I had 80% of my cows right up there around my pickup.”

Gibbs’ short term goal is to be in good shape for his 100^th birthday next September. Strangers generally guess his age about 20 years on the young side, and he gives credit for his health “to the good Lord above and the Montana VA healthcare system.”

Gibbs says that everyone needs goals, no matter how simple or complicated they are; when the goal is completed the feeling you get is your reward for sticking with it.

“I believe that every individual needs goals,” he said. “I am looking forward to celebrating my 100^th birthday at the big barn on the ranch where my daughter and son-in-law live. For my long range goal, I hope to be the oldest World War II veteran alive. I figure I’m going to have to stick around another seven years for that.”

“The Army was waiting for me.”

Life can be complicated. When Gibbs graduated from high school in 1944, “The Army was waiting for me.”

He enlisted, joining the 96^th Infantry Division, went to Texas for basic training at Camp Hood (now Fort Hood), and was shipped to the South Pacific.

“They gave me a rifle, a bayonet, and I was on my way overseas,” he said. “The war was just about over in Europe, but I got in on the fight in Okinawa.”

The 96h Infantry Division left the Philippines March 27, 1945, for the Ryukyu Islands, just south of Japan. Okinawa Island’s rough terrain and dense trees made it the perfect area from which the Japanese could defend their homeland.

The 96^th landed on Okinawa April 1, 1945. The landing and initial advances were unopposed; the Japanese army was dug in and awaited the American troops in strategic terrain. Commanding General Ushijima established a triangle of defensive positions in a rugged area, known as the Shuri Defense Line. Kakazu Ridge, Sugar Loaf Hill, Horseshoe Ridge, Half Moon Hill and Hacksaw Ridge saw fierce, deadly fighting and high casualties.

The battle for Okinawa was regarded as one of the greatest American victories of World War II, but it came at a high price. Nicknamed “The Typhoon of Steel” because the fighting was so fierce, the battle of Okinawa became one of the bloodiest battles of the war. U.S. casualties numbered over 12,000 killed in action and 36,000 wounded. Lieutenant General Simon Bolivar Buckner, Jr., the U.S. commander, was killed in action on June 18, 1945. He was the highest-ranking American officer killed by enemy fire during the war. An estimated 110,000 Japanese troops were killed or committed suicide rather than surrender as prisoners of war. Around one fourth of the civilian population of Okinawa, an estimated 100,000 men, women and children, also perished or committed suicide under orders of the Japanese military.

Although comparatively minor in the scope of the battle, one incident would haunt Gibbs for decades.

One night, in the middle of June, 1945, Gibbs and his squad sergeant were sharing a foxhole.

“When we were under combat, the only way we had of corresponding with our company commander would be through walkie talkies,” he said. “That walkie talkie weighed about 10 pounds and was about the size of a loaf of bread. If anything happened to the fellow that had the walkie talkie, it was imperative that anyone in the squad who could get to the walkie talkie would get it so we could stay in touch with our company.

“It wasn’t too long into combat that I wound up with the walkie talkie. The guy with the walkie talkie would be paired with the squad sergeant at night. We’d dig in at night, two men to a foxhole.

“In the night there was always one man in each foxhole awake all the time, on guard. All the other guys in their foxholes were doing the same thing, one guy was awake all the time.”

Gibbs stayed awake for the first watch, and had just traded spots with Sergeant Frank Dowell.

“A foxhole was just big enough for two men to stand in. I was laying down, curled around the other guy’s feet. All of a sudden I was being walked on and heard a grunting noise.”

Gibbs jumped up, right into the midst of hand to hand fighting between Sgt. Dowell and a Japanese soldier. They dared not fire a shot and risk the flash from a gun barrel giving away their position. The struggle ended with the Japanese soldier dead.

“Real early the next morning as we were going to move out, the Jap soldier was laying there,” Gibbs said. “He had a pistol, which I wanted for a souvenir. I bent to take the holster off him, and I could see in his blouse that he had something there, all in a nice little bag. I just slipped that out, put it in my pocket, and we moved out.”

Later, Gibbs opened the little wallet within the pouch, and saw that it was full of pictures.

Just days later, the commanders of the Japanese forces on Okinawa committed ritual suicide. After the battle ended, Gibbs and the 96^th shipped back to Mindoro, Philippines, where they recuperated and got the division back up to strength. The United States was preparing to invade Japan.

“The ships were there, and we were told we were going to hit Japan. We tore everything down we had built up there, struck our tents that morning and we were going to board ship when word came down: the Japanese had surrendered. We were that close…”

Gibbs accepted an offer to re-enlist for a year, and after a short furlough at home, he was sent back to Okinawa.

“We were trying to set up a government for the people,” he said. “I was there in Okinawa when it was torn apart, and I was back when we were putting things back together.”

After Gibbs returned home, the pistol was stolen, but he kept the Japanese soldier’s wallet in a small chest with other memorabilia from his time in the Army. He married, and started a family of his own. As his boys grew, the chest became a source of fascination for them. Lee, Wes and their friends loved to carefully open the chest and admire its contents, especially the wallet and the pictures of young Japanese men it held. To them, the war represented adventure and heroism.

For Gibbs, the memories were haunting. Half of his unit had been casualties. Japanese soldiers lay where they fell; their own comrades unable to give them a proper burial. And the civilian suffering he had seen firsthand on Okinawa was not easily forgotten.

As he watched his own children grow, he thought about the fallen soldier who had carried the wallet.

“It got to working on me,” he said. “I got to wondering, did that soldier have a family?”

Gibbs’ son Wes had always wanted to go to Okinawa. In 2011, 65 years after Gibbs returned to the states, the opportunity came. Gibbs packed the wallet, hoping he might find an organization in Japan he could give it to in the possibility that it could be returned to the original owner’s family.

“I was thinking about that family,” he said. “Maybe there would be some outfit there that could read the Japanese writing on the pictures and find out who to give it to.”

The Ryukyu American Historical Research Society published the photos that Gibbs had saved with the wallet.

Much faster than Gibbs expected, the owner of wallet was identified as Sgt. Keijiro Hojo.

“I left it there and come home, and they found the family,” he said. “At the time that soldier got killed at our foxhole, he had a two year old daughter. Now this two year old daughter is 60 some years old and the Japanese wanted me to go back to Japan, and present that wallet to her myself.”

Things came full circle for Gibbs, and for Sgt. Hojo’s daughter, Mrs. Noriko Kikuchi, when he traveled to Japan and presented her father’s wallet to her. Gibbs’ three children all made the trip with him. His cowboy hat made quite an impression on the people in Japan.

“Of course I had my Stetson,” he said. “The Japanese made a big deal of it. We’d walk down the streets and taxi drivers would stop to look at us. All the Japanese papers had newsmen with cameras, so camera guys would be following us walking down the streets.”

Japan’s NHK news organization interviewed Gibbs and Mrs. Kikuchi, both in Japan and in Montana. Reporters were present to document the moment Gibbs presented Sgt. Hojo’s wallet to Mrs. Kikuchi in her home in Japan, nearly 70 years after the war. An interpreter was present to help the two communicate.

 “She hadn’t known anything about her dad, and her mother had passed away, so when she graduated out of high school she was on her own. All she knew about her dad was he got killed in the war. After 60 some years, here this guy comes along with this wallet. It inspired her and changed her life.”

For Gibbs, it meant he no longer needed to think of the Japanese as “the enemy.”

“Before that experience, they were ‘Japs.’ Now they are Japanese. That soldier was doing just exactly what I was doing: serving my country.”