Written by John Erardi, special to The River City News
Wednesday was Newport Central Catholic High School’s graduation.
The graduates of the Class of 2021 – be it NewCath or Newport High (May 29) – would do well to consider Walter “Gus” Kraus, NewCath Class of 1938. He celebrated his 100th birthday last November and is still going strong.
Tell us, Newport graduates, if you could channel Walt – stalwart and personable card-carrying member of the Greatest Generation, the generation that won World War II – would you?
Times have changed but the challenges are similar.
Walt Kraus in 1941
Eighty-three springs ago, Walt, then 18, enlisted in the Navy; three years later he was manning an attack submarine in the South Pacific and guerilla-warfaring the Japanese fleet from the briny depths. Today’s students face the uncertainties created from a global pandemic.
There are lessons for today’s students in Walt’s life.
Walt Kraus on his 100th birthday in 2020 (John Erardi)
For some of those lessons, we transport you to late 1920s/early 1930s Newport, in particular, Monmouth Street. Yes, it has changed quite a bit, but not as much as you might think.
Today’s students will recognize the landmarks and buildings mentioned in this story.
Imagination will provide the rest.
Let us take a walk…
The walk that Walt and his father, George, a cabinetmaker by trade, would regularly take up and down Monmouth, began at their home in the one-thousand block of Central Avenue, three blocks west of Monmouth.
“We spoke German because that’s the only language we knew,” remembered Walt. “Back then, my dad was my best friend, my only friend actually, because my schoolmates and the neighborhood kids couldn’t communicate with me. The only language they knew was English. They made fun of me because my English was so bad.”
1038 Central, on the west side of the street, is where Walt was raised. He moved a block west to 1008 Isabella Street (still there today) when he was 10. He was born in Bamberg, Bavaria, Germany, on November 15, 1920.
Directly next to Walt’s first home in America is where the Brell sisters lived: Anna Mae, 20; Margaret, 28, and Hilda, 30. They worked diligently to teach Walt his second language. The Brells’ former home is also still there today.
Walt’s father was the first of Walt’s nuclear family to sail to America, in 1923. He came in search of a better life. His beacon light was his great aunt on his father’s side, a nun, Sister Martha, serving in the Order of the Good Shepherd. (A photo that runs with this story shows the Krauses posed next to a field at the former Good Shepherd convent in Carthage across the street from where St. Xavier’s High School is today. In the photo is Walt’s father; 15-year-old Walt, his right arm draped casually but affectionately across the shoulders of his mother, Adelheid; Walt’s younger siblings, Sebastian and Mary Catherine, who were both born in the U.S., and Sister Martha.)
Kraus family at Good Shepherd Convent, Carthage, circa 1936
Walt was four-and-a-half years old when he traveled with his mother to the port city of Bremer Haven and made the 11-day trip to New York City across the Atlantic in steerage. This adventure and the books he read in childhood (Sea Wolf by Jack London, among them) planted the seeds of curiosity about the sea and ships, which is how he wound up a machinist’s mate in the U.S. Navy soon after his high school graduation.
But back to The Walk…
The walk proceeded up Central and left (east) on 11th, past what would later become the Sweet Tooth candy shop. In 1934, work had begun on the 11th Street underpass-overpass (just as it exists today), which replaced a road-grade level passenger-train track and gate that delayed traffic considerably. The city is presently considering pedestrian and bicycle improvements there, and possibly removing the stairwells.
That’s where Walt and his dad turned left (north) up Monmouth Street.
Walt and his dad walked past Ebert’s Meats (“established in 1897”) – “on special occasions we stopped in to buy a rib roast,” remembers Walt) – the Cookie Jar Bakery (1927), the Gunsmith’s shop (1874), Dixie Chili (1929), the Itkoff Brothers men’s clothing store (“1923”), the Broering building (a music store, “1919”), and the Newport Public Library building (1902; now “Carnegie Hall at Newport”). Some of the buildings’ names and founding dates are engraved on the upper levels; all one has to do is look up. The first four businesses listed above provide the same services today as when Walt and his father walked past 90 years ago, pausing to look into the display windows.
Walking wasn’t foreign to George Kraus; he never owned a car. And if Walt wasn’t bicycling, he was walking. So, they made a natural pair on Monmouth from the time Walt was seven until he turned 13.
827 Monmouth, circa 1945
The year they began walking Monmouth – 1927 – there were two bakeries, two banks, two photography studios, three automobile garages, seven barbershops, twelve grocery stores, a florist, nine candy shops, two hardware stores, five restaurants, six shoemakers, two doctor’s offices, seven tailor shops, a sporting goods store, three shoeshine parlors, three motion picture theaters and three clothing stores. Also, a “filling station,” two car-sale lots, three laundries, an oyster shop, a flour-and-feed store, an umbrella shop, watchmaker, piano tuner, tree surgeon and one harness shop.
“I liked the smell of bakeries – who doesn’t? – but to me the best smell arrived in 1929 when Dixie Chili opened on Seventh Street,” remembered Walt with a smile.
Dixie Chili in Newport, then and now
In the “Broering Bldg” – “19,” it says on one end of the engraving, and “19” again on the other, 1919, the year the Reds won the fixed World Series from the Chicago Black Sox – the Broerings sold “grand and upright pianos,” “player pianos,” “radio sets,” and “music rolls.” A big Broering advertisement in the 1927-28 city directory touts their “talking machines,” that is, musical phonograph players.
Walt and his dad would talk about father-son things, about father’s jobs and son’s aspirations, which by the mid-1930s had morphed into Walt’s hopes for a job himself, which is when the walks trailed off.
“I liked riding my bicycle, so I got a job across the river at Cincinnati Messenger Service, delivering packages for the department stores – Gidding-Jenny, Shillito’s, Pogue’s, McAlpin’s — seven or eight packages at t time, when I was 16 years old,” remembers Walt. “They gave us our own bicycle. Well, you know how Cincinnati is, all those hills. So, I figured the best way to get up those hills was to grab hold of the back fenders of trucks and buses, and ride up the hills.”
Unknowingly, Walt had tapped into his ancestral roots. His birthplace of Bamberg, Germany, like Cincinnati, is known for its seven hills.
“Somebody along the route saw me riding up the hills like that, and called the company to complain. I received a warning, no big deal. But the next time somebody called to complain, it was a big deal. And they fired me. I needed a job, and so that’s when I decided to join the Navy.”
He enlisted in January 1939 and attended boot camp in Norfolk, Va. He trained in San Diego, where he considered what branch of the Navy to join. About the time Germany was invading Poland to start World War II, some fellow sailors noted Walt’s German accent. They said, “The Germans sure sank a lot of Allies ships in World War I with their U-boats, maybe you’ve got some of those abilities in you. Why don’t you join the submarines?”
Why not indeed? Walt wasn’t at all claustrophobic and the extra $25 per month pay didn’t hurt. When the U.S. entered the War, submariners’ pay shot up an extra 50% more than non-submariners’ pay of the same rank. Combat was the nature of the submariners’ jobs. If you weren’t in combat, you were out at sea looking for it.
“Unfortunately, the reality of submarine service during World War II was that most sailors who served either made it home intact, physically at least, or they died,” reads an article in the New Brunswick (Ga.) News. “Submarine service during World War II was the most dangerous duty in the military with casualty rates around 20%. More than 3,600 sailors – nearly one in five serving aboard diesel submarines – died during the war.”
Walt didn’t die. He’s here to tell the story.
Continues the article: “The submarine force was vital during the war, especially early on when the Pacific fleet was decimated by the attack at Pearl Harbor. The boats were the only threat to the Japanese fleet as it moved throughout the Pacific Ocean. Although submarines comprised only 2% of the U.S. Navy, they were responsible for destroying 30% of the Japanese fleet during the war, including eight aircraft carriers, 11 cruisers and a battleship. They also destroyed 60% of the Japanese merchant fleet, cutting off crucial supplies to its military forces.”
The success came at a heavy cost: 52 U.S. subs were lost, all too often with no survivors ever found.
That pretty much says it all. That was Walt’s life, December 7, 1941, through August 15, 1945.
The only submarine he was on that was lost via combat was his first. For details on how that happened, see “Walt’s WWII Timeline,” which accompanies this piece.
It had to start somewhere, graduates.
And for one centenarian submariner, it all started in Newport.
Walt Kraus, graduate of Newport Catholic High School, 1938
WALTER “GUS” KRAUS, WORLD WAR II AND LIFE EVENTS TIMELINE
Born: Nov. 15, 1920: Born Bamberg, Bavaria.
May 1925: Steamship out of Bremerhaven, emigrated to America; settled in Newport with his family.
June 1938: Graduated Newport Catholic High school.
Jan 4, 1939: Enlisted U.S. Navy.
Jan – Mar 1939: Boot camp, Norfolk, Va.
Apr 1939 – Feb 1940: Assigned to destroyer USS Shaw in San Diego. Attended six-week “sound school” on destroyer base, following which volunteered for submarine duty (June). In October, sailed to Hawaiian Islands (port, Pearl Harbor), and operated among the various Hawaiian Islands.
(courtesy Walt Kraus)
May 1940: Six-week sail aboard troop transport USS Chaumont to China.
July 1940: Assigned to S-36 sub in Tsingtao, China.
Kraus is third from left (courtesy Walt Kraus)
Aug 1940 – Dec 2, 1941: Based in Manila, Philippines, aboard S-36. Following that, the sub was ordered to leave Manila, and anchor in Bolinao Harbor. When Pearl Harbor was bombed on Dec. 7, the S-36 moved from Bolinao into the Lingayen Gulf.
Dec 28, 1941: Pulled into Mariveles Harbor in Philippine province of Bataan and concealed itself.
New Year’s Day 1942: Calapan Harbor, Philippines, Walt’s S-36 sub blasted a hole in a 5,000-ton Japanese freighter with single torpedo to the great cheers of the sub’s crew.
Courtesy Walt Kraus/US Navy
Jan 15, 1942: Back out at sea, but unable to dive to deep depth because of interruption to the sub’s oil supply. A Japanese destroyer appeared over the horizon. The S-36 was able to hide, diving to 60 feet. The oil leak was mysteriously fixed, sub turned to attack; too late, 7 depth charges exploded directly overhead, blowing starboard lights, and all lights in engine room and the gyro compass failed. Life jackets issued – they had rotted out due to lack of use and no maintenance – and sailors prepared to man the deck guns and fight it out on surface, but it never came to pass.
Jan 20, 1942: Without guidance of its gyro compass, S-36 ran aground on Taka Bakang Reef in Makassar Straits. Efforts failed to extract it. Crew of 43 safely evacuated by Dutch merchant vessel. (Walt scored an S-36 souvenir he still has – a plaque commemorating first firing of engines and an engineering award for the most efficient vessel in her class, 1932-33.) Crew taken to island of Java in Indonesia for reassignment.
Mar 1942: Walt reassigned to the Snapper, newer class sub.
Courtesy Walt Kraus/US Navy
Apr 1942: Delivered 46 tons of food (mainly vegetables), to besieged island of Corregidor at entrance of Manila Bay.
Aug 27, 1943: Walt’s Snapper torpedoed and sank– stern-first — the Japanese troop transport-and-cargo ship, Tokai Maru, in Apra Harbor, Guam.
Sept 2, 1943: Snapper torpedoed and sank Japanese frigate, Mutsure, 85 nautical miles NNW of Truk Atoll (now Chuuk Lagoon) in Caroline Islands, with a ” down the throat shot” that completely blew off the bow. Also sank a freighter in the same engagement.
Oct 1943 to Aug 15, 1945 (V-J Day): Walt finished his WWII submarine service aboard the Pickerel and Cobbler, completing 11 wartime patrols.
Apr 1953: Commissioned as an ensign after completing OCS at Newport RI and served on the USS Sarda.
Feb 1969: Retired as Commander after more than 30 years of naval service.
Aug 1974: Married Ecuadorian Ketta Banda, whom he had met in Washington, D.C. They presently reside in Crescent Springs, and raised two children, Emily and Gretchen, who has three children (Walt and Ketta’s grandchildren), Charlotte, 14; Robbie, 12 and Frank, 8.
