James Carlile, a WWII veteran, looks back at a century of life

(KAMR/KCIT) — James Carlile recently turned 100 years old. The World War II veteran sat down with Nexstar’s KAMR to speak about his time in the U.S. Navy and share his stories.

“I was 17 on the 3rd of September 1942, and I was sworn into the Navy on September the 5th, ’42,” Carlile said.

He served in the Navy from September 1942 to May 1947 and served on the USS Farenholt and the USS Smalley.

“In September of ’43, we were attacked by over 100 Japanese planes, fighters, bombers, dive bombers, and torpedo bombers,” Carlile said. “We lost a destroyer, a tanker, they lost all planes, because what we didn’t get, the Marine fighter pilots got… We went to the Leyte Gulf in the Philippines, and we were there until after the B-29s bombed Nagasaki and Hiroshima.”

“Then our task force went out and patrolled the coast of Japan, a carrier task force, while the Missouri with MacArthur and Halsey went to Tokyo Bay to sign the papers to stop the war,” the veteran added.

Carlile also talked about some of the positions he held while serving.

“On the Farenholt, I was a deckhand. My battle station was to handle, and the same on the other ship was to handle the 5-inch gun. While on the Smalley, I transferred into the E-Division, which is engineering, and was in one of the fire rooms,” he continued. “We had two Babcock & Wilcox boilers…our job was to add in the burners or retract them, increase or decrease.”

The Navy veteran went on to tell a story about a rescue that he was a part of during his time in the military.

“We went to Pearl Harbor, from Pearl Harbor out to Ulithi, which is out in the South Pacific, based there. While there, got a summons that one of our destroyers got hit by a kamikaze off of Okinawa, so we steamed out there,” Carlile explained to Nexstar. “We got out there just in time to see the destroyer go up like this, stern first, but every man came off of there alive, which is a rarity, and we helped pick up survivors.”

He continued, talking about when the U.S. Navy pulled into Tokyo Bay and anchored.

“Tokyo was a deserted city. There was nobody out and about,” Carlile said. “The streets were bare, we could walk around, nothing was open, and nothing to do.”

This year marked the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II.

Carlile talked about reaching 100.

“I’m still mobile, I still dress myself, do my own laundry… I use a walker, a cane, I actually got two walkers, the one right here, or it’s right there, and then I got what I call my Cadillac walker,” he said. “It’s a convertible, it can become a wheelchair … I’m thankful for the years I’ve had, and I’m looking for whatever the lord has left for me.”

According to the Department of Veterans Affairs’ statistics, as of 2025, there are 45,418 living World War II veterans. That means it’s less than .5 percent of the 16.4 million Americans who served in the war.