"So soon may I follow,
When friendships decay,
And from Love's shining circle
The gems drop away.
When true hearts lie withered,
And fond ones are flown,
Oh! who would inhabit
This bleak world alone?"
---from 'The Last Rose of Summer' (1805) by the supernal Irish genius Thomas Moore alias Anacreon Moore (1779-1852)
Philip Frank Kantz aka Philip F. Kantz aka Philip Kantz aka Phil Kantz 057-14-4769, born Harlem Hospital, 506 Lenox Avenue, New York, New York 10037 14 July 1922; died Morrisania Hospital, 50 East 168th Street, Bronx, New York 10452-7929 4 October 1968.
Graduate of Incarnation School, 570 West 175th Street, New York, New York 10033-8026 and The High School of Commerce, 155 West 65th Street, New York, New York 10023-6905.
The unusual name "Frank" was chosen to honor "a family friend", otherwise unknown and forgotten.
He grew up surrounded by loving parents and sisters, supportive relatives sadly forgotten, magnificent teachers and accompanied by his felinicidal and bibulous dog Scout.
On 2 April 1941 he enlisted in the USMC and was given SN 308242.
On 8 November 1941 he sailed aboard the USS PORTER DD356 from Long Beach, California to TDy at Sixth Defense Battalion, Fleet Marine Barracks, Navy Yard, Pearl Harbor, Hawaii along with future combat buddies
PVT Roger L. Eaton
PVT Grover Cleveland Fennell, Jr. (1922-1955)
PVT Daniel Grace (Evergreen Conecuh County, Alabama 1900-?)
PVT Philip F. Kantz (1922-1968)
PVT George Lulek (1919-1992)
PVT George H. Parker
PVT Carl R. Reisenweaver (1923-1976)
PVT LeRoy D. Werley, Jr. (1919-2007)
PVT James T. Whitefield (1922-1997)
The orders were signed by LtCdr Frederick Irving Entwistle (1899-1977)
On 29 November 1941 Phil sailed on the USS REGULUS AK14 from Honolulu to Midway with:
SSG Clifford R. Smith
SGT Thomas Jefferson Eley, Sr. (1917-2005)
SGT Johny Blondel Joiner (1914-2010)
CPL John C. Brownson, Jr.
CPL Elwin D. Lipscomb (1919-2002)
CPL Robert L. Wood
PFC John D. Coleman
PFC Everett E. Higgins
PFC Frank A. Samuelson
PFC Richard C. Sturgis
PFC James R. Wallace
PVT Lester M. Bennett
PVT Roger L. Eaton
PVT Daniel Grace (Evergreen Conecuh County, Alabama 1900-?)
PVT Foster R. Hinson
PVT Philip F. Kantz (1922-1968)
PVT Eugene A. Osborne
PVT George H. Parker
PVT Carl R. Reisenweaver (1923-1976)
PVT Grover Cleveland Fennell, Jr. (1922-1955)
PVT George Lulek (1919-1992)
PVT LeRoy D. Werley, Jr. (1919-2007)
PVT James T. Whitefield (1922-1997)
PVT Ole R. Woods (1918-1953)
//NOTE: Daniel Grace USMC (Ret.) was mentioned in John Walter Lord, Jr.'s (1917-2002) "Incredible Victory: The Battle of Midway" (1980) and thanked for his personal recollections while serving in the Sixth Defense Battalion.//
USMC 1941-1945 Pacific Theatre (Battles of Midway, Tarawa, and perhaps Peleliu) with the 1st and 2nd Marine Divisions. In addition to small-unit amphibious assault tactics, he was trained as a radar operator, which means he probably held a security clearance of some sort.
While fighting in the Pacific Theatre, Philip Frank Kantz was witness to the following curious incident: after joint US-UK combat operations against Japanese forces on Betio, Tarawa Atoll, Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony (today the Republic of Kiribati), British soldiers hoisted the Union Jack on a beach. Enraged Americans demanded that it be hauled down. The two sides stood at gunpoint until a US officer intervened and prevented bloodshed.
An official history painted a different picture:
“The Marines on Betio conducted a joint flag-raising ceremony later that same morning. Two of the few surviving palm trees were selected as poles, but the Marines were hard put to find a British flag. Finally, Major Holland, the New Zealand officer who had proved so prophetic about the tides at Tarawa, produced a Union Jack. A field musician played the appropriate bugle calls; Marines all over the small island stood and saluted. Each could reckon the cost.”
---Colonel Joseph H. Alexander, USMC (Ret), ACROSS THE REEF: The Marine Assault of Tarawa History and Museums Division, Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps, Washington, D.C 1993 page 47
Immediately after the Battle of Tarawa, Phil was assigned to Graves Registration detail and noted that he had to pour a substance called "Forest Green" (not further identified anywhere; a disinfectant of some sort) on the American corpses.
He noted that he killed 70 Japanese Marines (formal name Special Naval Landing Forces (SNLF), (海軍特別陸戦隊 Kaigun Tokubetsu Rikusentai) consisting of 3rd Special Base Defense Force and the 7th Sasebo Special Naval Landing Force SNLF) in the assault.
NOTE: "Sasebo" derived from 'Sasebo Naval Arsenal' (佐世保海軍工廠 Sasebo kaigun kōshō?) one of four principal naval shipyards owned and operated by the Imperial Japanese Navy.
In one particularly hair-raising anecdote, Phil and a platoon-sized unit were repulsing a banzai (Kana: ばんぜい Kanji: 万歳) charge when the Americans ran out of ammo. An unidentified officer ordered a counterattack and the Marines waded into the enemy. Phil's M1 10" bayonet at the end of his .30 M1 Garand got caught in the rib cage of a Japanese soldier and bent, making it impossible to withdraw. An unidentified Marine with a .45 shot the half-dead Jap but so close to Phil's right ear that he was deaf for days.
Phil spent an R&R on a farm in New Zealand and declared it “the most beautiful place on earth.”
On 17 February 1944 he was noted on the USS SITULA AK-140 sailing from San Diego, California to Pearl Harbor with:
Lant Horton, Jr. SN 292121 rating: M.T.S. enlisted 1 December 1938 Portland, Oregon
Obie Horton SN 822 01 03 rating: StM2c enlisted 6 May 1943 Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (1922-2002)
Harold Alexander Huber SN 871 91 86 rating: SC3c enlisted 21 June 1943 Omaha, Nebraska
Philip F. Kantz SN 308242 rating: CPL enlisted 2 April 1941 New York, new York
Harold A. Kemmerer SN 838357 rating: PFC enlisted 20 March 1943 or 5 April 1943 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (1925-1989)
William Edward Kildoo SN 895 70 37 rating: Flc (MM) enlisted 17 August 1943 Erie, Pennsylvania (1921-1980)
Bert Charles Lemmon SN 368 41 46 rating: Slc enlisted unknown
Donald Eugene MacNeil SN 654 11 29 rating: WT2c enlisted 16 December 1941 Portland, Oregon
Julian Garcia Manrique SN 625 14 62 rating: Slc enlisted 17 July 1942 Houston, Texas
Albert R. Miller SN 473639 rating: SGT enlisted 23 October 1942 New York, New York
Byron Monroe Morton, Jr. SN 861694 rating: CPL enlisted 3 July 1943 Springfield, Massachusetts (1924-2013)
Robert J. Mulvey SN 539397 rating: PFC enlisted 1 July 1943 Boston, Massachusetts
Leonard B. Nelson SN 527491 rating: CPL enlisted 18 June 1943 Springfield, Massachusetts
Adolph Herman Oltmann SN 347 13 94 rating: F2c enlisted 3 December 1942 Little Rock, Arkansas (1924-2016)
William M. O'Melia SN 879872 rating: CPL enlisted 22 June 1943 Boston, Massachusetts
During transit of an unspecified airport in Hawaii, Phil went to drink from a water fountain and found that it dispensed---pineapple juice!
Married Marcella Marie Kantz née Shine (1929-2004) in 1950, Bronx County marriage license 2547.
After the War, Phil settled into a good job with State Elevator Co., Bronx, New York, now Tri-State Elevator Co., 511 Fifth Avenue, Pelham, New York 10803-1205 as an elevator mechanic.
Phil was a poetry lover with a fine voice for the lost art of declamation poetry; by the late 1930s he had memorized dozens of works for formal public recitation including 'The Charge of the Light Brigade', 'The Congo', 'The Cremation of Sam McGee', 'The Green Eye of the Yellow God', 'The Highwayman', 'Lochinvar', 'The Raven', 'Woodman, Spare that Tree', 'The Wreck of the Hesperus', and his personal favorite, 'Horatio at the Bridge'.
The age, the art and the man are long since vanished, to the loss of us all.
He was a fine amateur artist (alas, only two or three of his works survive), handyman, tinkerer, carpenter, and friend to all: from every Jewish merchant on the Heights to the lively ethnic crew at the Nippon Club (located in those days at 1 Riverside Drive at 72nd Street near Riverside Park, New York, New York 10023) who loved seeing him show up to fix the elevators.
"It's the SPLING, Mr. Phil! The SPLING!"
"Could it be the SPLING?" Phil replied, enjoying the fact that the Japanese language has only one liquid consonant, while English is gifted with two.
His wake at McGonnell Funeral Home, 1295 St Nicholas Avenue, New York, New York 10033 was, according to the proprietor, "the best attended in years."
He was killed when a police vehicle driven by a NYPD officer, one Joseph Francis Melnicki, Sr. (1931-1973) hit him under the 3rd Avenue El in the AoR of the 42nd Precinct, 830 Washington Avenue, Bronx, New York 10451.
Ironically, Melnicki was a Korean War hero---a Silver Star awardee.
FAMOUS QUOTES:
"All it needs is bugs."
(in rē the infamous leafy green wallpaper in the "spare room")
"An Egyptian one-eyed sandwich."
"Gloriosky, Zero!"
"He who who he."
"I'm good at copying paintings, but not too good at doing originals."
"It's cold enough to freeze the nose off a brass monkey."
"I've got the ague, woman!"
"Kilroy was here."
"Never paint brick."
"Never point a gun at somebody unless you're gonna kill him."
"Snoop the Spook."
"Stand back and let the man work."
The only men I saw on the beach with me were New Yorkers and Southerners."
"The poor guy looks like a taxicab with its doors open."
When friendships decay,
And from Love's shining circle
The gems drop away.
When true hearts lie withered,
And fond ones are flown,
Oh! who would inhabit
This bleak world alone?"
---from 'The Last Rose of Summer' (1805) by the supernal Irish genius Thomas Moore alias Anacreon Moore (1779-1852)
Philip Frank Kantz aka Philip F. Kantz aka Philip Kantz aka Phil Kantz 057-14-4769, born Harlem Hospital, 506 Lenox Avenue, New York, New York 10037 14 July 1922; died Morrisania Hospital, 50 East 168th Street, Bronx, New York 10452-7929 4 October 1968.
Graduate of Incarnation School, 570 West 175th Street, New York, New York 10033-8026 and The High School of Commerce, 155 West 65th Street, New York, New York 10023-6905.
The unusual name "Frank" was chosen to honor "a family friend", otherwise unknown and forgotten.
He grew up surrounded by loving parents and sisters, supportive relatives sadly forgotten, magnificent teachers and accompanied by his felinicidal and bibulous dog Scout.
On 2 April 1941 he enlisted in the USMC and was given SN 308242.
On 8 November 1941 he sailed aboard the USS PORTER DD356 from Long Beach, California to TDy at Sixth Defense Battalion, Fleet Marine Barracks, Navy Yard, Pearl Harbor, Hawaii along with future combat buddies
PVT Roger L. Eaton
PVT Grover Cleveland Fennell, Jr. (1922-1955)
PVT Daniel Grace (Evergreen Conecuh County, Alabama 1900-?)
PVT Philip F. Kantz (1922-1968)
PVT George Lulek (1919-1992)
PVT George H. Parker
PVT Carl R. Reisenweaver (1923-1976)
PVT LeRoy D. Werley, Jr. (1919-2007)
PVT James T. Whitefield (1922-1997)
The orders were signed by LtCdr Frederick Irving Entwistle (1899-1977)
On 29 November 1941 Phil sailed on the USS REGULUS AK14 from Honolulu to Midway with:
SSG Clifford R. Smith
SGT Thomas Jefferson Eley, Sr. (1917-2005)
SGT Johny Blondel Joiner (1914-2010)
CPL John C. Brownson, Jr.
CPL Elwin D. Lipscomb (1919-2002)
CPL Robert L. Wood
PFC John D. Coleman
PFC Everett E. Higgins
PFC Frank A. Samuelson
PFC Richard C. Sturgis
PFC James R. Wallace
PVT Lester M. Bennett
PVT Roger L. Eaton
PVT Daniel Grace (Evergreen Conecuh County, Alabama 1900-?)
PVT Foster R. Hinson
PVT Philip F. Kantz (1922-1968)
PVT Eugene A. Osborne
PVT George H. Parker
PVT Carl R. Reisenweaver (1923-1976)
PVT Grover Cleveland Fennell, Jr. (1922-1955)
PVT George Lulek (1919-1992)
PVT LeRoy D. Werley, Jr. (1919-2007)
PVT James T. Whitefield (1922-1997)
PVT Ole R. Woods (1918-1953)
//NOTE: Daniel Grace USMC (Ret.) was mentioned in John Walter Lord, Jr.'s (1917-2002) "Incredible Victory: The Battle of Midway" (1980) and thanked for his personal recollections while serving in the Sixth Defense Battalion.//
USMC 1941-1945 Pacific Theatre (Battles of Midway, Tarawa, and perhaps Peleliu) with the 1st and 2nd Marine Divisions. In addition to small-unit amphibious assault tactics, he was trained as a radar operator, which means he probably held a security clearance of some sort.
While fighting in the Pacific Theatre, Philip Frank Kantz was witness to the following curious incident: after joint US-UK combat operations against Japanese forces on Betio, Tarawa Atoll, Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony (today the Republic of Kiribati), British soldiers hoisted the Union Jack on a beach. Enraged Americans demanded that it be hauled down. The two sides stood at gunpoint until a US officer intervened and prevented bloodshed.
An official history painted a different picture:
“The Marines on Betio conducted a joint flag-raising ceremony later that same morning. Two of the few surviving palm trees were selected as poles, but the Marines were hard put to find a British flag. Finally, Major Holland, the New Zealand officer who had proved so prophetic about the tides at Tarawa, produced a Union Jack. A field musician played the appropriate bugle calls; Marines all over the small island stood and saluted. Each could reckon the cost.”
---Colonel Joseph H. Alexander, USMC (Ret), ACROSS THE REEF: The Marine Assault of Tarawa History and Museums Division, Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps, Washington, D.C 1993 page 47
Immediately after the Battle of Tarawa, Phil was assigned to Graves Registration detail and noted that he had to pour a substance called "Forest Green" (not further identified anywhere; a disinfectant of some sort) on the American corpses.
He noted that he killed 70 Japanese Marines (formal name Special Naval Landing Forces (SNLF), (海軍特別陸戦隊 Kaigun Tokubetsu Rikusentai) consisting of 3rd Special Base Defense Force and the 7th Sasebo Special Naval Landing Force SNLF) in the assault.
NOTE: "Sasebo" derived from 'Sasebo Naval Arsenal' (佐世保海軍工廠 Sasebo kaigun kōshō?) one of four principal naval shipyards owned and operated by the Imperial Japanese Navy.
In one particularly hair-raising anecdote, Phil and a platoon-sized unit were repulsing a banzai (Kana: ばんぜい Kanji: 万歳) charge when the Americans ran out of ammo. An unidentified officer ordered a counterattack and the Marines waded into the enemy. Phil's M1 10" bayonet at the end of his .30 M1 Garand got caught in the rib cage of a Japanese soldier and bent, making it impossible to withdraw. An unidentified Marine with a .45 shot the half-dead Jap but so close to Phil's right ear that he was deaf for days.
Phil spent an R&R on a farm in New Zealand and declared it “the most beautiful place on earth.”
On 17 February 1944 he was noted on the USS SITULA AK-140 sailing from San Diego, California to Pearl Harbor with:
Lant Horton, Jr. SN 292121 rating: M.T.S. enlisted 1 December 1938 Portland, Oregon
Obie Horton SN 822 01 03 rating: StM2c enlisted 6 May 1943 Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (1922-2002)
Harold Alexander Huber SN 871 91 86 rating: SC3c enlisted 21 June 1943 Omaha, Nebraska
Philip F. Kantz SN 308242 rating: CPL enlisted 2 April 1941 New York, new York
Harold A. Kemmerer SN 838357 rating: PFC enlisted 20 March 1943 or 5 April 1943 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (1925-1989)
William Edward Kildoo SN 895 70 37 rating: Flc (MM) enlisted 17 August 1943 Erie, Pennsylvania (1921-1980)
Bert Charles Lemmon SN 368 41 46 rating: Slc enlisted unknown
Donald Eugene MacNeil SN 654 11 29 rating: WT2c enlisted 16 December 1941 Portland, Oregon
Julian Garcia Manrique SN 625 14 62 rating: Slc enlisted 17 July 1942 Houston, Texas
Albert R. Miller SN 473639 rating: SGT enlisted 23 October 1942 New York, New York
Byron Monroe Morton, Jr. SN 861694 rating: CPL enlisted 3 July 1943 Springfield, Massachusetts (1924-2013)
Robert J. Mulvey SN 539397 rating: PFC enlisted 1 July 1943 Boston, Massachusetts
Leonard B. Nelson SN 527491 rating: CPL enlisted 18 June 1943 Springfield, Massachusetts
Adolph Herman Oltmann SN 347 13 94 rating: F2c enlisted 3 December 1942 Little Rock, Arkansas (1924-2016)
William M. O'Melia SN 879872 rating: CPL enlisted 22 June 1943 Boston, Massachusetts
During transit of an unspecified airport in Hawaii, Phil went to drink from a water fountain and found that it dispensed---pineapple juice!
Married Marcella Marie Kantz née Shine (1929-2004) in 1950, Bronx County marriage license 2547.
After the War, Phil settled into a good job with State Elevator Co., Bronx, New York, now Tri-State Elevator Co., 511 Fifth Avenue, Pelham, New York 10803-1205 as an elevator mechanic.
Phil was a poetry lover with a fine voice for the lost art of declamation poetry; by the late 1930s he had memorized dozens of works for formal public recitation including 'The Charge of the Light Brigade', 'The Congo', 'The Cremation of Sam McGee', 'The Green Eye of the Yellow God', 'The Highwayman', 'Lochinvar', 'The Raven', 'Woodman, Spare that Tree', 'The Wreck of the Hesperus', and his personal favorite, 'Horatio at the Bridge'.
The age, the art and the man are long since vanished, to the loss of us all.
He was a fine amateur artist (alas, only two or three of his works survive), handyman, tinkerer, carpenter, and friend to all: from every Jewish merchant on the Heights to the lively ethnic crew at the Nippon Club (located in those days at 1 Riverside Drive at 72nd Street near Riverside Park, New York, New York 10023) who loved seeing him show up to fix the elevators.
"It's the SPLING, Mr. Phil! The SPLING!"
"Could it be the SPLING?" Phil replied, enjoying the fact that the Japanese language has only one liquid consonant, while English is gifted with two.
His wake at McGonnell Funeral Home, 1295 St Nicholas Avenue, New York, New York 10033 was, according to the proprietor, "the best attended in years."
He was killed when a police vehicle driven by a NYPD officer, one Joseph Francis Melnicki, Sr. (1931-1973) hit him under the 3rd Avenue El in the AoR of the 42nd Precinct, 830 Washington Avenue, Bronx, New York 10451.
Ironically, Melnicki was a Korean War hero---a Silver Star awardee.
FAMOUS QUOTES:
"All it needs is bugs."
(in rē the infamous leafy green wallpaper in the "spare room")
"An Egyptian one-eyed sandwich."
"Gloriosky, Zero!"
"He who who he."
"I'm good at copying paintings, but not too good at doing originals."
"It's cold enough to freeze the nose off a brass monkey."
"I've got the ague, woman!"
"Kilroy was here."
"Never paint brick."
"Never point a gun at somebody unless you're gonna kill him."
"Snoop the Spook."
"Stand back and let the man work."
The only men I saw on the beach with me were New Yorkers and Southerners."
"The poor guy looks like a taxicab with its doors open."
"So soon may I follow,
When friendships decay,
And from Love's shining circle
The gems drop away.
When true hearts lie withered,
And fond ones are flown,
Oh! who would inhabit
This bleak world alone?"
---from 'The Last Rose of Summer' (1805) by the supernal Irish genius Thomas Moore alias Anacreon Moore (1779-1852)
Philip Frank Kantz aka Philip F. Kantz aka Philip Kantz aka Phil Kantz 057-14-4769, born Harlem Hospital, 506 Lenox Avenue, New York, New York 10037 14 July 1922; died Morrisania Hospital, 50 East 168th Street, Bronx, New York 10452-7929 4 October 1968.
Graduate of Incarnation School, 570 West 175th Street, New York, New York 10033-8026 and The High School of Commerce, 155 West 65th Street, New York, New York 10023-6905.
The unusual name "Frank" was chosen to honor "a family friend", otherwise unknown and forgotten.
He grew up surrounded by loving parents and sisters, supportive relatives sadly forgotten, magnificent teachers and accompanied by his felinicidal and bibulous dog Scout.
On 2 April 1941 he enlisted in the USMC and was given SN 308242.
On 8 November 1941 he sailed aboard the USS PORTER DD356 from Long Beach, California to TDy at Sixth Defense Battalion, Fleet Marine Barracks, Navy Yard, Pearl Harbor, Hawaii along with future combat buddies
PVT Roger L. Eaton
PVT Grover Cleveland Fennell, Jr. (1922-1955)
PVT Daniel Grace (Evergreen Conecuh County, Alabama 1900-?)
PVT Philip F. Kantz (1922-1968)
PVT George Lulek (1919-1992)
PVT George H. Parker
PVT Carl R. Reisenweaver (1923-1976)
PVT LeRoy D. Werley, Jr. (1919-2007)
PVT James T. Whitefield (1922-1997)
The orders were signed by LtCdr Frederick Irving Entwistle (1899-1977)
On 29 November 1941 Phil sailed on the USS REGULUS AK14 from Honolulu to Midway with:
SSG Clifford R. Smith
SGT Thomas Jefferson Eley, Sr. (1917-2005)
SGT Johny Blondel Joiner (1914-2010)
CPL John C. Brownson, Jr.
CPL Elwin D. Lipscomb (1919-2002)
CPL Robert L. Wood
PFC John D. Coleman
PFC Everett E. Higgins
PFC Frank A. Samuelson
PFC Richard C. Sturgis
PFC James R. Wallace
PVT Lester M. Bennett
PVT Roger L. Eaton
PVT Daniel Grace (Evergreen Conecuh County, Alabama 1900-?)
PVT Foster R. Hinson
PVT Philip F. Kantz (1922-1968)
PVT Eugene A. Osborne
PVT George H. Parker
PVT Carl R. Reisenweaver (1923-1976)
PVT Grover Cleveland Fennell, Jr. (1922-1955)
PVT George Lulek (1919-1992)
PVT LeRoy D. Werley, Jr. (1919-2007)
PVT James T. Whitefield (1922-1997)
PVT Ole R. Woods (1918-1953)
//NOTE: Daniel Grace USMC (Ret.) was mentioned in John Walter Lord, Jr.'s (1917-2002) "Incredible Victory: The Battle of Midway" (1980) and thanked for his personal recollections while serving in the Sixth Defense Battalion.//
USMC 1941-1945 Pacific Theatre (Battles of Midway, Tarawa, and perhaps Peleliu) with the 1st and 2nd Marine Divisions. In addition to small-unit amphibious assault tactics, he was trained as a radar operator, which means he probably held a security clearance of some sort.
While fighting in the Pacific Theatre, Philip Frank Kantz was witness to the following curious incident: after joint US-UK combat operations against Japanese forces on Betio, Tarawa Atoll, Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony (today the Republic of Kiribati), British soldiers hoisted the Union Jack on a beach. Enraged Americans demanded that it be hauled down. The two sides stood at gunpoint until a US officer intervened and prevented bloodshed.
An official history painted a different picture:
“The Marines on Betio conducted a joint flag-raising ceremony later that same morning. Two of the few surviving palm trees were selected as poles, but the Marines were hard put to find a British flag. Finally, Major Holland, the New Zealand officer who had proved so prophetic about the tides at Tarawa, produced a Union Jack. A field musician played the appropriate bugle calls; Marines all over the small island stood and saluted. Each could reckon the cost.”
---Colonel Joseph H. Alexander, USMC (Ret), ACROSS THE REEF: The Marine Assault of Tarawa History and Museums Division, Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps, Washington, D.C 1993 page 47
Immediately after the Battle of Tarawa, Phil was assigned to Graves Registration detail and noted that he had to pour a substance called "Forest Green" (not further identified anywhere; a disinfectant of some sort) on the American corpses.
He noted that he killed 70 Japanese Marines (formal name Special Naval Landing Forces (SNLF), (海軍特別陸戦隊 Kaigun Tokubetsu Rikusentai) consisting of 3rd Special Base Defense Force and the 7th Sasebo Special Naval Landing Force SNLF) in the assault.
NOTE: "Sasebo" derived from 'Sasebo Naval Arsenal' (佐世保海軍工廠 Sasebo kaigun kōshō?) one of four principal naval shipyards owned and operated by the Imperial Japanese Navy.
In one particularly hair-raising anecdote, Phil and a platoon-sized unit were repulsing a banzai (Kana: ばんぜい Kanji: 万歳) charge when the Americans ran out of ammo. An unidentified officer ordered a counterattack and the Marines waded into the enemy. Phil's M1 10" bayonet at the end of his .30 M1 Garand got caught in the rib cage of a Japanese soldier and bent, making it impossible to withdraw. An unidentified Marine with a .45 shot the half-dead Jap but so close to Phil's right ear that he was deaf for days.
Phil spent an R&R on a farm in New Zealand and declared it “the most beautiful place on earth.”
On 17 February 1944 he was noted on the USS SITULA AK-140 sailing from San Diego, California to Pearl Harbor with:
Lant Horton, Jr. SN 292121 rating: M.T.S. enlisted 1 December 1938 Portland, Oregon
Obie Horton SN 822 01 03 rating: StM2c enlisted 6 May 1943 Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (1922-2002)
Harold Alexander Huber SN 871 91 86 rating: SC3c enlisted 21 June 1943 Omaha, Nebraska
Philip F. Kantz SN 308242 rating: CPL enlisted 2 April 1941 New York, new York
Harold A. Kemmerer SN 838357 rating: PFC enlisted 20 March 1943 or 5 April 1943 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (1925-1989)
William Edward Kildoo SN 895 70 37 rating: Flc (MM) enlisted 17 August 1943 Erie, Pennsylvania (1921-1980)
Bert Charles Lemmon SN 368 41 46 rating: Slc enlisted unknown
Donald Eugene MacNeil SN 654 11 29 rating: WT2c enlisted 16 December 1941 Portland, Oregon
Julian Garcia Manrique SN 625 14 62 rating: Slc enlisted 17 July 1942 Houston, Texas
Albert R. Miller SN 473639 rating: SGT enlisted 23 October 1942 New York, New York
Byron Monroe Morton, Jr. SN 861694 rating: CPL enlisted 3 July 1943 Springfield, Massachusetts (1924-2013)
Robert J. Mulvey SN 539397 rating: PFC enlisted 1 July 1943 Boston, Massachusetts
Leonard B. Nelson SN 527491 rating: CPL enlisted 18 June 1943 Springfield, Massachusetts
Adolph Herman Oltmann SN 347 13 94 rating: F2c enlisted 3 December 1942 Little Rock, Arkansas (1924-2016)
William M. O'Melia SN 879872 rating: CPL enlisted 22 June 1943 Boston, Massachusetts
During transit of an unspecified airport in Hawaii, Phil went to drink from a water fountain and found that it dispensed---pineapple juice!
Married Marcella Marie Kantz née Shine (1929-2004) in 1950, Bronx County marriage license 2547.
After the War, Phil settled into a good job with State Elevator Co., Bronx, New York, now Tri-State Elevator Co., 511 Fifth Avenue, Pelham, New York 10803-1205 as an elevator mechanic.
Phil was a poetry lover with a fine voice for the lost art of declamation poetry; by the late 1930s he had memorized dozens of works for formal public recitation including 'The Charge of the Light Brigade', 'The Congo', 'The Cremation of Sam McGee', 'The Green Eye of the Yellow God', 'The Highwayman', 'Lochinvar', 'The Raven', 'Woodman, Spare that Tree', 'The Wreck of the Hesperus', and his personal favorite, 'Horatio at the Bridge'.
The age, the art and the man are long since vanished, to the loss of us all.
He was a fine amateur artist (alas, only two or three of his works survive), handyman, tinkerer, carpenter, and friend to all: from every Jewish merchant on the Heights to the lively ethnic crew at the Nippon Club (located in those days at 1 Riverside Drive at 72nd Street near Riverside Park, New York, New York 10023) who loved seeing him show up to fix the elevators.
"It's the SPLING, Mr. Phil! The SPLING!"
"Could it be the SPLING?" Phil replied, enjoying the fact that the Japanese language has only one liquid consonant, while English is gifted with two.
His wake at McGonnell Funeral Home, 1295 St Nicholas Avenue, New York, New York 10033 was, according to the proprietor, "the best attended in years."
He was killed when a police vehicle driven by a NYPD officer, one Joseph Francis Melnicki, Sr. (1931-1973) hit him under the 3rd Avenue El in the AoR of the 42nd Precinct, 830 Washington Avenue, Bronx, New York 10451.
Ironically, Melnicki was a Korean War hero---a Silver Star awardee.
FAMOUS QUOTES:
"All it needs is bugs."
(in rē the infamous leafy green wallpaper in the "spare room")
"An Egyptian one-eyed sandwich."
"Gloriosky, Zero!"
"He who who he."
"I'm good at copying paintings, but not too good at doing originals."
"It's cold enough to freeze the nose off a brass monkey."
"I've got the ague, woman!"
"Kilroy was here."
"Never paint brick."
"Never point a gun at somebody unless you're gonna kill him."
"Snoop the Spook."
"Stand back and let the man work."
The only men I saw on the beach with me were New Yorkers and Southerners."
"The poor guy looks like a taxicab with its doors open."
When friendships decay,
And from Love's shining circle
The gems drop away.
When true hearts lie withered,
And fond ones are flown,
Oh! who would inhabit
This bleak world alone?"
---from 'The Last Rose of Summer' (1805) by the supernal Irish genius Thomas Moore alias Anacreon Moore (1779-1852)
Philip Frank Kantz aka Philip F. Kantz aka Philip Kantz aka Phil Kantz 057-14-4769, born Harlem Hospital, 506 Lenox Avenue, New York, New York 10037 14 July 1922; died Morrisania Hospital, 50 East 168th Street, Bronx, New York 10452-7929 4 October 1968.
Graduate of Incarnation School, 570 West 175th Street, New York, New York 10033-8026 and The High School of Commerce, 155 West 65th Street, New York, New York 10023-6905.
The unusual name "Frank" was chosen to honor "a family friend", otherwise unknown and forgotten.
He grew up surrounded by loving parents and sisters, supportive relatives sadly forgotten, magnificent teachers and accompanied by his felinicidal and bibulous dog Scout.
On 2 April 1941 he enlisted in the USMC and was given SN 308242.
On 8 November 1941 he sailed aboard the USS PORTER DD356 from Long Beach, California to TDy at Sixth Defense Battalion, Fleet Marine Barracks, Navy Yard, Pearl Harbor, Hawaii along with future combat buddies
PVT Roger L. Eaton
PVT Grover Cleveland Fennell, Jr. (1922-1955)
PVT Daniel Grace (Evergreen Conecuh County, Alabama 1900-?)
PVT Philip F. Kantz (1922-1968)
PVT George Lulek (1919-1992)
PVT George H. Parker
PVT Carl R. Reisenweaver (1923-1976)
PVT LeRoy D. Werley, Jr. (1919-2007)
PVT James T. Whitefield (1922-1997)
The orders were signed by LtCdr Frederick Irving Entwistle (1899-1977)
On 29 November 1941 Phil sailed on the USS REGULUS AK14 from Honolulu to Midway with:
SSG Clifford R. Smith
SGT Thomas Jefferson Eley, Sr. (1917-2005)
SGT Johny Blondel Joiner (1914-2010)
CPL John C. Brownson, Jr.
CPL Elwin D. Lipscomb (1919-2002)
CPL Robert L. Wood
PFC John D. Coleman
PFC Everett E. Higgins
PFC Frank A. Samuelson
PFC Richard C. Sturgis
PFC James R. Wallace
PVT Lester M. Bennett
PVT Roger L. Eaton
PVT Daniel Grace (Evergreen Conecuh County, Alabama 1900-?)
PVT Foster R. Hinson
PVT Philip F. Kantz (1922-1968)
PVT Eugene A. Osborne
PVT George H. Parker
PVT Carl R. Reisenweaver (1923-1976)
PVT Grover Cleveland Fennell, Jr. (1922-1955)
PVT George Lulek (1919-1992)
PVT LeRoy D. Werley, Jr. (1919-2007)
PVT James T. Whitefield (1922-1997)
PVT Ole R. Woods (1918-1953)
//NOTE: Daniel Grace USMC (Ret.) was mentioned in John Walter Lord, Jr.'s (1917-2002) "Incredible Victory: The Battle of Midway" (1980) and thanked for his personal recollections while serving in the Sixth Defense Battalion.//
USMC 1941-1945 Pacific Theatre (Battles of Midway, Tarawa, and perhaps Peleliu) with the 1st and 2nd Marine Divisions. In addition to small-unit amphibious assault tactics, he was trained as a radar operator, which means he probably held a security clearance of some sort.
While fighting in the Pacific Theatre, Philip Frank Kantz was witness to the following curious incident: after joint US-UK combat operations against Japanese forces on Betio, Tarawa Atoll, Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony (today the Republic of Kiribati), British soldiers hoisted the Union Jack on a beach. Enraged Americans demanded that it be hauled down. The two sides stood at gunpoint until a US officer intervened and prevented bloodshed.
An official history painted a different picture:
“The Marines on Betio conducted a joint flag-raising ceremony later that same morning. Two of the few surviving palm trees were selected as poles, but the Marines were hard put to find a British flag. Finally, Major Holland, the New Zealand officer who had proved so prophetic about the tides at Tarawa, produced a Union Jack. A field musician played the appropriate bugle calls; Marines all over the small island stood and saluted. Each could reckon the cost.”
---Colonel Joseph H. Alexander, USMC (Ret), ACROSS THE REEF: The Marine Assault of Tarawa History and Museums Division, Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps, Washington, D.C 1993 page 47
Immediately after the Battle of Tarawa, Phil was assigned to Graves Registration detail and noted that he had to pour a substance called "Forest Green" (not further identified anywhere; a disinfectant of some sort) on the American corpses.
He noted that he killed 70 Japanese Marines (formal name Special Naval Landing Forces (SNLF), (海軍特別陸戦隊 Kaigun Tokubetsu Rikusentai) consisting of 3rd Special Base Defense Force and the 7th Sasebo Special Naval Landing Force SNLF) in the assault.
NOTE: "Sasebo" derived from 'Sasebo Naval Arsenal' (佐世保海軍工廠 Sasebo kaigun kōshō?) one of four principal naval shipyards owned and operated by the Imperial Japanese Navy.
In one particularly hair-raising anecdote, Phil and a platoon-sized unit were repulsing a banzai (Kana: ばんぜい Kanji: 万歳) charge when the Americans ran out of ammo. An unidentified officer ordered a counterattack and the Marines waded into the enemy. Phil's M1 10" bayonet at the end of his .30 M1 Garand got caught in the rib cage of a Japanese soldier and bent, making it impossible to withdraw. An unidentified Marine with a .45 shot the half-dead Jap but so close to Phil's right ear that he was deaf for days.
Phil spent an R&R on a farm in New Zealand and declared it “the most beautiful place on earth.”
On 17 February 1944 he was noted on the USS SITULA AK-140 sailing from San Diego, California to Pearl Harbor with:
Lant Horton, Jr. SN 292121 rating: M.T.S. enlisted 1 December 1938 Portland, Oregon
Obie Horton SN 822 01 03 rating: StM2c enlisted 6 May 1943 Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (1922-2002)
Harold Alexander Huber SN 871 91 86 rating: SC3c enlisted 21 June 1943 Omaha, Nebraska
Philip F. Kantz SN 308242 rating: CPL enlisted 2 April 1941 New York, new York
Harold A. Kemmerer SN 838357 rating: PFC enlisted 20 March 1943 or 5 April 1943 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (1925-1989)
William Edward Kildoo SN 895 70 37 rating: Flc (MM) enlisted 17 August 1943 Erie, Pennsylvania (1921-1980)
Bert Charles Lemmon SN 368 41 46 rating: Slc enlisted unknown
Donald Eugene MacNeil SN 654 11 29 rating: WT2c enlisted 16 December 1941 Portland, Oregon
Julian Garcia Manrique SN 625 14 62 rating: Slc enlisted 17 July 1942 Houston, Texas
Albert R. Miller SN 473639 rating: SGT enlisted 23 October 1942 New York, New York
Byron Monroe Morton, Jr. SN 861694 rating: CPL enlisted 3 July 1943 Springfield, Massachusetts (1924-2013)
Robert J. Mulvey SN 539397 rating: PFC enlisted 1 July 1943 Boston, Massachusetts
Leonard B. Nelson SN 527491 rating: CPL enlisted 18 June 1943 Springfield, Massachusetts
Adolph Herman Oltmann SN 347 13 94 rating: F2c enlisted 3 December 1942 Little Rock, Arkansas (1924-2016)
William M. O'Melia SN 879872 rating: CPL enlisted 22 June 1943 Boston, Massachusetts
During transit of an unspecified airport in Hawaii, Phil went to drink from a water fountain and found that it dispensed---pineapple juice!
Married Marcella Marie Kantz née Shine (1929-2004) in 1950, Bronx County marriage license 2547.
After the War, Phil settled into a good job with State Elevator Co., Bronx, New York, now Tri-State Elevator Co., 511 Fifth Avenue, Pelham, New York 10803-1205 as an elevator mechanic.
Phil was a poetry lover with a fine voice for the lost art of declamation poetry; by the late 1930s he had memorized dozens of works for formal public recitation including 'The Charge of the Light Brigade', 'The Congo', 'The Cremation of Sam McGee', 'The Green Eye of the Yellow God', 'The Highwayman', 'Lochinvar', 'The Raven', 'Woodman, Spare that Tree', 'The Wreck of the Hesperus', and his personal favorite, 'Horatio at the Bridge'.
The age, the art and the man are long since vanished, to the loss of us all.
He was a fine amateur artist (alas, only two or three of his works survive), handyman, tinkerer, carpenter, and friend to all: from every Jewish merchant on the Heights to the lively ethnic crew at the Nippon Club (located in those days at 1 Riverside Drive at 72nd Street near Riverside Park, New York, New York 10023) who loved seeing him show up to fix the elevators.
"It's the SPLING, Mr. Phil! The SPLING!"
"Could it be the SPLING?" Phil replied, enjoying the fact that the Japanese language has only one liquid consonant, while English is gifted with two.
His wake at McGonnell Funeral Home, 1295 St Nicholas Avenue, New York, New York 10033 was, according to the proprietor, "the best attended in years."
He was killed when a police vehicle driven by a NYPD officer, one Joseph Francis Melnicki, Sr. (1931-1973) hit him under the 3rd Avenue El in the AoR of the 42nd Precinct, 830 Washington Avenue, Bronx, New York 10451.
Ironically, Melnicki was a Korean War hero---a Silver Star awardee.
FAMOUS QUOTES:
"All it needs is bugs."
(in rē the infamous leafy green wallpaper in the "spare room")
"An Egyptian one-eyed sandwich."
"Gloriosky, Zero!"
"He who who he."
"I'm good at copying paintings, but not too good at doing originals."
"It's cold enough to freeze the nose off a brass monkey."
"I've got the ague, woman!"
"Kilroy was here."
"Never paint brick."
"Never point a gun at somebody unless you're gonna kill him."
"Snoop the Spook."
"Stand back and let the man work."
The only men I saw on the beach with me were New Yorkers and Southerners."
"The poor guy looks like a taxicab with its doors open."
Bio by: Udo
Inscription
(outlined Latin cross)
PHILIP F
KANTZ
NEW YORK
SGT
US MARINE CORPS
WORLD WAR II
JUL 14 1922
OCT 4 1968
Gravesite Details
Upright headstone white marble, 42" x 13" x 4", weight approx. 230lbs.
Family Members
Children
