At Sea

Continuing my narative, we headed for Panama Canal. Now the ithsmus of Panama is twisted, so that the Pacific side is actually East of the Atlantic side! On one side of the ithsmus is Panama City, and on the other side is Balboa. I remember writing a letter describing perhaps Balboa. The airport is tucked in between a couple of mountains. I did get shore leave I think in Panama City. I remember going to a juice bar for a fruit drink, and trying out my Spanish. The people behind the counter were surprised and impressed.

I remember meeting a guy in U.S. uniform there. He was from Puerto Rico, and could not be sent to the war zone (because he was from Puerto Rico).

Calvin Larson and I were assigned Shore Patrol duty one night at a whore house. There was a live orchestra there, and sawdust on the floor, and I remember one of the orchestra members spitting on the floor. Our instructions were, "don't take anything to drink" I got exceedingly thirsty, and asked for a glass of water. Larson scolded me for this. There were no incidents.

We passed through the canal on a sunny Sunday afternoon. I looked up on a hillside and saw our sister ship, the USS Oklahoma City. She looked out of place up there. We also went past the original French effort at a canal, which was pointed out to us over the PA system. This really was like a tour at this point. At one end of the canal we passed the U.S.S. Franklin, on the way to the East Coast. She was a floating wreck, but still able to make good headway. She had taken a hit in one of the magazines, with just terrible damage. They never did fix her up, but she is now, still I believe, a floating museum somewhere.

Once we got into the Pacific, we headed for Pearl Harbor for final outfitting, refuling, etc. On the way, we squared off with our sister ship, the USS Oklahoma City, putting 10,000 yards between us, and shot at each other's wake using a 3 degree offset.

On the way, on shortwave we listened to the Free French Radio in Brazzaville, French Equatorial Africa. Also we listed to Tokyo Rose.

Eventually we reached Hawaii, and pulled into Pearl Harbor. As part of the "All Hands", I helped load big ammunition shells. We got final installation of some of our radar. At times we would put out to sea, and return. We were in Hawaiian waters for about a month. I seem to recall having a total of two afternoons ashore. On one of my excursions I bought a Swiss wrist watch with a date hand. I grew very accustomed to it; the date hand was red and made one revolution per month. I would glance at my watch, and mentally say to myself, "wow, it is half past May". I've never been able to find its equal since.

On my first liberty ashore in Hawaii, some of the old timers said that this was "heaven on earth". We took a narrow-gauge open-car railroad train from Pearl to Honolulu. On one of my excursions ashore, I rented a bicycle and went to the top of Diamond Head. At the top I looked out over the bay and saw a very formitable armada of warships. On the way up, there were orchids growing wild. And down in the valley I could hear roosters crowing. A most attractive place indeed.

On one or the other times, I went to Waikiki Beach and rented a surfboard. It was in May, and I lay on the surfboard with the water washing over me, not realizing how badly I was getting sunburned. The next morning at muster, while standing at attention, I had to squat down so as not to faint. I was put into the sickbay with very bad burns on the back of my legs, so bad I could not stand straight up as the skin would stretch too far. While in sick bay, another kid was brought in. He was OK, but only a little shook up I guess and very wet. We were at sea again, and he had been sitting on the top lifeline with his back to the ocean, and his heels hooked into the bottom lifeline. Pretty foolish. His heels unhooked and he had gone over. The scarry part for him was that he saw the ship almost disappearing in the distance, before it turned around. He was also worried about sharks. He did remember his training though, and took off his pants, tied knots at the end of each leg, and filled them with air to stay afloat.

Well, time to go again.