Hawaii Goes on War Alert

On November 26^th 1941 Hawaii suddenly went on a war alert.  Scuttlebutt had it that the Secretary of War had sent out a “war warning” message.  Working hours were extended to 1600 (4 PM).  We put ramp sentries on our neatly lined up airplanes to guard against sabotage.  We were also ordered to fly evening patrols with the airplanes fully armed for the first time.  We had ammunition for our machine guns and under the wings that were two five-hundred-pound contact bombs and two 375-pound depth charges, all armed.  We simply raised an eyebrow when Lt. Clark informed us that our orders were to report, attack, and sink anything in the Hawaiian Defense Area flying a Japanese flag.

(In retrospect, those evening patrols would not have been effective even if the Japanese fleet had been approaching from the direction we searched.  Our flight path in each sector—and we did not have enough airplanes to cover the whole 360 degrees—was 350 miles out, thirty miles across and return.  A simple time and distance calculation shows that, had one PBY been flying directly at Admiral Nagumo’s fleet on a patrol limited to 350 miles out, the PBY would have returned back fifty miles short of the point where Nagumo would have had to be in order to race in and launch his airplanes 250 miles out at dawn.)

We on 11-P-11 flew two of the evening patrols during the last week of November.  We saw nothing but broaching whales and thousands of square miles of empty ocean.

Also during that last week in November, VP-11 was supplied with kits of parts to install self-sealing fuel cells in the port gasoline tanks of the airplanes.  They were neoprene rubber cells with a core material that would seal any bullet holes the wing might collect in battle.  We were also furnished kits of armor plate for installation on the fifty caliber machine guns, the back of the pilots’ seats and behind the tail gun position in the tunnel compartment.  Special crews were formed and I wound up on the second shift evening crew.  Dick was less fortunate—he was assigned to the third shift crew that would work midnight to 0800.  Tropical working hours were no more.  We were to work seven days a week until all the airplanes had been modified.  We were girding for the war that everyone felt was inevitable.

Another event of that fateful week was that on Thursday, December 4^th, Ensign Foss notified me that my examination packet for the Annapolis prep school had arrived.  It was to be an eight-hour examination under his supervision.  He said we would schedule it for Monday, December 8^th.  In the meantime, he had said nothing to anyone and would keep the packet locked in his wooden desk in the squadron offices.  My heart sand and I was almost jumping for joy.  Glover was the leading petty officer of my second shift crew and he kept shaking his head at the way I bucked rivets for the armor plates on 11-P-4 until midnight—whistling cheerfully and smiling or grinning the whole time.

“Damn, young Frieze,” Glover finally said.  “You look like a cat with canary feathers in its teeth!  What the hell has got into you?”

I just shook my head and grinned wider, “Nothin’, Glover, just feeling good, that’s all.”

He shrugged, shook his head again, and pulled the trigger on the riveting gun.

Earlier that week I had received a letter from Elaine in which she told me that two of my VHS classmates would be in Honolulu with the Willamette University football team to play the University of Hawaii team on Saturday, December 6^th.  I wangled special liberty on Friday the 5^th and went into town in the evening.  The WU team was staying at the Moana Hotel in Waikiki.

It was the usual peaceful Hawaii evening.  The coconut palms lining the boulevard waved in a soft evening breeze.  The sidewalk lei stands near the Royal Hawaiian filled the air with the delicate odor of pikake and ginger blossoms.  In the fading sunset there was the usual air of tranquility and no hint of the danger that was heading toward us from the vast reaches of the North Pacific.

The football players were not allowed out of the hotel after supper so I visited the two of them from VHS in their room, a corner room overlooking the beach and the ocean.  They had not been close friends of mine (I no longer recall their names), but we visited for a while.  They duly admired my crisp white uniform and I asked about mutual friends at home.  During the conversation one of them wanted to know why there were so many servicemen on the streets of Honolulu.

I recall my answer clearly, and the two of them were to quote it in Vancouver when they finally got back stateside.  It was really just a bit of bravado, “Hey, we’re sitting on a powder keg out here, boys, and one of these days someone is liable to light the fuse!”

They just laughed (and I joined them).  We had no inkling that two days later we would be in a shooting war and they would be walking beach patrol as volunteers to assist the Coast Guard and Army while they waited for transportation home.  A Japanese attack on Hawaii could not have been more inconceivable to us or, indeed, to anyone.  We were sure that if the Japanese pulled anything it would be somewhere in the Far East.

Since the football players were confined to the hotel for the night, I wished them luck in the game the next day (I do not recall who won that Saturday), said goodbye and wandered off to the Waikiki Tavern for a couple of drinks before I caught the “Red Peril” back over the Pali to Kaneohe.

On Saturday afternoon, since I had the duty that weekend, I again worked on the second shift ground crew on airplane 11-P-4 in the hangar.  The armor plate installation ahd been completed.  We drained all the gasoline out of the big wing fuel tanks and ventilated them in preparation for installation of self-sealing cells in the port tank.

It was not an easy job.  The big black rubber fuel cells had to be collapsed and worked into the integral fuel tanks through small manholes barely large enough for a man to get through worked into position, then joined together with rubber crossfeed tubes.

We had all but one of the cells in place when we were relieved at midnight by the third shift crew who would work until eight on Sunday morning.  My brother Richard and his pal Joe Brooks were on the relieving crew.  I recall that Joe was kidding Dick about a crap game in the head from which they had just come.  Dick had always been a much better poker player than a crap shooter and he never knew when to drag some money after two or three good passes.  He had once more gotten on a roll and ran up a pot of two or three hundred dollars.  Instead of dragging a stake, he shot it all, rolled box cars, and came away broke.

I went to the barracks, showered, and rolled into my bunk blissfully aware that the next day was Sunday and I could sleep in late.  I would miss morning chow in the mess hall, but I went happily to sleep anticipating getting up at leisure and wandering over to ships service for some bacon and eggs.

A Postcard from the Edge of Peace

I waited eagerly for Chief Byron to post the new permanent flight crew assignments the next morning and let out a whoop of joy.  I was once more assigned to 11-P-11 with “Dopey” Clark’s crew.  Not only that, Foret had made CPO and Ernie Davenport was the plane captain.  I had been moved up to second mech and a new man, Paul Herrin, was our third mech.  Clark, our PPC, had been promoted to lieutenant junior grade and Ens. “Whiskey” Willis was still the co-pilot.  I forget his name, but we had an experienced ARM1c for first radio man.  It was a good crew.

Davenport had been on a ferry crew and he lost no time getting us familiar with the changes in the PBYs.  The engines had late model Stromberg pressure injection carburetors that had automatic temperature controls.  No longer would we have to sit in the tower endlessly and manually keeping the temperatures right.  In the galley compartment beneath the mechanic’s tower seat there was a new type of auxiliary power unit (we called it a “putt-putt”) that was designed to run on aviation fuel instead of white gasoline from its own little fuel tank.  The putt-putt was plumbed directly into the main fuel tanks (a fact that would become important to us at a later date.).

Back in the roomy waist gun blisters, the big black fifty-caliber machine guns were mounted on pivots so that it was not necessary to swing them up into position.  To fire, the gunner simply opened the side of the blister and swung the gun out, all the while well shielded from the slipstream.  Forward in the nose, behind the bomb sight window, the PBY-5s were equipped with the latest (and still secret) Norden bombsights. Being classified, it was necessary for the bombardier to carry the bombsight to the airplane in a black bag just before flight and return it to the ordnance vault immediately after the flight. [Since my father writing his memoires the Norden bombsight has been replaced by a radar based bomb sight.]

By the middle of November all of us were fully aware of the deteriorating of U.S.-Japanese relations.  We knew from scuttlebutt that the entry of the U.S. into the war in Europe was more and more imminent and we were fully aware of the “Axis” that had been formed by Germany, Italy, and Japan.  Tojo and his minions became our very potential enemy in the Pacific and a serious and grim air crept into our training flights.

We had read the accounts and seen the newsreels of the debacle at a coastal town in Europe called Dunkirk.  We knew that President Roosevelt had armed our merchant ships participating in convoys to England.  We knew that Navy destroyers had been sunk guarding those convoys.  We knew, too, that Roosevelt was still faced with a very divided United States with the pacifists and German bundists still making themselves heard.  We had had absolutely no idea and no hint that we might be in immediate danger in Hawaii, however, and went about our training with a blithe attitude, still observing those relaxed tropical working hours and long weekends.

Awaiting the New PBY-5s

"We were an operating squadron again."

During that almost idyllic but rather boring peaceful time, I maintained a desultory correspondence not only occasionally with the family back home, but also with Patty Cross, Elaine, and Shirley Mills.  The latter did not last.  Somehow I was just not much interested and her letters were not the breezy, chatty notes that I got form Elaine and Patty.  Shirley’s letters tended to have a rather possessive flavor to them.  I decided that I could do with less letter writing so, finally, I wrote her that we were not meant for each other—a sort of “Dear Jane” letter.  In return she sent me a new portrait of herself inscribed, “To Conrad, a boy who will always have a spot in my heart”.  I thought that would be that.

I kept up my correspondence off and on with both Elaine and Patty, keeping them up to date and asking about people and things at home.  Elaine was the most faithful to answer.  She wrote as delightfully as she talked, often skipping blithely from subject to subject and always was interesting and entertaining.

Around the first of November (I did not record the exact date in my diary) every one of us were on the ramp the day the new PBY-5s came sweeping around Bird Island and over the bay.  They were a magnificent sight when they made one pass in formation over the base before they peeled off to land.  They were powered by the latest supercharged Pratt & Whitney R-1830-92 engines that produced 1,450 horsepower each.  That gave them better takeoff capability, a cruise speed of 110 knots, and improved climb capability.

There were external changes that were obvious.  They flat sliding waist gunners hatches had been replaced by Plexiglas gun “blisters” that also gave good visibility for anti-submarine patrols.  The shaped of the rudder had been changed to a straight trailing edge.  Instead of the silver fuselages and rudders with squadron stripes, the new airplanes were painted a camouflage blue on the topsides and light grey on the bottom in an effort to make the airplanes harder to see by potential enemy either from above or below.  All in all, the PBY-5s had much more businesslike appearance than the old PBY-1s and the deep-throated roar of those big fourteen cylinder radial engines literally sent delighted shivers along my spine.

Our rather sullen non-cooperation with Lt. Delaney, born of boredom and inactivity, was suddenly forgotten.  We enthusiastically reinforced the beach crew with volunteers (me included), splashed the big 600-pound side mounts into the water, and in record time brought those beautiful aircraft ashore.  We were an operating squadron again.

The Fighting Frieze Brothers

During that summer [1941], my opportunistic brother, Dick, teamed up with one of our mechs named Bill Greer.  Greer fancied himself as an Edward G. Robinson type and he did, indeed resemble that actor playing a gangster role.  He was short and stocky, swarthy complexion, black hair, and a thin black mustache.  There was always a cigar butt in the corner of his mouth around which there was an almost perpetual sardonic smile.  He was a much better “card mechanic” than he was an airplane mechanic and brother Dick was an apt pupil.  (It was not long before I would no longer play poker with either of them.)

Actually, both Greer and Dick played it straight in most games with squadron shipmates except for a little practice now and then to keep their fingers supple.  They confined their card sharking to games at Army or Marine bases.  They would go into a game separately and, with one of them on each side of the table and apparently strangers to each other, they would take turns “third basing” for each other and invariably come away with a nice profit—enough that they solved the problem of liberty transportation.  Greer, in gangster tradition, turned up with a big black Cadillac sedan.  Dick went for a flashier “date buggy” and showed up one day with a big baby blue 1937 LaSalle convertible sedan equipped with chrome spotlights, fender mounted spare tires, and a powerful straight-eight that was a real gas guzzler.

Our life at Kaneohe Bay was truly idyllic through the summer of 1941.   We all agreed that it had to be the best duty in the entire Navy.  We spent most of our working hours on the ramp scrubbing and polishing those old airplanes and using liberal quantities of yellow zinc chromate to fight the inevitable salt air corrosion on the aluminum structure.  Every three or four days we would go on a three or four-hour training flight—the pilots practicing navigation and giving us strafing and bombing practice.

The PBY had no internal bomb bays.  Our armament of bombs, depth charges, or torpedoes were carried on external racks up under the broad wings.  We could carry either twelve one hundred pound bombs, four five hundred pound bombs or depth charges, or two 21-inch torpedoes.  We were provided little lead practice bombs to drop wither on smoke markers or on target sleds towed by ships.  Infrequently, we went on high altitude bombing practice over the bombing range on the island of Kahoolawe off the west side of Maui.  Those were long flights because, at the PBY-1 cruising speed of 100 knots and a climb speed of ninety coupled with a laboring rate of climb, it took a while to get to our maximum altitude of 12,000 feet.

In September, we got some welcome news.  We were to fly the creaking old PBY-1s stateside and pick up thirteen brand new improved model PBY-5s at the factory in San Diego.  We were ecstatic—a trans-Pacific mass flight and we would get brand new airplanes!  Many of us on assigned flight crews did not get to make the flights, however.  Leading Chief Duke Byron re-shuffled flight crew assignments so that the ferry crews were made up of the older men who had been in the islands long enough to qualify for annual leave.  Dick, Greer, Glover, Joe Brooks, and I would be among those left behind to more or less twiddle our thumbs until the ferry crews got back with the new planes in early November.

When the airplanes had departed on their stateside flight and we had received word that all planes made it without incident, we settled into an even more leisurely routine at Kaneohe.  Duty sections were small and liberty very plentiful.  Our VP-11 acting commanding officer, Lt. Delaney, was soon faced with a problem—how to keep the 150-odd men without airplanes busy.  He tired several special activities such as a boxing tournament that went over like a lead balloon.  When he tried organizing softball teams he struck out entirely.  Most of us did not particularly like Delaney and simply would not play ball for him.  He finally gave up and simply gave all the special liberty that was requested.

I did stumble onto one special activity in which I offered to participate.  The wife of our executive officer decided to form a VP-11 drama group and the play she selected for an opener was “Seven Keys to Baldpate”—the senior class play in which I had the leading role of Magee in 1939.  I could still remember most of the lines without looking at the lay book.  At the tryouts, without reading from the script, I was selected to play Magee once more.  It was not to be, however.  The group was formed shortly before the arrival of our new airplanes and rehearsals were scheduled to begin in earnest the second week of December so the play could be presented in conjunction with the holidays.  The Japanese were to put a stop to that.

During those halcyon days of October and November in 1941, Richard and I had a reputation in the squadron for frequent verbal scrapping as sibling will inevitably do.  We went on liberty together often in the blue LaSalle, usually accompanied by Glover, but we occasionally had a few arguments.  Sometime during that period I forget exactly when, we became “those fighting Frieze brothers” purely by accident.

Since civilian clothes were not allowed on the base, we had each rented lockers at a “locker club” in Honolulu and had purchased some basic civilian clothes to wear on liberty instead of our uniforms.  I had a pair of slacks, some sports shirts, and a lightweight jacket.

On one liberty both Glove and a shipmate Art Grace had gone into town with us.  During the course of the evening Grace managed to get himself thoroughly drunk—and when he was drunk he was mean.  The rest of us had a few drinks as well.  Sometime in the shank of the evening we went back to the locker club to change back into uniform to go back to Kaneohe.

I do not recall what started the argument between Grace and Dick, but Grace got mad and stomped out of the locker club declaring that no way would he ride back to Kaneohe in the blue car.  We just let him go although we knew that the last Windward Transit had left and that he did not have money for a cab.  “Hell,” Glover said, “let the bastard walk or hitch hike—might sober him up a little!”  We went to the Black Cat and had a couple more drinks.

Somewhere up in Nuuanu Valley on our way to the Pali we caught up with Art Grace trudging along the shoulder of the road.  Apparently he had been unable to thumb a ride.  I insisted that, after all, he was a VP-11 shipmate and that we should stop and pick him up.  Dick pulled over.

Grace had not sobered up appreciably.  He proceeded to cuss us out soundly and finally got so mad that he pulled a very small penknife out and opened the blade, declaring as he did that he would uct one of us.  I had enough to drink that I grabbed his arm, got the little knife away from him and threw it off into the brush getting a cut on a finger in the process.  Art was so drunk he really did not offer much resistance at that point. 

Later I recalled only that Glover said, “Shee-it, we ought to Sunday punch the bastard and throw him into the car!”

In my alcohol fog I thought I was just the man to Sunday punch Art and swung a hard right at him.  It was unfortunate that Dick was standing directly behind Grace, half supporting the frunk.  Just as I swung, Art’s head slumped forward (he was apparently passing out) and my fist missed him and caught Dick on the cheekbone.  I was wearing a heavy Navy ring on that hand and it laid open a pretty good gash on his cheek.  We shoved Art into the back seat and went on to Kaneohe.

At muster the next morning Dick showed up with a bandaid on his cheek and a beautiful purple shiner.  Of course the story inevitably got twisted and scuttlebutt was simply that I had done it to him—which was true, but I had not meant to hit him.  It was an accident.  When I would explain that, eyebrows would raise and someone would snort, “Oh sure!”

Art Grace, it turned out, was an ornery s.o.b. and his story was that Dick ahd held him while I tried to clobber him and that he could whip us both only one at a time.  Since he did not have a mark on him, he was ignored and it was assumed merely that Dick and I had a fight and I belted him.  Our reputation as “the fighting Frieze brothers” was really quite undeserved.

Except for the inevitable occasional squabbling of siblings, Richard and I got alone more as good friends than brothers.  He was reluctant to lend me the big blue LaSalle to go off in liberty with others but we used it frequently, often with glover or other friends.

I sometimes double-dated with Dick when he took his little Japanese friend from the saimen stand out for an evening or for a picnic.  She had a friend named Vivian, a beautiful, slim little half Chinese girl who sometimes came along as mu date.  We never developed more than a casual relationship but she liked me well enough that on one occasion she presented me with a good luck charm.  It was a small teak statue of the Laughing Buddha.  Supposedly, rubbing the Buddha’s fat belly would bring good luck.

One of our favorite spots for a night beer party was Haunama Bay which would later become famous for a steamy beach scene in Jack Jones’ “From Here to Eternity”.  It is a developed Hawaii state park now with asphalt paths, lights, and restrooms; however, in those days it was a very isolated cover reached only by a steep, winding path down the cliff from the Kam Highway.  With that car, we could always recruit a few girls.  I never asked Glover where he found some of the dates he would have.  They were usually haole and seemed quite familiar with the South Hotel Street area.

Becoming AMM Third Class

"Since Hawaii was not on war alert, those final peaceful days of 1941 were devoted to getting the squadron fully operational"

Four days after our arrival at Kaneohe Bay, I took the examination for aviation machinist mate third class and scored a 4.0 (one hundred percent).  My petty officer rate would become effective in two months and I could qualify for a flight crew.  In the meantime, I continued as a member of the beach crew, swimming in the clear water of the bay every day.  With my fair complexion, I sunburn very easily; however, with liberal application of cocoa butter (the only thing available in the way of sun bloc) my freckles gradually merged until I was sufficiently brown to stay out in the sun for extended periods during working hours.

During the last week in June, my blithe existence as a seaman on the beach crew came to an end.  I was ordered on temporary duty in the mess hall as a mess cook.  (Other than being assigned “captain of the head” or scraping paint, mess cooking was the bane of every seaman’s life.  Each unilt was obligated to furnish two or three mess attendants to serve food on the steam tables and do the swamping up in the mess hall.  My turn had come.)

I moved into the mess cook’s barracks at the mess hall building (where we could be rousted out at five AM to set up for morning chow) and suffered the indignity through the month of July.  I chafed with impatience the full time to get back to the airplanes.

It was a miserable period in my Navy career.  When I was notified by the squadron yeoman on the first day of August that my rate had come through, I was ecstatic.  My base pay would now be $72 a month and, as soon as I could get on a flight crew and draw flight skins, it would be a total of $108—a small fortune to an old Ozark boy right out of the Depression.  On our next liberty after payday, out two or three of us who had sewed the third class “crow” of an aviation machinist made on our left sleeves, caught the Red Peril over the Pali and had several zombies at Trader Vics—a traditional celebration.  (I served scrambled eggs the next morning with a vicious hangover and none of us could remember getting back to the base!)

The day after that I lurked in the mess hall after morning chow until our leading chief, CPO “Duke” Byron, was having a last cup of coffee before muster.  As I recall, the conversation went something like this:

“Scuse me, chief, they still got me on mess cookin’ here and I just made third class mech.”

“That so?”

“Yessir—and I sure would like to get on a plane crew.  I got a four point oh on my exam and I been studying everything about those PBYs since I came to the squadron.  I’m good on machine guns, too.”

“That right?”

“Sure is chief—figger I can third mech with the best of them!”

He got out his seat.  “Gotta go to muster.  I’ll think about it.  By the way what’s your name, mac?”

“Frieze, Chief.  Dick Frieze is my brother—he’s already third mech.”

CPO turned to walk out with a noncommittal, “I’ll let you know.”  Two days later I was ordered to report back to the squadron.  On the “Watch, Quarter, and Station Bill” I was listed as third mechanic on the crew of PBY 11-P-11.  As far as I was concerned, I was about as close to heaven as I was liabel to get for quite a while.

The structure of a PBY flight crew was a senior pilot who was the PPC (patrol plan commander), a co-pilot, an enlisted pilot, a leading petty officer who was the “plane captain”, a second mech, third mech, a first radioman, and a second radioman.  (After the war started a bombardier who was an enlisted ordnanceman would be added to combat crews.)

I do not remember all the names on our flight crew of 11-P-11.  The PPC was Ens. Charles “Dopey” Clar, the co-pilot was Ens. Charley “Whiskey” Willis, and the plane captain was AMM1/c “Tex” Foret.  The second mech was Dave Davenport.  I do not recall the radiomen or the AP.

Since Hawaii was not on war alert, those final peaceful days of 1941 were devoted to getting the squadron fully operational at Kaneohe, sporadic and relatively short training flight, and maintaining the airplanes.  The PBY-1s of VP-11 were more than five years old.  They had been first thirteen PBYs off the assembly line at Consolidated and were the airplanes that had made the first mass flight from the mainland to Hawaii in 1936.  It was my understanding that our 11-P-16 airplane was the original XPBY-1.

The old airplanes took a lot of maintenance which rapidly improved our skills as mechanics.  Our plane captain, Foret, had been in the Navy for more than twelve years and he taught us well, driving us unmercifully during working hours.

Working hours were still short.  We remained on “tropical working hours”—muster at 0700, an hour for noon chow, and secure at 1400 (2:00 PM).  Except when we had the duty, liberty cards were available evenings and weekends from 1400 on Friday to 0700 Monday.  Only our funds limited the time we could spend “ashore”.

There were always activities going on at the base during off hours—some that were contrary to Naval Regulations.  Regulations forbade gambling and hard liquor on the base but there was the station beer garden and, almost any evening, poker games here and there and crap games either in the barracks head or the hangar washroom.  We quickly became relatively expert at five card stud or draw, blackjack, and side bets in a crap game.

The Country Club of the Pacific

Chapter 24

“The Country Club of the Pacific”

Kaneohe Bay Naval Air Station

Summer, 1941

At the time of commissioning on 4 June 1941, the PBY base at Kaneohe Bay was not yet finished.  Contractors were still working on roads.  Only one of the eventual five big hangars had been completed and a second was half built.  Landscaping was not complete and the new black asphalt streets and concrete sidewalks were bordered by a few newly-planted palm trees and raw red island earth on which grass was just beginning to show.

After the crowded conditions of Ford Island, Kaneohe was a welcome relief to us.  The two-story barracks were large and airy.  We had new steel double-deck bunks that had real mattresses instead of the horsehair pads from our hammocks.  Instead of meager half lockers, each man had a six-foot steel locker at the head of his bunk.

Across an asphalt parking area from the Number One barracks where VP-11 was quartered we had a large ships’ service building that held a ship’s store, coffee shop, bowling alley, and a movie theater.  It was built in an L shape and, behind a curving wall, offered a beer garden for use after working hours in lieu of an enlisted men’s or CPOs’ club.  Officers’ quarters and the officers club were across the broad entry road on the slope of Hawaiiloa Hill.  Beyond a grassy quadrangle between the row of barracks and the administration building was a large mess hall and the brig.  The huge seaplane parking ramp, launch ramps, and the big new hangars fronted on the calm blue waters of Kaneohe Bay.

The view from our new home was magnificent.  Kaneohe is on the green windward side of the island.  From the operating ramp we looked westward across the bay past Chris Holmes Island to the village of Kaneohe and, farther south, toward Kailua.  The backdrop was the Pali side of the Koolau Mountains that divide the island.  Their verdant peaks were eternally topped by towering white cumulus clouds formed by the warm trade winds that swept ceaselessly up the mountain slopes and provided us natural air-conditioning.  To the north, just beyond the entrance to the bay from the sea was the green come of Chinaman’s Hat, a tiny islet just off the white line of breakers along the coast.

It was an idyllic setting.  In the months to come, when the base landscaping was completed, NAS Kaneohe would become known to envious personnel from other bases and from the surface fleet as “the country club of the Pacific”.  We complained about the heat and the mosquitoes, but privately, we all felt fortunate to be stationed there.

The one drawback to life at Kaneohe Bay was that we were a bit isolated form our liberty haunts in Honolulu.  Neither Kaneohe nor Kailua offered much other than some small cafes, a tavern called “The Coconut Grove”, and a small movie theater.  Transportation to Honolulu was via a small local bus line, “Windward Transit”.  We called it the “Red Peril” because the line had but two rather rickety small busses that, beneath many dents and layers of red dust, had once been painted red.  Kanaka drivers wheeled the little busses recklessly over the old Pali Road to the bus stop near the YMCA on Peretania Street.

The old Pali road has been closed for years after a tunnel was dug under the Pali for the current four-lane freeway.  It was something that had to be experienced to be appreciated.  The Pali is a sheer cliff at the top of Nuuanu Valley that overlooks Kailua and scene of King Kamehameha’s triumph over the army of Oahu when he consolidated the islands many years ago and became the first monarch of all the islands.  Legend has it that Kamehameha drove the Oahu army up Nuuanu Valley and straight off the cliff, killing them all.  We heard rumors that bones could still be dug up in the talus at the foot of the cliff.

The old Pali road twisted and turned along ledges that were literally chiseled from the face of the cliff with the sheer rock wall on one side and a straight drop to the floor of the valley on the other.  It was a perilous route but the kanaka drivers wheeled down it with great abandon.  It was a white-knuckle drive in a car, too, but we became accustomed to it and it cut the one hour trip around the island via Koki Head and Kaimuki in half.

Temporary Assignment to Midway and a Brush with History

My promotion to seaman first class became effective on May 1^st of 1941 and my pay jumped to the princely sum of $54 per month.  I happily had the third seaman’s stripe added to the cuffs of my dress blues and I got all of my loose white jumpers tailored to fit my lean frame.  I also concentrated on my practical factors studies for the petty officer rate of AMM3c because I would be eligible in just three months.

Beyond third class, promotions could come slowly in the peacetime Navy because quotas in each rate were limited.  I recall one evening that Dick, Glover, and I were sitting in the Ford Island beer garden killing time until the evening movie started.  We were discussing what our future plans might be beyond our current six-year enlistments.  We wound up agreeing that if we should be fortunate enough to make first class petty officer in that six years it would be smart to stay in the Navy for an entire career.

(We had no inkling, of course, of how a war could and would change everything.  If anyone had told us that at the end of six years Dick and Glover would be chief petty officers and that I would be a commissioned officer, we would have all gotten hernias from laughing!)

Preparations were going forward for the move of VP-23 from Ford Island to the new Naval Air Station at Kaneohe Bay.  The base was to be commissioned on 4 June 1941.  We would be the first squadron in and would become VP-11 of Patrol Wing One.  We would be followed by VP-12 and VP-14 (At our enlisted level we also had no inkling that Patrol Wing Two was permanently assigned to Pearl Harbor and that Patrol Wing One was destined to go to the front lines in the deep South Pacific when the war started.  We never worried about strategic planning.  We simply did the jobs we were trained for and, in our spare time, went ashore to have a little fun.)

It was decided that, during the transition and to make the move to Kaneohe easier, several of our VP-23 airplanes would go to Midway Island for two weeks of advance base operations.  They would then return directly to the new base at Kaneohe.

The Midway operations would require the support of ground crews. Both Glover and I were assigned to the Midway support group and Dick remained behind with the balance of the squadron that would affect the move of all equipment across the island.  On May 10^th the ground crew contingent boarded the aircraft tender USS WRIGHT for the voyage to Midway Island.

USS WRIGHT

The WRIGHT, my second temporary sea duty in the Navy, was not much of an improvement over the old TIPPICANOE.  The WRIGHT had been converted from a WWI barrage balloon ship used in convoys and had similar ungainly lines to those of the old tanker.  She was another rusty old bucket and the original balloon well still existed amidships.  I do not recall who the captain was; hoever, the executive officer was Lt. Commander Dixie Kiefer who would gain some measure of renown in Naval Aviation during WWII.

The voyage to Midway lasted five days.  We were aboard as passengers, not as temporary ship’s company, and therefore had no watch standing duties.  We could lounge about the deck and watch schools of flying fish and pods of grey whales that crossed our course.  After evening chow we would gather on the fantail and marvel at the luminous phosphorescence in the ship’s wake.

NAS Midway being built in 1941

Midway is barely a speck in the vast Pacific Ocean.  It consists of a large lagoon bordered by reefs and two low-lying islands, Midway and Eastern Island.  Eastern Island consisted mostly of a new runway for lane planes.  Midway itself is perhaps a mile long and a quarter mile wide at he widest point.  Installations consisted of one hangar on a seaplane ramp, a large fuel storage tank, a water tower, and a few small buildings housing the other facilities of a very small base.

East of the naval seaplane installation there was a very small transient hotel used by Pan American Airways for the overnight stop of the big Boeing clippers that flew between the West Coast and the Orient.  The clippers were big four-engine flying boats that landed in the lagoon and used the one Midway dock to tie up and refuel.

The center of Midway rises only a few feet above sea level.  The low hill was sparsely covered by scrub brush and small trees.  A hike around the circumference of the little island (which we did every day or so out of boredom) took barely an hour at a leisurely pace.

One outstanding feature of Midway was its population of gooney birds.  A “gooney bird” is an albatross on land.  In its incomparable soaring flight on seven-foot slender tapering wings, sometimes many miles from land, an albatross is a graceful, beautiful bird.  On land, however, it is an awkward, waddling fowl about the size of a big domestic goose.

Gooneys are reputed to have a brain about the size of a pea and their actions would tend to bear that out.  They had no fear of man and could be petted.  That, however, was a mistake.  If you petted a gooney bird, you became his bosom pal and he would follow at hour heels wherever you went like a faithful dog.  The big birds would even attempt to follow sailors up the gangplank of the WRIGHT moored at the dock and were difficult to discourage.

The gooney bird (or albatross) cannot make a takeoff from a standing start.  They are too heavy and must make a running takeoff like an airplane.  They used the beach for a runway and we discovered that it was necessary for them to make their run into the wind just as an airplane would do.  Young ones would occasionally attempt a downwind takeoff and, upon retracting their legs, would tumble tail over teakettle until they finally figured out they had to run the other way.

Our advance base operations of the PBYs at Midway was good training for handling the airplanes under field conditions.  We were not yet under alert conditions in the Hawaiian area; therefore, we simply conducted training flights and did routine maintenance checks on the airplanes and engines.

We followed the progress of the war in Europe but it was far away and, on our happy-go-lucky enlisted level, we never gave much thought to relations of the U.S. with the Empire of Japan.  The Japanese were “the bad guys” because of their conquest in China, but otherwise we mostly ignored the “slanteyes” and dismissed them as a real threat.  We preferred spending our of hours playing poker or shooting craps under the guise of playing ace-deucy.

Boeing Clipper

One afternoon I was headed back to the WRIGHT at the dock at the end of working hours (we were living aboard the tender) when one of the Pan American clippers came in and landed in the lagoon.  I lingered at the bead of the dock to watch the big graceful Boeing touch down on the water taxi to the dock.  With its massive boat hull and long tapering wing, I thought it the most beautiful airplane in the world.  Our PBYs truly looked like ugly duckling by comparison.

I was standing at the head of the dock wen the Am flight crew and about a dozen passengers passed on their way to the Pan Am hotel.  I paid little attention except to look at them with envy, but noticed that one passenger was a very short, stocky Japanese in a dark suit totally unsuitable for the climate.  He had a serious expression on his round brown face, but he smiles when our eyes met momentarily and his head bobbed in a half bow in silent greeting.  I waved a hand casually and went on to the WRIGHT for a shower.

Special Envoy Sabruro Kurusu

I gave no more thought to the little Japanese until about eight months later when I saw his photograph in a Life magazine article about the beginning of the war in the Pacific.  The man I saw that sunny afternoon on Midway was Sabruro Kurusu, special envoy to Washington on his way to join the Japanese ambassador, Nomura, for the final negotiations with President Roosevelt.

We launched our VP-23 PBYs for their flight back to Hawaii on the morning of May 31^st.  That afternoon, after waiting to take aboard the body of a Marine private that had just been killed on the island when a construction crane fell over, the USS WRIGHT sailed for Pearl Harbor.

Our arrival at Pearl Harbor on the morning of June 4^th caused a bit of a stir.  The executive officer, CDR Kiefer, had become upset with we airdales for some reason and had ordered the first lieutenant to put us to work as temporary ship’s company.  We scraped and painted the rusty plates of the WRIGHT all the way back.

When we arrived off the entrance to Pearl Harbor, the captain found that there was a problem with the tug that operated the anti-submarine net and we had to lay to for three or four hours before entering the harbor.  It was a windless, flat calm day so the first lieutenant decided that two of the paint party should go over the side in bosons’ chairs to finish some painting of rust streaks on the stern of the ship.  They worked just below the black lettering that read USS WRIGHT.

We steamed into the harbor in the early afternoon and up the channel past the Pacific Fleet flagship, the USS PENNSYLVANIA.  Just after we passed the big battleship, the TBS (Talk Between Ships) radio came to life.  It was the Pacific Fleet commanding admiral addressing the captain of the WRIGHT.  His soft, but firm voice said, “Captain, there are two names on the stern of your ship.  I want one of them removed immediately—and I do not care which one!”

As soon as the gangplank hit the dock, the captain of the WRIGHT and Commander Kiefer scrambled down from the bridge and went to inspect the stern.  There, in big letters painted with red-lead, immediately beneath the name of the ship was “USS MADHOUSE”.  Someone in the paint party ahd gotten even for the extra duty we had put in.

Fortunately, all we airdales had our gear on deck and there was a truck waiting on the dock to take us to our new base at Kaneohe Bay.  We quickly loaded aboard and were on our way while the CPO that had been in charge of the paint party was still trying to remember who he had put over the side with the red-lead.  (The chief’s memory was not all that bad.  We all chipped in on the fifth of good scotch that found its way to that chief.)