Chapter 37
End of an Era
The
wedding took place in St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Vancouver, Washington, on
November 8th, 1945. Since
Johnny Berry could not be there, my best man was Pat Madden, an old VHS
classmate and husband of Shirley’s sister Mary.
We
borrowed my father’s car (by then the old Chevy had been replaced by a newer
Plymouth sedan) and spent our wedding night in the New Heathman Hotel in
Portland. The balance of our honeymoon
was spent at the Mills family beach house at Seaview, Washington.
After
the honeymoon, accompanied by my new wife, I reported in at Moffet Field near
Los Altos, California. There I was
assigned temporary duty in the Inspection Division of VR_4, a squadron of
Douglas R5D four-engined transport planes of the Asiatic Wing of the Naval Air
Transport Service (NATS).
It
was in California that I first became aware that Shirley was not going to be
happy as a Navy wife. She disliked hotel
living so we moved to a furnished room in Los Altos. After a party at the Moffet Field Officers’
Club late in November, Shirley expressed unhappiness at the Navy wives pecking
order. Among them, being the wife of a
lowly ensign, she was low on the totem pole.
Otherwise, we were quite happy.
During
the first week of January, 1946, orders came for me to report to the staff of
Commander, Naval Air Transport Service, Asiatic Wing on Guam. While I awaited transportation to Guam,
Shirley’s parents flew down to Los Altos to drive back to Vancouver with her.
On
the evening of January 9th, we went to the Naval Air Station at
Oakland for me to catch one of the VR-4s airplane to Honolulu. There we were all subjected to a bit of a
fright. As the airplane taxied out for
takeoff near dark, Shirley and her parents watched from the observation
platform on the roof of the terminal building.
Just s the R5D got airborne, I became aware of a glow outside my
window. The number four engine was on
fire!
We
made a tight pattern around the field, trailing a thirty-foot plume of flame
while four ambulances and fire trucks raced to the end of the runway. Fortunately, the fire was simply burning
grease and oil on the engine set on fire by a faulty high tension lead in the
ignition systems and was quickly put out.
We drove back to Los Altos for the night while the plane was being
repaired.
I
guess my bride was more than a bit tense when we reported back the next
morning. She had noticed the tail number
of the airplane that caught fire and we were leaving in the same airplane. I assured her that it had been repaired and
that the Douglas airplanes were very reliable.
To
me, it felt like a homecoming when we landed at Hickam Field near Pearl
Harbor. I relished the warm breeze that
stirred the coconut palms when I stepped off the plane. The situation was a bit dreamlike. Only five short years before, I had arrived
on TIPPICANOE, a young and inexperienced seaman second class. Now, with the war behind us, I had returned
wearing the gold braid of a Naval officer.
I
soon found how irrevocably my life had changed.
I checked into the BOQ at Fort DeRussey in Waikiki for the two-day wait
for further transportation to Guam.
First I had a drink in the Banyan Court of the Moana Hotel which had
once not welcomed me as an enlisted man.
I then rented a car.
For
old times’ sake I stopped at the Black Cat on Beretania Street for a
drink. The bar had not changed and was
still a hangout for enlisted men. It was
a lesson that there comes a time when you can’t really “go back”. The several enlisted men stared at me and
edged away at the batr until the bartender came to my rescue. Spotting the red good conduct ribbon I wore,
the bartender called out, “Hey. Fellows, he’s a mustang!”
(“Mustang”
is the cognomen applied to officers who were
once enlisted men. I was to find
that in many situations that red ribbon was to my advantage in dealing with
enlisted men.)
From
the Black Cat I drove over the Pali to Kaneohe to see Ludi Carpenter who had
once been a surrogate mother to me, stopping at Lilly’s Fruit Stand on the old
road to buy her a bag of fruit. It was
not a happy visit. Ludi welcomed me with
a big smile and hug. Admired my
officer’s uniform, but then had a sad story that was all too common in the islands. Carpenter had abandoned her and the several
children for a stateside haole wahine sometime during the war.
My
visit to NAS Kaneohe was a real exercise in nostalgia. PBYs still lined the wide ramp. There were the marks of bullets still visible
in our old hangar. I stood for long
moments on the patched area in the ramp where there had once been that bomb crater
in which Richard and I had set up the machine gun after the attack. I could almost hear the snarl of diving
airplanes again, the thudding of machine guns, the whine of ricocheting bullets,
and the explosions of bombs. The scenes
were still fresh in my mind and I had a feeling of pride that we had been
there.
After
lunch at the Kaneohe Officers’ Club, I drove back to Waikiki via Kaimuki and
the little house at 1256A Ekaha Street then tracked down Diane and invited her
for a drink at the old Waikiki Tavern.
That was a happier time in spite of the cloud of the divorce form
Dick. She was no longer with the Marine but
lived in a hotel for women only and had started playing golf
professionally. She, too, admired my
uniform and was mystified at how I had found her until I explained that I
simply had called one of her brothers.
Diane
and I had dinner at the one taboo Banyan Court of the Moana. Sitting there in the warm darkness after
sunset with the glow of candles on the white linen, silver, and the gold bars on
my collar I could have sworn I saw, outside the wrought iron fence, a
white-clad young seaman looking wistfully in at us. Perhaps it was only a figment of my
imagination.
(I was back in Hawaii about every five years
of my first sixty and watched the changes as they took plae. In the 1940s I love Hawaii and each return
was a sort of homecoming except that I was sad as the influx of tourists
wrought radical changes, first on Oahu, then on the other islands.
I watched the freeways go in, first
replacing the dusty road to Pearl Harbor.
The exciting old road over the crest of the Pali was closed when the
four lanes through a tunnel were completed in the late Fifties.
Periodically, from the vantage point of Punchbowl
Hill where the World War II military cemetery and memorial were built, I
watched the carpet of green that was Waikiki except for the white bulk of the
Mona and the pink pile of the Royal Hawaiian give way to a concrete jungle of high-rise
resort hotels.
In later years came hordes of our old enemy,
the Japanese. They came first as
tourists with cameras slung about their necks, then they came as prosperous
businessmen carrying briefcases. They
could not conquest Hawaii so, after the U.S. occupation brought them to
unprecedented prosperity, they proceeded to buy most of it. I no longer care to go back. My Hawaii is long since gone.)
