Treasure Island

The next morning, I woke, of course, with a lovely hangover.  After muster and morning chow we headed for the one great service of the Treasure Island base—a real barber shop.  I settled myself into a chair and told the barber, “The works—shampoo, haircut, singe, and shave—the whole bit!” then I promptly fell asleep as he went to work. I was to regret falling asleep.  I dimly recalled later that the barber touched my beautiful handlebar mustache and asked, “You want that trimmed?”  I do not recall my answer but when I woke he was finished and he turned me to face the mirror I saw to my horror that he had indeed trimmed my mustache—to an asinine thin line on my ussper lip!  I did not look like either David Niven or Clark Gable.  The few haris he had left on my upper lip were so sun-bleached that they hardly showed.

My temper asserted itself.  I read him off royally—informing him that I had not even had time to get a photography taken.  He had ruined my mustache and I was not going to pay him one damned dime for what he had done!  He insisted that I owed seven dollars for the shampoo, haircut, singe, and that he would not charge for the mustache trim.  I acidly told him what he could do with his bill, that he could fine me at the transient barracks, and I stalked indignantly out of the barber shop.  (I heard no more about it.)

It was that night and the next morning that Oscar Hook repaid me in full for the long ago night that I got him back to Ford Island from Waikiki.  After noon chow, we packed our toilet kits into our ditty bags and headed for San Francisco.  There we got a double hotel room then headed for the fabled Barbary Coast.

In retrospect, we started drinking too early and the entire night and the following twenty-four hours are a bit of a blur in my memory.  I vaguely recall that there were several bars and night clubs in some of which, when the patrons learned that we were returned veterans from the South Pacific, they would not let us spend any of our money.  (We were well heeled.  I had four or five hundred dollars that I had no sent home.)

There was music and dancing.  At some point there was a table and some women.  One brunette, quite a good looking woman as I recall, was particularly attentive to me.  I told Hook that I was going to need the room for a couple of hours and took her thee.  Later, I could only dimly recall that I called room service for some drinks and the next time I was aware it was the next morning and Hook was holding me up in formation for morning muster.

As best I can reconstruct it, when Hook came to the hotel room in the wee hours of the morning he found me passed out on the bed, obviously the victim of a “Mickey” slipped to me by the brunette and the room service waiter.  I was dead to the world and mu wallet was empty.  I was still fully dressed.  Hook got me into a taxi and back to Treasure Island.  His debt for the night in Waikiki was paid in full.

After muster our orders were distributed.  Mind were to NATTC in Chicago with eleven days delay enroute.  My problem was that I had been foolish enough to go ashore the night before with all my money in my wallet and now I was broke and could not buy a train ticket to Portland.  Still have comatose form the drugging, I took my baggage and went to the Market Street office of Western Union in San Francisco.  There I called my mother and asked her to wire some money from my bank account to that office, then I sat down and went to sleep.  They woke me when the money order arrived and I managed to find my way to Oakland, buy a ticket, and board the next train for Portland.  I slept most of the way up the coast and was finally halfway back to normal when I arrived home.

Reflection and Return

USS PYRO - American ammunition ship

"I contemplated the events of the past two years and how they surely must have changed me as I passed from youth to manhood."

Now the long part of our voyage on SEA VITCH began.  It would take us twelve days to cover the vast expanse of the pacific between Bora Bora and the Golden Gate.  After a little more than a week we were getting out of the tropical latitudes and the nights became cool to those of us who had been two years in the warmth of Hawaii and the South Pacific.  Our deep tans began to show goosebumps.  We dug into our sea bags for navy blue wool jerseys and peacoats that had rolled and stowed for two years.  We also dug out, brushed and ironed our dress blue uniforms and flat-hats in anticipation of liberty in San Francisco.

As the prospect of being back in the states neared, I often thought of all that had happened in the past two short years.  On my birthday on 3 March 1943 when I turned 21, I sat alone on the fantail as darkness fell and watched the ships wake that led off toward the last vestiges of sunset.  I contemplated the events of the past two years and how they surely must have changed me as I passed from youth to manhood.

All of a sudden, so it seemed, I was a Navy petty officer first class and a “blooded veteran” to whom laughter still came, but without the abandon of before.  I was an “old salt” and had been informed at Ile Nou that I rated three campaign bars—the American Defense ribbon with a gold star for having been in Hawaii on December 7^th, the Asiatic ribbon with battle stars for Midway and the Solomons, and the American theater ribbon.

Now, I thought, I am almost phlegmatic—I seem to take things as they come and almost as a matter of course.  I wondered again just what is was that seemed to have died during that bloody hour on December 7^th, 1941.  Oddly, it crossed my mind that perhaps I had lost the capacity to love.  My physical needs were still there, but there was something in my emotions that seemed to be lacking.  The thought of sailing into San Francisco in the next few days did not increase my pulse.

I still had occasional nightmare about that bloody hour when the Japanese attack came out of nowhere.  Even awake the images of the row of bloody bodies under the wing of the shot-up PBY, the grinning face of that Japanese pilot who had circled overhead looking down ast the fires of burning airplanes, the head-on view of enemy Zeros diving at us with wing guns winking fire and streams of bullets walking across the concrete ramp toward us were all too clear in my memory.  It would be a long time before the snarl of diving enemy airplanes, the chattering of machine guns, and the dull “WHUMP!” of exploding bomb could almost be heard.

Then, unbidden, the rather corny words my father had said to me at the bus depot when I left for the Navy came back to me—“A man goes where the hand of the lord leads him,” Dad had said, “and he does what he has to be done when he get there.”  I suddenly felt very proud of my brother Dick and myself.  When the chips had gone down, we had not hesitated.  We did not run for cover and hide as a few had done.  We got a gun and fought back as best we could.

It was not bravery.  We were just a couple of mad old country boys that were dumb enough to get into that airplane that the Japs would be strafing trying to set it on fire.  The Lord had led us there, we did what had to be done, and He looked after us as the enemy shot that airplane to pieces around us and left us unscathed.  Fear?  Yes, we felt fear for our lives, but we knew what had to be done.  It was after the battle was over that the reaction had set in and we went weak in the knees.

I was saddened by a sense of loss that I was no longer a part of, and probably would not be gain, Patrol Squadron Eleven.  The spirit of VP-11 is difficult to explain.  It went far beyond the normal camaraderie of shipmates.  In fact, it was almost as if we were a “family” and were all brothers.  That bloody Sunday had a large part in drawing us together, I suppose, but somehow it went beyond just that.  I longed to be back there with them once more on a combat flight crew; however, that was not to happen.  I sighed and flipped my glowing cigarette butt into the wake of SEA WITCH.

(The spirit and sense of family of VP-11 did not die in the war.  Today, fifty years later, we have regular reunions of those old VP-11 shipmates and many always attend.  We retell the old sea stories and often there are new ones—sometimes confessions of long ago midsdeeds or mistakes that once were idle scuttlebutt.)

It was full dark and the stars were bright overhead with the glory of the Southern Cross having slipped for the last time below the horizon when Hook touched me on the shoulder and said, “Hey, sober-sides, let’s go get a cup of coffee and hit the sack.  It’s getting pretty cool.

The most noteworthy event of our voyage on the SEA WITCH occurred on the morning of the day 8 March 1943, still an hour or more out, somewhere west of Seal Rocks we were in a solid fog bank.  The fog was so thick that it was not possible to see form the bow of the ship to the stern.  Unfortunately, the SEA WITCH did not have radar and we were traveling alone.

Since it was chilly and damp in the fog on deck and our mess cooking duties were over for the lat time, Hook and I were at a table in the mess compartment playing a few hands of cards.  I was just dealing when there was a sudden violent jar in the ship and what sounded like a dull boom forward.  An alarm started going on the loudspeakers.

Our first thought was “Torpedo!”  The cards went flying as we came up from the table.  My lifejacket was on my bunk tow compartments away on the mess deck.  I shot through the hatches, snatched up my life preserver, went up to ladders and out onto the main deck in a matter of seconds—probably the fasted I had moved in my entire life.

We had not been torpedoed.  SEA WITCH had collided with another ship in the fog.  I moved fast enough that I got a glimpse of the stern of the ship we had hit just disappearing into the fog off our starboard bow.  I saw the name of the ship in black letters on the stern as it vanished.  Of all the ships in the United States Navy the one we had to hit was the USS PYRO, at that time the largest ammunition ship in commission!

We found later that PYRO was loaded to the Plimsol marks with every high explosive in use.  If the collision had set it off, there would have been bare fragment of the two ships and all souls on board drifting to the bottom of the ocean.  Such an explosion would have wiped out a good share of that convoy.

The bow of SEA WITCH had hit PYRO just at the port five-inch gun platform aft.  The big gun had been ripped loose and two men died on PYRO.  Inspection of SEA WITCH revealed a hole in the starboard bow about six feet vertically and fifteen feet long; however, it was well above the waterline so we were in no immediate danger of sinking.  SEA WITCH lay dead in the water until the foghorns of the convoy receded then we proceeded at a reduced speed.  The fog started to lift as we passed beneath the Golden Gate Bridge.  Two painters on a scaffolding beneath the great span waved welcome.

USS SAN FRANCISCO passing under the Golden Gate

We docked in San Francisco bay in the early evening of March 8^th.  All of we Navy passengers were on deck in our dress blues and with our baggage as the ship eased alongside the pier.  There was no brass band to greet the rusty freighter; however, there was a USO coffee stand on the pier tended by American girls—the first we had seen in two years.  I recall that Hook said to me, “Migawd—look at those wahines!  They are all as white and pale as if they just got out of the hospital or something!”  In comparison to the brown girls of the South Pacific to which we had become accustomed they did, indeed look a bit sickly, however, it did not take long for us to adjust to that!”

We did not get to talk to the USO girls.  A boat laid alongside SEA WITCH and we Naval personnel were transferred to the Navy Receiving Station on Treasure Island.  It was after dark by then and everything on the base was secured; however, as soon as we had been shown to a barracks, Hook and I dropped our seabags and headed for the ODD’s office.  It took some talking to the officer, but soon, armed with special liberty passes, we were headed for the Oakland Bay Bridge to catch a trolley into Oakland (it was a bit nearer than San Francisco).

As I recall, it was by then around ten o’clock.  We simply headed for the first bar we saw to celebrate our return.  By the midnight closing time, both Hook and I were gloriously drunk.  We weaved our way out to the street, singing bawdy songs.  Hook insisted on treating us to a taxi back to Treasure Island.  We decided that the next night would be our real return celebration.  We would go into ‘Frisco, get a hotel room, and really live it up.

A Moving Violation and Seperation

During that boring month while I drove the gasoline tanker, I had plenty of time between runs to study.  I took and handily passed the examination for first class aviation machinist mate even though I had been a second class petty officer for only four months.  Promotions were occurring as fast as a man’s skill would permit.  I also heard that applications were being accepted for the naval aviation cadet flight training program and promptly submitted my application for that.  A month later I passed the stringent physical with no problem.

The move of VP-11 and VP-12 to the Solomons was now more than a rumor and we began actual preparations for departure of the airplanes in advance of the ground personnel.  There were no openings on the flight crews; therefore, when my month on the gas truck was finished I was transferred to an engine assembly crew.  Dick and I were also informed that the new Navy policy was to split up brothers headed for a combat

Author's brother Richard Frieze on left, Conrad Frieze on the right.

zone.  Dick would remain in VP-11 ground support and, upon moving south, I would be assigned to Patrol Wing One Headquarters Squadron as an engine specialist.  Since we were to be split up and partly because one or the other might not come back from the war zone, Richard and I went into town and had a good portrait made to send to the family.  It wa well that we did—once we left Oahu I very rarely saw Dick for the next fifteen years.

When the airplanes had departed, we had plenty of opportunity for liberty while we awaited our surface transportation to the South Pacific.  One of those occasions resulted in my having a run-in with a Hawaiian policeman and I wound up having to go to provost court (Hawaii was still under martial law).

I had taken the Dodge and gone into Honolulu on a 24-hour special liberty pass.  I no longer remember the occasion but it must have been an all-night luau as—somewhat the worse for a few too many drinks—it was after sunrise when I climbed into the brown Dodge and started back to the base.  Realizng that I had consumed one or two many, I drove out to Kaimuki and stopped at the Ekaha Street house to bum a cup of coffee from Diane.  From there I could take the Kam Highway around the coast past Koko Head and the Blowhole to Kailua and Kaneohe.  It would be quicker than driving the Pali road.

Richard had told me a few days before that he and Diane were planning to get married on September 17^th and he wanted me to be his best man.  Diane was up making breakfast when I arrived that morning so I joined her.  I was due back on the base for muster at 0800 and when I finally looked at my watch it was past seven o’clock.  I would have to hurry to make it.

I hopped into the Dodge coupe and headed down the long hill out of Kaimuki ignoring the speed limit of 35 miles per hour in town.  At the first curve out toward Haunama Bay, I noticed the white of a Hawaiian patrol car coming down the hill out of Kaimuki about a quarter mile back.  I thought nothing of it for two or three miles until somewhere in the area of the Blowhole I saw the poilice car round the curve behind me with his lights flashing.

I had to make a choice.  I could either pull over and be late for muster or I could try to outrun him to the Marine checkpoint a quarter mile short of the Kaneohe main gate.  I knew that if I could get there the Marines would wave me by and would stop the police car.  It had been done before.  Feeling cocky and with traffic very light, I put the accelerator on the floor and made a run for it.

At first I gained on the patrol car then hit the curves past Koko Head and had to drop below seventy.  The policeman turned on his siren and started closing the gap as I went up the last ridge before Kailua with the speedometer over eighty.  There my luck ran out.  A big semi was laboring up the hill and, with the crest near, I judiciously elected not to try to pass for fear of an on-coming vehicle.

At the crest of the rise I saw no cars coming and started to pull around the truck but I was too late.  The police car shot by me and crowded between me and the turck with the officer waving for me to pull over.  I did.

The policeman that walked up to the Dodge was a big kanaka civilian cop.  He was not polite and brusquely ordered me out of the car.  Seeing as how he was wearing a .375 Magnum on his hip, I obeyed.

The Hawaiian cop asked for my driver’s license.  I could only state that I was unawake that a serviceman needed one and the I had none.  He then asked for my liberty card and the car registration.  When I produced both he found that the car was registered in Richard’s name, not mine, and became downright abusive informing me that it was a crime in Hawaii to be driving someone else’s car without written permission. 

I had been very polite up to that point but my temper flared and I am afraid I read the native officer royally.  I carefully did not call him any names, but as I recall, I had a few choice words to say about the Hawaiian income being primarily from the military etc, etc, and that he was going to make me late for muster.

The kanaka cop accused me of resisting arrest and laid a hand on the butt of his pistol.  I then said words to the effect, “Officer, if you pull that gun on me, I am going to feed it to you butt first!  I admit I was speeding so just write me the damned ticket and let me get on to muster before they list me as AOL!”

He proceeded to do that and handed me a ticket that listed five charges—doing seventy miles an hour in a 35-mile zone, driving without a Hawaiian driver’s license, driving another person’s car without written permission, resisting arrest, and some other ordinance that I forget.  I made muster, still in my liberty whites, without about two minutes to spare.

That evening I showed Dick the ticket with the date September 11^th when I was to appear in provost marshal’s court.  Being ever the wheeler-dealer, Dick had the answer.  He gave me the name of a Marine sergeant at police headquarters in the Honolulu municipal building, told me to contact him and slip him twenty dollars and the sergeant would get me a driver’s license which would at least remove one of the charges and maybe some of the others.

I did as he instructed and it greased the skids beautifully.  In one day I took the Hawaiian driver’s test and a license was issued to me.  When I asked the sergeant about the other charges, he just smiled and waved a hand in dismissal.

It was a well-spent twenty dollars.  On the appointed day I appeared in provost court before a bored Marine lieutenant colonel.  When my case was called I stood at attention dreading the fine that was sure to come.  (I had borrowed fifty dollars and hoped that would be enough.)

The colonel verified my identity then said, “Sailor, you are accused of driving fifty miles an hour in a thirty-five-mile zone.  Guilty or not guilty?”

I was momentarily stunned.  The ticket I had given the sergeant with the twenty-dollar bill had clearly said 70 miles per hour and the provost had said nothing about the other charges.  I managed to stammer, “Er—guilty, Sir!”

“All right—fifteen dollars fine.  Pay the clerk.  Next case!”

Feeling relieved and elated I paid the fifteen dollars, the clerk recorded my violation on the back of the driver’s license, and I went happily on my way.

The Recovery of Pearl Harbor

Sunken remains of ARIZONA

Between December 10^th and December 20^th, I was in the air with one crew or another for nearly a hundred hours.  We continued to find nothing but empty ocean in all directions from the island.  The weather was, as usual, perfect but the blue sky and sharply-defined horizon were ominous.  Our rage at the Japanese was unabated and we longed for a chance to strike back.  The Japanese, however, had sailed back to their homeland islands.

I got my one day of liberty while I was at Ford Island on Sunday, December 21^st.  It was not very satisfying.  First of all I discovered that I had packed neither my black silk neckerchief nor my good liberty shoes.  I borrowed a neckerchief from Gibson then did the best I could with black Shinola liquid shoe polish on my scuffed work shoes.  At least my one suit of whites and my white hat were crisp and clean right out of the laundry.  It got me by—the JOOD (Junior Officer of the Day) inspecting uniforms on Landing A let me board the liberty boat.

Pearl Harbor was recovering rapidly from the sneak attack.  The waters of the bay were almost clean except for slicks of oil still forming from the blasted and sunken hulk of the ARIZONA and the capsized OKLAHOMA.  Across the East Loch, the wrecked destroyers, CASSIN and DOWNES, had been removed from the dry-dock and the PENNSYLVANIA looked nearly ready for sea.  Cutting torches still flared on the superstructure of the ARIZONA which would be shipped back to the states for use as material.  The slanted bottom of “the Okie” was deserted—the remainder imprisoned were long since dead and would remain entombed until the ship was righted later.  The crew of ARIZONA would stay where they were.  The ship had already been declared a memorial and would remain forever in commission in the United States Navy with her crew aboard (It still is in commission.) [Cannot help but cry about this.]

The whole atmosphere of Hawaii had undergone a radical change after the attack.  The scene was the same—palm trees waving in the soft breezes, cloud-studded blue sky, white surf rolling onto the beaches—but the blue ocean, the sky, and the horizon were ominous.  The Japanese could be out there anywhere, anytime.

There was no Nimitz freeway from Pearl Harbor to Honolulu in those days.  Only a two-lane dusty country road through the kiave trees that was perpetually being worked on by road crews.  The liberty bus slowed as we passed one of those work crews.  They were mostly Japanese laborers.  Their almost-eyed round brown faces stared up at us as we passed.  For a moment I felt a wild urge to smash in those faces.  (It would be years before I lost that animosity for anything Japanese.) [But he did and made friends in Japan, but that was much later.]

Beyond the oriental road crew there was a typical little white-trimmed green Hawaiian house nestled in some scraggly banana trees.  In the red dirt dooryard there were three or four Japanese-Hawaiian small children at play.  They looked up at the sailors on the bus with wide innocent cheerful grins and waved gaily.  I did not wave back at the children, but my bitter thoughts were suddenly replaced by a feeling of shame for having had them.  I closed my eyes and leaned against the window frame.  It’s not those people that caused it, I told myself—it is the fault of those sonsabitches Hitler, Tojo, and Mussolini! I had heard the rumors that on the west coast of the United States Japanese were being rounded up and sent to “relocation camps” away from the coast.  Presumably, the same thing was happening to Japanese-Hawaiians here on Oahu.

When I got off the bus in Honolulu, I crossed Beretania to The Black Cat for a drink.  It was the first liberty weekend for any service personnel since the attack.  The bar was jammed with the white, khaki, and green uniforms of sailors, soldiers, and marines.  I gave up and wandered on down South Hotel Street toward the Honolulu Café.  With early curfew and blackout in effect the many cathouses were doing a daytime land office business.  There were waiting lines of servicemen down the stairs and onto the sidewalk at the Honolulu Rooms and the New Senator Hotel.

It was not for me.  I retraced my steps, went uptown, and caught the Number Seven bus to Waikiki.  Wartime and martial law had changed Waikiki as well.  The lei stands and souvenir shops were open; however, there were more service uniforms on the street than civilian tourists.  The famed beach at Waikiki was deserted and was lined with coils of barbed wire against possible invasion.  The military, having been literally caught sleeping, had over-reacted almost to the point of paranoia.

The Waikiki Tavern was comfortably crowded but I found a stool at the end of the bar and ordered a drink.  I saw no one that I recognized from Kaneohe so I simply sat and ordered one drink after another while I chatted with the bartender and whoever happened to take the stool next to me.  When I realized that the tip of my nose was getting numb—I had learned that was a signal that I had enough—I walked unsteadily down to The Wagon Wheel Restaurant, ate a ham steak with fried bananas (the specialty of the house), caught the city bus back down town, then the Navy bus back to Pearl Harbor.

Hunter-Killer Patrol

The next few days I recall only in a blur of continual flying.  We extended our patrols to the practical limit of a PBY—750 miles out, fifty miles across, and 750 miles home.  The fifteen hundred mile patrols took more than twelve hours at our cruise speed of 110 knots—twelve hours of monotony at seven hundred fifty feet ceaselessly scanning thousands of square miles of empty ocean.  We took off at 0500 and landed in the late afternoon.

When we had a patrol to the east, we kept hoping to see a huge relief convoy headed for Hawaii, but with the U.S. war machine just gearing up, it never came.  We continued to make do with what we had—airplanes on which even the patches had patches.

After a week of that, we came in one afternoon and the leading chief said I was to report to the Operations Office.  There the assistant operations officer stated that I had been promoted to temporary plane captain on 22-P-3 because the regular plane captain was in sick bay.  The airplane was being readied for a night patrol and I was to report right away.  I assumed that Gibson would be notified that he needed a new second mech.

After a quick bite to eat from a field kitchen behind the hangar, I went to 22-P-3.  The pilot briefed me on a new tactic that we were to try.  A submarine had been sighted on the surface charging batteries a night or two before in the vicinity of Maui.  We were to fly as “hunter-killer” mission.

Each PBY-5 had two flare tubes in the tunnel hatch from which parachute flares that cast a wide circle of light could be ejected.  Our airplane had about twenty extra flares loaded into the bunk compartment.  The tactic was for two airplanes to go out—one to fly in front as the hunter and periodically drop flares, the other to come along behind and look for surfaced submarines in the light of the flares.  As usual, we were armed with both contact bombs and depth charges.

I chuckled ruefully when the pilot finished and said, “Sir, do you know how big that damned ocean is out there?  Tale about a needle in a haystack.”

“I know,” he said, “but we can’t think of anything else.  We believe that they may be using the protected waters of Lahaina Roads to charge their batteries and we just might find one on the surface.”

We took off at sunset, followed by another PBY also loaded with extra flares so we could take turns being the hunter and the killer, and arrived off Lahaina after full dark.  It was monotonous—drop two flares, reload the tubes, drop two more, and on and on.  It almost worked.  About two 0’clock, just before we ran out of flares, in the far edge of the circle of white light from the burning magnesium, we saw what at first looked like a line of breakers.  It could not be breakers, however, because we were two or three miles off shore and there were no rocks in that vicinity showing on the chart.

It was the wake of a conning tower as a submarine went under the water.  We made a diving turn but by the time we got to the spot there was only a swirl left.  Not knowing which way the sub captain would turn under the dark water, the pilot elected not to waste depth charges.  We made a radio report, but there was no sonar-equipped ship in the vicinity.

By three o’clock in the morning, both airplanes had run out of flares.  Wishing to land in the daylight, we climbed to three thousand feet and simply cruised around on autopilot until the sun came up.  Not having slept for 36 hours or more, the entire crew was exhausted.  In spite of opening the side window for air, my head kept falling forward as I sat in the tower.  Suddenly I realized I had been sound asleep.  The panel clock said three-forty-five and my last entry in the engine log was at three o’clock.  I had slept a half hour or more.

There had not been a sound on the interphone.  I logged the instrument reading then slid quietly down the ladder from the tower.  In the radio compartment both the radioman at his set and the navigator at his chart table were sound asleep.  Forward I could see the heads of both the pilot and the copilot resting on the back of their seats and not moving.  Aft there were two men in bunks.  I did not go aft to see if the waist gunners were asleep but climbed back to the tower.

Apparently the airplane had been droning along on autopilot for more than a half hour with all exhausted hands asleep.  I figured that I should discreetly wake those on duty so I hit the interphone with a call from tower to pilot.  When he groggily answered, I gave him an unnecessary fuel report that we were down to one hundred fifty gallons in each wing tank.  He thanked me and an hour later, just as sunrise, we landed back at Pearl.

When I reported the Operations Officer, an older lieutenant commander, was indignant.  He looked me over distastefully.  I was a bit disheveled.  My dungarees were dirty, I was unshaven, and when I pulled off my grimy white hat my hair was uncombed.  I was bleary-eyed from having nothing but a thirty-minute nap during the past day and a half.

“Sailor,” the commander said, “where the hell have you been today—goofing off?!  You were scheduled to fly on 22-P-6 and you could not be found!  They had to scrounge another second mech.”

I stammered something like, “I—uh—well—sire, I was flying.  They put me on 22-P-3 as relief plane captain for that hunter-killer patrol last night.  We just now landed.”

The officer’s stony face softened and his eyebrows went up.  “you mean you were flying all night?!”

“Yessir—Lieutenant Dobson sent me out on the crew.  I figured they had replaced me on Gibson’s crew.”

“Well—I’ll be damned!”  The Operations Officer rose and strode out to look at the schedule board on the hangar bulkhead outside the office.  He turned to me and said ruefully, “It was a mistake, Frieze.  Someone fouled up—everything has been a mess since the attack.  Why didn’t you tell Dobson that you had just come in from a long patrol last night?”

I remember my answer distinctly, “I—uh—well, sir, I reckon I just figured that is the way you have to run a war.  Never been in one before.”

He chuckled then looked at me compassionately.  “No, that is not the way we have to run it, son.  We all have to get our rest.  How long has it been since your slept?”

“Well, I got a little nap in the airplane this morning (I felt I’d better not mention that everyone else did at the same time) and I got a few hours night before last.”

“You are now off duty—I’ll do some crew shuffling.  Get yourself some chow and some sleep and check the schedule board this evening.  I won’t schedule you before tomorrow morning.”

I got a mess kit of scrambled eggs and bacon from the field kitchen.  Even the strong black Navy coffee could not keep me awake.  I fell on my cot in the corner of the hangar and, in spite of the noisy activity all around, slept for ten hours.

First War Patrol

Chapter 26

December 1941

The thirty of us from Kaneohe were taken by truck to the Pearl Harbor Naval Base where the motor launch would take us to Landing A on Ford Island.  The boat, normall spick and span in grey paint and shined brass works, was filthy with oil and blood from picking up bodies and debris in the oil covered, wreckage strewn waters.

We stared in silent awe as the boat crossed to the island.  The tall tripod mast of the ARIZONA leaned at an angle above the sunken hull of the battleship.  The dull red bottom of the capsized OKLAHOMA was sprinkled with the blue-white flares of cutting torches in the on-going attempt to cut through to men still strapped inside the battered ships, only some of which I could identify—WEST VIRGINIA, CALIFORNIA, TENNESSEE, MARYLAND.

In the big dry-dock in East Loch, the wreckage of the destroyers CASSIN and DOWNES leaned against each other, trapping the battleship PENNYSLVANIA, flagship of the Pacific Fleet, in the damaged dry-dock.  Over beyond Ford Island was the battered bulk of the NEVEDA which had been the only battleship to get under way during the attack.  Under intense dive bombing, NEVADA had been beached on Hospital Point rather than be sunk blocking the narrow entrance to the harbor.  The waters of the bay were covered with a thick scum of oil and pieces of wreckage.  Motor whaleboats were everywhere picking up the flotsam and still occasionally pulling aboard an old covered body.

Not a word was spoken in our group until the boat desposited us at Landing A.  As we debarked onto the wide concrete landing we walked past a row of tarpaulin covered bodies that had been pulled from the bay.  From behind me I heard someone mutter bitterly, “God damn the sons-a-bitches!”

No time was wasted.  We were escorted to our living quarters that were a roped-off corner of the least badly damaged PBY hangar on the island.  Rows of folding cots had been set up.  Since the Ford Island barracks were overflowing with survivors, the corner of that hangar was where we would sleep while maintenance work on airplanes was done.  The windows of the hanglar had been painted black so that work could continue twenty-four hours a day.

As soon as we had deposited our ditty bags (I had brought only a spare suit of dungarees and one white uniform) on a chosen cot, we lined up at a desk near the VP-22 operations office for assignment.  I was assigned to 22-P-6 and was informed that the airplane was on the ramp and was scheduled for evening patrol.

22-P-6 had not come through the attack unscathed.  The fuselage, wing, and tail suraces were peppered with bullet holes.  Those below the waterline had been patched properly by the metalsmiths but those on the upper surfaces simply had fabric patches doped over the holes.

The plane captain on 22-P-6 was a harried second class AMM named Gibson.  His face was grim and there were dark circles under his eyes.  He greeted me warmly because both the original plane captain, a first class, and the third mech had been wounded in the attack and were in the hospital.  He had been promoted to plane captain, I would be second mech, and our third mech was a seaman striker for AMM.

When I commented that Gibson looked bushed, he sighed and said, “Don’t rightly remember when I had some sack time—we worked all day yesterday and last night to get this old bird flyable.”

The pilots came aboard while Gibson and I were finishing our pre-flight checks of the equipment.  All guns were loaded and we were carrying two five hundred pound bombs and two depth charges on the wing racks.  When he found that I had more than fifty hours of flight time, Gibson put me in the mechanics tower for takeoff and the first watch.  He would try to get some sleep when we were airborne.

When I scrambled into the tower, I saw that there were two bullet holes in the instrument panel.  I called them to Gibson’s attention.  “I know,” he said tiredly.  “I checked all the lines behind the panel and they look okay.  Slapped some tape on the holes outside.  Just get “em started!”  He fired up the putt-putt and the instrument panel came alive.

When we taxied out on the oily water of Pearl Harbor, motor whaleboats were still busily clearing debris from the takeoff sea lane on the east side of Ford Island past Battleship Row.  When we were in position, a green flag was waved from the nearest boat and we started our takeoff run.  Just as the airplane came up onto the step I heard a loud thud from somewhere below.  In response to the annunciator light on the panel, I moved the mixture controls from Full Rich to Automatic Rich for climb and maneuver then slid down out of the tower.

In the galley compartment directly below the tower Gibson was standing staring mournfully at a hole in the bottom of the airplane.  We had hit a piece of debris that curled the aluminum skin inward leaving a hole about six inches wide and over a foot long between hull frames.  Through the hole we could see the Naval Hospital passing below as the airplane banked out to sea.

While we were contemplating the damage, the PPC turned the airplane over to the co-pilot and came aft.  He whistled and groaned, “What a hell of a way to start a war—shot up airplane and we knock a hole in the bottom!!”  Will it sink us when we land, Gib?” Gibson sighed and shook his head dolefully.  “Dunno, sir.  Maybe—maybe not if you can land close to the ramp and they get us out of the water in a hurry.  I’ll bend that tin back, dope a bunch of fabric patches on it, and pile on some mattresses for collision mats.”  He sighed again and reached for his tool box as I climbed back into the tower.

That first war patrol was an anti-submarine sweep down between Molokai and Maui where there had been reports of a submarine in the vicinity of Lahaina Roads, the old Navy anchorage off Maui that was used before Pearl Harbor became operational a few years before.  We had also been alerted that all fishing boats and sampans had been ordered to stay in port.  We were to check out any vessel we encountered.  It was rumored that such boats were being used to re-supply enemy submarines.

Gibson finished his makeshift patch of the bottom, caught an hour of sleep in the forward bunk, then came to relieve me in the tower.  I went aft to take position on one of the waist machine guns.  Just as I started aft, the pilots spotted a large fishing boat underway ahead.  Jus as I stepped into the waist compartment and reached for the interphone headphones, the pilot made a low pass past the fishing boat.  Without orders to pen fire, the third mech opened up with the port 50-cal machine gun and raked the vessel from stem to stern.

There had been two men visible on the boat—one on deck and one standing in the cabin hatch.  As fountains of water and splinters from the boat sprayed into the air, the man on the deck went over the side.  The other man ducked back into the cabin.  I grabbed the gunner by the arm and yanked him away from the gun.  The pilot was yelling, “Cease Fire!  CEASE FIRE!” on the interphone.

We circled and came back, our co-pilot calling on the radio for a ship to come out and investigate the fishing boat.  The boat did not seem to be badly damaged.  It had laid to and the man from the cabin pulled his deck hand from the water.  They both stood up and did not appear to be injured.  When we were informed there was a ship on the way we continued our patrol—after the pilot had some very harsh words with the trigger-happy seaman striker.

It was after dark when we approached Pearl Harbor to land.  Gibson and I had placed three bunk mattresses over the makeshift patch, piled on two cases of fifty caliber ammunition for weight and I agreed to sit on top of those when we touched down to try to hold the mattresses in place against the force of the water when the airplane settled down.

I do not recall that pilot’s name but he made a great feather light power landing headed straight for the launching ramp on Ford Island.  Alerted by radio, the beach crew was ready with the big side mounts already in the water.  As the airplane slowed and settled, water poured in all around the mattresses.  Our timing was good—I heard the tail hook clank into place, the tractor on the beach wheeled us around, and the side mounts banged into their sockets.  Our first war patrol was safely over.