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.)

Prewar Honolulu part II

There was total discrimination against blacks in the Navy in those days.  The few of them in the Navy were limited to being cooks and mess attendants and they were trained in separate boot camps.  On ships or shore bases, blacks had separate living quarters.  They were seldom seen on liberty and quietly disappeared into native or Filipino sections of town.

The most rigid discrimination in Honolulu involved the many prostitutes that manned the several cat houses of the tenderloin.  They were governed by the iron fist of “Pistol” Adkins (I may have his last name wrong , but his nickname was “Pistol”), the head of the Honolulu vice squad.  I do not recall all of the thirteen laws that governed the Honolulu whores, but some of them were: Never go near Waikiki.  Never use public transportation except taxis.  Never go to a public beach except at Kailua across the island on the windward side.  Never be seen afoot on the streets of Honolulu.  Do not try to buy property.  Violations brought swift retribution from Adkins in the way of fines, jail time, and deportation stateside or to some other part of the South Pacific.

Controlled prostitution was condoned by the civil and military authorities for the reasons that it had always existed in Hawaii and, with the massive influx of military personnel in those years, local females would be at peril if there were not “camp followers” to satisfy male appetites for a fair price.  (In 1941 the going price was two dollars—excluding high priced call girls who serviced the officers.  Thus, a two-dollar bill was commonly known as a “whore house dollar”.)  The cat houses operated openly with neon signs such as “Nuuanu Room” and pimps stood on street corners handing out books of matches advertising various houses.

On our limited budgets, we did not spend a lot of liberty time in the environs of Waikiki, but we knew how to have a good liberty on a small amount of cash.  Bar drinks were relatively cheap as were movies.  Instead of patronizing a restaurant when we were having supper ashore, we patronized little saimen stands that long preceded fast food joints.

There was on saimen stand that we frequented two or three blocks down Beretania toward Nuuanu anal.  It was simply a canvas enclosure set up on the corner of a vacant lot.  It had two or three bare wood tables and in a corner there was a cooking pot and a charcoal brazier.  For thirty-five cents we could get a bowl of noodles (the saimen) and a couple of strips of nikoo (thin slices of beef strung on a stick and roasted on the brazier).  Dick always insisted the Glover and I go there for evening chow when we went ashore together because he had taken a shine to the chubby, friendly little Japanese waitress.  I do not know if he ever made any real headway with her or not since it was a family operation and Mama-san and Papa-san kept a pretty close eye on her form the cooking corner.

Hawaii was, indeed, a “melting pot” of nationalities, particularly in the lower classes.  Pure Hawaiians were disappearing as the natives intermarried with Japanese, Filipinos. Chinese, and Caucasians.  A person of partly white blood was known as a “hap-haole”.  More and more the typical Hawaiian was of mixed blood, usually Asiatic and Hawaiian.

More than on American sailor happily married a slender and beautiful Hawaiian girl.  An AMM!c, Carpenter, in VP-23 was an example.  His Hawaiian wife, Ludi, became one of my favorite people.  She and “Carp” lived in a small house in Kaneohe with their five kids.  It was sort of a second home for many of us and she was kind of a surrogate mother.  She was typically gracious and happy.  I never saw Ludi upset except after the war began and Carpenter wanted to send she and the children to family stateside.  She refused to leave the islands.

Honolulu 1941

Chapter 23

Honolulu 1941

Royal Hawaiian 1940

Pre-war Hawaii was, to me, a pure delight.  Honolulu was much smaller than San Diego and could be covered on foot except that Waikiki was a twenty-minute bus ride.  The Navy busses from Pearl Harbor dropped us off on Peretania Street near the YMCA.  From there the Honolulu “tenderloin” of bars, saimen stands, tattoo parlors, souvenir shops, and openly-run “houses of ill repute” stretched down South Hotel Street to Nuuanu Canal beyond which was the Filipino section of town.  In the other direction was downtown Honolulu covering the five or six blocks to the Aloha Tower on the waterfront where the steamships of the Matson Lines docked to bring in a relatively small number of moneyed tourists.

In 1941, tourism was not a major source of income for the territory of Hawaii.  Island income was from sugar cane, pineapples, and the military—not necessarily in that order.  There were no resort hotels on Oahu except the Royal Hawaiian (movie stars and rich people), Moana, and the Halekalani also at Waikiki.

The Territory of Hawaii (statehood was more than a decade in the future) was, a strange new land that soon became familiar and, longing for the wide spaces and climate of “stateside”.  No me.  I reveled in the unvarying warm, sunny weather interrupted only occasionally by a warm tropic shower of rain that quickly passed.  I like the waving coconut palms that abounded, the sights and odors of the myriad tropical flowers, and the laid-back air of the local people as they went serenely about their daily business with no one ever in a hurry.

On liberty, I roamed the streets of Honolulu until they became as familiar as Vancouver—which, like the Ozark hills, was receding into the past.  I visited Iolani Palace (not too long in the past the residence of Queen Lilikuolani, the last of the Hawaiian monarch) with the gilt statue of King Kamehameha.

 I learned the legends of the islands and quickly picked up a smattering of the Polynesian language.  All of us added to our vocabularies some basic and commonly used Hawaiian words.  White people were haoles (“howlies”) unless they had been in the islands a long time, then they became “malininis”.  A man is a kane (“connie”) and a woman is a wahine (“wah-he-nee”).  Many of the Hawaiian words had different meanings depending on the use.  For instance, trouble or bad is “pilikia”.  Kau-kau (“cow-cow”) can mean either food or eat.  (There was a nice drive-in hamburger place in Waikiki called the “Kau Kau Korner”.)  A fat stomach is an “opu” and a fat behind is an “okole”.

I did my share of carousing with VP-11 shipmates in the Honolulu tenderloin every other weekend after payday (we were paid on alternate Thursdays); however, Waikiki was my favorite part of Honolulu.  There was relatively little traffic on the broad streets of Waikiki.  Kalakaua street past the Royal Hawaiian and Moana hotels on the beachfront was wide and lined with palm trees.  There was a scattering of better class souvenir shops, a few restaurants (the better known of which was Lau Yee Chai’s on Kapiolani), the first-run Waikiki Theater, and along the sidewalks near the Royal Hawaiian the air was always redolent with the delicious odors of pikake and ginger from the lei stands under the palm trees.  Except on the weekend evenings, there was an air of somnolence about the area—indeed, about the entire city.

We quickly learned that there was a caste system in Hawaii even more rigid than that of the military.  Enlisted personnel were really not made very welcome in Waikiki.  We could use any of the commercial establishments, of course, and the Waikiki Theater, but we were not welcome at either the Royal Hawaiian or Moana hotels.  I can recall walking along the beach-walk outside the wrought iron fence of the Banyan Court at the Moana and looking longingly at the candlelit tables of military officers and their wives or dates in evening gowns and jewels.  The balance were moneyed tourists.

The dining room and ballroom of the Royal Hawaiian were turf of senior officers, movie stars, and moguls.  The Moana Banyan Court, as I mentioned, catered to officers and the mpre affluent tourists.  If an enlisted man tried to make a reservation, he always found that they were “fully booked” even though a peek through that fence showed empty tables.  The Hawaiian natives, known as “kanakas”, were welcome in Waikiki only as servants, hotel maids and porters, or entertainers.

Enlisted men were not totally excluded from Waikiki night life.  We were welcome at the Waikiki Tavern, a good bar just down Kalakaua past the Outrigger Club (which was very verboten to we common swab jockeys), at the Wagon Wheel Café on Kapiolani, at the original Trader Vics, and a coke and dance spot near there called (I believe) simply Jack’s.

Even in the Honolulu tenderloin, discrimination was apparent.  This was the turf of the enlisted men into which officers seldom strayed.  Two of the better cat houses had discreet entrances for commissioned officer that might wish to avail themselves (The Honolulu Rooms and the New Senator on Hotel Street).

You Don't Get a Good Conduct Ribbon for being an Angel

I had still not lost my dream of getting into the Naval Academy at Annapolis.  I did not confide in anyone, however—even my brother—because the average enlisted man in the Navy would deride anyone with ambitions to be a “gold braid”.  It would be a kiss of death with many of my new shipmates.

I went to the VP-23 squadron educational officer, a young reserve ensign named Rodney Foss, fresh out of the Naval cadet program, ostensibly for the purpose of getting some reference books to study for my third class petty officer’s examination.  I waited until Ensign Foss was alone in the office then, after swearing him to secrecy, told him what I wanted.  The young officer checked my personnel folder for my high school record and was delighted.  He felt that I had a chance to take the examination for the Annapolis preparatory school.  I was near the age limit (twenty) but Foss thought there would be time.

When I impressed upon ensign Foss the reasons that I wanted my application to be a secret, he promised that he would file the application himself and keep all the records locked in his desk.  If he entrusted it to a yeoman in would no doubt become an item of scuttlebutt and I would be subjected to much derision.  I told Foss that if that happened I would request a transfer and I did not want to do that.

The friendly young ensign swore on his honor as an officer that he would say nothing to anyone.  If my application was turned down, he would destroy all records and that would be the end of it.  He also promised to quietly check into the requirements for the examination and promised to provide me with a list of reference books that I could study.

It would be less than honest if I painted myself in those days as lily white.  As I mentioned before, I did my share of carousing in those early days in Hawaii and I did not always stay out of trouble.  I did receive a Good Conduct ribbon after four years in the Navy, but the reason was that I managed to avoid getting caught.  My troubles were usually personal and resulted from a combination of too much booze and the quick temper that seemed to come with my reddish blond hair.

One such incident occurred one night when I had gone on liberty with a good shipmate, Oscar Hook.  We decided we wanted to go dancing and see if we could pick up some girls.  Hook stated that he knew a coke joint that had live music and a dance floor out in Waikiki near the original Trader Vic’s (I forget the name of the place so I will call it “Jack’s” since that might well have been it).

There had been some problems at Jack’s with some inter-service fights between either sailors and marines or sailors and marines together against Army riff-raff.  Jack had banned booze from the premises.

We, of course, wanted something to spike the cokes (we figured the old saying “candy is dancy, but liquor is quicker” was true).  Hook had an answer as to how to smuggle in some bourbon.  He stopped at a drugstore and bought a douche bag and a bottle of bourbon.  In a filling station head, we cut the nozzle off the douche bag tube and poured the bourbon in the bag.  I was too skinny, but Hook weighed around two hundred pounds with a generous belly and he was wearing a loose regulation jumper.  He tucked the douche bag inside his waistband and it hardly showed.

At Jack’s, Hook remained seated at a table and I carried the cokes and ice from the bar.  Hook would then slip a drink under the red-checkered tablecloth and squirt a shot of bourbon into the coke.

We had gotten a pleasant glow on when two hapa-haole wahines that Hook knew came in and sat with us.  Both were terrific looking.  One was Kay with short black hair, quick happy smile, and laughing eyes.  The other was Lani (short for Leilani, meaning “heavenly flower”).  Lani had black hair down to her waist, the face and body of a beautiful young Polynesian wahine, and a very quiet voice and smile.  Both girls worked as models at a souvenir photo shop in Waikiki.  Lani was, indeed a heavenly flower in my eyes and we were soon on the dance floor.

The trouble began when a very drunken Army private tried to cut in on us and dance with Lani.  She did not want that and resisted.  When the private kept pestering us, my temper flared and I shoved him hard enough that he fell backward.  He came up off the floor sucking and swung a wild roundhouse punch at me.  I retaliated and almost instantly the place was bedlam with sailors and marines coming to my aid and soldiers fighting back.  The girls present were cowering along the palm frond walls.

I had just decked the drunk private when Oscar appeared on one side of the me and a green-clad marine on the other.  The marine yelled over the noise, “Back toward the window.  The shore patrol will be here and we’ll have to bail out!”

Sure enough, in a couple of minutes over the sounds of battle and breaking furniture there were shrill whistles of the shore patrol outside the door.  The marine shoved Nook and me through a side window and dive headfirst after us into the thick shrubbery.  The marine vanished into the darkness in one direction and Hook and I took off in another.  As we went I heard someone yell, “Watch the back!” and a white-clad shore patrol came around the building.

The SP spotted us and gave chase.  We cut over to the next street and ran for our lives with his pounding footsteps a half block behind.  He pursued us down Kalakaua and, as we came to the Wagon Wheel restaurant there were two SP’s coming up the street from the other direction.  Hook yelled, “In here!” and shoved me into the restaurant.

The Wagon Wheel had an open dining patio in the left of the front door.  We cut through there, causing no end of consternation among the diners.  The rear wall of the patio on the alley appeared to be made of woven palm fronds.  Hook, with his two hundred pounds charged the wall like a football guard and hit it with his shoulder.  It was not just palm fronds—behind them was a steel mesh fence!

Oscar bounced back with a curse.  I could hear the SPs approaching the restaurant door.  Using a vacant table by the fence, I boosted Hook over and swung after him.  We sprinted down the alley to the next street then swung off into the tree-lined streets of a quiet residential area.  Two blocks along and getting short of breath, we cut through an alley and discovered a detached garage with the door ajar.  The SPs were not within earshot as we slipped inside the garage.

The garage contained an ancient Model A Ford sedan.  We sat down on the running board to catch our breath, listening for sounds of pursuit that did not come.  When we were breathing normally and still heard no sounds, Hook produced the tube of the douche bag still in his waistband and we each had a shot.  I realized then that we were bareheaded.  I produced my white hat which had been folded and tucked into the back of my waistband.  Oscar felt around, then cursed, “Dang it, I must of left my white hat on the table!  I can’t get back to the base out of uniform—they’ll pick me up for sure!”

We each had another pull at the douche bag bourbon, (it had developed a slight taste of rubber but we were far enough along to ignore that) and solemnly considered the problem.  I had another shot and the little light bulb came on over my head.  “Tell you what, old buddy,” I pronounced owlishly, “I’ll go get you a white hat.”

“Where an’ how you gonna do that?”

“By now there’ll be a bunch of drunken sailors over at the Waikiki Tavern.  I’ll jist borry you one.”

“Hate to swipe an’ ol’ shipmate’s hat.”

“Aw, I’ll pick me a fireman off a ship.  You sit right here an’ save me a belt and I”ll be back before you know it.  Now don’t you try to go ennywhere—the SPs may still be out there looking for us.”

I straightened my rumpled whites, squared my white hat, listened at the door, then slipped out into the warm darkness walking as steadily as I could.

It went as planned.  I passed a couple of SPs with a careless wave of a hand, made it to the Waikiki Tavern, and as I reckoned the bar was in full swing.  I strolled through the din to the head where I was washing my hands when a very drunk sailor stumbled in headed for a booth.  His white hat was tipped on the back of his head and he never felt it when I lifted the hat as he staggered by.  I flipped it flat and tucked it in my waistband under my blouse as retching sounds came from the booth.

When I arrived back at the garage, I was dismayed to find the running board empty.  Hook had disappeared.  I called his name softly and was answered by a snore form the car.  Oscar was happily asleep in the back seat.  I felt the douche bag—it was flat and empty.

I finally got Oscar out of the car and unsteadily on his feet, straightened his uniform, and clapped the filched white hat on his head.  Hook was a big man and the hat was too small.  It perched precariously atop his mop of unruly black hair.

I considered our options.  There was no way I could get him on the bus to downtown Honolulu, onto the bus for the Pearl Harbor Navy Yard, and into the Ford Island boat without getting picked up.  Even as I thought it over, Hook slowly slid down to a sitting position on the running board.

I investigated my wallet, then checked out Hook’s.  Between the two of us we had enough cash for a taxi to the Navy Yard.  My problem was to find one and get him into it.  Finally I got him on his feet and we unsteadily made it out of the alley and to a corner under a streetlight where I propped the big man against the pole and told him to hang on.

My heart sank when the second car past was a Honolulu police car.  It slowed and backed up to us.  The officer in the passenger seat said, “Got a problem, boys?”

I was now sober enough that my words did not slur.  “No sir.  My buddy here just doesn’t feel so good.  I need a taxi to get back to the base.”

The policeman looked us over carefully, apparently decided we were harmless, and said, “Stay right there.  We’ll send a cab.”  The police car slowly pulled away.

It worked.  In a few minutes, during which Hook slid down to sit on the curb and snored leaning against the pole, a taxi pulled up.  He deposited us at the Navy Yard gate and we had no problem.  The liberty boat coxswain was used to such sights.

During another liberty after we had moved to Kaneohe and I was on mess cooking duty, I was on the other end of such a problem.  I was on Saturday evening liberty with a shipmate—Pickett, I believe it was—and we went into the Honolulu Café on Beretania Street for some supper.  There we ran into two of my Vancouver High School 1939 classmates, George Stonehouse and Frankie Enz.

Turned out that Stonehouse and Enz had gone through boot camp together and both ahd been assigned to the heavy cruiser INDIANAPOLIS.  The “INDY” had just moored at Pearl and they were on their first Honolulu liberty.  We had some drinks after supper, then took them for a tour of the joints in the “tenderloin”.

After considerably more drinks than we needed (I recall the tip of my nose got numb which was the signal I had had enough, but I ignored it and was having a great time) we wound up in a place down on Nuuana Canal.  Later I vaguely recalled that there was a crap game in a corner and I got into a beef with a drunk Marine corporal.  When we started to come to blows the madam ordered us to take it to the alley outside, which we did.

It was a dandy scrap and we each decked the other a couple of times when an SPs’ whistle shrilled down the street.  Pickett hustled me off down the alley, got me back up to Beretania, and we boarded the “Red Peril”.  I slept in the back seat all the way to Kaneohe.  I do not know what happened to Stonehouse and Enz as they were otherwise occupied at the time of the fight and I never saw them again.  (Late in WWII the INDIANAPOLIS was torpedoed, blew up, and sank in minutes with few survivors.)

The next morning when we mess cooks were turned out at 0400, I was on my bunk still in my whites and I was a mess.  I stank of gin, was sick as a dog with a hangover, and there was blood on the front of my blouse.  Checking myself over, I could find no damage to account for it.  I asked Pickett later about it and he just laughed, “Hell, Frieze, you beat up on that Marine.  It was his blood after you broke his nose!”

Like I may have said earlier, you don’t get a Good Conduct ribbon for being an angel—you get it for not getting caught!

You Don't Get a Good Conduct Ribbon for being an Angel

I had still not lost my dream of getting into the Naval Academy at Annapolis.  I did not confide in anyone, however—even my brother—because the average enlisted man in the Navy would deride anyone with ambitions to be a “gold braid”.  It would be a kiss of death with many of my new shipmates.

I went to the VP-23 squadron educational officer, a young reserve ensign named Rodney Foss, fresh out of the Naval cadet program, ostensibly for the purpose of getting some reference books to study for my third class petty officer’s examination.  I waited until Ensign Foss was alone in the office then, after swearing him to secrecy, told him what I wanted.  The young officer checked my personnel folder for my high school record and was delighted.  He felt that I had a chance to take the examination for the Annapolis preparatory school.  I was near the age limit (twenty) but Foss thought there would be time.

When I impressed upon ensign Foss the reasons that I wanted my application to be a secret, he promised that he would file the application himself and keep all the records locked in his desk.  If he entrusted it to a yeoman in would no doubt become an item of scuttlebutt and I would be subjected to much derision.  I told Foss that if that happened I would request a transfer and I did not want to do that.

The friendly young ensign swore on his honor as an officer that he would say nothing to anyone.  If my application was turned down, he would destroy all records and that would be the end of it.  He also promised to quietly check into the requirements for the examination and promised to provide me with a list of reference books that I could study.

It would be less than honest if I painted myself in those days as lily white.  As I mentioned before, I did my share of carousing in those early days in Hawaii and I did not always stay out of trouble.  I did receive a Good Conduct ribbon after four years in the Navy, but the reason was that I managed to avoid getting caught.  My troubles were usually personal and resulted from a combination of too much booze and the quick temper that seemed to come with my reddish blond hair.

One such incident occurred one night when I had gone on liberty with a good shipmate, Oscar Hook.  We decided we wanted to go dancing and see if we could pick up some girls.  Hook stated that he knew a coke joint that had live music and a dance floor out in Waikiki near the original Trader Vic’s (I forget the name of the place so I will call it “Jack’s” since that might well have been it).

There had been some problems at Jack’s with some inter-service fights between either sailors and marines or sailors and marines together against Army riff-raff.  Jack had banned booze from the premises.

We, of course, wanted something to spike the cokes (we figured the old saying “candy is dancy, but liquor is quicker” was true).  Hook had an answer as to how to smuggle in some bourbon.  He stopped at a drugstore and bought a douche bag and a bottle of bourbon.  In a filling station head, we cut the nozzle off the douche bag tube and poured the bourbon in the bag.  I was too skinny, but Hook weighed around two hundred pounds with a generous belly and he was wearing a loose regulation jumper.  He tucked the douche bag inside his waistband and it hardly showed.

At Jack’s, Hook remained seated at a table and I carried the cokes and ice from the bar.  Hook would then slip a drink under the red-checkered tablecloth and squirt a shot of bourbon into the coke.

We had gotten a pleasant glow on when two hapa-haole wahines that Hook knew came in and sat with us.  Both were terrific looking.  One was Kay with short black hair, quick happy smile, and laughing eyes.  The other was Lani (short for Leilani, meaning “heavenly flower”).  Lani had black hair down to her waist, the face and body of a beautiful young Polynesian wahine, and a very quiet voice and smile.  Both girls worked as models at a souvenir photo shop in Waikiki.  Lani was, indeed a heavenly flower in my eyes and we were soon on the dance floor.

The trouble began when a very drunken Army private tried to cut in on us and dance with Lani.  She did not want that and resisted.  When the private kept pestering us, my temper flared and I shoved him hard enough that he fell backward.  He came up off the floor sucking and swung a wild roundhouse punch at me.  I retaliated and almost instantly the place was bedlam with sailors and marines coming to my aid and soldiers fighting back.  The girls present were cowering along the palm frond walls.

I had just decked the drunk private when Oscar appeared on one side of the me and a green-clad marine on the other.  The marine yelled over the noise, “Back toward the window.  The shore patrol will be here and we’ll have to bail out!”

Sure enough, in a couple of minutes over the sounds of battle and breaking furniture there were shrill whistles of the shore patrol outside the door.  The marine shoved Nook and me through a side window and dive headfirst after us into the thick shrubbery.  The marine vanished into the darkness in one direction and Hook and I took off in another.  As we went I heard someone yell, “Watch the back!” and a white-clad shore patrol came around the building.

The SP spotted us and gave chase.  We cut over to the next street and ran for our lives with his pounding footsteps a half block behind.  He pursued us down Kalakaua and, as we came to the Wagon Wheel restaurant there were two SP’s coming up the street from the other direction.  Hook yelled, “In here!” and shoved me into the restaurant.

The Wagon Wheel had an open dining patio in the left of the front door.  We cut through there, causing no end of consternation among the diners.  The rear wall of the patio on the alley appeared to be made of woven palm fronds.  Hook, with his two hundred pounds charged the wall like a football guard and hit it with his shoulder.  It was not just palm fronds—behind them was a steel mesh fence!

Oscar bounced back with a curse.  I could hear the SPs approaching the restaurant door.  Using a vacant table by the fence, I boosted Hook over and swung after him.  We sprinted down the alley to the next street then swung off into the tree-lined streets of a quiet residential area.  Two blocks along and getting short of breath, we cut through an alley and discovered a detached garage with the door ajar.  The SPs were not within earshot as we slipped inside the garage.

The garage contained an ancient Model A Ford sedan.  We sat down on the running board to catch our breath, listening for sounds of pursuit that did not come.  When we were breathing normally and still heard no sounds, Hook produced the tube of the douche bag still in his waistband and we each had a shot.  I realized then that we were bareheaded.  I produced my white hat which had been folded and tucked into the back of my waistband.  Oscar felt around, then cursed, “Dang it, I must of left my white hat on the table!  I can’t get back to the base out of uniform—they’ll pick me up for sure!”

We each had another pull at the douche bag bourbon, (it had developed a slight taste of rubber but we were far enough along to ignore that) and solemnly considered the problem.  I had another shot and the little light bulb came on over my head.  “Tell you what, old buddy,” I pronounced owlishly, “I’ll go get you a white hat.”

“Where an’ how you gonna do that?”

“By now there’ll be a bunch of drunken sailors over at the Waikiki Tavern.  I’ll jist borry you one.”

“Hate to swipe an’ ol’ shipmate’s hat.”

“Aw, I’ll pick me a fireman off a ship.  You sit right here an’ save me a belt and I”ll be back before you know it.  Now don’t you try to go ennywhere—the SPs may still be out there looking for us.”

I straightened my rumpled whites, squared my white hat, listened at the door, then slipped out into the warm darkness walking as steadily as I could.

It went as planned.  I passed a couple of SPs with a careless wave of a hand, made it to the Waikiki Tavern, and as I reckoned the bar was in full swing.  I strolled through the din to the head where I was washing my hands when a very drunk sailor stumbled in headed for a booth.  His white hat was tipped on the back of his head and he never felt it when I lifted the hat as he staggered by.  I flipped it flat and tucked it in my waistband under my blouse as retching sounds came from the booth.

When I arrived back at the garage, I was dismayed to find the running board empty.  Hook had disappeared.  I called his name softly and was answered by a snore form the car.  Oscar was happily asleep in the back seat.  I felt the douche bag—it was flat and empty.

I finally got Oscar out of the car and unsteadily on his feet, straightened his uniform, and clapped the filched white hat on his head.  Hook was a big man and the hat was too small.  It perched precariously atop his mop of unruly black hair.

I considered our options.  There was no way I could get him on the bus to downtown Honolulu, onto the bus for the Pearl Harbor Navy Yard, and into the Ford Island boat without getting picked up.  Even as I thought it over, Hook slowly slid down to a sitting position on the running board.

I investigated my wallet, then checked out Hook’s.  Between the two of us we had enough cash for a taxi to the Navy Yard.  My problem was to find one and get him into it.  Finally I got him on his feet and we unsteadily made it out of the alley and to a corner under a streetlight where I propped the big man against the pole and told him to hang on.

My heart sank when the second car past was a Honolulu police car.  It slowed and backed up to us.  The officer in the passenger seat said, “Got a problem, boys?”

I was now sober enough that my words did not slur.  “No sir.  My buddy here just doesn’t feel so good.  I need a taxi to get back to the base.”

The policeman looked us over carefully, apparently decided we were harmless, and said, “Stay right there.  We’ll send a cab.”  The police car slowly pulled away.

It worked.  In a few minutes, during which Hook slid down to sit on the curb and snored leaning against the pole, a taxi pulled up.  He deposited us at the Navy Yard gate and we had no problem.  The liberty boat coxswain was used to such sights.

During another liberty after we had moved to Kaneohe and I was on mess cooking duty, I was on the other end of such a problem.  I was on Saturday evening liberty with a shipmate—Pickett, I believe it was—and we went into the Honolulu Café on Beretania Street for some supper.  There we ran into two of my Vancouver High School 1939 classmates, George Stonehouse and Frankie Enz.

Turned out that Stonehouse and Enz had gone through boot camp together and both ahd been assigned to the heavy cruiser INDIANAPOLIS.  The “INDY” had just moored at Pearl and they were on their first Honolulu liberty.  We had some drinks after supper, then took them for a tour of the joints in the “tenderloin”.

After considerably more drinks than we needed (I recall the tip of my nose got numb which was the signal I had had enough, but I ignored it and was having a great time) we wound up in a place down on Nuuana Canal.  Later I vaguely recalled that there was a crap game in a corner and I got into a beef with a drunk Marine corporal.  When we started to come to blows the madam ordered us to take it to the alley outside, which we did.

It was a dandy scrap and we each decked the other a couple of times when an SPs’ whistle shrilled down the street.  Pickett hustled me off down the alley, got me back up to Beretania, and we boarded the “Red Peril”.  I slept in the back seat all the way to Kaneohe.  I do not know what happened to Stonehouse and Enz as they were otherwise occupied at the time of the fight and I never saw them again.  (Late in WWII the INDIANAPOLIS was torpedoed, blew up, and sank in minutes with few survivors.)

The next morning when we mess cooks were turned out at 0400, I was on my bunk still in my whites and I was a mess.  I stank of gin, was sick as a dog with a hangover, and there was blood on the front of my blouse.  Checking myself over, I could find no damage to account for it.  I asked Pickett later about it and he just laughed, “Hell, Frieze, you beat up on that Marine.  It was his blood after you broke his nose!”

Like I may have said earlier, you don’t get a Good Conduct ribbon for being an angel—you get it for not getting caught!

Getting to know the PBY and a Move to Kaneohe Bay Naval Air Station

Consolidated Aircraft PBY-1

The next morning, when I reported for muster on the seaplane ramp in front of the VP-21 hangar, I arrived early to inspect my strange new world.  Each squadron had thirteen big Consolidated Aircraft PBY-1 flying boats.  A total of 52 of the twin-engine airplanes were parked in rows on the broad expanse of the concrete ramp.  Silver fuselages and broad high-mounted wings gleam in the morning sunlight.  Different stripes on the high rounded rudders identified each squadron’ airplane.

Being a lowly seaman second class recruit, I was immediately assigned to the beaching crew.  The PBYs were supported on land by large dual-wheel main gear that locked onto each side of the fuselage and a tripod mounted tail wheel with a steering bar for use when the airplane was towed by a tractor.  To fly, the airplanes were lowered down a launching ramp into the water by a tractor.  The beach crew then removed the wheels and dragged them back up the ramp.

When the airplanes returned from a flight, they taxied to the launching ramp and the beaching gear was re-installed by the beach crew.  It was onerous duty but we did have the advantage the this was Hawaii and we were required to go swimming several times a day.  Our uniform on the beach crew was Navy blue swim trunks and a pair of hob-nailed shoes for good footing on the wet ramp.  The water was eternally warm and we had plenty of time for recreational swimming unless the beach crew chief had us policing the ramp and hangar area while we waited for airplanes to get ready to launch or returned from a flight.

Pre-war duty in Hawaii was a delight because Navy shore installations observed “tropical working hours”.  Our hours were from muster at oh seven hundred (7AM) to fourteen hundred hours (2:00 PM).  The crew was divided into port and starboard watch sections between which the duty was divided so that during off hours, evenings and weekends, half the squadron was on duty—the other half could have liberty and the married men who had families in Hawaii could go home.  The off-duty section could have liberty on the weekends from 1400 on Friday until O700 Monday morning—one of the many reasons that duty in Hawaii was so sought after.

A problem for us recruits was that the $36 per month paid a seaman second was not enough to really take advantage of all that free time.  It did, however, give us plenty of time to study our practical factors manuals for the examinations for our next promotion.  Some of us, particularly we aviation machinist mate (mechanics) strikers, spent some of that free time poring over PBY maintenance manuals and going over the details of the airplanes.  Before I was even eligible for promotion to seaman first class, I was familiar with every system on the airplanes—particularly the big engines.  L also spent time with the ordinance gang helping to bore sight the machine guns and learning to field strip and re-adjust the mechanism.  I was determined to be ready when the time came that I could be assigned to a flight crew.

I did not get well acquainted with VP-21 shipmates.  Instead, I applied for transfer to my brother’s squadron and it came through in less than two weeks.  On 14 March I was transferred to VP-23, soon to become VP-11.

My duties did not change.  In VP-23 I was also assigned to the beaching crew.  I was envious of brother Dick because, being more than four months ahead of me, he had just made AMM third class and had already wangled assignment to a flight crew.  (Flight crew assignments were doubly coveted because flight pay—known as “flight skins”—added fifty percent to base pay.  A third class made $72 per month.  With flight skins it totaled $108—a small fortune to us then.)  Of course it meant that Dick continued to lord it over me just as he had done all our lives.  I did not mind—I was used to it and knew that, sooner or later, I would overtake him.

Dick’s assignment to a flight crew had one advantage for me—it got me my first ride in a PBY.  One day he talked his plane captain into listing me supernumerary on his crew for a local training flight.  The beach crew chief, Tex Foret, gave me permission and I happily drew a flight jacket, helmet, and goggles from the equipment room.

The big fuselage of the PBY had a bombardier’s compartment in the nose that included a manually operated gun turret for a thirty caliber machine gun behind which was the pilots compartment with its raised seats.  Aft of that was the radio/navigation compartment then a compartment with the small auxiliary “put-put” and a rudimentary galley on one side and two crew bunks on the other.  Above that compartment was the mechanic’s station in the tower that supported the big wing and engines above the fuselage.  It had windows on each side, an instrument panel, and all the engine controls except the throttles which were on the overhead of the pilot’s compartment.

Aft of the mechanic’s compartment was a bunk compartment that was also used to stow tool and ammunition boxes.  Immediately behind was the “waist compartment” having the sliding hatches and a 50-caliber machine gun stowed on each side.  There was also a tail compartment that had a hatch that could be opened to fire down and aft with a thirty caliber machine gun.

We had hardly reached our cruising altitude of seven hundred fifty feet and the engines had settle down to their synchronized drone when I knew that I had found my milieu.  I was ecstatic.  Glover was the second mech on the crew and was on duty in the tower.  He waved me to stick my head up and showed me all the gages on the panel, the fuel quantity gages, the wingtip float control, and the engine fuel mixture and carburetor temperature controls.

The fuselage windows were tiny and I could not see much until Dick took me to the waist compartment and opened one of the hatches.  Standing in the gunner’s position half out of the airplane on the port side, I had a panoramic view of the island as we flew around Koko Head, past Bird Island off Kailua, and circled in over Kaneohe Bay.

Richard gestured for me to put on the port gunner’s interphone because the pilot was speaking to the crew.  As I recall his words were something like, “Take a good look down there on the peninsula at those new buildings, fellows.  That is the brand new Kaneohe Bay Naval Air Station that will be commissioned this summer and will be our new home.  They are transferring us to Patrol Wing One and we will become VP-11 and move in there in two or three months.

The Kaneohe Bay Naval Air Station was on the seaward peninsula of the bay directly across from the village of Kaneohe.  I could see a long seaplane ramp with two or three launching ramps, one big hangar completed and another under construction, and a complex of new buildings of a major air station.  At the north end of the peninsula a small runway for land planes was under construction.  Kaneohe would obviously be a vast improvement over the crowded conditions of Ford Island.