USS COPAHEE and Crossing the Line

USS COPAHEE

On September 15^th the entire engine assembly crew, on which I had become the leading petty officer of the port section, received orders transferring us to the Headquarters Squadron, Patrol Wing One, and I was no longer a part of VP-11.  We were instructed to pack our full bags and report to the Pearl Harbor Navy Yard the next day for transportation.  There was no indication of where we would be sent, but we knew that it would be south and west toward the Solomon Islands where the Marines were fighting on Guadalcanal.

I have no record or recollection of all the names of the other men transferred with me but I do remember one blond, an affable young fellow, Troy Anderson, who would become a good friend as well as shipmate.  My crew also included a squat, dark-haired older man named Berridge (he was probably twenty-three or twenty-four so we called him “Pappy” Berridge since he was oldest on the crew) and a happy-go-lucky Italian from New York, Amuschustagi.  We were only a part of a large contingent of men being moved south for the Solomon Islands campaign.

At the Pearl Harbor Navy Yard, the truck deposited us on a dock and we were informed we would board the aircraft carrier USS COPAHEE as passengers.  We had never heard of the COPAHEE but were at first elated that we would be on a large ship that would have full facilities.  Our elation, however, did not last long when we saw the ship tied up at the dock and literally packed with airplanes.

COPAHEE was the first of the small escort carriers.  It was a large freighter hull of four hundred sixty feet (less than half the size of the regular carriers and about one-fourth the size of the NIMITZ and other modern aircraft carriers of today) onto which had been added a hangar deck, a flight deck, and a small superstructure on the starboard side.  Total length of the flight deck was four hundred forty feet.

We were to find that the ship had barely been completed at the Bremerton Navy Yard in Seattle and that its shakedown cruise had been the trip to Hawaii with contractor personnel still aboard.  The little carrier, forerunner of the many CVEs that Henry Kaiser would turn out during the war, was urgently needed to transport a load of Grumman F4F fighters and a few Douglas SBD dive bombers to the Marines at Henderson Field on Guadalcanal.

To our dismay when we reported aboard we found that all bunk compartments on COPAHEE were jammed to capacity with ship’s company and passengers that had boarded ahead of us.  We were instructed to stow our seabags and hammocks in storage compartments on the hangar deck.  We had the option of swinging our old fashioned hammocks from hooks in the mess compartments, but that would have meant being rousted out at 0300 when the mess halls would be set up for early breakfast shift.  We preferred instead to simply roll out our hammocks with the thin horsehair mattresses beneath the wing of an airplane on the steel hangar deck at night.

Dick & Diane’s wedding was to be the next afternoon.  I found the division officer to whom we were assigned and requested special liberty for the next day.  He shook his head and stated the COPAHEE would sail early in the morning.  I found a phone booth on the dock and finally got through to Dick at Kaneohe, telling him that Glover or someone would have to stand up with him.  I had no idea when I hung up that it would be several years before we heard each other’s voices again.

Tiny little COPAHEE was filled to overflowing with airplanes.  The hangar deck was full of F4F Wildcat fighters with wings folded.  The flight deck was solidly packed with a dozen SBD dive bombers at the stern and more F4Fs so that no flight operations would be possible.

The only clear space on the flight deck was at the catapult on the port side forward.  The four F4Fs lined up behind the catapult would be our ready airplanes in the event that we encountered enemy ships enroute.  Their guns were loaded and there were pilots aboard.  In case we encountered the enemy, they would take off on a one-way trip.  Since they could not land back aboard, they would ditch in the water so the pilots could be picked up by a destroyer/escort that would accompany COPAHEE.  We hoped that would not be necessary.

Our mission was to deliver the airplanes to the Marines on Guadalcanal.  The Second Marine Raiders had invaded Guadalcanal and had captured the airfield that had been built by the Japanese but they were in desperate need of airplanes for air support to defend against frequent air attacks and to provide air cover while the Japanese were being driven from the rest of the island.  The carrier HORNET and the new WASP were in the Solomons but the marines needed their own close support.  We were carrying, I believe, twelve SBDs and about three dozen F4Fs.

We sailed form Pearl Harbor early in the morning on September 17^th.  When we had cleared the torpedo net and set course to the southwest, we discovered that our entire escort consisted of one small destroyer-escort.  It was obvious that if we were spotted by the enemy, we would be a sitting duck.

Anti-aircraft defenses on COPAHEE consisted of four quadruple-mount 40-millimeter “pom-poms”, a few small 20 millimeter cannons, and some 50-caliber machine guns scattered along the fight deck catwalks down each side of the ship.  We had heard scuttlebutt that there was literally a Japanese “torpedo junction” down off the Fiji Islands, but we grimly joked that we did not worry about sub—we said that torpedoes would go through the thin plates of the freighter hull of COPAHEE and out the other side without exploding!  It was wishful thinking.  The calm sunlit horizon was ever ominous and we kept our life jackets near at hand.

Other than the constant threat of enemy submarines I enjoyed my temporary sea duty.  I had never been prone to seasickness.  Brother Richard was not so fortunate.  It was sell that he was in shore-based aviation because he was one of the unfortunate that suffered from chronic seasickness.  It was said that Dick got sick when the last line left the dock and stayed green at the gills until he was back on solid land!

(I later learned that when Richard came south with another part of the VP-11 ground support, he had the misfortune to be assigned for transportation to a destroyer—and destroyers are notorious for rolling and pitching even in a moderate sea.

The story I got was that somewhere down off the Solomons, a four-engine Japanese patrol flying boat saw the destroyer Dick was riding and started what appeared to be a bomb run.  When general quarters sounded the passengers were supposed to go below out of the way.

As the anti-aircraft guns of the destroyer opened up, Dick raised his head up for a look and muttered, “Let the sonabitch come!”  He then laid back down.  It was fortunate that the anti-aircraft discouraged the big Kawanishi.  It turned away without completing the attack.)

The first day out of Pearl all we passengers were organized into watch divisions and were assigned duties to work our way.  Being an “experienced” second class aviation machinist mate, I was assigned as plane captain on the Number Four read F4F behind the catapult.  It was my job to keep the fighter ready to go at any time.  I was delighted because the F4F had a version of the same Pratt and Whitney fourteen-cylinder R-1830 that we had on the PBY-5s.

One precaution that had been taken caused us some extra work on the airplanes.  Prior to sailing, all of the white star insignias on the airplanes on the flight deck had been painted out temporarily with lampblack as “camouflage” so the COPAHEE would not be so visible at night.

During the first night at sea, our escorting destroyer radioed bad news.  We might be in danger from our own forces because in the moonlight red looks black.  With those big black circles on the airplanes, our silhouette with the tiny superstructure well forward and open areas beneath the flight deck fore and aft, we had the perfect silhouette of a small Japanese carrier!  We could be in more danger from friendly subs than from the enemy.  We were promptly put to work scrubbing the lampblack off the airplanes!

Our voyage south was, for the most part, a peaceful cruise.  One memorable event was becoming “shellbacks” when we crossed the equator on the 22^nd of September.  It has always been a tradition that the “polliwogs” to be initiated attempt to revolt and get control of the ship before “Davey Jones” comes aboard for the initiation.

On this trip, polliwogs outnumbered shellbacks on the COPAHEE.  We revolted the morning of the equator crossing and, for a time, were quite successful.  Before long we polliwogs were in control of most of the main deck spaces except for the hangar deck area at the stern which was a shellback strong hold.

During the shellback initiation, officers and men alike are fair prey.  We polliwogs had set up a “barber shop” in the forward well deck area at the bow.  When we captured a shellback (black eyes and bloody noses were common) he was escorted forward, his hair summarily cut off, and his face lathered with a foul saltwater paste.

One victim was the ship’s executive officer who had ventured into polliwog space in an endeavor to help quell the rebellion.  The exec promptly stormed up to the bridge where he insisted that the captain do something to get the polliwogs under control.

Since it was all in the spirit of good fun and we had little enough diversion during those black days in the Pacific, the captain simply laughed at the exec.  He said, “Hell, man—I’m a shellback!  I’m not going down there—they will get me, too!”

With the assistance of the escorting destroyer, the COPAHEE captain did put down the rebellion.  The destroyer/escort was faster than the COPAHEE rigging cargo nets over the side and a boarding at sea took place.

A hundred or more new shellbacks from the destroyer swarmed aboard at the stern and, after quite a few more bloody noses and black eyes, the shellback “cops” got the situation under control.  I suffered one of the injuries.  I was below deck running from two shellbacks.  As I leaped through a watertight door I failed to duck my head enough and hit the top of the steel frame.  It knocked me galley west and I was captured.

As the shellbacks dragged me up to the flight deck where the subdued polliwogs were kneeling in rows, I felt something warm running down my face. It was blood from where my scalp had been split open.  A nearby CPO had me escorted to the sick bay where the doctor ensured that I did not have a concussion.  A corpsman shaved a patch of my hair and the doctor put in two or three stitches—allowing as he did that it was a good thing I was a hard headed Ozark boy or I might have hurt myself.

Davey Jones and his mermaids (sailors attired in wigs made of swabs and balloons for boobs) then appeared and we polliwogs were put through the traditional indignities of shellback initiation.  The CPO playing Davey Jones read the indictment for our having invaded the realm of King Neptune and an assembly line was set up that included shaving of heads (they skipped mine because of my bandage), marking with dye, lathering with a fiendish mixture of black grease, and “shaving” with a wooden razor.  We new shellbacks were still showing traces of the stuff when we arrived in New Caledonia five days later.

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 Summer of 1942

Chapter 30

Summer 1942 & USS COPAHEE

"Moonlight Serenade will still remind me of those lazy, idyllic evenings."

My week at the Royal Hawaiian was up on June 28^th and I reported back to Kaneohe expecting to go back on a flight crew.  That did not happen.  I was far over the average number of flight hours per month deemed maximum and was assigned to a month of ground duty.  Even though I was an aviation machinist mate second class, I found myself driving a gasoline tanker truck for a month.  That injured my pride but there was nothing I could do about it.

The truck was a 2,000-gallon tanker used to shuttle aviation gasoline from the tank farm to the PBYs on the ramp and to the fighter strip on the north side of the bae were carrier squadrons of F4F “Wildcat” fighters and Douglas SBD dive bombers were based while their carriers were in Pearl Harbor.  I had never driven a large truck (Grandpa Stanley’s little 1929 Chev truck hardly counted) but before long I was wheeling the big grey ten-wheeler around the base and through the parked airplanes like a veteran.

It was not long before brother Dick came up with one of his schemes.  Gasoline rationing for civilian and personal vehicle use had become very strict.  Extra ration coupons on the black market were expensive and hard to come by.  The big baby blue LaSalle with its gas-guzzling straight-eight engine was spending more time in the barracks parking lot than on liberty.

Dick had noted that the gasoline tanker carried two five-gallon cans of avgas in lower compartments on each side of the truck.  I do not recall what they were for, but old Richard figured out a use for them and came to me with a proposition.  He figured that the LaSalle would run fine, at least for a time, on 100-octane and might even have more pep than using ordinary 80-octane from a filling station pump.

Richard’s quick keen blue eyes had also noted that when I made a delivery to the fighter strip, I often used the base perimeter road past Hawaiiloa Hill and behind a large revetment.  For several second the fuel truck was not visible from the control tower or the base administration building.

In the past, Dick had been very penurious about allowing me to take the LaSalle on liberty my myself.  In fact, he simply would not lend it to me.  Now he tempted me by offering to let me use it one day a week if I would help him pirate a little gasoline.  When I demurred he said, “Hell, brother, you probably spill more than ten gallons every day!  No one is going to miss a cople of jerry cans full one in a while.”

Richard had been so confident in his plan that he had already scrounged two of the red five-gallon jerry cans and had them in the trunk of the LaSalle.  Through a bit of coordinated “sleight of hand” behind the revetment we had a few extra gallons of fuel and I did get to use the LaSalle once in a while when Dick had the duty.

The arrangement did not last very long because soon after we wrecked the LaSalle.  Dick, Glover, and I had been on liberty together and were coming back to Kaneohe at dawn so we could make muster.  Dick was driving, Glover was snoozing in the front seat beside Dick, and I was asleep in the back seat as we passed the Kailua junction and headed up a straight stretch of road toward the Kaneohe NAS main gate.

It was about a mile of perfectly straight road bordered by very shallow ditches.  We oculd have run off the road safely anywhere except one spot where a large kiave tree grew out of a low embankment.  It had a mass of gnarled roots at its base.  Just short of the tree, Dick fell asleep at the wheel and the car drifted off the road.  The right front end hit the roots and folded the wheel back under the engine.  Dick was not speeding but the impact threw Glover against the dash and my shoulder slammed into the back of the front seat.

Richard had not bothered to buy insurance on the LaSalle.  He knew that it would cost more to repair than he had invested in it so he simply allowed the Kaiua police to tow it away, then called the bank where he had gotten the loan for it and told them they could have it.   (We did see a Marine driving the LaSalle a few weeks later and the frame was so sprung that it went down the street somewhat crabwise!)

We were not without wheels for long.  Dick made some money in a couple of poker games and I got lucky in a crap game.  He borrowed a hundred fifty dollars from me one weekend and came back from liberty driving a brown Dodge coupe.  It was registered in his name but since I had provided half the down payment it was mine to use on occasion.  To my later regret, I neglected to get a Hawaiian driver’s license.

During the month I spent driving that gasoline truck, the build-up at Kaneohe Bay Naval Air Station accelerated.  The contractor completed the Number Two hangar and started refurbishing Hangar One.  Five new barracks buildings went up south of the mess hall to accommodate the influx of new men and new squadrons.  More airplanes arrived and soon VP-11 was up to full strength.  Scuttlebutt had it that a big campaign was developing on the Solomon Islands and it was rumored that we would be one of the first squadrons transferred to the South Pacific to operate off aircraft tenders.

With the fighting confined to the far reaches of the Pacific and the Japanese Navy no longer an immediate threat to Hawaii, our life was peacefully “normal”.  Dick and Diane rented a small house out in the Kaimuki district of Honolulu.  It was in a cul-de-sac off the Kam Highway just beyond the old Kaimuki theater.  I still have the address on a special liberty pass—1256-A Ekaha Street.

The raucous ambiance of the bars and cat houses of the Honolulu tenderloin held no fascination for me.  We who were shore-based preferred to do our partying and celebrating with shipmates in the quieter atmosphere of Waikiki.  When nothing special was going on and there was not a movie I wanted to see, I occasionally spent quiet liberty evenings with Dick and Diane at the Ekaha Street house.  Diane would prepare supper (I had my first encounter with Korean kim chee there) and we would spend the evening lounging around listening to Glenn Miller records.  Diane’s favorite was “Moonlight Serenade”. Moonlight Serenade will still remind me of those lazy, idyllic evenings.

The kim chee was another matter.  Diane loved it and Dick professed to like it, but that rotten cabbage never made a hit with me!  The evening Diane put it in front of me, it was fortunate that I had just opened a new quart of beer.  I had no aversion to cooked cabbage so I scooped up a forkful.  I don’t know what they put in kim chee for seasoning before they bury it, but it was as if I had a mouthful of angry hornets!  It took most of the beer to quiet it down.

The other problem with eating authentic kim chee is the “afterglow” on the breath.  For t least a day, a kim chee eater’s breath smells just like that fish in Hilo Harbor tasted—like a country outhouse on a hot day!  Beside it, the odor of garlic is mild.

It was during that “peaceful” summer of 1942 after the Battle of Midway that I had to come to grips with the grim realities of war.  Many images were often in my mind and in my dreams—that row of bloody bodies beneath the wing of that PBY on December 7^th, the noise strafing Zeros coming at us, exploding bombs, the grinning face of the enemy pilot who had circled us, the forlorn figure in that lifeboat and my near overwhelming desire to pull the trigger of the big machine gun.

What we were being subjected to and called upon to do was in no way consistent with my Christian upbringing.  I attended our Navy non-denominational church service but found no answers—only a reminder of the commandment “Thou shall not kill.”  We knew, however, that in war it is a matter of kill or be killed.

I finally found some solace in an unlikely place—the prologue of a play by William Saroyan, “The Time of Our Lives”, I believe.  It impressed me sufficiently and helped me to the extent that I still have a copy of the text:

“In the time of your life, live—so that in that good time there shall be no ugliness or death for yourself or for any life your life touches.  Seek goodness everywhere and, when it is found, bring it out of its hiding place and let it be free and unashamed.

“Place in matter and in flesh the least of the values for these are things that hold death and must pass away.  Discover in all things that which shines and is beyond corruption.  Encourage virtue in whatever heart it may have been driven into hiding by the shame and terror of the world.  Ignore the obvious for it is unworthy of a clear eye and a kind heart.  Be the inferior of no man, nor of any man be the superior.  Remember that every man is a variation of yourself.  No man’s guilt is not yours nor is any man’s innocence a thing apart.

“Despise evil and ungodliness but not men of evil and ungodliness—these understand.  Have no shame in being kindly and gentle but if, in the time of your life, the time comes to kill—kill and have no regret.

“In the time of your life, live—so that in that wondrous time you shall add no misery and sorrow to the world but shall smile to the infinite delight and mystery of it.”

I carried that with me throughout the remainder of World War II.

Return to Kaneohe following the Battle of Midway

"It was delightful at first, but by the third day we were getting bored and were chafing to get back to the squadron."
Return to Kaneohe

Two full weeks after the attack on Midway it was obvious that the battle was over and we were the victors.  We had combed the waters around Midway in a 750 mile radius and, after taking the survivors from the lifeboat, there were no more Japanese to be found and no more downed American pilots.  (Although my crew did not rescue any Americans, the other PBYs had pulled more than 35 American survivors from the waters between the location of the American carriers and the location of Nagumo’s carrier task force on the day of the historic battle.) 

Yamamoto’s mighty fleet had retired westward in defeat.  The Imperial Japanese Navy no longer posed a major threat to the American forces that were starting the island-to-island campaign toward Japan.  The opening of that campaign was the invasion by Marines of the Japanese –held island of Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands in the far South Pacific north of New Caledonia.

On June 21^st our ordeal as VP-11 orphans at Midway came to an end.  Both we and the airplane were tired, but we flew back to Kaneohe in high spirits.  During that two weeks, in spite of the Navy doctors’ decree that 80 hours a month was the maximum, rules go out the window when a battle is joined.  We had been in the air a total of more than 160 hours and had serviced an maintained  the airplane ourselves.

Once again there was no emotional reunion with brother Dick because once more he was ashore on a 72 hour liberty pass when we were pulled up the ramp and turned the weary PBY over to the maintenance crew.  The entire flight crew was given a welcome one-week R&R (rest and recreation) leave.

We found some changes had occurred.  Now that we were “blooded veterans: we were entitled, and required to wear the ribbons issued in lieu of medals that would some later.  They were not the decorations of heroes but were area campaign medals—an American Defense ribbon with a bronze star that showed we had been present in Hawaii on December 7^th, 1941 and an /Asiatic Theater ribbon with a star indicating that we had participated in a major battle (more stars would come later as we moved south and west and more battles took place).

We also found that the Navy had taken over the Royal Hawaiian Hotel at Waikiki and were using it for R&R for combat-weary crews, mostly the submarine crews that returned from war patrols in Japanese waters.  All crews from Midway, including us, were ordered there for a week of relaxation.  I packed spare liberty uniforms and on the morning of June 22^nd caught the Windward Transit to Honolulu for my time at the Royal Hawaiian.

When I got off “the Red Peril” on Beretania, I went to the garage that was the base for Dian’es taxi.  She was there getting ready for her shift and joined me for a cup of coffee at the Honolulu Café.  Over coffee I found again that casual-acting brother Richard was concerned about his “little brother”.  Diane told me in confidence that on June 4^th when we took off for that torpedo attack that never occurred, Dick had gotten special liberty and had come ashore to get drunk because he was afraid that I was flying to my death.  She did not go into detail but commented that Dick had gotten more drunk then than she had ever seen him and ranted about “that dumb sonabitch was going to go out and get himself killed”.  (He did not know that we had been called back to Kaneohe until later.)  She commented dryly, “He almost wreck my apartment!”

Sailors enjoying the Royal Hawaiian

The week at the Royal Hawaiian was a delightful change from the rigors of Midway.  I was in what had been a $40 a day room (in that era when the average hotel room was less than ten dollars) with one other man.  The cost to us was twenty-five cents a day to defray maid service.

Tea dance at Royal Hawaiian WWII

Other than being expected to observe the rules about no booze or women in the rooms, we were free to come and go as we wished.  The hotel bars and dining facilities were fully operational and were no longer restricted to officers.  There were no moneyed tourists during wartime.  Each afternoon there was a tea dance on the terrace that was well-attended by respectable young ladies of the community under the auspices of the USO.

It was delightful at first, but by the third day we were getting bored and were chafing to get back to the squadron.

The Battle of Midway: Part III: Another Lesson and Survivors

"That day almost got me a court martial and I got a hard lesson in tropic sunburn."

A Day Off

My memories of the two weeks following our arrival at Midway on the second day of the battle are mostly of long fourteen-hour flights every day.  For the first few days we anticipated that the Japanese main battle fleet and the invasion fleet might show up at any time.  Finally, however, we became convinced that the Japanese were really headed home in disgrace.  Yamamoto had us out-numbered four to one in ships, more than two to one in airplanes, four aircraft carriers to our three, but the incredible had happened—we won.  There were more black days in the war in the Pacific to come but the blackest of them were over.  The Imperial Japanese Navy would no longer run wild in the Pacific.

After a week of the daily flights I did not like the sound of the engines of our PBY.  Instead of singing, they started to complain with misfiring when we started in the morning and running rough during approach for landing.  I had to keep the cowl flaps cranked unusually wide open to keep the cylinder head temperatures down during normal cruise power settings.  Both we and the airplane were tired.

Davenport noticed it, too, and talked to the PPC.  We had put more than one hundred twenty hours on the airplane since the engines had an eighty-hour check.

We were given on day off.  Dave, Herrin, and I spent it on portable work stands changing the fifty-six spark plugs (two each in the fourteen cylinders of each engine), cleaning the magnetos and replacing burned points, and checking each system on the airplane.

That day almost got me a court martial and I got a hard lesson in tropic sunburn.  It was delightfully cool in the early morning when we put up the portable work stands and went to work on the engines.  I peeled off my dungaree shirt and started changing spark plugs.  A little later I also pulled off my skivy shirt.  It was time for noon chow before I thought to put my shirt back on.  My back was uncomfortable warm.

By evening I was in agony.  The searing tropic sun had literally fried the skin of my back.  Recalling that they had used tannic acid jelly on my sunburn in boot camp, I went looking for the Midway sick bay.  In the sick bay bunker a young Navy doctor took one look at me and exploded.

“Sailor, you have gone and got yourself a second degree burn there!  If I have to put you on the sick list as unfit for duty, you could get a summary court martial—that’s like shooting yourself in the foot!”

My back was hurting something fierce but I gritted my teeth and said, “Lieutenant, Sir, I am on a PBY flight crew and I will fly tomorrow.  All I ask is that you put on some of that tannic acid or something.  I can sleep on my face for a while.  I did not come here to get off duty!”

I did exactly that.  I slept face down.  Three or four days later Dave and I were in the shower one evening and he said, “Hey, Con, there’s a piece of loose skin on your shoulder.”  He took hold of it and the outer skin of my back peeled off in one piece looking like a sheet of onionskin typing paper.  From then on, if I wanted my shirt off, I left my skivy shirt on!

Japanese Survivors

Approximately two weeks after the Battle of Midway, I believe on the 19^th of June, our patrol sector was west toward Wake Island.  Two hundred miles or so out of Midway I was on watch at my gun station in the port waist blister when Lt. Camp said quietly on the interphone, “Gentlemen, we have a lifeboat out ahead of us and it is flying a Japanese flag.  Rig out the port fifty—I will make a low pass by the boat.  If they don’t haul down that damned flag—shot it down!”

Almost as an afterthought Camp added, “Don’t shoot at the boat unless they fire at us.  One shot from even a hand gun—sink the damned thing!”

I swung out the big machine gun and was looking through the optical sight when Camp made the pass.  The flag had been hauled down and Camp said, “Hold your fire.”

The lifeboat was a sorry sight.  It had a stubby mat rigged from oars.  A tarp or blanket that had been used for a sail covered some of the occupants.  One man was standing by the mast watching us.  Three or four others had pulled off their white jumpers or skivy shirts and were waving them apparently in a sign of surrender.  One man in what appeared to be officer’s whites sat with his head bowed in the stern.

We sent a contact report then orbited the lifeboat while we waited for the ship Midway promised.  I stowed the machine gun then leaned out as Camp made two or three other passes near the enemy boat.  For a moment I had a feeling of disappointment that they had not fired at us.  In retaliation for December 7^th I would have happily sent the boat and its occupants to the bottom of the ocean.

The feeling did not last.  All the occupants of the boat had looked up at us and were now sitting with bowed heads as if in submission.  Geez, I thought, they are just a bunch of poor bastards that have been floating around out here for two weeks trying to make Wake.  Sure don’t envy them!

The nearest ship turned out to be an old WWI four-stack destroyer that had been converted to an aircraft tender, the USS BALLARD.  It was a sister ship to the HULBERT that had come to our aid when we were down at sea in 71-P-7.  When the BALLARD had the lifeboat in sight we left the prisoners to them and went on with our patrol.

Late in the afternoon, the BALLARD delivered the Japanese prisoners to Midway—the only prisoners that were taken as a result of the battle.  The lifeboat as a cutter from the aircraft carrier HIRYU that had been sunk on the afternoon of June 4^th.  The story we got (and which was later confirmed) was that the survivors had been trapped below when the carrier was abandoned and had been left behind when the Japanese fleet hastily retreated.  There had been three officers and thirty-two enlisted men in the boat.  There had been four or five more who had succumbed to either wounds or to dehydration and starvation.  They had been making for Wake Island with a makeshift sail, but it was obvious none of them would have made it.  They were far less than half way when we found them.

That evening when we had finished our re-fueling and had checked the airplane for the next day’s patrol, a messenger showed up looking for the PBY crew that had spotted the Japanese lifeboat.  He was carrying a cigar box containing some little souvenirs consisting of uniform buttons and insignia.  He announced that the Japanese commander from the boat (the prisoners were being held in the mess hall because the Midway bring had been blown up in the attack the morning of the 4^th” had sent them to us as presents in appreciation for the fact that we did not sink the boat but had saved their lives.

I selected a brass cap device.  It was similar to a CPO’s cap device with an anchor in a rope circlet on which a lotus blossom was superimposed.  The messenger thought it was the cap device from a Japanese ensign ad it later wound up in the bottom of my sea chest where it lay for twenty-five years until it resulted in an incredible reunion with survivors of that lifeboat in Tokyo.

(I will record that reunion of old enemies in detail in an appendix to this part of my story.  It was almost as incredible as the wining of the Battle of Midway.  It resulted in friendship with the Japanese officer who had been standing by the mast of the boat after hauling down the Japanese flag.  Even today we still correspond.)