Читать книгу The Sailor's Homer - Dennis L. Noble - Страница 15
ОглавлениеOn Sunday, 6 August 1933, with the temperature near eighty degrees Fahrenheit, a twenty-year-old McKenna departed Chaumont, carrying an envelope with his orders and his service and pay records in his left hand and his sea bag, with a hammock wrapped around it, on his right shoulder. He made his way on board Gold Star, reporting for his first permanent duty in a ship.1
The Navy had taken over and commissioned the ship—originally built for the Shipping Board by the Bethlehem Shipbuilding Corporation of Wilmington, Delaware—on 1 February 1922 at the Philadelphia Navy Yard as Arcturus (AK 12), a cargo ship. Five days later, the service renamed the new ship Gold Star and classified it as an AG, a general auxiliary ship. The ship measured 392 feet in length and had a beam of 52 feet. Gold Star had a “snail-like cruising speed of about 9 knots (10 mph).” A former commanding officer, Capt. Joseph Unrig Lademan Jr., USN, described his ship as “elderly, plain, broad in beam, straight-lined from stem to stern with not a trace of graceful sheer.” The new ship sailed to the West Coast and there moved cargo along the coast, including three voyages to Alaska for naval radio stations. On 9 October 1924 Gold Star arrived at Guam, the U.S. possession in the far-off and little-known Mariana Islands. The two original 4-inch guns on the ship were removed by the time McKenna reported on board.2
Little did McKenna realize he now served in a ship with unique duties and living conditions. From 1924 to the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941, Gold Star was used like a civilian tramp freighter, shuttling slowly between Guam, the Philippines, China, and Japan, with an occasional foray to Hawaii, carrying mail, passengers, and products such as copra from the island. To work cargo, Gold Star had two masts, five cargo holds, well decks fore and aft, and a three-level superstructure. Because it carried all types of cargo, it had a refrigeration compartment. Other cargo, including large amounts of coal, was transported to the island. Gold Star carried so much coal from Japan for the Guam power plant the ship received the nick name Goldie Maru—Maru is the Japanese word for circle and is attached to the names of all the Japanese merchant ships. Carrying “everything for a new way of life” for the islanders, Goldie Maru “came to be regarded as a mother to the half-forgotten island sleeping far off the trans-Pacific shipping lanes.”3
Sometime early in Gold Star’s tenure in Guam, the Navy sent the ship to the Cavite Navy Yard in the Philippines, where carpenters fabricated small mahogany-paneled staterooms on the midship section of the vessel, which became first-class passenger accommodations. Forward, on the port side of the upper deck, the yard workers built the captain’s quarters. Furnished in “Victorian elegance,” with rattan chairs and “colorful Chinese rugs,” the quarters had eleven double-hung windows that provided an exceptional amount of light for the commanding officer. Similar quarters on the starboard side housed the governor commandant of Guam when he decided to take a cruise with his family. At this time, the governor was a U.S. Navy captain. Near the stern of Gold Star, the Navy established a sick bay, along with a dozen second-class cabins, including a modern barbershop. The ship’s yacht-like paneled interiors and accommodations for fifty passengers moved Goldie Maru into a more genteel status among naval ships.4
Nominally, Gold Star served within the Asiatic Fleet; however, the vessel operated as the station ship of Guam, and this isolated it from the even more isolated Asiatic Fleet. The administration for the ship came directly from Washington, D.C., and sailors could not transfer between Gold Star and the Asiatic Fleet, “nor did [Gold Star] operate in conjunction with [the Asiatic Fleet].” Two other Navy vessels also moored at Guam during McKenna’s time—the oiler Robert L. Barnes (AO 14) and Penguin (AM 33), a mine sweeper—but they did not have the reputation of the much larger Gold Star.5
First ships can sometimes become a distant memory for career sailors, but McKenna retained his impressions. Gold Star was the perfect assignment for him; the ship remained vividly in the mind of the young man from the high desert of Idaho until his death.
1933
One of the first things McKenna wanted to know upon reporting to Gold Star was the location of his berth. In 1933 a sailor usually slept in a hammock, and the area assigned to Richard was in the compartment above the fire room. The heat from engineering combined with tropical temperatures and a lack of air conditioning made for terrible sleeping. McKenna would soon find different sleeping arrangements in his new ship.
Gold Star sailors could, if they wished, sleep in canvas cots scattered about the topside decks. During working hours, crew members secured the cots in a hold. After the working day, those wishing to sleep on deck broke out their cots and sought the right location to protect them from rain and spray during their sleep. Unlike for most enlisted crews throughout the Navy, rate and seniority did not count for choice of sleeping locations among those in Gold Star; they were on a first come, first served basis. McKenna observed a “lack of interpersonal aggression [on the part of the crew that set] the Gold Star apart from all other ships.”6
Another unusual feature of the ship’s routine was the first serving out of coffee in the morning. In the galley a large steam kettle—called a copper—full of coffee stood waiting. Certain men had large cups—actually beer steins—that they filled with coffee, sugar, and cream. These men shared their steins with four or five other sailors. Rate and seniority did not determine the groupings for this sharing of coffee. Sailors vied with each other to own the largest cup, even though Gold Star provided single cups. The single cups were used by new sailors who had yet to join a group. No other naval memoir or novel of this period discusses this act of sharing coffee.
Breakfast for the crew began at 0700 in the old-style twenty-man messes. In this long-practiced part of enlisted naval mealtime, the sailor selected as the mess cook of a particular group, or mess, of sailors went to the galley to receive food, which he then brought back for distribution at the mess’s designated table.
Work in port started at 0800. The sailors stopped at noon, and at 1300 two of the three duty sections had liberty, or time away from the ship not counted as leave. These sailors returned to the ship by a designated time. At sea, the deck force worked until 1600 and stood two-hour watches in a six- or seven-watch list. Because of the heat, McKenna, working in engineering, stood four-hour watches and had eight hours off throughout the day.
After work the sailors began the period of washing. Even though Gold Star had more freshwater than was normal on a fleet ship, most crew members practiced the old-fashioned method of using one bucket for cleaning themselves and their clothing. Today’s sailors often rail against taking “sea showers,” that is, briefly turning on the water, turning it off while soaping up, and turning it back on just long enough to rinse. The traditional bucket method is a far cry from sea showers and can be considered a lost naval art.
As McKenna drew his freshwater, a Jimmy Legs used a measured stick to ensure that the engineer didn’t draw too much. Richard then took his bucket into a large compartment with his shipmates. The problem with the bucket method “was to keep the limited volume of fresh water from getting soapy too soon.” First, he scooped up freshwater in his hand to brush his teeth and rinse his mouth. He rinsed his toothbrush in salt water and then washed it out in freshwater. Next, he had to shave. He rinsed his shaving brush and razor in salt water before “sloshing” them in freshwater. Then he lathered up and shaved, rinsing the razor with salt water. When he was finished, he rinsed himself with salt water and then freshwater to remove the lather.
Now McKenna was ready to bathe. In Gold Star he dipped a small hand towel into the bucket’s freshwater and sponged it over his body “to wet down.” He worked soap into a lather in the towel and used the towel used to scrub himself. He then rinsed the towel in salt water. Next, he wrung out the towel, dipped it into the remaining freshwater, and sponged off the salt. Finally, he wrung the towel dry and used it for drying off. Gold Star sailors preferred to use small towels rather than larger regulation ones, as the small ones were easier to dry out in the small clothing lockers. McKenna thought the crew preferred the smaller towels because of their experiences of bathing in Japan.
McKenna did all of his washing squatting over a bucket in a room crowded with other men doing the same thing. The sailors were so close together, there developed a saying: “You had to scrub three strange asses before you came to your own.” After they had bathed themselves, McKenna and his shipmates used the remaining freshwater to scrub their uniforms, again rinsing them with salt water. Although the ship had a laundry, it was too expensive for the enlisted men and was usually used only by officers, chief petty officers, and passengers.7
Before the cleaning-up ritual, Richard retrieved his canvas cot. The evening meal began at 1700, and movies started shortly after sunset on Number 4 Cargo Hatch. Lights out was around 2100. Unlike most Navy ships, Gold Star did not have a normal time for taps—lights out and no moving about the deck. The sailors could stay up as long as they wished.8
Gold Star offered little in the way of recreation for the sailor’s leisure time at sea, there being no radio or phonograph for the crew. Some sailors played cribbage and pinochle, and Acey-Deucey, a Navy variant of backgammon, was popular. Some deck sailors filled their leisure time by vying with each other to make intricate knots and by weaving belts and doing other “fancy work” for the ship. Engineering personnel hammered out rings and bracelets. When the ship was anchored, many sailors tried their hand at fishing. Few Gold Star sailors wrote or received letters.9
At the top of McKenna’s personal priorities when he first settled into his new ship was finding Gold Star’s library. The library turned out to be a small bookcase of two shelves in the corner of the crew’s compartment. It was the perfect height for the mess cooks to set their coffee pots on. The bookcase had locked glass doors and contained only three books. They were The Snow Man, which Richard took to be a novel; Bowditch’s Practical Navigator; and volume 2 of The Collected Letters of Lafcadio Hearn. When the newly arrived McKenna asked older shipmates if the single bookcase was the entire library, he was told that “it used to be clear full” before “guys left ’em laying around on deck and they got rained on.”
McKenna kept a sharp watch to see who unlocked the cabinet and what the hours of the “library” were. No one opened the cabinet. He eventually learned that the mail clerk had had a key but had lost it. McKenna became obsessed with reading The Snow Man. Finally, one night some shipmates came back to the Gold Star drunk and belligerent. They woke everyone up with their shouting and shoved each other against the lockers. The commotion centered in the area of the bookcase. McKenna listened carefully for the sound of breaking glass but heard none. He slipped on his shoes, went quietly over to the bookcase, and “kicked in the glass.” Everyone in the morning presumed the drunks had caused the damage. “Snow Man turned out not to be a novel,” McKenna later wrote, “but it was quite an interesting book, and I read it several times.”10
The few sailors in Gold Star who read bought their books ashore and sought out others who read to exchange with during underway time. Because the lockers for sailor’s clothing were small, storage of the books was always difficult. Richard began hiding his books in the nooks and crannies of the engineering spaces, a practice he continued for most of his career at sea.
The young McKenna quickly learned that even though it was classified as a station ship, Gold Star spent a large amount of time under way and visiting foreign ports. Two days after McKenna had reported on board, as he was still trying to learn the ship, Guamanian stevedores began loading copra into the ship’s cargo holds. The commanding officer, Lt. Cdr. William C. Faus, USN, had his navigator lay a course to Kobe, Japan.
Fireman 3rd Class McKenna, for reasons known only to him, chose to strike, or learn through on-the-job work, for the rating of machinist’s mate. He began his training in enlisted engineering in the fire room, and as he mastered the basic routines, he found he wanted to work in the refrigeration area, known as the “ice plant.” McKenna eventually did move into the ice plant as he gained more and more experience.
As the date for the departure for Kobe fast approached, McKenna watched, puzzled, as passengers came on board. Civilian passengers had been boarding naval ships since the early days of the Navy occupation of Guam, when authorities declared the tropical environment of the island “unhealthful.” The same authorities recommended that American women and children living on the island take at least one “health cruise” a year to a cooler area. As public health on Guam improved—and some argue that health was never a real issue on the island—the reason for the health cruises evaporated, yet the custom continued. Some Guamanians also made journeys via the Gold Star, especially to the Philippine Islands, and members of the Guam militia were recorded in the ship’s logbooks “as troop passengers.” By the time McKenna joined the ship, every trip Gold Star made away from Guam was a health cruise. Whereas troopships carried women and children in addition to troops during transfers between assignments, Gold Star’s travelers were usually on board just for travel. McKenna in later years remarked that he never saw another ship in the Navy act as what amounted to a cruise ship for families, and one would be hard-pressed to find a vessel in the modern Navy that does so, making Gold Star truly unique.
Second-class women passengers (wives of enlisted men) lived in the staterooms aft and had their meals in the chief petty officer’s mess. To help escape the heat of the cabins, women used the large top of the Number 6 Hatch cover as a deck lounge. Women passengers in first-class staterooms lived in the officer’s area amidships and had a deck above the general crew quarters. Gold Star even had a few penthouse quarters for the wives of important men. On McKenna’s first voyage, the wife and two adult daughters of Capt. George A. Alexander, USN, the governor of Guam, were among the passengers. The women passengers in first class took their meals with the officers. As Gold Star slowly plodded into foreign ports, “her clotheslines flapping with panties and bras, rompers and diapers,” sailors on other ships did double takes.11
On 11 August Gold Star departed Apra Harbor, on the western side of Guam, bound for Kobe. McKenna thus started to fulfill his wishes for sea duty and experiences with different cultures. Richard quickly learned sea duty could be dangerous. Three days out of Apra, at 2345, on 14 August, a crewman found Matt1 Silvino Yabut “lying on the deck of lower #1 hold.” Yabut had “apparently accidentally fallen between [the] bottom boards of upper #1 hold.” The medical officer declared that Yabut had died of a “fractured skull . . . and concussion of the brain.”12
McKenna arrived at his first foreign port of call, Kobe, Japan, on Thursday, 17 August. The ship moored to a buoy, and Japanese stevedores began unloading the copra from Guam. The postmaster from Guam came on board for transportation, as did an army lieutenant and his wife and daughter bound for the city of Manila, in the Philippine Islands. When Richard went ashore, he received a number of cards and pamphlets for establishments offering all types of services. A Capt. J. Natsume gave him a card stating he was in charge of seamen’s services “for gentlemen’s diseases, etc.” at the Miyako Pharmacy.13
Gold Star departed Kobe on 22 August; stopped briefly at Nagasaki, Japan, and Shanghai, China; and arrived at Manila on Saturday, 9 September. The ship’s trips to Manila were typically short. Periodically, however, Gold Star needed to enter the Navy yard in nearby Cavite or the Dewey Floating Dry Dock at Olongapo for overhaul work. Yard stays meant extended time in the Philippines.
Given the inadequacy of Gold Star’s library, McKenna began a search for used-book stores in every port he visited. At first, McKenna had a practical reason for perusing the shelves of used books: he had little money left over after his allotment for his mother. The browsing of used-book stores became one of the more enjoyable ways he spent his time ashore during his career, and he continued haunting the establishments after his retirement.
McKenna recalled that the best library for sailors he ever saw in the Far East was in the Cavite Navy Yard, where the books were housed in a cool, quiet old stone building built at least a hundred years in the past. The library contained “quite a few books,” but Richard seldom saw anyone use the facility. He enjoyed watching the geckoes that made nests among the unread books, “running around the ceiling eating flies and mosquitoes and making musical chirps.”14
On Wednesday, 13 September, with all cargo stowed on board, Gold Star departed for Guam, arriving at a mooring buoy in Apra Harbor on Tuesday, 19 September. Years later, McKenna recalled his ship fondly. He did not remember some of his shipmates running afoul of Navy regulations. During this short underway time, for example, one sailor was placed in solitary confinement with bread and water “for 30 days, with full ration every 3rd day,” and had to forfeit fifteen dollars of his pay for six months for two cases of being absent without leave (AWOL) and “under the influence of intoxicating liquor.” Another sailor received a bad conduct discharge (BCD) for being AWOL, but the sentence would be remitted if he kept a good record for six months.15
While in Mountain Home, McKenna had answered to the nickname Richie. By the time he began settling into the routine of Gold Star, he responded to “Mac”—a nickname he’d take up for the rest of his career.
Two of the reasons McKenna joined the Navy were travel and experiences with interesting people and cultures. In just thirty-nine days on board Gold Star, McKenna had seen two ports in Japan, plus Shanghai in China and Manila in the Philippine Islands. Added to all this was Guam itself. What must a young man raised among the lava rocks and sagebrush-covered high desert of southwestern Idaho have thought of an island with lush jungles, unknown to most Americans of the time? Guam had everything an impressionable person could want: an unusual landscape, an ancient native culture, and the consequences of many years of Western domination. Mac made the most of this assignment. Although he honed his observing and researching skills during Gold Star’s voyages, he did not neglect learning about Guam.
Guam is the largest island, in both size and population, in the chain of fifteen islands that make up the Marianas. The Marianas are high-volcanic islands that stretch some five hundred miles in a north–south direction; Guam is located at the southern end of the chain. The Marianas are approximately fifteen hundred miles east of the Philippine Islands. Guam has two seasons: the dry season, from January to June, and the wet season, when the island can for the rest of the year receive up to a hundred inches of rain. The wet season can also bring typhoons—called hurricanes in the Atlantic Ocean—slamming into Guam.
In the vast Pacific Ocean, Guam lies in the ethnographic area known as Micronesia, the other two areas being Polynesia and Melanesia. These three ethnographic areas make up what is now labeled Oceania. Europeans first called Oceania the South Seas or the South Pacific.
Guam lies astride the principal routes from Hawaii to the Philippine Islands and from Japan to New Guinea. It holds the distinction of being not only the largest island but also the only island with both enough elevation for a protected harbor and enough land for airports. Furthermore, Guam makes up 20 percent of the land area of the 1,045 square miles of Micronesia. It sits astride the northeast trade winds and the north equatorial ocean current, which traverses the Pacific Ocean. This makes it an important area for ships wishing to cross the Pacific from east to west above the equator. These geographical features of Oceania affected the first people of Guam, the Chamorros.16
The first people on Guam came to the island around 2000 BC from Southeast Asia. Interesting artifacts of an ancient culture are the latte stones, said to have been introduced between AD 800 and AD 900, when newcomers arrived in Guam. The stones consist of two parts: the halagi, which is upright and narrows near the top, and the talsa, a hemispheric capstone with the flat side facing upward. The stones are arranged in two straight parallel rows of four to ten stones. Debate continues as to what these stones represent, but many researchers believe they held up wooden houses. Below the structure and within the stones, gravesites were found. These graves were thought to strengthen “the bond between the ancestors of village families, the living people and their homes.” The last of the structures was built in the sixteenth century and perhaps stood into the eighteenth century.17
Guam’s geographical location eventually proved fatal for its ancient society. The society’s downfall began when Charles I of Spain sent the Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan on a voyage in search of the Spice Islands. Magellan and his three ships departed Spain on 10 August 1519, and by 1520 they had entered the Pacific. Theirs was the first known voyage from the Atlantic into the Pacific. On 6 March 1521 the vessels approached Guam, which became the first inhabited island in the Pacific seen by those of the West. It was not until 1559 that Philip II of Spain ordered Miguel Lopez de Legazpi to take possession and colonize the Marianas. The next major event in the Western intrusion into Guam was on 15 June 1668, when the galleon San Diego arrived at the island. It brought Jesuit missionaries, led by Padre Diego Luis de San Vitores, to introduce Christianity and develop trade. The Spanish taught the Chamorros to cultivate maize, raise cattle, and tan hides and introduced them to Spanish dress, language, and culture. After the establishment of Christianity, the church became the focus of every village. Guam soon became the port of call for the important Spanish galleon route that crossed the Pacific Ocean from Mexico to the Philippines.18
Chief Quipuha, the leader in the area where San Diego put the Jesuits ashore, welcomed the newcomers. He allowed himself to be baptized and granted the land on which the first Catholic church, the Dulce Nombre de Maria (Sweet Name of Mary), was erected in 1669. Not all on Guam proceeded smoothly, however. When Father San Vitores arrived on the island, the Chamorro population stood at an estimated 12,000. Twenty-two years later, the Chamorro population numbered only 2,000. In 1671 a series of engagements began the Spanish-Chamorro Wars. Professor Robert F. Rogers of Guam noted that the drastic reduction of the native population came from a combination of “war, deprivation, diseases, disease-induced infertility, societal demoralization, and, finally, epidemics, all caused by the Spanish invasion.” The Spanish losses numbered between 118 and 128 men, among them Father San Vitores in 1672.19
Spanish rule continued until 21 June 1898. On that date U.S. troops captured Guam in a bloodless landing during the Spanish-American War of 1898. The Treaty of Paris ended the brief conflict and ceded to the United States the island of Guam. Not long after the American naval strategist Alfred Thayer Mahan and others looked on Guam as the United States’ “Gibraltar” in the Pacific. The island became an important part of America’s War Plan Orange, a pre–World War II plan devised in case of war against Japan. Despite its strategic location, Congress failed to fortify the island.20
By the time McKenna reported to Gold Star in 1933, the Navy had governed Guam for more than three decades. Because the governor himself was a Navy man, “no navy man could come into Agana out of uniform, and [Capt. George A.] Alexander even ordered the natives to wear a coat and tie in Agana. . . . [H]e finally compromised on Sundays only.” Mac observed “older natives would get off the road and stand at attention, hat in hand, when a naval officer passed. . . . It was something they had learned under the Spaniards and they insisted on doing it.”21
From 1933 to 1937 McKenna found “only a couple of hundred Americans” on the island, “including Marines.” A “few narrow roads” could handle “only a dozen or so cars and trucks.”22
One of the traditions of naval service for a young sailor beginning an apprenticeship in enlisted engineering was being assigned the dirty and least desirable tasks. Higher-rated firemen and petty officers used this system to help them evaluate the work of the new firemen. One of the more unpleasant of these unenviable tasks involved the ship’s boilers. So that Gold Star’s Scotch boilers performed at peak efficiency, their insides required periodic chipping and cleaning of the carbon. Known as “cleaning firesides,” this task required firemen to enter through a narrow access hole and work at chipping and scraping in a dark claustrophobic environment. McKenna’s unfinished autobiographical novel, The Sons of Martha, contains a long section about cleaning firesides, a sure indication Mac performed the task at least once while serving as a fireman 3rd class in Gold Star, probably after he had returned from his first trip in 1933.23
McKenna learned from a senior fireman that he would start cleaning firesides the following day. The fireman told Mac to report for duty wearing his oldest white uniform and white hat, as they would be useless after he had finished with his assignment. McKenna asked if it was a dirty job.
“Hah! You got no idea! But it’s more than the dirt and it’s more than the work. It gets you another way the first time.” The fireman wanted to warn Mac, thinking it might be easier for him if he understood the work. “It gets inside you and underneath of you someway,” said the fireman. “The first time I cleaned firesides I thought I was gonna die in there.”
The senior fireman had not exaggerated. After the boiler’s tubes had been cleaned, McKenna had to enter his assigned section of the furnace (the furnace itself, of course, was turned off) through a small access hole into the combustion chamber. Mac found soot piled thigh deep in the chamber. For illumination he carried a small electric light that was pitifully inadequate. His work stirred up the soot, which covered him in blackness and made it almost impossible to see anything. The senior fireman had not softened the work’s effects on the sailor. The darkness, closeness, and soot seemed to penetrate Mac. He wanted to run. Instead he retched. Gaining control of himself, the new fireman began bagging the soot and sending it out the access way so that it could be moved away from the ship.
McKenna next turned to wire brushing the tubes. This was the most difficult task, as it required both chipping and scraping, much like removing paint. The sailor broke down the work into small squares. He fantasized that the squares were a new land, and he the explorer. In his mind the square patches of corrosion became a homestead. As each bit of the square of corrosion peeled away, the homestead was cleared of trees, the land was plowed, and crops were planted. Again, McKenna moved the scraper across the square. He now had built a fantasy log house and rail fences.
Finally finished with his labors, McKenna found himself “absolutely black.” His knees and elbows were rubbed raw, the “raw flesh . . . more black than red.”24
During his first year in Guam, Mac found some diversion ashore on the island. His scrapbook has a notice about an enlisted men’s dance on 24 October 1933 at the recreation hall of the Marine barracks in Guam. As there has always been friction between Marines and sailors, Mac may not have attended, but in any case, as time passed, McKenna eventually found other activities while in his home port.
By 11 November 1933 Guamanian stevedores had loaded more cargo into the holds of Gold Star from lighters. As the ship was moored to a buoy in the harbor, freight was loaded into shallow draft barges, brought out to the ship, and transferred into the ship’s cargo holds. In the maritime world this process is known as lightering. When Gold Star returned to Guam and moored to the mooring buoy, stevedores moved the cargo from the ship to barges, and the lighters transported the material to shore for further unloading.
Gold Star departed Apra Harbor, this time en route to Manila. The normal complement of health-cruise passengers, minus the Guam militia, was on board. Gold Star remained in Manila for one week. While in Manila Mac went ashore and located a used-book store, where he purchased two books illustrating his eclectic reading habits. One volume, for $2.75, contained tables for logarithms, and the other volume was a Spanish-language book he sent to the Spanish professor he had had at the College of Idaho.25
Gold Star departed for the Crown Colony of Hong Kong and moored to a buoy on Sunday, 26 November. The ship, whenever possible, used a buoy to save money on dockage fees. On 1 December Gold Star departed for Yokohoma, Japan.
Yokohama was the favorite port of Gold Star sailors, and the ship invariably touched there on each of its many visits to Japan. The city’s location, with railroad connections, made easy access to many other cities: Tokyo, for example, is approximately seventeen miles (twenty-seven kilometers) from the port. McKenna found the easygoing ways of Gold Star life both beneficial and problematic. The crew of Goldie Maru received generous liberty in Yokohama. Whereas most sailors in the fleet were granted time ashore every other day at 1600, Gold Star divided the sailors up into three sections and allowed two sections ashore at a time, beginning at 1300. This arrangement was hard on Mac’s fourteen dollars.
With Gold Star moored to a buoy at Yokohama, liberty boats ran from the ship to shore and back. Mac and his shipmates went ashore with officers, passengers, and enlisted men in the same craft. McKenna wore dress whites in the summer in foreign ports. At this time, dress whites had a dark collar and cuffs, with white stripes on the cuffs. After they had arrived at the pier, the people from the boat broke up into smaller groups, taking taxis or walking to the various parts of Yokohama. On his first liberty Mac explored the port. He picked up pamphlets and cards for everything from bars to drug stores. One such information sheet advertised the Pacific Ballroom at 157 Yamashita-Cho, Frank Sato, “proprietor.” According to the sheet, the ballroom was “one of the latest style dance hall in city port of Yokohama, and is the ideal rendezvous for spending your hours ashore. . . . After a long voyage you will find here a pleasant and happy atmosphere and appreciate a happy welcome, the most splended [sic] and paular [sic] music that awaits you in this dance hall.”26
Gold Star departed Yokohama after a week in the port and arrived back at Guam on 20 December, thus ending the underway time for 1933. All passengers left the ship.27
For a young man who wanted to travel, observe his surroundings, and meet fascinating people, Richard McKenna’s first assignment outside the United States could have been scripted by a screenwriter. His home port was at an island that few people in the United States knew anything about, plus the ship’s deployments allowed Mac to see the Philippines, China, and Japan. The future seemed promising for McKenna.
1934
The year 1934 at first did not go well for McKenna. Cleaning firesides was not the only detail foisted on those who had yet to reach petty officer status. Another onerous duty to initiate a new bluejacket was mess cooking. Mac attended the chief petty officer’s mess and the general mess from 1 January to 31 March 1934. This was not an assignment given as punishment but a detail given to all beginning-level sailors. As one of the newer engineers, it was simply Mac’s time.28
Nine days after McKenna reported to the galley, Gold Star again departed Guam, this time for Hawaii. Thirteen days later, the ship moored at the coaling pier at Pearl Harbor. After receiving coal and other cargo, the ship moored to Pier 5A in Honolulu. In Honolulu a seaman 1st class was brought back on board the ship by the Shore Patrol for fighting and intoxication at the Casino Dance Hall. Mac managed to visit the Bernice P. Bishop Museum, devoted to the history, arts, and culture of the Hawaiian people. However, there is no doubt McKenna probably also had a few drinks with his shipmates.
On the last day in January 1934, Gold Star departed Hawaii for Guam and arrived at its home port the second week in February. After mooring, passengers departed and stevedores began the hard work of offloading coal and other cargo.
On 3 March, with new cargo and another roster of passengers, including Captain Alexander’s wife, two adult daughters, and their servants, Gold Star departed for Manila. The ship anchored off the Cavite Navy Yard on Friday, 9 March. There work was undertaken on the ship before it moved to Pier 3 in Manila to unload cargo and receive more cargo, some for naval activities in Shanghai. While Gold Star was in Manila, four women passengers were transported by launch from the ship to shore. The launch collided with a “sugar barge,” and the passengers received “cuts and bruises”; one woman suffered “a fracture” and a laceration to her scalp.
During this period in the Philippines, Mac found his favorite used-book store in Manila and bought several books, including a one-volume work of Lucius Apuleius’ The Golden Asse (the only Latin novel to survive in its entirety), Titus Petronius Arbiter’s The Satyricon (another Latin novel), and Longus, Daphnis and Chloe (a Greek novel from AD 2). Mac’s interest in classical texts may have been born from his brief exposure to them during college.29
While Mac perused the used-book store, a Gold Star shipmate fell from a window at the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) and received “a contusion and cuts.” The fall caused him to be absent over leave (AOL), an offense not as serious as AWOL. Not surprisingly, an investigation showed that the sailor had been under the influence of liquor.30
With repairs completed and cargo finally stowed, Gold Star departed Manila for Shanghai on 15 March and anchored off the Dollar Steam Ship Line area on 21 March. Chinese stevedores began the hard work of unloading cargo and then loading new cargoes of cement and sugar into the ship.
In Mac’s scrapbook is a sketch map, drawn with a pencil on a torn sheet of lined paper, that marks the location of the Cathy Hotel at the intersection of Shanghai’s Bund (waterfront) and the busy shopping street of Nanking (Nanjing) Road. (The refurbished Cathy Hotel still sits at the intersection but now is called Fairmont Peace Hotel.) The sketch has two Xs on Nanking Road showing the location of two bookstores: the Chinese American Publishing Company at 78 Nanking Road and the American Book Shop at 160 Nanking Road. On this visit to Shanghai, Mac bought a copy of Pan in the Parlour for $5.00 on 22 March 1934.31
To better understand McKenna’s purchases, one must first understand the money in China, for money was one of the main reasons for the popularity of the China Station. Most of the silver was drained out of China at the end of the nineteenth century, as a result of the opium trade, and it was replaced by silver dollars minted in Mexico. The silver dollars were not reminted but circulated as is and prices were quoted in “dollars mex.” Some Chinese found it profitable to split these silver dollars lengthwise, scoop out most of the silver, and then refill and seal the coins with lead—which was known as a “three-piece mex.” Most shop owners would bounce a coin off a hard surface and listen for the proper ring, known as “dinging,” before accepting a coin.
By the 1930s the silver Mexican dollar had largely disappeared. The official basic unit of Chinese currency, the yuan, inherited the name “mex.” In other words, a price given in dollars mex in the 1930s is equivalent to the price in yuan. Other coins were called “small money” and consisted of copper and silver. The value of both copper and silver coins fluctuated from day to day. Paper money, called “big money,” was made up of currency from various sources and never seemed to be withdrawn from circulation owing to wear. Denominations were usually in less than one dollar and were used for paying rickshaw fares.
Although their pay had been reduced because of the Depression, American troops received more pay than any other Western nation’s troops in China. Army enlisted man Anthony Ingrisano, stationed with the 15th Infantry in Tientsin, China, in the 1930s, remarked that the Americans were considered wealthy. He said some shops had signs that read, “‘Men in uniform not allowed except Americans.’ It was enough to turn your head.”32
Probably one of the most unusual clippings in Mac’s scrapbook covering Shanghai in 1934 is an undated newspaper article in The China Press. A photograph of an attractive blond woman is attached to the piece, which announces the arrival of Gold Star with twenty families of “American naval men aboard.” After detailing the ship’s itinerary, the article mentions the woman pictured. She was Larre (or Larry—both names are used in the article) Alexander, one of the daughters of Capt. George A. Alexander, the governor of Guam. The article pointed out Captain Alexander had been stationed in San Diego when he received orders to his current assignment. According to the account, at the time of her father’s orders, Larre Alexander “was tasting the sweet delights of first-won recognition as an actress in Hollywood.” Captain Alexander, however, “decided that Hollywood was too wicked for a young girl to be in it unprotected, so he brought her along with him.” The article relates how Larre Alexander appeared in a 1933 movie titled Cavalcade, which was based on a play by Noël Coward and directed by Frank Lloyd. The movie won three Oscars: Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Art Direction. The account stated that Larre appeared briefly to sing “Military Mary,” and one’s imagination can run away with what the sailors in Gold Star thought of their passenger.33
The ship remained in Shanghai for only a short period, departing on 26 March for Yokohama. By this time McKenna had his circle of friends in the engineering force, although not all have been remembered by history. Most sailors kept their group of friends within their particular division in the ship, as these were the sailors with whom they worked side by side. Engineering and deck force bluejackets have traditionally railed against one another. Mac, however, throughout his career in the Navy sought out interesting people and did not hesitate to make friends outside engineering. In Gold Star, for example, a deck force sailor, SN1 William Jennings Bryans, became his closest friend outside engineering. Bryans had enlisted in Denver, Colorado, about two months after McKenna and reported to Gold Star on the same date as McKenna. Mac found that, like him, Bryans was interested in photography; the seaman eventually became the ship’s photographer.34
Five days after Gold Star had left Shanghai, the ship moored to a buoy at Yokohama, on Saturday, 31 March, and remained there for six days. Sailors took three to six days’ leave while in port at Yokohama, a good indication that it was a favorite port for the Gold Star crew. They seldom took leave in any other port in Japan or China. The only other port sailors consistently took leave in was in the Philippines, and this was largely because the ship moored for extended periods in the Philippine Islands for repair work, plus many of the crew members were from the islands.35
At this particular time Yokohama must have seemed extra special for McKenna, as his time in mess cooking ended on Saturday, 31 March. Once McKenna left the galley, his evaluations improved steadily, thanks to his work habits and ability to quickly comprehend his new duties. In two evaluation periods before he was detailed to the galley, McKenna had been given a proficiency rate of 3.5 and 3.6, respectively, and a mechanical ability rate of 3.6.36
Gold Star departed Yokohama on 6 April and moored to its normal buoy in Guam on Thursday, 12 April. Again, stevedores began unloading the ship into lighters, and shortly thereafter, they began the task of taking on more cargo. It took nine hectic days to load the copra and “commercial cold storage cargo.” By Saturday, 21 April, the ship had departed for an extended period in the Philippine Islands, where it received overhaul work at the Machina Wharf in the Cavite Navy Yard and in the Dewey Floating Dry Dock. While in the Navy yard, McKenna attended a Mother’s Day service at the Service Club at 1000, Sunday, 13 May.
On Monday, 18 June, Gold Star finally ended its long stay in the Philippines and set course for Guam, where it arrived on Sunday, 24 June. The crew did not have much time in Guam, as Gold Star departed on Saturday, 14 July, for Manila. Captain Alexander’s wife, daughters, and servants again accompanied the ship. The ship moored alongside Pier 1 for five days and then departed for Hong Kong, where it arrived on Saturday, 28 July. One of the more unusual cargoes being loaded into Number 5 Lower Hold was “automobiles.” Once the cars were safely stowed in Gold Star, the ship departed on Thursday, 2 August, for Yokohama.
Because there were no offensive weapons on the vessel, the Japanese could issue Gold Star a merchant clearance with which the ship could avoid the long procedures required of a foreign warship entering the nation’s ports. The merchant ship–like environment worked to dull sailors toward potential threats and made them see their service in a different light. Mac observed that crews thought if they were not in combat, they were just being kept in reserve “against not too apparent contingencies.” Furthermore, the crew members thought they were not being paid sufficiently for the necessary ship maintenance of painting and scrubbing decks. McKenna continued, “By some magical inversion, this feeling . . . manifested in a covert hostility toward the ‘taxpayers’ who [came] out in the ships on visiting days.” None of the warship attitude prevailed in Gold Star; instead, the crew knew the ship’s cargo helped Guam in some way. “The ship’s storekeepers handled marketing arrangements and sailors ran the winches. Every man aboard had a job and his usefulness was never in question.” McKenna thought no other peacetime ship in the Navy of that time had a crew with “such an assurance of constructive usefulness.”37
Meanwhile, on Wednesday, 8 August 1934, Gold Star moored to a buoy in Yokohama’s harbor. One of the eight sailors going on leave in this favored port for four to six days was McKenna’s friend Bryans. During the mid-1930s sailors serving in Gold Star committed few infractions of regulations while in Yokohama, probably because no sailor wanted any excuse for stopping liberty in the port.
For the rest of the year, Gold Star continued its normal plodding to and from ports in China, Japan, and the Philippine Islands. This routine was shattered en route to Guam, at 0215 on Wednesday, 24 October, when the radioman in Gold Star received a message from Radio Cavite reporting SS Larry Doheny in distress. Commander Faus ordered full speed toward the ship’s position and quickly issued Special Order Number 1. The commanding officer said that “our greatest economy must be used in order to reach” the ship in distress and all “unnecessary lights must be kept turned off. No machinery, electrical or other, which is not absolutely essential for the safety of the ship will be used, and no fans will under ANY CIRCUMSTANCES [Faus’ emphasis] be turned on.” Commander Faus went on to write “non-compliance with this order may mean the life of a human being.”
Special Order Number 1 was quickly followed by an “Organization for Salvage Operations of S.S. LARRY DOHENY.” Commander Faus outlined the duties of all on board, including the women passengers. Thirteen women, including the wife of Captain Alexander and his two daughters, were to “assist the doctor if called upon.” The “remaining ladies will take personal charge of their children, see that they are kept clear of operations and that they maintain SILENCE [Faus’ emphasis] during operations.”
A lookout in Gold Star spotted Larry Doheny at 0150, Thursday, 25 October. The naval ship began escorting two thousand yards ahead of the civilian ship. The next day, the captain of the merchant vessel released Gold Star, which arrived at the mooring buoy in Apra on 27 October. Larry Doheny moored to another buoy the following day.38
Since being released from mess cooking, McKenna had continued to impress the senior petty officers and officers of the engineering force. His proficiency marks were recorded at 3.8, and his mechanical ability was rated 3.7. These above-average marks were rewarded when, one year and three months after reporting on board Gold Star, Mac received a promotion to fireman 2nd class on 16 November 1934, which meant he now received fifty-four dollars a month.39
Gold Star arrived at Manila on 20 November on its last deployment for 1934 and would touch only at Shanghai and Yokohama. Ashore during the last month of 1934, Mac made his way to 78 Nanking Road and paid the large sum—large for Mac—of $9.75 to purchase three books: George Sylvester Viereck and Paul Eldridge’s My First 2,000 Years: The Autobiography of the Wandering Jew (a novel); Aristophanes’ Lysistrata (a Greek play performed in 411 BC); and Pierre Louys’ Aphrodite: Ancient Manners (a novel). The next day, 7 December, Gold Star departed for Yokohama; it eventually arrived at Guam four days before Christmas 1934.
