Posts

Posted on

FROM A DIFFERENT WORLD

In the early 40’s, our country was still trying to shake off   the devastation of the Great Depression.   Whole sections of Rural America were still not yet Electrified, nor did they have telephone service, or highways for that matter.   For those Americans who had electricity, listening to the radio was their link to the outside world.

Hundreds of thousands of kids, still wet behind the ears, flocked to recruitment centers everywhere to join in the fight against our enemies in Europe and in the Pacific (Japan). Young men who never been away from home — never been off the farm or out of the hills were now training to be soldiers and sailors. Imagine finishing boot camp with orders to ship off to Boston for assignment.   A new ship was almost ready there.   Maybe you take a train to New York City en route to Boston.   After a night in the Big Apple, you take a train north to Boston.   You see the ocean for the first time in your life.

Months later, after making trial runs up and down the eastern seaboard, you transit the Panama Canal   –   you can hardly believe such a thing could exist.   Later, you arrive in Pearl Harbor.   Two years after the Sneak Attack, you are stunned to see sunken ships still spewing oil. You berth up next to the Battleship Arizona. Her upper gun turrets still stick up out of the water.   More than a thousand dead sailors are forever entombed below within her bulkheads.

After joining up with dozens of other warships into a Task Group, you head off across the VAST Pacific into an unknown and uncertain future.

After the Boston spent half a year ranging up and down the coast of Japan on Occupation / Demilitarization Duty in the Fall of 1946, she steamed back to California and most of the remaining crew left the ship.   Then she headed north to Bremerton and joined the “Mothball Fleet.”

From commissioning in Boston to retirement in Washington three and a half years later, the “Mighty B” traveled 286,000 nautical miles     –     330,000 land miles for all you drivers out there.

No wonder the guys didn’t talk about it much after the war.

Steve

Posted on

The Hard Way

April 3, 2010

Dear Dad,

Five years ago today, a few minutes before 2 am Pacific Time, you died just the way you lived — The Hard Way.   Admitted to the hospital around 6 am on April Fool’s Day, you were in a coma.   You faced death just the way you wanted to — unplugged; no respirator; no life support.   The doctors said you’d live for a couple of hours. You hung on, minute by slow minute for twenty-four hours.   Then you hung on for another twelve. Then, for good measure, you beat Death for eight more hours.   You finally drew your last breath seconds before we changed the clocks to Daylight Savings Time — effectively wrangling another hour from the Reaper.   The Hard Way.

I don’t know for sure how you were with my brothers or my sister as we grew up.   But with me, everything you and I did was The Hard Way. You and I both know what I’m talking about.

You didn’t tell me about your “Navy Days” or your grueling experiences aboard the Boston. You should have.   I didn’t ask. I should have. I had to find out on my own, the hard way.   I started doing some research a couple of months before you died.   Right after your funeral, I started in earnest. Then I started writing A Bird’s Eye View. My original intention was to write an account of your service for my three sons. Guess what, Dad?   When I finally started writing my book, within six months I lost you; the company I worked for was bought out. I lost my job. Oh, and after thirty years of marriage, I got divorced.   And there was that lawsuit thing . . . Rough six months.   But I bore down and wrote through all that turmoil.   Sound familiar?   The Hard Way.

Oh, I meant to tell you . . . some sons and daughters and grandchildren of your crewmates have stumbled onto my book and this website. They’re sending me pictures and documents and such so that their dads can be remembered too. A couple of your crewmates have read it also. They told me they cried.   They told me I did a good job telling it just like they remembered.   Not so many of them left, it looks like.

I think you’d be proud, Dad.   I say “I think”, because you’d never come out and say that. That’d be The Easy Way.   You’d make me try figure it out for myself   –   The Hard Way.

Steve

Posted on

APRIL on the BOSTON

1944: April opens with the men still involved in Operation Desecrate, the raid on the Japanese stronghold in the Western Carolines (halfway between The Marianas and the Philippines).   The men had spent most of their time between March 29 and April 2 manning their battlestations and shot at and shot down many attacking planes.   On April 4, the ships enter the anchorage at Majuro (southeastern Mariana Atoll) and remain there until the 17th.   During that time, Majuro fills up with arriving ships for the Next Action   –   the invasion of strategic enemy bases in New Guinea (the Hollandia Invasion — Operation Reckless.)

Posted on

Crew Lists

At the end of the month, I’m planning a trip to the National Archives outside of Washington D.C. to research more information about the USS BOSTON. The archives have the original deck logs, war diaries, photographs, etc. from the USS BOSTON. The preparation has been a little daunting since in researching this topic, you find out that a deck log is a very large piece of paper that can have 4 pages on a boring day and 120 pages on an exciting decklog day. The USS Boston in World War II (CA-69) has six bound volumes that are 11 inches by 10 inches.

In addition, the archives houses war diaries, and muster rolls (who has on the ship) have been declassified are available on microfiche. One startling fact Steve and I came across from looking at the BEANPOT was in the first year at sea, 1/3 of the crew of the BOSTON was reassigned to other ships, often at liberty spots like Ulithi Atoll in the Pacific. The crew list we currently have is from one place in time which is just shy of 1600 sailors (I haven’t yet added the Officers). So if the turnover was constant we’ll exceed 2,500 sailors.

I’ll update everyone on my DC adventure…

Bill

Posted on

WORDS

Words .   .   .     written or spoken   .   .   .                                                                                                                                                                                           Is there a more powerful manifestation of man’s intelligence?

Words have enormous power.   They can be devastatingly negative and hurtful.   They can be exhilaratingly beautiful.   They can heal. They can teach. They can destroy.

A reader of both my book and this blogsite contacted me by email. Did I have any copies of the newsletter? she asked.   [I have worked on dozens of newsletters   –   all aspects from writing to production — for organizations large and small.] Barely able to contain myself, I asked if she would be willing to send me copies of her copies.   After some time elapsed, several emails going and coming, and navigating the complexities of sending LARGE files across cyberspace, the files started to populate my “in box.”   First one newsletter, then another, then yet another. Three issues of The BeanPot –   the weekly newsletter aboard the “Big B”   Other documents came as well, including yet another newsletter named the “BEE.”

Courtesy of the family Of Augustus Harris, S1C, CA-69

So, here we have it   –   yellowed and tattered-edged pieces of paper, full of drawings by crewmembers, full of columns of words pounded out on old typewriters — some words faded and almost illegible, some clear and strong. Jokes. Words of wisdom by the Chaplain (who doubled as the Editor).   Bits and pieces of “inside jokes” and info about what different divisions were doing.   The first issue complains about the on-going lack of participation in the newsletter by the crew (4 pages)   The ‘second’ one — six months later is 10 pages long.   The last one reflects an entirely different tone   –   the war was over and they were on Occupation Duty.   That issue is all about boxing matches and other pressing matters.

Sixty-five years later, these documents and their words reach out across time in a way that no history book, no documentary ever could.   A little piece of the fabric of   the crewmembers’ lives aboard the Boston during the epic Pacific War, frozen in time, comes to life on fading, yellowed sheets of paper.   A big-smile bonus for me and my siblings:   seeing my father’s name in one of the articles.

My youngest son, Thaddeus, turns 20 the end of next month.   A whole ship full of kids his age served   aboard the “B”   – doing everything from   producing a weekly newsletter to shooting down enemy divebombers swooping in to sink their ship.

Steve