My family was probably one of the last to hear of the beginning of World War II on December 7^{th, 1941. We had no radio or newspaper, and therefore no way of knowing what had happened on Sunday morning in Hawaii. Because my mother wasn’t feeling too well, we had asked a neighbor to come over to help with the washing on Monday. When Mrs. Lyle arrived Monday morning, just before we left for school, she excitedly told us that the Japanese had dropped a bomb on Pearl Harbor and killed a man, or maybe two. When we got to school, we found out that things were a lot more serious than a single bomb.}

I was a tenth grader then, one of four in our little school. The only other boy was Kenny Schaeffer. We couldn’t believe that such a disaster had happened. We thought that our army and navy were invincible. But during the coming year, Bataan, Corrigador, and Wake Island taught us differently. We were still confident that we would win in the end. Some of us were afraid that the war would end before we were old enough to get into it. I suppose that that is just another manifestation of a teenager’s misconception of immortality.

As I went on through high school, I had no doubt that I would join the service as soon as I graduated. In my senior year, I took the V-12 exam to see if I was qualified for Officer Candidate School. That was a program in which promising students were enrolled in college classes for an accelerated training that ended in a degree and a commission. I must have scored pretty well because within about a week I was called to Pittsburgh for an interview and a physical. I didn’t pass the physical because I had an overbite that had never been corrected. I was very discouraged and disappointed, but the result was probably what God knew was best for me.

I was to have graduated at the end of May, but I enlisted two weeks before the end of school and was called to active duty the week before graduation. My grades were good enough that I was exempt from the exams. The high school officials excused me from the ceremony.

We went to Pittsburg for another physical and to be sworn in. Enlisted men don’t have to be as good looking as officers, so the buck teeth didn’t cause a problem this time. The morning after we were sworn in, we were loaded on a train and sent to Bainbridge, Maryland, for Boot Camp. There was plenty of grousing about the food, the ban on smoking, the haircuts (nothing was left for lice to attach to), the constant drills and inspections, and the shots. I didn’t mind anything except the shots. Except for a smallpox vaccination, they were the first I had ever had. I thought that the food was actually quite good. There was certainly more variety than I had ever had before.

One of the things I really enjoyed was my first experience with tidewater. We had one day to get acquainted with whale boats, on the tidal portion of the Susquehanna at Port Deposit. We practiced all morning and then had a race. If I recall correctly, there were eight oarsmen and a coxswain in each boat. We pulled until our arms ached and we thought our lungs would burst, but my boat won the race. I can still hear the coxswain calling “stro-o-oke, stro-o-oke”.

Boot Camp was finished in six weeks and I had my first leave. It was ten days, two of which were spent on the train to and from home. In those days one could take a train from Du Bois to Pittsburg and then to Havre de Grace near Bainbridge. There was a military bus from the station to the Base.

During Boot Camp we had been given another series of tests. My scores again attracted some attention. I was told that I could choose whatever service school I wanted. I picked the radio tech school, but after about a week I was told that the available classes were all full, there were too many radio techs in training. and I must make another choice. My choice was gunnery, and I started on the course to become a gunner’s mate. This rating doesn’t necessarily involve much shooting. Rather it is a firearms repair rating. The first school was at Bainbridge. I only needed to change barracks to start classes. I worked on everything from Colt .45s to five-inch thirty-eights. This latter gun has a caliber of five inches and is thirty-eight calibers long. I finished that course with the highest scores in the school for that session. That meant that I had to make a speech, which I bungled very badly.

After the basic gunnery school was finished, there was a wait to see what the next move would be. There was a call for volunteers to go to Washington to serve as guinea pigs for a chemical warfare laboratory. The incentive was that the volunteer would be placed on delayed orders for a month, the time at the lab would be three weeks, and the remaining week would be spent traveling to the next duty station. That meant that one could make a detour home on the way. I decided to risk it and went to Washington. My part in the experiment was to have my left arm wrapped in a supposedly gas proof glove and sleeve, stick it through a window of cellophane into a gas chamber, and sit there an hour to see if the gas could get through the glove and sleeve. I got a mustard gas burn at one place on my left arm, but it healed up without any trouble. After my time was up I made a trip home on my way to Dearborn for an advanced session of gunnery school.

The most important events at Dearborn I have already written in the section about meeting Lucile. The school itself was at the Pontiac plant in Pontiac, where they were making 20 mm cannon rather than cars. We lived in a barracks at the Ford Rouge Plant, because there were apparently no accommodations in Pontiac. Every day a charter bus took us back and forth. That course was more a hands-on training with the 20 mm cannon. That gun, and the forty mm, were the principal armament of the Landing Ship, Tank, to which I was headed, unbeknownst to me.

The next stop was Camp Bradford, Virginia. It was an amphibious training base were sailors were trained to handle ships that were capable of going aground to unload troops and military equipment. There weren’t any ships at the base, at least not for the trainees to be aboard, but there were a number of mock-ups that we worked out on. We did everything from anchoring to manning anti-aircraft guns.

It was mid-winter, and I could not recall ever being so continuously cold in my life. We lived in tarpaper-covered barracks that were heated by two coal stoves, one at each end. We each had two blankets and nothing else. When the fires burned down at night we just shivered. I tried putting layers of newspaper between my two blankets to add to the insulation effect, but everytime I turned over the rattling paper woke up the guys near me. They were nice about it but I decided that the minimal insulation value wasn’t worth the disadvantage.

One of the interesting training sessions was the firefighting school. We used high pressure fog to put out gasoline and oil fires in old cars, ship mockups, and buildings. I had the opportunity to use that experience at a later occasion.

Another session was at the Dam Neck firing range. I guess its name must have been changed because I cannot find it on any of my Virginia maps. We shot at a sleeve towed by plane, back and forth and from different angles. The sleeve was still in pretty good shape when we quit shooting. I was a loader on a forty mm twin. The sound of the explosions was so sharp that one could hardly think. That is probably when my ear damage started.

Eventually I was assigned to the crew of LST 1080. She was being built in Massachusetts. We had a lot of getting ready to do before taking her to sea. I almost didn’t make it because I had an ear infection the week before the crew was mustered, and my name was dropped from the list. I didn’t find out until the crew roster was called on mustering day. After some requesting from the ship’s officers I was included again.

When we were assembled as a crew, we went aboard another LST on the Chesapeake for our first real ship handling. There was another crew aboard to see that we didn’t get into trouble. We had another chance at shooting down a sleeve. I think that it suffered a couple of holes, but no more. I had my first experience at clearing a jam on a hot forty mm.

Finally we were sent to Boston to wait for our ship. At first there was nothing to do but guard duty and work details on the docks. We lived in an old warehouse that had been converted into a barracks by installing rows and rows of double decker bunks. Then some of us began to work aboard the ship itself. I had to clean the preservative grease off of the guns and protect them with a lighter grease that would let them fire. While the ship was being finished we went to Price’s Neck, Rhode Island, for another session of gunnery. This time we shot at a radio controlled plane, as well as the sleeve. The little plane crashed, but the pilot claimed that something other than our projectiles caused it.

By early summer we were able to take our ship back to the Chesapeake for a shakedown cruise, with no one to help us. I’m still glad that I wasn’t the skipper on that first night out with a seasick crew and heavy fog in the Long Island Sound. The fog was so heavy that we had to depend on radar to keep the ship in the channel and avoid colliding with another ship. The radarman got so hoarse calling bearings up the voicepipe to the bridge that I was sent down from my watch station to relay the messages. I was fortunate in that I didn’t get very sick. We had no trouble in the Chesapeake, although a hurricane came up the coast and gave us one bad night. By mid-July we had loaded up a side carry and a full tank deck of pontoons that were to be used to build docks on whatever island we were to invade. With that load we left for Hawaii via the Panama Canal.

The trip to Hawaii was relatively uneventful. We went through the Panama Canal, and saw first hand the electric locomotives that pull the ships through. Because the canal is fresh water, we used the occasion to thoroughly scrub down everything. Our ship was equipped with evaporators to make fresh water out of salt water, but the supply was always limited. We could take showers only during water hours, unless we wanted to take a salt water shower. That wasn’t too satisfactory, because the salt would dry on one’s skin and cause itching. The water hours were only about two hours in length. That meant that if one happened to be on watch, there was no shower that day.

Normally one was on watch four hours on and eight hours off. The dog watches, from 1600 to 1800 hours, and from 1800 to 2000 hours, served to break up the pattern so that everyone didn’t have the same watch every day. The midwatch was the worst. It ran from 0000 to 0400 hours. One barely got to sleep in the early evening before being called for watch duty, and then barely got to sleep after 0400 before being awakened for general quarters. There would be a call to general quarters morning and evening, when everybody rushed to his battle station as rapidly as possible. There were daily drills; fire, abandon ship, collision, and anything else the Captain could think of to get his crew ready.

My battle station was initially on the twin forty on the fantail. Because I was a gunner’s mate, I was the gun captain. That meant that I wore the sound powered headphones, to get orders from fire control, and pass them on to the crew. It also meant that I didn’t have anything to do with aiming and shooting the guns. The pointer and trainer did that. I’m not at all sure that our scores would have improved any if I had, because shooting an anti-aircraft gun is much more like shooting a shotgun than a rifle, and I have never been much with a shotgun.

We had one more practice with live ammunition before reaching Pearl Harbor. A plane came out towing a sleeve and we shot at that. For awhile the sleeve survived very well, and then the line parted. If it was helped by a projectile or a piece of shrapnel, it was well ahead of the sleeve and uncomfortably close to the plane. No one bothered to inform us one way or the other.

The weather varied from beautiful to stormy. LSTs have a relatively flat bottom so that they can run up on the beach. When the bow lifted on a wave and then crashed down on the water, the whole ship would shake and rattle. I guess that one can get used to nearly any minor discomfort, but rough water was not very pleasant on an LST.

One stormy night when I was on watch the Watch Officer decided to check the side carry of pontoons because they seemed to be shifting and working a bit. We went the rounds port and starboard and I tightened up the turnbuckles that seemed loose. Frequently a wave would send a deluge of spray up between the pontoons right into my face. I was soon drenched. We did get all of the turnbuckles tightened, however.

When the watch ended at 0400, there was no fresh water to rinse the salt out of my hair, because it wasn’t water hours. I hit the sack pretty damp. When I awoke the next morning some of the guys thought that I had turned gray, but it was just salt dried in my hair. I don’t know what the Engineering Officer said to the Watch Officer, but he told me rather grumpily, that we had tightened things up too tight, and one or two of the welds near the turnbuckle attachment points had cracked, so his crew had to do some welding.

Coming into Pearl Harbor was a special experience. Diamond Head loomed off to the starboard. We passed the Arizona, the submerged graveyard of hundreds of sailors who had died in the Pearl Harbor attack. There was also the floating bow of the Pennsylvania, which had broken off in some action and been towed into its present spot for salvage. The ship itself survived, and was repaired and returned to duty. One looked across the harbor to the sharp, steep mountains surrounding the bay. Fields of sugar cane covered the land between the water and the contour where the mountains became too steep. Occasionally a pair of Navy F4Fs would roar by in their wing cuddling fashion, silhouetted against the green of the mountains. The pictures I have seen of the area since show that all of that beauty has been replaced by condos and apartments.

It was not long after arriving at Pearl that I had my most serious experience. Anchored in a small nook of the bay were two rusty hulks of LSTs that had been burnt out by some tragic fire. They were a reminder of what could go wrong at sea. We were assigned to a group with two other LSTs for the journey to Guam, then to the Philippines to pick up a division of Army Engineers, and then on to the invasion of Japan.

One day we received a signal from one of the other LSTs saying that they had a fire and could we give them assistance. One of our firefighting crews that included me got into an LCVP (Landing Craft, Vehicle and Personnel) and were lowered over the side to run over to the other LST. We couldn’t see much smoke, but there was some coming out of a forward hatch. As we got ready to climb aboard, one of the officers called down to say that all they needed was the RBA man. That was me. The RBA was a device for breathing that allowed one to enter a smoke and gas filled compartment and breath for awhile before being overcome. The fire was in the landing equipment locker on the starboard side just aft of a forty mm magazine. There was a small compartment which one entered from the large, open tank deck. To the right was the hatch that entered the landing equipment locker. To the left was the magazine with its full cargo of high explosives. The forty mm shells were packed in a can containing two clips of four shells each. The projectiles were loaded with TNT and fused to explode on contact or at 4000 yards. They were also very sensitive to heat. There was about fifteen feet between the fire and the explosives, but one tightly closed hatch.

Yes, I was scared. I’m sure I prayed, because that is something that I always do if there is time to think about it. But I think that I was more scared of not doing a good job than I was of the fire. The electricity had been turned off and all I could see was black smoke rolling out of a dark hatch. The crew rigged the RBA on me and gave me the fire hose. There was supposed to be a wire line fastened to my belt, but it was not with the gear, so they tied on a manila line. I remember thinking that the line could easily burn through, but if I was in that much fire, that wouldn’t have mattered. I also remember putting on my white hat atop the RBA. One must be shipshape and Bristol fashion. The high pressure hose soon knocked apart the smoldering gear and after what seemed like hours everything was so soaked down that the danger was gone. Actually it was probably no more than fifteen or twenty minutes. Finally they called me out and I got out of the equipment. In spite of the equipment, I was a little sick from smoke. One of our crew had ducked into the locker, without any protection, to see if I was all right. Fortunately, he didn’t stay long. He was sick too. The only permanent damage was that I lost my hat.

We soon left Pearl Harbor for Guam, as lead ship in a convoy of three LSTs. On the way, there was an unplanned side trip to Johnston Atoll. These small islands are, or at least were, just visible above the ocean as sand beaches. I don’t recall a single palm tree. There may have been trees before practically the whole island had been converted into an airstrip. One of our electrician’s mates had been cleaning the back of an electrical panel with carbon tetrachloride. That stuff is generally banned now, for the good reason that it’s fumes are poisonous. The electrician’s mate became seriously ill. Our ship’s doctor insisted that in order to survive without serious permanent damage, he had to be treated in a hospital with much more comprehensive facilities than we had. Accordingly, we received orders to detour to Johnston Atoll to drop him off where he could be flown back to Pearl Harbor. We left the other two ships to continue on toward Guam and proceeded at our best speed to the Atoll. The next day we arrived and were met by an airport crash boat, because there wasn’t a suitable harbor at which to dock at the Atoll. It was tricky lowering a man in a stretcher over the side of a rolling ship into a pitching boat, but the maneuver was accomplished without an incident. We then headed back to join the other ships and resumed our place in the lead. We never heard whether or not our shipmate survived.

While all this was going on we were receiving news about the dropping of two atomic bombs on Japan, and that overtures for peace had been received. I remember hearing a professor of English being interviewed on the radio about the wording of the Japanese message. Most Americans did not understand the role of the Emperor in Japan. Fortunately some of the statesmen did, and an acceptable peace was offered. If they had not, the majority of the Japanese and thousands of Americans would have been killed in the suicidal battles that would have followed.

We went on to Guam and unloaded our side carry of pontoons as well as the tank deck load. During the unloading, one of the pontoons was dropped on the tank deck by the forklift carrying it. It’s weight was enough to drive a corner through the deck into the oil tank underneath. It was a tricky job to weld a plate over the hole. The oil was pumped out of the tank, and the fumes were kept from igniting during welding by passing a steady flow of carbon dioxide across the work area. A fire extinguisher provided the flow of the carbon dioxide. It is a good thing that fuel oil isn’t very volatile.

After a brief stay for provisioning, we headed on toward the Philippines. Peace came while we were enroute. As a celebration, the Captain ordered a target practice. We had plenty of fireworks, but not the usual kind. The ship’s carpenter made a crude raft out of scrap material and mounted a crate on it. This was floated off the ship at a considerable distance. We opened fire with every thing. The trouble was that at least half of the projectiles hit the water in front of the target, and it could no longer be seen for the splashes. That resulted in the pointers and trainers aiming at the splashes. The Captain said, “I’m glad the war is over”. It was an interesting celebration, without the slightest military value.

The reason why I had been able to hear the Captain was because I had been made an aircraft lookout on the bridge rather than a gun captain. Apparently my ability in aircraft recognition had been observed. I also had to teach aircraft recognition classes. That was not all fun and games. We had an 8mm movie projector and a number of film clips of planes in flight, both ours and the Japanese models. Electrical power on the ship was generally DC. The projector required AC. One source of AC was a special generator that provided power to the gyroscopic gunsights. One day while we still had the tank deck load of pontoons aboard, I was conducting a class in a crowded space on top of the pontoons. There was a long extension cord to the nearest outlet from the gunsight generator. It was in another compartment, out of sight and sound. The ship was rolling considerably. I had fastened a line between the projector and a toggle on the pontoon where we sat. I was on the opposite side with one hand on the projector to steady it. About halfway through the movie, the projector quit. I reached over to check the connection to the extension cord. Just then the ship took a longer-than-usual roll. Over went the projector, breaking one of the reel arms. One of the welders, after some grumbling, was able to weld it back together. It turned out that one of the Fire Control ratings had turned off the generator.

Arriving at Manila was a sobering experience for some of us. The harbor was full of the masts of sunken ships. I didn’t get ashore in the city, but those who did reported massive damage to the buildings. For many others? --- well, there was an ample supply of some kind of cheap alcohol. Many of the shore party returned in varying states of drunkeness.

One Sunday, I took a party ashore on the Naval Base to go to Chapel. There were no signs, and after looking for about an hour, we returned to the ship. We were stopped once by a Shore Patrol Officer in a jeep, but he didn’t seem interested in helping us find the Chapel. It was a frustrating experience.

We soon loaded aboard the Eighth Engineers Corps of the Army. They were headed for Japan, and we were their transport. On the way to Sasebo, in Japan, we passed some of the most beautiful islands in the world, at least as seen from a ship. They are the Bonins. They rise from the blue water in tier after tier of green terraces, probably rice paddies. It was a striking scene.

When we arrived in Sasebo, we were ordered to make a beach landing on a seaplane ramp. The trouble was that as soon as the ship stopped, she would slide right back off. Finally the skipper persuaded the port authorities, who were army men, to let us land on a small section of beach. After that there was no trouble.

We were able to walk off the ship and explore a little, provided we did not go too far. The Japanese were polite, and seemed as curious as we were. Some of them tried to sell us souvenirs. They were usually little hard wooden pillows or sake‘ dishes. Many of them tried to buy cigarettes. There were soon a lot of yen aboard the ship.

About this time the demobilization began to get underway. There was a system of points, one for each month of service, something, I think, for age, and more for being married and/or having children. I did not have the required number. The 1080 was ordered back to the States after delivering the army engineers, but I was transferred off to another ship, LST 581. We made a trip to the Palau Islands to repatriate a bypassed division of the Japanese Army. These are striking islands. Many of them seem to rise out of the sea like mushrooms, with cliff-like shores that seem narrower than the jungle immediately above them. Some of the larger islands had harbors into which one crept very gingerly through narrow channels in the coral reefs. In some ways it reminds me of following the channels in the Albemarle and Pamlico Sounds in the Outer Banks, but at Palau one looks down into rocks close aboard on either side.

Shortly after we arrived several barges loaded with Japanese soldiers came alongside and were loaded aboard. There were over eight hundred of them. The officers were given our sleeping quarters in the stern of the ship and we took troop quarters along the port and starboard sides. The soldiers were crowded into the tank deck to make out as best they could. Huge vats of rice and fish were cooked for them and served in their messkits. It was probably better food than they had had for a long time, because nothing could reach them from Japan for more than a year. Their sanitary facilities were constructed by our shipfitters across the open deck topside. The facilities consisted of one long trough across the width of the ship, with a pair of boards across it about every eighteen inches. A steady stream of salt water was pumped through it and over the side.

I had to stand guard duty on the officers along with several other petty officers. We stood duty one at a time, with one Colt 45 loaded with nine cartridges. That would account for about one percent of the prisoners. It is a good thing that they wanted to go home. Before the trip was ended, I became quite friendly with some of the officers. They even gently reminded me that I should be more respectful of their Colonel. There was certainly no sign of residual hatred on the part of the American sailors, and if there was any on the part of the Japanese, it was well concealed.

Many of the soldiers were sick, but we did not lose any of ours. There were two other LSTs along with us. One had to stop twice to bury a soldier at sea.

The most notable event on that trip was our encounter with a typhoon. We avoided the most violent winds, but the waves were monstrous. They were so high that we regularly lost sight of our companion ships in the troughs. These ships had radar antenna more than sixty feet above the waterline. Even these were out of sight at times. Because the length of the waves were so long, we rode up and down them fairly comfortably. After the storm subsided, we had an unpleasant surprise. Suddenly our engines quit. It was a worrisome quiet that enveloped the ship. After about an hour, we got under way again. It turned out that the wave action had cracked a seam in one of the fuel tanks, letting salt water into the tank. When it got to the engines, they stopped. After cleaning the injectors and fuel lines another tank was hooked on and we were on our way.

Our arrival at Yokohama was an impressive moment. Mount Fujiyama is quite visible from the harbor. The Japanese officers were given permission to leave their quarters and assemble on the fantail to watch our arrival. To a man, they gazed at the mountain, unmoving. They had probably never expected to see it again.

The next set of orders given our ship resulted in another move for me. There were still many bypassed Japanese troops on islands throughout the Western Pacific. Someone decided that rather than having the Navy pick them up, the Japanese would be given some ships to do so. Their own merchant navy had been almost entirely sunk. The 581, being one of the older LSTs, was selected to be turned over to them. That meant that we had to remove all of the guns from the ship. We hacksawed through all of the electric cables to each gun and then unbolted them from the deck. On one gun, I was sawing away when suddenly sparks started to fly and my hacksaw blade burnt in two. This time some Fire Controlman had turned on the AC generator. Fortunately the hacksaw blade was grounded before hitting the wire. Otherwise the current would have gone through me to the steel deck.

Unbolting the guns was quite a chore. We borrowed some large socket wrenches and handles from the engine room and put a length of pipe on the handle. Two of us would sit side by side on the deck and “row” the nuts off. They had been covered over with layers of paint and soaked in saltwater over and over again. Getting them loose required brute force. When all of the guns and ammunition had been removed, we turned the ship over to a Japanese merchant crew. Those of us who had enough points were sent back to the states. The rest of us, including me, were transferred to a troop ship for further assignment. The troop ship left Japan and went to Shanghai, in China. On the way to Shanghai there was nothing to do but eat, sleep, and wait. The day after we arrived we were told to gather up our seabags and listen to the PA system for our names to be called. After another wait, listening to name after name being called, the loudspeaker finally intoned “Campbell, Paul B. Gunner’s Mate Third Class, 251 55 88, and I reported to the deck for transfer to the USS Moore, DE 240.

The Moore was assigned to escort duty between Chinese cities. I made a couple of trips to Tsing tao. We were primarily on the lookout for floatng mines or other menaces to navigation. On one trip we went ashore to get a load of supplies for our ship. A storm brewed up and we were not permitted to try to get back to the ship in our small boat. A troopship took us aboard for the night, but I didn’t get much sleep, because I had to stand a 1200 to 0004 watch on the boatload of supplies. There was ample reason to keep a guard, because there were thousands of hungry people around the docks. Anything not guarded was most likely to be taken. I was most impressed and saddened by the number of Chinese men who stayed up all night just off the docks, hoping to get a chance to work in the morning. They built a fire and just stood there all night.

We spent most of our time in Shanghai tied to moorings in the Wang Poo River. There were usually two ships tied side by side. We saw many examples of Chinese river life. One staple in our diet was scrambled eggs made from powdered eggs. No one liked them. Consequently, they were thrown into the garbage in large quantities. When the garbage was to be emptied, there would be a rush of sampans along side. and the cans would be dumped into them. Then the women would sort the egg pieces out from among the coffee grounds and set them aside to eat. There was a rumor around that the boat people even had to pay someone for that privilege.

I spent some time ashore in Shanghai, where I found a Lutheran Mission. One of the families invited me to their home several times. The father was an engineer on a river steamer. The father was Scots and the mother was a daughter of a missionary couple from Saginaw. There were two children, a boy and a girl. They had been interned during the war.

The saddest thing I remember about China was the begging and the prostitution. A man in uniform could not step off of the boat without being accosted by beggars and pimps. “Hey Joe, you want China school girl?” I am afraid that my replies were frequently less than civil. We weren’t encouraged to give to beggars, because one would soon be overwhelmed if the others saw you giving to someone. There was one occasion, however, as I was walking alone to visit the family that I had met, when a little boy, maybe eight or ten, grabbed my arm and begged for something in a hoarse, sick voice. I had a couple of dimes in my pocket, no more, and gave them to him. He seemed very pleased. When our orders came to take the Moore back to the States I needn’t tell you that I was most grateful.

There were several other events in China that I still recall from time to time. On one occasion, I was detailed to shore patrol duty at one of the hotels in the city. I suppose the purpose was to have an official naval presence at the place, to discourage drunkenness and rowdy behavior. The hotel seemed to be one of the meeting places for call girls and Naval Officers. The women were mostly known as White Russians. They seemed to be going out with whatever officer got there first. It was raining heavily, and one poor streetwalker came inside to get out of the rain. She was so drenched that a puddle of water collected on the lobby floor where she was standing. It wasn’t long before the desk manager ordered her to leave. Then one of the bellhops came and mopped up the floor where she had been standing. I felt sorry for her, but did not know of anything I could do.

One of the pleasurable things was watching the junks sailing the river. One morning when the tide was going out but the wind was coming in, a group of them came tacking down the river. They would sail at an angle across the channel until they were almost upon us, then the skipper would yell a command, the crew would swing the boom across decks, and with the skipper stroking energetically with the steering sweep, the vessel would swing onto the opposite tack. The seamanship was clearly expert.

When we were ordered home finally, we sailed from Shanghai directly to Pearl Harbor. I had accumulated enough points in length of service this time to stay on the ship. The trip was uneventful except for a brief stop to sink a floating mine somewhere in the middle of the Pacific. One of the twenty mm’s that we were using had a misfire with a live round chambered in the barrel. When that happens, one has about sixty seconds to take the barrel off and dump it in a tube of water welded to the side of the gun mount. Otherwise the TNT in the projectile will cook off and blow up the barrel, sending steel fragments in all directions. I was not the person closest to the barrel, so the Fire Controlman standing beside it took it out as I told him what to do and showed him where to put it. The heat of the barrel made the water boil, but it was cooled off in time.

We stopped in Pearl Harbor long enough to refuel and reprovision. A group of us had a night off to go ashore. We went to a restaurant for what we thought would be a fabulous meal, fresh food rather than things out of cans. We especially wanted fresh milk, but apparently there weren’t too many cows on Oahu. We got powdered milk. The rest of the food was very good.

The trip back took us through the Panama Canal again and on to Charleston, SC. There we unloaded the ammunition and turned our ship over to the yard to be put in storage. All of the guns and hatches were covered with some kind of moisture-proof fabric and the ship was moored in an out-of-the-way channel. It was called “mothballing”. Later she was recommissioned and the last I heard of her was the time she was sent to look for a lost airliner somewhere between Hawaii and Guam. No trace of the airliner was found.

I was sent back to Bainbridge for discharge. The base tailors sewed the Honorable Discharge emblem on my Dress Blues, (we called it a ruptured duck), I had a brief physical once more, a brief interview with an impatient psychiatrist to see if I was ready to adjust to civilian life, and was given my papers and mustering out pay. I headed straight for Dearborn on the first available train.

Paul B. Campbell
March 15, 1996