Long Ago in American Samoa and Other Memories

By Robert Douglas

These stories are memories of remote and somewhat primitve American Samoa in 1932-34 and later adulthood memories of submarines, a bungled introduction to President Truman, his dog's midadventures, his father's feats, dancing, unusual uses of English, piano playing, cats as pets, Christmas letters, celestial navigation, and assorted other events in the life of a naval officer, editor, and retiree.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Robert Douglas
• Release date: Feb 13, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301759422

Robert Douglas

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CHAPTER 1. WAR PATROL

That was the name given in World War II to submarine patrols against the enemy. I made one war patrol in that war, and it was on the U.S.S. Pompon (SS 267), which was built in Manitowoc, Wisconsin, which is on the east coast of Wisconsin, on the edge of Lake Michigan. It was floated down the Mississippi River, which is on the west side of Wisconsin, on a floating dry dock. Don’t ask me how it got from the lake to the river. I first saw the boat in Apra Harbor, Guam, in May of 1945.

At that time I was an ensign, a recent graduate of the submarine school in New London, Connecticut, as well as a few other short schools that gave brief training in sonar, radar, lookout skills, and recognition of enemy aircraft and ships. In that May of l945, I was in a submarine relief crew aboard the U.S.S. Apollo (AS 25), which was a submarine tender. I had been doing this since sometime in March. Relief crews refitted submarines that had returned from war patrols, while the submarine’s officers and crew went to a rest camp for two or three weeks. In Guam this rest camp was several miles out in the boondocks, and it consisted of a group of Quonset huts. There wasn’t much to do except eat, drink, shoot craps or play cards, write letters, read, sleep, and keep in mind that stranded Japanese soldiers sometimes crept into camp in search of food.

My relief crew consisted of three officers, one of whom was an experienced lieutenant and boss of the crew, plus me and another neophyte officer who was my Apollo roommate, and maybe fifteen or twenty enlisted men of various ratings. We repaired/overhauled machinery and other things as needed, restocked the boat with food, fuel, and ammunition, including torpedoes, and in general made it ready to go out on patrol again. All this was done in two or three weeks, depending on the condition of the boat when it came in.

Usually a returning boat would lose an officer or two to reassignment, to be replaced by an officer or two from the relief crew. That’s how I got aboard, along with my Apollo roommate. We both got the starting jobs, the lousy jobs, and were told to get busy on our submarine qualification notebooks. I became Commissary Officer, which meant that I was in charge of the cooks and the baker (yes, we actually had a baker!), food supplies, and the weekly menus. I didn’t much care for the job, but there you are. Like anyplace else, unless Pop is the CEO, you start at the bottom.

We were still at war, and we left on patrol around mid-June, heading for the Japanese island of Truk. It was one of the Caroline Islands and had been a major Japanese outpost, but it had been leapfrogged by the American forces in our westward push across the Pacific, and in June of 1945 it could no longer be supported by the Japanese forces. So they were running out of food, fuel, ammunition, and other needed things. The Americans used it every few days as a target for practice bombing by aircraft from Guam. That’s why we were there—to rescue any pilots who had to ditch in the area. It was called a lifeguard patrol. But I like to call it a war patrol. Makes me feel heroic.

We did our patrol mostly on the surface, but always practicing drills and staying alert for enemy ships and submarines, highly unlikely at that time. Still, if you were sunk by an unlikely enemy as opposed to a likely one in the area, the result was the same, so we stayed alert. We were particularly alert for Truk’s air force, which consisted of one flyable aircraft, called a Jake in our recognition books. The Jake was a Zero, the famous Japanese fighter plane, fitted with a single pontoon instead of wheels and two small pontoons on the wing tips. Every few days Jake would flutter out toward us, and we would pick it up on our SV radar, our aircraft-detection radar, and dive well before it got near us. Judging by its slow speed, we figured that it was a patched-up old thing, held together by wire, tape, and glue.

We were always advised of American bombing raids and would be surfaced when they came—fighter and pursuit planes with one or two bombs each—and we would listen to them on voice radio. They were a crazy bunch, shouting Hi yo, Silver! Awaaaaay! and "Take that, you dastardly foe!" and other such nutty things on the radio as they dropped their bombs. Flyboys. Airdales. Children who could fly airplanes.

One night while we were on the surface there was a bright full moon, not very high yet in the eastern sky. I was junior officer of the deck standing my watch behind the bridge on what was called the cigarette deck (don’t ask), where the 40-mm gun was. Anyway, I was a sort of second rear lookout back there. It began to rain lightly, not enough, really, to require rain gear. We were in a light squall, but I could still see the moon. The squall passed in minutes, and soon a rainbow appeared in the west, where the squall was going. At night! In the moonlight! It became almost as bright as a daylight rainbow. I couldn’t believe it, yet there it was. In a matter of minutes the rainbow disappeared, but that’s not something that one forgets.

One day when we were on the surface (I was not topside), old Jake came sputtering out, and the radar did not pick it up. The after lookout spotted it and shouted a warning to the officer of the deck (OOD), who immediately shouted Clear the bridge! and sounded the diving alarm. The three lookouts scrambled down the ladder into the conning tower, followed by the OOD, who pulled the conning tower hatch shut while the quartermaster dogged it tight. They continued down into the control room, where the OOD became the diving officer, and two lookouts manned the control wheels for the bow and stern planes and immediately put the planes on full dive.

Many things happened automatically and simultaneously in those same three or four seconds that it took them to get from bridge to control room. Ballast tanks were flooded. Bow planes were rigged out. The helmsman rang up full speed and put the rudder amidships. Propulsion was shifted to the battery, and the engines and exhausts were secured. A big blast of air was bled into the control room on the questionable (to me) assumption that if air pressure held in the control room for two seconds or so, it also held in the after torpedo room almost two hundred feet away, and the boat was therefore leak-tight. I preferred to put my trust in the crew who had earlier rigged the submarine for dive and whose self-preservation instincts would prevent them from unrigging it.

We had barely gone down past sixty feet when there was a boom that we could hear through the hull. The after torpedo room said that it sounded close to our port quarter. Since it was a bomb and not a depth charge, it probably detonated when it hit the water, but it was a close call and the only one on that patrol. We surfaced shortly afterwards.

I, shiny new ensign, hoped that at least one of our aircraft would have to ditch and that we could then rescue the pilot. That would entitle all of us, the entire crew, to wear a silver pin (successful war patrol) on our uniforms. Those who already had such a pin would get a star added to their pins. But no such luck. Those aircraft were well maintained and well fueled, and they all got home safely, as far as we knew. Later, after I had earned my gold-plated dolphins pin and a few pin-on ribbons, I was glad that I did not have that silver patrol pin, which would have meant two more holes in my uniform, as well as the bother of putting the damn thing on and taking it off from time to time for the rest of my career.

Our patrol ended in late July, and we returned to Guam and the rest camp while a relief crew worked on the boat. Two weeks later we were back aboard and awaiting orders for our next patrol. We were still waiting for orders on August 6, when we got word that an atomic bomb, whatever that was, had been dropped on Hiroshima with devastating results. I won’t go into this further, but the end result was Japan’s surrender and orders for our immediate return to the U.S.A. for a month of rest and recreation in New Orleans. So ended my participation in WW II.

Tough duty, a month in New Orleans, the Crescent City, NOLA, with the French Quarter and all that jazz. But we managed to endure it.

What did you do in the war, Daddy?

Oh, I helped fix up two or three submarines, Diana, and went to sea for a while, and once I heard a bomb go boom, but listen, sweetheart, let me tell you about this fantastic rainbow that ….

CHAPTER 2. PERSONAL BEST

Years ago my wife and I were baseball fans. Because we lived near San Diego, we rooted for the Padres and attended several games every year. We also listened sometimes on the radio and watched some of the televised games.

When listening or watching, we noticed that the announcer in almost every game would mention some player’s personal best. For a pitcher it might be 13 strikeouts in a game. For a batter, a .311 batting average or 36 home runs in a season. Or 54 stolen bases. And so on. You find personal bests in almost every sport.

The idea interests me. How would I reply if asked what is my personal best? I would probably ask, At what? I have been many things in my life: naval officer, technical writer/editor, tennis player, harmonica player, little kid, father, husband, square dancer (damn good at that), stamp collector, piano player, and more. I wouldn’t know how to put a number on any one of them.

Yet there is one thing at which I think I have a personal best. It is piano playing. You won’t find my name on a master list of great piano players. However, back in 1951, when I was almost 29, I ranked pretty high among the 6-year-olds.

When I was a child of 12, I had a chance to take piano lessons from my mother, but I didn’t. She was an excellent player. She started at age 5 and was good enough to be a piano teacher at age 14. She played almost every day in our home, and I loved to stand by the piano and listen to her. She wanted to teach me, but I wasn’t ready for that. Playing outside with the other kids was much more important to me. Had I been more compliant and she more firm, I might today be a rather good pianist.

Later in life I regretted many times not having taken lessons from her, and so when I got my first shore duty assignment as a naval officer, I resolved to get a piano and take lessons. I was assigned to the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, and was told that I was to be an instructor in third-class (sophomore) Marine Engineering and that I would be there for at least two years. This assignment secretly amused me because it was the one subject that I had failed as a midshipman back in 1942. It was