Coming Home from Okinawa

I got my orders to come back from Okinawa in January 1953. I had been transferred from the Military Police to the 8116th Army Unit. I was in a barracks, near my MP barracks, which housed guys who worked in the Judge Advocate General’s Office, an Explosive Ordinance Detachment, and a sprinkling of other guys who worked in other areas. I was to be in the Supply Department. My new supply sergeant was an old army man, but I would be working under his assistant. The old sergeant just showed up once in a while and left all the work to the assistant. The assistant told me that I was to go to another barracks and be his assistant there. I was disappointed until I found it was the women’s BOQ! There, I would take charge of their supply needs and would have a room to myself. I would have access to the bathroom and showers at certain times of the day. Wow!, I could hardly wait for the transfer. But then fate dealt me an unexpected blow. The assistant get a message from the Red Cross that his old mother was ill and he got an emergency leave home.

Rats! I had to go back to the other unit and work under the grumpy old sergeant who was never there and I had to do all his work. I didn’t get mad, I got even. I had a lot of friends and would give them items from supply stock that he never would have given them such as, extra clothing, shoes, shoe polish, etc. One of my favorite friends who did this was one of the cooks who used to bring me ice cream, turkey sandwiches and other goodies. His name was Jim Baxes and had been a Pacific Coast League home run king. In the season and a half before being drafted, he had hit 55 homeruns. He later played for the LA Dodgers and the Cleveland Indians.

In my new unit, there were all kind of “jocks”, two from the Pacific Coast League, an All American volleyball player (on our company basketball team) and a Member of the 1951 UCLA basketball team, Phillip Beam. On our football team, we had the end from Illinois who had beaten Stanford 49-0 in the first postwar Rose Bowl, a good friend from the MPs, Leo Shanosky, from Pennsylvania University and a black All American fullback From the connection at the women’s BOQ, we were allowed to use their tennis court and I beat Beam several times which made little old unathletic me feel pretty good.

On the way over to Okinawa, deep in the ship, I could feel the throb of the big engines all the time. Near my supply room down in the basement, the heating and air conditioning units, sounded more and more like the same noise on the ship and made me want for that magical day to arrive. One of my friends in Personnel got me a good assignment on the ship as an MP guard for general prisoners returning to the US. The MP brassard got me to the head of the chow line and the line for the every night movie.
The draw back was that I had to take my turn guarding the prisoners in the brig which was as far forward and as far down as a guy could get. I was lying in the bunk across from the cell and every time the ship dove down, I would be floating about 4” off the bunk. I finally had to use a belt to hold me down.

I was all packed with everything in my duffel bag when a 6x6 truck came to pick me and other guys returning home and took us to the ship, the USS Breckinridge a sister ship of the one I came over on, both converted American President liners. We were first going to stop by Formosa and then to Yokohama.

When we got to Formosa we were carrying families of the US Military Advisory Group who had come over earlier to help train General Chang Kai Shek’s army. At Keelung, port city for Taipei, there was a big celebration prepared for the families. They had been firing firecrackers for hours and the pier was covered with a few feet of red paper. Near the ship, the was a Chinese Army guard post and the soldier, standing at rigid attention with a fixed bayonet, was shorter that the attached bayonet. I had a new pair of binoculars and, upon looking at the jungle type background, saw the mountain move! It was actually camouflaged Chinese soldiers on maneuvers.

We left in the early afternoon and went through the sea wall into the open ocean. Here is a link to Google Maps Satellite photo taken in the last few years:

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&time=&date=&ttype=&q=Keelung+City&sll=23.69781,120.960515&sspn=5.651963,8.64624&ie=UTF8&cd=1&geocode=0,25.123961,121.717621&ll=25.159017,121.755434&spn=0.02183,0.033774&t=h&z=15&om=1

On the way to Yokohoma, we hit the tail end of a typhoon and the sea was very rough. Most of the guys were seasick but I knew I had to eat. I had heard that it was good to drink tomato juice and suck on a match (don’t ask me why, but it worked). The ship was listing 30 degrees left and 30 degrees right of vertical. In the mess hall where we normally sat down, the long metal tables were raised. I had to hold on with one hand and eat with the other. I could look out the porthole and see the sky and the next time, it would be under water. Pretty scary.

We finally got to Yokohama and some of us were allowed off to wander around this large port city taking pictures, buying souvenirs and spending the last of our yen which wouldn’t do me much good back home. Before I went back to the ship, I went to Hotel Green which advertised “Japan’s Finest Italian Food” and got some very good spaghetti. I didn’t acquire a taste for Japanese food until the late 60’s and now I like it a lot better than Chinese food.

The trip home was uneventful. We were on the water for 11 days coming within 500 miles from the Aleutians. When we got to warmer waters we saw lots of flying fish. Another bird was the albatross who followed us across the ocean just gliding behind the ship eating garbage thrown overboard. I had the funny feeling that they got a free ride on the stern every night.

One day, we heard the horn give off three short blasts to indicate a “Man Overboard Drill” and the ship slowly made a large circle and the sailors practiced throwing a life preserver overboard. I guess it was necessary training but I wanted to get home. At dawn of the last day we paralled California near Marin County and sailed under the Golden Gate. It was great to get home!