Voyage to Somewhere (7 page)

“That's right,” I said. “Honolulu is a far cry from New Guinea and the Japs.”

“It's not that so much. It's the time I'm thinking about. We've got to be with these men for about two years at least. We've got to be within a hundred and eighty feet of them twenty-four hours a day for two years.”

“It'll be a long voyage,” I said, “and I think they'll be all right.”

Mr. Rudd grinned. “Ask me about that two years from now,” he said.

Even before we entered Honolulu harbor the mail orderly was dressed and ready to go ashore. Somehow he claimed to have found out just where the Fleet Post Office was located. When we nosed up into a far corner of the harbor we were surprised to see six little ships exactly like ours. It gave us quite a thrill to see our sister ships: somehow before we had considered ourselves in a uniquely unenviable position. The men on the battleships seemed like shore based personnel to us, and even the men on the destroyers seemed like big ship men. It was good to see that others faced exactly the same problems as we did. When we moored alongside the SV-130, our mail orderly sprinted across her deck to the wharf on his way to the post office. The men of the SV-130 came out on deck, and leaned on the rail talking to us.

“Did you get any mail when you first got in here?” was the first question our men asked them.

“Sure,” they said, “lots of it.”

A strange sort of nervousness pervaded our men. They fidgeted about the deck, and none of them asked permission to go ashore.

“How long do you think it'll take the mail orderly to get back?” the Chief asked me.

“I don't know,” I said. “I don't even know where the post office is.”

“I do,” said the Chief. “You go three blocks straight up toward Aloha tower.”

“Have you ever been here before, Chief?” I asked.

“No,” he said, “but I found out.”

In about half an hour there was a sudden pause in all movement about the ship, and I heard a voice say, “No, there's no mail.”

“No mail?” a dozen voices chorused.

“No. No mail.”

“Why, the sons of bitches!”

I went on deck and found the men glaring angrily at the mail orderly who was just stepping over the rail empty-handed.

“They said they never heard of the SV-126,” he reported. “They said they didn't even have her listed.”

“I'll go up and find out about it,” I said quickly. “I want mail as much as you do.”

At the post office, after being told just what the mail orderly had been told, I arranged for the mail to be traced, and I returned to the ship.

The Chief was awaiting me at the gangway. “What did you find out, sir?” he asked.

I said, “I had it traced. I can't do any more.”

“No,” the Chief said, “you can't do any more.”

After that the men did not go aboard the SV-130 much, for that ship had received mail. Instead, they sought out another of our sister ships, one that had not received mail—the SV-131. There was a great pairing together of the men of the two ships. Our seamen went into their forecastle and talked to their seamen; our cooks went into their galley and talked to their cooks; Mr. Rudd was down in their engine room swapping spare parts with their engineering officer; and I went and knocked at the cabin door of their commanding officer.

It was opened by a tall, heavy man about thirty-five. We introduced ourselves, and he bade me come in and sit down. It was somehow comforting to walk into a cabin exactly like mine; I felt I knew Mr. Stuart, the skipper of this ship, even before I talked to him.

“Did you hear about the one-fifty?” he asked.

“No,” I said, “what about the one-fifty?”

“Lost,” he said. “Lost between here and San Pedro. Collision. About half her crew went down with her. Fellow by the name of Richardson commanded her.”

“Richardson!” I said. “Not Tom Richardson! I knew him. Was he saved?”

“Tom Richardson it was,” Mr. Stuart said with satisfaction. “He was lost.”

When I went back to our ship all hands were talking about the SV-150. Several of the men knew men who had been aboard her. They talked in low tones about it, taking an awed relish in disaster brought close.

“Why, Bill Dawes!” I heard White say. “I was in boot camp with him! I saw him in San Pedro just before we left.”

“The SV-150!” the mail orderly said. “They had mail for her. They showed me a list of the ships they had mail for, and she was on it!”

CHAPTER TEN

W
E WERE
in Honolulu a month waiting for repairs and spare parts, and we never got any mail there. It took eight days for them to trace the mail, to find that it was all going straight through to New Guinea. By the time they found that out we thought that we were to leave any day, and I was afraid that if I had the mail sent back to us it would be in Honolulu when we arrived at New Guinea. As soon as the men found out that they were not going to get any mail themselves, they began writing more and more letters home, as though by writing they felt almost as close to their families as by receiving mail. Every morning we censored the mail, and certain phrases stuck in my mind.

Guns wrote: “Please don't write me nice cheerful letters. When I finally do get mail, I want to know how you're really feeling.”

White wrote: “I don't like being a sailor, but I guess I'll have to fool myself into liking it. When I was at school I convinced myself that I loved Latin.”

The Chief wrote: “As far as I am concerned the clock stopped when I left you, and will only start again when I walk across our front porch.”

In the evenings when their work was done, the men wandered around the streets of the city. There were thousands of sailors in Honolulu; a person in civilian clothes stood out from the crowd. Even if the sailors had not been dressed differently, I think I could have told them apart from the civilians who were at home. There was something aimless in the sailors' movements as they drifted about the strange city; there was something vacant about their faces as they stared at the sights. I walked through the city a good deal myself, and I saw them standing in lines before movie theaters, buying postcards that had pictures of stylized Hawaiian girls brightly painted on them and so could not be sent through the mail. I saw them buying woven pocketbooks to send home, and necklaces of seashells. A passer-by walking through the streets of Honolulu would have had a difficult time telling what kind of men the sailors were. They sat in the reading rooms of the libraries reading the classics, and even on weekdays one could not go into a church without seeing them leaning forward on a pew with their heads resting on their arms. Also they got drunk on street corners and were sick leaning against the windows of stores. They swayed down the street arm in arm, they whistled at girls, and on the buses they struck up conversations with anyone who sat beside them.

“Hello, ma'am, can I help you with your packages?”

“Tell me, honey, are you doing anything tonight? I've got a few hours to spare myself.”

They sat in the city parks staring at the strange birds that looked half robin, half sparrow. They hitchhiked out to Waikiki Beach and swam in the surf, stumbled off the long native surfboards and eyed the girls. They aimlessly enrolled in educational courses that they would have no time to finish: lessons in shorthand, English literature, and steel engraving. In back alleys down by the waterfront they waited in line before the whore houses, and they struck up conversations with children on the street.

“Say, sonny, want an ice cream cone?”

“Sure, mister!”

“Come on, and I'll buy you one.”

There were sailors everywhere. When officers walked down the street they didn't salute them much if they didn't know them, but when a familiar officer appeared they smiled and their arms snapped up like the arms of a king's guard.

“Good afternoon, sir! Not much doing, is there? Not much of a town.”

In the bars they crowded each other and sometimes they fought. The Shore Patrol fought a battle every hour of the night, and civilians stepped aside as they hauled kicking sailors from sidewalk saloons.

“Let me go, damn you, let me go! I didn't do nothing!”

“Take it easy, Mac, take it easy. We'll just take you in and let you sober down.”

Sometimes the telephone in the Shore Patrol office rang and a voice said, “I'm pretty drunk. Can't find my ship. Got to be back pretty soon. Down at the Blue Bell bar.”

The Shore Patrol said, “O.K., Mac, just hang on. We'll be around and pick you up.”

The sailors thronged the art museums and stared puzzledly at the paintings. They walked arm in arm with slant-eyed women, and they made love over the counter to waitresses.

“You sure got pretty hair, Anna.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“Yeah, you sure have.”

They bought newspapers and read about the latest battles in New Guinea. They pored over maps with great ink arrows on them showing the strategy of the war, and they conjectured.

“How long do you think it'll last?”

“I don't know. Looks as though it'll be over pretty soon now. I hear where a fellow in Washington says it'll be over this year.”

The sailors met people from their home town, their home state, or just from their part of country.

“Say, you don't come from Arkansas, do you?”

“No, I come from Montana.”

“Well, that ain't so far away. How about having a beer with me?”

They searched the city for places where they could buy hometown newspapers. Shops selling voice recordings did a land office business, and the post office had to put up a sign asking people not to use air mail, registered mail, or special delivery unless there were a real emergency.

They had problems. A “Miss Fix-It” ran a column in the local paper and answered their questions.

“If you lost your wallet on the bus, you should contact the bus line's lost and found department.”

“It would be all right for you to send your girl an inexpensive birthday gift even if you are not engaged to her.”

“It is correct that wives may not divorce their husbands without the husband's consent if the husband is in the service.”

The sailors were victimized by the hoodlums and thieves of the city. They were found beaten and robbed in alleyways and gutters. The usual procedure was to have a woman make friends with them and lure them into a dark corner where men waited to strike them over the head. Usually when the sailors awoke they did not seek the police; they just rubbed their heads, felt their empty pockets, and dazedly walked away. A letter was posted on the bulletin boards of all ships and shore establishments asking that cases of robbery be reported.

A good many of the sailors got engaged, and some got married. They married every kind of woman: Chinese, Polynesian, and naturalized Jap. Prostitutes were found who had married a dozen men and were getting allotments from all of them. Steps were taken to curb a number of women from marrying men they thought were in a particularly dangerous branch of the service and might leave them government life insurance. It was recalled to the men that they could not make out allotments to people who were not members of their family. Still men tried to make out allotments to sweethearts, friends, bartenders, people they met in the street.

“I don't care,” they said, “I can't use it myself.”

“Save it,” they were told. “You can use it later.”

“All right,” they said, “I'll save it.”

Still most of them didn't save any money they did not sign away in allotments. They bought vanity cases, rings, gold watches, and pressed them on girls they took out for a night.

“Take it,” they'd say, “I want you to have it.”

They joined part-time work organizations and hired themselves out to watch babies at night. They played catch like boys in the street. They organized baseball games, football games, and basketball matches between ships, between departments on a ship, between somebody and anybody. They heavily patronized a printing shop that made copies of newspapers with headlines to order.

“Samuel Brigham, Seaman Second Class, Wins Congressional Award. Grantsville, Illinois, Boy Earns Nation's Highest Honor.”

Every photograph shop in the city was working day and night. The sailors had snapshots made of themselves with their arms around girls, with their arms around shipmates, with their arms around anybody. They had enlarged photographs made of themselves, portraits, sketches, tinted pictures that made their flesh a rose color and their hair either bright yellow, mahogany brown, or jet black. One enterprising photographer worked overtime taking pictures of men and sketching on them realistic looking beards, mustaches, and long, unkempt haircuts. The same photographer would take a picture of a seaman and insert his face and figure into a uniform of whatever rank ordered. Most of the photography shops had buxom hula girls in brief pseudo-grass costumes continually on hire to pose on the laps of sailors.

Every ship, shore establishment, and public building displayed posters warning against venereal disease. They all showed pictures of pretty women.

“Beware,” they said, “VD Means Trouble.”

“Better Be Good Than Be Crippled!”

“If She's Friendly, Look Out!”

Every two or three blocks in the city there were prophylaxis stations for the prevention of venereal disease, and the men stood in lines outside of these fidgeting and joking self-consciously. Sometimes a seaman hardly older that a schoolboy was found crying on a street corner or on a bench in the park.

“Come on,” his friends would shout, “cheer up! What you need is another drink.”

The sailors were great singer. They sang in the churches, in the bars, and on the streets. They sang hymns, Tin-Pan Alley jargon, and songs they made up themselves.