Wesley R. Harkins
Era: World War II
Military Branch: Navy
Wesley R. Harkins of Duluth, Minnesota, enlisted in the 49th Division of the 10th Battalion, Naval Reserve in 1938. Ship''s company, USS Paducah, Duluth, Chicago, 1940-41; Navy Patrol base, New London, Conn. 1941-43; V-12 college training program, New York, Miami 1944. Enlisted ratings: Apprentice Seaman to Yeoman 1st Class. Commissioned ensign; communications officer, USS Blackhawk (AD-9), Pearl Harbor, Hawaii and Okinawa, Ryukyu Islands 1945-46. He was recalled to active duty in the Korean Conflict, Pearl Harbor, 1950-51. Resigned as a Lieutenant (junior grade)1952 and discharged from Naval Reserve.
Oral History Interview with
WESLEY HARKINS-VETERAN OF USS PADUCAH (WWII VET)
Born 1921 in Duluth, Minnesota
Interviewed by
Daniel Hartman
Program Director of Veterans’ Memorial Hall on June 5, 2007
Transcribed by
Karin Swor
Program Assistant of Veterans Memorial Hall
This interview is between Dan Hartman, (DH) director of Veterans Memorial Hall and Wesley Harkins (WH)
DH. I am beginning an interview with Wes Harkins, Wesley. Did you serve on the Paducah or the YP. You were a veteran of what war?
WH. WWII
DH. What year were you born?
WH. 1921
DH. What city were you born in?
WH. Duluth
DH. Have you been a life long resident of Duluth?
WH. Yes, except my Navy time.
DH. So you grew up in the 1920’s and partially in the 1930's as a kid.
WH. Yes
DH. How was growing up in Duluth 1920’s? Was it a fun time?
WH. Good times.
DH. What were some of the activities that you would do at the time to entertain yourself?
WH. Just the usual kids things. We didn’t have the usual organized sports that they have now. Dad was a train dispatcher for the Northern Pacific, worked right in this building.
DH. What part of the building did he work in?
WH. The dispatchers were in the round tower on the other side.
DH. On the East side?
WH. The room we are in now, the boardroom, use to be the? I think this was the superintendent’s office.
DH. What was the Depot like back then?
WH. It was a busy place.
DH. A lot of people coming and going.
WH. Yeah there were quite a few trains in and out of here, in those days. In fact there were a lot of trains in and out of here then. They called it the Union Depot, cause it had NP and Great Northern. I am not sure if the Mesabi came out of here or not. There is another depot down 5th Avenue, The Soo Line. This was a busy place.
DH. But this was biggest depot in town?
WH. Lots of activity here.
DH. You mentioned earlier that you played around here, once and a while.
WH. I studied telegraphy. My dad was going to make a telegraph operator out of me. I use to come to work with him, sometimes. Do some of his telegraphy for him. A couple of times I got sleepy, so he took me over here, the superintendent had a couch and I would sleep on the superintendents couch..
DH. Was the superintendent a pretty friendly guy?
WH. Well, he wasn’t here. My dad was midnight till 8 in the morning, was his shift. He didn’t have a telegraph operator, the dispatchers during the day had operators but the midnight shift didn’t have an operator. I came down and acted as his, telegraph operator.
DH. Growing up. So did your father work here through the 1920’s and 1930’s?
WH. Yes. He came her in 1919. They came right after the big fire.
DH. Okay, where did they come from?
WH. Well, originally from Iowa. And then he had been out in Montana all during WWI.
DH. Was he serving out in Montana?
WH. No, he was a train dispatcher.
DH. The whole time?
WH. He was working on the railroads.
DH. Were your parents born in America?
WH. In Iowa, yes.
DH. What ethnic background were your parents?
WH. My mother was Danish; full-blooded Danish, her parents and most of her brothers and sisters came from Denmark. She was born in this country. My dad’s parents were Scottish and Irish.
DH. Were his parents originally from Scotland?
WH. No, I think his grandpa might have been from Scotland.
DH. Okay, so his family had been in the United States for quite awhile?
WH. Yeah, they had come to Iowa from somewhere in Ohio.
DH. Was the train business a family business?
WH. That was the big employer in those days; everything was on trains in those days. A train served every town. If you didn’t have a train you didn’t have anything.
DH. Earlier you talked about, as a kid, you played games that normal kids played.
What were some of those normal games?
WH. I don’t remember a lot of them. Just kid games, hide and seek, some ball, some football. There was no organized... there was no little league, no little league football and anything like that. One kid had a football, another kid had a baseball and another had a mitt and one had a bat. We would get together just neighborhood kids. This was out in Woodland. We lived out in Woodland. There were a lot of open fields out there then. So we had a lot of places to play. Play baseball. We had neighbors that had cows, had a cow, they would take the cow out into the neighborhood fields and stake the cow out there for the day. She would keep the grass mowed. Put a little pie out once and awhile.
DH. Does Woodland look a little different now?
WH. Oh yeah, there weren’t too many houses out there then. There was a streetcar that ran to the end of Woodland, but it was a single track, from Hunters Park, from St. Paul Avenue. So the car that went out to Woodland, the next car would have to wait, for it down on St. Paul Avenue until it came down, before the next one could go up.
DH. I didn’t know about that.
WH. Now that big dairy hill up there, I don’t know what is up there now. It was a big farm in those days. We used to play out there. Out in that big field. Widdes used to have a farm out there; he used to fatten cattle out there. One time he brought sheep. He had a bunch of sheep out there he was raising. The sheep would get through the fence into the neighborhood. He hired one of my buddies, one of my friends, to come down and get a horse in the morning and he would take the horse up and then all he had to do was go along the fence and keep the sheep from going out into the neighborhood into Woodland. So we would go down there with this guy, we would play cowboys, we had a lot of fun there, and have a horse to ride. But that was just a big open field, it had a couple of swimming holes down their places where we could swim.
DH. A couple of questions back to the 1920’s. A lot of people today refer to the 1920’s as kind of the big era for Duluth. Do You?
WH. Finance you mean? I wouldn’t know, I was too little. I knew my dad worked all through the depression. He was the junior man. He was bottom man on the seniority list all through the depression. He always had a job. He worked all odd shifts. We kind of had to be careful with spending, you never knew from one day to the next if he was going to come home with a pink slip. But he didn’t, he worked through the whole.
DH. Did your mother work?
WH. No, no, we had chickens and duck’s that we kept. She had a big garden a lot of raspberries.
DH. This was at your house up in Woodland? Was it kind of like a hobby farm?
WH. No, a lot of people had chickens. One neighbor had a cow, so we got milk. We had another neighbor that had goats because his wife had to have goat milk to drink so we had goats in the neighborhood, we had a cows, a lot of people had chickens and ducks.
DH. Another question? What religious background were your parents?
WH. My dad wasn’t much on religion. We went to church at the Methodist church out there in Woodland.
DH. Did you go weekly?
WH. I don’t know. I went to Sunday school on Sunday. No, weren’t heavy in the church. My dad always worked nights, so he just didn’t want to get up and go to church on Sunday, I guess. Come home and get ready for bed.
DH. Do you remember the old incline station?
WH. The incline Railway? Oh, yeah. I rode that a number of times.
DH. Explain it a little bit.
WH. My parents, their relatives, from Iowa used to come up here and any time any of the Iowa people would come up here the first thing you would do is take them down and take them up in the incline.
DH. So that was the big thing to do in town?
WH. Yes, it was a big deal. Take a ride up to the top of the incline where you can see the whole city. We had one relative that would come up here. She would get on the streetcar and ride the streetcar all day. She would take a streetcar and go out to Gary New Duluth; I do not know how far west they went, if they went to Fond Du Lac I don’t know. They went at least to Gary and then she would go out to Lakeside, Lester Park just ride the trolley all day. That is how she would see the town. You would have a hard time doing that today. The tokens were 7 Cents. Or something like that to ride.
DH. Was the big station up on top still around?
WH. No
DH. It must have burnt before then.
DH. Your father didn’t serve in WWI but did you have Uncles or other family members that did?
WH. I had an Uncle that was in the air end of it. Air corps during WWI. He was over in Paris. He was a mechanic.
DH. Growing up did you ever hear his story?
WH. Oh yeah, and we had a neighbor across the street that was in the British Army. And I can remember as a kid when my Uncle would come up, this guy from across the street would come over and they would tell war stories. We loved to sit and listen to that war stuff.
DH. They still do. In the 1930’s, you were a teenager during this time. Do you feel like the great depression hit Duluth?
WH. Oh sure, it was tough. A lot of people lost there homes, many people lost their jobs. They would take any kind of a job they could get. Then the CCC [Civilian Conservation Corps] came along. I never did join the CCC.
DH. A lot of your friends did though? Did they enjoy it?
WH. Well a dollar a day and board and room. My wife was the next to the youngest of 13 kids at the time, so her brothers were in the CCC. I don’t know how they ever got through the depression with that many kids. We made out all right. It was just my sister and myself. There were just two of us.
DH. But you still felt the times?
WH. Oh yeah, you didn’t waste any money; you didn’t have any. If you found a nickel or a penny, boy, you were excited, it was a big deal.
DH. What did you do as a teenager? Did you go to movies?
WH. Yes, we went to movies.
DH. Do you remember any big movies that you and your friends really enjoyed?
WH. Well I went to the first movie that showed at the Granada Theater. The Granada theater was out by where the Northshore is. The name of it was the Dawn Patrol. It was a story of WWI Air Corps.
DH. Did that make you think of your Uncle?
WH. Oh yeah, it was a good movie. A lot of flying.
DH. That was the "Dawn Patrol"?
WH. Yes, D-A-W-N
DH. Do you remember any of the other theaters in town, like the Northshore?
WH. Well, there was no Northshore then. There was the Lyceum, [and] Lyric up on 2nd Ave W. Then there was a Lake Theater, that was a Superior Street on about 1st Ave East. That was a nickel to get into that. On Saturdays you could get in with a coffee can lid or something. I think it was a lid from the Empress coffee can. They would have a future movie and then a serial that would be continuous every Saturday. We used to go to that. It was kind of a dump theater but it was full of kids.
DH. That was the Lake Theater?
WH. The Lake Theater, yes. Over on, almost on 1st Ave East on Superior Street on the lower side. Back toward where they are tearing the buildings down now was the Strand Theater.
DH. There must have been quite a few?
WH. Oh yeah, there was in the West End the Doric Theater, and West Duluth had a theater. That was a big thing. Theaters were a big thing back then. I remember it cost a nickel to get into the Lake. I don’t remember, I think the Lyceum was one of the high priced places, I think a quarter or fifteen cents something like that.
DH. Was it kind of sad to see some of these buildings come down?
WH. Not necessarily. There were some nice ones that came down.
DH. I seen some pictures of the Lyceum and that was just amazing.
WH. I am glad they saved this one. But there used to be a big Spalding Hotel over here. It was an older Hotel. Across the street was the Holland Hotel, the Lenox Hotel, the 5th Ave Hotel. There were quite a few of them.
DH. Is there anything from the 1930’s era that you would like future generations to know about that was unique to Duluth that you thought should be told? What would that be? Was there something in particular you were very fond of?
WH. We had a lot of winter sports. One of the big events was a winter carnival, here, each year. They had a big parade, a lot of people, everybody gathered downtown and they had floats and things like that.
DH. So the carnival was in the winter? The floats and everything?
WH. Oh yeah, it was in the winter. It was a big event. My dad would take me to that. Another thing people would remember to do; there was a Ford Tri-motor Airplane that came here one winter. It landed on the ice just off of where the Armory and the Curling Club and a few other buildings. Also Leif Erickson Park, my dad took me down there. He was going to take me for a ride in the airplane; the line was two big, too many people. By the time it got to us it would have been too late in the day. The plane landed right there on the ice. It would take off and take people for a ride and come back.
DH. People were really excited for this?
WH. Oh yeah, it was a big deal. One of those old Ford Airplanes. That is a big heavy airplane it landed right on the ice out there.
DH. I take it we had pretty thick ice back then?
WH. Oh yeah, the winters weren’t much. Anyway the Army from Salvage Shield in Michigan came up here with their whole outfit, all their soup planes and their bombers and everything. They camped out here on the ice in the bay. They set up their tents and their mess hall. They lived right out there on the ice. They did all their exercises; they did all their winter exercises right here in Duluth.
DH. I can’t imagine it today.
WH. No, the pursuit planes, I remember that. They were just coming out with the low wing airplanes. Boy, I don’t think so, well anyway. They had some pursuit planes, I remember that, and bombers. They flew around here.
DH. And they took off on the Lake?
WH. Off the bay. Right out here on the bay. They had a celebrated city out there.
DH. Did you do any skiing yourself?
WH. Oh yes, everybody skied.
DH. Cross country, downhill?
WH. Just jump, they didn’t have any cross-country. Well you had cross-country but not like today.
DH. Did you play Hockey?
WH. Not really, I did play it, but not on any team. They had a hockey rink in Woodland, I think you had to clear it yourself; we had to plow it and shovel it. They helped put up the boards and we had a warming house. Any hill that had a bump on it, that is what you did, jump. Then of course we had big jumps at Chester Park, those were big events. At least we could get there by streetcar. You had to come downtown from Woodland and get a Kenwood streetcar and that would let you off behind the bowl. And you would come in behind there.
DH. So ski jumping was the popular one?
WH. Yeah, that was a big thing; we had a lot of big time ski jumpers here in this area.
DH. So that was one of things that you looked forward to in the winter?
WH. Oh sure, everybody had a toboggan, the other thing, in the wintertime; they didn’t sand the streets like they do now. Then with your sled you could ride your sled on the streets. Out in Woodland we had great streets for sliding on in the winter.
DH. Moving on to the next thing, when you decided to enlist in the Navy Reserve, when did you enlist?
WH. 1938
DH. Why?
WH. Something to do, well I was with a group of fellows. There were 6 or 8 of us in a group, and somebody in that group decided to join the Naval Reserve. I thought I would go along with it, so I went along. We went down there and signed up. I think out of the 6 guys there were only 2 of us that got accepted that night. The other guys had to get some eye corrections or they had to get this that or another thing. Some of them ended up in the Navy, some of them in the National Guard. At that time you got seventy cents a night for a drill and you would drill one night a week. The reserve drilled on Monday nights. We would go down there, down to the Armory, and you would get seventy cents a night. Well they paid you every quarter, so every three months you would get a check for about $11.00. Something like that. That was a lot of money.
DH. Would you say that money was a major impact?
WH. It was, it was a big help. There were no jobs for kids. A few guys would get an odd job.
DH. So the depression was definitely still on?
WH. Yes, oh that didn’t let up until the war got going.
DH. Did you have an interest in the Navy prior to this?
WH. No
DH. So there was no peer pressure?
WH. That’s what did it. I never regretted it. I was still in high school when I joined. When I finished high school I went right to work for the Navy. They had an office in the Armory and one on Park Point. I got a job at the office at the Armory. I can’t remember if I got paid for that or not.
DH. When you enlisted did you enlist at Park Point?
WH. No, it was out at the Armory. They had a medical officer there. That was a big building, the Armory; there was a lot there.
DH. Did the Navy Reserve and the National Guard share part of the Armory?
WH. Yes, the Navy had it on Monday nights. The Navy had permanent offices there.
DH. The Navy also had a base at Park Point, correct?
WH. Right
DH. Where on Park Point was that?
WH. Right down, where the Sundew, not the Sundew, but the Oliver ties up right where the Navy used to be.
DH. Can you describe that building a little bit? Or wasn’t there much to it?
WH. Oh yeah, it was a nice building. Have you not seen pictures of it? It was a beautiful building. A two-story building, it had a nice veranda all the way around it. They had a second deck where the office was. The captain was there, his office; it had a galley and a wardroom. The captain had a steward that was with him all the time. They had meals. That is where the Paducah and the YP tied up. We did all our drilling out at the Armory.
DH. Was there any rivalry between you and the guard?
WH. No, we were all friends. We were all in the same boat.
DH. But there wasn’t any like joking around?
WH. Not that I was ever involved in. A couple of the guys that went with me to join the Navy ended up the Guard. We were buddies all during the war we corresponded kept close.
DH. I asked this question before. Do you remember anything about the canoe boat races that the reserve put on? I think it was before your time, I just wanted to check.
WH. No I never even heard of it.
DH. How would you describe the atmosphere of the Navy Reserve, were people fairly proud of the history of how long they had been in Duluth at that time, or did they feel like maybe they really weren’t here that long?
WH. It was a good outfit. It was very credible. The skipper and the officers were all people, the skipper was full-time Navy, but the officers were all from town, businessmen, attorneys. Do you know the attorney Clure? Have you heard of him? His dad was a division officer, because he was my boss at one time.
DH. Were there any particular men that you remember well, that had a lot of character?
WH. Capazinski was another one of the officers. I forget what he did for a living. We had guys from the water and gas department, guys from Minnesota Power. They were there for the officers. A lot of the men in the reserve were from out west from the steel mill, steel plant. Their dads were from the steel plant. A lot of the people were from the Denfeld area, Morgan park area.
DH. Were a lot of these people part of Navy families or were they just there to make the money?
WH. Just there for 70 cents a week. As you advanced there were some that went beyond the 70 cents but not much.
DH. In 1938, when you came on board, what was drill like, pretty basic?
WH. Yeah, you would get in any line up, muster. We had the two divisions. You get the two divisions lined up in that big gym out there, it would fill the place up. One division was for deck side (top side), the other division was for the engine work. They would break off and go to classrooms and have classes. We would march, we did a lot of marching, we had to do so much marching every night.
DH. What division were you part of?
WH. I was part of the 49th; I was in the deck division.
DH. Was the deck division called the 49th?
WH. The Naval Reserve in those days was made up.... they set it up so the Naval Reserve Unit would be able to go aboard an old destroyer. World War I, World War II destroyer. We had all the engine ratings; we had all the topside ratings so we would be capable of going to a ship, to man a ship. That is what we were scheduled for, to go to a fortified destroyer. Then along comes this - they get this idea that they are going to take these training ships off the lakes because they were operational, the destroyers were all in mothballs. Here these boats were operational, they wanted to get them off the lake before freeze up that is, when they got the idea to take the Paducah and the Dubuque, and they took three or four of them that fall. They got them off the lakes before freeze up. So they put us on the Paducah instead of putting us on a destroyer. In the mean time, you probably heard this story, the St. Paul unit got sent to the USS Ward and they ended up being the guys that fired the first shots of the war.
DH. You say the St Paul unit. Weren’t there some people from the Duluth area that were in that too?
WH. Not on the Ward.
DH. I have heard rumors.
WH. I don’t think... I don’t think there were any Duluthians on there. But it was the St Paul reserve unit that shipped the boat and got it going again. That is what we would have done. There were, I don’t know how many divisions in Minneapolis, and there were divisions in St Paul. The people used to cruise on the Paducah and these lake boats in the summer. They came from all over the Midwest. Omaha had a unit, Kansas City had a unit, there were places in Michigan that had a unit. A lot of cities had Naval Reserves.
DH. The USS Ward was that stationed in Duluth for a while?
WH. No, no, that was one of the laid up destroyers. It was in mothball. See the Navy ended with about 200 and some destroyers at the end of World War I, and they just stuck them in backwaters here and there and kept them… They gave a bunch of them to the British at one time. They fit a lot of them out. A lot of them served in World War II.
DH. For example, the St Paul Navy Reserve went to the USS Ward and you got trained on the Paducah, correct?
WH. Well yeah, we took the Paducah to salt water to get it out of the Great Lakes and then we stayed there.
DH. When did you do that, in '38?
WH. No, '40.
DH. You also trained on the Paducah too, right?
WH. Oh, yeah.
DH. Did you train on some of the other ships to?
WH. I trained in '39, we trained on the USS Wilmington, which was a boat from Toledo, a training ship from Toledo. Our Naval Reserve Unit, we took a train down to Chicago then caught the Wilmington. We had a two-week trip then came home on the train. The next year in '40 we trained on the Paducah. We came aboard right here in Duluth, took the boat down and did the two week training. Then the Reserve Unit came home on the train. I stayed on the boat. I was permanent ship's company. I was working on the ship at that time. I was full time on the boat.
DH. In 1940?
WH. '40
DH. Obliviously there is a bond between you guys in the Paducah crew.
WH. There is now, we all knew one another.
DH. Was there that bonding back then, too?
WH. In a way. You had your friends; there were guys that you palled around with.
DH. The Paducah itself, how would you describe the boat, what was memorable about the Paducah?
WH. It was old, but it functioned. It worked and for the Navy to have ships that operated, all those generators operating... Of course, the Paducah didn’t have any guns on it. The ship was essentially operational.
DH. Which was unlike a lot of others.
WH. That’s right, the Navy didn’t have anything back then. They were short of ships.
DH. Do you remember the USS Gopher?
WH. No, that was before my time.
DH. OK, that is what I thought. Were you ever, as a local Naval Reserve, did you ever do any other missions for the state?
WH. I didn’t get involved in them but the Paducah did. They took firefighters up to Isle Royal one time. I forgot who the firefighters were.
DH. Did that happen when you were there?
WH. No, this happened before I was there. Then they served as the station ship for the people that were fighting the fire on Isle Royal.
DH. Could that have happened when you were there too?
WH. It could have, yeah.
DH. So that was an option that they told you you may have?
WH. Oh yeah, and of course there was a firm crew on the Paducah. There was probably 20/25 guys that were full time job. That was their occupation. A couple of them were regular Navy people.
DH. You were put on as permanent crew?
WH. I went on active duty as permanent crew in June of 1940.
DH. So you definitely spent your fare share of time on the boat.?
WH. From then on, yes.
DH. Was it a very loud ship, or was it pretty quiet?
WH. You’ve seen pictures of it. It was all right. I did alright on the Paducah. Of course I was in the office. I could either sleep on my desk or I had a cot that I could put in the office and sleep there. The other guys were sleeping in hammocks. We had no lockers in those days. You worked out of your sea bag. They had a place where you could hang your sea bag along the side of the mess room.
DH. What was your duty then?
WH. We didn’t have many nice things. If you wanted to take a bath we had to rig a shower that was just cold-water showers. Then they had a steam line coming into the shower head so you would turn the cold water on, then you would turn the steam line on, and you would try to get just enough steam in there so you would have warm water. Some of the guys got to be pretty good at it. I never did. I used to take a bucket and fill with water and put that on the steam line and just heat the water up there, nice warm water. Then I would go stand in the corner, take a towel and a wash rag and take my bath that way. You didn’t take a bath everyday like they do now a days. One of the things I think each morning when I get up, I had clean underwear to put on. A nice clean pair of underwear and I thank God for that. I don’t think that I ever had more than 3 suits of underwear all the time I was an enlisted man in the Navy. You didn’t have nice clean underwear to put on everyday, clean socks; you had to wash your own stuff. You did your washing that way too. You just took a bucket, heated up some water, scrubbed your clothes. So you didn’t scrub 'em too often either.
DH. No, it was kind of a messy situation?
WH. Well it was a way of life. That is the way things were done.
DH. What did you guys do to entertain yourself on the ship, or were you pretty busy for the most part?
WH. Just flap our gowns I guess.
DH. Did you play a lot of cards?
WH. I didn’t. I was never much of a card player. I was never really good at it. Some guys were pretty good at cards, gambling and stuff. You were busy; there were things to do, work to do.
DH. What was your roll on the ship, what was your duty?
WH. I worked for the paymaster, I kept the payroll. Just general office type of work. I was the stenographer too, also, so I used to do a lot of the stenography for the skipper. Write letters for him, a lot of typing.
DH. Did you enjoy that?
WH. Oh sure, it was all right, I was much better off than the guys that were out there on deck or down in the fire hole.
DH. Were you able to do some of things because of skills that you had learned prior?
WH. Yup.
DH. So did your dad helping you out at the depot?
WH. Well, he helped me out with the telegraphy and then of course I had to be a typist to do that. I had studied shorthand in high school. So I handled that pretty easy.
DH. When everyone was activated in the reserve, what were you thinking?
WH. That is an interesting story because we didn’t know that we were going to take the Paducah out. When the Paducah went back to Chicago, after the cruising season of 1940, the ship came back here, and we put off the crew that had been on there. I think it was kids from Minneapolis or Omaha, I forget which. Put them off here in Duluth, then the Paducah turned around and went back down to Chicago. They made kind of a station ship out of it. They had a radio school in Chicago and the Paducah was part of the picture down there. They left me behind. Me and a Chief Yeoman and a Pharmacist Mate and a Medical Officer was here and one other officer. They left us here. Our job was to recruit, get more people in the reserve, and that is what we were working on, trying to get ourselves up to strength. One day we got a phone call from the Great Northern Railway (probably on a Wednesday) they said your train would be ready on Friday or maybe on Thursday. The train will be ready for you to get you down to Minneapolis then Chicago. That was the first we knew we were going to leave. The old man came back from Chicago. He got on the phone with headquarters, and it got postponed for about a week. This gave us some more time to finish up with what we had. We got people organized got them together. A lot of our fellows had signed up, if you are in the Reserve, if you wanted to go on active duty for 6 months, you could sign up. Quite a few of our guys did that. One of the guys that spoke out there at the meeting that day was one of them. They would go in the Navy for 6 months then come back home. That took them off our roster. They weren’t here to go with us. We were scrambling. We had a crew that went out of her with pretty much all apprentice seaman 2nd class seaman.
DH. So, it was a pretty frustrating time?
WH. We were busy, we were recruiting. We worked down at the boathouse. I forget where the people were signing up. Oh, they were doing it right down there. If they wanted to join the Naval Reserve, we would put them in a room and give them all the things to fill out. Then we would send them up to Dr Main. He was our medical officer, so we sent them up to see Dr Main. and if he okayed them they would come back and we would type up there enlistment and get their papers all typed up and organized, get them ready to go,get them signed up. It would take a week or so to get them ready to go. Then, of course, we had to order their uniforms and they didn’t get them right off. I guess we had some in stock.
DH. So about how many guys did you need to recruit?
WH. Oh, gosh, we could have used a lot of them, I forget now, numbers.
DH. Like 10?
WH. No, something like 30-40. That Steve Balach, the guy that does all the talking, was one of the kids that came in then. He was underage. He wasn’t old enough to join. But somehow he had some fake papers. I think he was only 17 years old.
DH. So you were there when he enlisted?
WH. I was there. In fact, I typed out his enlistment papers. Two or three of the guys that are out there with that group, I did their enlistment papers. We had about 20 guys in the process of joining but their papers hadn’t been completed. We did not have all the forms signed, we didn’t. They had to bring in documents. They told us we were going to the Paducah, on the train the next day. Well what do we do with all these papers? We thought maybe they would leave us - me and this other yeoman, and the pharmacist - leave us here and we could finish this stuff up and go later. No way. You are going. We took all the stuff and we put it in one big box. All the partially completed enlistment forms, packaged each one, put each one in a envelope, put them all in this big box and sent them down to the 9th Naval district. Just sent the whole box. What they could do with that, God only knows what happened to those guys, whether they got in the Navy or not. We were gone, forget that.
DH. What a neat story.
WH. The sequel to that story - when I got aboard the Blackhawk, out in the Pacific, in the latter part of the war, the guy that was our paymaster on the Blackhawk had been at Great Lakes when that box came in. He remembered it.
DH. What did he say about it?
WH. Oh, God, you guys really did us a turn that day. No, they evidently dug it all out and followed through on it. They must have.
DH. I know you were fairly busy, but did you follow politics at that time? Like what were people thinking about what was going on in Europe. In the 1940's?
WH. We were all concerned. We used to listen to the president when he would have his fireside chats. I can remember the night that he promised no, we are not going to send anyone to foreign soil.
DH. Was that a day of relief?
WH. Well, that is what he told us, that is what he said.
DH. Did you believe it?
WH. At the time we did. What else, he was the president. No we were concerned and it didn’t look good.
DH. Did you feel like we should be over there?
WH. No, I don’t know. I don’t know what we were thinking in those days.
DH. Was there a lot of war protesters, like there are today?
WH. Not that I remember, no. We were all pretty proud to be in the Navy
and we were proud to be in the Guard. We figured we were doing the job.
DH. Were the people in the community, you felt like, being interested in the war?
WH. Yes, they were all proud of us. When we left there was quite a big group of people down to see us off. It was just the times, kind of like it is now. Actually we were afraid of Hitler. We were not afraid of the Japs, yet we didn’t know that the Japs were going to be involved in this. We were more concerned about Hitler and what he was doing.
DH. But, you were not thinking about the Japanese?
WH. No, we never dreamt that they would do what they did. That was not on our minds too much, I guess we were busy thinking about ourselves.
DH. December 7, 1941, do you remember that date pretty good?
WH. Oh yes, I was in New London, Connecticut, in shore patrol base. New London was the headquarters for the patrol sector that patrolled the whole eastern end of Long Island sound. Our objective was to try to keep submarines from going down into Long Island Sound. Of course, we didn’t have anything we could have fought the subs with but at least we had things out there that would know if they are coming or going. It was kind of a key point there. On December 7, we thought there was going to be a counter move on the east coast that would be sabotage or there would be some effort to bring someone ashore. We were concerned. I had the duty that day. The skipper came down, right away, and we had to call the crew. There were about 8 patrol boats assigned to us, so we had to get orders for them to go out, for what they were supposed to do and where they were supposed to be. We had to get those orders out, then we had this into patrol. Base was on a big pier, a big lumberyard was right next to it. We were afraid. If they set that lumberyard on fire it would have wiped our whole operation out. We had guys out there with riffles, patrolling, anti sabotage, you know.
DH. That was what you were afraid of the most, sabotage?
WH. Yeah, at that time they had the “Bund” I don’t know if you ever heard of that. The German boon was headquartered in New York. They were all Nazi’s. They were pretty wild people.
DH. What was the Bund?
WH. It was a bunch of people that were sympathetic to the Germans. That was an area of New York that you didn’t want to go into with a uniform on. We were just afraid that the Bund might have an organized sabotage.
DH. How do you spell it, just boon?
WH. No, B-U-N-D. We were up in an area called Yorkville in New York.
DH. Now, I guess we skipped ahead a little bit.
WH You are way ahead of the story.
DH. When you went down to Minneapolis, what happened after that?
WH. We took the Gopher down to Minneapolis, then we took another train to Chicago. We just laid over in Minneapolis, just waiting for the next train.
DH. OK, What happened from there?
WH. They had a bus that took us over to the Paducah. We went aboard. You probably heard this story. We were supposed to get under way on this certain day, then this big 1940 storm hit the lakes and fortunately we were still at the dock. So we stayed at the dock. I am sure somebody told you about this big sign came down. We just watched it. Boy, that was something to see.
DH. Was that a pretty incredible storm?
WH. Oh yeah. Well, they lost a couple of Lakers, a couple of lake ships. A couple were sunk on Lake Michigan. We would have been all right, we would have weathered it all right, but it would have been an awful wild ride.
DH. Do you remember the waves just on the shoreline?
WH. No, we were way in the harbor. We were in real good spot, real nice spot. I don’t remember where the YP was, someplace. I think she was someplace up around Lake Michigan.
DH. The YP was at sea?
WH. Yeah, she was on her way heading down. I don’t know where, the night of that storm. I don’t know.
DH. I am sure I will find out later.
WH. Yeah, you will see some of those guys find out where they were. We just stayed put.
DH. How long did you stay at the Great Lakes?
WH. About a week, then we went over to Detroit and tied up with the Dubuque. The Dubuque was the sister ship of the Paducah. She was assigned to Detroit. There was the another ship, the Sacramento. It was fairly new ship that had just come up to the Great Lakes the previous year. It was stationed down in south Lake Michigan somewhere. They came with us. The three of us went out, out the seaway together. It was an interesting trip.
DH. Why?
WH. Well, it was cold. There wasn't a lot of heat on that old Paducah. She wasn't made for winter cruising. We didn't have a lot of winter clothing, either. It didn't bother me too much. I was down in the office. I could stay warm, but a lot of the other guys had to be out in the weather.
DH. Were there a lot of problems with frostbite?
WH. No, no just uncomfortable. It got a little bit rough when you got out into the ocean. Nothing that the ship wouldn't take. The ship would handle anything.
DH. So, you are telling me the Paducah was very dependable.
WH. Oh, sure it was a good boat. She was a steel ship, but she had wooden planking on the hull from the water line down to the keel. She was planked with oak and then over the oak was a sheet of copper, copper sheeting. When we got in the dry dock down in Brooklyn and saw what it was like, the underwater part of the boat was like, kind of a surprise to us. There I was a mailman on the ship, I had to go to the post office, so I had to get off a couple of times a day. Some of the yard workmen looking at the boat said they never seen anything like that. One guy said when that boat gets ready to sail you better take off, do not go out on that one. Hell that boat would go anywhere. It was designed in 1904 and she was designed to run in shallow water, so she could bounce off the rocks and not hurt herself.
DH. She was converted for your purpose, I take it.
WH. No, that was the way she was, she was built that way, she was built as a China River patrol boat.
DH. Do you know when the boat actually came to Duluth for the first time?
WH. 1922. The end of World War I.
DH. Any reason why it was sent to Duluth?
WH. No, except they sent one to Toledo, one to Chicago. Where else did they send one? They sent several of them up here, there were 5 or 6 ships in the Great Lakes Fleet at all times. They sent them up here. In fresh water they will last longer and they made great training ships.
DH. Back up a little bit, from 1938 to 1940 did the reserve base grow quite a bit?
WH. Well, yeah, we kept recruiting all the time. People were anxious and it was something to do for one thing.
DH. Did you feel like something was coming, too?
WH. Not much.
DH. Before Pearl Harbor did you have any suspicions that you would be seeing war as quick as you did?
WH. The only thing I can remember about Pearl Harbor is that we were... I can’t say we were happy, but we were glad for one thing, we had been called back for the duration of the six months. So what is the duration, without a war, a duration of what? So we didn't know when we would ever get out. Once the war started, we figured once the war ended we could go home. Up to that time we were in forever, for the rest of our lives, probably. Well, we were in for the duration of six months.
DH. So were you done when the war was over?
WH. Oh yeah, war couldn't be over fast enough. What I am saying, it told us something has happened. We have been going through this monkey business on the east coast with the destroyers getting sunk and the convoy stuff going on. It is kind of a pseudo war. We weren't supposed to be in it, but we were out there doing it. Once that Jap thing happened, from then on it was real.
DH. Was there ever a time before Pearl Harbor that you felt that FDR maybe?
WH. No, you mean whether he was getting us into something? No, we were a little too young to think about things like that. For one thing you did not have the news like you do today. Too much news today.
DH. Quite a bit. When December 7 happened, were you fairly emotional? Were there a lot of people [who were emotional]?
WH. No, we were busy.
DH. No time to be emotional?
WH. I was busy. All the guys on the base were busy. We had 30/06 riffles. We didn't’t have any anti aircraft guns, but we had riffles. We had guys out patrolling the roof of the building, patrolling the lumberyard. Then of course we were calling people back trying to get people back to the base. Everybody came back voluntarily too. The other thing, kind of interesting, you go ashore, after December 7, people would stop and ask if you wanted a ride. Before that they would let you walk. People were awfully nice to you for a period. You would get a lot of free drinks at the bar.
DH. You definitely felt like the mission changed?
WH. Oh yeah, it was definitely a momentous occasion, to say the least.
DH. Do you remember the exact location when you heard the news?
WH. Yeah, I was listening to a football game. It was a Sunday. The New York Giants were playing the Pittsburgh Steelers. We were listening to the game, sitting in the lounge area at the base. They broke into the game. That is how we got the news.
DH. So what happened with your life from there, in the Navy?
WH. I got sent off the Paducah, along in March of '41. She was still in the Navy yard.
DH. '42?
WH. Yeah, '42. No '41.
DH. After Pearl Harbor?
WH. No, no, I left the Paducah. I was in New London when the war started. They sent me up to New London, Connecticut. I was at the Patrol Base. I think the Paducah was...you will find that out when you talk to some of the other guys. They might have been out on Staten Island.
DH. Why were you taken away from the Paducah?
WH. I don’t know. I got orders to report to New London. They took over, this was the state pier. There was a big pier in New London, and they made it into this inshore patrol base. They sent me up there as part of the crew that got the thing set up. It was the Bridgeport Naval Unit that manned the place. That is what they gave them to do for their war effort. They sent me up there because the work I was doing was what they were looking for. I went up there to do that.
DH. How many years were you in New London?
WH. A couple of years.
DH. Were you, ever sent off base?
WH. No, we did the same thing there. I ended up as the Skippers, Captain's writer. I tried to get out. I was going to try to get on a sailing ship. There was a big sailing yacht that needed a guy with my rating. I went down to New York to look at the yacht. Geez, it was a beautiful thing. I thought I could pull some strings and get on that yacht. They were going out and patrol the coast, under sail and look for submarines. I would have liked that job.Well anyway, I didn't get that job. Then along came this college education program where they were going to take people from high school, from college, and from the fleet, and send them to college for two years, give them a two-year college education. I applied for that and I got it. There were two of us that came from New London so I got into that college program, went to school. They set me up at Dartmouth, Dartmouth College.
DH. Did you enjoy it?
WH. Oh hell yes. It was pretty nice. It was a lot of hard work. They pounded it to us.
DH. What did you go to school for?
WH. We were in a pre-engineering curriculum. They selected the courses for us, at least to start with. They were basic pre-engineering educational. A lot of math, physics, chemistry and stuff like that.
DH. What year did you start that?
WH. '43
DH. From '41 to '43 you were in new London?
WH. Yes, then they sent me up to Dartmouth. That was a nice operation. They sent me up there without giving me any leave to go home. Most everybody that got into this program they gave a couple of weeks to go home. I didn't get that, so I went up to Dartmouth. I got up there two weeks ahead of time so I got to know all the guys that were running the thing. I moved right in with them. No use going home for a few days, so I moved right in with the guys running the program, worked with them, drank with them. I got to know all of them. That made it interesting. It didn't help with the studies part of it. We had a lot of fun.
DH. Was it a fun group of guys?
WH. Well, they were. Yeah, the ship's company was great. They were all Navy, regular rating. I was a 1st class so I fit right in with them. When it was time to select the dorm, we went hunting and found the nicest room. It was good, but it was all work. We had a schedule.
DH. So this was a military education program?
WH. Yes, you either cut the mustard or you went back to the fleet. There were more kids that had just started college got into this and some high school seniors. I think got into this, and a token number of people from the fleet. I think up at Dartmouth we had 4 or 5 that had been on the fleet. From there, I had family problems, so they transferred me to St. Thomas.
DH. In Minnesota?
WH. Yes, in Minnesota. My mother died when I was at Dartmouth so I went home for that. My dad was in the hospital in St. Paul so they transferred me to St. Paul so I could be closer to him. I thought that was unusual and pretty damn nice of the Navy to do something like that. When I look back I think how in the world did they ever do anything like that. In the middle, it was halfway through the semester, when they sent me off there.
DH. That is pretty incredible, especially during World War II.
WH. When I got out there, at St Thomas, they made provisions so I could leave the campus in the afternoon from 4 to 6 so I could go to the hospital to be with my dad. The other guys couldn't, nobody else got off every day like that.
DH. I bet your dad appreciated that?
WH. Well, he lived quite a while. It worked out fine. That is why they transferred me to St Thomas. I finished my college.
DH. How did you like St Thomas?
WH. It was wonderful. If it hadn't been for the Navy V-12, St Thomas would probably have closed. When we got there, when that reserve unit came in with 250 guys I think they had about 40 students in the college and they couldn't keep their staff with that few people. When the Navy came along that let them keep their staff and keep the college open. And to this day we still have reunions down there now and then. They acknowledge that is what kept the school going during the war. I think there were a lot of small schools that closed during the war.
DH. Do you ever go to Dartmouth for any reunions or anything?
WH. No, too far away. That was a beautiful place. That was the biggest unit in the V-12.
DH. Did you say V-12?
WH. They were trying to get more officers in the Navy. It was a successful program. I have been to several V-12 reunions. There are some pretty important people that got their education from V-12.
DH. Sounds like it. You were stateside for a few years. Did you feel in 1941 after December 7, the nation was really involved in the war effort? Did you feel that as time went on the country felt like they had been there too long?
WH. I never got that. I think they were bailing it to her when it ended. In fact they wouldn't have ended if it hadn't been for Harry dropping that bomb. That thing could have gone for another 5 to 10 years we would never taken Japan I don’t think. So the war came to a sudden end when the Japs capitulated.
DH. As the main population?
WH. They were still bailing it to here. This area turned out a lot of ships; everybody here was in the war work.
DH. Do you remember much about that? Did you ever take leaves and come back home?
WH. Well, I was home on leave and got to see a launching. I had a cousin that worked in the Gold Ship yard and he took me down there. When you went through the shipyard with a uniform on, everybody thinks you are a hero just back from the battle. A lot of good work done around here.
DH. Did you feel pretty proud walking around with that uniform on?
WH. Oh yeah, you had to.
DH. How was that with the women? Did that help too? I have heard other GI’s talk about how they?
WH. Well, I had a steady girlfriend.
DH. Did she later become your wife?
WH. No, no.
DH. So you were unmarried throughout the war?
WH. You had to be unmarried, to be on this college program. You are stirring up some memories, where do you want to go from here?
DH. I just know that a lot of vets talk about that. After the program when you completed it, where did you go?
WH. I went to Midshipman’s school out in New York. Fort Stiller out in New York.
Then they sent me down to Miami to a sub chaser-training center where we worked on Destroyers and Patrol Ships, chasing subs. We had to learn how to sink subs. We were down there about 3 weeks or so. Then I got assigned to the USS Blackhawk. It was a Destroyer. I was trying to get on a Destroyer and I ended up on a destroyer tender. The Blackhawk was what you called destroyer tender and that were at Pear Harbor where I joined her.
DH. You spent some time in Hawaii?
WH. Yeah, I was at Pearl [Harbor] when the war ended and then we got under way and went to Okinawa. We went out there to repair, doing a lot of ships that got damaged in the later stages of the war from all these kamikazes. So we went out there and we were repairing. We would come up alongside and repair them, get them repaired enough so that they could go back to the states. Fix them up, you know, get the engines running. It was a lot of work but there were several tenders. There must have been a dozen of us in Okinawa just patching ships up so they could go back to the states. This destroyer tender...
You could do almost any job on the ship except dry-dock, we had shops for everything.
DH. Did you actually enjoy it?
WH. No, I didn't have to much to do with it.
DH. Did you act more as a supervisor?
WH. Yeah
DH. I suppose your training and all your schooling helped out with that?
WH. I got by. We had a lot of Warrant officers on this boat. They were real mechanics. We had a slug of officers on this ship. They were all specialists. We had dentists, doctors; we had barbers and eye people. We could do anything. A destroyer comes along side of us we could take care of their people and the boat.
DH. How many destroyers or ships can you say you actually fixed up?
WH. Well, when we were in Pearl [Harbor] we had boats alongside all the time but when we got out to Okinawa we would have, at the most, 3 or 4 boats, alongside at any one time. Yeah, 3 or 4 at a time. After a period of time we repaired quite a lot of them
DH. I imagine. This is kind of an unusual type of question - when Hitler committed suicide, I am sure you heard the news?.
WH. I forget where I was when that happened, I don’t remember.
DH. Was it a pretty big day?
WH. No. I don’t remember where I was that day.
DH. Do you remember when Japan surrendered?
WH. Oh yeah, I was at Pearl Harbor when they surrendered. That was a big day. Searchlights came on, people were firing the rockets, and they were shooting the guns. It was a real circus, there in Pearl [Harbor].
DH. Even after we dropped the bombs, people didn't expect the surrender? Or did you even know that we dropped the bombs?
WH. I don’t know. When it was officially over is when the entire ruckus took place. I remember the Commandant came on the air and said knock off firing the guns. Everybody was shooting his or her guns up in the air. Everybody was pretty happy. But then a couple of days later we are under way heading west and everybody else is heading east going home and we are heading west to gather up the lame ones.
DH. I imagine you had a pretty good feeling that day?
WH. Oh, God, yeah. Well, that’s five years. A pretty long time to be away. You think of these guys going away for 6 months deployment and feel sorry for them and have a parade for them, and they come back 5 years later. Pretty different.
DH. The same day, was everyone going around having a good time drinking, having parties?
WH. I don’t know, I didn't go ashore. I don’t know why I didn't. Maybe it was self-defense. It might have been pretty wild over there on the beach.
DH. Did you enjoy the waters of Hawaii compared to Connecticut?
WH. It was beautiful out there, everybody is the same. Perfect weather every day, it was nice being there.
DH. A lot of our guys took up surfing and other things.
WH. I never. I wasn't that good of a swimmer, I didn't want to get that far out. They showed me how far out they had to be to get the good surf. I will stick to the swimming pool. I wasn't the bravest guy in the troop.
DH. But there were definitely a lot of your friends that tried it?
WH. Yeah, but where we could go to do that you had to go out, you had to take your board and go way out to get the good surf. Then you had to paddle all the way back in. If you lost your board you would have to swim back.
DH. Was there still a lot of damage still there from 1941?
WH. No, see I was there in 1945. The thing that I remembered, between Pearl Harbor and downtown Honolulu, there is this highway going there and both sides of the road were with war supplies. There were truck tires, guns and all kinds of material heading west, going out. They were still hauling stuff out because there was going to be a big war yet. Then I got called back for the Korean War and I went back out there and it was all gone. I wondered what had happened to all of that stuff. There were tons and tons of war materials that had been stocked up for miles. Nothing but supplies heading west, come back a couple of years later and it is all gone.
DH. How long were you out west preparing ships?
WH. Well, I got back here in December 1945.
DH. Where you happy to be back?
WH. Yeah, it was a great feeling. THAT WAS A GOOD FEELING, to be back in the states. I rode back on a hospital ship. There was 3 or 4 of us from the Blackhawk. We lived in tents over in Okinawa for a while waiting for transportation to come back to the states. They were bringing people back on Aircraft carriers and Battleships. Whatever was coming back to the states they would put people aboard. Here was a hospital ship, so they put us on this hospital ship, and it was the oldest hospital ship in the Navy, the fastest it would go was 10 knots. It took us a full month to come from Okinawa to San Francisco. The longest ride of our lives. We were comfortable but it was boring, oh God. I have always said, you hear the expression, a month of Sundays, that is what we had a month of Sunday’s. When we got closer to the states we started picking up music from the states. You could get some stateside music. We could hear the music live. Up until that time everything was on a record. You started hearing some real live music, I always remember the first tune that we got. “It has been a long long time" by Bing Crosby and every time I hear that song I think of that. Coming into San Francisco and hearing that.
DH. Where you a little scared to go home?
WH. No, anxious to go home.
DH. Just anxious to be back. I know there were a lot of vets who were a little nervous because they had been away so long they weren't sure how they would be treated.
WH. I was looking to be treated pretty well. It didn't take me long to get married once I got home. I had no job; I had nothing to come back to.
DH. How long did it take you to find a job when you returned?
WH. It wasn't bad. The trouble was I was one of the early ones out, so you would go to apply for a job and they would say, yes, we have a job, but some guy is going to come back and we have to save the job for him. So I was disappointed in that. I thought getting out early I would have a better chance. See I had enough points. The minute the war ended, I had enough points to get out, because I had been in so long. Yeah, they would say I got a job, I would love to have you, but Joe Blow is coming back so we have to save the job for him. I ended up working for the Railroad; I got a job with the Northern Pacific.
DH. What did you do for the Railroad?
WH. I worked in the office, clerk, yeah. Then on my first Christmas home a senior employee displaced me, the day before Christmas, and here I have a wife at home with 3 kids. I married a gal with 2 kids then we had another one of our own. So I lose my job for Christmas. It was my first Christmas present. It worked out fine.
DH. I am sure you were pretty bummed about that.?
WH. We survived, and that is when I got the job with Stilling Magazine. I worked with them for about 20 years. I had a good time with that. That was a good job.
DH. Earlier you mentioned you were called back for Korea?
WH. Yes, I got called back for that.
DH. How long did you serve?
WH. Not very long. I think we had four kids then, yeah we had four kids then, so my wife did a little politician and got me released, got me out. It was kind of a joke, they called me back for a job in San Francisco, they were going to put a Navy Officer on every tanker, that was hauling oil from the Middle East up to Japan. I think they had something like 25-30 ships and I was about the 120th guy they called back for the job. SO the minute I got back to San Francisco, I was up for reassignment, and that didn't sit well with me. You leave home, you leave your job and you leave your family and get out there and they don’t even want you. The next morning I went and found a yeoman and wrote a letter resigning my commission, got the Hell out. It took about three or four months before it finally came through. In the mean time they sent me out to Pearl Harbor to the communication station, so I worked communication in Pearl [Harbor].
DH. You said things were dramatically different than they were the last time.
WH. Oh yeah, it was different. I applied for housing out there, so I could bring my family out there. There was a wait.
DH. In Pearl Harbor?
WH. Yes, in Pearl Harbor, I came back here and was back for some time when I heard that a buddy of mine from the Naval Reserve Unit here got called back. He was assigned to a ship working out of Pearl Harbor. So he gets out there and applied for housing for his family. The next guy up for a house out there was Harkins, Wes Harkins. He said "I know Wes Harkins and he just came home, can I have his house?" They gave it to him. He walks out there and walks right into the house that I was supposed to have and had his family out there a couple of weeks later. He had a real nice tour during the Korean war. I still have lunch with the guy now and then.
DH. Who was the guy?
WH. A guy by the name of Minty, he was a mining engineer and I knew him from the Oliver. He worked for the Oliver. We were in the reserve together. Can you imagine that I am the next guy up when he goes in to apply for housing? Why they let him have it is another question? He was a nice guy so let him have it, what the hell.
DH. It was fantastic luck for him. You seem to give me a different impression than I usually get from the typical Army, which it seems like the Navy was fairly willing to help out people at times.
WH. They sure did me, the Navy never did hurt me. I have no gripes about the Navy. I didn't get shot. I didn't get hurt. I had descent assignments. I always worked with nice people. One of the Captains that I worked out in New London, he was the last chairman of the NAM, National Association of Manufactures. He is the guy that called back and here he came from a job running this association of all the US manufacturers in this country and I am working for him. What a wonderful guy he was, a prince of a guy. I worked with some nice people. I still get a kick out of these Paducah guys that get together. We are lucky to be here.
DH. They are a great group of guys. When did that group start getting together for the first time?
WH. I think, right after the war, we used to have a pretty good size group, there aren't many left now. It is quite a gang…you’re interested in how we felt about things. That’s about it. I have no regrets over my Military time. I sometime regret that I quit. When I quit after that call back for the Korean War, I only had two years to go for a pension, and I quit. If I had any brains I would have stayed for another two years. I wanted to get home. I wanted to get back with the family.
DH. It is pretty hard when you have four kids and a wife back home.
WH. It worked out alright. I was putting butter on the bread, and we got along,
DH. Otherwise I just want to thank you for doing this interview, is there any certain story or anything you haven’t said yet?
WH. No, not that I think of right off.
DH. I think we did a fairly good job of going through what you experienced. You bring a lot of things to mind. The Naval Reserve served an important role in World War II. For them to be able to call people back from all across the country, from Naval Reserve Units, people that had been trained and kept going. They were the key to get things going with the Navy. If the Navy would have had to go with straight recruits for everything at that stage of the game, they would have been in tough shape. Many of those destroyers were manned by reserves, reserve units. You see here in the 9th district, I don’t really know how many units there were in this district. We had 5 ships out here that sailed all summer, we made probably 4 or 5 different cruises, two way cruises, with two divisions, they were reserve divisions, so there was a lot of people that got trained right out here on the Great Lakes. Learned how to do things. So the Naval Reserve was very important, what they have done now with the reserve I don’t know.
DH. I will save that for a later interview with some of the modern guys.
WH. Get some of the guys.
DH. Well thanks again.
WH. Thanks Dan, I enjoyed visiting with you.
DH. You have a great story, you should be proud of it.
WH. Was your dad involved in the mines over in Crosby?
