Elvis & Waikiki

It was in a letter to my mother, dated April 10, 1962 that I told her I was spending an extended liberty weekend at Waikik with my buddy Lory Miller from the Battalion Aid Station at Kaneohe Bay Marine Corps Air Station. We rented an apartment just off Waikiki beach for the weekend and spent our first day walking the 10 miles or so to Pearl Harbor to "check out the ships". We spent Saturday on the beach at Waikiki where the co-eds were going crazy with the filming of "Girls, Girls, Girls" starring Elvis Presley. We were streached out on the beach with our surf boards that we checked out from special services for the weekend, had our sun faded tropical print cotton swim suits on, and were greased-up with coconut oil from head to toe, but the co-eds were more interested in Elvis that weekend than a couple of guys trying to fake being civilians. Sometimes we even wore tattered and sleevless University of Hawaii sweat shirts to put a spin on being college students, but that generally didn't work either. We were probably just to obvious, too much white skin in the wrong places.
There were many other stories in those letters: like the Johnson Island Atomic Blast of July 8, 1962, the lone ship at Pearl Harbor during the Cuban Missle Crisis, the purchase of my 54 Ford convertible from a fellow Corpsman who was being discharged, the entrapment inside an LVT that wouldn't start some 500 yards from shore, and the Marine who was making a rocket out of an M1 cartridge that exploded penetrating shrapnel into his femeral arterythat I field dressed and air evacuated to Tripler Army Hospital in Honolulu.
The memoir is coming along rather nicely, the research that is. I have bits and pieces of the big story, but I feel like I am just beginning. As I read the letters home, so much starts to come back to me, the memories that the letters seem to bring forth. I find myself filling in the details that the letters didn't expand upon, and kind of relive the moment. I start thinking about the petty officer 2nd class with 16 years in the Navy who was escorted into the laboratory at the Navy Dispensary at Kaneohe Bay Marine Corps Air Station that was suffering from prolonged syphilis , and I had to draw blood on him. There just seems to be so many stories, stories that I want to relive, stories that I want to tell. I feel somewhat impatient, trying to get to the end of a memoir that is miles away.

Researching Letters to Mom

Most of the research for this Memoir Paper comes from letters I wrote home to my mother when I was in the service from 1961-65. She saved every letter I wrote and it is those letters that make possible the reconstruction of my experience and adventures in the Navy/Marine Corps. I am now reading each letter and coding the rear envelope with notes on the content of the letters and placing them in chronological order.
I have been reading some very interesting letters that I sent home, at least interesting to me. One of the recent letters I read details the first meeting with Darvin and Lori Haupert who lived in Honolulu where Darvin was an employee of the Bishop Estate, one of the primary land barrons on the island of Oahu. Darvin was also a 1st Lieutenant in the Navy reserve stationed at Pear Harbor, serving out his time in his dress whites. My connection with Darvin was through his father who was a shoe merchant in Huntington where my father called upon him as a salesman with Portage Shoe Company out of Milwaukee,Wisconsin. Mr Haupert had my father forward Darvin's phone number and address in Honolulu, and suggested I call. Well, I did, and that was the beginning of a long and wonderful experience of enjoying the hospitality and companionship of Darvin and his wife Lori over a three year period of time in Hawaii. They were recently married and opened their entire home to me, even providing me with my own room when I came to stay with them on liberty weekends, and I frequently did just that. Darvin had a sweet 57 T-Bird convertible that was his pride and joy, and he let me drive it on weekends when I went to Waikiki for fun in the sun. You couldn't ask for nicer people, who took me in like I was their son. took me along to meet their friends for social weekends, and never let a holiday go by without an invitation to spend that special time with them. They were just wonderful people!
I did a search this week for Darvin and Lori and tracked them from Honolulu to Texas and then to North Manchester where they reside today. I think they are at Peabody Retirement Community, their age and lack of property ownership in Wabash County tells me that. I look forward to making contact with them and get their side of the story of the young man they befriended so many years ago. I want to do something special for them, as a gesture of my gratitude and thanks, and just let them know that forty years doesn't erase a memory and strong feelings.

Johnson Island H-Bomb July 8, 1962

In researching letters I had written my mother while in the Navy/Marine Corps and stationed at Kaneohe Bay Marine Corps Air Station on Oahu, Hawaii I reviewed a correspondence I sent her on July 9, 1962 in which I said that I had stayed up late (11:00 PM) last night to watch the bomb explosion over Johnson Island. "There was a tremendous green burst that could be seen as far as Hilo Hawaii. Directly after the burst there was a bright red glow miles in the sky which could be seen for 10 minutes. It was really something to see and quite a show of power." I recall going to the Pali, the highest point on the island, with several of my military budies to view the event. Looking down over Waikiki and Honolulu from this vantage point was breathtaking, especially when the sky exploded with color from the atomic blast. The Fairbanks Alaska Daily News-Miner recorded the event with the headlines "H-Bomb Blast Lights Pacific."
In the Atomic Bomb Chronology: 1947-1979 the entry read: "1962 .7 .8 (USA). High altitude nuclear test, 400 km high Johnson Island of a 1.4 mt H-Bomb. A large power loss in Oahu island, Hawaii due to malfunction of electric supply control device caused by electromagnetic pulse wave emitted during bombardment of ionosphere x-ray and gamma ray of nuclear explosion."
http://www.ask.ne.jp/-hankaku/english/np9x.html

The Book of the Century

That's what the Editor-in-Chief calls it, and he may be correct. It starts in 1900 and terminates in 1987. It contains 1373 pages of headlines and significant events for each day of the month just as it was reported by the media from around the world. I have been doing research in this book to place events in time for my memoir from 1961-65 while in the Navy (actually the Marine Corps). I have been reading the letters I sent my mother while in the service and placing them in chronological order and then referring to the Book of the Century to place the letters and myself in relation to world events. I am interested to read my correspondence after the assissination of President Kennedy to read what my response was and how it seemed to affect me personally. My memory of past events seem to be pretty good, but I really get surprised when I read my old letters. My attitude and perspective is completely different than I remember. My letters are very positive and seem to reflect joy and happiness with where I am and what I am doing. My memory reflectes on a completely different attitude of unhappiness and depression during that time frame. At some point in time my attitude must have changed. I'm anxious to find out what triggered that and how I handled the correspondence with my mother. I'll just keep reading-on.

Letters from the Marine Corpsman

I have begun researching letters that I wrote my mother when I was in the service from 1961-65. Many of these letters express an attitude of happiness and satisfaction of being in the service that I just don't recall having had. In a 1962 letter from Camp Pendleton, California, I express to my mother with enthusiasm and happiness that "I may be able to stay attached to the Marine Corps for the entire twenty years of my enlistment." This letter revealed an enthusiasm of being assigned to the Marine Corps, plus a mind-set of making a career out of the Navy/Marine Corps that was almost shocking for me to read. I don't recall seriously considering a career in the military until late 1964 when my enlistment was nearing completion, and I certainly don't recall having any interest in spending an entire career (20 years) with the Marines, especially since I enlisted in the Navy. In that same letter, I told my mother that I had applied for assignment to the Marine Corps "Recon" unit, the equivalent of the Army Special Forces or the Navy Seals. I'll be interest to read follow-up letters to see how those attitudes played out.

Research Reference Book

One of the difficulties of writing a memoir about a military experience is the proper identification of military terms and equipment you were exposed to in the military. A resource that will help me with that task is a book I purchased called "Words of the Vietnam War" by Gregory R Clark. This 600+ page reference tool identifies "The Slang, Jargon, Abbreviations, Acronyms, Nomenclature, Nicknames, Pseudonyms, Slogans, Specs, Euphemisms, Double-Talk, Chants, and Names and Places of the Era of the United States Involvement in Vietnam." It is through this reference book that I hope to identify the equipment I used and the ships and vehicles I served on and participated with while serving as a Navy Corpsman with the Fleet Marine Corps Pacific.

Research Methods for Professional Writers

Welcome to my blog! This is the location where I will report my progress for my research memoir "Navy Recruit." Please feel free to view any and all of my prior entries from previous classes. Research on!!!