MY STORY: MY LOVE AFFAIR WITH THE US NAVY

By JOHN R. BAKER

CHAPTER ONE: THE LUCKIEST EVENTS OF MY LIFE

I was born July 12, 1924 at Swedish Hospital in Seattle, Washington.  Growing up in north Seattle was a happy time for me, mostly because of family events and grade school.  I was eight-years-old in 1932, the height of the Depression, and I vividly remember the Hoover – Roosevelt presidential campaign.  None of my contemporaries had any money, but hey, none of us ever felt deprived.  I’m glad I grew up back then rather than having to endure the lifestyles kids face today.  Life was great back then and  I had nothing  to complain about.

Back in 1935 my dad’s job as a salesman for Pacific Fruit and Produce called for a transfer and our family moved to Bremerton, Washington.  We were the Baker family — my mom and dad and my little sister Marilyn and me.  Bremerton is located on Puget Sound and is home to Puget Sound Naval Shipyard.  This yard is still very active what with repairing, rebuilding, mothballing and maintaining all types of Navy ships.  As an 11-year-old and then a 12-year-old kid with a bicycle I got to cover a lot of territory, and soon the Navy yard was the most interesting part of my world.  Back then my favorite activity was to ride down to the Navy yard gate and hang out with the Marine sentries.  I was well aware that this was a special place — guarded and protected from all but those who belonged there.  Nevertheless, sneak that I was, I’d ditch my bike and ease on into the yard.  Oh, joy!  This was where I loved to be.  On these trips I was always alone; I needed no buddies to confuse the issue.

Now, the one piece of advice I can give to anyone trying the same stunt — always fold your hands behind your back and don’t touch anything, and  by all  means stay out of the way.  Just look.  This way you’ll probably never have trouble with the honchos.

I could spend hours prowling around those Navy piers jammed tightly with ships.  I soon had preferences.  I can’t tell you why, but my all time favorite was light cruiser USS Raleigh.  I fell in love with that sleek, deadly warship

USS RALEIGH, USS OREGON AND USS SAINT LOUIS AT PUGET SOUND NAVAL SHIPYARD, BREMERTON, WA, ABOUT 1913.

and often went by her pier just to take another look at her.  Other special favorites were the aircraft carriers Lexington and Saratoga.  At that time  these carriers were the pride of the US Navy.  One Navy Day I even got to go aboard Saratoga!  The thrill of a lifetime.  All my life I’ve loved the water and boats — all kinds of boats.  (I still prowl around boat yards and moorages, even now that I’ve retired.)

In town we rented a house next to a popular bicycle rental shop, so I got to be around lots of sailors who came to rent the bikes.  Later on we rented a house, just for the summer, at Kitsap Lake, not far from Bremerton.  I had my own rowboat to use for three months.  Best of all, the Navy had a rest camp on the opposite shore of the lake.  That summer the neighbor kid and I would hang around there a lot.  They had all kinds of sailing craft that they used and sometimes we’d get to ride along with them as they cruised about the lake.  I never really learned to sail, but those future admirals were plenty salty, so associating with real sailors made our joy complete.  Can’t you see now why the Navy was my only choice?

Later on  the family moved back to Seattle where my dad was killed in an auto accident when I was 17.  This was in 1941 and war soon came on December 7.  I was a junior in high school by then but I got to finish.  By 1943, I graduated, enlisting wasn’t permitted for our age group, so we had to be taken in through the draft.  All of us had been given our pre-induction physicals and at their pleasure we were called up by our draft boards.  I was in board #4 and was ordered to report for induction on June 6.  (High school graduation was held the night of June 5.) 

Now for one of the luckiest events of my life.  Of course, all I wanted was the US Navy.  Certainly not the Army.  All of my formative years I had been gearing for the Navy.  Very important to me.  What could I do?  At least three different boards were called in at a time.  There was a strict quota system in effect.  I can still remember the ratio very well.  Forty went to the Navy, seven to the Marines, seven to the Coast Guard.  The Army took the rest.  I would have to be there early.  At 7:30 the next morning I was first in line at the induction center downtown.  At 9 a.m., when they opened, we were directed to wait until called.  This is when I found out that board #4 was going to be interviewed last.  When at last I got to the head table I was met by a Navy chief, Marine sergeant, Coast Guard chief and an Army sergeant, seated all in a row.  The Navy chief asked me: “Do you have a preference?”  I smartly answered: ‘Navy.”  He said: “Sorry, son, the Navy quota is already filled for the day.”  At this the Marine sergeant leaned over and asked: “How about the Marines?”  I thought for a moment and  answered: “That will be okay.”  We were then sent out to have a last, brief physical and then returned to the same table.  The sergeant had my eye test and said: “I’m sorry, son, but I can’t recommend the Marines because of your eyesight.  Do you have another service branch you would like?”  I immediately answered: “I’d like to join the Navy.”  I sometimes wonder what became of the 40th choice that day, because immediately I was made #1 in the Navy draft.  Next, we all had to march through downtown Seattle to the Navy recruiting station to be sworn into the service.  I was given everybody’s records and got to lead the whole shebang!  Needless to say, I was the happiest kid in the whole city of Seattle.  It couldn’t have worked out any better for me.  My car had been parked on a busy downtown Seattle street all day and was about to be towed, but I didn’t care.  The heck with the fine.

Boot camp was at Farragut, Idaho, and was a good experience for me because I did well on  the testing and was sent to radio school at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.  We got there in September while the weather was perfect.  But, winter, when it came, was colder than any place I’d ever seen.  They even sawed up the lake and saved big chunks in sawdust insulated ice houses.

I spent five months attending radio school on campus.  I found out we were learning Morse code by a new method.  The special training was developed to make us respond to Morse code by striking the proper typewriter key according to what we heard over the earphones.  In other words, dit-dah meant “Contract the little  finger of your left hand and strike ‘A’.”  You didn’t think, that would slow you down.  You simply automatically struck the proper key.  Some trainees couldn’t do it that way above about 10 words per minute, and one of my buddies, B. B. Ball, was shipped out because of it.   Eventually, those of us who made it through could be reading a pocket book and copying code at the same time.  At school, my roommate, Don Bergfeld (matches by alphabet are in the service) and I became buddies.  He had a brother, Bill, on the submarine USS Growler who wrote to him often and made the boats sound so good my roommate couldn’t hold off.  He just had to volunteer for submarines.  As for me, I had no thought about submarines, but Don worked on me and I decided to go, too.  Of 125 in radio school, seven were accepted for New London.  My vision still wasn’t 20/20.  But I went with the other six to the college infirmary to take our physicals.  I easily memorized the simple eye chart and was accepted.  I figured it would be a lot different story when we got to take the real submarine physical later.

The first thing to happen to us when we got to the subbase was our introduction to “Spritz’s Navy.”  Charley Spritz was an old-timer who had retired from the Navy a long, long time ago and then was recalled to make life miserable for all the students and potential students at submarine school.  For three weeks he kept us in a special barracks area while we were being tested to see if the Navy was going to let us enter submarine training.  Spritz had a crew of “henchmen,” sadistic types all, who kept us under iron control during this three weeks and even afterwards while we were taking sub classes.  We all got a more thorough physical checkup than I’d ever seen before.  The usual color-blind test, etc., but also “depth of field” tests and dental overbite testing to make sure we could bite the Momsen Lung mouthpieces properly in case we ever had to escape from a sunken submarine.  We also got written tests to make sure we were competent to learn our lessons and even, get this, a psychiatric interview with a Navy shrink.  I hesitate to even try to recall that shocking episode!  The corpsmen had detected a deviated septum I didn’t even know I had, but to my surprise nothing was said about my eyesight and so I passed the physical.  There was more to come, however. 

It was January of 1944 and most of us had colds — I think the Navy called it “Cat Fever” — and we were in bad shape.  The air pressure test, because of our blocked Eustachian Tubes was particularly painful.  We were put into a big air pressure tank, the hatches were sealed, then air pressure was applied.  The pressure was again run up and down a few times, all while men were being cycled out of the tank.  Eventually, most of us passed.  The diving tank was next.  I recall this as actually being fun, like a day at Disneyland.  We were put into a pressure tank fixed to the side of the big diving tank which was over 100 feet tall.  Groups of about five at a time put on Momsen Lungs, were sealed into the pressure tank at the 50 foot level.  Air pressure was increased and when that pressure matched the water pressure inside the diving tank at 50 feet, the heavy side door was opened and we left via a line which led to a buoy on the surface.  We had been instructed to let ourselves slide up the line slowly, breathe into the Momsen Lung, and whatever we did we were not to hold our breath.  We were told to do this was potentially fatal.  My group from radio school didn’t do too well.  One fellow, after coming up from 50 feet in the driving tank, wouldn’t let go of he buoy in the tank center.  Turned out  he had never learned to swim and had to be aided to the edge of the tank.  I know, I know, you’re not supposed to get out of boot camp if you can’t swim, but it seems there are always exceptions to the regulations.  He was no longer with our group.  Another had severe acne.  Chronic staph. infections can’t be allowed in the tight confines of a submarine so he was gone, too.  In all, Bergfeld and I were the only two to make it through the whole school.

We spent  any of our spare ? time down at the docks along the Thames River looking at all  the REAL submarines.  As well as the American boats there were some French and English boats, but they didn’t seem to be doing much.  After concentrated study it was time for our first “trip” to sea on a real submarine.  When Don and I went through submarine school they had no contemporary subs available for training, so we were forced to concentrate on the “O” boats.  These rusty buckets had been built back during World War One.  Certainly they weren’t state of the art.  In retrospect, I think going out on an “O” boat was about as risky as going on War Patrol in  the Pacific.  However, in school, we had to learn that boat from one end to the other, even though after graduation we would never be exposed to anything so ancient again.

One painful episode occurred for me when I was assigned to man the trim manifold.  On an “O” boat this featured a bank of dinky valve handles about like those found on a garden spigot, only a lot more of them and spaced closely together.  Anyhow, we were given a rapid series of orders regarding the pumping of water between the trim tanks to keep the boat nice and level.  I was so charged up in my new duties that my feverish valve-twisting caused my fingernails to scrape my fingers and hands all bloody!  Somehow, I got through this early training.

I had been rated RM 3/C from radio school and  had done well in sub school so I got new-construction at Portsmouth, N.H.  My boat was to be the USS Atule, SS 403.  Bergfeld was sent to a training boat at Cosco Bay, Maine.  Sadly, I never saw him again. 

Photo Credits:

USS Raleigh, USS Oregon and USS Saint Louis (Donald M. McPherson — US Naval Historical Center Photograph)

USS O-1 (US Naval Historical Center Photograph)

USS 0-1 (SUBMARINE #62) IN DRY DOCK AT PORTSMOUTH NAVY YARD IN SEPTEMBER 1918

"HIT 'EM WHERE IT HURTS!" -- A SUBMARINE SERVICE RECRUITING POSTER FROM 1943