Memoir: Hot War - Cold War | Page 4

when necessary, until we
were out of the harbor. We were to have our life preservers with us
at all times.
Hours later, the ship's vibration, a back-and-forth shifting in my center
of gravity, and creaking along the bulkheads, told me we were under
way. Scuttlebutt was that we were in a convoy, escorted by
destroyers. Enemy submarines were suspected to be in the area.
We took turns, by compartment number, going on deck. On our way to
Honolulu, the convoy zigzagged frequently to minimize the success of
an enemy air or submarine attack. Finally, on the fifth day, land
appeared on the horizon and, shortly afterward, we saw Diamond Head.
Our ship left the convoy and entered Honolulu harbor.
We docked and disembarked, under heavy military guard, at the Aloha
Tower pier and boarded the Toonerville Trolley, as we got to know the
train on Oahu's narrow gage railway. An hour later, we were at Hickam
Field.
The devastation was appalling. Burned-out hulks of bombed aircraft
were scattered about on parking aprons, and huge accumulations of
debris lay next to aircraft hangars and along the roadways. The roofs of
military barracks hung down along the outsides of the structures; they
had exploded up and outward over the walls.

As a senior technician, I was assigned to the recovery and repair of
damaged parachutes, life rafts, inflatable life preservers, oxygen masks,
and the escape-and-evasion kits that air crews relied on when they
bailed out over enemy territory. All of the equipment that came to our
shop was closely inspected, repaired, if possible, and, when the
standards called for it, tested. As soon as survival gear was fixed and
ready for service, they were returned to the airplane from which they
came, or shipped to air bases in the battle zones.
Many of us joined Hickam Field's armed civilians, officially titled the
Hawaiian Air Depot Volunteer Corps. We were a group of employees
who, during non-duty hours, trained to handle and fire a rifle and a
pistol, and guarded locations at night where high security was
needed. We were armed with '03 Enfield rifles and, at night,
patrolled aircraft maintenance hangers, warehouses, instrument repair
shops, and an engine repair line underground at Wheeler Field, near
Wahiawa in the Oahu highlands.
As armed civilians, we were each given a card to carry in our
wallets. The card stated, in fine print, that if captured by the enemy
while carrying a weapon, we were entitled to claim rights as a 'prisoner
of war.' The Army Air Corps military officer who commanded our unit
said that, since we did not wear military uniforms, nor carry military
identification tags, the card would certify us as 'combatants'. The
statement on the card was supposed to keep us from being shot as spies
in the event the enemy invaded the Hawaiian Islands.
During the war years, I fixed and packed thousands of man-carrying
and cargo parachutes, and serviced many other types of life-saving and
survival gear.
After the war, my job was changed. I investigated defects that had been
made during manufacture or repair in all types of equipment. My job
was to examine what was wrong, and talk to mechanics and anybody
who knew how and why it happened. After collecting the information, I
wrote reports that described what was wrong so that specialists and
engineers, who were thousands of miles distant, would understand the
problem and solve it.

I worked at Hickam Field until April 1948, and then returned to the
place where I had signed up when the war began. By then, the base
had grown enormously, and was named Wright-Patterson Air Force
Base.
#
Any questions?
The students e-mailed their questions to me, and I replied, also by
e-mail. An example:
Q. How did you get from fixing parachutes to writing reports about
mistakes and defects?
A. I think my change in jobs came about because of what happened
when I worked with parachutes and survival gear. It began in 1942,
when large numbers of damaged parachutes were shipped from the
Mainland to Hickam Field and other Air Corps bases in the Pacific.
The parachutes had ripped and mildewed canopies, badly frayed
suspension lines, rusted metal connectors, and the straps that secured
the aircrew person in place, were so rotten that they came apart in our
hands. Other types of survival gear that came to our shop from the
Mainland had obvious defects, too: life rafts and life preservers did not
inflate the way they should, escape-and-evasion kits were damaged or
had been pilfered, and items that were vital to survival were missing. In
many instances, medical kits tied to the parachute harness or in life raft
compartments had been slashed