Memoir: Hot War - Cold War | Page 4

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.
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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 open and pain relief syrettes were just 'gone.'
Before 1942, parachute canopies were made of silk or cotton cloth, and the harness, in which the parachutist is encased, was made of cotton webbing. Both silk and cotton are organic materials which can be seriously weakened when attacked by fungus and dampness. That's what had happened to the gear we were getting, much of it recently shipped. Often, the equipment was unsafe, and could not be fixed.
I complained to my supervisor about the quality of the parachutes and survival gear that we were getting from the Mainland, and he passed my complaints along to his supervisor.?? He told me to put my complaints in writing.?? I wrote reports that described the damage, and included photographs.?? The poor quality of the life-saving gear that had been sent to us, I wrote,