Change of Life: Chapter 1 Excerpt:

The date was September 1, 1943, the place, the Quonset Point Naval Air Station, located a few miles from Providence, Rhode Island. The temperature was well below normal, and a brisk wind intensified its chilling effect. Standing awkwardly on the station’s parade grounds in four ragged lines were thirty-four newly commissioned officers in the United States Naval Reserve. They were members of Platoon Sixteen, Company D of the Naval Training (Indoctrination) School, class of 1-44. Shivering a little in the raw wind, their eyes reflected a deep anxiety. Clearly they were wondering what was going to happen to them next.

In front of them stood a perfectly groomed, rigidly erect Navy lieutenant, the officer who had mustered them. There was a look of obvious disdain on his face. Suddenly he shouted an order that sent shock waves rippling through the platoon:

"Gentlemen, suck in your guts!"

After an initial paralysis, the new officers made an abortive attempt to straighten up, but most remained as they were before—their weight clumsily balanced on one foot. The look of disdain on the mustering officer’s face deepened. Then in a tone of weary resignation, he commented, "You are a motley looking group."

And motley looking indeed they were. Most of the men were attired in working uniforms of a dull, sullen gray, the rest in a somewhat sharper looking khaki. I was one of the few wearing a khaki uniform.

The previous May, I had been converted overnight from a civilian with no military experience or training of any kind into an officer in the United States Naval Reserve. I was to remain in that status for the next two and a half years. What follows is a memoir of those years. It is not, however, a memoir of the usual type that begins at the beginning and then continues chronologically to describe what happened next, and next, and next, until the account is completed. Instead, I have chosen to focus on how a born-and-bred civilian reacted to life in the navy. The organization of material is therefore topical rather than being arranged in the order in which developments occurred in time.

When I became a naval officer, I found I had entered a strange new world governed by protocols, rituals, and practices that from my civilian point of view can be variously described as quaint, irritating, illogical, and, in a few instances, downright absurd. Some, of course, were profoundly pertinent. Most of them, I found out, were set in concrete no matter how idiotic they might be. Sometimes I tried to do something about a rule or practice that seemed alarmingly in need of change.

I also discuss matters of somewhat weightier import: the issues of race and class in the World War II navy, how it handled the difficult problem of sex, and the nature of command responsibility.

Of all the grim realities I faced during my navy years, the most soul-jarring was the unrelenting, horrendous fact that in times of war, young people, whose lives are just beginning to bloom, are fated to suffer sudden and in most cases, horrible deaths. We all know this, of course, but when you are close by when it happens, and in some cases can actually see the agency of death, the impression it leaves is indelible and everlasting.

The ship on which I served, the battle cruiser Alaska, was in a combat area for a relatively short time—February, 1945 to the middle of August, 1945—yet when I began reflecting on my experiences, I was surprised to discover how many times I was in close proximity to the young men whose lives suddenly and tragically came to an end.

Our first battle was the invasion of Iwo Jima. The Alaska was in the fleet that supported the landing of marines on its treacherous beaches. In the thirty-six terrible days the operation lasted, thousands of young men perished as they struggled to find a footing in its shifting volcanic sands or were killed by the withering fire they faced as they moved inland. Thousands more died as they tried to root out Japanese soldiers who scrambled for cover in the hundreds of caves that dotted the island.

Later, I happened to be on the main deck of the Alaska when a Japanese suicide bomber, undetected by radar, burst out of the overhanging clouds and dove with chilling accuracy onto the afterdeck of the carrier Hancock, cruising a few hundred yards from us. The resulting explosion instantly snuffed out the lives of seventy-two members of the crew.

In preparation for the invasion of Okinawa, the carrier Franklin was cruising a short distance from us, its flight deck loaded with planes about to take off for a bombing attack on targets in Japan. The Alaska was cruising nearby. Suddenly the blip of a Japanese plane appeared on the radar screen, but before an interception could be set up, the Japanese plane dropped two bombs on the flight deck of the Franklin. Two tremendous explosions resounded, followed by a succession of equally powerful explosions as the bombs loaded on each of the planes on the Franklin’s flight deck detonated one after the other. In seconds the flight deck was a mass of raging fire. In that awful carnage almost 800 young men lost their lives.

A few days before the invasion of Okinawa was about to be successfully concluded, the Alaska, along with the battleship Pennsylvania, was ordered to anchor in Buckner Bay, the entry to Okinawa’s main port. The Alaska took the position nearest the shore. The Pennsylvania anchored in the outside slot. Most of the Alaska’s officers were in the wardroom one evening watching a movie when suddenly they heard the sound of a tremendous explosion. A Japanese plane, which had avoided radar detection by coming down through the mountains, had launched a torpedo. It struck the Pennsylvania in the stern. Twenty young sailors died instantly. Miraculously, the ship remained afloat.

There is a deeply unsettling feeling closely related to the imminent presence of death and destruction. It is the recognition that if you fail to carry out your assignment competently, you may be responsible for avoidable deaths or the sinking of a ship. I have often wondered, for example, what the admiral who ordered the Alaska and the Pennsylvania to anchor in Buckner Bay instead of keeping them moving could have been thinking. The invasion of Okinawa was almost over, but it was not quite completed. The possibility of an attack by a Japanese plane could still exist (as indeed it did). It is obvious to me that he made a decision that invited disaster.

As you have noted, I have not been reluctant to record my candid opinion of the shortcomings of an admiral whose identity I never knew. I am equally forthright in discussing the character and performance of people I did know, my shipmates aboard the Alaska, the leaders of various training sessions I attended, and the students who were my companions in them. Almost all of these people, I am happy to report, met the standard of performance one has the right to expect, and some far exceeded it. With a few, I formed enduring friendships.