USS Boston CA-69 in WWII

As I work with the data from the Sailor Database I have been noticing trends, It’s faster to be promoted as a Fireman 3rd class than to a Seaman 1st class. In fact if your selected to be a fireman, you’ll be promoted six times faster on the Boston in world war II as a fireman than to a Seaman 1st class. The promotion time from Seaman 1st Class to Coxswain is about twice as long as the path from Fireman 3rd class to Fireman 2nd class. So Seaman 2nd class sailors selected to be Firemen can have 4-6 promotions in 2 years, where sailors slotted for Seaman 1st class will have on average 1-2 promotions.

Bill

I’ve just finished updating the arrivals and departures for April 1st 1946. In March, the Ship was in San Francisco where Sailors were busy some arriving an most departing. The war officially ended in August, but the Navy needed to move lots of men and supplies around, so some Boston veterans departed in september, some in October and November, and many sailors in January to March. As of April 1st 1946, there were 650 sailors on board, at this point 2,980 sailors had spent between 1 day and 1,000 days on board. On this day April 1st, 77 sailors are still on board from the commissioning on June 30, 1943. About 1/3 to 1/2 of the boat’s sailors on April 1st, 1946 are new to the boston, added from January to March. About 200 sailors were added in November and December of 1945 in japan and they left the ship when it arrived in San Francisco in February and March. The ship is being prepared on this date to go to Washington State for it’s eventual decommission in the fall of 1946.

11-20-11

This post will be less controversial than yesterday’s . . .  As promised, here are some pictures.  I was able to download these (and more) from my girlfriend’s camera.

The magnificent Temple Bell

THE PLAQUE

2 views of the top "pivot" through which the bell was suspended

You should not be surprised to learn that Pat Fedele’s story about carving his name atop the bell intrigued me.  And it should not surprise you to hear that we “took a closer look.”  The top of the bell shows all the signs of being cast (bronze) more than 300 years ago -  it is rough and has consistent striations and nubs and marks across the whole top . . .  except for one spot that has obviously been “smoothed” somewhere along the line. (Perhaps about 65 years ago???).  Just big enough to “erase a signature . . . ”

look carefully around 1:30 or 2:00. What do you think?

Here’s one more view  of the bell  -  to show scale.  (The bell itself weighs 450 pounds, I am told.) {The handsome one is my oldest son, Chris . . .}

steve

11-19-11

The attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec 7, 1941  -  70 years ago changed the world.  On that fateful morning, 1,000+ sailors on the Battleship Arizona sunk with their ship to the bottom of the harbor.  Hundreds of others died horrible deaths that day – some drowned, some burned beyond recognition, some blown to bits.

By war’s end, more than 3,000,000 Americans were in the US Naval Forces (Navy, Coast Guard and Marines) fighting the War in the Pacific. (This does not include the Army or the Army Air Force).  We could easily say there were 4,000,000 American service people at War in the Pacific.  The disruption to the lives of families and friends of all those sailors and soldiers and Marines throughout the War is incalculable.

The USS Boston shipped out and arrived in Pearl Harbor two years after the Attack.  She became a unit of Task Force 58  -  a collection of 97 warships (with about 100,000 men aboard) that fought 11 major sea battles and supported dozens of massive amphibious invasions.  Task Force 58  took the fight island by island across the Central Pacific right to Tokyo Harbor, where the Surrender documents were signed a year and a half after TF58 was formed.

In my book, A Bird’s Eye View, I state that the Boston was a lucky ship.  No one died at the hands of the enemy (few ships could make that claim).  However, the Boston was not tragedy-free. The men witnessed several burials-at-sea, including a mechanic who was electrocuted during a repair, and an aviator who drowned when one of the seaplanes flipped in a wave while being ratcheted back to the ship.

The ships of Task Force, and the Service Fleet of oil tankers, supply barges, along with their escort ships (destroyers, destroyer escorts and aircraft carriers) could not rendezvous for refueling as planned on December 17, 1944 east of the Philippines.  The ships were blind-sided by the worst typhoon in Naval history  – Typhoon Cobra.  Two days later, when the winds abated enough to allow the ships to refuel, the men learned that three destroyers had sunk (only a handful of men survived.) 800 sailors drowned during that horrendous ordeal.

The Boston headed up a task force of ships after the Surrender to demilitarize Japan (“Occupation Duty”).  Their job was to seize and destroy weapons – most notably suicide submarines and boats.  The Boston was one of five American cruisers to leave Japan with a confiscated ancient Temple Bell, “salvaged” from “scrap piles” near munitions foundries in and around the Yokosuka Naval Base.  The 300 + year-old bell was one of over 70,000 temple bells confiscated by the Japanese government early in the war – to be melted down to make propellers and bomb shells and bullets.  My heart bleeds for the cultural, material and corporal losses that the nation of Japan has endured as a result of their participation in World War ll.  (See my blog of 3-19-11 entitled Occupation Duty for my comments about the tsunami).

I am, however, a stickler for resisting everyone’s natural tendency (including my own) for revisionist history.  Seventy years can cast a heavy fog over our collective memories.  Here is an excerpt from Admiral Ernest King’s final report to the Congress on the Naval Operations of WWII:

The casualties of the United States Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard reached the totals of 52,206 dead, 80,259 wounded, and 8,967 missing.

This is one man’s opinion: 

The Bell belongs right where it is, on a pedestal in a beautiful park in the city of Boston.  It stands as a Silent Witness to the ENORMOUS cost and the EXTRAORDINARY sacrifice that millions of America’s finest young men and women made so that this “symbol of peace”  could be transported back to Boston.  Now anyone and everyone can visit this park, admire this bell and reflect upon the meaning of humanity and our strange and barbaric propensity to make war on each other.

Steve

PS.  I encourage anyone who wishes to express any opinion about this bell to email me.  Bill and I will publish any cogent and coherent argument -  “for” or “against”

PPS.  I will be posting pictures of this magnificent bell soon.

11-16-11

I took a quick trip back from San Francisco to Boston last Thursday.  The impetus was to see my youngest son play the role of John Wilkes Booth in Sondheim’s dark yet oddly appealing musical the Assassins.  Thad is a senior in a well-respected University in Worcester, MA. (He did a damned fine job, I must admit.) The trip also gave me the opportunity to spend a couple of days with my other two sons:  Jon, who lives outside of Worcester, and Chris, who lives in Greater Boston.

My girlfriend and I spent Monday in Boston with my oldest son (and his girlfriend) doing a quick tour of that wonderful city.  There was no way I was going to spend a day in Boston without seeing the Bell.  We parked in Somerville and took the T (the subway) to the Museum exit on Huntington Ave.  It was during the T ride that I checked my camera. Guess what?  The battery was dead.  3,500 hundred miles to go see a bell and my camera was dead!  Fortunately for me, Roxanne’s camera although low on battery power, had enough left in the tank to take several pictures.  Now, I just have to figure out how to get them from her camera onto this website . . .

Walking behind the Museum of Fine Arts, we spotted the footbridge that leads to the War Memorial in the Emerald Necklace Park (in the Fenway.)  As soon as you step onto the bridge, the first thing you see on the other side is the Japanese Temple Bell.  It is magnificent!

Just before I left for the East, I got an email from one of our devoted readers.  She is now also interested in the bell.  Laurie was musing that part of her thinks the bell should be back in Japan, but part of her thinks it should be here.  Then she asked me what I thought.  I decided that despite the fact I had an opinion about that, I’d like to see the bell firsthand before I answered.  I am now ready to answer that question.

I need at least another day for the jetlag to dissipate, and some unspecified amount of time to get the photos onto my computer.  Then I will submit another blog entry on the Bell.

steve

ps.  Here’s a little anecdote about the bell.  While we were having dinner in a burger joint in the north part of Worcester on Friday afternoon, I got a phone call from Pat Fedele.  (If you been reading this blog for a while, you’ve heard his name mentioned before.)  Pat tells me that his division was in charge of guarding the bell while it was being transported from Japan to San Francisco.  The not-quite-old-enough-to-vote seasoned sailor, in charge of the division, carved his name into the top of the bell en-route somewhere on the Pacific.  Before stopping for the last time in San Francisco, a senior officer saw the defacement and told Pat that if he didn’t get his name off the bell, he would be courtmartialled.  Pat did.  We looked closely at the top of the bell.  Looks like he buffed it out enough to avoid  that dastardly penalty.