Clothing
While in the Navy, the men wore only Navy issued clothing. The basic uniforms were dress blues, undress blues, and undress whites. These uniforms are the "sailor suits" that everyone knows. Worn for liberty, leave, and special occasions such as change of command, the wool dress blues had white piping around the collar and cuffs and a black silk neckerchief. Aboard ship, sailors might be directed to wear their undress blues. These uniforms lacked piping and cuffs and only men standing watch wore the neckerchief. By World War II, dress whites no longer existed. The cotton undress whites had no piping or cuffs and the same neckerchief was worn. Dress black shoes and white hats were standard for all of these uniforms. Blues served as the cold weather attire while sailors donned whites in hot climates. Since NORTH CAROLINA saw most of her duty in the South Pacific, her men got a lot more wear out of their whites.
Fashionable sailors splurged on "tailor-mades." Tailors in cities like New York or San Diego would advertise that they could make you a sharp looking outfit. The jumpers (tops) were form fitting, some to the point of requiring a zipper on the side. The pants legs hugged the thigh and ballooned out into bell-bottoms. While not regulation, bell-bottoms were an old Navy tradition. With bell-bottoms, a sailor could pull the bottom of his pant leg over his thigh and keep them dry and not wrinkled. Some tailor-mades have beautiful rainbow decorative stitching on the inside. Since tailor-mades were not regulation, some officers tolerated them while others went strictly by-the-book. If the officer in charge was strict, the wearer had to almost sneak off and hope not to get caught.
For normal work duty, the Navy provided dungarees, long-sleeved blue chambray shirts and high-topped leather shoes. During the war, men were allowed to purchase ball caps to keep the sun off their faces. In really hot areas such as the laundry, men went around in their underwear.
When the ship returned to Pearl Harbor for various reasons, the men working out on deck had to be in whites. After dinner, no one could appear on the outside decks in their dungarees. They had to be dressed in whites.
Sometime after the first air attack, the ship’s deck was painted blue to blend in with the ocean to make the ship less of a target from the air. As a result, everyone had to send their white hats to the laundry to be dyed blue as well so that they would not be easy targets against a blue deck.
The Navy issued the first complete set of clothing, but sailors were then responsible for purchasing their clothes in the future. The cost was deducted from their paychecks.
The Battleship had a laundry and regulations for having laundry done was quite detailed which is understandable with a compliment of over 2,000 men. Men placed their dirty clothes in a large bag. Laundry men washed clothes by division and the division’s laundry petty officer received and distributed the clean clothes. The Navy required that all clothing, blankets, and towels be stenciled with name and division so that a man’s possessions could be easily identified. Clothing found strewn about ended up in the Lucky Bag and the owner placed on report. Unidentifiable clothing could be auctioned with money going to the ship’s welfare fund.
