Entering The Service

"I think a good place to begin this would be my enlistment and how I arrived aboard the USS NORTH CAROLINA.

In December 1941 I was just under 17 1/2 years old. I was attending high school, in the eleventh grade, in Charlotte, North Carolina, where I was born and raised. My father was employed as a parts and service manager for a truck dealer, and we lived in a small, but comfortable bungalow on the east side of town. I was an only child, so I was used to providing my own entertainment and had an interest in nautical affairs and particularly naval history.

On Sunday, December the 7th, we were following the usual routine. After lunch, mom and dad had gone back to their bedroom to take a nap. I started listening to music on the radio. I believe it was the New York Philharmonic. At around 2:00pm, the program was interrupted to announce that the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor Naval Base in Hawaii. I was stunned. At first I didn't believe that it was true. I listened for a few more minutes as more bulletins came in indicating that it was a very large raid and serious damage had been done. After probably five minutes or so, I raced back to the bedroom and woke mom and dad and told them the news. They immediately got up and came to the living room to hear the news. As the hours went by, more news came in indicating we had suffered a real setback and that it was a total surprise.

By this time, I was reaching a high state of excitement and so was dad. Dick Boward, our next door neighbor, later stated that I raced out into the front yard and was in a very high state. I told him that I was going to join up right away. After returning to the house, I began to discuss this with my parents. Obviously, they were against it and gave me all the logical reasons for not joining. I was in no mood to listen to logic. Dad suggested that we drive downtown and see if any "extras" were out yet that could give us more information. As we were proceeding through town on 5th street, dad ran a red light at the corner of 5th and North Tryon. A policeman on the corner gave him the whistle and wrote a ticket. Dad was really flustered by this time. He did not even see the light. His mind was 5,000 miles away. We did get our extra. Newsboys were standing on several corners downtown yelling "Extra! Extra! Read all about it, war begins." I believe it was the Charlotte Observer we bought. Big banner headlines told of the attack.

When we arrived back home, I again opened the conversation about joining. I had been working on dad while we went downtown. I knew the Navy would take 17 year olds with parental approval. I wanted to go up Monday morning when the recruiting office opened and enlist. Mom and dad continued to say "No" and gave me a long list of reasons why. The discussion continued on into the evening hours, but my case was getting stronger as news continued to come in. It was more bad news. Every bulletin seemed to bring news of more losses and indications of more Japanese aggression taking place in other locations in the Pacific. By this time I was arguing that I didn't want to fight the Japanese on the bank of the Catawba River. It did sound possible that they would invade this country. Mother finally gave in and consented, but she said she was convinced I would not be able to pass the physical. She said I was too small and that they probably wouldn't take 17 year olds now that war had started. I don't remember dad ever saying anything but from that point on we only talked in terms of my going. He did say that he thought I should finish high school before I enlisted. That night I lay in the bed thinking of what I was about to do. Was I crazy? Leaving this comfortable home and family situation to go into a totally unknown situation that could cost my life. I don't remember whether I slept or not.

At dawn, we were up and dad was going to work as usual, but today he was going to drop me at the post office downtown. There I was to locate the Navy Recruiting Office and find out what I had to do to enlist. I think I was at the recruiting office by about 7:30am, and to my surprise, there was a long line with maybe 100 guys in it. Up until this point I was wondering if I was going to be the only one who was that fired up about this attack. The line had all types in it. There were young and old, well dressed and not so well dressed. As I recall, the Navy recruiters culled out some who were reserves or who had previous service and took them into another room. They then pulled out the 17-year olds because they would require parental approval. All of this speeded up the process somewhat, but there were only two or three sailors in the recruiting office. They passed out multitudes of forms and told us to start filling them out.

Finally, my name was called. My heart was pounding. My legs were weak. This is it. The sailor interviewed me with a few questions, but mainly he wanted to know if my parents approved. I said yes. He wanted to know if they were present and I said no. He said that they were too busy to be wasting time with someone who really did not have their parents' approval. Either way I had to get them to sign a form before they would continue with the enlistment procedure. The recruiter also weighed me and said that I was underweight just a little bit, but if I ate a bunch of bananas and got my approval signed, I would probably pass. I left somewhat disappointed, but with form in hand and headed home on the bus. I wanted to get their signatures and go back that afternoon, but I still had to eat my bananas and dad would not be home until about 1830 or 1900.

The next morning we were up early and dad again dropped me off at the post office. I stuffed myself with bananas as we drove to town. This morning there was an even longer line to enlist. I was taken in ahead of the others and presented my papers. They weighed me and said okay. They said go home and wait for a notice in the mail that would tell me when to report. Again I left with mixed emotions. More waiting and for how long.

I believe it was the next day or the day after that I received a notice to report to the post office, prepared to leave for Raleigh, North Carolina, and swearing in. The recruiting personnel indicated that there would be nine weeks of recruit training and then a week's leave before being assigned to a ship or station.

So on the morning of 11 December, I said good-bye to mother at the house, thinking I would see her again in two months. Dad dropped me off at the post office with my little bag of specified belongings which consisted of toothbrush, comb, one change of underwear and that was all. Little did we know that it would be two years and seven months before I would see them again."

- Charles M. Paty, Jr., enlisted December 1941

"Well, I looked to military life for a long time before I was old enough to enlist. I tried to lie and enlist. I didn’t make it. They caught me. They could look at me and tell that I was too young. Then along comes the draft of 1941. I was just seventeen and they wouldn’t take me without a guardian’s signature. Finally, I talked my mother into signing the papers to let me go. I told her that I didn’t want any part of the Army. If the draft got me, I wanted to get what I wanted and not what they wanted me to have. I wanted to come into the Navy…"

-Theron T. Nichols, enlisted in September 1941

"I was born and raised in a little town in Wisconsin named Kimberly. It was a home base for a paper mill and paper-related products…. I went to the paper mill several times. I would see these slots where people kept their time cards. People who were there for eight-hour shifts, day in and day out, seven days a week, twenty-four hours a day. I said that is no life for me. I said, ‘There must be a better way’…In November 1936, I enlisted in the Navy.’"

- John P. Van Sambeek

"Well, I lived on a farm in New York State. I went to a one-room country schoolhouse when we first started. Six grades in one room. Later on after a certain age, they bused us to another town seven miles away. That was the high school. After high school, I couldn’t live with my Dad one day. He said, ‘Men join the Navy.’ So I got tired of pulling that cross cut saw and I joined the Navy. This was April of 1941. Right after my eighteenth birthday."

- Henry Okuski

"I’m from Brooklyn. I had just graduated from high school in January of 1941. I was walking downtown on Fulton Street. I saw the sign ‘Join the Navy and see the world.’ This was in the beginning of March before my eighteenth birthday. I went upstairs and talked to the person in charge. He said, ‘How are your eyes? Can you read this?’ I said, ‘Fine.’ He said, ‘Why don’t you go in and see the doctor?’ I went in and saw the doctor. Everything was fine except he said. ‘I see you bite your nails. We can’t take you in because you bit your nails. Here is a pair of gloves. Put them on and come back next week. If your nails are not bitten, we will take you in.’ I guess it (the concern) was nervousness, I don’t know. I went back the following week and they took me in and that is when I enlisted."

- Edwin L. Calder

"I didn’t like wearing a necktie. I knew you had to wear a necktie in the Army or Marines. That was really the only reason. It was kind of a dumb reason because I really wasn’t that fond of the water. I wasn’t no A-1 swimmer like some people."

- Daniel Schroll

"I enlisted in the winter of 1941, in January. I had always been interested in the Navy as a boy, and you could feel the trouble over in Europe that we were going to get involved sooner or later. I enlisted with my parents’ consent. I just got in on the weight limit. It used be 120 pounds and I was 122 pounds."

- Larry Resen

"I joined the Navy the twenty-first of November 1941, which was my birthday. I was seventeen that day. I didn’t have any idea that there was a war coming on. I was no hero or anything, I just wanted to travel, you know. So, I talked my mother into signing my papers."

- Michael L. Horton

"When I was in high school, I thought the greatest thing in the world was to be a soldier. At that time, back in the late 1930s, the government had a program called CMTC, Citizens Military Training Corps. As a high school student, you would go for a month to be trained by the Army. I went to what is now known as Fort Dix, but was then called Camp Dix. I went there for a month. I said to myself, ‘You know what you can do with this Army. I ain’t going out there to lay in that wet grass and march all day in that sand and get sand in my shoes." After high school, Paul tried his hand at printing, which he studied for four years. When the jobs didn’t work out, he decided to enlist in the Navy rather than risk being drafted into the Army. Things were heating up in Europe and who knew what Hitler would do. You heard the news over the radio, saw it in newsreels at the movies, and read it in the paper.

- Paul A. Wieser