Friday January 7, 2005 – Setting Sail For Adventure

Friday January 7, 2005 – Setting Sail For Adventure

I was twenty years old when I first arrived in Japan in July 1965. I arrived fresh from visiting my family in El Paso, Texas. I had taken a Continental flight from El Paso to San Francisco and from there I reported to Travis Air Force Base outside Sacramento (Ck) for my flight to Tachikawa Air Base in Japan. We were flown on a chartered Braniff International Airline's plane. Back then Braniff had hired American designer Alexander Girard to redesign the airline’s look which included painting the planes distinctive colors—lime, orange, reds. Braniff had also hired Italian designer Emilio Pucci to design flight attendants’ uniforms—pink and plum dresses, pants, and coats with multicolored scarves. For a love-struck sailor, I was smitten to say the least.

We left Travis climbing into a mid-afternoon Pacific sky, looking down on the fog bank laying just off California's coast and the silver ocean surface for miles toward the horizon. We had begun racing the Sun to Tachikawa and we would lose arriving after sundown and boarding a bus for the trip from Tachikawa to Yokosuka. My early memory of the Navy was the bus trip from San Diego’s Lindbergh Field out to the U.S. Naval Training Facility for boot camp. I was tired and longing for a place to sleep. The night bus trip to Yokosuka brought back the same memory. Only this ride took a lot longer. And when we arrived, there was no one to yell at us, but the process of getting assigned a bunk, collecting bedding and getting into bed still took far longer than I would have wished. By now, I had come to realized that this was an integral part of Navy life and something I no longer railed against or fretted over.

It took a couple of weeks in my temporary barracks in Yokosuka before my ship, the USNS Michelson returned to port. When it did, I was so glad to finally begin my life aboard ship. I had been in the Navy since June 1963—just over two years and I had never been aboard ship. The Michelson was a converted Victory Ship, that were used toward the end of the Second World War and during the Korean and Viet Nam conflicts as the main supply ship ferrying supplies into to the war zone. It was 455 feet long, had a 62-foot beam, and had a draught of 23 feet. It could run at 16 knots—made fast to outrun submarines. The Michelson was named for Albert Abraham Michelson, the 1907 Nobel Laureate in Physics, who first measured the speed of light. The ship was laid down May 5, 1944, at Oregon Shipbuilding Corp. in Portland. During my tour we would return to Portland while the ship was in dry dock for repairs.

On the 15th of December 1958, the ship was converted at Charleston, S.C., Naval Shipyard, and placed into service under the operational control of MSTS Atlantic as USNS Michelson (AGS-23). It was one of several ships the Navy built for oceanographic survey. The ships recorded magnetic, and gravity data, plus bathymetry (mapping of the oceans bottom). Civilian seamen, merchant mariners, under Military Sealift Command operated the ships. They commanded the ship—we had a Master, ran the engines, cleaned the ship, cooked for the crew, everything involved in running the ship’s operation while underway and in port. I was part of a small contingent onboard who were essentially passengers doing survey work. The Navy personnel operated the equipment, factory engineers repaired the electronic equipment on board and Naval Oceanographic Office personnel performed the scientific mission of the ship: sonar mapping of the Pacific sea floor, recording the earth’s magnetic field in the Pacific region, as well as other scientific experiments.

The Michelson was relatively new to the Pacific. It had conducted oceanographic survey work for the Hydrographic Office in the Atlantic until 1964. It arrived in Japan earlier in 1965. En route to Japan from San Francisco in mid-January 1965, The Michelson received distress signals from SS Grand, a Nationalist Chinese merchant ship that was breaking up in heavy seas off the Japanese coast. The ship proceeded to the scene and swimmers from her crew rescued six survivors in the 12-foot seas. During my seventeen months aboard, I would have my share of adventures: enough shipboard emergencies and interpersonal intrigues to help me learn who I really was and what I wanted from life.

When I first set foot aboard ship, “permission to come aboard, sir,” at the top of the gang plank after a salute to the colors at the stern of the ship and you boarded and found your way to the purser’s office where you were presented your orders and reported for duty. Anyone who has ever been in the Navy will tell you that the Michelson was the exception and not the rule of shipboard life. I was assigned to a four-man stateroom with a closet and bunks with drawers and enough common space to have such luxuries as a complete stereo system. I was encouraged to wear civilian clothes while in port and not to discuss anything about the ship or its mission outside the ship.

As I made my way from the main deck to the first level below, I was confronted by a boyish looking man dressed in denim jeans and rolled-up long sleeve denim shirt, with a tool belt around his waist and a mischievous grin on his face. He had stepped aside at the bottom of the stairway to allow me to descend with my duffle bag over my shoulder. As I reached the bottom of the stairs, I looked at him, smiled and introduced myself and said I was looking for the purser’s office. He returned the greeting, gave me directions, and welcomed me aboard. Just before I walk off, he said, “you have beautiful eyes.” I blushed, thanked him, and left feeling a bit uncomfortable. Thus began my life aboard the USNS Michelson.