(This is a model at McGrew Point similar to the House of Socotra, circa 1981-85. You can’t go home again.)
As it turns out, it isn’t a metaphor. It is just true. The guy wouldn’t let me in the gate, and besides, the house where I lived had been bulldozed in 2005. But I will have to get to that in a while. Bear with me. This was intense.
The Pre-farewell Farewell.
It was a very emotional evening as a baker’s dozen of us gathered for sushi at the Akasaka restaurant down in the burgeoning Ala Moana district of Honolulu. It is on Kona St, just off Atkinson, but watch where you park.
It is a sketchy neighborhood- it is located in a district of strip clubs- in fact, the restaurant is adjacent to the one where the PGA golfer claims to have been drugged and kidnapped. None of us were, or at least I don’t think so but I have not seen everyone yet this morning. Apparently the mixed-use nature of the neighborhood is due to the requirement to serve the needs of the Chinese and Japanese businessmen who stay at the luxury hotel adjacent, and further beyond the mall for up-scale shopping while in the US.
A grand time was had by all, with officers and spouses from all the eras of our pal Kimo’s career. The sushi and birus were magnificent, almost as fresh as at Tokyo’s Tsukiji Central Fish Market.
The formal retirement is at the Kilo Pier over on the Naval Station later today- we met up at fabled Lockwood Hall, the site of an infamous Cold War Dining In, in which there was a near riot, and caused a ripple effect in my career down through the years I don’t have time to go into this morning.
(Left Coast Guy demonstrating the scale of the venue for the infamous Dining-In, circa 1982).
But Lockwood Hall, back in the war years, was the home for the officers who deployed on the Fleet submarines to pillage the Empire of the Sun. Many of them are still on Patrol, and the sail of one of the old Fleet Boats is next to the Hall as a memorial. Oh, and in the landfill under the parking lot is reputed to be the hulk of one of the Japanese mini-subs that got past the nets and into the Harbor on Pearl’s very bad, horrible, no good day. The remnants of that are still all around, despite the subsequent building.
Cables still cling to the side of the USS Utah, used to right her after capsizing at her anchorage. I remember picking up a rusted bit of cable on Ford Island years ago that was part of the salvage operation on the battlewagon Oklahoma- and there are still block-houses and bunkers with faded paint reading “air raid shelter.”
It is an emotional place.
A shipmate and I are at staying at Makalapa, where we used to work at FOSIC PAC (and where our pal Mac Showers was the Fleet Intelligence Officer twice- once at the end of WWII when his Boss Eddie Layton went back to Washington to testify about the disaster that started our part of the war and then again in Vietnam). The COMPACFLT (sic) HQ is just up the street. Don Rumsfeld made them change the name when he was SECDEF; to me it will always be CINCPACFLT.
I went up the low rim of the crater to take pictures of what Mac would have known as the Joint Intelligence Center- Pacific Ocean Area (JIC-POA) during the war. Two shells from the mighty battleship IJN Yamato flank the door. Pretty cool, if you know what they are.
While I was at it, I took a picture of the fire hydrant that Mac ran into in his car in the black-out days of 1944 before he deployed to Guam for the invasion of Japan and flooded out the PACFLT Chief of Staff’s house. I am going to get Mac’s daughter Donna and her family onto the reservation here at Makalapa Crater so they can see where she lived during the Vietnam War.
I don’t know if you do social media- I am only on Facebook to post pictures and don’t pay much attention to it otherwise, but if you are a “friend,” you can see the 163 images from yesterday, ranging from a total local breakfast to a windshield tour of Makalapa, including the pool where we taught the boys to swim and McGrew Point where we lived and of course the attractions on Ford Island. Very poignant, and why this is so emotional.
Of course, the real reasons I am here is to honor Kimo’s career and celebrate his retirement. I am proud that my son got to see him at his zenith as the Pacific Fleet Intelligence Officer.
So here is how it went:
Yesterday: I tossed and turned though the night attempting to adjust to Hawaii time. Shipmate Chris called to see if I was interested in breakfast at Aiea Heights at the Koa Pancake House. Strongly recommended, by the way, for the total local experience. It is in the same strip mall where the Chiefs would take us to a secluded bar the morning that we finished a three-week rotation of Days, Eves and Mids on the 24-hour watch rotation monitoring the Soviet Red Banner Pacific Ocean Fleet. It came as a minor revelation that I labored in an organization where there were sailors who started drinking before going to work.
I ordered sticky rice and omelet off the illuminated menu over the counter. Chris got the Portuguese sausage and scramblers with potatoes. Delicious.
Then back to the Navy lodging until Washington hit their Friday close-of-business, and I took off to take a tour of some old haunts. And trust me, there were some ghosts, regardless of the rich blue sky and gentle sun and puffy mauka clouds.
I will get to a discussion of my first stop in a minute, but it was unsatisfactory. I headed back east on the Kamehameha Highway to reach the bridge that wasn’t there when we all lived here. In those days, you had to take the Ford Island Ferry to get a car over to the island, or hop on one of the Mike Boats that shuttled between the landings at the Naval Base and the island.
The new bridge is impressive, with a segment that opens to let aircraft carriers through when required. It is amazing how much pork Senator Dan Inouye captured to pour on the Island (and his constituents). I met him a couple times when I worked on the Hill, and he was an impressive legislator, and like Bob Dole, you had to pay attention to his war wounds and not shake the maimed hand.
Some of the things he showered on Pearl include the Bridge, the gigantic NOAA complex; the Missouri, the Aviation Museum, and funding to rehabilitate the historic buildings to house the Defense Information Systems HQ.
Thank God the old runway is not covered in solar panels, which was a Green hallucination project that would have ruined any appreciation for what the island had been. Despite all the changes and the new housing that was built, the old wartime feel is still there.
I went past the enormous sea-based x-band radar that looms at its mooring on the Pearl City side, and parked at the USS Utah Memorial (it is still there, the other battleship they don’t talk about much). We used to jog the perimeter of the island at lunch, and would stop to look at it. The fact that you can see portholes and a hatch makes the wreck human scale, though it is rusting away.
You can no longer drive the perimeter, and I had to double back around some of the new and historic housing. The corner of the island where I worked is on the Hospital Point side. That is where the main hangars were, and the Headquarters and berthing for the troops.
I parked the rental car and just wandered around, remembering. I found the old ramp for the defunct ferry, and looked at the historic structures. I had several flashbacks. I walked up the steps to the Dispensary, where we had a bunkroom for the days we stood the 24-hour watch. We slept in a former office on the second deck (and it was the room in which actress Patricia Neal’s desk was located in the filming of the movie “In Harm’s Way” with The Duke).
The place is haunted- I know that for a fact. In addition to being used as a triage station in the attack, it was a morgue in the aftermath, and it took a 500 pound Japanese bomb in the courtyard, marked by a plaque, which I could not gain access to see again because DISA does classified work and this is not a museum. hahaha.
The reason I know the Dispensary is haunted because I was staying there one duty night and awoke around 0300. I looked down on my recumbent body in the bed from a vantage in the upper corner of the room. I was gazing at myself- or someone was, out of body- for a few amazing seconds before I awoke and became me again. I never feared it, whoever it was. But I felt the envy of someone who was dead before he knew it, and was feeling envious for me who was alive and did not (yet) appreciate how long the night will be.
In this sunny afternoon, I touched my cheek. I remembered I had a wisdom tooth extracted in the second floor dental clinic long ago- it is not Dental now.
I walked on after looking in the glass door at the ochre tile and the little brass plaque that explains what happened there, where the bomb crater had been, and where the bodies were stacked after the attack.
I was looking at the building that housed the COSP- Commander, Ocean Systems Pacific- that was built next to the Fleet headquarters where I worked. That is where all the cables linking the hydrophones we scattered across the ocean floor of the Pacific came together, tracking the noisy Soviet submarines with unerring- hahaha- precision.
This visit, a sleek Beltway-looking bureaucrat in a well-pressed Aloha shirt and slacks was standing on the steps to the former entrance to the THIRD Fleet HQ. I wanted a picture of what had been a formal ceremonial entrance, but which was now a blank steel door with an alarmed code-entry cypher lock. The civilian looked down at me, and asked if I was lost.
I looked back at him coolly and said, “Yes, but it is by 30 years, not location.” He did not call the cops, but his attitude seemed typical of the idiots I have to deal with these days. I understand now how Mac must have felt about so many things.
Who were these people in my buildings? I dunno. But more about this and the Aviation Museum of the Pacific and the retirement tomorrow. I could sit here and write about it, or I could go out and live. May as well do that while I can.
(The control tower-cum-water-tower on Ford Island. It was on the verge of collapse until Sen. Inouye fixed it. All photos Socotra).
Copyright 2015 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303