We were in San Diego through early November. Underway Training was complete. The people who trained us for what lay ahead did not have a training program for AGER’s, so to meet the training requirements they muddled through with a syllabus programmed for AKLs, the type of ship PUEBLO was formerly. One of the requirements for assessing our skills was to demonstrate our proficiency in underway refueling. Since we didn't have the equipment for this, we "acted" like we were refueling. The oiler that came along side passed us a fuel line, which we brought over and pretended to hook up. We passed. No drills were evaluated for destruction of sensitive publications, or equipment. As far as the trainers were concerned they didn't exist. Everyone was pleased with our acting abilities.
We were up early at the ungodly hour of 0500 hours November 6, 1967, to prepare for our departure from the land of purple mountains majesty and all that. That what was now becoming analogous with the Chinese water torture, the "Lonely Bull" blared in my ears as we sailed from San Diego. I had the port watch leaving the harbor, and said a silent goodbye to my grandparents who were buried at the naval cemetery on Point Loma. The USS PUEBLO steamed south past the point, turned west and set her course for Pearl Harbor. For the next nine days we were treated to fair weather and fairly smooth seas, only half the crew was puking as we sailed into the west. Almost every morning the deck force would have to clean the well deck of small squids and flying fish that had managed to make it on to deck during the night.
Some of the crew were restless, but I felt refreshed and enjoyed the tranquility that one finds at sea. Life at sea took on certain monastic traits and being away from the pressures one found on land was a great way to relax. I was in my element, spending hours at night out on deck staring at the stars. While in the Boy Scouts we had camped in the desert a number of times and were impressed with the number of stars that we were able to see, but that was nothing compared to what the night sky appears at sea. The Milky Way looked like a neon tube.
We arrived off Pearl Harbor around midnight on November 13, 1967. Those of us who had never been to sea before were surprised that we could actually smell land. It was warm that evening, an unusual experience for us during November, so we stayed out on deck that night and watched as Diamond Head became silhouetted against the morning sky. As dawn broke we were able to make out the hotels on Wakiki. We drifted off to breakfast and got into the uniform of the day -- Tropical Whites for our grand entrance into Pearl Harbor. Entering this harbor was very special, it held an almost spiritual meaning, and as we stood at attention on deck, we couldn't help but be touched by its history. In the distance we could see the USS ARIZONA memorial. The thought of an attack in such a beautiful setting seemed incongruous. The PUEBLO entered the harbor and was directed to tie up at the sub base, perhaps so that the skipper could visit his old chums.
As we tied up I was informed by Tim Harris that it would be two days before I could leave the base and see the beauty of this island for myself. First, supplies had to be replenished. Although the days were occupied with work, I was able to find solace and entertainment at the Enlisted Men's Club on base. After a long day, I cleaned up and departed for the club with some of the guys to see what trouble we could either get into or avoid. I dressed in my Topical Whites, without the scarf which I thought was optional in these climates. I was stopped at the club by the Master-at-Arms, who wanted to know where my tie was. After informing him that I didn't know it was a formal occasion, I found myself returning to the ship to get my tie. In an attempt to expedite my journey back to the club and maximize my limited time ashore, I took a cab back to the ship, ran in and got my tie.
When I returned the Shore Patrol was screaming at the cab driver. It seems that the sub base was off limits and the Shore Patrol had patiently explained to my cabbie that he would have to leave after they wrote him a ticket, but he wasn't listening. I sat in the cab waiting to return. Had I walked, I would have had a beer in my hand instead of my hat. The cabbie kept whining that he didn't know any better, but the Shore Patrol wasn't buying it and at last, in exasperation, told him to get back down the pier the way he came in. The jerk started the cab, turned his head around and began backing up at high speed down the pier. I watched the Shore Patrol in the windshield become smaller as we accelerated -- when one of them looked up, the look on his face was one of injudiciousness.
Meanwhile as the cabbie vented his anger on me, telling me how I was responsible for the death of his family through slow starvation, I saw the Shore Patrol with red lights flashing coming towards us. I told my friend that perhaps he should look out the front of his cab, and as he does, slams on the breaks. I watched as the Shore Patrol slammed on its breaks, swerved to avoid us, skidding right past. I knew at that moment that the cabbie was in deep trouble. Most of what the Shore Patrol said was lost in the upper level of my hearing, but to get their point across, they started beating the hood of the cab with their helmets screaming that this was the part of the cab that you drove with. Another ticket was written, his base license yanked, and the death of his family was on my hands. I paid him for the ride, thanked him for the memories, and walked off towards the club to find my buddies many beers ahead of me.
After two days of backbreaking work, Tim Harris was pleased and I was given Liberty. Bob Hill, Tony Lamantia, Pete Langenberg and I rented a Volkswagen and spent the day driving around. Despite the fact that we were wearing civilian clothes we still looked like service personnel. It must have been the dull cow like look in our eyes. We did the tourist routine, finally ending up at Ft. Derussy, where we polished off a few beers before heading back to the ship. I fell in love with the islands that night. Drinking beer outside at night in November was a wonderful thing. I would be back.
The trip from Hawaii to Japan was another round of sea sickness and sunshine. Each day blended into the next. The birthing compartment was an oven by the end of the day. Our section with eight bunks stacked four high with less than two and a half feet in between them became a depository for most of the odors the human body can produce. There was one fan for the area and in the morning the direction the fan was facing provided mute testimony to who was in bed last.
About halfway to Japan Bucher authorized a swim call and soon most of the crew was either in the water or preparing to jump off the bow into the water. If you timed your jump so you took off at the top of a swell, it was a long drop to the surface. The crew soon took to the age old and time honored activity of grab ass, tragedy was an instant away. Several of the larger crewmen took to tossing the smaller men into the water. This activity ended abruptly when they tossed one man on top of another. This resulted in an injured back and an end to the swim call. "Doc" Baldridge examined the injured party and was concerned about his back.
Bucher contacted the higher ups and a rendezvous with the USS GOMPERS was planned. The "Swing Sammy G" as it was called by its crew turned about and met us the next day. By the time we met them, we were in the middle of a squall, the sea was too rough for them to launch their whaleboat, but not rough enough for us to launch ours. We lowered our boat into the water and picked up a doctor from the GOMPERS to examine our injured crewmen. By now the crew was a little on the dark side of being unhygienic and hirsute. When they arrived at the side of the GOMPERS, its deck force was unsure as to whether they should sink our whale boat and make a run for it. The decision was made to put their doctor over the side and return him to the PUEBLO in order to make a more thorough assessment than Doc was able to do.
The doctor and several well groomed corpsmen clamored aboard our bobbing ship and took in their new surroundings. The doctor saw a man on the bridge dressed in a T-shirt, shorts and wearing sandals. He was aghast and asked one of the crewmen if our captain new there was civilians aboard his ship. One of the deck apes pointed to the rain drenched apparition on the bridge and said, "That's the old man up there, do you want to ask him yourself?"
After the injured man was examined, it was decided that he was too injured to remain on board. He was lashed into a stretcher, tied into the whaleboat and transported to the GOMPERS. Ron Berrens and Wendal Leach completed the transfer and returned to the leeward side of the PUEBLO to be hoisted aboard. The speedier GOMPERS was quickly lost in the squall line and we were soon alone on an empty ocean. As we approached the end of our westerly course and turned north the weather quickly turned cold and deteriorated. In the morning the fan that had blown chilled air all night was pointed at the least liked man in our birthing section. The lowering of the temperature and the adding of clothing layers were the only changes in our routine as we continued on to Japan. We ran into one more storm before we entered Tokyo Bay. We were escorted into the bay by the ever present Benjo Maru.
Sailors have a tendency to go a bit nuts when they pull into a new port, and Yokosuka was no exception for the crew of the USS PUEBLO. We had just survived a major storm that scared the hell out of us and the thought of going back to the North Pacific on the PUEBLO in the middle of winter was causing us all a great amount of anxiety. Because of this we went on liberty with great gusto. We were so damn glad to be alive that we partied hard and got carried away in those little bars that surround the naval base.
During the days I was forced to bury myself in my work. Reed had really screwed up the supply system. If it hadn't been for the storm and the reduced use of the galley, we would have run out of our major staples before we got to Japan. The Old Man was pretty hot about it and moved Ralph back to cooking and me back to being Jack of the Dust. I was happy to be done with cooking, but the mess I had to clean up took a lot of my time. On top of all this Bucher noticed I wasn't hitting the beach and made me the night movie projectionist. It wasn't all bad, at least my evenings were planned.
I got my scores for graduate school, I needed 850 to get into USC graduate school and received a score of 1050. Acceptance to graduate school would win me the much coveted "early out" and be out of the navy a few months early was a real motivator. I figured I had about seven more months in Asia, tops.
When we first got to Japan, it was pretty quiet on the beach, there were hardly any ships in the harbor, but as it got closer to Christmas the number of ships increased greatly. The USS KITTY HAWK came in and I tracked down David Vespers. He had been my boss in Long Beach and it was good to see a friendly face. He gave me a tour of his ship and I was jealous of him being on a real ship instead of an "oceanographic research ship." The USS BLUE (DD-744) arrived with three guys from my reserve center on board, came into port for Christmas. It was getting to seem like old home week. I bumped into two guys, David Cowarden and Walt Henry, that I knew from high school. But it was still lonely being this far from home during the holidays.
To make matters worse the USS BANNER (AGER-1) came in on December 19 and tied up next to us. The guys that could grow them all had beards and they looked like a bunch of pirates. They all seemed a bit spacy. We were finally able to talk to someone about what it was going to be like to be on station. They took a perverted pride in the fact that they would go out 30 to 45 days and come in for periods as short as three days. This wasn't winning any converts to the AGER way of life, but what was extremely disconcerting, none of them would say much about what they did. The bragged some about being hassled by the Russians and made it sound like they had gone out on a shopping spree and just missed being mugged.
Our little world in supply land had its own problems. The Japanese yard workers were initially very shy, but with each passing day they grew bolder in taking liberties on board the ship. Bucher had us give them our leftovers after each meal, which was a good deal for us since we didn't have to carry the trash over the BANNER and the Coast Guard cutter to which we were tied up. John Mitchell had injured his back making a garbage run and no one wanted to follow suit.
At first, the yard workers would wait until the serving line was shut down before they came for their food, but that soon changed. They had become more aggressive, one night, Ralph had to chase one of them out of the galley with a knife. That was the final straw for Ralph, the next night we had chili for dinner and he spiced it up for them. It was hot to begin with, but Reed dumped in a large box of Ben-Hur's finest peppers and folded it in with an economy sized bottle of Tabasco sauce. It was smoking. Before he could serve Lava a la Ralph to the yard workers, Steve Ellis came running in. He had gotten off watch late and was very hungry. We tried to warn him, but to no avail. Being an LA boy he was born and raised with hot food. I told him that I too was from LA and this stuff was industrial strength hot. He ate it anyhow. That's not exactly true. He took one bite and stuck his head under the spigot of the water fountain in the galley. Ralph was now ready. The yard workers, not unlike their brothers in Bremerton, swarmed over the line. They were not back the next day. But we think they might have gotten revenge.
On December 21, we got underway to check out some of the repairs made to the ship by the gentlemen with the sore butts. I was on the bridge in my usual position as look out. It was not raining and the sky above was clear, but the surface was covered by patches of fog that looked like cotton candy. I was scanning those parts of the horizon that I could see with my binoculars when my vision was obscured by the largest ship I had ever seen. It was one of the new Japanese super tankers. It was less than a mile away. I called out, "Ship, bearing 350, range 1000 yards."
Bucher and Murphy swung around and saw the monster coming out of the fog. Bucher exploded, "God damn it, XO, how the hell did that get there? Why wasn't it picked up on radar, the God damn thing must be a quarter of a mile long, its as big as a damn mountain? Get below and attended to the radar." Murphy was saved from a further beratement because the steering going out. A tug was radioed for and we were towed back into port. Elapsed time thirty minutes.
Fortunately, there was no time for us to play Mr. Alpert's best. The USS PUEBLO slipped away from the dock and pulled out of Yokosuka early in the morning on Janruary 5, 1968. We were headed south for Sasebo. We would return to our home port in about a month. As we rounded the tip of Kyushu and headed northeast, the ship moved away from the warmer Pacific waters and the temperature dropped as we neared our next port. Our stated purpose for visiting Sasebo was to pick up additional supplies.
Ensign Harris and I went looking for the supply depot. There was a dusting of snow on the ground. Winter had come to Japan. We were looking for anything we could get our hands on. Tim Harris attempted to show me that he was bilingual. He belonged to the school of "if you yell loud enough, you will be understood." The Japanese we tried to speak with were of the "if they yell at you, screw'em" school. The return for our efforts were slight, but it wasn't because we didn't hump like hell the few days we were there.
I was unable to pull liberty there so anything I know about Sasebo was gleaned from the my shipmates whose memories were blocked by copious amounts of liquor. They knew it would be a long time before our next port and tried to store it up like camels drinking water.
We prepared to pull out early in the morning on January 11, 1968, I was one of the last people to come back on board. As I approached the gangway, a black sedan pulled up and a rather corpulent oriental, climbed out on the passenger side of the car. He called to me to wait, I stood there waiting for him to come to me. He asked what the name of our ship was and where were we going, what type of ship were we and when would we be back? It struck me as a little strange and I asked him why he was asking me these questions. He gave me his card and told me that he and the guys in the car had a band and that they played at ship's parties when they came back in port. He asked me a few more questions that I didn't answer. I didn't feel comfortable with this clown and his buddies in the car. They didn't look like card carrying musicians. They looked more like gangsters.
Up until now the on going attitude about not knowing what our mission was, was kind of a joke with us. Now for the first time, I realized that perhaps it wasn't so funny. I took the guy's card, hunted down Bucher and related to him what had happened. He didn't seem to be too concerned, he took the card from me and that was the end of it.
Just before leaving Sasebo, Bucher called an all-hands meeting once the crew was all on board. He told us that we were about to depart on our first mission. Where we were going and what we were going to do was none of our business and we were not to worry about it because what ever we were doing wasn't fattening or illegal. The CT's had a knowing look on their faces, the rest of us no longer really cared, let's do it and get it over with.
Herb Alpert played for the last time, they had fixed the equipment. I had been relieved of my assignment on the sea and anchor detail. There were enough qualified people on the deck force to take the chore. I was happy about it now that it had gotten cold and was going to get colder. I rather enjoyed hearing the muted sounds of "The Lonely Bull" as I sipped a cup of hot coffee on the mess deck.