by Larry Colton
October 20, 1941
Looking forward to June 13, 1944. That’s when I get out. I wish I could finish high school now. Somehow I don’t regret joining the Navy but I wish I were out. I learned considerable since I joined although it wouldn’t help me in getting a job.… I don’t know whether I’ll be back home for Christmas. I doubt whether Roosevelt himself knows, although there are rumors about being back on the 1st of the year.… Hula dancers—Phooey. The only hula dancers over here are in photo shops where you pay 50 cents to get your picture taken with them, and half of the time they’re not real Hawaiians.
It was November 8, 1941, a month before the attack on Pearl Harbor, and Gordy was aboard the USS Sculpin as it sailed into Manila Bay. The Sculpin, named after a small, grotesque fish with a large shining head and short tapered body, was one of twelve submarines being transferred from the Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor to the Asiatic Fleet based in Manila. For Gordy, a guy with no mechanical background or training, the submarine was still one big mechanical puzzle. Because he hadn’t been to Sub School like a lot of guys on the crew, he was scared he wasn’t smart enough to learn what he needed to become qualified or perform under pressure. It helped that he was assigned as a mess cook.
He was happy to be coming to Manila. Anything, he figured, had to be better than Honolulu and the unfriendly locals. From what he’d heard, Manila was a city where the locals treated servicemen well, even if it was only to get them to spend their money. Plus, the Philippine women were supposedly very friendly. And as far as the threat of war, if the top brass were concerned that it was about to start, the news hadn’t drifted down to Gordy.
Admiral Thomas Hart had been put in command of the Asiatic Fleet, and he believed that a major weakness of the war plan was the inadequacy of that fleet. He also believed that a Japanese attack on the Philippines was imminent, so he took over with an iron fist, requesting reinforcements. In response to his plea, top Navy brass sent him the submarine tender Holland and an escort of twelve submarines, including the Sculpin, swelling the Asiatic submarine force to twenty-nine. Fearing that the surface ships stationed in Manila Bay would be vulnerable to an attack, Hart ordered them withdrawn to the south. All the subs remained in Manila Bay.
Gordy knew nothing of these strategic decisions. He was just eager to get liberty in Manila so he could go ashore and find out if Filipino women were as friendly as advertised. Before heading ashore, however, he and the crew had to listen to a lecture from an officer warning about the danger of venereal diseases. “It’s worse here in the Philippines than anywhere,” the officer said, showing the men photos of genitals grossly deformed by syphilis and gonorrhea. “But I’m sure some of you guys won’t heed the warning. And you’ll be sorry.”
December 8 and dawn was breaking over Manila Bay. Gordy was in his bunk, fighting a hangover. He and his buddy Otis Taylor had gone to a cabaret in Manila, and while a couple of other crewmates danced away the evening with some of the Filipino girls, he and Otis had pounded down a half dozen Canadian Club and 7-Ups. They hadn’t danced because neither knew how. Now his head hurt.
To Gordy, Manila was as seedy as Honolulu, only dirtier. What struck him most were the ramshackle houses and the poverty, orphans wandering the streets, begging for handouts, sleeping in alleys. He had yet to meet any Filipino women.
Stirring in his bunk, Gordy vaguely heard someone ordering him to get up. It seemed too early. As he drifted back to sleep, someone else shook him. “The Japs have bombed Pearl Harbor!” a voice shouted.
Within minutes everybody on board was at his station, getting the Sculpin ready to leave the harbor. The skipper, Lucius Henry Chappell, had already received a message from Commander Hart, alerting all submarines and Navy aircraft to immediately begin waging unrestricted warfare. It was assumed that it would be only a matter of hours, maybe minutes, before the Japanese began attacking the Philippines. With all the submarines lined up together, they were sitting ducks.
The Japanese plan was for roughly simultaneous attacks on Malaya, Thailand, American-held Guam and Wake, Hong Kong, Singapore, the Philippines, and Pearl Harbor. The raid on Pearl Harbor was meant to destroy the U.S. Pacific Fleet in its home port. The other attacks were meant to serve as preludes to full-scale invasion and occupation, as well as to secure resources the U.S. embargo was preventing from reaching Japan.
The Philippine Islands, some 7,000 in number, form a natural barrier between Japan and the rich resources of Southeast Asia. Under American control since the Spanish-American War, in 1941 the Philippines formed the westernmost U.S. outpost—5,000 miles from Pearl Harbor and over 8,000 miles from Gordy’s home in Yakima. By contrast, Manila was only 1,800 miles from Tokyo. By 1941, Japan controlled much of the surrounding territory, including Formosa, a strategic air base only 600 miles to the north. Although the United States had maintained military forces in the Philippines, including a substantial number of indigenous units, the islands were largely unprepared for hostilities with Japan. A key to the Japanese strategy was to strike and destroy MacArthur’s air force there. If American airpower were destroyed, Japanese troops would be able to invade and capture the Philippines, then push south to capture Borneo, Sumatra, Java, Timor, and New Guinea. The Japanese fully expected that MacArthur would have the planes ready to fight.
For reasons never fully explained, MacArthur did not have his planes ready and his ground troops were spread too thin, even though the Japanese intent to attack was clear. American radar had picked up enemy aircraft heading toward the Philippines and Clark Field from Formosa the morning of the eighth. They struck at noon, and by the end of the raid forty minutes later, one-half of America’s total airpower in the South Pacific had been destroyed. In all, fifty-five men were killed and over a hundred wounded. The disaster at Clark Field would give air control to the Japanese, and, coupled with inadequate ground forces and a disabled Navy, the fate of the Philippines seemed hopeless.
With the American Navy’s Asiatic surface fleet having been sent to the south, the weight of the naval defense of the Philippines now fell to the submarine force. Sunshine Murray, the designated operations officer for Asiatic submarines, hastily addressed the skippers of the twenty-nine subs moored in Manila Bay: “Don’t try to go out there and win a Congressional Medal of Honor in one day. The submarines are all we have left. Your crews are more valuable than anything else. Bring them back.”
Nursing his hangover, Gordy joined his crewmates as the Sculpin waited its turn with the other submarines to refuel and load stores and torpedoes. With all the subs gathered in the bay like targets on a firing range, there was great urgency to get these ships out to sea before more Japanese planes came swooping down out of the sky.
Late in the afternoon of the eighth, the Sculpin sailed out of Manila Harbor, one of five subs assigned to patrol the eastern side of the island. After leaving the other ships, it sailed east through the San Bernardino Strait at the southern tip of Luzon, the biggest Philippine island, then headed north, up the east coast to patrol off Lamon Bay, a possible landing sight for a Japanese invasion from the east. En route, the ship stayed submerged during the day and surfaced only after dark. Each evening, Gordy looked forward to coming up for air.
Shortly after the ship left Manila, its air-conditioning had quit. Efforts by the auxiliary men to fix it failed, and with the engines running hot, the heat was dispersed through the sub. The temperature inside the ship hovered between 100 and 105 degrees. Like the rest of the crew, Gordy stripped down to just his shorts. All the men were sweating profusely, dripping onto the deck, making walking through the boat a slippery proposition. Sleeping was also difficult. With not enough bunks to go around, the men slept in shifts, grabbing any available bunk. The mattresses soon became completely sodden. Gordy tried placing a towel atop the mattress, but it quickly got soaked too, and when he hung it up, the humidity inside the ship prevented it from drying. Adding to the discomfort was the fact that the ship had been in such a rush to leave Manila
that there was a shortage of distilled water. Drinking water was rationed. Showers weren’t allowed.
Gordy soon developed a severe rash, particularly bad in his armpits and crotch. At first he worried that it might be a symptom of one of the venereal diseases the crew had been warned about, but he knew he had not had sex in the Philippines. He soon learned it was a heat rash.
The pharmacist’s mate tried several treatments, but none worked. With each day, the conditions on the ship worsened—a dwindling supply of drinking water, no showers, slippery deck, wet mattresses, high temperatures and humidity, and a growing stench. The only relief was at night when the ship surfaced and the men could go topside for air, but outside it was 80 degrees and humid, offering little respite. The meal schedule was changed so that dinner was served while the ship was on the surface in order to keep down the heat from cooking.
This was no way to start a war, thought Gordy.
After a few days, a treatment was discovered to combat the rash—torpedo fuel. It was not the fuel’s only alternative use. On most World War II subs, the pure grain alcohol used for the fuel in torpedo motors was also used to produce a short, powerful high with little in the way of a hangover, which was ideal for men in a stressful environment who wanted a bit of relief but didn’t want to be fuzzy on duty. Conventional alcohol was prohibited on board; the Navy believed that life at sea was uncompromising enough, especially during wartime, and any abuse of alcohol would be totally unacceptable. But that didn’t stop the Sculpin’s crew from hiding a mini-still in the machinist’s room. The torpedo-fuel cocktails they concocted were known as “Pink Ladies,” so named because the Navy added a pink coloring to the torpedo fuel to indicate it was not meant for drinking. The crew sneaked slices of bread out of the kitchen that they used to filter the fuel. Usually, they mixed the fuel with coffee. Gordy had tried a sip from a coffee cup only once but hated it, figuring it must be an acquired taste. Instead, he spent most of his spare time studying. From his perspective, the information about the operation of the submarine he was trying to digest was hard enough to grasp while sober, so why make it even harder by ingesting 180-proof Pink Lady? He did, however, apply the torpedo fuel to his rash. It stung like hell, but it did diminish his rash and cool him down.
Gordy retrieved the Pall Mall tucked behind his ear, then struck a match. It didn’t light. He tried again, but still no luck. The humidity inside the ship made it tough to light a match. He tucked the cigarette back behind his ear and continued to read his manual on the ship’s hydraulics.
Gordy had taken up smoking shortly after coming aboard the Sculpin. Everybody, it seemed, smoked: FDR, Clark Gable, Joe DiMaggio. By Gordy’s count, there were only a couple of guys on the ship who didn’t. Cigarette smoke permeated the ship, adding more carbon monoxide to the air, and another smell to deal with. For Gordy, smoking had become a way to deal with the tension. There was now a heightened sense of urgency and alarm to everything happening on board. They were in enemy waters, and their base back in Manila Bay had been destroyed.
Moving north, the Sculpin found itself running right into the throat of a fierce December storm that relentlessly pounded the ship, making the search for the enemy even more difficult. The constant bobbing up and down and pitching to and fro was unnerving. At times it felt as if the ship was totally helpless against the raging sea and squalling sheets of rain. The bouncing was also making Gordy seasick.
Despite its being a goal of every new submariner to become qualified, Gordy didn’t feel driven to pass the test. He studied because he’d been told to. But down deep he had doubts that he’d ever be able to qualify. Sometimes he would read the same sentence in his manual over and over and still not understand it. But he persisted, spending his spare time studying rather than joining crewmates for poker or acey-deucey at the mess tables.
Gordy donned his rain gear and climbed the ladder to take his position as the port-side lookout. They were on the surface to recharge the batteries. Standing on the platform, he leaned against the waist-high ring; there was no hook or chain to secure him. Swells crashed over the bow and against the superstructure, banging him around in his little cage. No stars. No lights. Just darkness and the storm.
This was the third day of the storm. Standing lookout, he was soaked to the bone, cold, wet, and miserable. Raindrops coated the lens of his binoculars. The visibility was abysmal. The ship rode a swell, then dove down the other side, driving the bow straight into the next swell, kicking the screws out of the water as she went over the top and down again—movements endlessly repeated, hour after hour, pounding the ship’s machinery and wearing on Gordy’s nerves. He threw up again and again.
After several days of their being buffeted by the storm, a shipmate on lookout spotted two Japanese battleships in the distance. Getting a bearing was difficult. The vessels could be seen only when the Sculpin crested atop a swell. At first Captain Chappell, a soft-spoken, easygoing southerner, chose not to fire on the two ships. Part of the cautious breed of captains in charge at the start of the war, he was respected and well liked by his crew. But despite Chappell’s caution and the difficulty in getting an accurate reading, he couldn’t resist the temptation to fire his first shots of the war. He launched two torpedoes. They both exploded halfway to the target.
The Asiatic sub force was off to a miserable start. None of the twenty-nine subs assigned to protect the Philippines had sunk an enemy ship. Several had had close-range opportunities, but their torpedoes had malfunctioned. Facilitated by the pitiful failure of the U.S. Navy’s submarine force and its flawed torpedoes, the Japanese had successfully invaded the Philippines.
Critics, including Clay Blair Jr., a leading submarine historian, were quick to point out the mistakes that had been made in the planning and execution of the submarines’ defense of the Philippines. For starters, the sailors’ training had been inadequate. This limited preparation had neglected such basic factors as the psychological effects of long-term patrols or even how much food to take on board. Poor maintenance of the ships was another issue. Almost without exception, the Asiatic Fleet’s subs suffered continuous engine breakdowns because of outdated or poorly repaired equipment. Another mistake was basing the subs in Manila, which had been good for liberty and recreation but unwise as a base for operations. When MacArthur’s airpower was destroyed, the fleet was left unprotected. Once the combat began, the plan of defense was weak. Captains were told to patrol briefly and cautiously, and to place survival ahead of inflicting damage on the enemy. But with the submarines cast as the main naval offense, critics believed a bold call for action was needed, not caution. And perhaps the Navy’s most dangerous mistake was its failure to adequately test the Mark XIV torpedo. Even the simplest of tests would have revealed the weapons’ flaws, and measures could have been taken to repair them so that the ships would not have had to go into battle effectively unarmed.
Within the submarine force there was a feeling of frustration for failing to stop the Japanese advances. By the end of December, the Asiatic Fleet had mounted forty-five separate attacks, firing ninety-six torpedoes. Postwar Japanese records confirmed only three ships sunk. In terms of the overall impact on the war, the loss of Manila and Luzon was a greater military setback to the United States than the loss of its battleships at Pearl Harbor. It let the Japanese overrun the Philippines and launch their invasions to the south. Admiral Ernest King, Chief of Naval Operations, later called it “a magnificent display of bad strategy.”
With the American fleet forced to flee its base at Manila, the Sculpin and the rest of the subs no longer had a safe harbor. The Sculpin was ordered to proceed to Balikpapan, on the east coast of Borneo, to refuel, its crew already exhausted, the war less than a month old. Gordy was happy for the respite, even if it would only be for a few hours. A few days earlier he had been given a certificate acknowledging his graduation from polliwog (a sailor who had not crossed south of the equator) to the status of shellback (one who had). It was a Navy tradition, an
d it had given him a measure of pride at a time when he was feeling overwhelmed by all he still needed to learn about the ship. He placed the certificate in the scrapbook he carried in his belongings.
Despite the bad start to the war, the crew had the feeling that the problems were just temporary. America was on the right side of the conflict, God was on their side, and their power would soon prevail.
After forty-five long, grueling days on its first patrol, the Sculpin arrived for supplies and repairs in the harbor at Surabaya, Java. The second-largest city in Indonesia after Jakarta, Surabaya was an important commercial center for Southeast Asia. Java was a Dutch colony, and a key target of Japanese expansion.
For Gordy, the stop couldn’t come soon enough. What was supposed to have been a three-week patrol had lasted twice as long. But now, much to his relief, they were scheduled for a leave of five days.
Located on the north side of Java in the Bali Sea, the harbor at Surabaya was crowded with American ships fleeing south from the advancing Japanese. Many of these ships had been damaged, either by storms or in battle. There was a shortage of everything—spare parts, torpedoes, food. The work to repair vital machinery, especially engines, was being rushed to hurry the ships out of the harbor before the expected Japanese attack. Their previous port, Balikpapan, had already been invaded, and it was only a matter of time before Surabaya was hit.
To get away and relax, the crew traveled by train to a large Dutch army base at Malang, a city in the mountains two hours from Surabaya. Gordy marveled at the beauty of Java, an island he’d never heard of two weeks earlier. It dawned on him that the slogan “Join the Navy and See the World” was true. Nine months ago his entire world had consisted of Yakima, Washington, and already he had been to San Diego, Hawaii, the Philippines, Borneo, and Java.
