The Kid from Hoboken

by Bill Bailey

  The typhoon showed no mercy. All night we were battered by pounding as waves broke over the bow. The rigging was alive with weird sounds, strange and frightening music, as the winds played havoc with us. We were happy when the darkness of the night disappeared and the grayness of a new day approached.

  The sun stayed hidden. The decks were wet. We lost sight of ships from their previous positions on the horizon. Perhaps they had slowed down. We didn't know. We only cared now about the Laredo Victory. It was not good weather to be working in. One had all one could do just to maintain his balance on board. During meal times, not all hands showed up. Some were sick and the thought of food made them sicker. We plowed on and asked ourselves when the hell Mother Nature might give us a break.

  Night fell and we looked for the light of other vessels. They were few and far between, yet still a welcome sight. We felt more secure knowing that help was not too far away should something happen. The bulkhead door that opened onto the main open deck on the lee side of the ship was open for some fresh air. Our room was adjacent to this bulkhead. From my top bunk I could look out my door and see the open sea. We had a bright light overhead that threw its beam about 40 feet into the sea. It was like a mirror, reflecting what it saw at that spot.

  At ten that night I was in my bunk reading. I put the book down for a moment to watch the movement of the vessel. I thought I saw an overturned lifeboat and two faces clinging onto it as it passed by. I yelled to Sid, then jumped out of my bunk and raced out the door to the deck to see if there was really something there, or just my imagination. As soon as I hit the deck, the general alarm went off. Good. Someone else saw it from their lookout and reported it.

  Our captain was on deck. He had the signalman use the blinker light to spot the men adrift. We started our maneuvering. A wide circle had to be made to bring us back to the men in the sea. It was not easy. The captain gave many different orders. He told us all to keep our eyes on the men in the sea and not to lose them. He had the signalman blink across the horizon to tell all the other ships that we were executing a rescue mission and to watch their positions. Our engine room was inundated with telegraph signals to slow down or speed up.

  We maneuvered close to the two men clinging to the overturned boat. The wind made it impossible for us or them to be in a standstill position. Even with our engine on a "stop" position, our ship still moved through the sea quickly. We were 30 feet from the men. A heaving line was tossed. It fell across the upturned lifeboat. One of the men grabbed it. We watched him wind it around his arm a few times and then release his grip on the lifeboat as we pulled him toward our ship. The captain ordered a Jacob's ladder over the side. The other man did not make a move, but clung to the lifeboat which was now fading from us. We pulled the man aboard. His face was like a piece of raw hamburger, battered and whipped by the wind and sea. We wrapped him in blankets and hauled him to our two-bunk hospital to undress him. He kept repeating how thankful he was that we rescued him. We had to tell him to shut up and preserve his energy. His body, like his face, was full of sores from the saltwater. We covered him with Vaseline, and the mate ordered him some hot broth. He told us that his small naval craft had taken a few big seas over her bow and the water knocked out her engines, and eventually she sank. Five men were aboard her and they all got into one lifeboat. Eventually, the heavy seas were too much for the lifeboat. It overturned; three men were lost. That was three days ago. He never expected to be rescued. He said that another ship had passed them, oblivious to their plight. Had we, too, passed them, they were both ready to give up and end it all. They were too exhausted to carry on another day.

  We continued our efforts to rescue the other man but were finding it tough. There was a lot more maneuvering, with bigger circles and more listing, which worried our captain, who was fearful that his cargo would shift. The lights from several other ships got closer. It troubled our captain. "I'm asking all those damn ships to stay the hell away from us." He shouted to the signal man to relay the message.

  Again we came up close to the other survivor. We tossed him a line. It fell short of his reach. Our captain was fearful that the survivor and his overturned lifeboat could fall victim to our ship's propeller. Thus he tried to stay as far away from the survivor as possible. The captain seemed frustrated. He ordered a boat over the side and called for volunteers to man it. Sid and I were the first to get into the boat. Others followed quickly. "I don't want all the key men taking off, " the captain said, addressing the men in the boat. "Chief electrician, get off," he said. Sid left the boat grudgingly. The captain ordered the boat lowered ten feet, then stopped. We were slightly above the tip of the lapping waves.

  I sat in the stern of the boat. I had two duties to perform. As the boat hit the water, I was to trip the mechanism that would release the davit falls that held our boat to its mother. The sailor at the forward end would have to do the same thing. This would place the lifeboat in the control of the men in the boat, who would push the boat away from the side of the ship. My second assignment would be to assist the engineer in the operation of the lifeboat's motor.

  In a glassy, calm sea launching a lifeboat was simple. In a rough sea, however, one simple error would result in lives wasted. With each succeeding second, the waves seemed to grow deeper, then climb higher. Now they were slapping the keel of our boat. The captain was giving commands to crew members to keep an eye on the survivor while he tried to maneuver his ship closer to him. I became convinced that we could not safely launch the boat without a serious mishap. If the captain should sit the boat down on top of a wave, we would have to release our holding-on gear within a fraction and both ends would have to be clear. Of course, we would then ride down with the wave and hope we could push the boat away from the ship's side immediately. If we did not get away fast enough, we would then start up on the next wave, and many crew men might be injured by the heavy blocks dangling from the davits.

  If the captain sat the boat down in the trough of the wave, again he would have to be quick in releasing the mechanism. If one end failed to unhook, the next heave of the ship upward would come close to standing the lifeboat on end and dump everyone into the sea.

  The captain must have been pondering this thought. We waited a five more minutes. I looked up into the captain's face. I could understand his predicament, his responsibility to his crew and to the age-old tradition of rescuing a fellow worker from the grasp of the sea. "All right," he shouted, "bring her back."

  The same motor that had launched us was now easing the lifeboat back up on deck and onto its resting blocks. "We'll go around again," shouted the captain, assuring us that he was not abandoning the man in the water, who was now watching the ship move away from him. A thought came to me. If we couldn't come alongside the man in the water, or if he was too far away to grab our line, why not tie a line around my waist, let me don a life jacket, and when we get fairly close to our target I'd dive overboard and swim to the overturned boat. Then both of us could be pulled in together. I searched out a heaving line and proceeded to put my plan into operation when I heard the captain say to the man at the wheel, "Bring her in close. Get ready with those heaving lines, and let's do it this time." Seconds later the survivor had a choice of latching onto any one of the five heaving lines that landed on his boat. There was a chorus of soft encouraging words, and then shouts of glee as he was pulled to the Jacob's ladder and pulled aboard.

  We carried him to the hospital. With tears in his eyes he reached over and clasped the hand of his old friend. They were together again, safe and being taken care of. Like his buddy, he was exhausted from clinging onto that overturned boat, and his face, lashed by salt water, appeared like a piece of raw meat. We had all we could do to get his clothes off, Vaseline his body and feed him some hot broth before watching him go off into a deep slumber. We had cheated ole King Neptune out of two weary souls, and that was a great victory.

  The typhoon raged on. We got news from the radio operator that the airwaves wer
e full of SOSs. It had been five days and nights of riding out the typhoon. We sailed back to Naha. The port looked like it had been hit by an atomic bomb. Four Navy seaplanes were lying upside down. Tons of sheet metal that were once Quonset huts were scattered everywhere. Papers we learned later were thousands of pieces of mail were strewn among twisted metal, blankets and clothing. We learned that 600 to 700 men waiting to be the first sent home had been lost to the typhoon's destructive power as it swept over the island. We were lucky no one on board our ship suffered so much as a headache. Our two Navy survivors thanked the captain and crew for all the tender loving care they had received from us. They shook hands with the crew and told us they would always remember the crew of the Laredo Victory. We wished that the Army and Navy would also remember the Laredo Victory, because we were back sitting at anchor, waiting, waiting, and waiting.

  On November 5th we awoke in the midst of great excitement. We had been ordered to get the hell out of Naha and proceed to San Francisco. It felt good to hear our roaring engines come alive. We sailed with open portholes and lights aglow. We were alive with discussions about what the new world would be like now that fascism had been destroyed. As we talked of the future, I could not dismiss from my mind that gold-braid bastard I met who wanted to take on the Russians.

  On December 3rd, questions were being asked about the sinking of the Indianapolis. The Navy brass began to squirm. On this day at the Washington Naval Shipyard, court proceedings began against Captain McVay. Among other things, he was charged with negligence and inefficiency in the performance of his duties. At the hearing, the Navy brass adds insult to injury: they bring in Iko Hashimoto, the Submarine 128 commander. He was considered a prisoner, yet he appeared as a Navy witness against McVay.

  On January 3rd, 1946, the Judge Advocate General of the Navy approved the court-martial finding that Captain McVay was guilty of negligence resulting in the sinking of the Indianapolis. He was demoted but allowed to remain in the Navy.

  The Navy published its report, which was widely-regarded as incomplete and a barefaced effort to cover the Navy's own incompetence and negligence. Coupled with this coverup was the failure of the Navy brass to conduct a search-and-rescue operation for the Indianapolis after its failure to show up in the Leyte Gulf. The public would soon forget about the Indianapolis episode and other tragic events of the war. But not all of us would forget.

  (Some twelve years later, on the front lawn of his home, Captain McVay would shoot himself. Clutched tightly in one hand would be a toy soldier.)

  Chapter XIV: The Party Under Attack

  I believe in the saying that if an organization stops growing, it will stagnate and devour itself from within. It contains truth. When the attacks on the Party took place, there was a general run for cover. This occurred even more after the first group of leaders was scooped up and arrested. No longer was it only rhetoric of the press or a group of patriotic zealots. The arrests made it the real thing. The government objective was, of course, the complete disarming and then destruction of the American Communist Party, with the hidden and more sinister motive of eventually destroying the militancy of the trade unions. The growth of the Party seemed to come to a standstill. Our concentration on raising finances to pay for defense costs and to prepare for pending underground work seemed more pressing than recruiting. From the leadership came mandates to the rank and file for pledges, a day's pay, and other financial contributions (including the loan of large sums of money with the proviso of getting it back when you requested it). If you had a few bucks in the bank, now was a good time to take it out and hand it over to a special finance committee which would properly document the transfer. Across America hundreds of thousands of dollars were collected to end up at the national headquarters of the Party in the East.

  In our little seamen's branch in San Francisco, we continued to hold our weekly meetings. Faithfully our 11 members would show up on time.

  At last peace had come. The many hundreds of merchant ships would be returning home. There was much talk and speculation among the maritime workers. Many believed that the bonanza of full employment would go on. They argued that the destroyed nations must be rebuilt, and America was the only nation that could supply the material. Thus we would maintain a strong and vibrant merchant marine.

  Others were of the opinion that we would start laying up ships and tapering down the merchant marine to a bare nothing, like after the last big war. One thing was for sure--the class struggle was back. Browder's pipe dream of the working class working to improve its lot with the approval of "progressive capitalism" had fallen flat on its butt. A blast came out of France by Jacques Duclos, one of the outstanding leaders of the French Communist Party, telling Browder and the world that his theory of a "progressive capitalism" was not only haywire, but counterrevolutionary to the working-class movements. The struggle within the American Communist Party would now take on new dimensions through the struggle between pro- and anti-Browder forces.

  Browder had concluded that because Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill had collaborated so well, this collaboration would carry over into the post-war world, and there would be no need for the class struggle. Working men and women would sit around a table with the minions of capitalism and work out a better life for all sides. Capitalism was proving this in the winning of the war, insisted Browder. To some members it sounded feasible. And at that time so did signing the pact with the Nazis.

  The debates within the Party as to who was right would go on, both in print and verbally. While we debated what "line" to pursue, the bourgeoisie didn't give a damn. They sought their own line--the destruction of the Communist Party.

  In 1947, Secretary of Labor Lewis B. Schwellenback declared that the Communist Party should be outlawed. We had heard numerous such statements in the past, so no one got overly excited about it. However, in the early part of 1948, the Smith Alien Registration Act of 1940 was amended. This Act, fathered by Howard Smith of Virginia, forbade the teaching or advocacy of the violent overthrow of the United States government. This threat made us more nervous, but on the waterfront we stayed calm--until the gendarmes swooped down and arrested 12 National Committee members of the Party and indicted them.

  The trial of the first batch of Communists arrested under this Act would go on for nine months, well into 1949. It would be a trial where books were the issue, books that spelled out the theory and philosophy of the Communist Party. Authors like Lenin, Stalin, Marx and Engels would be cited to prove that the people on trial conspired to teach and advocate the overthrow of the American government.

  They were found guilty, as expected. They were sentenced to five years in prison. One defendant, Robert Thompson, who had received the Distinguished Cross for valor in World War II, got three years. Because of his illness, William Z. Foster had been detached from the trial. The convictions and the anti-sedition section of the Smith Act were appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

  In my union, The Marine Firemen's, our handful of Party members was weathering the storm by putting on an act of bravado to the rank and file, as if we were so overpowering that no government act or series of arrests of the Party leadership could cripple us. But all hell was about to break loose.

  I was ready to ship. I joined The President Wilson as electrician and sailed for the Orient. It was an easy job, with good quarters, decent food, and the best of working conditions. It was our homeward leg of the voyage. We were tied up at Kobe, due to sail within a few hours for Manila. I was one of the last crew members returning to my ship. I stepped out of a small restaurant and stopped to allow at least 75 big military trucks to roll past me. The contents of the trucks hidden by tarpaulins. They were headed toward the waterfront. To the average citizen, this sight was a rare one indeed, because Japan was now frowning on the military.

  The next day our ship was steaming past the island of Taiwan, the new home of Chiang Kai Chek, when a report was heard over the radio that North Korea had invaded South Korea. The United States
was preparing to call on the United Nations to have it take immediate action against North Korea. Having just come out of a worldwide conflict, we did not seem to have time to enjoy the peace before we were preparing to fling ourselves into another. The trip home was not a joyous one. The thought that the government was decapitating the heads of the Communist Party, combined with the thought of going into another war, was enough to whip up the paranoia in me.

  We weren't prepared for another shock. Congress passed the McCarran Act, also known as the Internal Security Act. One major function of this act was the required registration of the Party and its membership. Failure to register resulted in a series of fines, sanctions, and even jail terms. To muddy up already dirty waters, Senator Joe McCarthy was about ready to unleash his brand of "McCarthyism" upon the American scene, creating havoc among liberals, professionals, trade unionists, and anyone else who stood up for principle.

  Within our Party confusion reigned as to where we were going or how we were to get there. Our leadership talked as if fascism were just around the corner, seeing the attacks against the Party and its leadership as just the beginning of what was in store for the American people. As the country prepared to ease into 1951, the Supreme Court voted to uphold the constitutionality of the anti-sedition section of the Smith Act. The courts set July 22 as the date for the 11 convicted members of the top Party leadership to show up for prison and start serving their sentences. Seven showed up. Four went on the missing list and into hiding.