Somewhere In The Pacific: MP Duty at Pearl Harbor

As I mentioned in an earlier story, my father had a "colorful time" in the Merchant Marines during WWII. He traveled all throughout the Pacific and one of his most intriguing disembarkations was at Honolulu and especially Pearl Harbor after the bombing.

Honolulu and vicinity were wild: it was teaming, it was plastered with men and an occasional woman congregating, arriving, leaving, movement, movement, movement.

The city was jam-packed with both arriving and departing military personnel and for some soldiers and sailors it would be the last time they saw their families, their homes and America. So, many wanted to have a good time -- in all ways -- before their time there was over and they faced the harsh realities of war, thousands of miles from their loved ones.

It was a crazy place and time indeed, from the tale he recollected to me, while sitting in his recliner, drinking his Diet Root Beer and eating his Little Debbie snack pastry. Busy, it was exceedingly hectic there, and there was a lack of MPs available to control things and head off disasters and all out bedlam in the streets. This proved to be a great predicament for the authorities and they were a bit in need of some good old fashioned law and order. So my father was drafted on the spot to be an MP after disembarking from his Merchant Marine vessel. The authorities were pretty desperate at the time.

Now my father was a wiry, strong guy,  but he was all of 5-5, so he was probably not cut out for the MP life. Fortunately his fellow crewman from his ship, he was teamed up with, was considerably larger and apparently they made for a good team, while they were on patrol, although he described the situation as "harrowing."

There was for instance, a whole street of brothels and whore houses and gambling dens - a mini-Las Vegas of its time. Soldiers and sailors played games of chance and took a chance with the ladies and drank up a storm. They got plastered drunk at times. Fights, fights, fights... and a few more fisticuffs and brawls would greet the MPs. And diseases were rampant with several a crewman heading back to their ships, laden with the gifts that kept on giving, "the enemy in your pants" as it was less-than-lovingly described at the time.

Somehow my father survived this tour of duty -- and the war -- and acquitted himself well, which is about all you can ask for in life.

Later, near the war's close, he found his supply convoy heading toward Japan via The Philippines for what was to be the final Allied ground invasion of the Pacific Campaign. But it was called off after Hiroshima and Nagasaki happened. I asked Dad, what he knew about the Atomic Bomb at the time, and they knew that there had been a large explosion that had wiped out most of Hiroshima, but they didn't know the extent of the bomb's power, and that the Atomic Age had dawned and had changed everything forever.

My father lived through history, and in many ways, that is a great thing...

Image Credit: https://visitpearlharbor.org/tour/honolulu-city-tour/