Chapter 20 -1967 Invasion Money & Big Fish

Chapter 20 Version 2

1967

“When we got to Hawaii, we had to use invasion money” said Stanley as he sat by his pool in the heat of a Saturday summer evening.

“What is invasion money?” asked John.

“Well, the Japs might invade Hawaii at any time so the US government took all the paper money and stamped it with Hawaii on the front and the back so it would be worthless if the enemy got ahold of it. I still have some. Want to see it?”

“Sure” replied John who started collecting coins and stamps around 1959 when he noticed they changed the back of the penny from a couple of stalks of wheat to the Lincoln Memorial. Someone said if you look real hard you could see Lincoln sitting in his chair.

Stanley went inside and came out a few minutes later with an envelope. He opened the envelope to show a five dollar bill and a few one dollar bills with the word Hawaii stamped on the front twice in small letters and the outline of the word in large letters stamped on the back. They were silver certificates but they had brown serial numbers and seal instead of the familiar blue. They were from 1935 so they also lacked the words “In God We Trust” on the back above the word “One”. The first money to have “In God We Trust” was a two cent piece from 1864 during the Civil War to show that God was on the side of the Union. One dollar bills began to show the motto in 1957 after “In God We Trust” was made the official motto of the United States in 1956 to show our tie to God versus Godless communism during the Cold War. In colonial times, the motto used but never officially adopted was “E Pluribus Unum” which John translated from his high school Latin class as “From Many One” showing that from the many diverse states there was one country. “Under God” was also added to the Pledge of Allegiance on Flag Day in 1954. John recited the pledge every school morning in homeroom without the phrase “under God” and refused to bow his head to pray to the consternation of the homeroom teacher who John stared down. John didn’t mind prayer but he was not going to be forced to pray. He would be spiritual in a time and manner of his own choosing. He had stopped going to CCD class because the lay teacher after consulting the priest declined to include a discussion on the nature of God and besides, the CCD class conflicted with seeing “The Monkeys” on TV.

“Do you want one of these?” asked Stanley and John readily accepted the gift of a one dollar Hawaii note. “Money” was John’s second word after “Moon” and he learned the word from Stanley.

Then Stanley made an unusual offer.

“If you want to come fishing tomorrow for big trout in the Quabbin, Ed and I leave at 4am. Bring what you want to eat and drink for lunch and we will be back for supper.”

 “We know how to catch the big ones now. Jack got us some stainless steel line from the wire mill and we use deep sea poles. You have to troll at just he right speed with a five pound sinker to get to the bottom. Then you bounce the sinker off the bottom and it drives them big trout crazy and they” at this point Stanley lunged at John’s arm making a biting grip between his fingers and his thumb while continuing to talk “GRAB_AT_IT” while raising his voice to get the maximum effect which was enough to cause John to jump about six inches off of his chair. After laughing at John’s reaction, Stanley reeled himself in. Raising one finger and talking lower than usual Stanley continued “but you have to find the ledges where it gets deep because that’s where the big trout hang out.”

John regained his composure. He fished for bluegills in Nashawannuck Pond, perch in the Oxbow, and catfish in the Connecticut River. “How big are these trout?”

“Four to five pounds and 36” to 42” long” Stanley offered up.

John could not imagine a trout that big never mind catching one. “I will be there.”

John packed a ham sandwich with American cheese on Wonder Bread, an apple, a cold cream soda, some ring dings and potato chips before going to bed and put a paperback copy of John Hersey’s “Hiroshima” in his windbreaker’s pocket. His father Joe saw John reading the book about the first atomic bomb dropped on Japan but never made any comment on it.

It was still dark when they pulled inside the bait shop. “Got any good size bait?” The proprietor showed Stanley and his brother-in-law two 10” fish, their dark upper backs barely visible in the water filled tub. In the net they looked like “keepers” to John. They purchased a few smaller minnows and then it was off to gate 8. The seventeen foot wooden Old Town boat slid off the trailer and into Boston’s water supply out in Western Massachusetts. Because of the size of the reservoir and the distance from where it was going to be consumed, low powered gas engines for fishing were allowed on the reservoir. There were no water skiers. The wooden Old Town boat putted out toward a predetermined spot that Stanley and Ed had determined from topographical maps would be good fishing spots where there would be ledges with large drop offs.

“Come up and steer the boat while I prepare my bait” Stanley called to John. “See where that big tree is on the other side of the reservoir? Just keep the boat on course toward that tree.”

Stanley knelt down and grabbed one of the big bait fish from the galvanized metal bucket. He took out the largest hook that John had ever seen. With the bait fish in one hand and the hook in the other hand, Stanley proceeded to insert the hook through the mouth of the fish and up through the top of the head pulling some extra line through. He then sewed the hook down the back of the fish until the hook was at the tail.  The hook was attached to the largest clear filament line John had ever seen.

“If you put the hook through the gills like most fishermen do, the bait won’t swim true. The big trout will notice that there is something wrong and they won’t hit on your bait.” Stanley attached the filament leader to an enormous swivel that was already attached to the stainless steel line and pulled out a five lb weight he attached at the swivel. He swung the bait fish out into the water along side of the boat. It swam straight and true. But then Stanley pulled the bait out of the water.

“Look over here” Stanley instructed pointing toward the water, “trees”. John looked and a few yards from the surface of the crystal clear water was a forest of stumps. Then a rock wall appeared and the stumps disappeared.

“During the depression the state took four towns by eminent domain – they took the land and made everybody move out. The buildings were moved or burned and all the trees where the water was going were cut down. With the drought going on now the water is down about 100 feet from full and you can see this stuff on the bottom in some places. The fishing gets better because there is less place for the fish. If you troll through the forest, you are going to get snagged and maybe lose you line or your pole if you’re not careful. Here is your pole. You fish off the back.” Stanley handed John a light fishing rod with a night crawler on a “normal” size hook. The large baits were down on the bottom now with Ed’s off on one side and Stanley’s on the other. John pulled out his book and didn’t really care if he caught anything. He was here for the ride.

After a few minutes of trolling, Stanley’s rig quivered in its holder. He picked up the rod and felt the line with one finger. The rod bent and instantly Stanley pulled the tip of the rod toward the front of the boat.

“I got him” said Stanley “reel in the lines and shut off the motor”. Ed had already shut off the motor and was busy reeling in his line. John was reeling in too. The fish would make moves as it was being pulled up to entangle the lines. Stanley brought the tip of his pole up and reeled in as he dropped it down to create slack. If normal tackle were used, this could take hours to exhaust the fish without putting so much strain on the line that it snaps. With the steel line this was not a problem. Brute force lifted the fish toward the boat.

It was a ballet of two fishermen who would exchange roles depending upon who hooked the prey. This time Stanley was the lead and Ed was the supporting cast. John’s role was to stay out of the way. Ed grabbed the net and watched where the fish forced the dance. This time the fish danced under the boat from one side to the other never giving Ed a chance to net him until Stanley worked the fish far enough out and Ed had him in the net. A yard of trout. Brown trout.

“That there is a keeper!” Stanley shouted and smiled and laughed.

Chapter 19 - 1943 Stanley & Edwin to the Pacific; Joe to ACORN 29

Chapter 19 Version 1

1943

“This man is a graduate of Class “A” Machinist Mate School Wentworth Institute, Boston Mass. And he has been trained for the rate of MM2c and by the direction of the Chief of naval personnel must be assigned to duty where his specialized training may be fully utilized. The attention of commands to which this graduate is transferred is particularly invited to this directive.” –Standard Transfer Order 11/8/1943 for Joseph Zywar

“I have my orders to report to the Submarine Training School in New London, Conn. “ said Joe to his buddy Chet as they marched from their hotel at Kenmore Square down Huntington Avenue in Boston to the Wentworth Institute campus.  It was early November and the raw cold was beginning to creep into Boston. The sailors marched in formation to and from their classes at Wentworth as they had each day for the past sixteen weeks. Joe graduated a respectable 122 out of 228 sailors in his class putting him near the middle of his class. Joe earned a rating change to F2c(MM) – Fireman 2^nd Class (Machinist Mate).

“Me too!” said Chet who was from Hatfield, Mass.

“If we are based out of New London, we won’t be too far from home. We also won’t be living on a pier in New York waiting for orders” said Joe.

It was a good plan but short lived for both men as neither man made it through the first week in New London. On November 12, 1943 Joe was “Examined and found NOT physically qualified for submarine duty” due to elevated blood pressure. The standards for submarine duty were higher than the requirements for duty on a surface ship. He was sent to Pier 92 in Manhattan to await orders. On November 30, the Queen Mary docked at Pier 92 and nearly 12,000 combat engineer troops boarded and headed for England to train for D-Day. They became experts at quickly constructing Treadway and Bailey bridges. The hollow concrete caissons for constructing a port at Utah Beach in Normandy were already being fabricated so they could be floated across the channel soon after the beaches were secured. This would maintain the flow of supplies without having to capture one of the heavily fortified existing ports. The Queen Mary made her crossings alone without protection of a convoy as she was faster than any submarine making the crossing in 5 days and 11 hours averaging over 27 knots. Hitler had a bounty on the Queen Mary and on the Queen Elizabeth of near $250,000 to the submarine commander who could sink either one. Luckily for the Allies, the bounty was never collected.

Joe received his orders to report to ABATU on November 29^th at Lido Beach on Long Island’s southern coast not far from New York City. ABATU stood for Advanced Base Assembly and Training Unit. The military loves their acronyms and Joe was assigned to the ACORN 29 Unit B-5-a. An ACORN unit was an elite unit consisting of between four and five thousand men who repaired, built and maintained airfields captured after a battle. ACORN stands for for Aviation, Construction, Ordnance, Repair, Navy. The Seabees, a Navy construction battalion, would have been assigned to be part of an ACORN unit. The different parts of the unit could be unplugged and moved as the needs of the unit changed making it a very flexible and responsive organizational structure. Joe’s training at Wentworth and his prior experience making aircraft engine parts made him a good match for inclusion in this unit. On 12/6/1943, he began a 10 day training class in gunnery maintenance of 20mm and Thompson submachine guns. It seemed that Joe was finally on his way to war at the end of 1943.


Stanley now found himself in the “Hurry up and wait” mode. He was waiting for his ship and that was all that he was allowed to say. He reported to the Brooklyn Navy Yard in mid-August and waited for two months until his ship was outfitted in Hoboken, New Jersey. The barracks conditions in Brooklyn were cramped as there were up to 4,000 men in a facility built to house 2,500. The USN Rocky Mountain also known as the USN Rocky Mount was a merchant ship being converted to an amphibious force flagship by Bethlehem Steel Company. In the Pacific Theater where the Japanese controlled vast ocean territories from bases on many islands, the strategy would be to engage the enemy by capturing strategic island bases and cut off supplies to islands that were passed by. There were so many assaults needed that a single series of assaults could not be made leaving men, ships and planes waiting while the next assault was planned and the necessary forces were brought into place. Multiple amphibious force flagships were put into place and as one was directing an assault on an island, the others would be back at Pearl Harbor being outfitted for the next assault while the plans were being drawn up. By the end of the war there were 19 amphibious force flagships.

 The USN Rocky Mount ACG-3 was commissioned on Oct 15, 1943. Stanley’s rating was changed from S3c to F2c on his assignment to the ship.  He wrote in his Service Record book:

Transferred to: “Brooklyn Navy Yard to wait for a ship that was being completed. Stayed there for two months – then left on a shake down cruise to Virginia. Ran into a hurricane and was really sea-sick”. Stanley would refer to being sea sick as “feeding the fishes” but he would never feed the fishes again.

By then Stanley knew that he was going off to sea and might not be back for some time so he took his five day annual leave from Nov 3 to Nov 8 and came up to see his wife Jeanette in Easthampton. Jeanette had moved from their apartment at 51 Parsons Street to her parent’s house on Ferry Street. Just before leaving Stanley was picked up by the Shore Patrol in Portsmouth Virginia for being out of uniform because his hat and cuffs were not being worn in regulation manner and that was worth five hours of extra duty when he returned.

The USN Rocky Mount sailed down the east coast and around the western end of Cuba through the Panama Canal and into the Pacific Ocean. On Dec 27, 1943 the ship and crew arrived at Pearl Harbor where inspections of the ship and training of the crew began with great intensity for their first mission.

While Joe and Stanley were training and waiting, cousin Edwin Wojnar was off immediately to join the crew of the USN Reid in July of 1943. After surviving the attack at Pearl Harbor and downing one Japanese plane during the attack, the destroyer Reid patrolled the area islands and provided convoy escort to and from San Francisco. In May of 1942, the Reid was called upon to provide support for actions against the Japanese positions at Kiska Island in Alaska and supported landings at Adak, Alaska sinking Japanese submarine RO-61 on August 31, 1942. This action was part of the Battle of Midway. Then it was off to the South Pacific where the Reid escorted Army troops to Guadalcanal and shelled enemy positions there in January of 1943.

During July of 1943, the Reid was refitted in the Mare Island Shipyard and Edwin joined the crew as a fireman. Mare Island is on the northeast side of San Francisco Bay. The ship did patrols in the Solomon Islands and provided radar information and fighter directions during the assault at Lae, New Guinea on September 4, 1943. She chalked up two enemy plane kills at Finschhafen, New Guinea on September 22, 1943. Support activities for landings at Arawe and Cape Gloucester, New Britain brought 1943 to a close. Edwin would continue to see plenty of action on the Reid in the upcoming year.

Chapter 18 - 1943 Stanley Arrives at Sampson NTS & Joe, Edwin & Stanley's Orders After Bootcamp

Chapter 18 Version 2

1943

The train pulled into the Geneva NY station and Stanley gathered his meager belongings and exited along with most of the other passengers. The only extra item he was toting was a copy of the US Navy brochure that contained instructions on what to bring and what to expect at the Sampson Naval Training Station. He just came with the clothes he was wearing, a deck of cards, pencil and stationary to write back to Jeanette and his mother, five dollars in cash and three cigarettes left in his pack of Camels. He stopped and bought another pack of Camels before moving toward the Greyhound buses bound for Sampson. He could see Seneca Lake. It was big but not as big as the ocean he looked out upon when he was visiting his aunt Tekla in New Bedford. He boarded the bus and it moved east toward Seneca Falls before taking a right hand turn over the Seneca River. From his seat he could see that the lake was a few miles wide but nearly 38 miles long. What he couldn’t see was that it was over 600 feet deep and home to some huge trout but there would be no time for fishing.

To the east of Seneca Lake was Cayuga Lake which was not quite as large. The Seneca River emptied into Cayuga Lake after passing through Seneca Falls, the cradle of the women’s suffrage movement and home to Elizabeth Cady Stanton. The Seneca River then flowed out to the Erie Canal which stretches from Albany to Buffalo and the Great Lakes. To the west of Seneca Lake is Keuka Lake, also known as Crooked Lake with a shape like a Y and steeply sloped banks. The city of Penn Yan lies at the north end of the lake. It was settled by Pennsylvania and Yankee Quakers led by a charismatic and controversial Rhode Islander named Jemima Wilkerson. She called herself the Publick Universal Friend and claimed spiritual unity with God from her experience in a high typhoid fever coma. After the fever, she used an unpronounceable symbol instead of a name. She moved from Rhode Island to Worcester Massachusetts and then to Pennsylvania before moving to the city she called Jerusalem but eventually was named Penn Yan. The local Seneca leader Red Jacket recognized her as the chieftain of the settlers. Red Jacket was later approached by missionaries who wanted to bring Christianity to the Indians of the Seneca Lake area. Red Jacket refused on the basis of the conflict that he saw between rival Christian sects that resulted in the deaths over religious beliefs. Native Americans had their own religion and beliefs that were consistent between the tribes and never resulted in religious conflict according to Red Jacket. He made an eloquent, impassioned and reasoned presentation to the US Senate concerning Indian rights for freedom of religion in 1805. A statue of Red Jacket was erected in Penn Yan.

All of the recruits at Sampson NTS were required to attend service on Sunday. A chaplain would be part of the lives in the military in boot camp and beyond.

“Welcome to Sampson Naval Training Station. The detention center will be your home for the next three weeks. You will be examined here to be sure you have no communicable diseases. You will learn to keep your clothes ship shape. You will undergo physical training. You will take tests to help determine where you will be assigned after completing your basic training…”

Stanley followed his company leader and was issued his navy uniforms which were $119.19 worth of clothes. Replacement clothes would need to be purchased using a clothing allowance included in each pay. He knew from brother Joe’s experience that his civilian clothes would be sent back to his home as they will no longer be needed. Hair would also not be needed and the new recruits would be referred to as skinheads for an obvious reason. Immunization shots were given. Life insurance for $10,000.00 was purchased by 99.5% of recruits. A locker 20” square and 30” high would be assigned to house a recruit’s entire collection of worldly goods. Stanley looked at the full sea bag and wondered how he was ever going to fit everything in the locker. That was the first test and you didn’t move out of the detention center until that was accomplished. The precise folding of everything needed to be mastered to do that storage feat but training was given and eventually, everyone moved on. The brochure instructed recruits not to bring anything of value both due to the possibility of theft and the limited space for storage. Besides, there wasn’t much time for anything but military matters here.

The daily schedule at Sampson was a non-stop parade of assemblies, drills, and training sessions. Training included swimming classes, rifle range, and more technical classes like how to keep a boat headed in the right direction based on a compass heading. Freezing cold with plenty of lake effect snow in the winter and hot in the summer, the spring and the fall were the sweet spots to have boot camp at Sampson. Reveille was at 5:30am and supper was at 5:30pm or 17:30 military time when each company was marched to the mess hall. Evenings were free time if you didn’t have guard duty and were spent studying for placement tests and recovering from exhaustion. Sick call was at 18:00 but every day in the infirmary delayed graduation from boot camp.

Stanley arrived at Sampson on June 9^th, 1943 a few days before Joe completed his basic training. Stanley had been working at Cardanic Company in Easthampton as an electrician for the past six months and he was classified as 1-A on May 13.  He also came with six years of experience as an electrical repairman at Worthington Pump in Holyoke working on automatic relays and machinery. In civilian life he had taken a six week course as a machinist. At the end of boot camp on August 19, 1943, Stanley was assigned aboard the USS Rocky Mountain and was sent to Brooklyn NY with a rating of S2c or Seaman 2nd Class.  A seaman is a general classification performing all jobs on a ship.

Cousin Edwin was actually the first to get assigned to a ship. Edwin was trained as a fireman which in navy terms meant that he was part of a ship’s crew that ran the coal boilers or diesel engines of the ship. A fireman’s rating is higher than a seaman’s rating as the job is more physical as well as more technical in nature. He was assigned to the USS Reid, a destroyer on active duty in the Pacific Theater. The Reid had an early initiation into the war as it was involved in the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor. 

Joe was inducted voluntarily on April 7^th and was called up and arrived at Sampson on April 13.  He arrived as an Apprentice Seaman and left with a rating of F3c – Fireman Third Class. More importantly, Joe had qualified to go onto additional school for four months at Wentworth Institute in Boston toward becoming a machinist mate being trained on motors, boilers and pumps. The training would start on July 14^th. There was a part of Sampson NTS where boot camp graduates stayed in barracks until receiving their orders. Joe stayed for about a month overlooking Seneca Lake while Stanley was in his three week stint in the detention center.

This was Joe’s first experience at what he would later call the military’s policy of “Hurry up and wait” but would not be the last.

Chapter 17 - 1942 Drafted to Sampson NTS

Chapter 17 Version 1

1942

The car pulled up to 112 Ferry Street before any hint of light was poking over the horizon where the Connecticut River flowed past Mt. Tom. It was 5:15 and Joe Zywar was ready with his coffee and lunch and walked down the cold porch stairs and into the front seat of the car. The car was making its last stop of the morning to pick up its sixth occupant before starting down toward East Street for the ride down to East Hartford in Connecticut. There was a clear division of labor on the commute. The three back seat occupants slept until their arrival at 6:30. The two riders in the front style bench seat had the job of keeping the driver awake for the ride. They all pooled their eight gallons per week of gas ration stamps to allow the group to make their daily trip. The car sported a green B sticker indicating that they were industrial workers essential to the war effort. The car averaged just under 35 miles per hour which was Victory Speed designed to save rubber tire wear. At the end of East Street past the Oxbow, the car pulled onto US Route 5. Traffic at this time was seldom an issue. There was a half hour buffer so they were never late as the shift did not start until 7:00 am. Everybody was awake when Joe started the morning conversation:

“I don’t think we have any chance of being drafted even with the expanded draft ages. We are indispensable to the war effort in our jobs. If we get drafted, who is going to make the aircraft engines?”

Until November 1942, the draft included white men 21 thru 36 years old. Of those men, 20 percent were ineligible because they were illiterate and an additional 30 percent were 4F – unfit due to physical conditions. Blacks were not included in the draft. Now 18-20 year olds could be drafted along with men aged 37. Blacks were drafted but for non-combat roles like being cooks or loading ammunition which was a very dangerous assignment. Joe was 19 and had been working at Pratt & Whitney Aircraft for nearly two years. He was working as a machinist making airplane engine gears on a lathe. Joe’s logic for not being drafted was impeccable until he received a letter from the President of the United States in April of 1943:

     Greeting:

     Having submitted yourself to a local board composed of your neighbors for the purpose of determining your availability for training and service in the land or naval forces of the United States, you are hereby notified that you have now been selected for training and service therein.

Joe answered the phone and it was his cousin Edwin Wojnar:

“ Hi Edwin…you too!...when do you have to report?...me too!..let’s go together to Springfield…Stanley thinks that because he is married to Jeanette that he won’t be drafted…so far he has been right…”

and Stanley was not drafted…until May

Even being drafted, there were still options to consider. All of the recruits were lined up alphabetically by height. They then counted off by threes. The ones went into the army. The twos went into the navy. And the lucky threes went into the marines. Joe was a one. Army draftees usually ended up in the infantry. But there are always options. Joe exercised the option of signing up for the navy reserve. A two year enlistment could stretch out long after two years as there was a law passed that all in the armed services would be retained for a maximum of six months after the end of hostilities. But he was able to specify training preferences. Joe would also get to go home and wait to be called up. His activation was swift and by the end of the following week, both Joe and Edwin were on their way to Sampson Naval Training Station in the New York Finger Lakes Region near the city of Geneva NY. Stanley followed suit and arrived at Sampson NTS about a month later for his eight weeks of basic training. They all started as Apprentice Seamen in the naval reserve.

‘Mail call! Jones…Laprade…Bertollini…Zywar…Zywar?”

Joe spoke up “Is that Z-Y-W-A-R? Zywar” using the Polish pronunciation Zi (as in igloo) v (there is no v in Polish – the w has a v sound as in vodka which in Polish is spelled wodka) er (as in water which in Polish is never mixed with wodka).

“No this is Z-Y-W-A-R. Zywar” using the navy pronunciation Zi (as in ice) war (as in war which was appropriate for the time).

“From now on sailor, that is how your name is pronounced.”

And that pronunciation was brought back to the family in Easthampton and used ever since.