by timothy langley
November 20, 2024
While some pals were growing callouses strumming their first six-string, or working at the pool, or partying at Woodstock, the summer of ’69 found me on an ocean-going Merchant Marine ship…. as a deckhand.
To be fair, though, that sounds far-more romantic than it actually was: thirty days solidly entombed inside this WWII-built massive, moving bucket’s engine room unfortunately… not swashbuckling on an open deck.
Take it from me: there is nothing romantic about any ship’s hottest, most damning place, let alone for four weeks in open-ocean! But for a 16 year-old pimply-faced kid (at that time) confronted with the same faces of 28 crusty, salty, modern-day pirates, stifling temperatures, nothing to see but the inside guts of a rusted cargo ship… and daily, a too-far-off horizon… how the hell did I get into this!?
As a brat moving from base-to-base maybe 7 times before hitting the family’s latest, far-flung-outpost, landing in Okinawa in 1964 was the beginning of our longest station as a family. Later, by ‘68, my oldest (of three) brothers, Chris, was drafted…earmarked as a grunt slinging a Browning Automatic…for Vietnam.
My father was doing time in Vietnam & rarely around, my poor Mom scrambling to manage 7 other (less-deserving) siblings; as Number 5, I basically had the screaming-run of the island like only a proper street-urchin possibly could. I had by then mastered the island’s pidgin-english, was way too-deep into an exotic form of hand-combat that sprouted here, and stupid-enough to get into fistfights with drunk g.i.
In retrospect, upon seeing the movie, “Officer and Gentleman”, my life seems like Richard Gere’s character “Mayo(nnaise)” must have been before he landed at boot-camp. What a great movie: a guy lost, thrown into the Real World, nothing to loose, not knowing which way is up: I relate a lot with Gere’s character… spinning reverse back-kick and all.
Even back then, the military had a rule preventing immediate family members in a warzone at the same time a’la “Saving Private Ryan”. And so that was why my brave, valiant father-of-eight volunteered for Vietnam. One can be forgiven for asking, “what in the hell was he thinking?!?” because my Mom asked that a lot, too.
While this decision left us on Okinawa for his rare R&R breaks, it also kept Chris securely out of harm’s way. Apparently, Dad knew far-far more about what was going on there than he ever let on. He almost got killed twice, losing two Orderlies in the process. Only much later did we learn this, of another breastplate on an already well-decorated chest … from the same incident.
The late ‘60s were not the best time to serve in the military: President LBJ was bombing the North, TET ’69 spelled disaster for the US, a full-throttle military effort was launched to support a corrupt South Vietnamese President, spiking casualties incited protests back in the States and huge, violent ones on Okinawa, too.
As with those of my friends, our fathers were stationed for 2~3-year tours on Okinawa as pilots, logistics, doctors, professional soldiers… whatever. Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines: Okinawa had it all in spades…. still does.
As kids, we would lay on the grass to watch overburdened B-52 Stratofortress’s circle high overhead until in V formation, then disappear for bombing runs 6 hours away. Screaming exhaust-pumping Phantoms crisscrossed, always in pairs. Out of nowhere, the thump-thump-thumping of Huey helicopters would reverberate in our chests as they appeared and disappeared at treetop level without notice. Soldiers, some 18~19-year-old kids themselves, in camouflage on the streets and in the villages. Impossibly black SR-71 spy planes screeched-in (like the UFOs they were) still glowing red from the friction-heat their speeds produced. Truly, amazing what an experience I had growing up on this overburdened, hot & muggy tropical island.
So, one morning while shoveling-down breakfast, an out-of-the-blue WATTS-call (a kind of wireless-relay) from Vietnam stopped time fast. In mid-mouthful… utensils frozen in mid-stroke…. no one dared swallow or breathe. Not knowing if this was good or bad (but of course always thinking it must be “bad”) we braced ourselves as only brats can ever truly appreciate.
It was my soldier-father, announcing in a crackling barely audible voice his just-received Orders: we would be moving back to the USA in 4 weeks time. “Start packing.”
Oh my god, the joy: we would leave, our banishment at an end, and I would go to a _real_ high school in Atlanta, Georgia (an alien, unheard-of-place to me at this point!).
Having discussed this eventuality endlessly over the last 5 years, dwelling on it, envisioning how glorious life would THEN be, to pass through Tokyo on an idyllic family-journey. Well, this was always an ever-exciting thought stuck in the back of everyone’s minds since arriving. Now a reality, here I stood at the masterfully ripe age of 16 and the prospect of going … together with my family-of-eight … well, it was less enticing than when first imagined.
I kissed Mom “goodbye” (the last kiss I gave my Mother for a long, long time, it later turned out) and grabbing my olive-drab satchel of books, began my climb up a dew-sprinkled path cut into the hillside, my daily trek to school.
Today was different, though, triggered by Dad’s barely intelligible WATTs call. I made my way up a verdant slope, surrounded by jungle, our bunker-of-a-house resting in a narrow valley surrounded by all manner of ancient tombs, some crumbling. I caught myself taking a mental snapshot as I passed these (by now sacrilegiously well-explored) burial mounds. So spiritually something was so different this morning that I clearly recall the sensation even today…eons-and-eons later.
I crested the hill to await arrival of the ramshackle, smoke-coughing old Army bus that transported me and two dozen of my classmates to school. This 30 minute ride took us down a winding, death-defying course to the sea’s edge. Our destination: a Quonset-hutted, barbed-wire-encircled camp occupying a desolate point on the coast, as if hidden for no one to see (background profile photo on my FB). I glanced back over my shoulder… thoughts of the impossible firing synapses in my brain.
A truly stunning sight: past the familiar carpet of green, spread like a blanket over everything… Beyond…. down to the beaches, 15 clicks away; then further, to the waves crashing white onto the submerged reef of coral. Here, we learned to snorkel, endlessly exploring rusted-out, bullet-riddled wrecks.
This shelf, totally exposed at low-tide, a protective tidal zone that stretched almost a mile out in a line exactly mimicking the craggy coastline. From there, a deep-blue swath all the way to the horizon. And plopped onto this placid sea here-and-there, ships toiling into/out of the port at Naha, miles away and out-of-sight.
Plumes of clouds, mirrored onto this sea, reflected my thoughts: the prospect of leaving my island after almost 5 years thrust me, just like this trick on the eyes, into a back-then-forth, rightside-then-upsidedown jumble.
An itch took hold, somewhat involuntarily, somewhat actively. With older brother Joe (brother Number 3), a scheme and a plot thickened and, immediately after school, the two of us made a beeline to the bustling Navy port facilities at Naha. We both knew what we wanted. The itch had morphed.
The evil-thinking that captured our imagination didn’t require much ignition because precisely a year earlier, brother Bob (brother Number 2) jumped on a Merchant Marine ship and worked his way across the Pacific to San Francisco. This trip, of which he regaled us with all sorts of real and richly made-up detail (as only an older brother could!), included a secret detour to Haight/Ashbury before completing this trek that ended-up in Portland (University of Oregon). Through this disembowelment process, influential Bob’s inevitable, irreversible separation from us, from The Family, was launched. We suddenly longed for this self-administered disembowelment, too. Strange… but true.
Mighty Bob, being of course our hero and role-model, etched footsteps that compelled, indeed dictated (!) our path to follow. Bob’s experience obviously not only held a powerful appeal to us but, because we moved every 2~3 years (saying “goodbye” time and again to newly found best friends), and in fact only 12 mere months separated Joe-and-me… well, we were as thick as thieves as you can perhaps imagine.
We tumbled into the massive Naha navy port to be awestruck at the ships lined-up: every imaginable shape and size on-loading & off-loading cargo. A beehive of activity, olive-drab vehicles hurriedly scurrying, huge cranes stacking containers shipside, others cranking bundles gathered together in massively dangling pouches woven of hemp, thick as an arm; lines and lines of military equipment awaiting shipment to the Vietnam warzone six-days away; military ships, destroyers, a lone, glistening-white hospital ship, a submarine slung low in a special berth. My god, what a sight!
On the opposite end, unwanted, unwashed delinquents: dozens of Merchant Marine ships. Lined-up and segregated like slaves, each suffering from their own individual stages of deterioration.
Flashing our I.D.s in practiced unison, we strode past the guards with an aplomb that didn’t match our teen years. We trekked the half mile to where manifests were stapled to a huge bulletin board, hanging like criminals between two telephone poles; yellow sheets that identified the individual ships, their cargos, destinations, and dates of departure. Five were destined for America: targets identified.
We boarded the first ship with trepidation hidden by (again) an undeserved gusto. Unmolested, we just walked-on; no security, no guards. After 5 flights and three separate decks, always going up towards the wheelhouse. A rough-looking guy smoking a cigarette suddenly, his foot hiked up on the guardrail. “Excuse me, where’s the Captains Quarters?” He didn’t even care… he just wordlessly nodded in the direction of yet another set of stairs bolted to the side, signs of rust here-and-there.
Up, until finally the stairs ended. A huge room greeted us at the top of this conning-tower where inch-thick plated windows faced the forward bow, a massive wheel for steering erupting from the floor: the wheelhouse… the entire ship splayed out in front of us. Not a soul there. Turning toward the stern, the first door was stenciled in black “Captain’s Quarters”; Pay Dirt… and hearts suddenly in throats.
Rapping on the door, and repeating this same exact saga on the four following ships gave rise to an increasing feeling of doom. Each-and-every door that creaked-open resulted in the Captain taking one look (even before my slightly older brother could finish our practiced introduction), immediately asking our ages and then, promptly, growling to us to (in a manner of speaking) take long walk off a short pier. Some used far more colorful language.
Still, we were determined and besides, what the hell: we are already here and more than halfway into it… so we steeled ourselves and trekked from one rejection to another. The final ship, the worse-looking of the lot, loomed in front of us, filling even our peripheral vision. It was huge … and menacing.
Again we climbed up the gangplank and went directly to the Captain’s quarters. Knowing our way by now, but still with apprehension hidden deeply inside, a knock on the paint-peeling metal door was to be our final.
A grizzled old man in a stained tee-shirt appeared, smelling of tobacco and beer-breath: he inside a dark oval doorway, the two of us standing outside, the afternoon sun hitting our backs. The massive port six stories immediately behind us (kind of suggestively). I stood straight, “We’re looking for work, Captain…. heard you might be shorthanded…”, my brother lied convincingly.
His piercing eyes gave me the once-over, then shifted to Joe. He scratched his three-day growth and admitted three of his guys (he said “assholes”) had jumped-ship in Vietnam and admitted he needed replacements. “You got the job, but you need to find one more to take their place; anchors-up at noon.” “Holy hell, that was easy!” we both thought.
We looked quickly at each other, our voices shooting up another octave involuntarily. “Thank you, sir, we’ll be here in the morning…”. But as we turned to leave quickly (as if we had just successfully stolen something), the Captain cleared his throat nosily, stopping us in mid-turn. He spit laboriously over the chainlink barrier between us and oblivion, and watched a huge wad sail the distance as if in reverie; it was a long time. Then the inevitable “How old are you?”, he finally managed. “I’m seventeen, sir!” said Joe with maybe a bit too much force, attempting to conceal the obvious. The Captain’s gaze was locked on me. “Thirty days at sea. Three of you… ” he emphasized; then, “…the first port we hit is Charleston… you have to get off there because you’re underage, you got that?” His eyes never left mine.
Charleston, a mere 500 miles from Atlanta! “Understood, sir.” With that, we lumbered down as quickly as our legs would take us… down this flimsy ladder hanging as if by threads to the port below. My heart pounding, chest exploding: wings couldn’t have taken us quicker (and more thankfully!) to solid ground.
Admittedly, the prospect handed to us was a bit more than a simple challenge: less than 18 hours before anchors-up: who to get to join us? are our passports okay? how about shots? will Mom flip-out: (yes); will Dad blow his top: (decidedly) … an explosion of thoughts. Out of breath, I shot a look at my brother once we were on the ground … with great relief, his eyes were ablaze! “Thank god…” I remember thinking, “…I’m not the only one crazy here!”. And off we sprinted, racing each other in unbridled exhilaration!
By the time that it took us to get home, we had narrowed-down possible other-victims of our diabolical plot. While Joe worked the phone, Mom was in a tizzy. “Wait until your Father hears this!” she said threateningly. We’d launch this make-it-or-break it call tonight…to a strict disciplinarian we hadn’t seen in months, and in the meantime, we secured another collaborator and steeled ourselves for the Dad-call.
That evening, we called my father. Normally, we would beat around the bush, maybe make a suggestion for him to consider before respectfully stating our case. This time, however, we were too excited and besides, time just didn’t provide this luxury: the WATTS-call was on-the-clock. With Mom looking on anxiously, Joe (being older by a massively significant 12 months) just rolled into it: “Can me and Timmy have permission to skip the family trip and work aboard this old freighter, meet you and the family in Atlanta in 6 weeks?”.
Just reflecting on this now, 50 years later, makes my head swoon! Who in their right minds would EVER let their kids so such a thing?!? Now a father of 4 myself, I reject this maniacal idea out-of-hand: what kind of insanity is this?!… I would definitely, emphatically, say “NO!”
My god, how things have changed.
Without much of a pause, he simply told that us we were now old enough to make our own decisions (this was the first father-son talk either of us had, and the Ol’ Man seemed somehow different… distant).
Much to our surprise (and later admiration), in a solemn tone rarely used in talking with us, the Colonel told us he had men our ages under his command to protect, that there was a lot going on, and he needed to focus his thoughts on them. “…so write to your Mother because she will worry, and get to Atlanta safely.” I can’t begin to describe the awe and relief that hit us. We had all the permission we needed. My Mother’s stonehard gaze belied her fuming.
By 11 the next morning, Rick (the other victim, the Provost Marshal’s eldest son) arrived with us at Naha Port to begin our adventure to cross the world’s largest ocean aboard this bedraggled old ship, the Duke Victory. In fact, we got there as the gangplank was being cranked starboard. In a panic, we had to sprint from the parking lot! And while it only struck me later, I imagine now how my poor Mother must have felt, seeing us run awkwardly as we were burdened with duffle bags crammed with cloths & whatever: her two boys, towards the unfathomable… maybe never to be seen again? I regret now, consumed as I was with the crew looking on, for sprinting away without so much as a kiss good-bye. Mothers deserve far better than what I gave her is a thought I still harbor today.
Once aboard, we were quickly guided into separate crew-quarters: Joe to one room, Rick another, me even farther removed: four bunks in tightly compartmentalized identical spaces… separating us from the get-go. These cabins ran along an interior steel-encased corridor, the smell of marine paint and diesel fuel filling the air.
The Bosons Mate, a guy who looked exactly like Mr. Clean in the ammonia commercial (complete with the bold golden ear-ring) gathered us to assign positions aboard the ship.
Two stations were general shipmen, “Able-Bodied-Seamen” they were called. The other was as an engineroom hand, tasked with maintaining and fixing the ship’s massive engines—no doubt the least desirable of jobs aboard. We drew straws to determine who got what: I drew the shortest. Brother Joe and Rick looked at each other with an unhidden grin of relief.
My job, I quickly learned, was “Wiper”, the lowest of the pecking order. With Joe and Rick looking on, the Boson’s Mate described the work, distinctly different from the Deckhand jobs these two won. That he capped-off his description with “… but in recognition of the conditions and the labor you have to endure, you get $2 dollars more each hour than your smirking friends here…”, provided little comfort.
Work in the engineroom started right away, tugs were already towing us into open water. Engineroom work included 5 others (compared to 20 Deckhands): Engineer, Assistant Engineer, two oilers, another Wiper… working in shifts around the clock to keep the diesel-fed steam turbines churning.
The Boson’s Mate tossed me a pile of folded clothes and pointed (using his chin in a jerk) to a pair of heavy boots in the corner, then left me alone in my crewroom. The other Wiper was a stout muscle of a man, in self-exile & hiding from a murder he committed in Peru years earlier. Never left the ship, even when in port. Only he and I occupied this four-bunk room: not really a luxury. I initially ascribed our segregation to shifts being so distinctly different from everyone else’s (4hrs on, 8hrs off, 4hrs on, 8hrs off… every day). I eventually learned we also stank more, triggered by showers after work that first necessitated a kerosine towel-off. His times “off” were my times “on”. We never shared any words during the entire voyage.
In any event, 10 minutes later, already sweating in the heavy gear I was wearing, I stumbled and ricocheted along the narrow corridor as the ship began to gently pitch and yaw, down 6 flights of claustrophobically narrow metal stairways, always down, always the din and commotion from down below growing ominously louder and more insistent.
Entering one containment entailed opening a sealed door, climb through a narrow oval opening, turn around to seal again, and continue to the next one… deeper, louder, the smell of diesel permeating everything.
I genuinely had no idea what was waiting for me, but the signals were not getting better. I braced myself, pushing through spiderwebs of thoughts as I made my way. A will-crushing “what did I get myself into THIS time?” incessantly in pursuit.
Finally, into a gaping maw: a last hatchway revealed an encased cavern packed with machinery, tubes, hissing pipes, the sound of tremendous pounding, and a blast of heat that physically rocked me back. At this portal, a scaffolding of sorts, metal grate-footing of slats, 30 feet off the engineroom floor; a factory compressed into a closet.
In the center below, through a cloud of steam I spied two big men dressed like me. One, noticing the intrusion, thrust up a beefy gloved-hand in what looked like a salute: with palm facing-up, he clenched his fist twice as if squishing an orange to motion me down. It was not a salute, but a command. The noise and the heat were overbearing.
Thirty-feet down, into the bowel of the ship I clumsily lumbered. I could see now a massive shaft, far beneath the metal gangplanks upon which I and all the machinery & equipment floated. The slowly rotating shaft, a solid gun-metal meter thick, connected the pistons of the engine to the propellers, the flippers of this beast.
The ship was swaying, a routine I would come to memorize as I learned to walk bowlegged, know the hot-spots, and the cooler ones, too.
Once on dry land, in fact, this habit stuck with me even for weeks afterwards. I learned to sleep on my stomach, too, for a far far longer period, with my feet tucked in between the mattress and the frame. This tactic evolved to prevent my head from bouncing over and over again into my bunk’s headboard as the ship yawed endlessly… a habit I didn’t break until much later in my own bed at home! Funny how the body masters certain things without you even noticing. ..not the “haha” kind-of-funny, the other kind. Anyway…
Once down, the Engineer cupped his hands to my ears so I could hear, “You the new Wiper?” he yelled at me. “Yes sir,” I answered. “Don’t call me “sir” he yelled back.
He walked me singlefile through the entire engine room along a maze of guarded planks that only allowed for one, showing me were everything was: I didn’t understand a word. And that’s not only because I had no idea how anything worked, but because I could only hear about 20% of whatever was being said. The fact that I was bunking with a murderer was another mind-numbing distraction, too, I guess… but I digress…
We worked next to scorching machinery, Union regulations requiring us to wear full body jumpsuits, boots, and gloves to protect ourselves from burns. Our only salvation came from air ducts that channeled fresh surface air down the six stories to stations where the vents poured, our little places of reprieve. We would stand there, gulping air as long as we could before needing to move onto our next task—it never seemed long enough. Sweat constantly streamed from my face… I learned to tuck a towel into my shirt collar, circumnavigating (and protecting) my neck.
We worked 12 hours a day. Being on a ship presents limited opportunities to do anything else so work occupied more like 16 hours: one can only sleep so much. So we worked as much as possible to cash-in on that juicy overtime pay. For a sixteen-year-old, this was the best paying summer job I could ever hope to find, but boy, did I work for it.
Our trip from Okinawa to Charleston was scheduled to take roughly thirty days, mostly isolated in the middle of the Pacific. Lonely and boring as it was, it still provided a kind of peaceful panic in being that far away from anything or anyone. Plenty of time to reflect… and given the sometimes dangerous situations that arose with regular frequency, such reflection seemed to come-up a lot.
Rick and Joe shifts included stints as night watchmen so I’d join them in between my shifts. The stars! They blanketed the night sky; even satellites that crept across the vault shone bright. Together, we would sit on the tip of the bow as the ship, totally-darkened (no lights so lookout’s eyes night-vision could kick-in) cut through the waves, agitating the phosphoresce and making the water below sparkle like underwater fireworks. Rocketing-up then diving down, we scoured the darkness for other darkened ships, and enjoy the span of the Milky Way. Neil Armstrong actually set foot on the moon during this journey. To this day, those conversations, that rocketing, diving forward sensation, those memories are favorite recollections. I guess I grew-up a lot during that seemingly unending voyage. I longed to see the horizon grow closer however.
Then one day, before it finally did, something wonderful and delightful happened!
About twenty-five days into our journey, the air … it changed: suddenly a whiff… a scent… a suggestion of green, of life! Could it be that for which I was so desperate?
Ship lights had begun to appear then disappear at night, during the day, we’d see some on the horizon: traffic, when before there had been none! Then, about three evenings later, the cry of a deckhand, “Land!” and the coastline gradually, slyly appeared on the horizon’s edge. Pins of light from the shore penetrated. The sun, unseen far over the globe, emanated rays piercing at an impossibly oblique angle to the collection of clouds gathered along the emerging horizon in front of us… it must have been about 3:00 a.m. Thin lines of colors exploded, kissing the curvature…far far away. Earthy scents filled the nostrils, which I remember breathing-in hungrily The excitement this triggered, honestly, was indescribable.
Just like a child struggles to sleep before Christmas, I fought to fall asleep when I knew the Panama Canal would be there when I awoke. The next morning, sure enough, our ship was in a queue that stretched for miles in both directions, steaming forward to pass through the narrow passage up through the locks, onto a massive lake in the highlands, then down another set of locks… until 18 hours later, tugged into the Gulf of Mexico. Next thing you knew, a new face expectedly climbed aboard: the Pilot.
Whenever a ship navigates through the Panama Canal, a specialist guides the vessel through the Canal’s difficult path. The channel walls are narrow and leave little room for error; mechanical mules are tied to the ship that tug us through the opened, then closed, then flooded channels, one after the other, rising higher and higher in elevation with each step. Ships understandably must follow certain complex protocols and while these onboard experts helped negotiate the unfamiliar waters, everyone on the ship took a daylong break to watch the scenery pass by. It was lovely just to see green again, people on shore, families picnicking. Life, in fact, did exist.
With our ship through the Canal, we could finally begin our journey through the noticeably warmer waters of the Gulf to Charleston, South Carolina. Being just three days away from US soil felt almost depressing. The summer I spent with Rick and Joe was ending, and the journey of a lifetime was coming to an end. Arriving in port, we said our goodbyes to the men we worked with (none of them seemed to care) and hopped on a bus for our first taste of freedom in Virginia Beach, loaded with the cash we couldn’t spend on-board. What a lovely couple of days followed!
Looking back at that summer.. well, it was something I still think about to this day. The hard work, sweat and camaraderie all conspire to instill in me an understanding of how “work” is related to “significance”: work on this ship and the challenges it presented in an unending avalanche have stuck with me.
These days, working and running a business in Japan, operating at a delicate & high level in a second-language, is hard work too. But one-thing always builds on another and in fact, anyone who is truly striving to succeed here in Japan is bound to run into obstacles, failures, language difficulties, individuals-who-want-what-you-have, or individuals who simply (for whatever reason) have decided this-or-that about you. The point is to strive in any event: just do the best you can. You are here for a reason—go discover it.
I am forever grateful for this chance to span an ocean and have a proper right-of-passage into adulthood, something that was by today’s standards truly unique and mind-altering. I hope you don’t mind me sharing these thoughts.
