girlfriends, and life was real good. Then all of a sudden, I made third class and the
 bottom fell out. They set me on board the most dreadful little ship you have ever
 seen in your life. It was a destroyer-type tender.

CJ: What was it called?

RJ: It was the U.S.S. Childs. It had been an old destroyer and they had taken a couple
 of the stacks out and put a 100,000 gallons of aviation gasoline in there. I am telling
 you it was sitting on top of a bomb. Surprisingly, the ship lasted through World War
 II. But anyway, it was miserable. And all of a sudden I had to stand watches. But
 I was the helmsman. I was steering the ship. I found out something else about that,
 because I was on watch at midnight one night and we were going through the islands.
 I was not sleepy, but I became hypnotized by watching the compass. I got forty-five
 degrees off course and almost ran the ship aground. Fortunately, I woke up in time
 and got back on course without getting caught.

 But, luck reared its beautiful head again, I was only on that bucket for six weeks. I
 was transferred off it to the most wonderful squadron: VP-22. It was a very unique
 PBY squadron with the most memorable group of people I have ever met in my life,
 wonderful people. One of my shipmates was Admiral Thomas H. Moorer, who was
 then a lieutenant. He was later chairman of the joint chiefs of staff for four years.
 He is still alive; eighty years old and he is hard as a rock. He is a wonderful friend.
 I chat with him occasionally. But anyway, I got with this squadron and I spent a year
 and a half there. [It was] wonderful.

 But, before that, let me back up to 1939. On September 1, 1939, war was declared
 between England and France and Germany. It was kind of uncomfortable. We were
 there in the Pacific which was an awful long way away, and everybody had an opinion
 of the Japanese: that they would be so easy to take care of if we had any problems.
 Nobody thought anything much about it.

 Then came December 1941 and we got a real surprise. The fleet had moved out in
 the early part of 1941 to Lahaina Road, which was down in Maui (Hawaii). The
 fleet was anchoring out down there and that was not a very safe place to be because
 you had a lot of water there and it was nice and deep. Japanese submarines could
 have really decimated the whole fleet there; I mean, they would have been gone
 forever. So they decided they would move them up to Pearl [Harbor] about eight
 months before the war started. In other words, it was about February or March.
 Well, this was most exciting because every Friday afternoon the fleet would steam
 majestically into Pearl Harbor. [There was] just a stream of them coming in. Of
 course, I was off duty at 1:00 and I would go down on the seaplane ramp and stand
 and watch these ships come in and maneuver to their berths. The battleships tied
 up to Ford Island, right in front of my barracks. The rest of the fleet would tie up
 in the various docks or anchor out in the stream or what have you. They would do


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