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NORTH COAST TIMES E A G L E , SUMMER/FALL 2000
STEPHEN ROTH (LONDON, 1943)
BILL CRAWFORD (USA, 1944)
futures and decided to tear up Astoria, which was their last
American port."
The Gambier Bay has the unfortunate distinction of being
the only American aircraft carrier sunk by surface fire It was shot
to pieces by Japanese battleships and cruisers at the battle for
Leyte Gulf in late October 1944, which was the largest sea battle
in history and ended with the virtual destruction of the Japanese
Navy — a spectacular victory for the USA despite heavy losses
and serious blunders. As with the cruiser Astoria, survivors of
Gambier Bay have met at CRMM for reunions at the replica of
their lost ship, a society of sudden swimmers.
No longer currently on display in the Naval Gallery is
an example of the other savage undersea war that was fought
simultaneous with the Battle of the Atlantic, the World War 2
diesel submarine USS Icefish, which sank three Japanese
merchant vessels in five combat patrols, underscoring the virtual
destruction of Japanese shipping by U.S. submarines — at the
cost of 52 subs and crews — and rescued six shotdown pilots.
Rolf Klep's cutaway drawing of a typical World War 2 submarine
(also removed from display) shows all its compartments, engines,
submersion tanks and torpedo tubes. A similar X-ray rendering by
Klep of a WW2 destroyer is on a wall next to USS Knapp.
Rounding out the gallery's World War 2 fleet is a model
PT boat, a plywood torpedo carrying vessel perhaps the closest
Americans came to suicide craft in the war, made famous by
John F. Kennedy; and an attack dog type of ship, a destroyer
type converted submarine chaser. In a glassed case near twin
mounted 20-mm cannon that point skyward in perpetual wait for
Japanese warplanes is a photograph of a Navy divebomber flying
over what is now Clatsop County Airport. Photos of sailors on
wartime seaduty (such as Astoria's crew members) are on the
walls, and the radio broadcast of President Franklin Roosevelt's
"Day of Infamy" speech to Congress the day after Pearl Harbor,
declaring war on Japan, is repeated interminably.
A poignant yet routine sight of the war years in Astoria
when American servicemen crowded into the city and filled out
Navy crews, aenal squadrons and combat infantry shipped to
hostile shores was described by Paul Barkman
"One day in 1944 when my patrol boat, which was about
50 miles offshore, spotted a large troopship that had come out of
the Columbia River and was heading across the Pacific.We could
see hundreds of soldiers at the rails, staring at us or looking back
at the land many of them would never see again. I thought I knew
how they felt and how they must have yearned to be in my place
aboard a Coast Guard patrol boat that never left the USA or ever
had a shot fired at it."
The war against Nazi Germany ended May 8. 1945. with
the defeat and eradication of Nazism (Its periodic resurrections
in various parts of the world, including the Pacific Northwest, are
yet far out on the political fringe.) The Pacific Ocean War came
to a conclusion that summer a few days after atomic bombs
obliterated two Japanese cities. Japan surrendered to the Allies
on August 14. 1945. and officially signed surrender documents
aboard a U.S battleship in Tokyo harbor, the famous Missouri.
on September 2. Both dates are claimed as the real 'VJ Day.
(Two photographs of Missouri are on display in the Naval
Gallery of the Maritime Museum, one the famous shot of a
Kamikazi plane barely missing the ship, the other of Missouri
anchored in Tokyo Bay with snowcapped Mount Fuji promiently
in the background.)
Whether America should have used the atomic bombs
on Japan will be debated until the end of history. The claim of
one million casualties if the U.S. invaded Japan has never been
verified or its origin known; discussion at that time never used
that figure. However, it was predicted that more Americans would
be killed and wounded assaulting the Japanese homeland than at
any other time in the war (estimates vaned from 16,000 to 46,000
killed, and four times as many wounded; President Truman later
claimed he was afraid 500.000 Americans would be killed), and
that the Japanese cost would be astronomical. One point is
certain, as Capt. Edward L Beach wrote in his book, The U.S.
Navy: A 200 Year History1 "That the people inhabiting Hiroshima
and Nagasaki —and fire-bombed Tokyo too — were no more
responsible tor Pearl Harbor than the population of New York City
or San Francisco did not occur to us then "
Robert Lovell wrote of Astoria at the end of the war
'Troopships began passing Astoria as the soldiers came
home in the fall of 1945 You could hear their cheers all over
downtown as the ships slowed to change pilots. In October 1945,
Astoria played host to a small fleet of Navy ships that arrived just
in time to celebrate Navy Day. They came from Kamikaze action
off Okinawa; then on the way here, they encountered a terrible
typhoon. You can visualize how glad they were to be here."
(From Cumtux)
Vestiges of World War 2 remain in Astoria. The balcony
and wood dance floor of a nightclub that was crowded every night
during the war years wth servicemen and local ladies is part of a
garage between a restaurant and a plumbing store The wharves
at Tongue Point after the war berthed a fleet of 500 mothballed
ships that were dismantled or sent north to Puget Sound (some
retired a second time after reactivation for the Korean War 1950-
53). And of course the old houses, the city's most conspicuous
residencies that have sheltered its population through tw World
Wars as well as the entire 20th Century and earlier when Astoria
was a booming nverport and its canned salmon a world-class
delicacy
ASTORIA'S WAR REDUX
Ten years ago, on June 6, 1990 (the 46th anniversary
of 'D Day' at Normandy) the World War 2 battleship USS New
Jersey, which fought in the Pacific during the war, including the
Battle of Leyte Gulf, was stopped for the first time in its history
while attempting to transit up the Columbia River past Astoria
Eight Greenpeace members dangled 200 feet in the air on ropes
from the arch of the Astoria/Meglar Bridge over the shipping
channel, which delayed the old battleship at least four hours
during its voyage to the Portland Rose Festival The Coast Guard
offered to clear the bridge of protesters but New Jersey’s captain
responded that he did not wish to start an incident, saying that
those dangling from the bndge were as much Amencans as his
crew and had the right to dissent that his sailors were in service
to defend
Greenpeace mobilized the demonstration with precision
and imagination. The rappellers were dropped onto the bridge
from three vans and they instantly tied off their lines and went
over the side Each was an experienced climber, each had a
survival suit and was equipped with a 2-way radio with several
channels, and banners that said 'Nuclear Free Seas'
Their purpose was to draw attention to the possibility
of the New Jersey carrying nuclear weapons The Navy neither
confirms or denies if its ships carry nuclear weapons Clatsop
County was and remains a nuclear free zone, voted into law by
60% of county voters, though Astona has no such ordinance
Greenpeace pulled off the stunt with the assistance of a local
group opposed to the proposed establishment of a Navy home
port in Astoria, 'Nuclear Free Harbors' Hardly noted by news
accounts of the affair was that the Cold War nuclear arms race
had for the most part gone undersea in Navy submannes or out
of sight of voters on the oceans’ surface in naval vessels such as
New Jersey which made land-based sites increasingly obsolete
as well as bargaining commodities by the competing superpowers
vtfio were able to carry out treaty obligations while continuing the
arms race
Local officials responded angrily Astoria's mayor Edith
Henningsgard said the protest did not represent Astoria citizens
and that "outside agitators" were responsible While she expres
sed her pinched views of democracy — a country club toryism
which she represented — her son Blair Henningsgard, then a
Clatsop County Commissioner, attempted dismantling the
nuclear free zone law by claiming the state attorney general's
ruling that the law was unenforceable was a legal and not a
political ruling by a Republican candidate for governor sowing
party support.
The climbers did not intend to drop onto the battleship as
authorities claimed, yet there was fear the tall ship would collide
with one or more of them, which caused the delay Finally, after
the captain was convinced no one was to be hurt, the ship passed
under the bridge Two climbers raised up several feet to assure
themselves of clearance.
All were arrested and initially held without bail after they
climbed back onto the bridge. After several hours in jail bond
was set at $30,000 apiece by a judge impatient to watch Portland
Trailblazer playoffs Astoria attorney Elizabeth Baldwin finally got
them bailed out for $5000 ($500 each), despite the anger of the
local distnct attorney who wished to make them pay dearly for
their dissent and possible endangering of homeporting Naval
vessels in Astoria, an idea that later disintegrated with the
collapse of the Soviet Union and end of the Cold War
Ten years later many Astorians remain angry at what
they consider the willful embarrassment of Astoria by Green
peace Yet many others express satisfaction that Astona was
chosen to confront the Navy's nuclear policies and its arrogant
violation of Clatsop County's Nuclear Free Zone'
'We aren't anti-American." one of the Greenpeace
climbers said at the time "We actually care a great deal about
the United States to try and make it as peaceful as possible, as
good as possible " Another said he was not against the Navy "but
we are against nuclear missiles."
"We felt we needed to do this and getting arrested comes
with the territory." said a third
It used to be remarkably easy to step back into the World
War era near the Flavel House. Up a grassy knoll from Astoria's
most famous Victorian was an old frame house that until recently
headquartered the local Red Cross chapter. For years a French
boxcar that hauled American soldiers to the frontlines in both
World Wars — on its sides painted shields by Cannon Beach
artist Don Osborne of every U.S. Army unit that served in World
War 1's trenchlines and World War 2's liberation of France —
was exhibited in a corner of the Flavel estate. It is now at Fort
Stevens, which is the only American military installation in the
lower 48 states attacked by the enemy in either World War
(Hawaii, vtfiich became a state in 1959, was a U.S. territory
at the time of Pearl Harbor: and the Japanese bombed Dutch
Harbor on Unalaska Island, a part of Alaska which was also
granted Statehood in 1959, to protect their amphibious invasion
of two other Aleutian Islands.)
Like most cities worldwide Astoria has a monument to
the World Wars, a "Doughboy" from World War 1 scrambling
through barbed wire with his infantry rifle held aloft, shouting no
doubt to inspire his comrades across No Man's Land' The statue
looks more completely a soldier when local pranksters stick an
empty whiskey or wine bottle in his other hand.
Compared to cities all over the world that were shattered
by World War 2. their populations decimated by bombs, fire,
disease, starvation, forced removal and extermination. Astoria’s
postwar problems were minor. It did not have to rebuild or
recreate its reasons for being a city. Its countryside, though
ravished by forest fires during the war years, had not been
obliterated by savage combat or bombs. The war's end provoked
an economic dislocation that was a microcosm of the early
postwar years nationwide Astoria was without a manufacturing
base and did not profit from the reconversion to consumer goods
(though some of its markets and shops did). The Korean War
caused a flurry of activity, but afterward the Navy abandoned
its Tongue Point base Even back then there were signs of the
imminent collapse of the region's resource based economies.
Perhaps that is why Robert Lovell's Cumtux reminiscence of
wartime Astoria ended on a dismayed note: "Our population still
has not returned to the level of the 1940s ”
World War 2 played out one last act in Astoria, however.
USS Missouri visited the city in the late spring of 1998 It stayed
for several days before being towed to Pearl Harbor to join the
sunken 'Arizona' as monuments to the war. An estimated 125,000
people came to see the old battleship before its last voyage —
such crowds as will never be in Astoria again unless, as one man
suggested to the Mayor, the city hosts the Olympics.
Americans are notorious for being largely indifferent to
their history, yet a collective chord of memory occasionally
revives and they respond as they did to Missouris short visit to
Astoria, a full century after battleships made the USA a world
power. Missouri, almost the world's last battleship, represents
what might well be considered the nation's high-water mark half
a century later
Missouri left Astoria towed by a powerful tugboat, fittingly
named Sea Victory, disappearing to a watchful crowl into fog that
rolled up from the river's mouth The old battleship towered over
more recent Navy vessels visiting the city before going upriver to
the annual Rose Festival in Portland The moment the tug moved
'Mighty Mo' toward the ocean, another famous vessel. Astoria's
own Salvage Chief, blasted its horn in tribute.
Above the Missouri photographs at the Columbia River
Maritime Museum is a vintage blue banner with a golden Eagle.
Inscribed across the banner is a statement that probably says it
all for the soldiers, sailors and airmen who survived World War 2.
and who are now half a century later, in a new century, dying at
a rapid rate from advanced age
, Welcome Home Buddy
Many more wars have killed many more millions
since World War 2. and for half a century afterward it
seemed almost inevitable that humanity would obliterate
itself by nuclear holocaust, and it is not certain yet that
it eventually won't World War 2 is a war of a previous
century: the world has changed and soon the remaining
survivors will be as dead as those who died in the war
Yet the war burnishes the far horizon like a persisting
afterglow of a sunset long after other more recent wars
have slipped past memory
Columbian Cafe
1114 Marine Drive
Astoria, OR 97103
503-325-CAFE (2233)
Hoort Mon - Fri lam - 2pm
Sat 10am * 2pm
Dlnnari: Wari - Sat Opan 5pm
- michael M c C usker
URIAH HULSEY