see who unlocked the cabinet and what the hours of the “library” were. No one opened the cabinet. He eventually learned that the mail clerk had had a key but had lost it. McKenna became obsessed with reading The Snow Man. Finally, one night some shipmates came back to the Gold Star drunk and belligerent. They woke everyone up with their shouting and shoved each other against the lockers. The commotion centered in the area of the bookcase. McKenna listened carefully for the sound of breaking glass but heard none. He slipped on his shoes, went quietly over to the bookcase, and “kicked in the glass.” Everyone in the morning presumed the drunks had caused the damage. “Snow Man turned out not to be a novel,” McKenna later wrote, “but it was quite an interesting book, and I read it several times.”10
The few sailors in Gold Star who read bought their books ashore and sought out others who read to exchange with during underway time. Because the lockers for sailor’s clothing were small, storage of the books was always difficult. Richard began hiding his books in the nooks and crannies of the engineering spaces, a practice he continued for most of his career at sea.
The young McKenna quickly learned that even though it was classified as a station ship, Gold Star spent a large amount of time under way and visiting foreign ports. Two days after McKenna had reported on board, as he was still trying to learn the ship, Guamanian stevedores began loading copra into the ship’s cargo holds. The commanding officer, Lt. Cdr. William C. Faus, USN, had his navigator lay a course to Kobe, Japan.
Fireman 3rd Class McKenna, for reasons known only to him, chose to strike, or learn through on-the-job work, for the rating of machinist’s mate. He began his training in enlisted engineering in the fire room, and as he mastered the basic routines, he found he wanted to work in the refrigeration area, known as the “ice plant.” McKenna eventually did move into the ice plant as he gained more and more experience.
As the date for the departure for Kobe fast approached, McKenna watched, puzzled, as passengers came on board. Civilian passengers had been boarding naval ships since the early days of the Navy occupation of Guam, when authorities declared the tropical environment of the island “unhealthful.” The same authorities recommended that American women and children living on the island take at least one “health cruise” a year to a cooler area. As public health on Guam improved—and some argue that health was never a real issue on the island—the reason for the health cruises evaporated, yet the custom continued. Some Guamanians also made journeys via the Gold Star, especially to the Philippine Islands, and members of the Guam militia were recorded in the ship’s logbooks “as troop passengers.” By the time McKenna joined the ship, every trip Gold Star made away from Guam was a health cruise. Whereas troopships carried women and children in addition to troops during transfers between assignments, Gold Star’s travelers were usually on board just for travel. McKenna in later years remarked that he never saw another ship in the Navy act as what amounted to a cruise ship for families, and one would be hard-pressed to find a vessel in the modern Navy that does so, making Gold Star truly unique.
Second-class women passengers (wives of enlisted men) lived in the staterooms aft and had their meals in the chief petty officer’s mess. To help escape the heat of the cabins, women used the large top of the Number 6 Hatch cover as a deck lounge. Women passengers in first-class staterooms lived in the officer’s area amidships and had a deck above the general crew quarters. Gold Star even had a few penthouse quarters for the wives of important men. On McKenna’s first voyage, the wife and two adult daughters of Capt. George A. Alexander, USN, the governor of Guam, were among the passengers. The women passengers in first class took their meals with the officers. As Gold Star slowly plodded into foreign ports, “her clotheslines flapping with panties and bras, rompers and diapers,” sailors on other ships did double takes.11
On 11 August Gold Star departed Apra Harbor, on the western side of Guam, bound for Kobe. McKenna thus started to fulfill his wishes for sea duty and experiences with different cultures. Richard quickly learned sea duty could be dangerous. Three days out of Apra, at 2345, on 14 August, a crewman found Matt1 Silvino Yabut “lying on the deck of lower #1 hold.” Yabut had “apparently accidentally fallen between [the] bottom boards of upper #1 hold.” The medical officer declared that Yabut had died of a “fractured skull . . . and concussion of the brain.”12
McKenna arrived at his first foreign port of call, Kobe, Japan, on Thursday, 17 August. The ship moored to a buoy, and Japanese stevedores began unloading the copra from Guam. The postmaster from Guam came on board for transportation, as did an army lieutenant and his wife and daughter bound for the city of Manila, in the Philippine Islands. When Richard went ashore, he received a number of cards and pamphlets for establishments offering all types of services. A Capt. J. Natsume gave him a card stating he was in charge of seamen’s services “for gentlemen’s diseases, etc.” at the Miyako Pharmacy.13
Gold Star departed Kobe on 22 August; stopped briefly at Nagasaki, Japan, and Shanghai, China; and arrived at Manila on Saturday, 9 September. The ship’s trips to Manila were typically short. Periodically, however, Gold Star needed to enter the Navy yard in nearby Cavite or the Dewey Floating Dry Dock at Olongapo for overhaul work. Yard stays meant extended time in the Philippines.
Given the inadequacy of Gold Star’s library, McKenna began a search for used-book stores in every port he visited. At first, McKenna had a practical reason for perusing the shelves of used books: he had little money left over after his allotment for his mother. The browsing of used-book stores became one of the more enjoyable ways he spent his time ashore during his career, and he continued haunting the establishments after his retirement.
McKenna recalled that the best library for sailors he ever saw in the Far East was in the Cavite Navy Yard, where the books were housed in a cool, quiet old stone building built at least a hundred years in the past. The library contained “quite a few books,” but Richard seldom saw anyone use the facility. He enjoyed watching the geckoes that made nests among the unread books, “running around the ceiling eating flies and mosquitoes and making musical chirps.”14
On Wednesday, 13 September, with all cargo stowed on board, Gold Star departed for Guam, arriving at a mooring buoy in Apra Harbor on Tuesday, 19 September. Years later, McKenna recalled his ship fondly. He did not remember some of his shipmates running afoul of Navy regulations. During this short underway time, for example, one sailor was placed in solitary confinement with bread and water “for 30 days, with full ration every 3rd day,” and had to forfeit fifteen dollars of his pay for six months for two cases of being absent without leave (AWOL) and “under the influence of intoxicating liquor.” Another sailor received a bad conduct discharge (BCD) for being AWOL, but the sentence would be remitted if he kept a good record for six months.15
While in Mountain Home, McKenna had answered to the nickname Richie. By the time he began settling into the routine of Gold Star, he responded to “Mac”—a nickname he’d take up for the rest of his career.
Two of the reasons McKenna joined the Navy were travel and experiences with interesting people and cultures. In just thirty-nine days on board Gold Star, McKenna had seen two ports in Japan, plus Shanghai in China and Manila in the Philippine Islands. Added to all this was Guam itself. What must a young man raised among the lava rocks and sagebrush-covered high desert of southwestern Idaho have thought of an island with lush jungles, unknown to most Americans of the time? Guam had everything an impressionable person could want: an unusual landscape, an ancient native culture, and the consequences of many years of Western domination. Mac made the most of this assignment. Although he honed his observing and researching skills during Gold Star’s voyages, he did not neglect learning about Guam.
Guam is the largest island, in both size and population, in the chain of fifteen islands that make up the Marianas. The Marianas are high-volcanic islands that stretch some five hundred miles in a north–south direction; Guam is located at the southern end of the chain. The Marianas are approximately fifteen hundred miles east of the Philippine Islands. Guam has two seasons: the dry season, from January to June, and the wet season,