to imagine the trauma the eviction might have caused for sixteen-year-old McKenna. Yet the 1929 Prophet records Richard as being president of the student council and receiving a letter for his abilities as guard on a football team whose season had four wins, two ties, and three losses. He also excelled in his academic studies but no longer worked on the school newspaper.21
At graduation from high school in 1930, Richard’s class numbered twenty-five. His senior picture shows a determined young man with deep-set and remarkably blue eyes framed by the darkening hair of an emerging adult. Despite his poverty and reputation for shyness, McKenna had accomplished a great deal in high school. The Prophet lists Richard’s achievements: working on the school’s newspaper and the yearbook, playing football, and receiving honors in Spanish, English, and debate. He also received a science honor at the Senior Day Awards. His academic abilities earned him a year’s scholarship to the College of Idaho at Caldwell.22
McKenna at the age of seventeen graduated into the Great Depression. In the 1920s, before the Depression, those living in rural areas did not see the economic benefits of living in urban settings. For Idaho at this time, one economic shock followed another. The Depression caused the income of average Idahoans to drop by 49.3 percent. Few jobs were available in cities; in rural areas they were almost nonexistent. Some believe that rural states did not suffer much from the Depression, as farmers could always eat. Historian Leonard J. Arrington points out, however, that Idaho’s economy “was in desperate straits during the 1930s.” The basis of the state’s economy—mining, lumbering, and agriculture—had grown during World War I, as new land, “which should never have been brought under cultivation,” was set aside for farms. Just as this boom moved toward its peak, the armistice ended the war, and Idahoans soon realized no one had planned for maintaining the state economy after the war. The result, in Arlington’s view, was “catastrophic.” Idaho’s famous potatoes, for example, commanded $1.51 a bushel in 1919; by 1922 the price had plunged to $0.31. Because of this, Idaho, along with other western states, did not realize the boom times of the 1920s seen in the East. Idaho, in fact, was second only to Montana in the rate of emigration of any western state during that decade.23
By September 1930 Richard had begun at the College of Idaho, a liberal arts school some sixty-eight miles northwest of Mountain Home. His mother and brothers moved with Richard to 1514 Arthur Street, Caldwell. The move allowed Anna a better chance of employment, and Richard’s scholarship could also help. But at the end of his first academic year, Richard knew it was impossible for him to continue, for he lacked the fifty dollars required for his sophomore year tuition. McKenna much later wrote he had no great feelings about giving up the chance for a higher education and a professional career: “The problem was much more starkly elemental. How to escape the iron pinch of enforced idleness and poverty and the terrible sense of personal unworth they generated.” Most important, as the oldest son, McKenna decided he needed to help support his mother and brothers.24
Thus, an intelligent, introspective, eighteen-year-old man with no discernable future ahead of him except poverty determined he had only one option open to him. He boarded a bus and made a twenty-seven-mile journey from Caldwell, Idaho, to the state capital of Boise. There he was accepted for enlistment in the U.S. Navy. McKenna was then sent to the Naval Recruiting Station, Salt Lake City, Utah, the first step on a journey that eventually led to Guam, the Philippines, Japan, China, and the eventual publication of The Sand Pebbles more than three decades later.25
McKenna began his naval career in Salt Lake City. Enlistment was not an altogether radical choice; the Depression meant McKenna had little or no opportunity for either continuing his education or immediately entering the workforce. Moreover, his mother and three brothers needed financial support, and poor economic times have always been the best recruiter for the armed forces (this is still the case in the twenty-first century). Why McKenna chose the Navy is unknown, but some reasons can be surmised. He enjoyed reading travel books, making him an ideal target for the Navy’s recruiting slogan at the time: “Join the navy and see the world.” Furthermore, as a young man McKenna took great pleasure in meeting unusual people, and he had a passion for observing his surroundings. How else could a poor boy from a small, isolated desert community pursue these interests? A young man from the sage-covered desert, he might also have yearned for the long vistas of the sea. For centuries the sea has presented young men the chance to escape imaginary or real injustices and have an adventure. It is likely all of these reasons combined to sway McKenna’s decision to enter the naval service.
Whatever the reason, on 2 September 1931 Richard Milton McKenna raised his right hand and repeated the oath given by Lt. Cdr. J. M. Lewis, USN, the officer in charge of the recruiting station. McKenna became an apprentice seaman, earning twenty-one dollars per month, with orders to report to the Naval Training Center (boot camp) at San Diego, California, to start his four-year enlistment.
The paperwork generated by McKenna’s enlistment gives a glimpse of the young sailor. McKenna filled out a “physical questionnaire,” which asked him about his health. He wrote yes to only three items: Have you had a tonsillectomy? Do you wear glasses because of nearsightedness? and Are you well? Interestingly, the few photographs of McKenna during his early Navy years do not show him wearing glasses. Lt. (jg) J. R. Weisser (Medical Corps), USN, reported the young man had blue eyes, light brown hair, and a ruddy complexion. He stood five feet nine and one-half inches tall and weighed 162 pounds.
At the time of McKenna’s entry into the Navy, new recruits were asked, Why do you want to enlist? McKenna had the yeoman answer: “Earn, learn & travel.” He was also asked whether he intended to make the Navy a career, and he responded yes. However, most men trying to enter the Navy during the Depression probably answered the question in the affirmative.
Another of the forms Richard needed to complete was a “beneficiary slip.” If he died, his beneficiary would be his father, Milton Lewis McKenna. On the form Richard gave the address at Caldwell where his mother and brothers lived. Why he chose to place his father on the document is unknown; perhaps Anna had her mail sent to her under her husband’s name.
Having signed all the paperwork and taken the oath, AS Richard Milton McKenna, USN, departed on 3 September to boot camp at San Diego.1
Enlisted personnel have been forgotten in military and naval history. “It is obvious that the ability and character of the enlisted force affect the performance of a navy; yet the consistency with which this fact is disregarded makes repetition necessary,” wrote historian Frederick S. Harrod. To date, no one has written a definitive history of naval enlisted personnel. Following is an overview—at times subjective—of the Depression-era enlisted force that McKenna joined.2
The Navy of the young McKenna was far different from the twenty-first-century version and even changed markedly during Richard’s era. For most of the nineteenth century, the U.S. Navy had remained small, with wooden sailing ships. The enlisted force consisted mainly of international mariners. When vacancies occurred in the ranks, the Navy put up notices in seaports advertising for sailors with maritime experience no matter what nationality. Furthermore, captains of naval vessels could recruit men in any port of the world. The sailor-writer Herman Melville signed on board the frigate USS United States in 1844 and wrote the novel White Jacket (1850) about his experiences. Melville noted that the frigate Navy always had signs in port cities advertising for sailors. This method of recruiting provided mariners who needed little, if any, training. Eventually, the service established recruiting stations only in coastal cities with Navy yards: Norfolk, Virginia; Washington, D.C.; Philadelphia; New York; Boston; Portsmouth, New Hampshire; and San Francisco.3