29 May 2007
Museum of the People
People's Museum #5
Earlier this month, USS Kitty Hawk, the oldest ship in full active service in the US Navy, embarked on its last major maneuvers before being decommissioned next year. It is a matter of strategic and personal interest, since it is the last conventionally-powered aircraft carrier, and that is the reason for why she has been located where she was.
Ships and locations are interesting things. Hawk is 46-years-old, and completes her active life as the capital ship and anchor of the Forward Deployed Naval Force, or FDNF. She will be back in the United States next year to begin the decommissioning process. She will be replaced by the USS George Washington, the first nuclear carrier to be forward deployed. That is quite a change.
As she retires, Kitty Hawk will bequeath her honor as the oldest active ship to another, though that is a matter requiring the careful parsing of phrase. The frigate USS Constitution is still commissioned, and as one of the first six warships commissioned by Congress in 1794, is periodically active. Her crew actually raised the sails a couple years ago and held their breath as she was underway under sail power.
Another candidate is the USNS Observation Island, a precision radar tracking ship that continues to chug along on her own power, usually, and ply the waves on sensitive missions. Her keel was laid down in 1952, as a merchant, but she was on the active Navy list for a dozen years or more prior to being transferred to the Maritime Sealift Command.
There is an older ship that is still commissioned, of course. It was built on the Great Lakes in 1944, part of the huge ship-building effort of WWII. Originally an Army ship, she transferred to the Navy in 1966 for service in the waters off Vietnam, and that is how AGER-2 passed into history as the USS Pueblo, which is the second oldest commissioned ship in the Navy, and also known as People's Museum #5 in North Korea.
Presidential candidate Bill Richardson paid a visit onboard last month, and a Senator jumped up and down on her status, so there is a relevance to her that belies the now-ancient saga of her capture and her crew's imprisonment.
Don't worry; I am not going down that particular rabbit hole today. This story is actually about where People's Museum #5 is located at the moment, not the ship or the saga of the crew. Nothing exists in a vacuum, and in looking at something as simple as the relative age of old ships I got wrapped around the axle of history this morning, and it is going to take a day or two to sort out. I hope you will bear with me, since the story involves murder, politics, and why some people are really irritated today. it will require us to tread lightly in the shallow surf of three centuries.
It started innocently enough. I was trying to write a note about the last deployment of the Hawk for the Quarterly publication I edit in haste. It is of interest to those readers, since many of us have trod her decks, and she has been in the news periodically. The most famous items were the collision with the Soviet nuclear attack submarine off Japan in 1984, and the threatening overflight by Russian attack aircraft in 2000 and the surfacing of a Chinese Song-class sub near her last year.
All came with much diplomatic wringing of hands. She has been in the thick of things right along, with all the changes in the world. Kitty Hawk has been operating out of the naval base at Yokoskua since 1998, when she relieved the USS Independence, which in turn had relieved my first ship, the venerable Midway-Maru.
Midway was the first American carrier home-ported in Japan, a concept that germinated in 1972 with the Vietnam War entering it's negotiated endgame, and flowered in the deployment of Midway to Yokosuka in September of 1972. The point was to reduce the operating pressure on West Coast-based warships by having a battle group permanently in the region.
That is the strategy, but it gets personal quickly, since the stories about sending hundreds of families to accompany the ships, assigned quarters in disintegrating Occupation Housing, or cast adrift on the Japanese economy is still too fresh for discussion.
It did create a certain espirit that echoes down the years, and one of those accidental situations that resulted in an unanticipated career, but that, too is another matter. The fact that it all began where the Black Ships of the US Navy under Commodore Perry opened Japan to trade is pivotal to the story, since it led directly to what happened later.
It is also worthwhile to consider how this teeters on the cusp of the future that is being born now.
As China rises in economic might, the supply lines that provide it oil and raw materials become more important. To secure these things reliably, military might is a prudent capability, and undoubtedly accounts for why the Chinese sub surfaced to announce it's baleful presence last year. The PRC has embarked on an ambitious naval building program to secure its sea-lanes, and there will unquestionably be friction in the coming years between the traditional and rising powers. Perhaps it will be over the status of Taiwan, or perhaps it will be about the security of the Straits of Malacca or the transit lanes in the Indian Ocean or the South China Sea.
That is not for today, though we can see the outlines of what is coming.
For those who live in the region, the term “Far East” is a misnomer. It is neither far, nor east. It is the center.
It is the center that matters here, in perception and reality. So here begins the saga of the SS General Sherman, and the adventure in Korea 125 years ago that placed People's Museum #5 in the upper reaches of navigation of the Taedong River.
Copyright 2007 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com