I am back. I flew all night across the Pacific from the Lovely Islands to frozen O’Hare international in Chicago. It feels like a dream now.

After my encounter with the arrogant Bureaucrat in the aloha shirt on the steps of the former THIRD Fleet HQ, my dander was up. Who was he to ask if I was lost? I harrumphed my way back to the rental Mazda and drove along the Ford Island side of Battle ship row up to the battleship Missouri.

She is an impressive piece of steel, to be sure. But I had no particular inclination to go aboard to see her up close. I have been aboard her sister ships Iowa and Wisconsin when they were alive and active ships seething with life and activity and menace, and were most definitely not memorials. They reeked of raw attitude and really serious trouble for anyone who dared mess with them.

Then I trespassed. Arizona is just offshore in the historic housing area, and I took a couple furtive shots, since the residents are sensitive to the fact that all sorts of riffraff (with suitable ID) can just drive over the bridge.

When I worked on Ford Island the only way to get there by car was the Ford Island Ferry. I snapped a couple pictures of the old landing ramp, now in ruin. “Foot Passengers, Bicycles, Mopeds” is how they announced permission for the non-automobiles to get off. I heard that every trip to the office, and it echoes all the way to McGrew Loop where we lived.

Then the Aviation Museum of the Pacific. Sorry. I love airplanes. Increasingly, when I visit the museums, there are jets on display in which I have actually flown. Not driven, of course, since I have been a professional aviation box of rocks. But I enjoyed being chauffeured around by actual Naval Aviators. Taken with the older vintage like the ones my Dad flew, it always raises intense interest though it makes me feel like an antique.

There are three unique stories are told in the main museum- the saga of the second attack on Pearl, which Mac Showers first related to me, the to giant Japanese flying boats that flew over the darkened islands and wound up dropping bombs on Roosevelt High School on Tantalus, and the mission for which Fleet Intelligence Officer Eddie Layton tried to blame Jasper Holmes. They always had an adversarial relationship, but this one stemmed from the fact that between the wars, Jasper had published a fictional account of exactly such a long-range mission, with the aircraft being refueled by submarine at French Frigate Shoals to the northwest.

Eddie’s contention was that Jasper gave the Japanese the idea.

Across from the display about the Second Attack is the wing of the Zero-sen fighter that crashed on the Forbidden Island- Niihau. That island is wholly and privately owned by the Robinson family, and the crash site provided an engine and flight controls to the Americans for study, a dead Japanese aviator, and a suicide by a Japanese American who tried to assist him. There is also a little tractor that the Robinsons used to cross-hatch their island with steep ditches so the Japanese could not land on it and use it as a forward base for the conquest of the Hawaiian Islands. It was crazy enough to be one of Jasper Holme’s ideas for the Saturday Evening Post.

Kitty corner from that is a nice specimen of a B-25 Mitchell Bomber with mannequins depicting General Billy Doolittle as he plans Special Project No. 1- the “Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo” raid flown by the air corps bombers from the deck of the USS Hornet (CV-12).

The poignancy continued, since Lt. Col. Edward Saylor, 94, one of the last four survivors just passed away last week. Now there are three.

The main museum is devoted to the war years. One of the SBD Dauntless dive bombers is there, the type Dad was taught to fly. Outside there are some new and old jets- a Tomcat and a Strike Eagle, a Navy Skywarrior SIGINT bird and an F-104 Widow-maker. Inside Hangar 79 is a host of gems- jets fully restored, including an F-4 Phantom from my days in the Fleet, helicopters and the most amazing thing I have seen: the B-17 Swamp Ghost, a Flying Fortress lost in the first weeks of the war,and which languished in a swamp in New Guinea before being salvaged a couple years ago. An amazing story- truly a ghost.

This is how it looked then, still in the swamp:

There are a lot of cool birds in Hangar 79, but this wreck, unrestored, is about as eerie a thing as I have ever seen.

Now, back to that part about why you can’t go home again.

I drove into the Navy housing area at McGrew Point, the little peninsula that looks right up Battleship Row and gave us the coolest backdrop for backyard parties, ever. McGrew Loop is where the boys were babies, and where I hopped the steel link fence to clear the soaring tangled underbrush to and provide the million dollar view of the Arizona Memorial.

It is where I pushed off to train for the four Honolulu Marathons I ran when we lived there, and where we had friends and play groups and showed movies at the rec center and lived a rich life. This is how it looked then, lush and lovely:

The contract guard looked at his list when I approached and asked to go in and see the house at Number 121. He looked at his list, and said there was no 121, and regardless, I could not go in, retired Captain or not, because I had to either live there or be sponsored.

Turns out the whole area was bulldozed in 2005, courtesy of funds provided by Senator Inoyue’s Appropriations Committee, along with the bridge and the NOAA facility on Ford Island and the cash to restore the control tower which was about to fall down, and bring the arrogant bureaucrats onboard to fill up the historic buildings.

Sorry, I was not permitted to enter, regardless of my rank or status. “Sorry,” said the contract guard. “They use you up and spit you out, don’t they?

This is the entrance now:

And this is what the new digs look like:

As it turns out, you actually can’t go home again. You have to have a sponsor.

Copyright 2015 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303