Visibility in the fog was as near zero as possible as we entered San Francisco bay before dawn on
August 3, 1945. It was my misfortune to be operating the radar and guiding the ship in to her anchorage. The navigator rushed in every minute calling for the range and bearing on a fixed site while I tried to tell which blips on the radar screen were buoys and which were fishing vessels headed for sea.
That was the beginning of a momentous August that would see the dropping of the atom bomb on Japan and the resulting surrender by the nation that had begun the war with an attack on Hawaii December 7, 1941.
We had served in the South Pacific for more than 10 months, taking part in the battles for Iwo Jima and Okinawa. We had returned to the states to take on board the Blackhawk Division who would take part in the planned invasion of the Japanese mainland. Naval casualties, mostly from suicide plane attacks, were projected to be 50 per cent but would have been greater had we been forced to carry out the invasion.
August 3, 1945. It was my misfortune to be operating the radar and guiding the ship in to her anchorage. The navigator rushed in every minute calling for the range and bearing on a fixed site while I tried to tell which blips on the radar screen were buoys and which were fishing vessels headed for sea.
That was the beginning of a momentous August that would see the dropping of the atom bomb on Japan and the resulting surrender by the nation that had begun the war with an attack on Hawaii December 7, 1941.
We had served in the South Pacific for more than 10 months, taking part in the battles for Iwo Jima and Okinawa. We had returned to the states to take on board the Blackhawk Division who would take part in the planned invasion of the Japanese mainland. Naval casualties, mostly from suicide plane attacks, were projected to be 50 per cent but would have been greater had we been forced to carry out the invasion.
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