[Granville-Hough] 9 Apr 2009 -

[Trustees for Granville W. Hough]

Date: Thu, 09 Apr 2009 08:47:20 -0700
From: Granville W Hough <gwhough at oakapple.net>
Subject: HeroicSeaRescue - 9 April 2009


    Easter is a time of remembering and renewal.  Our Easter 
incorporates Passover, because Jesus told us, over and over, that he 
came not to discard the law, but to fulfill it.  So our Easter 
celebrates the freedom from slavery in Egypt, but early America forgot 
that fact.  Our Easter celebrates the humility and bravery of Jesus and 
his disciples, men who undertook the impossible, but sometimes we do not 
see or understand what they are doing.  I want to relate one instance of 
such an action, one I never before recorded. 

-------------------------------------------------------------

    After graduating from West Point in 1946, we had to go through the 
Artillery School Officer Training Course, then we finally got orders  to 
go to our overseas assignments, mine to Korea.  In May 1947, the Korea 
group was ordered to report to Camp Stoneman, CA, nearest town 
Pittsburg, way up the Bay from San Francisco.  There we awaited the 
first available transportation to Korea.   After a few days, about 25 of 
us were assigned to an Army Hospital Ship bound straight for Korea.  
Another group of passengers were 19 pre-war missionaries, 17 Methodist 
and 2 Presbyterian.  We had several families of Army dependents, wives 
and children of high-ranking officers already in Korea.  I cannot recall 
what other groups there were, except that there were regular mariners 
who had been drafted into the Army and were assigned to hospital ship 
duty because of their sea-going experience.  I noted that the kitchen 
police were a group of South Sea islanders who had their own language, 
and their own chain of command to their chief, he being the only one who 
could speak English and translate.  They were small, muscular, slightly 
dark people.  Of course the hospital ship had its staff of doctors and 
nurses. If I remember correctly, the Chief Surgeon was also de facto 
Captain of the ship.
    I found that the only group with whom I had any compatibility was 
the missionaries.  Having been associated with Missionary Baptists, for 
whom Missionary Judson of Burma was a standard hero, I could talk to 
them, join in their daily prayer meetings, and learn about the Korean 
towns and people where they had worked.  The two Presbyterians were a 
doctor/nurse team who had had a hospital in North Korea.  They hoped to 
get back to their hospital but I never learned their fate.  Nor did I 
ever run across any of the other 17 Methodist missionaries in South 
Korea.  They were all fine people, dedicated to their work; and I hope 
they survived the Korean War.  The fact that there are so many Christian 
South Koreans attests to the work of someone, possibly including the 
people I met.
    It being a hospital ship, there was a recreation/therapy room with 
various equipments for casualties.  I noted there was a small loom for 
weaving, and I had never seen such a device.  I learned to weave and 
made several place mats, at least enough for a setting for six people. 
I then designed a larger loom for making rugs, etc, about six feet by 
three feet.  I still have the scale drawing, but I never got back into 
weaving.  I loved to work patterns with different colors of strands.  I 
would say the strands were about the size of a shoe string and made in a 
similar way, so strand may be the right term.
    Hospital ships were designed to be slow and stable; however, a few 
days out, we hit the remnants of a Pacific storm.  We bobbed about like 
a cork and made little headway for some time.  We had plenty of sea 
sickness.  Finally, as things seem to settle down a little, we received 
an SOS from a Polish freighter from the middle of the storm.  The waves 
had swept over the ship and they had lost a couple of mariners, and all 
of the other crewmen on deck had been injured.  One had been slammed 
against the bulkhead and his skull was fractured, and he clearly had 
brain damage.  Could we help?  In our inventory of emergency medical 
supplies, we had one skull cap, made of Zirconium.  It was a one-size, 
fit all sort of cap, and our doctors thought they could replace the 
mariner's shattered skull with it.  So we changed course and notified 
the freighter we were on the way.  As I recall it took us a day and a 
half to sight the freighter.  And, my goodness, the waves were mean, 
ugly, and high.  How could we make a sea to sea rescue?
     The normal procedure was to get fairly close, fire a cable over the 
other ship, and then send supplies, or even move persons, one at the 
time, over the taut cable.  Each captain was afraid to get that close.  
Even if we could, as the ships rolled,  the cable would go under water 
in the high waves.  We would have to send a boat over to rescue the 
injured.  The Captain called for volunteers, and not a person stepped 
up.  Those waves were simply too ferocious for American mariners.  Then 
the Chief of the kitchen police said his people could do it.  The word 
soon passed around that the Kanakas were going to do the rescue by 
boat.  That was the first I had heard them called Kanakas.  I later 
learned that was a generic term for South Sea Islanders, and that even 
Hawaiians were originally called Kanakas. 
    The Kanaka chieftain carefully explained to the ship captain how the 
ships should be placed with respect to the waves and this was 
transmitted by radio to the Polish captain.  Then the Kanakas got into 
the lifeboat along with one terrified American doctor who carried 
emergency supplies.  They hit the waves and immediately pushed away from 
our ship into the waves and disappeared.  Then they shot upwards in 
sight and down again.  It was this way all the way to the Polish 
freighter, where they were pulled up and the doctor did his chores and 
the injured were anchored to the bottom of the boat, but high enough not 
to drown if the boat took on water.  Then they came back in the same way 
they had gone over.  In the meanwhile, everyone on our ship had moved to 
the starboard side to watch the action, and our captain got afraid we 
would capsize the ship.  So he had us move back over the deck so as to 
distribute the weight.
    The seaman with the fractured skull was rushed to the operating room 
where his skull was skinned and sawed off and the zirconium cap 
installed, then the skin sewn back in place.over the new skull cap.  We 
got daily reports on his condition and he was with us all the way to 
Yong-dong-po, South Korea, where we debarked and each went our own way.  
I often thought, in the depths of the Cold War, that somewhere on the 
high seas there was a Polish mariner with a zirconium skull who should 
forever give thanks to a fearless group of little Kanaka seamen.  I wish 
I could say the Kanakas were properly rewarded for their expertise and 
selfless bravery, but I simply do not know. 
    So I would say belatedly, " May God bless all the Kanaka seamen, and 
give them in Heaven just rewards for saving lives of strangers on 
earth."  Grampa.