Tag: Navy

Vanuatu was our shortest country stop, with only 5 working days and a few weekend days on either end. Unlike Samoa, we anchored in a protected channel making for smooth water for our water taxis and supply offload. I worked with the local hospital leadership to develop an Emergency Action Plan, something they did not have prior to our arrival. I also utilized my former Fire Department training to teach Fire Extinguisher use to the administrators and maintenance staff. We also worked together to produce an Emergency Evacuation map of the hospital which included the location of fire extinguishers and hose reels. In my remaining time I helped instruct a BEC course to the local hospital nurses, certifying 11 people as BEC providers.

My time, however short, in Vanuatu was not without scuba diving. I made 7 dives while there, including Million Dollar Point, the USS Tucker, and the SS President Coolidge. Million Dollar point came about at the end of World War II when the US forces stationed there were loading the ships and ran out of room for all the equipment. They offered to sell it to the French and British forces there, but when they declined and suggested the US simply give it to them instead, the US forces built a pier out into the water, drove all the equipment off the end of the pier, and then a few weeks later, blew up the pier. It is so aptly named because there was an estimated 1 million dollars of equipment in this underwater trash heap. In today’s money, it may be closer to a Billion dollars-worth of equipment. It did make for some interesting diving though, seeing piles of wheels, trucks, dozers, scrapers, trailers, and backhoes all intertwined.

The SS President Coolidge was a luxury ocean-liner built in 1931 to serve 2,000 passengers, of which 800 were first class passengers. It featured a swimming pool on the top deck, chandeliers, and other POSH amenities. After the start of WWII the US was in a crisis for supply ships to keep the fight going in the Pacific, so it was converted to a supply ship. They added gun turrets to it and used every last inch to cram some 5,000 service members aboard. It was laden with aircraft drop fuel tanks for long-distance missions, 1 armored tank, numerous trucks and jeeps, and multiple stores of ammunition. It also carried vital medications to treat malaria, a major medical concern for the US troops in the Pacific. As it arrived in Vanuatu a pilot boat was supposed to meet it and guide it in to the pier. The captain of the Coolidge waited several hours, but the pilot boat never came. The captain took it upon himself to sail toward the pier unescorted, but that was a fatal decision. What the captain wasn’t told on the radio (for fear that the Japanese would intercept it) was that the reason for the pilot boat was to guide the Coolidge around the US-laid underwater mine field that had been placed. The first mine the Coolidge hit ripped through her engine room killing one service member. The second mine tore a hole in the port side amidship. The captain was able to beach the ship along the island and the 5,000+ service members were able to make it ashore before it slipped off the shore and sunk. It took with it all the heavy equipment, ammunition, and medical supplies stored within, making cascading impacts across the Pacific.

I was able to dive the Coolidge in both daytime and as a night dive. During the night dive we watched bio-luminescent fish called Flashlight Fish blink in the pitch-black waters of the ship’s interior. I can liken it to fireflies on a summer night, except in complete darkness and 100 feet underwater.

As we sailed away from Vanuatu we were happy to be sailing back to Hawaii, back to our families, and back to our normal routines. While a worthwhile mission, 6 months is a long time to be away. There were birthdays, anniversaries, and holidays that we missed taking part in. The time had come to return to the United States. What awaited us now were 2 weeks aboard the ship, looking out over endless water until the islands of Hawaii came into view off the bow.

Conclusion

While you may not be reading this until later, I am writing this as we sail back to Hawaii from Vanuatu. I am very happy to have had the opportunity to participate in this humanitarian mission, touch lives across the pacific, and enjoy a government-funded scuba diving expedition courtesy of the US government and US tax-payers. While that last bit is a little snarky, I joined the US Navy in part for the exploration component, and have truly traveled multiple regions of the world as a result.

Samoa………Samoa was difficult. I was again part of the ADVON team, so I flew ahead of the ship. However, there are no direct flights from Palau to Samoa. Instead, I flew from Palau to Guam to Tokyo, JP to Auckland, NZ, to Samoa over the course of about 36 hours. Once I arrived in Samoa we drove an hour to our hotel. Over the next 3 weeks we confirmed events to the best of our ability, and planned engagements for all our mission body. However, there is a strong social bureaucracy in Samoa. Nobody will commit to an event before confirming with his or her boss, which in turn confirms with their boss and so forth until you reach the upper levels of government. Even when it was the Ministry of Health who sent us to a location to set up an engagement, nothing would be committed until that game of social telephone had been completed, which took forever. Even the day before the ship arrived, we had not confirmed everything that we wanted to confirm. The US Embassy in Samoa was also highly involved in what we were doing. This wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, as they were sometimes able to open doors for us that we could not open by ourselves, but it added just one more step in the social telephone game. Other times we requested to make contact with a certain organization and the Embassy simply said no.

The waters around Samoa were also far from calm. The ship was anchored on the windward side of the island, and white-capped waves were a normal occurrence. We intended to have a barge tied alongside the ship to facilitate people getting on and off the ship easily, but due to the constant rough seas 2 attempts were made at placing the barge, and both were met with failure and snapped mooring lines. Instead, our personnel got on and off the ship via a rope ladder over the side to a waiting water taxi boat below. We had 2 water taxi vessels, and there were multiple times they had to pause operations, sometimes for hours at a time, until the seas calmed enough for them to continue operating. Even then one of the vessels had a rope anchor/cleat ripped completely out of its deck due to the rough conditions. I should also mention that during this mission stop the US government couldn’t agree on a budget and had shut down, severely limiting the funding for our mission and greatly reducing the number of personnel we could house on land instead of braving the bucking sea conditions every day.

Despite these headaches, I was able to coordinate with the Disaster Management line of effort to conduct a full-scale Marine Rescue Operation exercise involving Samoan Maritime Police, Red Cross, Apia Fire Department, Ambulance Service, and National Emergency Operations Center. I also took part in their 3-day Disaster Management symposium and After-Action discussion. In the few days I was not working with the Disaster Management team I drove a diesel stick-shift van around the island delivering personnel, bottled water, and MREs to various locations. I was tasked with this due to being one of the few on the mission that actually knows how to drive a stick-shift and the ability to do it backwards. Instead of driving on the right side of the road, in the left vehicle seat, and shifting with one’s right hand, everything was reversed. I drove on the left side of the road, in the right vehicle seat, and shifted gears with my left hand. It was less awkward than I originally thought it might be, but a skill set that many on our mission did not possess.

In one word, Palau was wonderful! The local people were so happy for us to be there. The roads were so much better than Chuuk, and the overall infrastructure on the island was much better. They were also probably the most financially stable country we visited, which likely contributed to the good infrastructure and road conditions. I was part of the Advance team, arriving a few weeks ahead of the ship. We worked hard confirming events and meeting people face-to-face that we had been communicating with via email for the past few months. We also had the opportunity to play hard. I, of course, took the opportunity to scuba dive. There are multiple dive charter businesses in Palau including Live-aboard vessels. We utilized Cruise Control dive shop, and they were absolutely amazing! Between our Pre-deployment site survey in February and our time there on mission, I made 21 dives with Cruise Control in Palau. The sea life and coral reefs are absolutely stunning! We saw giant schools of fish, multiple sharks, and best of all, we got to dive with Manta Rays. These majestic creatures are about 8 feet across and about 6 feet long not counting their tails. We would get down on our knees in the sand, and they would swim right over the top of us close enough one could reach up and run one’s fingers along their underside. Diving with Manta Rays was one of the activities on my diving bucket list, and now it is checked off 😊

Interestingly, we were in Palau during their National Independence Day celebration. The ironic part of it was that they were celebrating their administrative independence from the United States. Their celebration included a parade, fireworks, and boat races along the waterfront to name a few of the events.

In Palau I oversaw ventilator training for the national hospital’s nurses, instructed 2 BEC courses as well as a Train-the-Trainer BEC course, oversaw a Medical Evacuation exercise that involved the hospital Emergency Department, local Fire/EMS service, and Pacific Aviation which is the local provider of Aero-Medical Evacuation from Palau to Guam. Our exercise followed a patient (role-played by one of our Australian medical planners) from the ER to transportation to being loaded on the aircraft at the Palau International Airport. The Fire Department ambulance even ran lights and siren through town to facilitate a real-life timeline for transport. I was able to follow the ambulance through town in my car which was also followed by our Japanese contingent vehicle, which made for a convoy that drew the attention of a local police cruiser which joined our convoy until we made it past the edge of town and the police cruiser broke off and returned to the center of town again. At the airport we entered through a side gate and drove right out onto the tarmac to meet the plane. It was certainly a unique experience.

 After we departed Chuuk, we sailed to Guam for resupply, some port liberty, and to switch ships. While the USS Pearl Harbor served us well from June to the beginning of September, she had other things on her schedule for this fall, so we switched to the USS John L Canley, an Expeditionary Sea Base vessel (ESB-6) for the rest of the mission. While on Guam we celebrated a few of our officers promoting to the next rank, a birthday, and of course went scuba diving. Just off the coast of Guam is the start of the Mariana Trench, the deepest oceanic trench on the planet bottoming out at 35,876 feet below sea level. We did not go anywhere near that deep, but it was fun looking over the edge of the reef wall into the blue abyss below as we explored the reef and the sea life living there. A fellow nurse and I also dove a wrecked Japanese sea plane that sits upside down just off the coast in about 100 feet of water. We also enjoyed eating at local restaurants that conform to U.S. food safety standards, which could not be said about those in Chuuk or Papua New Guinea.

There was some actual work done in Guam, especially surrounding moving all mission equipment and personnel from the Pearl Harbor to the John L Canley, however most of that work occurred after I left Guam. After just 3 days on Guam, I flew ahead to Palau as part of the ADVON, or Advanced Echelon team, that worked to plan and confirm events ahead of the ship’s arrival at each country stop.

Our second country stop was in Chuuk, a state within the Federated States of Micronesia. Chuuk lagoon was a significant location during WWII because it was the main Japanese naval base in the south pacific until the Americans sunk a large portion of the Japanese surface fleet there during Operation Hailstone in February 1944. Some say it was payback for the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. During the 2-day battle 51 Japanese ships were sunk and 500 aircraft were destroyed. There were naturally some American planes shot down during the battle as well and they were lost to the deep. Even now, some 81 years later, casualties are still being found and recovered from downed aircraft there. Earlier this year 3 Americans were discovered in 2 downed planes in the lagoon, 1 of which was just off the port side of where the USS Pearl Harbor was docked in Chuuk during our country stop. Operation Recover, a group devoted to searching for and bringing home American MIAs and POWs typically performs a simple flag ceremony at the site of found remains and that flag is then delivered to the family of the deceased along with the service member’s remains in an attempt to help bring closure for the family and honor their ultimate sacrifice. The flag ceremony had not yet been completed for those of the site just off the port side of our ship. In true partnership, Operation Recover was able to host this ceremony on the flight deck of the USS Pearl Harbor with Pacific Partnership and the ship’s crew in attendance. 3 flags from our ship were folded in honor of each of the 3 MIAs, and a member of the Pacific Partnership band played taps on the trumpet. It was a very touching ceremony full of history and meaning, and I was honored to be in attendance.

On a lighter note, and the flip side of all these ships and planes being sunk, it makes for some incredible SCUBA diving! When I was not working, I took the opportunity to dive these massive historical wrecks. Prior to this mission I had some knowledge of Chuuk lagoon as a destination dive location, someplace on many avid divers’ bucket lists. But I didn’t think that I would ever make it there, and yet I have now joined the ranks of those who have experienced the marvels of Chuuk lagoon in person. The ships still hold fighter airplanes, tanks, trucks, guns, bottles of alcohol, and various personal effects in their cargo holds just as the day they were sunk. On one of the ships the Engine Order Telegraph system even still moves. I also dove a downed bomber that the front broke off of and is lying to the side of the fuselage, so it is possible to swim from the front of the plane down through the fuselage and exit out the tail of the plane. Due to the amount of aluminum alloy used in the manufacturing of the bomber, it is in surprisingly good shape even some 80 years after crashing into the ocean.

Like many small pacific islands, Chuuk is resource-constrained, and it showed. Vehicles are imported from elsewhere, largely Japan and other Asian countries for use on the island. The locals keep them running as long as possible, sometimes harvesting parts off of other broken-down vehicles. Then when they significantly break down, they just leave them on the side of the road where they quit. There they sit abandoned and in various states of disrepair as a source of still-useful parts. Every 10 years a non-profit organization comes through and clears out all the cars from the island to recycle them. I am not sure where we are in that 10-year cycle, but there were numerous junk vehicles along the roadways as we drove around the island.

Despite their limited resources, the local people we met were friendly and accommodating to us. They welcomed us to participate in their hospital, guest lecture at their community college, and attended our classes and engagements. Although I do think we quickly overwhelmed their restaurants with the 500 people the mission brought to their island. As the time we were there progressed, the menu at the closest restaurant to the ship became smaller and smaller as they ran out of required ingredients.

During our time on island I was a guest instructor at the local college, helped present at the Dive Medicine Symposium, toured their compression chamber and assisted behind the scenes to ensure all our engagements ran smoothly and people were shuttled to where they needed to go. I also manned a booth about Disaster Management for Families at our Community Health Engagement event.