Okay. Alright. Mr. Triggs, would you please give me your full name.

Transcription

1 Charles Triggs March 24, 1993 Pat Schwabik Good morning! Today s date is Wednesday, March 24 th, My name is Pat Schwabik, and I am representing the Anoka County Historical Society. This morning, I am interviewing Mr. Charles Triggs, World War II veteran, who was at Pearl Harbor on December 7 th, Okay. Alright. Mr. Triggs, would you please give me your full name. Yeah, my name is Charles S. (Charles Starling) Triggs. I have to qualify that Starling. Many years ago, when they named me this, my father s name was Starling, and of course, we have an English ancestry, and so they told me when I got old enough to know that the starling was a beautiful bird. Well, I didn t know any different until I saw one here in this country, and I think they re ugly. (Laughter) Anyhow, that s my middle name Starling. And I was born in Airshire, Iowa, January 12 th, 1918, so this makes me just at 75 right now. And I was born to Starling A. and Nes Triggs. They were married in And so, I am the center child of theirs. There was seven of us born into that family, and I m the middle one. I have three older ones and three younger ones. By this time, we re all still alive, by the way. The oldest one is 81, and the youngest one is 62, so you know the age bracket, there. So anyhow, my story at the Pearl Harbor incident it didn t start on the first of December, 1941, it started way back. As far back as when Roosevelt was elected president, and there was a deep depression on the country, and all over the world, actually. And so when at that time, it was almost impossible to find a job. I worked for as little as 10 cents an hour in order to have any kind of a job at all, and that was in a mill making lumber products, and it was belt time, so if the mill broke down for any reason, why your time stopped. So we made some days you could make 80 cents, and some days you could make a dollar, and if you worked 10 hours, you made a dollar, and if you only worked a half a day, why, it was 40 cents. Well, by the time you paid 25 cents a meal for you meals, you didn t get rich on it. And so this is the way that went. And finally, I decided that since Roosevelt had started this so-called tree army of his, or otherwise called the Civilian Conservation Corps, for young men between the ages of 17 and 27, they enlisted in this for a 6-month period enlistment. And, of course, the wages there was a dollar a day. Twenty five dollars a month went home to your folks, and five dollars you got in camp. Well, I had a lot of people objecting to me going there. They said, Well, that s just one way into the Army, but I went anyway, because

2 of the hard times there was. Anyway, of course, we got our clothing and our food there, too, besides that dollar a day, but that all worked out pretty fine. And I was there a month or two and was selected to be one of the leaders of the group there. Usually, they had about 210 men in a camp. And, of course, the camp I was in was up in northern Minnesota, northeast of Detroit Lakes, and we built the now, they call it the Tamarack Lake Game Refuge. The government bought 50,000 acres of land there, and we tore down the buildings that were in place; the old buildings farmsteads, and so on. And we saved the lumber and, of course, we built a camp. And, of course, that s long since gone, but I stayed in that camp for two years, and I had a brother that came in six months after I did. So anyhow, I was selected as a carpenter there. That s where I started out learning carpentry work. Alright, then, my brother, of course, he didn t care much for carpentry, so since they were building roads and bridges and fire trails and fences and so forth, he got into learning how to run a Caterpillar. And so there were many, many different occupations that were learned by these young people. Truck drivers and cooks and bakers and hospital corpsmen and you name it; there were surveyors and auto mechanics and painters and all sorts of things. But this there was like about three million of us young people running around the country, looking for work, and this furnished the work for us, as well as they did plant trees and so forth, there. And, of course, then after we served our time there, there was a limit of two years, so I got out and went to North Dakota. And, well, during the time when I was in the C s, that s when Hitler began going into Poland, and occupying that, and creating a big disturbance. And so I kind of figured out that sooner or later we re gonna get into this war, whether we liked it or not. Everybody else said, No, no. We re not gonna get in. Roosevelt, he even made a statement that as long as he was president, none of the boys were gonna serve on foreign soil, and so on, but it was gonna happen, and I knew it. Everybody else kind of had it in their mind. So, while I m up in North Dakota, there was a lot of ships and tankers being sunk off the East Coast by German submarines, and a lot of our other destroyers and submarines and stuff were sunk by Germans. And, of course, they kind of covered that up, but it kept on getting worse and worse and worse, and finally, they had this Lend Lease Bill come out, and we were furnishing material war materials, and stuff to England and so on, and so while I was up in Dakota, north of Cavalier, we heard that there was something going on between the United States and Canada, so we drove up there, and here, lo and behold, they were flying planes in from Seattle, or wherever they were coming from. They were made there. And they flew them in there to a little town called.or whatever that town was, and they d back them up to the Canadian line, and the Canadians would pull them across the line, and then they d run them in a paint booth and put their Canadian Air Force signs on them, and the pilots that flew them in there would then try and go over to Winnipeg to join the Royal

3 Canadian Air Force to fly them same planes over to England. So this you could see. Okay. Now you know that we re furnishing things that way, and our pilots were fighting in that war with them. So I said, Okay, that s it! I came home, and on my way back through Fargo, I signed up for the Navy. I d never seen a ship or a sailor in my life. I was strictly a jack pine savage, you might say. All- American boy! Never been anyplace or done anything, but I joined the Navy, anyway. And they said, Well, okay. You go home and wait till you re called. You re on a waiting list. It might take a month, and it might take three, who knows? And so, alright, I went home and I waited and waited and waited, and finally one day I get a call to come to Fargo prepared to go to camp. So on my way to Fargo, I had to go through Detroit Lakes, and times being as tough as they were, and in the wintertime, I didn t have enough money to afford a hotel room, so I went down and saw the sheriff and I slept in the jail that night. And in the meantime, he inquired what I was doing, and I told him, and he said, Well, if you re going to Fargo, I ll get you a ride tomorrow. So he called a guy, and I went to Fargo. The guy the sheriff even furnished me breakfast the next morning. So that was fine. So I get there, and then we went to Great Lakes. Now, we re thinking about January of 41. You know, this is eleven months ahead of Pearl Harbor. And so I get down to the Great Lakes, and things are really buzzing down there. At that time, there was five training stations Naval training stations in the United States, operating. And at the time they formed the company I was in, they were forming a company of men a day in each camp. Now, there s 210 men in a company, and when you re forming 210 men a day, and now I m looking at January 29 th, and this has been going on. So now you re looking at over 1,000 men a day going into the Navy. Well, some people will say they don t have no ships for that many people, but you gotta stop and think about this. During this depression, there was a move to cut back like there is now. Military cut backs. So, a ship that had like my ship that I was on had a wartime compliment of 625. During that period, they were down under 300. And they d take a ship like a battleship or a carrier that had 3,500 to 4,000 people on it, they were down to under 2,000 so they could build them in, you know. Fill it up, and still build ships to take care of the overflow. Alright. So, I got through the training camp, and then they sent us out to Hawaii, and I rode on the old transport called the Henderson, which took nine days to go from Toleo, California, to the Pearl Harbor. And there was something like 4,000 people on that. There were recruits, and there were 200 Navy nurses on it, and there was something like a 100 Naval officers on it, and so on. The rest were recruits in the Navy.

4 Well, alright. So we get down to Pearl. Now, when you go into Pearl, at that time, a beautiful place. You could smell the flowers from the islands, probably a day out to sea. Oh, it was beautiful! Then you pull into Pearl, and here you see row on row of ships. Beautiful, sleek battleships, destroyers, submarines and whatever. And you could see Diamond Head, and they claim that Diamond Head was armed. So, with a person coming into a situation like this, no one would ever dream that anybody would have nerve enough to attack something like this where battleships 600-feet long, row on row of them sitting there, armed. You re not gonna pull a gun on something like that, you know. You wouldn t think, anyway. So, well, as snug as a bug in a rug, here I am in Uncle Sam s Navy, and I m surrounded with some of the finest ships in the world. And nothing to worry about. And so I got assigned to a star ship there, and What was the name of your ship, again? USS Wright. W-r-i? G-h-t. That was a sea plane tender. Okay. After being assigned to that, I found out it was in dry dock there, and that was during the time that they were taking all the old bituminous bottoming paint off of all the ships, which was about anywhere from a half to an inch thick, coalbased stuff for anti-fowling and anti-corrosive measures, but this was old and they were in the process of stripping all that off and putting on a new plastic that was easier to put on, easier to apply, and lasts longer, and it would speed up the ship a little, because it wouldn t be such a drag on it. It would be slicker, you know. And so, alright, our first job then was on a chipping hammer, and going down over the side and chipping all that black stuff out of there. You d go out there in the morning, you d put on a clean white pair of uniform snow white, and an hour after you worked, the tech would come out, and he d look like a Pennsylvania coal miner. And so, anyway, the ship that I was on was built in 1916 for the Army, and commissioned in the Navy in And it was a sister ship to the Argon and the Fairmont. And anyway, it was an old timer, and they used it during World War I for hauling mules over to France, but in the interim of that, after it got into the Navy, they made it into a lighter than aircraft tender and after the war, then, they turned it into a sea plane tender. Well, in doing this chipping that stuff off of the bottom, once in awhile, your chipping hammer would ease through the skin of the ship. You know thin it had been rusted out, so they supplied each one of us with a piece of chalk, and

5 when we run into this situation, well, we d mark it, and then the ship fitters would come by and take that piece out and put in a new piece of oak. Well, we finally got the thing sea worthy, again, and they backed it out of dry dock and our first trip was to Hilo, which was 190 miles from Pearl. And so when they out to sea, you wonder if some of them jokers marked all the holes that they found on the bottom of that thing cuz that ocean, out at that point, is quite deep, and it s a long ways to shore. So anyway, we made that fine. Well, then in June, on June 16 th, 1941, we crossed the equator, headed for a little island called Canton Island. That s two degrees south of the equator 120 miles. And now the war in Europe was heating up, and of course, we were still kind of wishy-washy, and so my ship carried 100,000 gallons of aviation gasoline in its bowels. And so when we got down to Canton Island, we unloaded, I don t know many, many, many 55 gallon drums of gasoline out on the island. There was nothing there. It was just a coral rat hole; no buildings, or nothing. About four feet above sea level. And it was hot; like about 120 degrees in the shade, and no shade. And so we rolled those barrels over on the beach and left them there in this atoll had a little lagoon in it, and the planes would landing there, and refuel, and then take off again, see. Alright. Our little commander on our ship he was afraid. We were there four days and four nights in June, and he didn t care whether we was an apprentice seaman or a chief petty officer, he d come around day and night, patting us on the shoulder. Hurry on, boys. Let s get this job done. I m afraid we re gonna get caught before we get out of here. And on the second day we were there, there was a ship come over the horizon. You could see the smoke, but we couldn t see the ship. Well, we went to battle stations, and finally the ship came up over the horizon, and we decided it was a scootie ship, so that cooled down. The little commander, he was getting tired. He was all done in. So we got out of there, and went back to Pearl. Well, we made a couple of trips out to Midway and so on, and then later on, I think it was in August or September, we had an order to load a seven inch gun mount in our bowels, and take it out to Wake. So we loaded the gun you know, a seven inch gun and all the trimmings with it was quite a load. It s not just a gun you stick under your arm. It s bigger it s tons and tons of weight. And so we loaded the gun. Well, at that time, everything was wide open. There was no censorship of mail or anything else. You could go to a bar or a barber shop or a grocery store, or wherever you wanted to go in Honolulu, and as soon as they recognized you and what ship you were on, Oh, you re going out to Wake with that seven inch gun!

6 Everybody knew, see. So it got to be so wild before we got underway, we had an executive order from Washington to commence unloading the cargo. That we couldn t take that gun out to Wake for fear it would offend the Japanese people. Alright. See? You can see through the lines a little bit. We unloaded the cargo. Then we got an order: Proceed to Hilo from Pearl. We went down there, and we loaded 200 Marines personnel and a couple of carloads of rakes and shovels; garden rakes, of course. Pick axes and shovels and things like this. And head for Wake Island. And so we went to Wake. And they dumped the Marines off. Incidentally, on that same group of people, we had two commanders: Commander Keane and Commander Cunningham on our ship that were more or less overhead people. They transferred to Wake Island with the Marine Corps. And so, but they were regular, and we d kept them as regular members of our ship all through the war, but when the Japs took over Wake, of course, they were prisoners of war all through the whole war. Alright. When we unloaded that group, and we headed back to Pearl on a Sunday morning, I don t think I ever saw another nicer day in my life at sea or any other place. The weather was perfect, the sun was shining, and no wind, and it was just ideal. And so I enjoyed the topside. Anyway, we headed back, and now you gotta remember that around Pearl Harbor, at that time, they had established a black-out zone. A hundred miles around the island was a black-out zone. You couldn t have a light of any kind; blue, red, yellow, whatever. No lights at all. And they didn t have any radio contact, they didn t have any signal lights, they didn t have nothing. You were traveling in the dark. At night, it was dark; it was black. And so we headed back for Pearl. Well, during the night, before we went into Pearl, the moon came up, and we spotted a carrier in the moonlight with this task force. Well, we assumed that it was either the Lexington or the Saratoga our ships, because you know, at that time, who knows nobody thought about a war. And so we just let that go as such. Well, of course, they didn t challenge us; we didn t challenge them, and so they went around behind the island, and we were supposed to come in the next morning to Pearl. Well, the Japs hit Pearl before we got in the harbor. So they flagged us they signaled us to back off, and so we didn t get in until the afternoon of that day. So when we came in, well, here s the Nevada sitting crossways in the channel going in, and the Arizona was still burning, and the dry docks were all aflame and it was still going, see. And so what we got into was the clean up, and so this is the way that went. It was you can t imagine the feeling that people would have when you your earlier feeling was all this power around you, and you come in there, and you see the shambles, and the harbor was actually between oil and blood. So that was it. And of course, people look at this like a sneak attack, which it

7 probably was, but I seen all of these things happen, watching it grow into a war as a young man, and watching this thing and the way it happened. At the time, I went down there at Pearl Harbor I m going back now to prior to the attack the Admiral that took the fleet down to the Hawaiian waters was named Admiral Richardson, and he was kind of a go getter. At the time you see, we hadn t been in a war for 20 years or so, and of course, there was a lot of people, not only enlisted men but the officers were not in the Navy because of the wars. They were there because they were looking for excitement, and to see the world, you know, at the government s expense, and so they were actually playboys. And, of course, not Richardson. Every ship in the Navy has a rule book, and they have different statistics, and the ship I was on had a 12-minute sinking time if it should get into a scrap, and it got hit. Well, it had been so long since they d been into any kind of a scrape, and they were a little lackadaisical as far as going to battle stations when they sounded the general quarters drill sign, sometimes it would take as much as a half hour before people could call in and say We re manned and ready. Well, with only a 12-minute sinking time, you could be down on the bottom by that time. And not only was it our ship, but the battleships were the same. Everything was that way. They were just downright slow. But Richardson was ordered to take that fleet out there and drill them so that they could get that back up to where it belonged, you know. Command and rig situation. Well, now this only tells you that somebody was figuring that something was gonna happen soon, and they wanted to get this crew ready. Alright. So he d take the fleet out around the Hawaiian waters and if they run out of provisions, why, drop off the line and go back into Pearl, provision up, and get back on line. If they ran out of fuel, drop off the line and go back in, fuel up, and get back here and we re gonna drill some more. And day and night. Well, these people weren t used to that kind of treatment. We re not in war. Why are we out here doing this for? Well, we re practicing, see. We re drilling. Okay. They finally got it to a point where they were in pretty good shape, according to the book, but there was a lot of pressure on him. And so he got an order to cease this drill business, bring that crew in to Pearl Harbor, and give them leave and recreation. And he said, I m the commander out here, and I ll bring them in when I see fit. So he didn t do it. So down in the Pentagon there was a guy by the name of.e. Kimball, Admiral of the same rank. He was a yes man; a messenger boy down there, carrying messages from one end of the Pentagon to the other. And so in order to get that fleet in, because a lot of fellas had written home telling dad about being out to sea all the time, and dad, of course, in turn, he put the pressure on his representatives, and the representatives put the pressure on the Navy Department, and you know, the old go around. And so, consequently, Kimball was sent out I think it was in 1940 or thereabout; 39 or 40 to relieve Richardson at sea. The next day, the fleet came in to Pearl.

8 (Laughter) Okay. Now they sat there for about a year all huddled in the harbor like fish in a barrel. Okay, now, the only ones that ever moved was ships like mine, because we d go out to Midway, or Wake, or Guam, or someplace like this. Alright. So, the only time the battleships turned on their power was the joke was that they only put on their power to stir up the coffee grounds so they wouldn t go aground. You know? Yeah. And so, anyway, here they sat. Well, when Kimball took over, he put out an all- Nav order that he was going to hold a material inspection on December 8 th, which would have been Monday. A white glove situation, so to speak, so in order to accomplish all of this and make it so that the new commander would look kind of bright, they took all the ammunition and everything off of the ships, and put it over on the beach in the storages. Well, they chipped paint, and they painted, and they done everything on the interior of these ships. They cleaned them up clean; fine. And, of course, Sunday morning, the Japs got it inspected. Kimball never got to his inspection. So now, that was Pearl Harbor. But you know, it s amazing, if I live to be another 25 years older, I ll always say that that whole deal was cut and dried. It was planned. There was no way out of it, because they had to squeeze Japan into attacking us. Now, we, as I said, was in and out rather frequently. I spent three years, five months and twenty five days in the war with that ship. We didn t get out of the harbor, then, until the following March. We went on a trip we stopped off at American Samoa down in Pago Pago, and then we went to the Fiji Islands, and subsequently, we ended up in New Caledonia, and then we went to Sydney, Australia, and from Sydney, we went around to Melbourne, and from Melbourne to Adelaide, and from Adelaide to Perth. At one time, I was about 9,000 miles from home. And, of course, people nowadays, when a kid gets overseas my nephew just got a call from his son last week. The kid s in the Philippines, I believe. And it cost him $15.00 for a telephone call. But back when I was in, my folks didn t even have a telephone, and I could show you some of the letters that I got, you know, that I m telling them that I haven t heard from you for a couple of months and I m looking forward to a letter, or something like this. The only communication you had was a letter, and that was awfully poor. Sometimes, you d get a letter that was, oh, a few months old. You never give it too much of a thought. It was there. Well, another thing that I did, when I got up as far as Hilandia, New Guinea, in my travels during the war, see, I was on that ship, and we went through all of that, around Australia, and we were up through Guada Canal and Logi, and a few of

9 the islands. I was at one island, I don t know if anybody ever heard of it or not called Calamangara, and we spent 30 days and nights up at Rendola, and of course, it was all rather exciting because in all that travel, in 1943, we traveled 72,000 sea miles, so you can see, at 15 knots an hour, we were underway quite a lot, moving day and night, and tending PVY planes and PT boats. And it was quite a thing. Well, when I got up to Hilandia, it was an odd thing. Being on this ship about three years and eight months, I had advanced in rating from an apprentice seaman up to a first class petty officer, and I had a chief that was just ahead of me. He d been on that ship for seven years, and he was kind of sick of it, and he wanted to transfer. And he had written to the Bureau of Naval Personnel to request a transfer. He d done everything he could to get transferred, and finally, one day, after I took the chief s test and passed it, he said, Well, Charlie, I ll tell you what. I ve done everything I can. Now all I can do is accept warrant officer. If I accept warrant, they ll have to transfer me, because that s the routine, you know. When a person makes an officer s rank, they transfer him to keep people from calling him by his first name. It s Mr. So-and-so, then, see. Which is right. And so I said, Well, Pete, don t take that warrant if you don t want it on my account because I don t care whether I m chief or not, see. I m happy the way I am. So alright. We only had one chief carpenter, but he was in, so he took warrant officer one day. The next day, he was transferred. The following day, I was chief petty officer, and the following day after that, came an order from the Bureau of Naval Personnel: transfer one chief carpenter s mate back to the States for new construction and reassignment. Our skipper knew what went on, and I m the only one that knew about this old ship and the operation of some of the machines on there, and so he went over to the Port Authority and he said, I gotta stop this transfer. And the officer over there said, You have a chief petty officer on that ship? He said, Yes, I have one. He just made it two days ago. Well, the order says transfer, so he gets transferred. So from Hilandia, I got transferred, and I went back through a place called Palm Island, and subsequently to Townsville, Australia, which is in the northeast point of Australia, and I had to take a train a train down to Brisbane, which was 832 days, which took four days and four nights to travel that. And I got back to Brisbane, and I had to wait for a ship for transportation back to the States. And I got back to the States in San Francisco, and my buddy, Pete, the fellow that took warrant I knew he lived in Palo Alto, California, so I didn t have nothing else to do. I thought, Well, I ll just surprise him. I ll swing down to his home, and surprise him. So I got on a bus and went to Palo Alto, and I went up to the door, and knocked on the door, and his mother answered the phone [door], and I says, Is [Beckman] here? No, is he supposed to be? Well, he left before I did. He should be coming home. Well, while I m talking to her, he walks up the walk.

10 So, what a reunion, huh? Yeah. So, okay, we had quite a kick about that. And anyway, from this transfer, I was assigned to the floating dry dock training center in Fiberon, California, and there, as a chief petty officer, I was schooled in the art of dry docking a ship. They made a dock master out of me when I was 28 years old. And I was the youngest dock master the Navy had at that time. And that is a job billet for someone like a lieutenant commander or a commander, but they didn t have that many lieutenant commanders or commanders, so I was one. And so after I got my education in that, and got pretty good at it, I had a fourstripe captain that was observing all of this everyday while I was in school, and so when I graduated, why, he said to me, Chief, would you mind serving on the dock that I am in charge of? And I said, Not at all. So okay, he went and spoke for me at the headquarters, and I was sent, then, to Seattle with him, and he was the skipper and I was the dock master of a floating dry dock a concrete job. That was over 300 feet long, and it took us 47 days to tow that thing from Seattle to Innewetuk. And I had 65 men on that ship on the dry dock. Now, that was a secret weapon as far as the Japs were concerned, because they couldn t figure out how they could get into a scrape with a destroyer or a cruiser or a ship like that one day, and the ship be disabled, and it would cripple away and in three-four days or a week, and be back on the line, again, because we were 400 miles back of the line, and they d fall back, go into our dry dock. We d repair them and send them back out to duty again, see. And I spent 17 months at Innewetuk on the floating dry dock. Well, by that time, I had five years and eight months in the Pacific without leave. And so I got sent back to the States again, and they assigned me to another dry dock in Seattle, and they said, Well, you ll outfit this ship two years in Kodiak, Alaska. And I said, Well, you guys might be going to Kodiak, but little Charlie ain t goin. I spent five years, eight months in the tropics, and I m not going to Kodiak and freeze. (End of Side 1) So I said, Make out my orders to go home. I m done with the regular Navy. Well, by this time, of course, I was chief petty officer and I carried a lot of weight. I didn t want to leave the Navy, completely, so I joined the Reserve, at that time, before I got my discharge out of the regular Navy. So I came home, and my brother was working here in Minneapolis, so I came down and stayed with him in January, again. He said, What are you gonna do here? I said, I ll get a job. He said, A carpenter get a job in January in Minneapolis? Don t be foolish! I ll get a job. So the seventh of January, I went to work here in

11 Minneapolis. That first year, now this we re talking about 1947 the first year, my wages as a carpenter, and I worked full time, $4,700. And, of course, that was hard for people to believe then, but of course, I had had a lot of experience. See, I was 18 when I was in the CC Camp, working as a carpenter. I worked as a contractor up in Dakota, and I studied hard, and became a chief carpenter s mate in the Navy, and all of this, and I sent to Annapolis and all over the country for different books, and I studied hard. At one time, I was a walking encyclopedia as far as anybody and I ve had a lot of people ask me, How come we can ask you something, and you ve got an answer right now? Well, I don t know. I guess it s because I know it, and so this is the way it was. Now, just like the other day when Howard called me; he does this once in awhile I think just to check me out. He calls up and he asks if I know this or that, so the other day, he called up and he said, How do you tell area of a circle? And I said, Well, that s easy. I said, Radius squared times five. And he says, How do you know that? And I said, Do you have a Stanley tape? He said, Yeah, and I said, Look on the back. It s there. Trying to catch Dad? Yeah. So it s kind of an unusual thing, and of course, I m a past commander of the VFW. I joined the VFW in 1942 down in Honolulu, and I ve been a member ever since of one post or another. I was a member in the Detroit Lakes for many years, and then I joined Anoka, and I m now my membership is over in Palmer Lake VFW. And, of course, after I came here to Champlin, I not only joined the VFW, I joined the American Legion and I joined the Masons, and I m a Shriner, and Scottish Rite Mason and a York Rite Mason. I spent a year as associate guardian for Chapter 38 in Anoka, and I was seven years advisor for Demolet in Anoka, and I spent several years advisor for serving Demolet. And you were with some Scouts over there, too. Oh, I ve been in Scouts for 28 years; something like that. But in 1960, I believe it was in 1960, I retired from the Naval Reserve, and the Navy. I have 27 years military service plus the two years in the CC Camp. So, and then I retired from the carpenters organization, and all of this and that, and so I met a guy down here I was playing cribbage over at the Champlin Legion a couple weeks ago, and I met this gentleman, and he said he was in the Navy. And I said, What ship? He said, The Wright. He said, The Wright; it was a carrier. And I said, No, I ve gotta disagree with you. It was a converted carrier a baby carrier they called it. And he said, How do you know so much about it? I said, I spent three years and eight months on the Wright when it was a sea plane carrier. And he said, I don t believe that. I said, Yeah. World War II. He was on the Wright during the Korean War. A different war. Yeah.

12 But a different ship. Actually, the same hull, but a different time. And so I sat there and I told him when it was built, and how much tonnage it was, and how long it was, and how wide it was, and how much draft it had, and he said, Well, I gotta tend to believe you!. Yeah. I would think so. I would think so. Well, somewhere - there s two things I d like to back up to Pearl Harbor. Am I correct in remembering that you did have a good friend on the Arizona? Oh, yeah. Probably more than one. No. When I was up in North Dakota, that was what I was gonna tell you, I stayed with a family. To show you the difference, I boarded and roomed with this family for seven dollars a week board, room, and washing. And that fellow was a shoemaker. He was arthritic, but he was a former painter. And he was crippled up with arthritis. And they had five children. And, of course, the oldest daughter was about my age, and of course, you know what that led to. I begin to chase around with her a little bit. And the oldest boy was about my age a little younger, and so when things got going along there, and our work began to slack off, why, I said to this fellow his name was Howard, by the way I said, Howard, let s join the Navy. And he said, Fine. So we joined the Navy together. He was called just a little bit ahead of me; maybe a week. And when he got assigned to a ship in Pearl Harbor, it was the Arizona. And, of course, I was on the Wright, and of course, when I got down there and got organized, why, we were back and forth a lot. I almost became his brother-in-law, you know. It was that close. Yeah. And so anyway, we were pretty close. We went ashore together. Maybe one Sunday if I was in, why, we d have dinner over on the Arizona, and another time, he d come over and have dinner with me on the Wright. Or we d go over to Honolulu and go to a show, and have lunch over there, or go out to Waikiki Beach or someplace. Anyway, I have a letter here someplace in my archives that well, I wanted to get on the ship Arizona. It was clear down yet when I was there. It was about that much above water. And so I went over there, and they wouldn t let me on it unless I had things to do, and so anyway I thought I ll find out whether he got it or not. I wrote him a guard mail letter, and the guard mail letter was returned to me unclaimed. And so then I knew that he had been one of the unfortunate ones. And so we ve been over to Honolulu a number of times, and I got a picture.

13 Here. Do you want to wait just a minute, here. I want to ask you okay, before we look at a few pictures, I was over at Pearl Harbor just two weeks ago. Mmmhmm. And it s a very emotional thing. And there were so many Japanese people there. I know. There were large tours of them. I know. And I didn t know what to make of that. Well, my theory is in 1941 they tried to take it by force. Now, of course, they come over and buy it. I found myself kind of resenting them being there, which I didn t think I would ever Well, a person shouldn t be that way. I know. But I can t help it. After all these years I can t hardly bring myself to converse with the Orientals for the things that they have done, and the conditions I lived under for five years. Now, one other thing before we close this, and that is, somewhere along the way, you did find a girl that you married, and I happen to know her first name is Maxine. No. The first one was in California. Oh, is that right? Okay. I married a Helen McDonald in Berkley, California, and of course, that didn t last long. That was one of those Dear John deals. There were a lot of those. And then when I came back here, that s when I met Maxine. When you came back when you lived in Minneapolis.

14 Yes. So she is from Minneapolis. No. No? She was born in Rapid City, South Dakota. Oh. Maxine was. And her home then her folks lived in Watertown, South Dakota, and then after her folks separated, her mother moved to Minneapolis and worked for Minneapolis Moline. And there was Maxine and her three brothers living with their mother down in Minneapolis when I met Maxine. And what is her maiden name? Moss. And that s M-? M-o-s-s. Okay. And now you have three children. Yeah, I have three children. I have Charles, who s the oldest one. And Howard is the second one, and Anna Marie is the third one. And I have eight grandchildren. And do they all live in this area? Well, within 15 miles of me all of them. That s wonderful. That s wonderful. Howard lives up in Oak Grove, Chuck lives in Maple Grove, and Anna Marie lives in Brooklyn Center. And, of course, Chuck is an electronics engineer. He works for Richfield Bank & Trust. And Howard has his own business. He s an appraiser and a real estate broker he and his wife, both. And Anna Marie is married to a Brooklyn Center police officer. That s their oldest boy, right there. He looks like Anna Marie, I think. Huh?

15 He looks like Anna Marie, I think. Very much. And then she operates a Day Care. Yeah, she has a Day Care, and she has about 18 little ones in there. That oldest boy here they are again. That s him over there, and that s his brother. The two of them were Eagle Scouts. Is that right? Yeah. Nice looking. I can t believe she has children that age already. Well, I thank you very much. We ll close off the tape unless there s something more you d like to add to this, Charles. Well, this of course, is self explanatory. I belong to this organization called Pearl Harbor Survivors which was initiated in Oh. A white hat it says Navy Pearl Harbor Survivors. And I understand that you were there when they had their celebration. 1981, I was there, but I haven t been back because I got so disgusted with, as you say, the Orientals that were there, that I couldn t. You found it too upsetting. I couldn t take it, again. Yeah. And anyway, I was telling you about this friend of mine that s on the Arizona, yet Howard Kukuk is his name. Oh, how is the last name spelled? K-u-k-u-k. Kukuk. Kukuk. It s an Icelandic name. Then, of course, I wouldn t live this through if I didn t show you this. Not that I m a hero of any sort, but Howard seen the Anoka County Service Officer Mmmhmm.

16 And got these for me. Oh, yeah. About 35 years after I had them coming. Yeah. I understand that happens with many of them. This first medal is the Asiatic-Pacific Campaign. That happened, I m afraid, far too often. And this one has the two smaller medals on it with Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941, and a coin. That s a tie tack. Is it a tie tack? Okay. It s in the box. We have another medal that says World War II, United States of America the Victory Medal, it s called on the back of the box. Another medal that says American Campaign. It s got the air, the land, and the sea pictured on it. It s called a campaign medal. And another medal that says, American Defense. They re beautiful medals. Oh. Then I wanted to tell you something about this is just some of my discharge stuff. My pension out of the Navy. My monthly pension, now, is more than my first full year wages was when I was full time in the Navy. Is that right? You know, at 21 bucks a month, it didn t build up too high. Yeah. And now, of course, with 27 years, and paid off as a chief petty officer, it s well over a year as an apprentice. Well, that s good. So, that s Charlie Triggs. Well, that s pretty great. I m not a hero, but I ve seen a lot. The United States Navy. Okay. I think how do you feel about this move to what do I want to say? Close some of our bases our military basess?. Just on a personal level, what s happening today in our news? As far as I m concerned, it s history repeating itself. They did the same, I m telling you this at the beginning of this thing about the depression time now you

17 take a ship that has well, we ll say, a carrier, for instance, 4,000 people on it 4,500 intended. Okay, they say, Cut back military spending. Well, we ll say 10%. That s not much. But 10% of 4,500 people you know, 450 people you re getting back here. Okay. That don t sound like much, but if you take 450 people off from a ship, now you have seen the description, but it s hard for you to realize that a carrier is like 888 feet long. That s farther than from here across the pond. And you take 450 people off of that 4,500, it leaves a little hole. Okay. They can fill in and do this. Now, that s this year. So next year, they say, Well, we didn t do it quite enough. We gotta take another 10%, so you get 400 more off, and pretty soon, you get down to the point where it was prior to World War II. Like I was saying, our ships had a wartime compliment of 600 and some, and when the Japs hit, we had under 300. We were operating on a shoestring. And the same thing happened, like for instance, they wondered, you ve heard that said, Where was our fleet when the Japs hit? Where was all our people? Well, they were over on the beach getting drunk. That s not true. A battleship that s had a compliment of, say, 3,500 people, had been through this cut back, cut back, cut back, down through the depression years, and so they had under 2,000 people on a battleship. Okay, they were skeleton crews. Alright, now, having never been in war for 20 years, who s to say? What s the sense of sitting here 24-hours a day waiting for something happen? Liberty. As long as we re sitting here. Now, they have four sections on each ship has four sections of duty. Okay? So it gets to a point when something is brewing, they give a one-section liberty. 25% can be allowed. Okay, if it s a little lax, then 2-section liberty. And so it had been so long since anything had happened, why, now, Pearl Harbor as long as liberty is up at midnight, let s make it 3-section liberty. Everybody in 3-sections. We keep one section aboard to man the lights and the heat and so on the ventilation, and that. 25% of the crew can manage this, but they can t get the ship underway, and they can t go to battle stations with 25%. So, this is what happened, see. And now, we re doing the same thing. We re cutting back the bases. Next it ll be cutting back the ships, and next we ll be fighting the yellow race, if not the Russians, so it s my opinion that the younger people now should start learning the Oriental languages or Russian, and be ready to communicate with these people, because it s gonna happen. They re gonna get us one way or the other. It s gonna happen. And see, we re spread out so much now, and try to do good to those Balkan countries and African and they re still worrying about Korea, and this, and they re getting spread too thin. Okay. Well, I thank you, again, very much for taking your time this morning to tell me the stories. It s really great, and I didn t have to ask too many questions. You had it all ready for me, and that was wonderful. I really appreciate it. And

18 now, we ll turn this off, and then you had a picture or a letter or something you wanted to show me. Oh, yeah.