Aboard the Chester Maru

Another letter from my Dad, this one about his World War II service as a navy gunner aboard the merchant tanker MS Chester Sun.

While at boot camp all of us recruits had to take a battery of tests.  The top scorers got to choose which school they wanted; all the others had to take the luck of the draw. Not wishing to brag, but I was in the top 3% in my company and chose gunnery school. The bulk of my boot camp company was assigned to a baby flattop (a Liberty or Victory cargo ship converted into an auxiliary aircraft carrier) the USS Lipscomb Bay. The Lipscomb Bay was subsequently sunk and several of my fellow recruits lost their lives.

The reason I chose gunnery school instead of some other school was that I thought I had a better chance of getting to sea as soon as possible. In those days I was very ignorant, so ignorant that I was afraid the war would be over before I got to be part of it. I needn’t have worried; the war lasted for a couple more years.

I was sent to a three-week crash course at a gunnery school at the destroyer base in San Diego. It was there that I learned that I was being assigned to the Armed Guard. The Armed Guard was a generic term for the Navy gun crews assigned to the merchant ships which were pressed into service during wartime. After finishing the abbreviated gunnery course I was sent to San Pedro to await assignment to a ship.

After a night on the town (during which I lost my billfold, pay card, and ID card) I returned to base and learned that very night that I was assigned to a merchant tanker, the MS Chester Sun. Early the following morning I was taken to the ship just before it sailed off to war. At that time most merchant ships were steam powered and had the SS (steam ship) prefix; e.g. the SS Rheem. The Chester Sun (owned by the Sun Oil Company out of Chester, Pennsylvania), powered by a large four-cylinder diesel engine, was a motor ship, hence the prefix MS. The Chester Sun was old and slow, the plates were riveted instead of welded. It was a bit more than 300’ long.

The ship was armed with two .30 caliber and four .50 caliber water-cooled machine guns, a 3″ and a 4.5″ cannon. A Navy lieutenant, a signalman, a boatswain’s mate, and about 10 or 12 seaman recruits headed up the gun crew. A Navy tanker usually carries a complement of about 300 officers and men; the Chester Sun only about 40, counting the gun crew.

Since the ship was so slow (4 to 6 knots) it normally didn’t run in convoys but sailed by itself. Our first stop was the New Hebrides Islands. The route to the islands was circuitous, down by South America and then over to Espiritu Santo, the main island. The long route lasted more than 30 days but was necessary to avoid the submarine zone. When we pulled into port, the first Navy ships I saw were the cruisers Honolulu and the St. Louis, both of them missing their bows. Since the Chester Sun (nicknamed the Chester Maru) was so slow, it became a station ship. That is, we remained in port for months; the newer and faster tankers would discharge their load of oil into the Chester Sun and return to the US for another load.

My job aboard the ship was to service the .50 caliber machine guns and serve as range finder (aimer) for the cannon. Inasmuch as I was proficient in code, I also stood signal watch. Our code was KGMV. As Navy ships came into port to refuel they blinked our code, sort of shotgunned the signal since there were so many ships in port. I would read the signal, acknowledge it, and notify the bridge that we had a ship coming alongside for refueling.

While in the port we went ashore quite often. At one spot there was a stream flowing into the harbor that was our swimming hole. The stream made the area semi-salty. Coconuts and lime trees grew wild in the jungle. Lime juice squeezed into a green coconut makes for a delicious drink it has a cooling effect. And speaking of salt water and water in general, I must point out that fresh water is always at a premium aboard an old ship. We washed our own clothes in a bucket with salt-water soap of an ugly brown color which was hard to work into lather. In order to keep clean we took salt-water showers and then rinsed off with a quart of fresh water.

Now and then the Japanese would send over a bomber at night and drop a few bombs. None of the ships in the harbor were hit directly (some close misses) and none of the military installations ashore suffered any damage. The bombs that hit the islands didn’t kill any humans but did kill some cows. During those night raids we manned our guns but never fired. That was good policy because the planes were high and except for occasional glimpses, when the planes were caught in search lights, you couldn’t see anything to shoot anyway. The Army AAA ashore did all the firing, the Navy none. A wonderful fireworks display. The triple A batteries made a constant roar and the bombs dropping on the islands made a clumping sound.

After some months the Chester Sun hauled anchor and went south to New Caledonia, a French possession, this time in a convoy of four merchant ships and two Navy escorts. In the mornings and evenings we had air cover too. One evening there was a submarine scare; both the planes and Navy vessels dropped a lot of depth charges. As far as I know it could have been a false alarm, the Navy never claimed a kill.

We spent Christmas of ’43 in port at Noumea, New Caledonia. The popular place in Noumea was the Pink House, a whorehouse. It was rumored that Admiral Halsey had a financial interest in the Pink House. You heard the wildest rumors in wartime, practically all of them false. None of the gun crew of the Chester Sun frequented the Pink House but some of the merchant crew did.  We Navy boys did watch the lines of troops waiting their turn. Army MPs kept order and as each customer exited the gates they were obliged to undergo prophylaxis administered by Army medics.

One day while servicing the machine guns, one of our crew (Barnes by name, from Utica, NY) accidentally fired a burst of .50 caliber rounds into the city. Following a policy of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” we waited for repercussions, there were none. The rounds must have fallen into the ground somewhere. There were a lot of lepers in New Caledonia, they seemed to be street vendors or beggars, and we avoided the dark skinned natives.

In January the Chester Sun hoisted anchor and headed back home. Again we took the southern route and sailed alone. This time it took more than 30 days. The cook ran out of flour. In order to make bread he opened cans of hominy, dried it, and crushed it into course flour. Finally he ran out of all canned goods except spinach and fruit cocktail. We lived on spinach and fruit cocktail the last four days of the voyage. We docked at the Navy base in Long Beach, California on a Sunday. I know it was Sunday because the dining hall on the base was serving poultry (in the Navy, poultry was always served on Sunday). After the diet of spinach I ate so much chicken I got sick.

Some years after the war the Chester Sun was in the news; there was an explosion aboard while the ship was in the Caribbean. I think some crewmen were killed or injured but the ship did not sink. That was the last I ever heard of the Chester Sun. Surely it was turned into scrap when shipyards began turning out supertankers.

I remember Dad telling me how eager he was to get to war, and his letter confirms it.  He must have been a little disappointed to be assigned to a mere merchant tanker, particularly a ship so old and slow (the MS Chester Sun was launched in 1917) it was confined to harbor duty.  And he must have been a little disappointed to be so far from the action.

To be, ah, perfectly honest, I’m not sure I’m entirely on board with Dad’s claim that he and his gun crew never visited the Pink House, but I’ll never get the opportunity to ask him about it.  And I’m not all that upset by his remark about avoiding dark-skinned natives in New Caledonia – Dad was a man of his times, as we all are, and that’s the way it was back then.

I was able to find just one photo of the Chester Maru on line, and although specifications and build dates are available at the Sun Shipbuilding Company site, there’s no information on when the ship went out of service.  Sister tankers built by Sun were sold to various South American shipping lines in the years following WWII, and that’s probably what happened to the Chester Maru.  Surely it’s long since been scrapped.

I hope you’re enjoying these scraps of history.  There’s more to come.