On leaving Auckland we headed north, past Australia, past the Solomon Island, New Guinea and New Ireland and continued on to Manus Island.  Why Manus, I don’t have the slightest idea other than we had some small Navy facility there.   The damn Island sits almost smack dab on the equator and hotter than heck day and night.

But at least the evenings offered a little reprieve and a beautiful sky, clear enough it seemed to almost see the entire universe.   At times we could also see the Southern Lights (Aurora Australis) with its the rippling curtain of ghostly green light.   It was a beautiful sight late at night.

Standing by the guardrail in the dark of the night, looking out to sea, made it difficult not to think about the girls at home and the ones left behind in New Zealand.   It was depressing enough when I wrote my final letter to my newly found New Zealand girlfriend a couple of days earlier, but standing there thinking about that and the seven letters I received from my stateside girlfriend in the final mail call before leaving New Zealand made looking forward to the next five months seem like an eternity.

It was nearly impossible to write while at sea, what with duty details of four hours on and four hours off.   And it was certainly impossible to do much of anything below deck in the sleeping quarters because the lights had to be off so that the guys could get their sleep in between duty details

A small signal shack attached to the back of the Pilot House solved that problem to a limited extent!   It was a signalman's private haven, a virtual paradise! Okay, so I'm exaggerating a little!   But only a wee-bit!   It wasn’t much, just a little 4x4 room, but big enough for a couple of guys to stand in when the weather was bad or a place to study signal books and occasionally get a letter written.   In all likelihood it was constructed as an afterthought after the ship was built.   I mention it here because it had a light bulb (always red at night) and a wall electric socket.

That little electric socket is what made the place so special! Besides enabling us a place to make coffee it also made it possible for us to use a hotplate.   I don’t know how or when the hotplate came about, it was there before I arrived and I’m sure it wasn’t regulation and probably wasn't supposed to be there, but it was.

We made some of the best, fried cheese sandwiches late at night one could imagine.  A half stick of sizzling butter for french-frying two slices of bread with cheese in between, heated until the cheese melted and the toast was golden brown -- was a pure delight;  Nothing tastier!

Being in the signal gang gave us something the cooks wanted and they had something we wanted.  So we made sure we stayed good friends with those folks!   We wanted coffee, bread, cheese and butter.  They wanted messages sent to friends on other ships.  Those late night cheese sandwiches and the fact that us signalman had access to the ship's only sewing machine made us good friends with a lot of folks aboard.

I wonder how many uniforms I tailored aboard the Spangler?  The guys liked bell-bottom trousers and tight jerseys so the sewing machine came in handy!   Just about everyone aboard ship had something someone else wanted, so we were always bartering something.

February 5, 2005 - In my letter to my girlfriend that evening (who later became my wife and has put up with me over all these years), I wrote, "Gee, but it's hot here! I never thought it possible anywhere in the world to get this hot.  But what gets me is there are hotter days to come and we were still a day or two from the equator).  I said Joe Mitchell was at it again, "he wants to go over and get plastered while we're at Manus Island.  And we're going to be there overnight.  Frankly I doubt we will go over and have one beer much less get drunk.  But the thought of a few cool beers does help a little in this heat..."

I added, "One of the ships steaming along with us lost steering control this afternoon and almost ran into us.  Damn near caused me to have a heart attack.  Ha! Yep, if she would have come a few yards closer, I think this old ship's number would have been up."

As scheduled we made our overnight stop at Manus Island and Joe got his beer.  In fact we all drank more than our fair share.  I suppose that’s one of the reasons I remember so little about Manus.  About all I can recall for sure is going back to the ship.  As a Quartermaster/ Signalman my delightful task while ashore that night was to signal the ship when it was time for the ship’s boat to come pick us up.  By then I could barely see the ship much less send an intelligent signal, but somehow or another I managed to get a message across Because someone aboard ship "guessed" what I was trying to do and sent the boat after us.  The guys in the photo below on the left are (l to r) are: Moore, Kuntz, Obarski, Archey, Johnson, and Lalicker. Andin the photo on the second photo is Joe Mitchell, sitting with cap on back of head, and Lalicker on far left with open shirt, Kuntz and Obarski next to the SP.

        Feb. 10, 1957 - The Spangler arrived at Guam where she spent six weeks, not in port much but in conducting a surveillance of the Bonin, Eastern Caroline and Marianas Islands including four days retrieving weather balloons launched from Guam.  We no sooner arrived in Guam and we had to head out again .  Of the twenty islands in the Bonin and Caroline Islands group, only ten have any appreciable size.  Some were nothing more than large volcanic mountain outcroppings, Nearly all of the islands, however, were large enough to hide a fishing boat in one embayment or another.  The Spangler's responsibility was to circle each island looking for Japanese fishing boats operating within restricted waters.  We were told that the Japanese had used fishing boats under guise to gain a foothold on the islands before the war and the U.S. was not about to permit that to happen again.  So this practice was prohibited following the war until the islands were released from American Administration back to the Japanese in 1968.

ChiChi was the largest of the Bonin Islands.  We had a lot of fun over that one! Chichi is slang for breast in Japanese.  The older salts on the ship told us that the Japanese sent young ladies to be trained in the Geisha art of satisfying men. And of course they embellished on this a slight bit.  I wrote my girlfriend jokingly saying how pretty Japanese women were on Chichi Jima Island and that they had been sent there to be educated the ways of manors and love.  But I added she need not worry, we were only going to stop for about 2-hours.  Mostly what I recall from seeing Chichi, was not pretty women, but high bluffs areas with massive numbers of tunnel openings used by the Japan for gun emplacements.

We didn't come across a lot of fishing boats in restricted areas, but did find a few.  When we did we pointed out five-inchers in their direction and escorted them to Guam or someplace where they could be taken into custody.