In 1997, Judge Jack Weinstein was asked by William Stegman to write down his “recollections” of his time on the Jallao in World War II. Mr. Stegman was writing a memoir of the Jallao. Judge Weinstein pro- vided the following information in a letter to him. The Naval Submarine League requested and received Judge Weinstein’s permission to reprint his letter. The majority of the text is provided here with a few edits to correct typographical errors.
Jack Weinstein was a civilian, who joined the Navy after the war started. He got out of the Navy after the war and became a lawyer and a judge. He has served as a federal judge in the Eastern District of New York and, although on “retired” status, continues to still hears cases. He recently celebrated his 97th birthday.
The USS Jallao (SS-368) was a Balao class submarine. Keel laid 9/29/43 in Manitowoc, WI; commissioned 7/8/44 with LCDR Joseph B. Icenhower in command; arrived Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 9/22/44.
November 13, 1997 Dear Bill:
The numbered paragraphs are not in chronological order.
There have been a number of references to the Jallao in books de- scribing submarine warfare in the Pacific. I am sure your librarian can get them. I believe one of them was a rather comprehensive summary, by the Navy, itself. Here are a few “incidents:”
- After the war started, I tried to enlist in the Naval air force, but was turned down because of my allergies. I went to Columbia’s 90 day midshipmen’s school, then studied electronics for nine months at Har- vard and MIT. The night I came aboard the Jallao after a short stint on a submarine tender at Midway, the Jallao was conducting final night maneuvers and training off-shore near Pearl Harbor.
The boat had come, as you know, from the boatyard in Manitowac, Wisconsin, through Chicago, down the Mississippi and through the Pan- ama Canal. The original crew and officers were working together well, but were, except for a handful, without combat experience.
The submarine forces had had little success with either the “SJ Ra- dar,” which was designed to pick up ships and other objects at sea level, or the “SD Radar,” which was intended to find aircraft, but had a fun- nel-like “catch basin” that made it difficult to see low-flying planes.
The captain welcomed me as one of the first of the trained radar of- ficers. Fortunately, there was an electronics mate aboard named Grieve, with whom I got along quite well. He had a good understanding of the circuits.
Shortly after we arrived on station that first night, the SJ Radar blanked-out completely. Since we were at close quarters with our “tar- get” vessels in the dark, this was rather embarrassing, and somewhat dangerous.
Grieve and I went over the system using a technique which doctors use as a kind of differential, clinical analysis. We agreed that the central pulsar had completely broken down. Neither of us had ever heard of that happening before. Fortunately, there was a spare aboard. We replaced it in short order and the radar was quickly in full operation. This cement- ed my relationship with the captain and Grieve’s relationship with me. From then on I had little trouble as a technical consultant. Whatever I said about any electronic equipment was accepted as accurate.
- On our first patrol we were involved with other submarine pick- ets blocking the retreating Japanese forces after their unsuccessful ap- proach to Leyte Gulf in their navy’s attempt to attack MacArthur’s forces landing in the Philippines.
Our radar was working better than it ever had before. We picked up a vessel coming up from Leyte Gulf, heading back towards Japan at over 32,000 yards. This was at or above the maximum for the SJ at the time. Our vessel was the first to pick up this signal and it notified the rest of the Pack. The other pickets also closed in on the nearby enemy. They agreed, however, that the Jallao should have the first crack at whatever this was. The signal was extremely strong and had two peaks, which is some- thing I had never seen before in connection with a vessel at that distance. The captain asked me what I thought it was and, without any knowledge on the subject, I said, “It looks to me like a very large destroyer or a small cruiser.” It turned out, much to my surprise, to be a small cruiser. I was aware of a personal heightened memory capacity as we came in. I could remember each range and bearing I reported and, contrary to my normal ability, was able to simultaneously estimate relative speeds and courses of their target.
We tracked the target during dusk. When it got dark, we were close enough for the final approach.
The captain came in semi-submerged so that he could continue to use the SJ radar as we approached. We sunk the vessel with the first spread of torpedoes.
It turned out that this cruiser had been somewhat crippled by our air- force. But it was proceeding, as I recall, at about 15 knots, which meant that if we had missed it, it might have just escaped destruction.
- During one of our missions off the China Sea, east of Taiwan, we became involved in a terrible During the storm, a whole flotilla of destroyers near us was blown over and sunk when they persisted in following the Admiral’s directions to pursue what we were all then fol- lowing – one of the last remaining Japanese battleships heading towards Japan.
The waves were enormous. I estimated they were at least as high as a 5 story building. When we were in the trough, we were surrounded by black water to an enormous height. At one point in the storm, one of the lookouts flashed by my eyes. I was the duty officer on deck with the conn. He started to go overboard. I turned and caught him by his ankles, hanging on while I shouted for the other lookouts to come down and help drag him back aboard.
The force of the waves when they hit the bridge was so enormous that if you didn’t duck under the counter, it was like being hit with a sledge hammer on your chest and face, forcing you back against the steel bulkheads of the conning tower.
When I informed the captain of the danger, he secured all the look- outs and submerged. We went down over 300 feet. At that level the boat was still rolling to a considerable angle. Our captain had had the wisdom not to follow Com Pac’s directions to pursue this battleship. Unlike the skipper of those destroyers, he had saved his crew and his ship.
Sometime after the captain died, I was in touch with his son, who was a major in the army stationed in Germany. I told him that the captain had saved our lives. I had not only this event, but many other incidents in mind.
Captain Joe Icenhower was a fine sailor. Although, he was quite an aggressive skipper, he never put his crew and boat at unnecessary risk.
- We were leaving Pearl Harbor after a very pleasant interlude near Diamond Head and quarters in the Royal Hawaiian. The captain had taken us over the mountain into the then lovely and underdeveloped side of Oahu. After he stewed the steaks in liquor and the crew stewed themselves, we had a wonderful carefree outing on the lovely, white, palm fringed beach.
At this time, as I recall, he implied that we would be going to Aus- tralia. This pleased me greatly, but I was puzzled why, as winter was approaching in the north Pacific and summer below the equator, we were loading on board heavy felt boots and the heaviest of outdoor clothing. Sure enough, when we left port, instead of turning south towards Aus- tralia, we turned north towards the Bering Sea for some of the coldest weather and nights that I can remember. I chided the captain on this and he pleaded “Secret Orders.”
- Despite the cold, the north had a beauty of its own. Sometimes the fog was so thick that you could see neither the bow nor The wa- ter was, at times, flat calm and in the surrounding deep purple fog even the diesels sounded muffled and respectful of the silence and loneliness. At times, due to electricity in the air, every point on the hull had a light purple halo so we proceeded lighted up like a Christmas tree with foot- wide bulbs invisible to the world at large.
While we were in Southern latitudes, the minute diatoms and other microscopic flora and fauna, brightened our path with luminous flux so it appeared as if the ship was ploughing a lighted highway through the sea. My pleasure at the sight was always somewhat alloyed by the fear that Japanese planes could spot us from afar.
One night I was startled by a huge black glistening body suddenly rearing up about 100 feet off the port bow. I took quick evasive action before I realized it was a whale. During the war, while humans were kill- ing each other, whales had some respite. I’ve seen many whales since, blowing and diving with their huge flukes exposed in the waters of Alas- ka and Baja, California. None ever made as much of an impression as that first one.
I now seem to recollect hearing whales communicating with each other through the steel of the hull, as I lay in a bunk. But that memory is not reliable since I have read about, and heard recordings of, these sounds since then.
- On one of our patrols which should have been very successful in destroying Japanese vessels, we scored no sinkings at all. This was strange. At one point while the ship was submerged, I was in the conning tower as duty (Since I did not play bridge, I was often sent up on duty since the captain, who loved bridge, needed the officer on duty as a “fourth.”) I had picked up on the periscope five freighters in a convoy. We made a perfect approach. All five of them should have been sunk since we were close enough and had a perfect set-up.
Unfortunately, however, we had loaded the new electric torpedoes. My recollection is that I was very skeptical of these torpedoes when they came aboard. I vaguely remember mentioning that to the captain, but the Navy did not want a mixed load of electric and steam torpedoes.
As you know, during the first year or so of the war our submarine forces had had terrible problems with the original steam torpedoes. They ran too deep. Their exploding devices did not work when they hit head on. They sometimes porpoised. It was only after these problems were corrected that the submarine forces began seriously to attenuate the Jap- anese war effort.
The captain assured me that the Naval Bureau had thoroughly tested these torpedoes. They had a great advantage in running more quietly and not leaving a wake. It turned out, however, that we fired every one of them and none of them exploded.
In addition to making for a useless patrol, this was extremely dan- gerous. At one point, after firing these torpedoes at a convoy, we were picked up by a Japanese destroyer. A shot down the throat of the destroy- er would have been useless in view of the bad experience we had with these torpedoes, so we went down. Before we could get down sufficient- ly, the destroyer hit one of our periscopes and bent it over. It had also started to drop depth charges which shook up the submarine.
The Japanese destroyer must have felt the hit of the periscope, be- cause it didn’t stay around very long. Apparently it was under the im-pression it had been hit by a torpedo which failed to explode. By that time enough attacks on Japanese destroyers and escorts had been suc- cessful, and there had been sufficient attrition of the Japanese navy, so that even their destroyers had become less aggressive.
When we got back to port, I was on deck while most of the crew and officers were on shore. Down the dock walked Admi- ral Lockwood. He looked up at the bent periscope and asked, “Son, was that done by one of theirs or one of ours?” I replied, “It was one of theirs, sir. A destroyer nicked us, before we could get down.” He grinned and with a friendly wave said, “That’s good, because if it had been one of ours, I would have been faced with an enormous amount of paper work.” We both chuckled as he walked back down the dock.
- During our passage through the Japanese mine fields into the Sea of Japan, I watched the proceeding on our new sonar. It was scary.
You could see the round mines a few feet in diameter as we went by. They were quite close.
This new sound equipment operated much like radar so that you could visualize the mines. It was not possible, however, to tell the depth of the mine. You never knew whether the mine was above, below or at just your level.
At one point we scraped one of the mine cables. We could hear it running down the hull as we passed. Had it been snagged on any part of the hull, it would have undoubtedly drawn the mine down to us creating an extremely hazardous condition. All the bulkhead doors were sealed and we were rigged for “collision” in case of an explosion.
- When we got into the Sea of Japan, Guy Graham, our radio offi- cer, and I were on He came from the Northwest and I am told died rather early. He was a charming, lovely, dark skinned young man.
We got word from our radio that the first atomic bomb had been dropped. Both of us had taken some atomic physics. We speculated on whether the world would go up with the bomb since we weren’t sure that you could control the “combustion.” I jocularly indicated that if they hadn’t controlled it, the whole world would have gone up almost instantaneously. Since we were able to discuss it, the bomb must have been a success. We both laughed, little realizing what horrors had been unleashed.
- On the return from our first patrol, Gieseking, our engineering officer, was on deck facing (Gieseking had a serious heart condition rather early in life and the captain mentioned to me on a number of occa- sions that he worried about him.)
In charge of the boat was an officer, whose name escapes me, who came from Eagle Pass, Texas. He too, I am told, died shortly after the war ended.
Gieseking turned forward and noticed a large air bubble and then the wake of a torpedo going down the side of the ship.
We had been fired on by a Japanese submarine. The officer in charge was completely unaware of the event. When Gieseking reported the sighting, the vessel, of course, went up to full speed to escape the area. We all recognized that this was a close call.
The officer was never thereafter a happy person. When we arrived for refitting in Midway, he drank more than he should, and was left ashore.
I rather liked him, even though we had a few run-ins. For one thing in cribbage games, where he considered himself a great expert, I invari- ably won, purely out of luck, and I kept making remarks, such as, “Is this the right move? What do you think I should do now?” Finally, he got so infuriated, he threw a metal ashtray at me. Fortunately, it landed flat on my ribs, or I would have been out of commission.
He did help me, talking about possible careers, and suggesting that the law would be good. He made some recommendations about schools. According to him, after he graduated from Pennsylvania University Law School, he had been selected to go to the Supreme Court of the United States as a clerk to one of the justices but he couldn’t take the job be- cause he had to go into the Navy.
I did send for some law books including the Common Law by Holmes. Those conversations, I think, helped me to decide to go to law school rather than to medical school or to study advanced economics or physics – all of which, I suppose, would have been open to me since I had a fairly good college record.
Another run-in with this officer was also somewhat amusing. When I came aboard all the officers’ bunks were occupied. We had extra officers because of the need for somebody like me familiar with radar. So I had no assigned bunk. I used to have to sleep in free bunks while the officer whose bunk I used was on deck. I would come down exhausted from my own watch and throw myself into whatever bunk was empty. This offi- cer, on one occasion, apparently had gotten up for a few minutes to go to the head to relieve himself. When he got back he saw me in his bunk. He tossed me onto the floor and got in himself.
This lack of a bunk was a particularly difficult thing to live with. When we picked up wounded aviators, I did all my sleeping under the wardroom table, or on the deck without blankets, and without undress- ing.
- At one point when we were on station to pick up downed avi- ators, a number of them were in the sea off a small island controlled by the Japanese. Our charts and “intelligence” indicated that the Japanese garrison had a gun with a maximum range of 15,000 yards. I was in the conning tower watching the radar since the captain was picking up the aviators who were in a small raft 18,000 feet from He wanted me to make sure we stayed outside of the 15,000 yard range.
Suddenly there was great excitement on deck and everyone, includ- ing the wounded airmen, came tumbling down as we dove. The Japanese had straddled us with two shells that splashed water on the deck. Another shell could well have been a direct hit.
The aviators had wounds that were putrefying. The smell was sick- ening. Newly developed sulphur and penicillin soon had them on the mend. In earlier wars they probably would have died or had limbs am- putated.
- We were in the Sea of We drew back from the Manchu- rian coast earlier than our original orders required because the Russians came into the war a few days before they and President Truman had agreed they would. The Bombs had just been dropped and the Russians feared that Japan would surrender before they could invade Manchuria and the Japanese Northern Islands. As it turned out, we didn’t need their help, but they put themselves in a position to assist the Chinese Commu- nists in their struggle with Chiang Kai-Shek and his Nationalist armies. After the dropping of the two atomic Bombs, we picked up on our radar a vessel traveling from the mainland towards Japan. It could have been a freighter or passenger vessel. My recollection was that it carried passengers, or, at least, was equipped to do so. The captain started asubmerged attack.
I approached him and said, “Captain, the war is almost over. That ship is probably carrying refugees from Manchuria back to Japan, in- cluding women and children – do we really have to sink it?”
He replied, rather sadly, “I’m sorry, Jack, but those are my orders. I have no alternative.”
I suppose it was pretty nervy of me to do this. Had I not done so, however, this would have been a burden on my mind even more than it has been.
(Since that time, I have been to Japan and to that entire area. I was on a cruise ship, the Marco Polo, that covered the same area as two of our patrols – including Korea, Vladivostok, Tokyo, and other Japanese cities and Shanghai and Beijing. The Chinese and Koreans still hate the Japanese for what they did. I have also just returned from a series of lectures I gave in China. As a result of these trips those events became much more vivid in my mind.)
Shortly after we sank that vessel, we were very close to the Japanese coast when we were informed by radio of the end of hostilities. Again, I approached the captain and said, “Look, captain, you’re probably the closest United States vessel to Japan. They have given up. They certain- ly will obey the Emperor – why don’t we just land?” We could see the docks of the Inland Sea just a few miles away. “We could take over the whole Japanese empire,” I went on.
The captain laughed. “I’m sorry Jack. I have no such orders. In any event, it might be dangerous.” So, instead of taking over the Japanese Empire, we escaped from the Sea of Japan and turned towards the long voyage home.
That long trip back, where we sailed day and night for many days came back to me when we began to become heavily involved in the Vietnam War. I had three sons all of whom were available for the draft. I just couldn’t see getting involved in such a faraway place in what I con- sidered an unnecessary and losing war that would serve no purpose from our point of view. Some of my colleagues on the Columbia Law faculty, didn’t see it my way. They had not had the advantage of understanding the huge distance between our country and Vietnam – both in terms of geography and background
- On our last patrol we had aboard a young African-American “messboy” to serve the At that time, the armed forces were seg- regated and an African-American or Filipino servant could never aspire to higher rank. This young man was trying to study mathematics from texts that were available through a mail program. I also had a number of paper-back texts from Wisconsin University on Sociology, as I recall. I tried to teach him trigonometry.
The rest of the crew and officers were not helpful. (I, however, re- membered the strong black longshoremen who were abused, but took no guff on the New York docks where I once worked while I went to college at night.)
Since then, of course, things have changed radically. Truman brave- ly risked losing the 1948 election (but picked up Northern black votes sufficient to beat Dewey) by desegregating the armed forces. (I detested Dewey because he had held up absentee ballots, I believed, and I could not vote in the 1944 election for Roosevelt.) I was on a tender in Midway when Roosevelt’s death was announced. I wept, but some cheered.
John Higham has an article on “America’s Three Reconstructions,” in the New York Review, November 6, 1997, p. 52, pointing out that there was a great resurgence of aid for African Americans after the Rev- olutionary War, the Civil War, and World War II, followed by back-track- ing. I observed and confirmed the truth of his thesis. During my early days of teaching at Columbia, I assisted the NAACP and Thurgood Mar- shall in the Brown case (being listed on the brief in the Supreme Court) and in other matters. I also helped as a judge in prison, school, and men- tal health institutional reforms and in discrimination cases. Now there is, as Higham points out, a shift back, but most “gains” have been retained even though there is a negative reaction to minority assistance. When I look back to what I observed in New York in the twenties and thirties, and what I saw through that messboy’s eyes in the forties, I marvel at the change. I wonder if he was still alive to see the armed forces headed by an African-American.
I was astonished – and I think you may have also have re- marked on it – that among the officers in the wardroom, even though we came from such diverse backgrounds and parts of the country, we had a common fund of knowledge from schooling and absorbed attitudes toward life. We had read the same books in school and had the same gen- eral world outlook. You and I had roots in Kansas (I was born in Wichita) so that was probably predictable, but it was true of all the officers. Al- though there was a slight anti-semitism in the crew, I never felt it among the officers.
Of course, that was wartime, so we all had a common cause. Now, since the Reagan years particularly, we seem to have become somewhat more selfish and are beginning to fall apart.
- I, personally, never had much animus towards the Japanese. As a boy, I had walked many times across the Williamsburg Bridge and watched the beautiful white Japanese Marus steaming up and down the East river to pick up scrap metal (some of which may have been in those depth charges dropped at us). I never dreamed that one day I would be helping to try to sink these lovely ships.
Despite Pearl Harbor, the Japanese Navy was often admirable, tak- ing its cue from the British, American and its own warrior traditions. Their equipment and morale was excellent. During the early part of the war, they tried to pick up survivors of ships they had sunk. As the war wound on, these niceties were forgotten. The army was always cruel, of course. We were just too big and powerful for them.
I have had one of my books translated into Japanese and I respect their academics. We even own a Toyota Camry, designed in Japan, but made in Tennessee. They are now our allies, possibly against a resurgent China. It’s going to be an interesting twenty-first century.
- As you will recall, we used to say, “The Golden Gate by Forty Eight,” under the assumption that there was not a great chance that we would ever actually return to the States We did return in ’45. What a thrill it was to sail in under the Golden Gate Bridge.
I went home to marry Evelyn. Four of the officers from the Jallao travelled together East by coach train. Captain Joe and I slept with our feet in each other’s belly on that rattle-trap four-day train trip across the country.
I was very fond of Captain Joe. I spoke to him on the telephone from time to time and corresponded after he moved to Pennsylvania. His wife died after a lingering illness. He wrote a number of books for children, including one on submarines and a trip to Antarctica. I read a few ofthem and they were fairly good.
Much to my regret, I never did get to see him face-to-face. I still remember the very fine letter that he gave me to help me get into law school and the silver platter that he gave to Evelyn and me on behalf of the officers and crew of the Jallao when we returned to San Francisco after our marriage.
In a speech at dinner greeting Evelyn, he said we were made for each other, which was very romantic. It turned out he was right in this, as in many other matters.
- The analytical techniques I had learned in connection with radar also were useful in connection with the torpedo control I think it was called the TDC.
On one occasion it broke down and Guy Graham and I went over it, analyzing the blueprints. We discovered that one of the rods was broken. We got an electric drill and put a brace in, reconnecting the rod. This was kind of a courageous for us since that equipment was rather sensitive. But it worked. The captain encouraged us. He remarked, “When I heard that drill going I knew you guys had solved the problem – go to it.” We did, getting a kind of joy in joint accomplishment.
On another occasion, Bobby Bown and his torpedomen had been checking over that TDC. It wouldn’t work. They could not discover the problem. After a day or so, he asked me to take a look at it. I examined the diagrams and went up and looked at the equipment. It was imme- diately obvious what the difficulty was. One of the wheels, instead of slowing down when an electric signal was sent to it, speeded up. That meant that the wires were crossed. I told them to switch those wires and the problem would be solved. He thought I had to be wrong, since the crew had thoroughly checked the wiring. But he switched terminals and that did solve the problem. (He paid me back in San Francisco by lending me his golf putter, which I lost by putting it into a collection bin at the golf course.)
This was not great tribute to my reasoning. It was just an applica- tion of the analysis that I used in servicing electronic equipment. The approach has proven useful in the law: (1) find out what the problem is,
(2) reflect on the theory, (3) develop a hypothesis, (4) check hypotheses against the facts, (5) adjust the hypothesis as needed to accord with real-ity, (6) correct the problem.
- When we landed for a refit after a patrol, the officers were allowed a certain number of bottles of wine and of whiskey each week. The men would have paid an enormous amount for them, but they were available only to officers at the officers’
Since I did not drink, I utilized my own store of liquor for the boat’s benefit. At one point, changes were being made in the deck in order to install the sonar that would get us through the Japanese mine fields. I took the discarded teak wood from the deck along with a couple of bot- tles down to one of the shops. They made cribbage boards for each of the officers. I don’t know what happened to mine or even if anybody kept them – but it did seem to me like a good use of my liquor.
I also had a piece of the hull – about 2-1/2 inches thick – cut out at that time. For years I used as a paper weight. During one of the many moves that we made after the war we lost it.
- Another use of the liquor was on Saipan. Shortly after this island was taken in a terrible battle, we While this island and the nearby Tinian Island were being readied for the B29 bombers to bomb Japan before the invasion, I took one bottle over to one of the army mo- tor pools. The bottle got me a huge army truck for the day which I used to explore Saipan.
I’d learned how to use a large truck and its gear shifts while I was working while going to night school. Even so, I pretty much stripped the gears of that truck going up and down the hills and newly bulldozed roads. I returned the truck before the end of the day because I couldn’t stand the smell of the bodies and of death that permeated that island.
I used some of my liquor at a B29 compound. There had been de- veloped for the Air Force a series of monitoring devices that enabled the operator to tell us what type of radar was being used by the Japanese and whether it had “locked-on” to you. For a few bottles of whiskey, I got all the equipment and manuals from a B29 and brought them back to the boat, installing it with the aid of the electronics shop suitably plied with drink.
The device proved effective. We could pick up all of the radars as we went along the Japanese coast and the Philippine coast. The only trouble was that it scared everybody out of their wits as I would announce from time to time that such and such radar at such and such location was not picking us up.
The captain wisely discontinued use of this B29 equipment. We went on without it. Ignorance was bliss.
There was once one Japanese plane that did pick us up, however. We were bombed, according to the pilot, although we dove before it arrived overhead. Tokyo announced our sinking. This proved to be a bit prema- ture, fortunately. Pearl Harbor expressed relief when we denied by radio that we were dead.
- Probably the most dangerous moment for me personally on the Jallao occurred one night while we were at Hawaii being I was the only officer on board. There were seven crew members on watch.
Before retiring, I came up on deck to check the lines. Sitting in a circle on the aft deck were all the men on board. In the center was a half-empty bottle of whiskey. I picked up the bottle and asked, “Whose is this?” No one answered. “As long as it doesn’t belong to anyone, no one will mind if I dispose of it,” I said, flinging it in a wide arc into the water. I then continued to walk aft to check the stern lines. Returning for- ward, and past the group which hadn’t moved, I bid them, “Good night gentlemen.” Silence.
Later I was told that the sailor carrying a 45, who was guarding the boat had reached for his gun to shoot me in the back, but was restrained by two of his companions.
I never mentioned the incident. The captain would have had to pun- ish the men for drinking aboard. A bottle of whiskey probably cost a seaman about $35.00 at the time.
- On one of our missions we were with a group of other sub- marines in a “Wolf ” One of our companion subs was sunk not far from us.
I lost a number of friends in the Submarine Service. The last night in San Francisco before I flew out to Pearl Harbor and Midway, was spent with two vivacious young officers. Both of them were lost in submarine operations.
- Occasionally, I will hear from one of the men by New Year’s card. I was in touch with the baker, Stanard, who, I think, opened a bak- ery in He and I got on well because I admired his baking skills.
After getting off the watch at 4:00 AM, he always had fresh bread and butter and coffee for me. That, pickles, ice cream, and canned grapefruit was about all I ate after a few months on patrol. The captain raised his eyebrows at my preference for pickle sandwiches instead of steak, but probably thought it another New York idiosyncrasy and never remarked on it.
After the war, the Petty Officer in charge of our dispensary opened a pharmacy on Amsterdam Avenue. Once in a while I would drop in to see him when I was teaching at Columbia. I don’t know what happened to him after he sold that pharmacy.
I would like to be in touch with some of the officers and men. It will not be very long before we are all gone. I therefor applaud your attempt to write the memoirs of the Jallao.
With all best wishes to you and your family, I remain,
Sincerely yours,
Jack B. Weinstein
Senior United States District Judge Senior Lieutenant, U.S.N.R., (Ret)
