Audio
Dale Barnhart
Transcript
Brian Chin: 00:06 [inaudible 00:00:06] I'm starting to tape the conversation now because we're already into it, so I'm just telling you.
Dale: 00:12 Okay. Anyway, I was already in charge of the Base N stations there for that battery B. I was a corporal at the time. And I had come up from basic training from Camp Callan, and we had all those old-World War One caissons and everything. So, there were several months that they had sent all the equipment, the old World War One equipment, up to San Rafael, I think, California to have it modified. So, we got the gun carriages were all with pneumatic tires and everything when we got them back.
Brian Chin: 00:51 So before that they were the steel wheels?
Dale: 00:53 Before that they was all that old World War One stuff.
Brian Chin: 00:55 Right.
Dale: 00:55 The helmets we wore and the rifles we used were all World War One. It was quite a mess. That was Camp Callan, down in San Diego. Are you familiar with that?
Brian Chin: 01:06 Yes.
Dale: 01:07 Yeah.
Brian Chin: 01:08 So this was after the first couple of months when the war started, and then they sent you down there for a refitting or retraining or whatever, and then they got the guns ready, and then you had headed off, down to...
Dale: 01:20 Well, from basic training near San Diego, we went to San Francisco.
Brian Chin: 01:24 Oh, okay, I get it.
Dale: 01:25 Yeah. And we were interviewed up there too, and [Riley Conrad 00:01:30], I guess his name was... Let me see, I'm going to check this again, well it's not on this one here.
Anyway, he asked me if I knew anybody that had worked on the telescopes, the tracking instruments. And I said, well, I had been in on the firing down in San Diego, we did a trial firing down there. The only one we did. Then I had worked on the azimuth instruments, the Base N station. And he said, "Well, I'm going to put you in charge of that."
Brian Chin: 02:06 I see.
Dale: 02:07 So shortly after that they made me a corporal, probably the least likely person to be made a corporal, but I did get out of KP-
Brian Chin: 02:07 Yes.
Dale: 02:17 ... that way.
Brian Chin: 02:19 Yeah.
Dale: 02:19 And we made a tour, of course, of Cronkhite, they had all those great guns up there, which were never used again. I don't even know if they've dismantled them since.
Brian Chin: 02:32 Yeah, they have.
Dale: 02:32 They have huh?
Brian Chin: 02:32 Yep.
Dale: 02:33 So I was up there. Let's see, I went in the service in March '41, and of course the Japs bombed Pearl Harbor on the 7th, December. And then we went into a maneuvers up at Drake's Bay. They really thought there might be a landing, a submarine landing there, but it rained the whole time we were out there. I think out of 50 days we were there it rained all but three.
Brian Chin: 03:02 I see.
Dale: 03:03 And the place was just mired, and the tractors and the caterpillars went down deep, they couldn't even move them. And when we got back, of course, we were in blackout at Cronkhite. And then they started in on this plan, we didn't know where we were going at the time. I had one year of French in college, so I guess that, and the fact that I was working on the Base N stations, made it possible for me to be included in that group.
Brian Chin: 03:34 I see. Did you-
Dale: 03:36 And there were about 250 men all together from all the different batteries.
Brian Chin: 03:42 Of the 56th?
Dale: 03:43 Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Brian Chin: 03:44 So they just put together a composite type of a unit?
Dale: 03:47 Yeah. Each group was 27 men.
Brian Chin: 03:51 Okay.
Dale: 03:52 And we were the first to land in South America, our little group, detached group 9098 B I think they were called.
Brian Chin: 04:04 9098 B.
Dale: 04:04 9098 B.
Brian Chin: 04:06 I see.
Dale: 04:07 Detached.
Brian Chin: 04:08 I see.
Dale: 04:09 And of course being detached, we weren't going to receive any kind of supplies or materials or anything to replace the uniforms and all that.
Brian Chin: 04:18 So you brought whatever you had with you?
Dale: 04:21 So whatever we had, we were stuck with that.
Brian Chin: 04:22 Yeah.
Dale: 04:23 They had four of these station groups down the coast of Chile. And headquarters of course was at the embassy in Santiago. We were at [Togopia 00:04:36], which is the northernmost harbor. And there we worked on establishing the gun batteries, there was four of them, and the Base N stations, and the communications. And we had one man, Sergeant [Arod 00:04:51], who actually charted the whole area up there, I think for the first time, surveyed it and charted it. And we went around with him on that.
I never was really prepared for that kind of service. I was just merely an artist. And I had no engineering ability or anything at all. So I was actually in that work for the entire time I was in. And we had to live with the Chileans, eat what they ate, and get the services that they got.
Brian Chin: 04:23 Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Dale: 05:33 At their prices.
Brian Chin: 05:34 I see. Now were there Chilean military units that you were working with?
Dale: 05:39 Yeah, we worked with the Chilean [Arturia Costa 00:05:41]. Let me see if I can say that again.
Brian Chin: 05:47 Okay.
Dale: 05:48 They were like Marines in a way, and it was just a coastal outfit, and it was conscriptees, and we worked with them every day.
Brian Chin: 06:02 Now was the object to train them to use the equipment you brought down?
Dale: 06:06 Yes. And to help us to establish them, to pour the gun batteries and the cement pits and place the plotting rooms somewhere down near the harbor, and to build the Base N stations, which were located usually about three miles apart on opposite sides of the plotting room.
Brian Chin: 06:29 Yes. Now the Chilean coastal artillery, did they have weapons to start with, or everything was brought down and they were...
Dale: 06:37 We brought it all to them.
Brian Chin: 06:38 I see. So they weren't operating any type of active costal artillery before that?
Dale: 06:45 No, just a navy. And they had these very old looking naval ships, they looked like flat irons, real weird looking thing. I suppose they were actually leased to them too.
Brian Chin: 07:00 You said there were four gun batteries established?
Dale: 07:07 Four. Four as far as I know.
Brian Chin: 07:08 I see. You're talking about full-strength gun batteries with four 150 [crosstalk 00:07:12]-
Dale: 07:12 Mm-hmm (affirmative). Four rifles in each one.
Brian Chin: 07:16 I see.
Dale: 07:18 Now everybody that worked with it, we had to teach the Chileans how to use everything. Very eager people they were too, smart, bright.
Brian Chin: 07:31 So this was only, they just culled some personnel from the 56th. I mean, it wasn't complete 56th coast artillery batteries that went down there, they just-
Dale: 07:39 No just instructors.
Brian Chin: 07:41 Right. And you were one of those?
Dale: 07:43 Yeah.
Brian Chin: 07:43 And how did your-
Dale: 07:44 We had people that operated the big lights. What do they call them?
Brian Chin: 07:51 Search lights.
Dale: 07:52 Search lights.
Brian Chin: 07:52 Yeah.
Dale: 07:53 We had a group that worked on the trucks and that equipment, Jeeps and so forth. They were in the transportation area, and plotting room people, and the gun sergeants and their crews. And we had just 27 guys.
Brian Chin: 08:13 In your particular, now what did they call it? A detachment or-
Dale: 08:19 Detachment, yeah.
Brian Chin: 08:20 Okay, 27. That meant you were supposed to train of course, more Chilean people than like a one-on-one training. I mean, you were there to instruct a whole group?
Dale: 08:33 Yeah. I forget what they called the whole group here, but they had a full, I would say battalion maybe.
Brian Chin: 08:41 I see.
Dale: 08:42 If that's the name we could put to it.
Brian Chin: 08:43 Yeah, I suppose so. That sounds like that would handle about four batteries wouldn't it? A battalion.
Dale: 08:47 Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Brian Chin: 08:48 So there were 27 of you for the entire compliment-
Dale: 08:50 For the entire group.
Brian Chin: 08:52 ... that went down to Chile?
Dale: 08:53 Yeah.
Brian Chin: 08:53 Yeah. Did-
Dale: 08:55 And it took us a month to get there on the ship, the old Matsonia, which was renamed the Etolin, E-T-O-L-I-N. And every day we met on the decks, and had our, we had our Latinos with us, our American Hispanics, and helped us to get through some of the rudiments of-
Brian Chin: 09:18 I see, good.
Dale: 09:20 ... Spanish language. And so for me anyway, I had quite a bit of vocabulary by the time I go there.
Brian Chin: 09:26 Oh good. Now, because you had one year of French, they figured that that would be good enough for you to start picking up the Spanish?
Dale: 09:36 It might so, I had some experience with language.
Brian Chin: 09:37 Yes, yes.
Dale: 09:39 But I think more than that, it was that the fact that I worked with the telescope and would be very useful there. We had two, a private, a PFC, I guess by that time with us, and there was another corporal and I that headed up those two Base N stations.
Brian Chin: 10:03 Uh-huh (affirmative). Let's see, I want to go back to a time when your detachment departed. So did they go out of the San Francisco port of embarkation?
Dale: 10:14 Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Brian Chin: 10:15 So all the 155s were loaded in that one ship-
Dale: 10:19 They were.
Brian Chin: 10:19 ... and you guys were on it, and all your supplies and equipment?
Dale: 10:23 The whole cahoot.
Brian Chin: 10:25 That meant trucks and whatever else you needed?
Dale: 10:27 Everything, yeah, it was all there. And we didn't really know where we were going until we got out of the golden gate there, on the sea, and then we were all called to gather, and Colonel Sackville told us what we were going to do.
Brian Chin: 10:46 So he was the commanding officer of your particular-
Dale: 10:48 He was the commanding officer down in Santiago.
Brian Chin: 10:51 Oh, I see. So he was already down there when you went, or he went along on the same ship?
Dale: 10:57 He was with us.
Brian Chin: 10:58 I see.
Dale: 10:59 And then we had the big cruiser, Concord, was our escort all the way to Panama. And until we got to San Pedro, in that area, we had a blimp too. So it was so soon after the Pearl Harbor incident that they were afraid that we couldn't really handle the regular shipping lanes because of submarine warfare.
Brian Chin: 11:28 Okay. So in the book, I would say that a compliment of 27 went down with all the equipment and the guns, under the Golden Gate, escorted by this cruiser and this blimp.
Dale: 11:39 Mm-hmm (affirmative). The blimp left us at San Pedro-
Brian Chin: 11:39 San Pedro.
Dale: 11:43 ... and the cruiser with us. And all we had to do, I mean there were fellows that had to work in the kitchen and all that, but I stood watches at night, mostly on the stern. And you'd see the ship, the big Concord out there on one side, and then it'd be on the other side, and they'd send off this little plane, they'd catapult a plane off the deck. And then he'd go around looking [crosstalk 00:12:15] in the daytime.
Brian Chin: 12:16 I see. Well what was the sort of the anticipation or feeling of the people on board the ship as they went out the Golden Gate and were going for places unknown? Was there any particular mood or...
Dale: 12:29 Well I can't remember, it was 50 years ago.
Brian Chin: 12:31 Okay. No, that's all right-
Dale: 12:35 I know how I felt. I was an adventure for me. It was terrific, because I knew the other guys that were left behind were going to be shipped to the Aleutians. And I didn't want to go to Alaska.
Brian Chin: 12:47 Okay. So the 56 actually wasn't part of the harbor defenses of San Francisco for very long after they got up to the Bay area, and after the war started, then they got moved out pretty quickly?
Dale: 13:01 Well, I don't know. I know that we went these two different places, some of us to South America, and others to Alaska, but I don't know what happened to the others. I don't know anything about the Cronkhite after that time.
Brian Chin: 13:18 I see. Okay-
Dale: 13:19 You probably know.
Brian Chin: 13:20 Yeah. Well, the thing is, I only know basically what I read and what somebody might've told me. So I'm always trying to draw all the strings together. And so there's a lot of times where I'm asking these questions, I'm trying to see how it jives up with something that somebody else might've said.
Dale: 13:37 Did you have any idea at all that we went through that trip to south?
Brian Chin: 13:43 Yes, I did. I have a book that shows all the units and how they eventually ended up from beginning to end of the war. And they made a big mention of the 56 being split up into these various task forces that head down to South America. And it seemed like there were other groups that went to other countries down there.
Dale: 14:02 Yeah, that's possible too. I don't know.
Brian Chin: 14:05 Okay.
Dale: 14:06 All I can know is that we were pretty well censored too. When we were down there, anything we wrote had to be thoroughly censored. And we were warned that there were a lot of Chileans that were pro-Axis. And in fact, we made friends with a very nice family, the [Frowmanies 00:14:28], who were Italian, who had the photo shop in town.
Of course, there wasn't much to do up there. We had cameras, we took a lot of pictures, hundreds and hundreds of pictures. But eventually before we left, it was found out that the Frowmanies were actually undercover agents, and they took the whole family down to Santiago, I guess, and put them in jail.
Brian Chin: 14:59 I see. I would imagine probably along with your group somewhere that must've been a few army intelligence people, or some detective types that was working on the security for the mission?
Dale: 15:15 Actually we were there, we were sponsored more or less in that area by the Chilean Exploration Company.
Brian Chin: 15:23 Which was a?
Dale: 15:25 Anaconda Copper.
Brian Chin: 15:27 I see.
Dale: 15:27 And we all received 90 bucks a month over a base pay just to be there.
Brian Chin: 15:37 I see.
Dale: 15:38 And Anaconda Copper Paid for that.
Brian Chin: 15:39 I see.
Dale: 15:42 So we were loaded in the sense that the Chilean military men made so little money. I think they made 50 pesos a month. And we were instructed not to go into town when they were paid because they were so generous. They would blow their money on us.
Brian Chin: 16:00 Yeah. You mean I can not write in my book something about a military industrial complex being paid by the Anaconda Copper Company?
Dale: 16:12 Yeah, I was interested, because not too long ago there was a series about the condor, and about South America, and this man traveled through Chile and wound up in Chuquicamata, where the mines were. They also had the, what do they call it, nitrates. The nitrates, they did the nitrate mining there too. It was all there, the copper and the nitrates. And it showed that is practically a ghost town by now, and it brought back some strange memories I'll tell ya.
Brian Chin: 16:53 I hadn't taken a look at the geography of chili yet, but I understand that there were little spits of land at that very tip that had to be figured into the defense system that you set up down there?
Dale: 17:07 You're talking about Tierra Del Fuego?
Brian Chin: 17:09 Yes.
Dale: 17:10 I know nothing about that. But I know that several of us went down to Santiago for a couple of weeks on a kind of vacation-type thing. And we wanted to go further south, but they wouldn't let us.
Brian Chin: 17:27 Oh, I see.
Dale: 17:28 Valdivia for instance was a heavily German settlement, and they didn't want us to go there, and we wanted to go in where [Todal De Santos 00:17:38], the Lake there, and the mountain there. It's as beautiful and as perfect as Fujiyama. It's that kind of thing. We wanted to go for the South, but we were neither equipped for that, nor did they want us to do it.
Brian Chin: 17:55 Okay. So as far as you know, the four gun batteries didn't extend down to that part of-
Dale: 18:00 No, they just went as far as above Santiago. Now I know one was in [Ando Pugosta 00:18:06], and another was in [Shan Uraul 00:18:09], and that there may have been another one, and I can't remember the name of that one. That would be the furthest south. And if I give you the number for my Lieutenant, you can ask him that.
Brian Chin: 18:00 Right. Yes, well we can get it at the end-
Dale: 18:26 Yeah. He said, "Well, gosh Dale, nobody could tell more than you could about what we did down-"
Brian Chin: 18:26 Well, then I got the right person.
Dale: 18:37 Anyway, I think he would be very helpful.
Brian Chin: 18:39 Well, yes. See, you never know what I have heard before that I can corroborate and start putting all the pieces together. Whatever you say at one point may mean not too much, but a couple of days later after talking to somebody else, or reading of something else, it may create a big spark.
Dale: 18:58 Yeah, you'll be able to tie some loose ends together.
Brian Chin: 18:58 Yes.
Dale: 18:59 Yeah, our captain is still, [William C. Leonard and 00:19:04], they call him Clyde, and he must be in his late eighties by now. And he wasn't able to travel to our last two reunions.
Brian Chin: 19:12 Oh, I see. So you guys-
Dale: 19:15 We're going to have another one in October, I think. And there aren't too many of us left. Well, there were some we couldn't locate, and others I've kept in touch with for years. And that was the one who actually got everybody together the first time. So I've become the chronicler for the group.
Brian Chin: 19:33 Oh, well I certainly have come to the right person. As I told you, it was such a strange coincidence that [inaudible 00:19:40] mentioned some tiny little thing about you. And then when he mentioned that it, when he said you went to Chile, then it sparked my interest. Because I had read that the 56th did send some detachment down there, and so I knew it had to be.
Dale: 19:57 Yeah.
Brian Chin: 19:58 So that's strange.
Dale: 19:58 Well I've met people here, even in talking about it, who were down there too, as civilians, of course. And we had some Japanese in town. We had a lot of English people, they're great colonists. And we had some Americans there too. So we had contacts. And the Chileans were really nice, really affectionate and friendly people.
Brian Chin: 20:28 Now did you mention that as far as learning what you had to teach them, they were quite good, or I don't remember if I asked you.
Dale: 20:38 Yeah, they were very good. They were very eager. Sometimes you had to restrain them because they go off half cocked and take chances.
For instance one night we were at a ball for the Minister of Defense in the Club Union there in Tocopilla, and we heard this enormous explosion and everybody raced out of the place. It turned out that the Navy was there in the Harbor, and a couple of sailors were trying to get a timer, a fuse in, and they were pounding on the darn thing. And it detonated, blew the end of the ship off-
Brian Chin: 21:19 Oh, well, this was the Chilean Navy?
Dale: 21:21 ... and killed the kids. Yeah the Chilean boys.
Brian Chin: 21:24 Okay. Let's see. When did the unit leave Chile?
Dale: 21:32 Leave Chile? It was somewhere around May of '43.
Brian Chin: 21:39 So you were down there for seems like about a year, at least?
Dale: 21:43 Well, at least a year. When I tell people about it, I usually exaggerate a little bit, I said, "We were there for 18 months." But I think it was more like 14, 12 or 14.
Brian Chin: 21:54 Then you said you came back in...
Dale: 21:54 We came back in two groups. We came back on liberty ships, and we came up to San Pedro Harbor, and then we were shipped up to Camp McQuaide near Watsonville. And there I had the most rigorous kind of training schedule to do. I had [inaudible 00:22:26] to 50 men, I had to take them through [inaudible 00:22:31], and close order drill, obstacle course. I had also went into camouflage, and it was like 16 hours a day.
Brian Chin: 22:45 Were you guys being retreaded and to some other branch or...
Dale: 22:48 No, but there was a chance at one point to go to Army Specialized Training Program at Stanford. And I got to Stanford, and I passed my oral tests in Spanish, with an eye to studying Italian for the North African and Italian campaign. But all that went so rapidly over there that they sort of decided to not to send some of us to school.
So some went, I didn't. I went back to McQuaide. And then we had draftees coming in, 18 year olds. And they had to be gotten ready in 13 weeks, sending them to the South Pacific. And boy, that was hard. Those kids, they were so worried about what was going to happen to them. They didn't feel like they'd been trained long enough.
Brian Chin: 23:46 Yeah. So you were a part of the basic training?
Dale: 23:49 Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Brian Chin: 23:50 I see. Were you a sergeant by then?
Dale: 23:54 No, I was still a corporal.
Brian Chin: 23:56 Still a corporal?
Dale: 23:56 Yeah. This is when I began to think that I should have been in a different branch of the service to start with. I could have been a cartographer, and so many did, they even became officers doing that. And I was a corporal to the bitter end.
Brian Chin: 24:21 I thought you said you left the service sometime during the war or?
Dale: 24:25 Well sometime still during the war, yeah I left there and went back to Cedar Rapids, and went into a defense plant. I was a draftsman.
Brian Chin: 24:40 Did you have all your time by then or how did you get out?
Dale: 24:42 No I had some problems, medical problems. So they decided instead of transferring me to another outfit, which might've been better for me, they just decided to let me go. That's how it worked.
Brian Chin: 25:06 I see. We've gone through the entire chronology of things. Let me get back to the harbor defense in San Francisco part. And so you went into the army basically in the spring of 1941?
Dale: 25:21 March, yeah.
Brian Chin: 25:22 Oh March, as a recruit?
Dale: 25:24 Yeah, I was a draftee.
Brian Chin: 25:26 Okay, a draftee.
Dale: 25:27 And in those days, of course, you were going to serve for a year, then you'd be out.
Brian Chin: 25:31 Mm-hmm (affirmative). So you had your basic training down in-
Dale: 25:35 So it was almost, let me see. I had my basic training at Camp Callan, San Diego. And from there we went to the harbor defense area, back in the hills there.
Brian Chin: 25:49 Yeah, so you had your basic training as, I mean, you were slated to go into the Coast Artillery?
Dale: 25:55 It was the Coast Artillery to start with, yeah.
Brian Chin: 25:58 And you first worked with the guns down there?
Dale: 26:03 Yeah. We've fired them once.
Brian Chin: 26:06 So at that time you were already constituted as the 56th Coast Artillery?
Dale: 26:11 I guess so, yeah. For me, most everything exciting about the service started when I got to San Francisco. So I'm having a hard time remembering.
Brian Chin: 26:22 Oh well, see, I'm just trying to work it up to that San Francisco point. Because in that red annual book, like you have, it shows the 56 Coast Artillery as part of the HDSF, and it has pictures of them with the tractors out in the field and gathered around the 155s and all that.
Dale: 26:42 Yeah, is that the big red book?
Brian Chin: 26:44 Yeah.
Dale: 26:44 I have that here too. Did you see my picture in there?
Brian Chin: 26:48 I don't have the book myself. I've seen it from various other people, so I have a copy on hand all the time. So I didn't ever get a chance to look at your picture up in there.
Dale: 26:57 In fact that all the boys are in there that I went to South America with.
Brian Chin: 27:00 I see. So those pictures were probably taken, what, probably in the autumn, or so, probably?
Dale: 27:09 Yeah. I don't think I have a date on that.
Brian Chin: 27:14 Okay. Well, I guess they had to be taken after the unit got up to San Francisco.
Dale: 27:19 Yeah. And it had to be done after, well, it was probably July or August.
Brian Chin: 27:24 Oh, okay.
Dale: 27:25 Now I'm seeing a picture better, because I was made a corporal in July, and I got up there, when did we get up there anyway? Well, I went in in March, we had three months, March, April, May, it must've been June or July when they got up. It was shortly after I got up there that they called me and said they were going to make me a corporal. And I almost protested. I thought, "I can't handle these guys. I'm only 21, and some of them are in their thirties."
Brian Chin: 27:25 Oh, I see. Yeah, that-
Dale: 27:59 The idea of getting out there in the field and barking orders to [inaudible 00:28:04] order drill.
Brian Chin: 28:05 Yes, yes.
Dale: 28:06 It scared me. He said, "Well I think that's all in your imagination. I'm going to make you a corporal anyway." That was Captain [Schweitzer 00:28:13], wonderful guy.
We were talking about him the last time we all got together. And I remember him particularly because of that incident, but he got me out of KP and I didn't have to walk guard duty anymore. I posted the guards, but I didn't have to walk it.
Brian Chin: 28:32 I see. Now what did the 56th do from the time it got to SF up until Pearl Harbor? Was it just basically more training and a target practice and all that?
Dale: 28:45 Yeah, Base N stations were way up, God, I don't know where it was. It was above the big 16 inch gun anyway, somewhere up in there. And we had maneuvers, we went into the field, and of course we went into the field right after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, that's when we went up there. We had to dig our own Base N stations up there too. And we had regular target, they had target practice, but they didn't fire except maybe once or twice they fired. And of course they had to let everybody in the region know so they'd open their windows, [crosstalk 00:29:28] get broken windows.
Brian Chin: 29:28 So every one of the batteries had some chance to fire at least once then?
Dale: 29:33 Mm-hmm (affirmative). And then we also learned, we were instructed in handling the machine guns, the ones that were mounted on these heavy bases. And we had new rifles, we had the Garand rifle. And we practiced marksmanship, and the usual stuff. A lot of inspections, my God-
Second Tape Begins
Brian Chin: 00:08 [inaudible 00:00:08] art show. I'll be here, so I will see you at that point.
Dale: 00:08 All right.
Brian Chin: 00:12 Now, okay, I'm ready here. Now, let's see. How should I start? Now, in the HDSF, the concrete in placement, those units like the sixth coast artillery and the 18th coast artillery, they man the fixed defenses?
Dale: 00:31 Yeah.
Brian Chin: 00:31 Okay. Now, in the 56th coast artillery at the HDSF, did they have particular positions that they had marked out for them in case of hostilities, or do you think they only thought of that after the war started and then they figured they needed...
Dale: 00:48 Now that may be something that Lieutenant De Moisy could tell you. He might know more about that because he was a lieutenant at the time. But I don't remember that we had anything staked out at all. I know that they were mobile, and they could be shipped as anywhere I suppose.
Brian Chin: 01:14 Right. Oh...
Dale: 01:16 But there wasn't really any room for them there...
Brian Chin: 01:18 Okay. Oh, I remembered something.
Dale: 01:18 Along the coast.
Brian Chin: 01:22 Now, in that red annual, I think there's one picture, a little tiny picture, of a tractor towing one of the 155's.
Dale: 01:30 Yeah.
Brian Chin: 01:31 But the 155 has the steel wheels on as I remember.
Dale: 01:34 Oh, is that right?
Brian Chin: 01:36 Yeah, I believe so. But you're saying that by then they had been changed to [inaudible 00:01:40] pneumatic tires?
Dale: 01:41 Yeah, they were all sent up to, I believe it was San Roselle, somewhere up there near Redding, and they were gone for quite a while and they modified all that and they brought them back. And they were, of course, OD. They were olive drab.
Brian Chin: 01:57 Yeah. And before that?
Dale: 01:58 [crosstalk 00:01:58] before that, those old things were orange.
Brian Chin: 02:00 Okay. Oh, that's very significant. The more visual elements I've got in the book, the better.
Dale: 02:06 And they just really looked old. And my father was in the army in France in 1918. I was born while he was gone. But we had those very uncomfortable helmets, too. And we of course, later on, we had the others.
Brian Chin: 02:24 Did you get the new helmets before you left for Chile?
Dale: 02:27 No, we had to wear those damn things down there.
Brian Chin: 02:29 Okay, and then they sent you some...
Dale: 02:31 We'd put them on, and it was so hot down there at times, you'd be standing there and your head starts swelling inside the band. No, we didn't get any equipment down there at all after we got there.
Brian Chin: 02:43 Oh, so you-
Dale: 02:44 [crosstalk 00:02:44] practice marksmanship, however.
Brian Chin: 02:46 So that means you didn't have the new helmets of anything?
Dale: 02:50 No, we didn't. We had the rifle, however.
Brian Chin: 02:53 I see. Okay. Now back to the Harbor Defenses. Was there a certain area where the guns were kept in between times that they were being used before the war? The 155's, they must have parked them somewhere.
Dale: 03:08 Oh, we must have had these big buildings, or these... What would they call them?
Brian Chin: 03:14 Yeah. Oh, so you don think they...
Dale: 03:15 Where they put them.
Brian Chin: 03:17 I see. So you're not sure.
Dale: 03:21 And just where that was, I don't know.
Brian Chin: 03:22 Where did the practice take place, whether they were dry-runs or an actual shoot?
Dale: 03:27 They were dry-runs.
Brian Chin: 03:28 Okay. They would just do them right at the parade ground or wherever they'd set them up?
Dale: 03:32 Yeah, and I think that we had to phone in our, [inaudible 00:03:36], for the plotting room. Excuse me. I don't know where the plotting room was either when we were training.
Brian Chin: 03:46 So they would send the range sections out to...
Dale: 03:49 Out to the end of the hill.
Brian Chin: 03:50 Out to where they wanted. And then the whole thing would be... I mean, would they be focusing out towards the ocean? I would imagine so.
Dale: 03:57 Oh yeah, definitely. West. Way up on some height above the Golden Gate Bridge. And sometimes we'd see that too up there.
Brian Chin: 04:09 I see.
Dale: 04:10 And then we'd get up there in these recon cars and it was so steep you'd wonder if you were going to tip over up there. And I met some of the other people who were working in the same field, from the other batteries, because we had battery A, B, C, and D. And some of the ones from A, for instance, I knew some of the guys there, went with us to Chile too because they were part of the other group. So some went to [inaudible 00:04:45] and the others went to [inaudible 00:04:47]. And they all look familiar to me today. I can look through these books and they all look... You'd never forget their faces. It's a strange thing. Maybe it's because I'm one of those people anyway who would naturally observe more than others.
Brian Chin: 05:05 Yeah, well that's what I was telling Walt, that well, you're going to be the first one that I'm thinking I'm going to get more of a visual feel for the topic.
Dale: 05:13 Yeah, my life has just been spent in visual [inaudible 00:05:17] things.
Brian Chin: 05:19 Do you remember the time that your battery had fired the... had their target shoot with a target out there in the water, before the war?
Dale: 05:32 You mean while we were in the Harbor Defense?
Brian Chin: 05:34 Yeah. Or did you have one?
Dale: 05:37 I suppose they did, but you know, [inaudible 00:05:40], I just cannot remember seeing a target being towed there.
Brian Chin: 05:47 Okay, so what...
Dale: 05:52 It must have been, but whether it was a [inaudible 00:05:53] that I thought...
Brian Chin: 05:55 So, when they had the dry runs, what did the range section put their sights on? Was there any boast that was out there or something?
Dale: 06:02 Anything that was out there, yeah.
Brian Chin: 06:02 Oh, okay.
Dale: 06:05 And then of course, we had to... A lot of it was done in the classroom too, I would say. Because you had to identify different types of ships, whether it was a freighter, whether it was a cruiser, whether it was a battleship, whatever. And they had these silhouette things you had to look at.
Brian Chin: 06:25 So, now you, as a corporal, would be in charge of one base end station, was that [crosstalk 00:06:30]?
Dale: 06:30 One base end station.
Brian Chin: 06:31 Yes. And a 155 battery had how many base and stations?
Dale: 06:37 Two. Yeah.
Brian Chin: 06:37 Okay. One on either-
Dale: 06:39 And they were usually located way out on either side of the plotting room.
Brian Chin: 06:45 Right. Now, after the [inaudible 00:06:49]... Okay well, I guess everybody has recounted how December 7th happened for them. If you can do the same.
Dale: 06:58 Well, we were completely shocked, unaware what had happened. And we were on our way over to Oakland... for dinner at some friend's friend's house in Oakland. And we were sitting upstairs waiting for the host to get there, and he comes bounding up the stairs and says, "The Japs just bombed Pearl Harbor!" Well, it sounded so fantastic, so out of this world, I could hardly connect with it. It was a shock. A real shock.
And we had our dinner, of course, but oddly enough, we went out sightseeing and we wound up at an old baby cemetery to look at the stones, see how far back they dated. It seems very weird to me today.
Brian Chin: 07:53 Well, actually, that's similar to what my father did.
Dale: 07:57 Is that right?
Brian Chin: 07:58 Yeah, because he told me and I said, gee that sounds strange, I always thought that everybody was rushing around trying to get back to their units. And he said, no we figured the war had already started, and so we'd just take it easy.
Dale: 08:10 Yeah, we got back all right, but they started putting up a blackout. And then they got us ready to go up to Drakes Bay.
Brian Chin: 08:17 That was just your battery going up to Drakes Bay?
Dale: 08:21 Now, again, I'm trying to think if it was just our battery or whether it was most of the fort. [inaudible 00:08:31]. Because at one point, I went back one day to shower and relax and it just looked like the place was empty.
Brian Chin: 08:41 Okay. Well, I guess everybody...
Dale: 08:43 I think most of us were up there [crosstalk 00:08:47] battalion.
Brian Chin: 08:49 Well, the reason I'm asking is because I think I had read some document showing that battery A went here and a couple of batteries went South of the Golden Gate, some went North to various sites.
Dale: 09:04 No, that's probable. Yeah.
Brian Chin: 09:04 Okay, but you went up to Drakes Bay. So the tractors and the whole unit went out on the commercial roads to go up there, or did you...
Dale: 09:13 Yeah. Right.
Brian Chin: 09:14 What, up 101 or...? I think 101 was there.
Dale: 09:20 It's probably 101. And then we got to the... We were too far from the shore when we got there. And we were digging in on these farms, farmlands. The Japanese are farmers and have been taken away. They lost their rights there for a while. And we dug in our base and station up there. And then it started raining. Yeah, what a mess.
Brian Chin: 09:51 Okay. Now, when the guns... and dug in there, did they attempt to build anything more permanent than just digging in, like putting a concrete base or lining the-
Dale: 10:02 No, I think they were just... No, I don't think so. I think they just came in there the way they were and took them off the [kaysans 00:10:13] and set them up like they would without the regular concrete [crosstalk 00:10:23] forms. There was no time for that anyway. And we went up there right after the 7th.
Brian Chin: 10:29 What is the amount of traverse a 155 like that had without having a sort of concrete platform or any of the things rigged up under it? Did it...
Dale: 10:41 You mean, could they really read...?
Brian Chin: 10:45 Well, I mean how far could the gun swing around in an arc. I mean, it didn't have 360 degrees.
Dale: 10:52 No, that's something you're going to have to get from De Moisy.
Brian Chin: 10:54 Oh, okay.
Dale: 10:57 Yeah, because he'll have the information on that, whereas I just... Except for the work that I was doing, I'm not too sure.
Brian Chin: 11:08 All right. No problem.
Dale: 11:09 We did have to do some work in the plotting room, too. We would be familiar with what's happening to our [inaudible 00:11:16].
Brian Chin: 11:16 I'm saving the best questions for last, see? I'm about to get to that.
Dale: 11:20 Oh boy, you're getting tough.
Brian Chin: 11:22 Now, okay, so they sent you to set up one of the base end stations. So somebody determined where they wanted it and then you would take the crew up there...
Dale: 11:33 Then we would establish where we were in relation to the battery and the plotting room. And then we had to take readings from different points. We could see, for instance, one of them was Point Reyes. Is that r-e-y-e-s?
Brian Chin: 11:52 Yes.
Dale: 11:53 Point Reyes. One night our lieutenant, [inaudible 00:11:59], I think his name was, he came in. He bustled into the place and said, "I think the Japs are landing up there." And it turned out to be the lighthouse up at Point Reyes.
Brian Chin: 12:12 I see.
Dale: 12:14 We had a good laugh on [inaudible 00:12:18].
Brian Chin: 12:18 So as far as setting up your base end station, you would just dig into the ground a little bit and set up the instruments?
Dale: 12:25 Yeah, we went kind of maybe three feet deep. And then the lid on it had to be real close to the ground, so it's couldn't be seen.
Brian Chin: 12:35 Yes. So you would have to construct a lid for the whole thing?
Dale: 12:39 Yeah. And I guess it was tar paper and just wood, whatever we could get. And we had a place where we could sleep. It was one of those regular huts. It had a little stove in it. The wind came up so strong that there was a downdraft in the furnace and it burned into the floor. Here we are, holding onto the ridge pole to keep this thing from blowing away. And we had dug this whole for the base end station and it was full of water, and I'd forgotten where it was. And I ran outside and I fell right into the water. And it was so dark, you couldn't see anything.
Brian Chin: 13:27 Oh, I see. So you feel right into the base end station.
Dale: 13:27 Yeah. Before it was completed.
Brian Chin: 13:34 I see. So when you went out there, you had to build your own structure?
Dale: 13:37 Yeah, we did.
Brian Chin: 13:39 Did they supply the materials or you had to find [crosstalk 00:13:43]
Dale: 13:43 [crosstalk 00:13:43] how would we get it?
Brian Chin: 13:44 So you built the little hut and everything?
Dale: 13:46 Yeah, we did. I've got pictures of it.
Brian Chin: 13:49 Do you?
Dale: 13:49 Mm-hmm (affirmative)-
Brian Chin: 13:50 Oh, well I was going to ask, if you had photos or whatever...
Dale: 13:53 I've got some pictures I could send you.
Brian Chin: 13:55 Yeah, because I would make copies of them and then use them in the book. Now, I...
Dale: 14:00 You want a picture that I have, the diagram I have of the instrument, a cutaway of it, with all of the Spanish nomenclature on it?
Brian Chin: 14:09 That may be a good idea. If it was just the American nomenclature, I probably wouldn't because I'm not really doing a nuts and bolts type of a book, but if it's in Spanish then it will illustrate what you had to go through.
Dale: 14:19 Well, I had the great good luck of having with me one of Chilean artillery men who had studied English at Valparaiso University. And he was very gung ho about speaking English. So he helped me translate all the nomenclature, all the little parts on the instrument so we could teach it.
Brian Chin: 14:45 I see. Okay.
Dale: 14:47 That was really good luck.
Brian Chin: 14:48 Yes, that was. Yeah, the photo of what you rigged up in the field. Well, what type of photos do you have besides those two?
Dale: 14:57 Well I have a lot of stuff taken in Chile, too. I could send them to you and you could have them copied if you want to.
Brian Chin: 15:08 Well yes, that's what I would like to do.
Dale: 15:09 Because I don't think I have... I have some negatives, but I'm not sure.
Brian Chin: 15:13 Oh, no. No, my whole collection of photos is all on proof sheets. That's the way we're going to work them. Whatever I get, I rephotograph them and then I will give you back the pictures, the originals that is.
Dale: 15:27 Okay, that'd be good, because I won't have anything to replace them with.
Brian Chin: 15:31 Well, no, I realize that and what I want to say now is... I have to assure you over and over again that I will take care of these pictures because if they get lost then you won't have any, and I would feel awful about them. And I won't lose them, and I won't destroy them or anything like that, but there's no way that I can possibly reassure you that I'm trustworthy. You know what I mean?
Dale: 16:04 Yeah, well I'm pretty sure you are. Yeah, I'm willing so take a chance on that.
Brian Chin: 16:05 [inaudible 00:16:05]
Dale: 16:05 You get to see what I looked like when I was a boy.
Brian Chin: 16:12 Well I'd like to see all these.
Dale: 16:13 You will call Ralph, won't you?
Brian Chin: 16:15 Oh, yes, I will. I definitely will.
Dale: 16:18 There are some things that he will be able to come right out with that I probably wasn't aware of.
Brian Chin: 16:25 No, no, that's quite all right. And I'm not through with you yet, you know? There's more.
Dale: 16:30 Fire away.
Brian Chin: 16:31 Okay. Now, how long do you figure guys were bivouacked and had your set up out at Drakes Bay?
Dale: 16:39 Well, I thought it was more than a month. Yeah. Let's see, the December, January... Yeah, it had to be, because shortly after we got back to Cronkhite from that excursion, we went through this process that I told you about of being selected and getting ready to go. And we left in February from the Bay, and we left on the old Mansonia, which was renamed then Evelyn. And we had a grand piano in the dining room. And I was the only person out of all those people that ever played the piano.
Brian Chin: 17:18 Did you say they renamed [crosstalk 00:17:19]
Dale: 17:19 I entertained them all the way down to Chile.
Brian Chin: 17:20 You did? You're a master of many things here.
Dale: 17:24 And when we got there, somebody at the... Mr Boynton, who was head of the Chilean Exploration Company, an American, said, "Does anybody here play the piano?" Everybody pointed at me, of course. So he said, "Well I've got this cabaret piano, and nobody uses it. I'll send it down to your day room." We had our own staff quarters, and our own cook, our Chinese cook, and that kind of thing. We had a boy that made our beds and shined our shoes and stuff like that.
Brian Chin: 17:53 I see.
Dale: 17:55 So they sent the cabaret piano down that was only 44 keys. But I entertained everybody throughout that whole mission.
Brian Chin: 18:03 I see.
Dale: 18:04 And then when the captain from Andofagasta called our captain, said, "Who was that boy that played the piano on the ship coming down?" And he said, "Well, you must mean Dale." So he said, "Well, we'd like to have him come down and play for us. We're saying goodbye to somebody down here. We wanted to have a fiesta for her."
Brian Chin: 18:22 I see.
Dale: 18:23 So they flew me down over the Andes to Andofagasta and I played for five hours that evening.
Brian Chin: 18:29 Well, so you must be a pretty good piano player.
Dale: 18:31 Well, I'm pretty good, yeah.
Brian Chin: 18:33 Well, okay.
Dale: 18:33 Yeah, I've written some music too.
Brian Chin: 18:36 Oh boy. You are so versatile.
Dale: 18:39 I have a tune on Stan [inaudible 00:18:40] if you ever...
Brian Chin: 18:43 Well, you are so versatile. Monday I'll have to go and tell Walt that you were so versatile. I'm sure he will like to hear that.
Dale: 18:48 Yeah, see what he says. He's probably bored with the whole thing. [inaudible 00:18:55]. We were great friends.
Brian Chin: 18:56 Oh, you're facile, I guess. That would have been the term.
Dale: 18:59 Well, he would probably say, "Well, he was a great dilettante." That's what I'd expect to get out of Walt. It took him a long time to say what he thought of my work.
Brian Chin: 19:08 Really?
Dale: 19:09 Oh yeah.
Brian Chin: 19:10 Oh my goodness.
Dale: 19:11 And finally he said it was... It was like a left-handed compliment. He said, "Well, I know what I feel about your work," he says, "You have finesse." I had to be happy with that.
Brian Chin: 19:22 Yeah, I think you had to be happy with that. That's the same as facility, which he was talking about...
Dale: 19:32 [crosstalk 00:19:32] started [inaudible 00:19:32]. He was dedicated, though.
Brian Chin: 19:32 Oh yes. Yes, and he still is.
Dale: 19:34 Mm-hmm (affirmative)-
Brian Chin: 19:35 Now, let's see. Outside of the incident with the flashing lights at Point Reyes, you don't remember any other funny things that might have happened while you guys were...
Dale: 19:48 No, not for me. [inaudible 00:19:48] base end station. We were a little out of everything.
Brian Chin: 19:52 Yeah. Now, you were way out there. So, you're saying you didn't get back to Fort Cronkhite except maybe that one time to wash up.
Dale: 19:59 Yeah, to be there.
Brian Chin: 20:02 So you were out in the field for about a month probably?
Dale: 20:04 A month or even more I think. Yeah, and it rained all but about three days of that time. You can imagine the mud.
Brian Chin: 20:12 Yeah. Yeah. Was any target practice done at that time?
Dale: 20:17 Well, I'm sure there must have been. But maybe Ralph can tell you about that. I know that some of the other boys had some stories that they tell about some of the strange things that happened to them. Like Walt Horn, for instance, with whom I've been in touch for almost 50 years now, had some funny incidents he said that happened, firing on the wrong things and whatever.
Brian Chin: 20:44 I see. Were there other units out in the area that you saw? I mean, maybe some infantry or anything else, any aircraft or any other coast artillery units out in that area that you remember running across?
Dale: 21:01 No, I don't remember that.
Brian Chin: 21:03 Okay. Now, the food that you got, did they send that in, or you had to do your own cooking out there?
Dale: 21:08 They sent it in. Yeah, we had a mess tent. Yeah, I remember we had what would have been Christmas dinner out there. And you can imagine slogging through the mud to get there. It was up to your knees. And then your mess kit was filling with rain. I mean, here was all this food, and then it rained on us while we're eating. Not the most festive thing you can imagine.
Brian Chin: 21:36 No, I guess not. Now, how did... And here I haven't really got to your specialty which is the range finding, but there's so many other questions. You say that you gave the name of the Fog Horn to the unit paper, right?
Dale: 21:55 Yeah, right. And you've been getting some copies of that, have you?
Brian Chin: 21:57 No, I've only seen one copy.
Dale: 22:00 I haven't got any myself. And I remember it was John Freeman whom I met, he was in the same barracks as me in basic training, and he had worked for Disney. And he was an animator. And he also got himself jobs with... Let's see, I guess it was the newspaper at Cronkhite. And they wanted a name for it. And he told me that they wanted a name for it. And I put my bid in, so the Foghorn, and won a three day pass.
Brian Chin: 22:42 And at that time that you did that, you were way out at Drakes Bay.
Dale: 22:47 Yeah.
Brian Chin: 22:49 He came up there to see you?
Dale: 22:50 No, no, it happened after I came that day that I came back.
Brian Chin: 22:56 Oh, for your...
Dale: 22:58 For the shower and all that sort of thing. So I left it there. I had to go back of course.
Brian Chin: 23:03 So did you finally get to use that pass somewhere?
Dale: 23:06 Yes. I had a three day pass in San Francisco, only it wasn't much fun because nobody else had a pass.
Brian Chin: 23:12 Oh, yeah.
Dale: 23:13 I went in alone.
Brian Chin: 23:14 Yeah. Yeah, the San Francisco questions will come after [crosstalk 00:23:18], all that stuff.
Okay, so you didn't work on the paper. You just threw in your name as a suggestion?
Dale: 23:27 As a suggestion, and won that, and the pass. And then of course, we had all our regular people... What would you say? Our reporters from our different units. Battery B had its reporter. He was a Polish fellow from Chicago. Wójcik was his last name. And he would gather bits of gossip and stuff like that for the paper.
Brian Chin: 23:58 Yes. Was this paper done with a staff that was just laid aside for that, or this was something they did along with their other duties?
Dale: 24:09 Yeah, there was someone named... I think his name was John Cleland. He was the editor. And that's what he did.
Brian Chin: 24:16 I see. So was a...
Dale: 24:18 What branch he was in, was it Headquarters maybe?
Brian Chin: 24:20 Yeah, could be. Maybe in public information or something.
Dale: 24:23 Yeah. Headquarters [inaudible 00:24:25] where John worked. And it was years later that John found me in Cedar rapids and told me that Disney's was hiring and I'd better get out there.
Brian Chin: 24:36 So this is the fellow you mentioned that worked at Disney's?
Dale: 24:39 Worked at Disney's, yeah.
Brian Chin: 24:41 Yeah, okay. Well, you may be interested to know, though I'm not sure if the Fog Horn name started exactly with you or what, but I mentioned the story to somebody who I used to work with at the presidium. He said, "Oh, by the way, you know that that name has been adapted by the Letterman Hospital for their paper."
Dale: 24:59 Oh, that's fine.
Brian Chin: 24:59 Yeah, so they have it now. I mean, they're been using it for I don't know how long as that hospital has been out there. So maybe you originated it.
Dale: 25:06 It might just well. Yeah, I mean, obviously we heard the fog horn an awful lot.
Brian Chin: 25:12 Oh, did you? Way up there? I've never been to Drakes Bay.
Dale: 25:14 Oh yeah, we could hear it at night, especially the great, thick fogs that we had. We run on the lagoon there. [crosstalk 00:25:27] had to get up there in the morning.
Brian Chin: 25:14 At Cronkhite, you're talking?
Dale: 25:30 Yeah, Cronkhite. They had a lagoon there. And our barracks was right near it, the shoreline. So we'd get out there in the morning in our thin fatigues, and do our [inaudible 00:25:45] in the chill.
Brian Chin: 25:46 Yeah. Let's see, now where should we go next. Oh, okay. Now, here's the question. What methods of target and range finding were used? Was it triangulation and plotting boards such as they did with the concrete defenses? And was it time interval values, or was it more like field artillery type of range finding?
Dale: 26:07 Good question. You talked about a bell, time interval bell.
Brian Chin: 26:08 Yes.
Dale: 26:08 It must have been that.
Brian Chin: 26:23 Okay.
Dale: 26:24 And we had our little phones that we would... I'm trying to remember exactly what they were like. They had a leather... and handle, a leather box, and the phone was in that, and you could wind up the phone I suppose to the plotting room. And then we must have had a bell, at which time we would be tracking the target. We would give the [inaudible 00:27:11] reading from there on both the base end stations.
Brian Chin: 27:15 Okay.
Dale: 27:16 Must have been that.
Brian Chin: 27:16 Okay, so it sounds like...
Dale: 27:17 Although nobody's asked me that question for 50 years.
Brian Chin: 27:21 Yeah, well it sounds like...
Dale: 27:22 You ask that of Ralph too when you talk to him.
Brian Chin: 27:22 Yes, I will. It sounds like...
Dale: 27:29 He was very knowledgeable about that.
Brian Chin: 27:30 Yeah, it sounds like you did the traditional coast artillery method of range finding.
Dale: 27:36 Now, I can't remember the name of our... Was it the M1910? I don't have it here on this page. I have a little book somewhere that I jotted things down in. It's probably all there.
Brian Chin: 27:49 Oh, I see. Well, I can find this through somebody else. If not, I won't mention this too much in the book because I do have a big explanation of how the...
Dale: 28:01 Yeah, you're talking to an entertainer. And I was an entertainer from the word go.
Brian Chin: 28:06 Oh, there you are. That'll set up another line of questioning. I know you weren't out in the field at HDSF too long, but during the time that you were there anywhere, do you remember if any... Well, not USO maybe, but Red Cross, or any entertainers came through at all to some of the battery sites? Maybe you were too far away to receive some of...
Dale: 28:34 I don't think they were doing it yet. I don't think they had their entertainers until after we were in the war. I remember we fought a fire up in the hills there. A terrible fire. Went out and beat the grass.
Brian Chin: 28:54 So were you the only people around and they just rounded you up to...
Dale: 28:58 Well they got us all up there. I remember clambering over a high fence at one point when the fire swept toward me. Everybody was very tired when that was over up in the hills there.
And they had social things, social events at the... What would they have called that? The rec... recreational hall? We had one boy that did murals on the wall of the recreation hall. We had, a lot of women came in from schools and places like that.
Brian Chin: 29:35 So they had dances there?
Dale: 29:37 Dances, yeah. My picture in the paper, months talking to some woman.
Brian Chin: 29:43 Mm-hmm (affirmative). Now how often would they truck you all back for anything like that if you were out in the field?
Dale: 29:53 We weren't.
Brian Chin: 29:54 Oh, okay.
Dale: 29:54 No, that never happened then. That happened.
Brian Chin: 29:55 Oh, okay. This is before?
Dale: 29:57 Earlier, yeah.
Brian Chin: 30:02 Yeah, go on and describe some of the social functions and entertainment and things that might have happened before that period just as you were doing.
Dale: 30:10 Well, I think it was one or two occasions probably in that short time. They had these dances, they'd bring the women in from Mill College, places like that, where they had... I think that was considered a girl's school, wasn't it?
Brian Chin: 30:26 Yes, it is.
Dale: 30:27 Yeah. And it's society girls and people like that. They'd have a dance and they'd have refreshments and a little orchestra combo or something like that for dancing, or recordings, records and then loudspeakers. But we did try to get into San Francisco as often as we could too.
Brian Chin: 30:53 All right, now you can tell me about San Francisco as you saw it during that time.
Dale: 30:56 Not much I can tell you that would be anything that anyone would be interested in. You just went to a play, or a movie, or the bars. A lot of bar hopping in those days, learning how to drink. And sightseeing, de Young Museum and things like that. Depends on who you were and what you liked.
Brian Chin: 31:28 Well, of course. Now, since you were an artist and all this, did you find many people in your unit that had the same type of likings for this type of thing?
Dale: 31:37 Yeah, what I could tell you about that is that I organized a sketch club in basic training down at [inaudible 00:31:45]. And we had probably one of the first shows in the West Coast in the army.
Brian Chin: 31:52 I see. You mean like a little gallery presentation?
Dale: 31:56 We put them up in the recreation room. And they had a woman there who sort of took care of the social events I think, and she arranges that show for us. And we went out to have a little time, four, five of us, and sketched up there in the hills. And of course I was always interested in figure work, so I would do these pinup girls and stuff like that. I did a heck of a lot of that through the years.
Brian Chin: 32:34 Yeah. Now, did any art activities like that continue when you moved up to San Francisco?
Dale: 32:42 No, we didn't have much time for that then.
Brian Chin: 32:44 Okay... Let's see.
Dale: 32:51 We planted a lot of ice plant.
Brian Chin: 32:54 Okay, where were they planting it?
Dale: 32:58 It was pretty bare up there when we went up there. When they didn't know what to do with us, it's like, dig a hole and fill it up.
Brian Chin: 33:05 Oh, I see. So you just...
Dale: 33:07 So we planted tons of ice plant as a ground cover between the barracks.
Brian Chin: 33:14 Oh, this was just around the barracks area. Yeah. Well, I think a lot of it is still there. Those barracks are still there for the most part.
Dale: 33:20 I know. What have they done with it? They've turned it over to...
Brian Chin: 33:20 The National Park Service.
Dale: 33:20 Yeah, right.
Brian Chin: 33:26 And some of the barracks are being used for... they have a mammal center there. They have an art center there. You may be interested in going up there one day.
Dale: 33:38 I went up there several years ago, I think it was probably in the '70s, early '70s.
Brian Chin: 33:45 Oh, well there's a lot more than that now, it's really...
Dale: 33:48 In fact, the daughter of one of our fellows is working with that animal... Oh, what do they do? Conservation group there.
Brian Chin: 33:58 Yeah, they have an artists' colony out there that they rent space out too, and they have exhibits and there all sorts of things going on. And they've restored many of the buildings, and they're in the process of restoring a part of the barracks into circa 1941 at this moment. They're doing that. So, your ice plant...
Dale: 34:23 There were some old forts there. Can't remember their names now. Baker was one I know.
Brian Chin: 34:30 Yeah. Yeah.
Dale: 34:31 That was down near the bridge, wasn't it?
Brian Chin: 34:33 Yes. Yeah, there are many of those things. That's a rich area in military archeology.
Dale: 34:38 [crosstalk 00:34:38] of those that were within the confines of the...
Brian Chin: 34:42 Well, there was Fort Barry, which right next to Cronkhite, which is one the other side of the lagoon. And then on the other side there there's Fort Baker like you mentioned.
Dale: 34:50 Baker.
Brian Chin: 34:51 And then there's Fort Scott, which is adjoining the Presidium.
Dale: 34:54 Scott is over there, yeah.
Brian Chin: 34:56 Yeah, that was the headquarters of the HDSF, and then there was Fort Miley which was...
Dale: 34:56 I don't know that one.
Brian Chin: 35:01 Yeah, that's farther out by the veteran's hospital. And then way down the coast on the other side is Fort Funston.
Dale: 35:09 Heard of it, but never been there.
Brian Chin: 35:10 Okay. And then, of course, you got on your liner at Fort Mason, which was the port of embarkation.
Dale: 35:19 Yeah, I'd forgotten where we were there. Probably I didn't know it at the time even.
Brian Chin: 35:24 Yes. So did you visit Coit Tower?
Dale: 35:29 No, I only visited that about two years ago.
Brian Chin: 35:35 Oh, okay. Because I've been always fascinated with the mural they have there. I love those.
Dale: 35:40 Yeah, [crosstalk 00:35:40].
Brian Chin: 35:40 Yeah, or they had some of his proteges working on those...
Dale: 35:44 Mm-hmm (affirmative), I get that with him more like it.
Brian Chin: 35:48 Yeah. And you visited de Young Museum when they sent you up to that area.
Dale: 35:54 Yeah, I think I had been there surely. I don't think they had the aquarium there yet at that time.
Brian Chin: 36:01 At that time, was that your first visit to San Francisco?
Dale: 36:06 Let's see. No, it would have been my second visit. I went there when I was 17 with some friends from Iowa.
Brian Chin: 36:14 Yeah. But that was probably before the bridges were up.
Dale: 36:19 Well, the bridge had just been finished.
Brian Chin: 36:20 Oh. Oh, okay, yes.
Dale: 36:22 In '36, I think.
Brian Chin: 36:23 Okay, yeah, you're right.
Dale: 36:24 And I was there in '37 or '8.
Brian Chin: 36:25 Yeah, okay.
Dale: 36:26 '38 probably. And we saw the bridge then.
Brian Chin: 36:32 So, I hope you liked the city.
Dale: 36:37 San Francisco?
Brian Chin: 36:37 Yes.
Dale: 36:37 Loved it.
Brian Chin: 36:39 Okay.
Dale: 36:40 I was there in '88 and I lived there for a year.
Brian Chin: 36:43 Oh, okay.
Dale: 36:44 But what I didn't like was the expense of living there, and I wasn't getting anything done.
Brian Chin: 36:50 Oh, you were going to be working on your art.
Dale: 36:53 I did some prints, but I didn't get much else done. And I had personal problems with a friend there. And having already had this nice house here in Santa Fe, I decided to come back. I'd rented it out. And what we had in San Francisco wasn't anywhere near as nice as this. So I came back here. I like the wide open space. And I think I got the taste of that many many years ago in Chile, because it's a desert, in the Northern part of the Western hemisphere, all the was down to near Santiago before you begin to see, almost Mediterranean climate. In the North, we were very close to the shore. The foothills in the Andes rose 2000 feet within 400 yards of the shore.
Brian Chin: 37:54 Wow, that's straight up.
Dale: 37:55 Yeah, and we had to go up there with full packs. My throat seems to be acting up.
Brian Chin: 38:02 Oh, well, maybe we've talked too much and you've about had it.
Dale: 38:08 Well, I've had a little problem with mucus here the last couple of days.
Brian Chin: 38:12 Oh, I see.
Dale: 38:13 Anyhow, 35 miles up you went to 11,000 feet. 35 miles. And that was on the... What do they call them? It was right on the tip of my tongue. Pampas, of course, but there was no grass, and the only trees they had they planted with topsoil around the homes up there, and they were all constructed of corrugated copper, painted green. And because the termite problem was terrible, anything made of wood was soon eaten up by termites, including furniture. And of course, we went to Chuqui many many times, and even at that altitude, some of the fellows couldn't take the altitude. They'd get puna, which is altitude sickness. Well, I had no problem with that because I think, if anything, I probably had a little low blood pressure instead of high blood pressure. I played tennis, rode horseback, went to dances and stuff like that.
Brian Chin: 39:30 Well, sounds like you had a grand time down there.
Dale: 39:32 When we went up there, we did have good times.
Brian Chin: 39:34 Uh-huh (affirmative). So that was just 27 of you to set up the coast defense...
Dale: 39:41 Yeah, plus our captain and our lieutenant.
Brian Chin: 39:43 I see.
Dale: 39:44 Yeah. Captain Leonard, and Lieutenant De Moisy, and 27 of us. And we had guys that were just mechanics, others that were interpreters, well two of them are interpreters that is. They also had their regular jobs. We had an agent or what'd they call him? Warren was our battery clerk. And then the regular instructors for the other facets of coast artillery.
Brian Chin: 40:24 I see. Well all right. Okay, well I guess I have... That's all the questions I can think of asking. So, I guess I should let you go before I get the correct addresses of all this stuff.
Dale: 40:44 Let me give you Ralph's phone number, and address if you want it.
Brian Chin: 40:50 Yes, please.
Dale: 40:52 Sorry that my throat is...
Brian Chin: 40:54 Oh, no, no. No problem at all. So that would be Lieutenant Ralph De Moisy, d-e, and then separate, Capital M-o-i-s-y.
Dale: 41:11 M-o-i-s-y. Okay.
Brian Chin: 41:12 I had his phone number here just a minute ago. It's the same one he's had all these years. He lives... He has an address that's just a Post Office Box address. I'll give it to you and you can take it down and I'll gie you the phone number.
Dale: 41:29 Yes.
Brian Chin: 41:29 It's Box 625.
Dale: 41:32 625.
Brian Chin: 41:34 Winchester, Oregon.
Dale: 41:38 Winchester, Oregon. Okay.
Brian Chin: 41:38 97495.
Dale: 41:43 97495. Okay.
Brian Chin: 41:44 Okay, then his number is 503 673...
Dale: 41:52 673.
Brian Chin: 41:56 5953.
Dale: 41:57 5953. Okay. All right.
Brian Chin: 41:58 And he's Ralph. Ralph De Moisy.
Dale: 42:00 Yes. And I've talked to him already so he would be expecting to hear from you.
Brian Chin: 42:04 Yes. That's right. Okay, well good.
Dale: 42:06 And he can give you a lot of those details that...
Brian Chin: 42:10 That you forgot. Shame on you.
Dale: 42:13 I remember some of the warm things, the human things.
Brian Chin: 42:16 Oh, yes. No, no.
Dale: 42:18 I think we're all the same that way.
Brian Chin: 42:19 Oh, of course. I make use of all the material in one way or another, so there's no loss at all.
Dale: 42:25 Yeah, and I only met Ralph and our captain, Quiet Leonard, when we were on our way to Chile. That's when we first got to know each other.
Brian Chin: 42:37 Oh, I see. So they weren't assigned to the 56th before that?
Dale: 42:41 I think they were, though.
Brian Chin: 42:41 Oh, they were probably in some other...
Dale: 42:44 Let's see. I found this little thing here. Harbor Defenses, San Francisco, Christmas 1941.
Brian Chin: 42:49 It's a pamphlet, right?
Dale: 42:50 Yeah, it's a pamphlet. And it has three insignia on it at the bottom, you see that?
Brian Chin: 42:55 Yes. I've seen that pamphlet before.
Dale: 42:57 And John Freeman designed the one in the cemetery with the little boy.
Brian Chin: 43:01 Yeah, that's the 56th.
Dale: 43:02 Yeah, he designed that.
Brian Chin: 43:04 Oh, this reminds me. Do you at any time see a negro coast artillery unit, the 54th come in? Or maybe they only came in after you guys. I don't know.
Dale: 43:16 Never have. No.
Brian Chin: 43:17 Okay, no problem. All right. Yeah, I have seen that pamphlet. It's a very nice one. In fact...
Dale: 43:24 Somewhere, I think...
Brian Chin: 43:27 In fact, I may want to take my cover design using the type style that they have on it.
Dale: 43:37 The type style.
Brian Chin: 43:40 Yeah.
Dale: 43:41 [crosstalk 00:43:41]
Brian Chin: 43:41 Yeah, with that 1940's style lettering, it sort of sets the mood.
Dale: 43:45 It's almost like stencil.
Brian Chin: 43:47 Yes. Yes.
Dale: 43:48 Yeah. Well, you know John Freeman has been in the animation business [inaudible 00:43:54] there for years and years. He's an animator still I think.
Brian Chin: 43:57 Is he?
Dale: 43:58 Yeah, he lives down there. I saw him not too long ago.
Brian Chin: 44:01 Maybe I should look him up.
Dale: 44:02 Yeah, you could try to get in touch with him. He worked for Hanna Barbera quite a bit, and at Disneys earlier.
Brian Chin: 44:09 All right, well I'll call the union. They would know.
Dale: 44:12 Mm-hmm (affirmative), they'd know.
Brian Chin: 44:12 Yeah.
Dale: 44:13 Sure.
Brian Chin: 44:14 Is he a person that... Well, my politically correct, socially approved list is always based on Walt now, so I have to check it through him first, see if he's the person that I...
Dale: 44:14 He's a character and a half.
Brian Chin: 44:14 Oh, okay.
Dale: 44:27 Yeah, he is. You mustn't tell him said this,
Brian Chin: 44:33 No, I won't.
Dale: 44:34 if you meet him, but he was a real goldbrick.
Brian Chin: 44:37 Oh, he was, well...
Dale: 44:38 He found himself the cushiest job he could find.
Brian Chin: 44:41 Well that's the type of person I need to talk to about this book.
Dale: 44:44 You do?
Brian Chin: 44:44 Yes, well, see I'm trying to...
Dale: 44:46 I don't know what he could tell you anyway.
Brian Chin: 44:48 Well, I'm trying to paint a complete picture, you see? So whatever they did there, that's what the book's going to be about.
Dale: 44:55 Well I haven't been hard on John, it's just that when I did finally come to Disneys, he sort of tried to take me over, be my mentor, my boss, whatever, and take his advice. And I was too independent for that.
Brian Chin: 45:14 Does he have a middle name, just in case there are more than one...
Dale: 45:14 I don't know what it would be.
Brian Chin: 45:19 Okay. All right. Let's see. Oh, yeah, I would like to see the photos that you would like to send so I can make copies.
Dale: 45:27 I'm going to start looking for them and I'll send a package of stuff to you.
Brian Chin: 45:33 Very good. Okay. I think the best place to send them... Would you like to send them to... You could send them to Walt's house, or you can send them to me. The reason why I'm afraid of my address is because I don't have a very big mailbox and they would end up putting it [crosstalk 00:45:50].
Dale: 45:49 What about sending them to you at the studio?
Brian Chin: 45:51 Well, okay. That's probably the best place.
Dale: 45:54 [crosstalk 00:45:54] sure I've got that address.
Brian Chin: 45:55 Well, let me see here. I'm looking-
Dale: 45:58 I think I put it down in my book here.
Brian Chin: 46:00 Okay, I think I'll...
Dale: 46:02 It's Marvel, right?
Brian Chin: 46:03 Yes. I will look it up again just to make sure that we have the right one.
Dale: 46:09 No, I don't want to send them to Walt's place because his wife and I don't get along.
Brian Chin: 46:15 Oh, I see. Oh, okay, I see. I should have checked that. Yes, no, it'd be a good idea not to. All right.
Dale: 46:21 You have a great voice, do you know?
Brian Chin: 46:22 Oh, really? Well, thank you.
Dale: 46:23 You have a great telephone voice.
Brian Chin: 46:26 Yeah, that's why these interviews tend to work out good on the phone. I just like to do it that way.
Dale: 46:29 You got a nice deep modified [inaudible 00:46:33] voice. Now let me see if I've got this.
Brian Chin: 46:36 It's Marvel Productions.
Dale: 46:36 Just hold on a second.
Brian Chin: 46:36 Okay.
Dale: 46:40 I think I wrote it down. No need to write it again if I have done that.
Brian Chin: 46:42 Well, I want to check that we've got the same one. These studios move around.
Dale: 46:50 If I didn't put it under Marvel, I put it under John Wilson, maybe. Marvel. Yeah, unfortunately I think our old captain wouldn't be much help, because he's been ill.
Brian Chin: 47:09 Oh, I see.
Dale: 47:11 And he...
Description
Corporal, 56th Coast Artillery Regiment in 1941.
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