San Francisco 1943
| USS SARATOGA CV 3. December 1943 San Francisco. All the men are Boatswain's Mates from the 4th Division. The women are forgotten past. Left to right. R.V Moore Bm2c, Girl ???? J.W. McWilliams BM1c, Girl????,Woody Walker BM1c, Girl ???? N.A Harkley BM2c, John Hendry Kundret BM1c (Photo courtesy of Woody Walker) |
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| The excellent photo of Woody Walker and others caused me to look for photos of festivities in conjunction with our visit to Hunters Point Naval Shipyard in December 1943. I came across the photo above taken during the Palace Hotel dance party. It shows men well-known to Saratoga shipmates; Jack Frost; Ray Boyd, Ed Wakefield, Gil Devey, and ? Derry (although no person named Derry is shown as a current member of the Saratoga Reunion Association; I did not know him personally). To my knowledge there was just the one big soirée in SF, although there was the USO entertainment at Hunters Point (my slide show “Incident at Hunters Point” at one of the Social Club meetings). The background of the picture with Woody Walker appears to be quite different from that shown in my photos. Perhaps Woody remembers. I am a poor person to opine about the social activities in SF. As most of the crew had sufficient shore leave to travel to almost any part of the U.S., only about half of the complement would have been aboard at any particular time. I do recall thinking that the influx of about 3,000 additional persons in SF did not appear to have a great deal of impact on the city. That said, there was a critical shortage of hotel rooms, but such was par for the course throughout the country in those days, with or without a visiting ship in the vicinity. Gil Devey |
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