After getting out of Cal, I could not find work as a geologist and took a lousy job as a surveyor’s assistant with the Southern Pacific Railroad, making $135 a month. Jeanne and I moved into a cruddy apartment in the extreme south of Berkeley on Grove St. next to the city limit of Oakland.
Being quite dissatisfied with that job and after a few months with S’n Pacific, I was able to get another job at Richmond Shipyard no. 1, an enterprise of Henry Kaiser, that was building “Liberty cargo ships” for Great Britain, the latter country being at war with Germany at the time. Jack Kronschnable was in charge of pipefitting of the ships when they were on the building ways (on land), and he hired me on 5 Dec. 1941 as an “engineer” at $175 a month, to begin on 8 December.
Jeanne was in Carmel to spend a few days with her parents at their home in the former residence of Lincoln Steffins on San Antonio St. and I drove down to join them on 6 Dec. The next day was 7 Dec. of course, “a day that will live in infamy”, and we stayed glued to the radio as it told us about the attack at Pearl Harbor. Jeanne and her parents were extremely disturbed because Jacqueline Smith (her sister) was there, married to (then) Lt. Lee Cagwin.
Needing to report to my new job the next morning, I left Carmel at an early hour on 8 Dec. and was stopped twice by Army crews searching all cars as they looked for spies.
The job turned out fine, although it was not in my field of interest. Tom was born in Feb. 1942, and we eventually moved to a house in Richmond.
Kronschnable was a cracker-jack boss. He was promoted to supervisor of all pipe-fitting jobs, and later on to becoming the boss of all ship building operations on the Outfitting Dock (the largest operation in the Yard), and he took me with him on each promotion.
But when Kronschnable became Outfitting Superintendent, my job turned blah! Instead of working as an “engineer” in the Piping Department, I found myself as a fancy clerk, keeping voluminous records. A couple of months of that were enough and it became time for me to Do My Bit and to Join Up.
The shipyard had been contacting my draft board in Berkeley, claiming that I was “indispensable” and obtaining deferment after deferment from military duties for me. In the spring of 1944, I went to the draft board myself, asking for a hearing to cancel my draft deferment! That rare request was quickly approved, and I was given draft status 1A (“available”). Jeanne and I had talked about this a great deal. Thank you, my wife: you understood my position and agreed with me.
About the same time, I applied to the US Navy for a direct commission as an officer. In those days, the Navy believed that college graduates were qualified for positions of leadership because of their diplomas [I found that sometimes yes, sometimes no].
After having been tested for physical suitability, I went to San Francisco in May 1944, was sworn in as an Apprentice Seamen, and boarded a train for the US Naval Training Station in San Diego on 29 May 1944.
