The Band of the U.S.S. Honolulu

For what things
must a navy sailor
always stay alert?
The wind and the weather?
Ocean waves? Shoals and reefs?
Pirates and mermaids? 
Clarinets?

For some sailors it was the sound of
the band of the U.S.S. Honolulu.
Twenty musicians with their bandmaster
pose in concert formation
on the aft deck of a battleship,
a Brooklyn-class light cruiser
of the United States Navy.

Source: Navsource.org

Miss Helen Poindexter, daughter of the governor of the Territory of Hawaii, wielded the champagne bottle that launched the U.S.S. Honolulu, (CL-48) in August 1937 at the Brooklyn Navy Yard in New York City. It was 600 feet long with a beam of 61 feet 7 inches and armed with 15 six-inch guns in five rotating turrets and 8 five-inch anti-aircraft guns. As a light cruiser it was built for speed with less armor than the heavier battleships and its four steam turbines could propel the ship to over 32 knots. After being commissioned in June 1938 it kept a ship complement of 868 officers and enlisted men, which included 21 musicians in its band.

Beginning in 1935 when the U.S. Navy announced that its next new cruiser would be named after the city of Honolulu, Hawaii, the people there became eager to see their namesake. After its first sea trials in the Atlantic and Caribbean, the U.S.S. Honolulu was assigned to the Pacific fleet. When it finally arrived in Pearl Harbor on 10 July 1939, the ship was met by a throng of 10,000 Hawaiians who came out to greet its sailors with a "Gigantic Aloha". The territorial newspaper, the Honolulu Advertiser, put a photo of the ship on the front page, contrasting it with a traditional Hawaiian outrigger canoe next to the immense battleship. (The paper's headline about a powder blast destroying a town refers to a munitions explosion in Spain.)

[WARNING: this post contains an unusual number of references to deadly explosions]

Honolulu Advertiser
10 July 1939

For the next year the U.S.S. Honolulu's home port was Long Beach, California. After some alterations made at the Puget Sound shipyard in Washington in November 1940, the cruiser was reassigned to Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. That was where it was moored when the Japanese Navy Air Force attacked the Pacific fleet on 7 December 1941.

The U.S.S. Honolulu sustained minor damage from the Pearl Harbor attack but did not suffer any casualties. Few of the other ships were so lucky. The Japanese fighter planes and bombers hit eight battleships, sinking four. They also sank or damaged three cruisers, three destroyers, and five other smaller ships along with destroying 188 U.S. aircraft. The surprise attack killed 2,403 sailors, wounding 1,178, with 103 civilian casualties.

Over the first year of the war with Japan, the U.S.S. Honolulu worked out of San Francisco as a convoy escort to Australia and Samoa. In May 1941 it was sent to the Territory of Alaska as part of a force to attack the Japanese who had taken the western Aleutian Islands. In November the Honolulu joined a large fleet going to the South Pacific, but before it left it needed repairs at the Mare Island Navy Yard in San Francisco. Two birds-eye photos taken there of the ship show the deck aswarm with sailors. The first image shows  the aft deck where the band posed. The stern derrick was used to lift floatplanes used for scouting. The planes were launched from catapult tracks mounted on each side of the aft deck.

U.S.S. Honolulu, Mare Island, 1942
Source: Navsource.org

The second photo shows the forward deck and the ship's three main gun turrets.

U.S.S. Honolulu, Mare Island, 1942
Source: Navsource.org

Of all the kinds of historical research, military archives are my favorite to examine, especially those of the United States Navy. Since record keeping began, every movement of ships and sailors was accounted for in some kind of document. In fact there is so much, that it would be an immense task to find specific information on just one ship if it were not for the wonder of modern internet digital archives. With the right search terms, details appear on my computer that would otherwise take days if not years to locate in a library. So it was with finding images of the U.S.S. Honolulu on websites like Navsource.org, the source for dozens of images of the ship during its wartime service.

Madison Wisconsin State Journal
6 February 1942

During both World War 1 and the much longer World War 2, newspapers in America regularly printed stories about local men serving in the army or navy. I found a few references from 1940-41 that established that there was indeed a band onboard the U.S.S. Honolulu, but this one from the Madison, Wisconsin paper was special because it interviewed a sailor, John "Bud" Bakke, on leave from San Francisco for a visit home, who was a cornetist in the ship's band and also a witness to the tragic events of December 7th, 1941.

The night before the attack, the U.S.S. Honolulu band was playing for a dance at nearby Camp Andrews, where afterwards Bakke and his fellow bandsmen stayed overnight. The next morning they hurriedly reported to their ship.

"I'd rather not talk about what happened in and around Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7," Bakke said, "The facts of the attack have been published, and it it something we would all like to forget, if we can. I was fortunate enough to come out of it without a scratch."

John Bakke enlisted in the navy in May 1940, graduating from the US Navy School of Music in Washington, D.C. in April 1941. He joined the U.S.S. Honolulu band as a cornet player in June 1941 leaving for Hawaii.

On a typical day onboard ship, Bakke rises at 7 AM, plays colors at 8, has music classes until 11, and a concert from 11 to noon. Afternoons, he has rehearsals, and another concert at 8 pm, with playing for dances at recreation centers some nights.

_ _ _

Bristol TN Herald-Courier
3 April 1942

 
There was a good reason Bakke was reluctant to talk about the Pearl Harbor attack. Among the many sailors killed that day, were 21 musicians in the band on the U.S.S. Arizona. The battleship was struck by a Japanese bombs which detonated a catastrophic explosion in its magazine. Major structures on the ship were destroyed and a fierce fire broke out. Within seconds the Arizona sank, killing 1,177 officers and crewmen.

On the morning of the attack the U.S.S. Arizona's band was about to play the Star Spangled Banner for the ship's morning colors service. Immediately ordered to  their battle stations, the bandsmen raced down to below decks where they worked as ammunition handlers, one of the most hazardous duties on the ship, passing powder to the guns above. None survived.

It's likely that Bakke knew some of these men.  Perhaps some were his classmates at the navy school of music. Certainly withing the close musical community of navy and army bands at Pearl Harbor, Bakke could have heard or even played with the U.S.S. Arizona band during the previous months. Today the U.S.S. Arizona lies preserved underwater, a memorial to all the lives lost at Pearl Harbor that day.

In 1943, John Bakke, Musician 2nd Class, transferred to the band of another a Brooklyn-class light cruiser, the U.S.S. Helena (CL-50). His luck was tested in July of that year when the Helena was torpedoed and sunk in the Battle of Kula Gulf. Fortunately most of the crew, including Bakke, were rescued.

_ _ _

A navy band like the one on the Honolulu played an important role in boosting the morale of a ship's crew. The collection of photographs of the U.S.S. Honolulu found at the website Navsource.org has one photo of the band taken sometime during the war while entertaining sailors with an evening concert. With the row of saxophones, a trombonist taking a solo, and a singing string bassist at center stage, the Honolulu band demonstrates that it was very adept at playing music of the current popular dance band style in addition to the old military march standards.

Band of the U.S.S. Honolulu
Source: Navsource.org

The U.S.S. Honolulu was in the same task group as the U.S.S. Helena in the Battle of Kula Gulf. It escaped the fate of the Helena, but a week later on 12/13 July 1943, the Honolulu was hit by a torpedo at the Battle of Kolombangara. The bow of the ship was severely damaged, requiring an emergency patch, but the ship was able to return to Pearl Harbor and then San Francisco for more repairs.

Returned to service, in October 1944 the Honolulu joined a large force preparing for the amphibious invasion of the island of Leyte in the Philippines. On 20 October a Japanese torpedo plane targeted the Honolulu, and despite evasive maneuvering, the torpedo struck her port side leaving a large gaping hole. The ship managed to stay afloat and a few days later the crew fixed the hull with a temporary repair sufficient to get the Honolulu back to Hawaii. But for serious damage like this, a proper repair was required at a major navy repair facility. It was sent to Norfolk, Virginia where it arrived in December 1944 and remained in the shipyard for the duration of the war.

U.S.S. Honolulu, damage from October 1944
Source: Navsource.org

Here are two more photos from Navsource.org  that show the frightening damage from that Japanese torpedo. Unless I'm mistaken, there are two trombones twisted up in the middle left.

U.S.S. Honolulu, damage from October 1944
Source: Navsource.org

After the end of the war, the U.S.S. Honolulu was refitted in 1945 as a training ship and sent to Newport, Rhode Island. In January 1946 it was decommissioned and placed in the Philadelphia Reserve Fleet. It was finally sold for scrap in 1959.

For its service in World War II the U.S.S. Honolulu received eight battle stars,
worn on the campaign medals awarded to each serviceman.

* * *

The details of the ship's history are clear. The U.S.S. Honolulu was commissioned on 15 June 1938, and decommissioned not quite 9 years later on 3 February 1947. But I still had questions. I wondered if it was possible to figure out when the photo of the U.S.S. Honolulu's band was taken. Except for the ship's name on the lifebouys the postcard is otherwise unmarked. The aft deck setting matched the other photos of the ship that I found, but could there be any other clues?

There was one. A very big one hiding in the hazy background of the photo.

With the contrast corrected, a bridge is revealed in the near distance behind the sailors. The patterns in its structure show both interwoven trusses and long suspension cables. Knowing the timeline of ports where the Honolulu was stationed, it seemed likely that this bridge was near one of the navy bases it visited. Using Google Maps I checked out bridges located near Mare Island in San Francisco; Puget Sound in Seattle; Norfolk, Philadelphia, even Pearl Harbor. The few bridges that existed at that time were all ruled out because of size or design.

Then I looked at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, and quickly identified a bridge that would be instantly recognized by anyone familiar with the bridges of New York City. Just beyond the shipyard where the U.S.S. Honolulu was first launched is the Williamsburg Bridge spanning the East River from Brooklyn to Manhattan. Completed in 1903, until 1924 it was considered the longest suspension bridge in the world.

Williamsburg Bridge, New York City
Source: The Internet

This aerial photo shows the truss construction and suspension cables visible in my postcard of the band. An even better view, taken from the level of the navy yard docks, shows the destroyer U.S.S. Turner with nearly the same perspective of the bridge behind.

U.S.S. Turner (DD-648)
Source: Wikipedia

The U.S.S. Turner (DD-648) also served in WW2 but tragically only for a very few months. Commissioned on 15 April 1943, it served as an escort ship guarding Transatlantic convoys to Britain. On 2 January 1944, after completing its third voyage across the Atlantic, it anchored in the channel off of New York. In the early morning of 3 January, some kind of accident occurred that caused a series of explosions in its ammunition magazine. Within an hour the Turner sunk, taking the lives of 15 officers and 123 men.



As far as I can determine, the U.S.S. Honolulu never returned to the Brooklyn Navy Yard after its initial departure and subsequent wartime service. So I believe the photo of its band was taken in New York around the time of its commission in June 1938. It happens that when the ship left New York, the newspaper in Hawaii thought it noteworthy to include an aerial photo of the new cruiser being backed off into the East River. In the upper right corner is a pier of the Williamsburg Bridge.

I think the band of the U.S.S. Honolulu may be in this photo
sitting on the aft deck with the bridge in the background.
We just need a big magnifying glass.

Honolulu Advertiser
16 August 1938

Photos of navy bands onboard ships are not particularly rare and tend to share similar elements to photos of army bands in regard to military uniforms and band instrumentation. But it is their connection to specific ships that makes each image of a navy band unique. The band on the U.S.S. Honolulu was part of a history that lasted only nine years, but in that short time these sailors earned every one of those eight battle stars.

In the centuries before recorded music, radio, and television, the U.S. Navy recognized that live music was an important part of a sailor's life aboard ship. This naval custom of band music differed from the traditions of army bands in one important way. Soldiers marched. Sailors sailed. Band music may have moved the soldiers' feet, but it moved the sailors' spirit.

This is my contribution to Sepia Saturday
where everyone's bundled up for personal protection.