Bob Chapman
Age: 84
Born: March 15, 1926
Hometown: Dayton, Iowa
Residence: La Quinta
Military branch: U.S. Navy
Years served: July 1943 - March 1946
Rank: Signalman third class
Family: Wife Arlene; three children, Bob Chapman of Salinas, Bill Chapman of Northern California, and Julie Powers of Lake Forest; three grandchildren; five great-grandchildren.
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U.S. Navy veteran Bob Chapman — hangar chief of the Palm Springs Air Museum's memorabilia-filled Pacific Hangar — reflected on his World War II memories.
“We shipped out on a Dutch merchant ship, Japara,” he began. “We left San Francisco and 30 days later we were in Nouméa, New Caledonia.”
From Nouméa, in the South Pacific, Chapman traveled north through the Coral Sea to his assigned base at Benika in the Russell Islands — part of the Solomon Islands chain.
“We only had 80 guys in our outfit,” he said. “We were connected to Cub 12. It was almost like a Seabee outfit. They built cities, campgrounds and mess halls.”
Chapman and the men worked at a PT (Patrol Torpedo) boat repair base at the island.
Future president John F. Kennedy operated PT-109 out of the Solomon Islands and had recently moved on from Benika.
“He was just ahead of us,” Chapman said. “When he left, we moved in.”
Later, when most of the PT boats moved north, Benika became a supply island.
“The war for the PT boat was just about over,” he said. “The war went beyond us. We were no longer getting bombed.”
A huge dock was built that could handle three ships at a time.
Supplies were delivered to the island — tanks, guns and ammunition — and hidden on a coral road sitting below a coconut tree grove.
“That's where all the supplies went and would come back out,” to be loaded on attack transports, he said.
The supplies were organized in the ships by how they would be needed on the invasion, he said.
One day, the men hopped in an old PT boat for a trip to the nearby island of Tulagi.
“I invited some young guy on the island to take a boat ride with us,” he said. “We were plowing along, and I stumbled and I went over the side. I hit the water and I was immediately unconscious. They got the boat turned around and picked me up. The pain was so bad I kept fainting.”
The men took Chapman to a mobile hospital where a doctor drained salt water out of his ears with a large syringe.
“We didn't finish the trip,” he said.
On the day President Franklin Roosevelt died, Chapman was on the signal tower.
He flashed a light that sent a message in Morse code that a message was to follow.
Using semaphore flags, he sent the following signal: “Our president has died lower your flags to half-mast.”
A nearby boat filled with New Zealanders signaled back, “Does that mean us?”
“I said, ‘You damn well better,'” Chapman replied.
The dock was also used as a landing craft repair base.
“When a ship came around the corner a strong telescope” was used to identify the ship, he said. “They got the ship number and told them what buoy to tie up to,” to await repairs.
“One night we were unloading ships a whole bunch of beer came in,” he said. “There was 80 cases to a pallet. We loaded a pallet on one of the trucks and away we went. We had the beer in the jungle. We were supposed to go up to where the (supply) dump was.”
The dump area was heavily guarded, he said.
The truck, loaded with Acme Beer, made a detour.
“Nobody was guarding (the roads),” he said. “We'd go over to where our camp was,” and pass around the contraband.
The South Pacific island was teeming with birds.
“You never saw so many parrots in your life,” he said. “We used to fill a little pan with beer and the parrots would get drunk — they'd walk sideways.”
In one of the island villages, the natives taught the sailors how to make pineapple wine.
Some of the men threw together the three-ingredient concoction — pineapple, coconut and sugar — then set it aside to ferment.
“One night we all decided we were going to get drunk,” he said. “We all started drinking that pineapple wine.”
Something in the wine made the men sick and a violent attack of diarrhea sent the men scattering.
“We were all ‘over the side,'” he said. “To this day, I cannot stand the smell of pineapple.”
When the war was over, the men received orders to get rid of everything on the island, except personal belongings.
Jeeps, trucks, a huge crane, all types of supplies — and even a load of American-made cars — were dumped in the ocean.
The heavy equipment was loaded on Mechanized Landing Crafts and carried about 10 miles out to sea.
“You'd put stuff on them, take 'em out and shove 'em off,” he said.
A load of 1942 Plymouths were in the harbor when the war ended and those were dumped as well.
“Our group (dumped) $3 million worth of stuff,” Chapman said.
