Washington -- In June of 1967, USS Rainier (AE-5) entered Hong Kong harbor for a few days of rest and recreation after several weeks on the line in the South China Sea.
I was an officer on the ship, one of thirteen. The watch bill permitted only a few of us to leave the ship at any one time, but Lt. (j.g.) George Raines (a Morehouse Man in college) and I took the first opportunity to go ashore, check into the the Hong Kong Hilton, and take long, hot showers. We took a sampan over to a floating restaurant for dinner and slept in the next day.
We awakened to the English-language South China Morning Post as it was tossed into the hotel hallway. It came as a shock to learn that war had broken out in Israel and that the USS Liberty, a U.S. Navy ship, had been attacked with the loss of 34 killed.
All was not peaceful in Hong Kong, either. From our ship we had seen debris from the Chinese Cultural Revolution float down the Pearl River from the mainland. Dead, bloated cattle. Some sailors said they saw human corpses. There were fears that China's Gang of Four would try to extend the Cultural Revolution into Kowloon and Hong Kong island itself.
The British ruled Hong Kong on a lease from China with 30 years yet to run, but there were also protest riots in the streets against the British. Nearby Macau had fallen from Portuguese control just a few months earlier.
Hong Kong was not a democracy in 1967 and the British were slow to implement reforms to give the local population more say in its government. When the lease was up in 1997, Hong Kong became part of China under the "one country, two systems" approach. From the standpoint of 1967, this was a dubious proposition given what we knew about China at the time, and what we knew of Hong Kong's desire for democracy.
Five decades later, it is proving to be difficult to keep Hong Kong democracy down. Hurrah for their bravery and persistence.
In the summer of 1968, I came back to Hong Kong on another ship, USS Arlington (AGMR-2). With a much larger crew and more sailors on liberty, the ship's watch bill assigned me to Shore Patrol duty, with a nightstick, to help keep order in the Fenwick Street Pier area, a notorious sailor strip. As I recall, it was Navy policy not to arm Shore Patrol from the fleet with guns, and wisely so. Nightsticks.
The center of unrest in 1968 was the USA, with the assassinations of MLK and RFK, and in Europe, with student-led unrest challenging governments in Germany and France. Hong Kong that year seemed peaceful in comparison.
The upper photo below is our Hong Kong floating restaurant in 1967. The middle photo is USS Arlington in Hong Kong in 1968. It is a long range communication ship; notice the antennas. This was back in a time when electronic communications were carried over radio waves, bounced off an ever-shifting ionosphere. Later that year, we would provide communications for the recovery of Apollo 8. The bottom photo shows Hong Kong harbor from Victoria Peak: I am in civvies, in a shirt made by Hong Kong tailors.
