Lincoln – Previously I posted a memoir blog about my first U.S. Navy sea duty, on USS Rainier (AE-5), 1966-68. My second sea duty was aboard the much larger USS Arlington (AGMR-2), 1968-69.
The first glimpse I got of Arlington was through a snow storm in the Sea of Japan in early 1968, from a helicopter that was transporting me over from the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise, where I'd spent the previous night after flying onto Enterprise from Atsugi, Japan. The two ships were operating off the coast of North Korea, where they had been dispatched after North Korea captured USS Pueblo and was holding it and its crew.
After landing on Arlington, which had been converted from the old aircraft carrier USS Saipan into a long-range communications relay ship with huge antennas over its former flight deck, I immediately went to the operations room, where Captain T.F. Utegaard* was being briefed on the hostage situation. I was the new assistant communications officer aboard Arlington and got immediately to work.
Two months later we steamed into port at Yokosuka, Japan, moving on to other tasks. The Pueblo crew would not be released for another year. For the rest of 1968, Arlington operated in the waters of the western Pacific, often in the Tonkin Gulf, making port calls at Sasebo and Yokosuka, Japan; Subic Bay, Philippines; Hong Kong; and Sydney, Australia. In December of 1968, Arlington proceeded to Hawaii and then south to the splashdown site of Apollo 8, to provide long-range communications for NASA.
I was able to take shore leave on occasion and visited several cities in Japan, including Nagasaki, Kamakura, Kyoto, and Tokyo. I learned a few phrases in Japanese to aid in getting around. In Yokosuka I ran into Nebraska friends who were in the Navy: childhood pal Bill Anderson and college classmate Ivan Ficken. Bill was a submarine sailor; Ivan was an officer on a tender.
The aged photos below show USS Arlington in port in Yokosuka, at sea; and in Sydney. The bottom photo is of a basketball game in the hanger bay, at sea. It's different, playing on a rolling deck.
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* I knew Captain Utegaard from his classic book on navigation, a text I still have in my collection. I never imagined while studying navigation that I would later serve as one of his officers at sea.
