Safe passage

On the morning of Nov. 26, 1941, the same day the First Air Fleet of the Japa­nese Imperial Navy left Hito­kappu Bay for its fateful journey to Pearl Harbor, the SS President Coolidge took on cargo and passengers in Manila Harbor.

Easily recognizable by its sleek black sides with white upper decks and two smokestacks, the ship could reach a speed of 20 knots and carry nearly 1,000 passengers and more than 300 crew members. Its two funnels bore the colors of American President Lines: black with a red band and a white eagle and four stars.

That afternoon, the lines were cast off, and the ship started the long voyage back to San Francisco via Hono­lulu.

There were two most unusual passengers that day: giant pandas flown to Manila from China, gifts from Madame Chiang Kai-shek in gratitude for relief aid, that were destined for the Bronx Zoo.

Also boarding that day was 15-year-old Rosa­lie Hutchison and her mother and brother. They were fleeing the impending Japa­nese invasion of the Philippine islands, leaving behind Rosa­lie’s father, a mining engineer. From her first moments boarding the ship, Rosa­lie sensed the tension aboard, witnessing occasional outbursts from the adults and a general unhappiness. Down at the saltwater showers she saw women "wringing their hands and moaning" about their uncertain situation.

To pass the time, Rosa­lie and her new friend, the Rev. Edward Murray, a Catholic missionary returning from China, would go up to the first-class section to see the pandas. Usually, she spent her time standing at the stern, watching the ship’s wake as it made its relentless zigzag course.

The second day out, off the island of Panay, the Coolidge sighted the U.S. Army Transport Scott and the two ships fell into convoy formation. On Nov. 29 the Scott and the Coolidge linked up with the Navy cruiser USS Louisville in the Celebes Sea.

Early on the morning of Dec. 7 — Dec. 6 in the U.S. — near the island of Espiritu Santo in the Coral Sea, Mrs. Chin Chu Shee, a third-class passenger, gave birth to a baby girl. The convoy was about 3,500 miles from Hono­lulu.

THE FOLLOWING DAY, Rosa­lie watched astonished as the crew transformed the Coolidge’s gleaming white upper decks to a dull gray and painted all the portholes black. The ship’s deck log made no mention of the attack on Pearl Harbor, and nobody told Rosa­lie, but she figured something bad must have happened.

With little fanfare, the Coolidge entered Hono­lulu Harbor on the afternoon of Dec. 16, docking at Pier 11.

Rosalie saw the still-smoldering fires from Pearl Harbor and now understood the tension on the Coolidge — the preoccupied adults, the boat drills — and it made her worry even more about her father left behind in the Philippines. She couldn’t know it at the time, but he had been captured by the Japa­nese and would be held in various concentration camps around Manila. It would be four years before she saw him again.

In the darkness of her room in the completely blacked-out Moana Hotel, Shirley McKay struck a match, risking the wrath of the blackout warden. She had to light it so she could see where the cockroaches were.

The thought of stepping on one was more than she could stand, blackout restrictions or not. The Willamette University sophomore was stranded — if you can call staying at the Moana Hotel with 27 football players stranded.

The Bearcats, from Salem, Ore., had arrived in Hono­lulu on Dec. 3 aboard the SS Lurline. Also on the ship that day was Shirley’s father, state Sen. (and later Oregon governor) Douglas McKay, a big Willamette supporter accompanying the team on its trip to play several college teams in Hawaii. On the evening of Dec. 6, the same day that Baby Chin was born at sea aboard the SS President Coolidge, the Willamette University football squad lost 20-6 to the University of Hawaii in front of 24,000 spectators at Hono­lulu Stadium.

The next day was planned as a day of sightseeing for the Bearcats and fans.

Instead, the Willamette group found itseld in a war zone, stuck on Oahu with no immediate way to get home because the military had seized all oceangoing civilian ships for the war effort.

Back at the Moana, Doug­las McKay worried about what to do with the football players suddenly with time on their hands. He and Coach Roy "Spec" Keene arranged to have the team stand guard duty at Punahou School in the high ground overlooking Waikiki.

Shirley wasn’t idle, either. She volunteered at Tripler General Hospital to help with washing dishes and rolling bandages — anything to help the nurses, freeing their time to attend to the wounded servicemen.

AT PIER 11, customs agents guarded the dock and the ship’s gangway, while junior officers patrolled the Coolidge’s decks throughout the night. On Dec. 18, work commenced converting sections of the ship into hospital quarters for 125 critically wounded servicemen.

Sometime during the afternoon, Ruth Erickson, a nurse at the Naval Hospital, boarded the ship and began preparations to receive the wounded. Just the evening before, she had been ordered to pack a bag and be ready for a new assignment the next day. She had no inkling where she was going. She and two other nurses were picked up by car at their quarters wearing their white ward uniforms, capes, blue felt hats and blue sweaters. In the car they learned they were heading for the Coolidge and were told to prepare for a 10-day voyage.

That same afternoon, Doug­las McKay announced to his daughter in a loud voice, "Well, we got a ride home." He and Keene had secured passage aboard the Coolidge. The football players and coaches would travel in steerage, but they had to pull strings to acquire three third-class cabins for the female fans accompanying the team.

Steerage was a dormitorylike space at the extreme aft of the ship, below the waterline and near the propellers; it was dark, noisy and stuffy. Compared with steerage, third-class cabins on the upper deck must have seemed luxurious: six to eight metal berths per cabin and a lavatory with hot and cold water.

Up at Punahou School the Willamette football players were told to be on board the ship the next day for the voyage home.

On Friday, Dec. 19, the activity and bustle aboard the Coolidge picked up. Hundreds of evacuees congregated at the dock, many notified to evacuate just hours before. Last-minute baggage, mail and stores were loaded in the holds, and the wounded servicemen were secured.

At 11:44 a.m. the Coolidge and Scott departed Hono­lulu carrying well more than 900 people home to safety. Off Diamond Head the two ships rendezvoused with their escort, the destroyers USS Detroit, USS Cummings and USS Reid, thus forming the first convoy from Hawaii to the mainland carrying war wounded, refugees and evacuees.

Watching the two evacuation ships from the deck of the Detroit, signalman John McGoran found himself thinking about the wounded aboard and felt great sympathy for them.

Aboard the Coolidge, Erickson and fellow nurses Catherine Richardson and Lauretta Eno divided their time into three eight-hour shifts in order to provide the patients with around-the-clock coverage. Aboard the Scott, nurses from the Queen’s Hospital in Hono­lulu tended 55 wounded servicemen.

Because of the close quarters and sealed portholes, the smell from the wounds and medicines was overwhelming. Erickson, who had never experienced seasickness before, took some getting used to the conditions before her stomach settled down. Shirley McKay was bothered by the strong odors as well, but she willed herself to help these young men, some dreadfully injured, any way she could — reading to them and helping to feed them.

One wounded serviceman said to her, "My dad won’t want me now. I don’t have my pitching arm." She tried to reassure him, telling him they would be thankful he was alive.

To get away, Shirley would visit the pandas up on their sheltered deck. Standing there alone she would watch them with fascination. Sometimes she would talk to the man tending them.

THE WILLAMETTE players were glad to assist in any way they could and welcomed the opportunity to get away from their quarters in steerage. When not helping with the wounded, the young men spent most of their time listening to the radio in the ship’s lounge.

Rosalie Hutchison was too young to help with the wounded. She was forced to spend more time in her cabin because much of the ship was now off-limits. She lost her access to the deck and the freedom and fresh air, which had become her precious escape from the claustrophobic cabin and the fussing by the worried adults.

At 4:30 p.m. Christmas Eve, during Erickson’s watch, bosun’s mate Elvin Albert Dvorak, who had been extensively burned during the attack, died from his injuries. In her notes, Erickson recorded that Dvorak had been losing intravenous fluids faster than they could be replaced.

As they neared the West Coast, rumors swirled throughout the ship about the likelihood of attack from Japa­nese submarines lying in wait outside San Francisco harbor.

The four-ship convoy entered the Golden Gate Strait in a cold drizzle on Christmas morning, while overhead a squadron of planes provided an escort. As the ships passed under the Golden Gate Bridge, Shirley McKay and her friends broke out singing "California Here We Come."

Rosalie gazed up at the bridge and remembered her experience just two years before on her way to Manila, when she passed under the "pretty Golden Gate" all lit up. On this wartime Christmas Day, she said later, "nothing was light then, just gray and foggy."

Entering San Francisco Bay, the Coolidge and Scott docked at Pier 44 at about 8 a.m. Rosa­lie, Shirley McKay and the other passengers had to wait while the wounded were unloaded to ambulances. Hundreds of onlookers, held back by armed soldiers and sailors, pressed against the barricades set up three blocks from the docks, hoping for a glimpse of those disembarking from the ships.

Once the civilians disembarked, the Red Cross helped the Hutchison family secure train tickets to Rosa­lie’s grandparents’ house in Pasa­dena. Tempering her joy at being home was the anxiety of leaving her father back in the Philippines.

Two days later the Willamette football team, Shirley McKay and her father arrived by train in Salem, Ore., and were greeted by a joyous crowd of 1,000 who had lined the station platform. Most of the team members soon enlisted in the service, and all but one of them survived the war.

The next day, Dec. 28, a month after the Coolidge began its journey, Ruth Erickson was aboard the troop transport USS Henderson, heading back to duty at Pearl Harbor.

And on Dec. 30, after spending a night in a special suite at San Francisco’s Hotel St. Francis and then crossing the country by train, the two pandas — named Pan Dee and Pan Dah — arrived safely at their new home in the Bronx Zoo.

As for the SS President Coolidge, the great ship was converted into a troop transport and later sunk after striking a mine in the harbor of Espiritu Santo, Vanu­atu, on Oct. 26, 1942.

It remains there to this day, a popular shipwreck site for divers.