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- Written by: Pim van Wijngaarden
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| Bill in September 1944 | Bill in June 2010 |
William Walker (Bill) Rankin was born in Brooklyn, NY on June 17 1926. He grew up in New York City, attended parochial grammer school, and a private high school. After the war he used the GI bill to go to George Washington University, from which he graduated in 1955. Bill passed away on May 24, 2015.
Bill talks about his schooling: 
To avoid being drafted into the Army, Bill enlisted into the Navy before his 18th birthday. He was still a high school senior, and the Navy gave him a 60 day deferment in order to graduate.
He received orders to report to Pennsylvania station at 9 PM on June 23, 1944, where he boarded a Lehigh Valley train to Sampson Naval Training Center (boot camp) on Lake Seneca in upper New York State (near Geneva), where he'll be know as Serial # 713-51-07.
Bill talks about enlistment:
"The Lehigh Valley RR was built mainly to ship coal to New York. Passenger comfort was not an objective.
The road bed was bumpy, the equipment was ancient and the interior smelly. It was impossible
to sleep in the rigid day coach seat"
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Sampson Naval Training Center
I was at Sampson from June through August 1944, it was a massive facility with several units each which had a ships store, a huge field house that included a swimming pool, gymnasium, and movie theatre, also a drill field and an obstacle course. Here were also service school units to train quartermasters, signalmen, radiomen, storekeepers, and yeomen.
Bill talks about his training:
Boot camp was mainly introduction to Navy discipline and basic Navy procedures. We also learned aircraft recognition, abandon ship skills and how to tie knots, along with marching and the manual of arms.
Bill's Boot camp class - to see the back of this picture, showing all names, click here.
We had movies about twice a week and boxing matches once a week. There were several professional fighters stationed there who put on exhibitions. The most famous was Willie Pep who reigned as world featherweight champ for many years. Sampson also had a great baseball team composed of major leaguers. I can't remember the names of all the players but the ace of the pitching staff was Johnny Vandermeer.
After basic training I went to quartermaster school, also at Sampson. This was a three month training in basic seamanship, navigation, and signaling. I eventually became a good helmsman and celestial navigator.
Bill's Quartermaster class - to see the back of this picture, showing all names, click here
We had every other weekend off (Saturday and Sunday) and could leave the base but be back by 6 AM Monday morning. The ride back and forth to New York on the Lehigh Valley RR was not pleasant. The other cities in upper New York were crowded with sailors (Syracuse, Rochester) on liberty. I found the best place for liberty Niagara Falls. We took the train to Buffalo and then hitchhiked to the Falls. There were very few servicemen there and loads of girls.
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My first assignment was on the USS PC 1214 which I boarded at Coco Solo Naval Base in the Panama Canal Zone. I was sent to the naval base in New Orleans to await transportation tot Coco Solo. Transportation was aboard an LST, which I boarded about 50 miles above New Orleans on the Mississippi where it was loading ammunition. When te loading was finished we set sail down the river on our way to Panama. It was delightful sitting on deck observing the sights on the river bank.
Bill Talks about his assignment aboard the USS PC-1214:
And then it happened. We passed New Orleans and entered the ocean. The flat-bottomed LST started rolling and pitching. I suddenly got a very queasy feeling in the stomach which wouldn't go away. After about two days I got used to [sic] and never had a bout of sea sickness thereafter.
At Coco Solo I was assigned to the PC 1214 which was one of a flotilla of patrol ships doing convoy duty in the Carribean Sea. When the merchant ships came through the canal a convoy was formed and we took them up to Guantanamo Bay, where another convoy was formed to take them to whatever East coast port. There were ships waiting that had arrived from East coast ports to be escorted to the canal. A convoy was formed and we returned to Coco Solo. By the time we got there another group of ships was waiting to be convoyed.
Crew of the USS PC-1214
A PC is 173 feet long with a beam of about 20 feet. It had a crew of 65 men and five officers. It had a 3 inch fifty gun on the foredeck, several batteries of 20 and 40 MM machine guns, depth charge racks and Y guns.
At first I was disappointed to be assigned to such a small ship which was facetiously called part of the "donald duck" Navy. However, eventually I got to know everybody aboard and the comeraderie was good.
Upon finishing quartermaster school I did not yet get a rating but was known as a quartermaster striker. At sea I was a helmsman and lookout and signal man. In port I was part of the maintenance work force, scrubbed decks, chipped paint and handled lines.
While aboard the 1214 we had some pings on the sonar but never encountered a German Sub. They may have come close enough to take a look at the convoy and then decided that they couldn't get in position to launch a successful torpedo and scampered away.
On one occasion we set sail to Limon, a small fishing village on the coast of Costa Rica. When we arrived the captain went ashore with an attaché case. He returned about an hour later and we returned to Panama. Nobody ever knew what that was all about. We suspect that he carried cash as a payoff to operatives we had in Central America who were looking for fueling bases that we suspected the Germans had in order to maintain the U-Boat fleet in the Carribean.
This duty was from Feb 1945 to the end of the European war in May 1945. On VE day we were out at sea under radio silence and didn't know about it until we reached port.
While on leave we tried to meet girls, went to dance halls, movies and beerjoints.
I was never in actual combat or even near a Naval battle. The only time we fired our guns was in target practice. My battle station on the PC was second loader on the 3"/50 deck gun. Even with cotton in my ears the noise was raucus.
After the European war was over and no more U-Boat menace, our ship was ordered to the West Coast to join the Pacific fleet. We were to be converted from an anti-submarine vessel to an anti-aircraft vessel. Depth charge racks and Y-guns were removed and more 20 and 40MM guns added. We had this work done at a shipyard in Oakland, just across the bay from San Francisco. While there, the war ended and the ship was ordered back to the East Coast to be put in mothballs in the St. John River in Jacksonville.
On VJ day I was aboard the PC in San Francisco Bay. I had duty that day, so I couldn't go ashore on liberty. I think the news came over the radio about 8PM local time. The crew members who were ashore said San Francisco became party central. I had liberty the next day and the party was still going on.
While we were in Oakland getting the PC overhauled, the Captain decided he wanted to get married and had his fiancee travel from Minneapolis. The Captain and all officers left the ship for the wedding. Since the crew was left alone somebody poured a fifth of bourbon in the coffee urn thinking that the officers wouldn't return to late in the afternoon. While we were seated in the mess compartment drinking coffee royals, the wedding party returned on their way to the reception. The bride wanted to see the ship. He took her to the mess and while there she said she would like a cup of coffee. We all cringed at that. She took the coffee and drank it and never said a word.
Before the ship set out to Jacksonville I was transferred to the Naval Base on Treasure Island in the San Francisco Bay for further assignment. While waiting for reassignment I was put on Shore Patrol duty in San Francisco. I had many eventful nights keeping order as hordes of sailors came ashore from long term duty in the Pacific.
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Finally my new orders came. I was assigned to the Port Directors office in Sasebo, Japan, which had been set up immediately after the surrender. Sasebo was on the island of Kyushu, about 40 miles up the coast from Nagasaki.
Sasebo Harbor
It took 28 days on a Naval transport ship to get there. Since I was a rated man, I didn't have to work. I spent my entire time reading books. We arrived in Sasebo in November 1945.
Bill talks about his Sasebo assignment:
Japan was a mess after WWII. Sasebo had been firebombed and was badly in ruins as were most cities. There was a great need to send food and building supplies to rehab the country. The problem was that the coast and the Inland sea were heavily mined. Japan had heavily mined the coast and the US Air Force had dropped 5,000 mines in the Inland sea. There was no way of knowing where they were. Mine Sweepers were brought in to clear channels to the ports. Sasebo is the first deepwater port availabele when sailing to Japan. Every ship with the relief supplies had to anchor in Sasebo and await sailing instructions from the Port Director's Office. We were advised of where the mines had been cleared and plotted courses for the ships to take to deliver the supplies. We did a good job; not one ship was blown up.
As I mentioned before, Nagasaki was 40 miles from Sasebo. After officials said it was safe to go there, our QM group requisitioned a vehicle and drove down. The trip itself was an adventure. There were only one lane dirt roads over mountainous terrain with no guard rails. When we arrived there, everything that had been reported was true. The city was just rubble. One building had been a torpedo factory with large machinery. The machinery laid on the ground and was melted into round blobs. I could only imagine what happened to the people who were there. They must have been instantly cremated. This was just a rudimentary bomb. I can't even imagine what would happen today.
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| A job well done | Port Director's Office crew Pictures @ Bill Rankin |
Unknown ship at Sasebo |
Bill saved some maps of the Sasebo and Nagasaki harbors:
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