They sprang up and waited for another lecture, but instead the officer spoke quietly and intently to Young.
“Young, I need you to tell me what happened at that club last night. I really need to know,” he said. “There are things happening all over the fleet, and I need to know what happened here.”
Young told the lieutenant that he couldn’t be of much help.
“The guy was screaming about Martin Luther King and the Black Panthers. All we did was roll the table and get out. Then here comes the Marines with ax handles, so we did what we were told and got out.”
The lieutenant asked the other men if Young’s story was true, and they agreed, saying they didn’t know any more than that. The officer seemed to believe them, but clearly he wasn’t satisfied.
“All right, well . . .do me a favor,” he said to the sailors. “Don’t go back to the EM club. If you want to go out, go out on the town. Stay out of the EM club tonight.”
They told the officer they would.
WHAT YOUNG AND THE lieutenant didn’t know was that there had been another noteworthy incident at 12:30 on the morning of October 9, as a black Kitty Hawk sailor, Airman Dwight W. Horton, was returning to the ship. The shore patrol arrested him for fighting outside the base gate with two white petty officers, though he said it was less a fight than a beating from the other two, particularly since he already had one arm in a cast. After being returned to the Kitty Hawk, he reported to his black brothers that he had been mistreated by the white shore patrol officers and the base provost marshal’s office. They sat around their berthing compartment talking about the incident and getting more and more worked up.
“Not surprising,” one of the men said. “Even halfway around the world, a black man can’t walk the street without whites giving him a hard time. And then, of course, the white lawmen have to take their turns with the black man. Typical.”
But they would get even. The evening of Oct. 9 passed without incident, but the next night, October 10, was their last in Subic and the black sailors decided they would protest Horton’s mistreatment by disrupting one of the favorite white hangouts on the Strip: the Sampaguita Club.
THE WHITE SAILORS ON the Kitty Hawk had no idea that any retribution was planned that night. Neither did many of the black sailors. Likewise, Townsend and Cloud had no inkling of what would occur as they had dinner ashore, then returned to work on the carrier.
Keel’s sore shoulder left him laying low for the rest of the port stay, so he didn’t end up in the Sampaguita Club on October 10, even though it was the hot destination. The club was hosting its weekly “Soul Night,” which meant that black sailors were welcome in this usually all-white club, and it also guaranteed good entertainment. The club was packed, full of sailors along with some civilians, such as the wives of men stationed at the base and locals—black, white, and Filipino. Everyone, of all races, loved soul music, and opening the doors to everyone usually guaranteed a big crowd—one that was raucous and loud, ready to dance and have a good time. But on this night, the racial tension that had been fomenting among the Kitty Hawk sailors would come to the club with them. The brawls started almost immediately. One fight broke out about 9 P.M. and appeared to be nothing more than the typical scuffle over something meaningless until a white shore patrolman from the oiler Savannah, also in port for R&R, stepped in. He tapped a black sailor on the shoulder, and that man immediately swung around and slammed the shore patrolman in the face with his fist. Others in the crowd rescued the shore patrolman from a group of black sailors who surrounded him. The rescuers pulled him into the manager’s office at the club and called for an ambulance. Other shore patrol officers called the base headquarters to report that the Sampaguita Club was heating up. The base operations command center sent over another fifteen shore patrolmen, doubling the number at the club.
The additional show of force helped settle the crowd down, but all over the club, men were eyeing each other warily. The booze was flowing and the men were on edge. The bands carried on, playing covers of the great music of the day—crowd pleasers like “Push and Pull” by Rufus Thomas and “Jody’s Got Your Girl,” about the much-hated Jody stealing your girl while you’re away, by Johnny Taylor. The crowd responded to the hot soul hits like Curtis Mayfield’s “Freddie’s Dead (Theme from Superfly)” and “I Gotcha” by Joe Tex. At nearly 1 A.M., on the morning of October 11, Alabama boy Chris Mason was enjoying himself with some buddies, ordering another round, while they waited for the band to resume playing. John Callahan, the would-be conscientious objector, was there too. The band looked like it was just about ready to hit it again, but then about ten black sailors walked up on stage, dressed in what Mason thought was a parody of how black soul brothers were portrayed in the movies: civilian suits in loud colors and big hats with feathers. Mason had never seen such a sight in person and wondered if they were part of the show. Sailors sometimes performed with their bands in the club.
Soon it became clear that the men weren’t on stage to sing. The crowd watched as the men started dapping, performing an elaborate soul handshake that was clearly meant to be “in your face” for the whites in the crowd. An audible groan went up, especially from the whites who just didn’t want any more dapping rubbed in their faces and wanted to get back to the music. As the dap went on and on, shouts were hurled from the crowd.
“Get the fuck off the stage!”
“We want the music!”
“Enough with that nigger shit! Get out of there!”
Black sailors responded, in part as a true show of support for their brothers on stage, and in part to defend the men from the abuse.
“Right on, brother!”
“Black power!”
At about the same time, Horton, the black sailor who had incensed his buddies with his story of being mistreated the night before, arrived at the door to the club and swung at a shore patrolman stationed there. The scuffle that ensued as Horton was subdued occupied several shore patrolmen just as the crowd inside was growing rowdier.
With the band waiting behind them, the black sailors continued with the dap. Their smug expressions told the crowd they were getting exactly the reaction they wanted. It wasn’t long before the first beer bottle flew through the air. Soon it was raining broken glass. The band ran for cover, and most everyone else in the club ran for the nearest sailor of a different color and started swinging. Chairs flew. Bottles smashed. Tables broke. Men bled. It was a full-scale brawl.
A shore patrolman called the base command center, desperate for backup.
The base sent over twelve Marines and ten provost marshals to supplement the thirty shore patrolmen already on site. When they arrived, the backups found a scene of destruction. A civilian investigator from the provost marshal’s office who had come along to help was told by white sailors that a group of blacks had dragged a man into a bathroom and were beating him. The investigator forced his way into the head with six shore patrolmen and rescued the white sailor, then had the Marines throw the most violent black sailors out into the parking lot, where shore patrolmen guarded them until paddy wagons could take them to the brig.
As Mason ducked to escape the flying debris and fists, he noticed that the shore patrol and the Marines were making their offensive. The helmeted men were wading into the crowd swinging their batons, knocking any heads within reach until men stopped fighting. Mason made his way to the nearest exit and escaped, racing away as fast as he could. Callahan did the same thing.
With the most violent men out of the crowd and under guard, the club finally began to settle down. Then a black sailor threw a bottle that smashed near the front door, and the noise set off the sailors being held outside. They broke free of their guards and rushed back into the club, turning over tables, throwing chairs, and assaulting whites. The Marines who tried to block the exits were thwarted by some black civilians who helped the rampaging black sailors escape. They darted off into the darkness of Olongapo and toward the base, along with many others try
ing to escape the melee and the shore patrol.
PERRY PETTUS, MEANWHILE, WAS heading back toward the main gate of the naval base after having spent the evening with other black sailors at Harlem, the most popular club in the Jungle. He and several black friends were making their way to the Kitty Hawk when they saw a couple of white sailors arguing with a few black sailors. Pettus could tell that the blacks were giving the whites a hard time about going into the Jungle. Pettus and his friends didn’t pay much attention, thinking it just a stupid argument among drunks, and when they saw the shore patrol coming over they certainly didn’t want to get involved. As they got close to the scene, they saw the shore patrolmen turn around suddenly and run toward the Sampaguita Club. The men didn’t know what was going on, but they assumed the shore patrol had bigger fish to fry. Then they heard the commotion, looked toward the noise, and realized that something big was happening.
What the hell?
A horde of men, black and white, was running toward them. It didn’t take long for Pettus and all the other men standing there to decide that they didn’t really need to know what the crowd was running from. Whatever it was, they’d better run too. Pettus and the others turned and ran. At first they were in front of the surging mass, but soon they were outpaced by some of the more motivated sailors spilling from the club. Pettus could see that some were bleeding, their clothes torn, and a few were still screaming insults at each other as they ran.
The Marines guarding the enlisted men’s brow saw the mostly black crowd racing down the pier. The men piled onto the Kitty Hawk as fast as they could, some pushing past the Marine guards who insisted on checking their identification cards, jumping the turnstiles instead of waiting to board in an orderly fashion. The men knew that if they didn’t get back to sanctuary on their ship, they’d wind up in the brig or the hospital. The Marines let them board without any explanation for their torn uniforms, black eyes, and bloody lips, but they also took notice of the sailors because of their disheveled appearance and panicky efforts to get aboard.
Man, what was that all about? Pettus wondered as he made his way to his berthing compartment. Other sailors told him of the big fight at the club and how sailors were being thrown in paddy wagons.
That had to be one hell of a fight, he thought. Glad I was at Harlem.
The officers chalked up the fight as just another wild night in Subic Bay. They did not realize that many of the black sailors and some of the white ones still seethed with anger after the brawl. They had brought their anger back to the ship with them. All they needed was an excuse to let it fly.
CHAPTER SEVEN
SAILING INTO TROUBLED WATER
October 11, 1972
Later in the day on October 11, the Kitty Hawk pulled away from the Alava Pier at Subic Bay, and Captain Townsend set a course for Yankee Station. By now the men on the bridge hardly needed much direction in getting the ship back on line. After such a long cruise, the Kitty Hawk helmsmen could find their way back to Yankee Station almost on instinct. Some of the sailors on board, and the officers too, were beginning to wonder just how long the Navy could keep one carrier at sea and on duty. The accepted scuttlebutt was that a carrier could stay on line for up to a year, with periodic replenishment at sea and relatively minor upkeep at nearby ports, before having to return to its home port for more extensive maintenance. A year at sea was a long time. Even the best port calls were no substitute for being back home with friends and family. It was clear to the sailors that their time at sea would be dictated by the physical needs of the ship and the strategic needs of the war, not any concerns for the crew.
The Kitty Hawk was sailing back for its sixth on-line period, and the ship’s commanders knew they were asking a lot of the crew. Townsend felt a twinge of regret as the big carrier sailed west toward Southeast Asia, but his sympathy for the men on the long cruise wasn’t going to get in the way of fulfilling his mission. By 1 P.M. on October 12, the men of the Kitty Hawk would be within range of her targets and launching aircraft as she continued to Yankee Station. The aircraft would launch no matter how hung over, bruised, angry, or homesick the sailors might be. Cloud knew he could depend on the crew to do their jobs, but at the same time, he worried about their mental state. They were being pushed hard, they’d been away from home a long time, and now they were being dragged away from Subic too soon.
Both Townsend and Cloud had heard about the fight at the Sampaguita Club and how so many of the sailors had returned to the ship showing signs of having been involved. Before sailing, the captain received a report from the chief of staff at Subic Naval Base, whom Townsend happened to know personally.
“It looks like it was a good number of your black sailors” involved in the fight, the officer told Townsend. “We’re not sure how it started, but you know how these things go. I just wanted you to know because it was a really big fight, pretty much a riot. We had to send a lot of Marines but even then most of the troublemakers got away.”
Townsend thanked the man for the heads-up and then called his officer of the day for a report. The Kitty Hawk officer confirmed to Townsend that a crowd of sailors, many of them black, had rushed aboard in the early morning with their clothes disheveled, seeming frantic to get back aboard.
“Some of them were armed too,” the officer reported. “They had those nunchakus, sir, those sticks with the chain between them that you twirl around. Apparently some of the men are quite proficient with those things.”
Townsend questioned whether the men had caused any trouble on returning, and the officer reported that they hadn’t. That was why the officers on watch did nothing and made no special report of the incident, he told the captain. Townsend, satisfied, wondered whether the information from Subic constituted any real reason for concern or if it was just another bar fight. Though he had known his crew for only about four months, and even with the tensions he knew existed on the ship, Townsend didn’t think any of his men would go ashore and create such problems. He radioed back to the Subic chief of staff for more information. “Was the fight really that bad? Are you sure it was my men? I’ve never had that kind of trouble from them before. I find this difficult to believe.”
The Subic officer confirmed that it was that bad and that the sailors who escaped from Marine custody that night had been seen returning to the Kitty Hawk. Townsend ordered his staff to investigate and report back to him. In particular, he told them, he wanted to know if the disturbance had been planned or organized. That would be quite different from a spontaneous bar fight, no matter how big. Carlucci, the leader of the Marines on the Kitty Hawk, had the two Marines who had been posted at the enlisted men’s brow walk through the ship with him, looking for any faces they recognized from the night before. They found some, but each sailor questioned told Carlucci that it wasn’t him, that he had returned to the ship much earlier and hadn’t been involved in the Sampaguita fight. Without any way to dispute their word now that the ship had left port, Carlucci had no choice but to end the investigation.
Townsend knew as well as any other Navy leader in 1972 that the black power movement and antiwar sentiment could result in organized uprisings on Navy bases and on ships at sea. But on the morning of October 11, he could only exercise caution and wonder what he might not know about his crew. Cloud was at more of a disadvantage even than his boss. Townsend didn’t have much time on board but he still had twice as much experience with the crew as Cloud’s two months. In fact, both men were woefully unaware of the underlying tension as they sailed back to Yankee Station. Each suspected that something might be afoot, but Townsend was focused on the mission at hand and trusted his crew. Cloud was more suspicious, but he didn’t know exactly what was wrong. As for how it might erupt, neither Townsend nor Cloud had any idea.
The official reports from Subic and from the Kitty Hawk officers did not adequately relay to the top brass the level of disharmony on board. Frustrations and anger had been growing ever higher during the Westpac cruise, and some black sailor
s on the ship were just waiting for the right moment to strike back at the white Navy and the white sailors who oppressed them every day. The disturbances at the clubs at Subic Bay were like dry timbers on a long-smoldering fire. When the Kitty Hawk sailors returned to their ship, their animosity simmered, and as the ship churned through the sea to Yankee Station, a great many men were on a hair trigger. A great many more were at risk because they were not so agitated by the pervasive but easy-toignore racial issues. These sailors, most of them young and innocent, were not on high alert and did not see trouble coming. They did not know to be cautious.
On October 11, as the ship was in transit, the workload was relatively light, so the men were able to relax and rest up for the hard work that would face them the next day when full flight operations began again. But many of the sailors did not really relax. The EM club fight on the first night was still a fresh memory for some, and even more were still worked up about the last night in Subic. The stories and the rumors flew. Everyone who had been at the Sampaguita Club told tales about how wild the fight had been and how they didn’t know whether it would be worse to face the rioters inside or the Marines outside. Everyone’s account of the brawl was somewhat different, but the white sailors generally told the same story about black sailors starting the fight and seeking out white sailors for beating. Black sailors told their version: The white sailors didn’t want them in the club and viciously attacked the men who were dapping. With each retelling, the riot became even bigger, the story more sensational, and the racial tension more pronounced. The trash talking never stopped. Sailors passing each other in ship would mumble an insult under their breath about honkies, niggers, or spooks. Black sailors warned white ones that they wouldn’t make it through the night. White sailors told them to bring it on. And yet many white sailors remained oblivious. On a huge ship made up of thousands of tiny compartments, even the most volatile situation can be unknown to those on the other side of a steel wall.
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