recent scribbling
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I am taking a class in Non-fiction Creative Writing. This is a copy of my first draft...
Kwaj
While we were enjoying life in verdant, wet Portland, my father got orders for a place called Kwajalein. We looked it up in an atlas and found that it is part of the Marshall Island group in the South Pacific. Needless to say, we were excited. Who wouldn’t want to trade a wet, rainy city for the sunny, warm, exciting South Pacific? We could hardly wait.
We traveled to the island by military transport ship - the USS Mitchell. I don’t know how the troops traveled, but the part of the ship we were on was set up like a cruise ship on a budget. Everything was clean, there were activities to keep us busy on the trip and the food was great, but our surroundings were done in shades of gray. The bulkheads, decks, cabins and racks were all painted gray. The sheets on the racks were a grayish white and the blankets were Navy blue and gray.
It was a good way to travel from one kind of climate to a very different one. The voyage took about a week, including a short stop in Hawaii, where there were signs and newspaper articles and all kinds of excitement about the proposal to make Hawaii a state. By the time we reached Kwajalein, we had adjusted fairly well to the change between a moderate and a tropical climate.
As we approached our destination, we stood at the rail and watch the speck in the ocean turn into something larger and larger. We anchored off the reef and waited for a landing craft to come out and transport us to the island. We boarded the landing craft which took us through a channel in the reef to the pier. The beaches were beautiful, backed by a breakwater (formerly Japanese bunkers) completely covered with green. Beyond the breakwater we could see the taller buildings and the air traffic control tower for the airstrip.
Settling in to our new home didn’t take long. The Navy hadn’t wanted the hassle and expense of moving families’ entire household effects to the island and back again so we were provided with a home that was already furnished. We just had to put away clothes and personal effects. When we were done, Daddy turned us loose to explore. He handed us a bottle of sunscreen and pointed out the bus stop.
“Put that sunscreen on and keep it on whenever you are out in the daytime,” he told us. “The bus will take you all around the island. Once you get on it, don’t get off until you are back at this stop.”
We stood at the bus stop and put the sunscreen on. My sister Terese, who is a total priss didn’t like the feel of it. “This is icky. I don’t want to put this on me!” She looked over her shoulder and found Daddy watching so she put it on, making a face he couldn’t see. The bus turned out to be a panel van with seats built into it. We sat close to the front so we could see out the doors and the windshield. The bus driver took one look at our very pale skin, tagged us as newcomers and happily pointed out places we would need to know about. On the circuit of the island, we saw where the commissary was, the Navy Exchange, the air strip, the chapel, the barracks, the school, the clubs, the outdoor movie theater and the housing area. Most of the buildings were made of concrete block and painted beige. The ugliness of that was minimized by all the palm trees and bright, tropical flowers - and the scents were incredible! The indescribable smell of the of the ocean was mixed with the smells of tropical flowers, mostly hibiscus and spider lilies, fish cooking or rotting and laced through it all, the smell of aircraft fuel.
The entire trip, including stops to take on and let off passengers took forty-five minutes! When we got home, we had a lot of questions to ask our dad. We hadn’t realized, coming in by sea, that the island was so very small. How in the world were we going to pass the time for two whole years in this place? I was going on thirteen and the sisters who were closest in age to me were also approaching teen age. Where were the parks? Where were the dance classes and the other activities we were used to? We looked at each other, but didn’t ask my dad - where were the boys?
Daddy gave us a thumbnail sketch of where we had ended up.
“Kwajalein is part of the Marshall Islands. The island is about a mile and a half long and, at its widest point, about half a mile wide. It is shaped roughly like a boomerang. About a third of the island’s area is taken up by the airstrip.”
“But Daddy, where will we go? What will we do here?” This was my sister Terese, who was a very social person.
Daddy put on his sternest look. “You’ll go to school, of course! Classes start in two weeks. Until then, you’ll help your mother, your brothers and sisters settle in.” Then he relented and added, “You’ll find friends and things to do once school starts.”
My brother David, age five at the time, asked “Where’s the TV? Wanna see Mickey Mouse Club!” It was a program he had become very interested in.
“We have no TV here.” Daddy said. “No TV station and only one radio station. However, there are five movie theaters on the island.”
This did not sound promising, but once school started, things picked up a bit. We made friends who showed us that there were actually things to do. They weren’t the kinds of things we were used to doing, but fun and interesting. We learned how to walk the reefs at low tide without cutting ourselves to ribbons on the sharp coral and how to look for live seashells and which were poisonous and which were safe to handle. We learned how to climb coconut palms to pick the green coconuts and one of the native Marshallese men taught us how to shell them. Green coconuts were the best. They had very little coconut milk and the meat was still like jelly. We learned how to swim well. It was a required subject in school because the island was only eight feet above sea level. Thinking back, I wonder how they thought that would help if a wave washed over the island. Knowing how to swim was not going to help.
For most of the time we lived there, we found our excitement in the small things like trips on the LSTs to the other islands. The biggest stir, however, was when we found out there was to be another atomic bomb test on Bikini Island. We were given instructions about how not to look in the direction of the blast and that we were actually supposed to stay indoors. As if!
On the day of the test, we snuck out so we could see what we could see. We had heard that the blast would be powerful and the cloud would be awesome. We wanted to see! We wanted to know what all that power and glory were about. The time for the test came and went and we saw nothing! Was it canceled? Did something go wrong? It turned out that Bikini Island was so far over the horizon that we couldn’t see a thing.
The next day we learned about the price to be paid for power and glory. We joined the other people on the island that weren’t busy with other duties and cleaned the beaches. There were so many dead fish! All the beautiful fish that we would watch swimming around in the lagoon and off the reefs were washed up and dead. They had all been killed by the concussion from the blast. We hoped then that there would never be another test.
What do you think? There's a second draft...
I am taking a class in Non-fiction Creative Writing. This is a copy of my first draft...
Kwaj
While we were enjoying life in verdant, wet Portland, my father got orders for a place called Kwajalein. We looked it up in an atlas and found that it is part of the Marshall Island group in the South Pacific. Needless to say, we were excited. Who wouldn’t want to trade a wet, rainy city for the sunny, warm, exciting South Pacific? We could hardly wait.
We traveled to the island by military transport ship - the USS Mitchell. I don’t know how the troops traveled, but the part of the ship we were on was set up like a cruise ship on a budget. Everything was clean, there were activities to keep us busy on the trip and the food was great, but our surroundings were done in shades of gray. The bulkheads, decks, cabins and racks were all painted gray. The sheets on the racks were a grayish white and the blankets were Navy blue and gray.
It was a good way to travel from one kind of climate to a very different one. The voyage took about a week, including a short stop in Hawaii, where there were signs and newspaper articles and all kinds of excitement about the proposal to make Hawaii a state. By the time we reached Kwajalein, we had adjusted fairly well to the change between a moderate and a tropical climate.
As we approached our destination, we stood at the rail and watch the speck in the ocean turn into something larger and larger. We anchored off the reef and waited for a landing craft to come out and transport us to the island. We boarded the landing craft which took us through a channel in the reef to the pier. The beaches were beautiful, backed by a breakwater (formerly Japanese bunkers) completely covered with green. Beyond the breakwater we could see the taller buildings and the air traffic control tower for the airstrip.
Settling in to our new home didn’t take long. The Navy hadn’t wanted the hassle and expense of moving families’ entire household effects to the island and back again so we were provided with a home that was already furnished. We just had to put away clothes and personal effects. When we were done, Daddy turned us loose to explore. He handed us a bottle of sunscreen and pointed out the bus stop.
“Put that sunscreen on and keep it on whenever you are out in the daytime,” he told us. “The bus will take you all around the island. Once you get on it, don’t get off until you are back at this stop.”
We stood at the bus stop and put the sunscreen on. My sister Terese, who is a total priss didn’t like the feel of it. “This is icky. I don’t want to put this on me!” She looked over her shoulder and found Daddy watching so she put it on, making a face he couldn’t see. The bus turned out to be a panel van with seats built into it. We sat close to the front so we could see out the doors and the windshield. The bus driver took one look at our very pale skin, tagged us as newcomers and happily pointed out places we would need to know about. On the circuit of the island, we saw where the commissary was, the Navy Exchange, the air strip, the chapel, the barracks, the school, the clubs, the outdoor movie theater and the housing area. Most of the buildings were made of concrete block and painted beige. The ugliness of that was minimized by all the palm trees and bright, tropical flowers - and the scents were incredible! The indescribable smell of the of the ocean was mixed with the smells of tropical flowers, mostly hibiscus and spider lilies, fish cooking or rotting and laced through it all, the smell of aircraft fuel.
The entire trip, including stops to take on and let off passengers took forty-five minutes! When we got home, we had a lot of questions to ask our dad. We hadn’t realized, coming in by sea, that the island was so very small. How in the world were we going to pass the time for two whole years in this place? I was going on thirteen and the sisters who were closest in age to me were also approaching teen age. Where were the parks? Where were the dance classes and the other activities we were used to? We looked at each other, but didn’t ask my dad - where were the boys?
Daddy gave us a thumbnail sketch of where we had ended up.
“Kwajalein is part of the Marshall Islands. The island is about a mile and a half long and, at its widest point, about half a mile wide. It is shaped roughly like a boomerang. About a third of the island’s area is taken up by the airstrip.”
“But Daddy, where will we go? What will we do here?” This was my sister Terese, who was a very social person.
Daddy put on his sternest look. “You’ll go to school, of course! Classes start in two weeks. Until then, you’ll help your mother, your brothers and sisters settle in.” Then he relented and added, “You’ll find friends and things to do once school starts.”
My brother David, age five at the time, asked “Where’s the TV? Wanna see Mickey Mouse Club!” It was a program he had become very interested in.
“We have no TV here.” Daddy said. “No TV station and only one radio station. However, there are five movie theaters on the island.”
This did not sound promising, but once school started, things picked up a bit. We made friends who showed us that there were actually things to do. They weren’t the kinds of things we were used to doing, but fun and interesting. We learned how to walk the reefs at low tide without cutting ourselves to ribbons on the sharp coral and how to look for live seashells and which were poisonous and which were safe to handle. We learned how to climb coconut palms to pick the green coconuts and one of the native Marshallese men taught us how to shell them. Green coconuts were the best. They had very little coconut milk and the meat was still like jelly. We learned how to swim well. It was a required subject in school because the island was only eight feet above sea level. Thinking back, I wonder how they thought that would help if a wave washed over the island. Knowing how to swim was not going to help.
For most of the time we lived there, we found our excitement in the small things like trips on the LSTs to the other islands. The biggest stir, however, was when we found out there was to be another atomic bomb test on Bikini Island. We were given instructions about how not to look in the direction of the blast and that we were actually supposed to stay indoors. As if!
On the day of the test, we snuck out so we could see what we could see. We had heard that the blast would be powerful and the cloud would be awesome. We wanted to see! We wanted to know what all that power and glory were about. The time for the test came and went and we saw nothing! Was it canceled? Did something go wrong? It turned out that Bikini Island was so far over the horizon that we couldn’t see a thing.
The next day we learned about the price to be paid for power and glory. We joined the other people on the island that weren’t busy with other duties and cleaned the beaches. There were so many dead fish! All the beautiful fish that we would watch swimming around in the lagoon and off the reefs were washed up and dead. They had all been killed by the concussion from the blast. We hoped then that there would never be another test.
What do you think? There's a second draft...