Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, June 30, 1995 TAG: 9506300052
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: SHEBA WHEELER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
When the nurse comes in to give Chocklett, 73, his pain pills, he shoos her away with a gentle smile. He knows he's having heart surgery the next day. But for now, he just wants to talk about the ship he calls "the most masterful piece of machinery" he ever saw.
Past crews of the USS Iowa and their families are gathered at the Roanoke Airport Marriott for the 19th annual Veterans Association of the Iowa reunion. More than 200 crewmen, their wives, friends and relatives have traveled across the nation to attend the reunion, which runs through Saturday.
The association moves the event around the country. In previous years, it has met in Louisiana, Arizona and Washington. Next year, the reunion will be in Fargo, N.D.
But the traveling is not the best part of the anniversary. If you asked Chocklett and his colleagues what they like best about the reunion, they would say it's being able to sit around the hospitality room and exchange stories from daylight until well past dark.
"It's the camaraderie you have with former shipmates that makes this reunion so special," said association secretary Lester Smith of Moline, Ill., who served on the Iowa from 1951 to 1954. "It's the fact that you can do this," he said as he stood to shake an old friend's hand and give him a strong clap on the back.
Chocklett was one of the few sailors from Roanoke who sailed on the ship during World War II. He also coordinated this year's reunion, but the surgery kept him from attending.
After saying goodbye to his bride of nine days, Chocklett left for training camp, followed by service on the Iowa from October 1942 to 1945. He was a shipfitter responsible for all ship damage control.
Chocklett lived through a weeklong typhoon; in the Marshall Islands in March 1944, he slept through two Japanese bomb attacks. The bombs burst on the deck near a turret and blew a hole in the ship's side without penetrating the 16-inch armor.
The worst thing he remembers about his time on the Iowa was not the enemy bombardment. It was the crew's humiliating "crossing-of-the-equator initiation."
"Hell, if somebody hits you - bam! What can you do? You're just dead," he said. "But when I crossed the equator, that was the most miserable time I had in my life. They initiate you. They made you do anything and everything stupid that you could think of. I remember once when the temp was 125 degrees, and they made us put on our long johns and stand out watch."
The Iowa was commissioned in 1942. More than 9,000 feet long and 100 feet wide, with 42 feet under water, the high-speed battleship protected the aircraft carriers of the Pacific fleet from numerous Japanese air attacks. The ship's 16-inch guns drilled shore fortifications of South Pacific islands for Marine landings, hammering 2,000-pound shells more than 20 miles with pinpoint accuracy.
Crew members jokingly remember the Iowa as the only U.S. Navy ship that installed a bathtub, to accommodate President Franklin D. Roosevelt when he sailed to meet with Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin at the Tehran Conference in 1943.
The Iowa's guns pummeled targets in Japan in the closing days of the war, and it was the first ship to enter Tokyo harbor as part of the fleet that accepted the Japanese surrender.
"At that moment, we were all happy, elated and teary-eyed," said Joe C. Hennigan, who served from 1943 to 1946 as an assistant gunnery officer for the 5th Division. "We knew it was over, and it was time for us to go back home to our wives and families."
Some sailors were not able to see their children while they served. They took advantage of each opportunity to see their wives, who lived in groups of two or three in apartments near Brooklyn, San Diego or other cities where the ship would dock.
"We received lots of letters, sometimes four or five of them in a bunch," said South Carolinian Polly Rogers, who married Ralph "Will" Rogers one month before he set sail on the Iowa in 1943. "If the post office box on the letters had changed, then you knew you could find the ship there."
An explosion in one of the ship's turrets killed 47 sailors in 1989 and submerged the ship in a wave of political controversy. In an effort to cut costs, the Navy called the Iowa "expendable" and decommissioned it for the third time Oct. 26, 1990.
Though the Iowa has been put to rest, Chocklett stubbornly clenches his lips and declares the ship "first class."
"It wasn't just the ship, but it was the fellowship I had with the men I served with," he said. "I met some down-to-earth people and learned how to get along with people from all races and classes. It's better than a college education, if you want to take it. I think everybody ought to do it at least once."
by CNB