By Don Snyder

I read with great interest, the history of NavComSta, Adak, Alaska in one of the earlier issues of CRYPTOLOG. It is wonderful that someone has thought to preserve such places in print for the future to be able to read about and confirm some of the stories of those who lived it. Yes, I am a survivor of Adak, Alaska.

My tour of duty began in March of 1953, right after I had finished CT School at Imperial Beach, California. Going from the wonderful climate of Southern California to the unpredictable climate of Alaska was pretty difficult for a 20 year old kid who, before the Navy, had not been out of the state of Missouri more than three times. A new duty station meant getting acquainted all over again and making new friends and finding out what you do for recreation on an island so far out in the Aleutian Chain not many of my friends or family knew anything about it.

The journey from the Naval Operations Base on Adak to what we referred to as Radio City was a few miles and the scenery was not so great until you reached the famous Adak National Forest. There were about 16 trees in the forest and none of them were over 6 feet tall. Rumor had it there was a woman behind every tree on Adak. I think we proved that to be false because, at one time or another, we looked behind each and every tree. The falsehood started when there was no Adak National Forest so obviously there could be no women behind trees that do not exist. I’m guessing that some lonely sailor planted the Adak National Forest, and it has become a well known attraction the world over. Several fellows, when they learned that I had been on Adak, asked about the Adak National Forest.

We participated in an activity known as Arctic Survival upon arrival on Adak. That was a trip out into the uninhabited (most of the island) parts of the island for an overnight campout where we stayed in tents and cooked over an open fire and learned to survive in case of an enemy attack or a natural disaster. Most guys had to go only one time but I was privileged to go on a second outing just before I came home, but that is a whole separate story that I will save for later.

After being assigned to a watch section I began to get acquainted with guys from all over the United States. They were from California, Pennsylvania, Illinois, New York and various other places. As luck would have it, we were pretty compatible, and we all got along very well. We all tried our hand at leather tooling, worked out in the gym, bowled in the bowling alley under the gym, read, shot the breeze etc. One evening one of my friends suggested that we climb Mt. Moffett. Now, it is important that you understand I said “one evening.” So about six of us started out, on foot, from the barracks, to make our way up the steep slopes of the mountain that towered over the Radio Station. When we were about one third of the way up, someone suggested that we stop and lie down to observe the Alaskan sky. It was magnificent! You could see stars like you cannot imagine. And then someone said, “listen”! So I listened as hard as I could, trying to hear something. There was absolutely no sound. No crickets chirping, no frogs croaking, no police car sirens blaring, no cars roaring by, no airplanes in the sky, just plain and absolute silence and solitude. That was 51 years ago, and I can still hear the silence as I write this.

As 20-year-old sailors will sometimes do, we were getting tired of all of the indoor things we did so when the weather began to warm up in the summer months we began looking for outdoor activities. NavComSta, Adak was located on Clam Lagoon, a nice body of water just outside the barracks. We noticed there was a lot of lumber and logs around the lagoon, probably left over from the earlier establishment of a less modern facility. We began to gather the lumber and logs with the idea that we would build a raft and perhaps use it to fish in the lagoon. When our, somewhat, seaworthy craft was finished, others began to gather around and some wanted to ride on it with us. One fellow had a $300.00 camera with him to take pictures from the middle of the lagoon and others were just interested in doing something different. I must mention that $300.00 was a lot of money in 1953. Anyway, we launched the raft with about seven or eight fellows on board; I was poling along when all of a sudden my pole would not touch bottom. This caused some anxiety but not nearly as much as when the raft began to breakup. Now picture this. We were rafting on a lagoon filled with water that was probably 50 degrees at best, and we had a $300.00 camera on board. I could see this fellow worrying about his camera so I decided to keep the raft afloat by abandoning ship, which I did and swam for shore. God, that water was cold! When I reached shore one of my buddies yelled, “How’s the water?” I yelled back that it was great and to come on in. He did and when he reached shore the first thing he did was grab me and give me a good cussing and then turned to the others on the raft and yelled to “Come on in, the water is fine!” The second guy in tells the story better than I do but we remember it exactly the same after all of these years. He said he jumped in because I told him the water was fine. In his words, “I lost my breath and one shoe when I hit the water and didn’t get my breath again until I was on the beach. I never did get the shoe back.” We have pictures to prove this fiasco or I am convinced that absolutely no one would believe it. All in all, four of us participated in the swim and left about 3 or 4 others on the raft to paddle their way back to shore.

Believe it or not, I was browsing the internet the other day about Adak and found a picture of about 5 or 6 sailors who swam in Clam Lagoon in 1957. It would be nice to hear from them because I think that we are members of a very small fraternity.

Our barracks was a modern brick building with windows on both sides of the dormitory making visibility great. On one side we had mountains and on the other side we had Clam Lagoon and in the distance we could see a lone mountain called the Great Sitkin Volcano. Sitkin was an active volcano and close to a refueling depot that was used extensively during World War II and still had about 12 sailors there to man the refueling duties. We caught a ride on a yard oiler hauling supplies to the men at the depot and visited with them one day. We heard the Japanese had been there recently digging up their fallen comrades and were taking them home for proper burial. I really didn’t know if that was true or not. Back at our barracks, each morning we would look across (about 29 miles away) to see if smoke was rising from Sitkin. Believe it or not, about once a month smoke would come billowing from her crater giving you a very eerie feeling that she could erupt at any time. To make matters worse, occasionally we felt ground tremors that shook the building and rattled the metal lockers in which we kept our possessions. I never will forget the first time I felt it because I nearly panicked. All of the fellows who had been there and felt them before had   good laugh at my expense. Later, we became accustomed to the tremors and could sleep right through them. According to an article I read, the earliest recorded eruption of the Great Sitkin Volcano was 1760 and it has erupted 12 times. The refueling depot is no longer in operation, and the area is now a part of Alaskan State Park system. Oh, by the way, according to the article, it had erupted in 1950 and the most recent eruption was 1987. Guess I missed the real excitement.

These are just a few of the stories from Adak, Alaska, 1953-54 vintage, and I thought that you might get a kick out of them. Usually the guys whom I talk to about duty stations feel blessed that they did not have to survive a year there. Oh yes, the second Arctic Survival training was a little pay back. You see, I was asked to extend for a month and I refused, so I had a little “extra activity” tacked on before I could leave.

All in all, Adak was OK but I really wouldn’t want to do it again. It was a wonderful time to grow-up and meet some very nice people with whom I have just recently made contact again. I ran into a fellow just this past week who had spent two years at the Naval Operations Base, on Adak, and he said he would go back tomorrow if they would let him. Imagine that!

Source:  NCVA CRYPTOLOG, Fall 2004