Given the economy, Kinburn (McKenna) chose engineering. Furthermore, Kinburn mentioned he had joined the Navy to go to sea, not spend time in hospitals, and he had submitted letters for a change in his rating and a transfer to sea. This latter reason seems more in line with McKenna’s persona.17
The Great Depression, which had caused McKenna to join the Navy, also affected the armed forces’ pay and promotions. In 1933 Congress cut all federal employees’ salaries by 15 percent. At the time McKenna drew thirty-six dollars per month, less the 15 percent. Whether because of public outcry or improvements in the economy, Congress restored 10 percent of the reduction in 1934 and the remaining 5 percent in 1935.18
McKenna eventually received orders to transfer from Receiving Ship San Francisco to USS Gold Star at Guam. He awaited the arrival of the troopship USS Chaumont (AP 5) to make his way slowly across the Pacific Ocean.
During World War I the U.S. government created a large number of emergency shipyards with the American International Shipbuilding Corporation, located at Hog Island, Pennsylvania (Hog Island was also the site of one of seventeen of these yards on the East Coast). The government used the same system of emergency shipyards during World War II. Chaumont began as hull number 671 at Hog Island. Its keel was laid on 18 November 1918, and it was launched in 1920. Originally scheduled for the U.S. Army Transport Service, it became the Navy’s Chaumont on 3 November 1921. The ship was named for the site of the General Headquarters of the American Expeditionary Force in France in World War I and for Le Ray de Chaumont, a French citizen who contributed to the American Revolution by purchasing, outfitting, and supplying American ships in French ports. Chaumont had been a good friend and confidant of Benjamin Franklin and John Adams.
Chaumont displaced 8,300 tons, measured 448 feet in length, and had a draft of 26 feet 5 inches. It made 14 knots (16 miles per hour) and had a single propeller. The ship had a permanent complement of 286 and sported four 3-inch guns as armament.
During the unrest in China in the twenties and thirties, the transport moved U.S. Marine Corps Expeditionary Forces to the Middle Kingdom. Usually, however, Chaumont plodded its way throughout the Atlantic, Caribbean, and Pacific, moving naval personnel, their wives and children, congressional committees on inspection tours, and cargo to and from destinations as wide-ranging as Bermuda, Pearl Harbor, the Philippines, Guam, and Shanghai.19
McKenna awaited Chaumont, scheduled for arrival in two months, on Goat Island—now called Yerba Buena Island—in San Francisco Bay. The naval facility had a small library, but sailors in transit could not check out the volumes. For McKenna, who described himself as “hopelessly addicted to reading,” the waiting period brought about a “serious problem.” He recalled he had taken out an allotment to send to his mother leaving him with “only 13 dollars” a month. This meant he had little money for books and thus was dependent on libraries.20
A few days after he had reported to Goat Island, McKenna found a store on Mission Street in San Francisco specializing in secondhand magazines. The establishment stood on the fringes of skid row, and down-and-out men were always bringing in magazines to sell. They obtained the periodicals from trash cans or vacant lots, or they begged for them. Richard spent at least an hour browsing the offerings, selected ten magazines for a quarter, and returned to Goat Island. After reading the magazines, he returned to the store, resold them for a dime, and made another selection. He considered the store a library for skid row men and people, like himself, with little money. He even viewed the owner of the “library” as its librarian, although he never learned the man’s name and recalled him as an “unshaven, taciturn, pipe-smoking old man, [who] between transactions . . . was always reading himself.” The “librarian” seemed to resent the interruptions made by sales. The skid row establishment began McKenna’s lifelong prowling of used-book stores. A publicity photograph for a 1972 book shows Richard behind his typewriter with a large bookcase crammed with volumes, most of which appear to be used books.21
McKenna had heard that all Navy ships had libraries—he would soon learn this information was false—but thought because he was in a transit status in Chaumont he would not be able to use its library. Before sailing across the Pacific, Richard went to his “library” on Mission Street and, with some money he had managed to scrape together, purchased a dollar’s worth of old magazines. Storage space for personal possessions being limited on a troop transport, McKenna spread his magazines beneath the thin mattress of his bunk. Other people in the compartment either read or pilfered the volumes, but most returned them when finished. When he arrived in Guam, McKenna still had some magazines he had not yet read.22
Fireman 3rd Class McKenna eventually boarded Chaumont for the long voyage to Guam. Ask any veteran about sailing in a troop transport and he or she will invariably paint a picture of overcrowding and boredom. In the pictorial center of the Naval History and Heritage Command (NHHC) in Washington, D.C., is a sailor’s cartoon that captures what many felt. Vertically along the side of a drawing of a transport ship are letters spelling out USS Chaumont, which the wag has translated as meaning “U Shall Suffer. Christ Help All Us Monkeys on Navy Transports.” Ironically, McKenna’s World War II career would center on troop transports.23
Upon boarding Chaumont, the new fireman received a sheet of paper printed on both sides, titled “Instructions for Troop Class Passengers,” which outlined what was expected of him while he was in the troopship. McKenna found himself—not too surprisingly—assigned to E Division (Engineering); he would sleep in compartment L-7 and eat “in cafeteria style in Compartment No. 5-B.” In addition to outlining where the troops could or could not smoke, the instructions informed him he was to check the ship’s orders, which were “conspicuously posted about the ship.” Further, McKenna was required to “be habitually in a clean and neat uniform of the day.” His hair had to be cut in a regulation manner, which meant “that hair on top must be no longer than two inches and neatly tapered at the sides and back. The back of the neck must not be shaved.” Furthermore, “no eccentricities” in beards or haircuts were allowed, and McKenna was required to “shave daily.”24
Richard spoke badly about the slow-moving Chaumont throughout his life. In a letter to an old shipmate two months after his retirement in 1953, Richard let loose a stream of vitriol toward all masters at arms (MAAs)—that is, the police force on a ship or shore, known then in the Navy as “Jimmy Legs”—and specifically those in Chaumont. “All MAA’s were bastards and the ones on the Chaumont were the biggest bastards of all,” McKenna wrote. “They would grab a towel or anything else you left on a bunk for a few minutes and put you on report for having clothing adrift [not in the proper place]. If they had to, they would take something out of your seabag. Then you would have to do extra duty or buy off. They wanted you to buy off. If you only had a quarter and two packs of cigarettes, they would take that.” Warming up to his subject, McKenna revealed, “The chief Jimmylegs . . . made more money by shaking down the passengers than the skipper drew in salary. Maybe the skipper was cut in on it. I will always hate that ship.”25
A decade after his 1953 letter, his ire had not diminished. “I hated the Chaumont more than I ever did any enemy ship. I rode her both ways, out in ’32 and back in ’41, and she had not changed a bit,” he wrote. “One ship, one passageway. Eat slop standing up. Standing room only on the well decks and God help any sailor who leaned against an officer’s automobile. The married men could stand down there evenings and watch their wives on the boat deck dancing with the officers. She looked like a shoebox with a bow on each end. I still hate that ship.”26
Even later he wrote, “That wash room, all around a trunked cargo hatch in the tween decks. Half of it always roped off for
