Midway Island 1963--Remembering When President Kennedy Was Assassinated

We boomers (and older) can all recall it—where we were when we heard the news that President Kennedy was assassinated.  In my case, I was in Miss Howerton’s 4^th grade classroom.  It probably wasn’t unusual to have heard it in school, except we were far out in the middle of the Pacific, on Midway Island.

When Kennedy was assassinated in November of 1963, the world was mired in the Cold War.  Midway Island’s played a vital role in defending the United States against a Soviet attack.  The island was the tail end of the Distant Early Warning (DEW) line, which was a series of radar stations that stretched across the Arctic to give an early warning should the Soviets launch something at us.  Over the Pacific Ocean, there were no land-based radar stations, and so detection depended on big planes called Willy Victors, which flew seven hours up to the Aleutian Island radar stations and seven hours back, thus providing radar coverage 24 hours a day over the ocean.  There were always concerns that the Soviets were going to take over Midway Island and thus cripple our defense, for the cold war was in the height of its shivering flu.  Any tipping of the balance of power was cause for concern, and the assassination of an American president was like kicking an ant hill. 

On Midway, when there was some cause for alert, such as a tsunami warning or Bay of Pigs concerns, they blasted an air raid siren and we were under General Quarters.  This meant we were to leave school and rush home, then stay locked inside the house.  Locked is questionable, as I don’t recall having a lock on the front door.  Latched, maybe.

At the sparkling white George Cannon school, the bikes stood neatly parked in bike racks.  There were no cars on Midway, as it was only a mile long or so.  Everyone rode bikes.  Moms went grocery shopping on bikes with huge baskets that could hold two grocery sacks.  Dads went to work on fancy “sports car” 3 speeds.  Kids all rode their coaster brake bikes everywhere, so the bikes were all stabled in the school’s bike racks.  Recess was over in the modest field that sported a small playhouse and meager swing set.  We now sat doing social studies worksheets.

An enlisted man in a blue denim shirt and dungarees walked into our classroom.  Something was up.  Enlisted men NEVER walked into the classroom.  He wasn’t someone’s father, as no child shrieked with delight at seeing their daddy.  He walked over and whispered solemnly to Miss Howerton.

This went on for some time.  We 4^th graders pondered this.  It wasn’t General Quarters, as no siren went off.  Therefore, it was no emergency.  This sudden interruption was not from the principal, so it wasn’t a school matter.  But the looks on both their faces meant that it was something big.

War?  Were we are war with the commies?  We children feared the commies like the boogie man.  A commie was the Black Plague, he was the devil, he was the Nazi of our time.  If we were at war, it did not take a genius to figure out that Midway was in danger of being invaded.  Did that mean that we would be occupied?  Or were we to be prisoners of war?

Presently the enlisted man left.

“Boys and girls,” said Miss Howerton.  “The president has been assassinated.”

We looked at her blankly.  What did assassinated mean?  Was it like “elected” I remember silently wondering?  We guessed no, for we would have known about an election, as we were well aware of the Nixon-Kennedy election and how looooong that took.

Teddy Hanson raised her hand and asked for a definition of assassinated.  Miss Howerton now realized why her news had not shocked us, and said that he had been shot and killed.

I still don’t think we reacted as she wanted, nor expected.  It was sad, of course, but none of us knew how it would affect us.  I remember figuring that America would just have to get busy and elect a new one.  I guess we were pretty much used to hearing that most of the presidential heroes had died.  It wasn’t much different than hearing that George Washington died and Abraham Lincoln was assassinated years ago.  It seemed like that was just what presidents did. 

We talked about it later on the playground.  At this time, very few of us had had experience with death.  My only brush with it was when a goldfish had died and my mom unceremoniously flushed it.  I’d never been to a funeral, didn’t really remember my grandpa dying when I was barely four. I had little understanding of the historical impact of a president being assassinated, the finality of death, or death’s customs and grieving. 

We had a television broadcast on Midway and there were lots of scenes of the funeral, but I grew weary of the process of dispatching the deceased and ran outside to play.  I was surprised at hearing a neighbor woman saying that she cried a little when watching the funeral.  Endless streams of black cars on a tiny black and white TV did not move me to tears.

A woman I met at a church softball game recently told me that she was an adult on the day she heard JFK had been shot.  She said she was so disappointed that he would not fulfill the rest of his term, and hopefully a second one, as she really had hoped that his destiny would be to lead America to greatness, to think beyond our own personal concerns and strive to help the nation if not the world, move forward in common brotherhood.

In an era when fears and polarization had led us into a Cold War, I can see what hope America had placed in their young president.  Perhaps he would not have been able to lead us to the brotherhood he had dreamed of.  But who knows what one person can accomplish, what we ourselves might be able to do if we have the courage and conviction?  After all, during his administration, a miniscule island named Midway was able to successfully stand as the anchor line of great defense. 

The Delights and Dangers of Childhood on Midway Island during the Cold War

There is something about living on a teensy island a billion miles from anywhere in the middle of the Pacific Ocean that fosters a sense of detachment from the world.  Although we weren’t separated from the dangers of the Cold War and politics on Midway Island, my two brothers and I delighted in living on this seemingly idyllic island. We loved Daddy taking us to the beach after work or on the weekend, and couldn’t hop on our bikes fast enough when he said the word. 

The sugar white sands at the beach, although pristine to look at, were actually dead coral, and were rough on the feet, so we tried to protect our feet by wearing flip flops.  This made it worse, as the rough white coral sand got caught between the toes and made us bleed.  One just put up with such things, much as we put up with disgusting canned milk, brackish water coming out of our house plumbing, and mosquitos.

The turquoise waters were warm and a delight to swim in, but only my older brother was much of a swimmer.  My younger brother, who was in kindergarten, and I who was in third grade, could not “swim” without the aid of snorkel, mask and fins.  Without the mask and snorkel, the crawl stroke was beyond me, as was the breast stroke’s complicated timing.  I could sorta do sidestroke.  But one the mask and snorkel were on, we were freed from breathing problems and used the flippers to propel us up and down the beach looking for shells.  Dad and Mom watched us and set reasonable limits.

The grand prize for us to find in the shallow water we were permitted to traverse was an auger shell.  I still have a good sized one we found.  It sits to this day on a shelf in my living room. 

In spite of the pristine look of the lagoon, dangers lurked.  The most common peril for wee swimmers was the man o’war jelly fish.  They stung like fire, I still clutch my right arm when talking about them.  We had swimming lessons at the beach in the summer, and the man o’ war’s blue stingers were nearly invisible in the turquoise water.  I got stung one day, as did many other swimming lesson pupils.  They found a delivery truck somewhere and took us to the dispensary, then called our mothers.  I don’t know why they took us to the dispensary.  They merely looked at us and said, “Yep, you’ve been stung by a man o’war, all right. Go home.”

Mom came to fetch me and I walked beside her going home.  Wasn’t far.  A block.  Nothing is far on an island that is only a mile or so long.  Mom let me lie down on her bed and I stared at the huge welts on my arm.  She read to me, but it didn’t help much and I probably cried a lot, but I got over it in a day or two.  From then on, I kept a wary eye around me when I went swimming.

The birds by the thousands came to Midway to mate and lay eggs.  Very few people can live on an island full of birds and not get pooped upon.  It happened to me when I was riding to school.  Plop—right on the side of my head, streaming down into my ear and on my dress.  The culprit in this crime was a fairy tern.  Fairy terns are alabaster birds with jet black beaks and eyes.  They swooped and launched attacks on interlopers of their nesting areas.  “Nesting areas” is a misnomer, as they didn’t build nests.  They laid their sticky eggs in the crotch of a tree, then the chick was reputed to hatch feet first and cling to the first thing it could latch onto.  They would sway and bob in the breezes, never falling from their perch.  Third graders who went whizzing by on their bikes better watch out for fairy tern parents who carry a load like the Enola Gay.

Bosun birds, also called tropic birds, did not nest in trees, they just found a spot on the ground and laid an egg.  Bosun birds had shriveled little feet which did not allow them to walk.  In those days, dogs were allowed on the island, and when one threatened, the birds would screech a cacophony, actually turning pink.  It was a strange site, but it seemed to dissuade attacks.  I’ve come across quizzes that ask which is the only bird that can fly backwards.  The answer claims it to be hummingbirds. Ha!  Bosun birds can too.  The bosun had a long, thin red tail that they would drag in the water as a lure while flying backwards, then plunge upon the unsuspecting nibbling fish to gulp it up for dinner.  The fish must have never known what hit them. The poor bosuns faced a peril of their own.  They were nearly wiped out as a species during the 1800’s when the millinery trade fancied their thin red tailfeather.  I don’t think turning pink did much to scare off someone intent on making a hat out of them.

We had baby gooney birds (Laysan albatross) by the thousands, fluffy little balls of charcoal gray, with tiny little hooked beaks like their parents.  It was a delight to watch the parents build a nest, lay their eggs and tenderly nuture their young.  When for some reason an egg did not hatch, and the perplexed and disappointed parents were sometimes given a tennis ball, for the rotten eggs were prone to breaking and smelled foul.  Occasionally a gooney died, and I learned for the first time what a dead animal smells like when left in the heat for a week.  Death came to the birds in senseless lottery, and  we rode our bikes past it quickly, holding our noses and taking a different route next time.

Once the babies fledged, they made their way down to the beach, where the jaws of tiger sharks waited.  The adolescent birds flailed and flapped in the water, trying to learn how to fly, plopping back down in the water to rest.  It was a siren call to the sharks. When sharks were spotted in the lagoon, a red flag was hoisted, but we children whispered horror stories about a supposed two year old child that was eaten when no red flag had been posted.

That was the nature of things on Midway Island.  Hidden dangers lurked.  The pristine waters held peril, birds lived on the edge of death and extinction, and the so-called Camelot days of the Kennedy administration stood ready to launch atom bombs.  

Yet bosun birds have made a good comeback from near extinction.  Thousands upon thousands of beautiful goonies made it maturity, to grow their magnificent twelve foot wingspan and discover the art of soaring for years at a time.  And we kids made it through jelly fish stings, sharks and even canned milk.  We swam, found shells, and grew up through the Cold War to one day discover magnificence in our own time, when the Berlin Wall come down. 

Were you alive during the Cold War?  Was your childhood filled with fun and dangers?