All My Navy Duty Stations Are Defunct

Another personal Navy history trip, but I'll make it brief. All of my former Navy duty stations are defunct. The San Diego Navy boot camp was closed long ago. I think they still operate some of the A Schools (tech schools in specific job skills) but my radioman rating is long discontinued, for something more computer/communications oriented. My ship (USS Galland, MSO 489) was sold to the Taiwan navy and renamed in the 1990's. The home port of Long Beach Ca. has been re-purposed as a major commercial port for ships from Asia. Midway Island Naval Station was closed and reverted to the Department of Interior as a wildlife refuge. My last duty station in downtown Milwaukee I haven't checked on; it was in a beautiful old office building blocks from the Lake Michigan shore; that was recruiting where I did p.r. for about eight months. Mostly, the places where I served have long gone to other uses. I don't think Midway Island is even accessible. For a while they had rental rooms in the old bachelor officer quarters for eco-tourists, and also cruise ship stop-overs where people would take a whaleboat from the anchored ship to the islands, but I think that's suspended. The airstrip is still there for emergency landings, but I'm not sure how well maintained.

death', maybe something like that. I suspect a whole different array of geographical points might be chosen, for various reasons, but Long Beach, Ca., and Midway might certainly come into play, rebuilt for the purpose from the ground up. I Googled and now believe that the Navy recruiting station is in the same old place, with a few suburban satellites west of Milwaukee; that's an especially nice office building, so I'm glad the Nav' has kept their lease. 'Might be some old Navy vet in ownership. My ship was the USS Gallant ... I must be distracted. I'm surprised they closed San Diego boot camp and now do all boot training at Great Lakes north of Chicago. I'd advise recruits not to sign up for winter boot camp, having grown up in the Chicago area. I've never decided if I'd have joined if it hadn't been the era of the draft. My family had a history of Navy service. It was a little like spending four years living with the Sioux; most especially back then, it was a totally different world from civilian life, far more so even than now. It took me a few years to accustom to owning a car (I'd leave my new VW bug parked) or living in a residence with a kitchen, like I'd grown up in a different country.

pappymac, 'love the reversal on LORAN. They might start teaching Morse Code to communications techs again, who knows. I was sent to a "C" school for Morse Code after other radioman training. I had no gift. Some guys hear it fluently as the spoken word. I worked so diligently despite my lack of talent, I may have been graduated as a social promotion. Never used it in the fleet although my head radioman was qualified on a speed key which was kept available. He was one of those anointed with talent.
For those not familiar with radio, Morse code requires nothing more than a clear tone. Voice communications requires signal modulation and more circuitry in the old school gear. So Morse code was an emergency back-up when gear was minimal.

kanala, YES! I never did catch the helicopter to Kure Island, but I was with the group that operated the radio and TV stations, though I was doing a little "newspaper," a lithographed sheet about sea/air rescues, little league games (dependents were on the island), other sports leagues, and a smattering of news from the world, though mostly that was relayed to us by armed forces TV and radio. But the guys on Kure were always in mind, and guys liked to trek out there if they could wangle a ride. Comparatively, we were the big city. We had a few restaurants and two bars, a mini-bowling alley, a post exchange, an old hangar that served as a gym, a water front with sailboats and a beach, etc. For the size, it was pleasant. There were maybe a thousand people. Kure had (as I recall) about fifty, if that. So I never visited Kure, but we sure thought of it and as I recall, we'd take radio music requests via radio com. Even on Midway, peoples' morale and wellbeing were of concern, and more so for Kure where the isolation was more significant.