Admiral Nimitz Historic Site National Museum of the Pacific War
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Admiral Nimitz Historic Site National Museum of the Pacific War Center for Pacific War Studies Fredericksburg, Texas Interview with Capt (USN, Ret) Robert Hagen (USS Arron Ward - USS Johnston) [WW II Battles – Kwajalein, Guam, Guadalcanal & Leyte] Date of Interview: July 9, 2003 Admiral Nimitz Historic Site National Museum of the Pacific War Fredericksburg, Texas Interview with Capt (USN, Ret) Robert Hagen (USS Arron Ward - USS Johnston) [WW II Battles – Kwajalein, Guam, Guadalcanal & Leyte] Today is July 9, 2003. My name is Floyd Cox and I am a volunteer at the National Museum of the Pacific War in Fredericksburg, Texas. We are here at the Towers in San Antonio, Texas, to interview Retired Navy Captain Bob Hagen regarding his experiences during World War II. Mr. Cox: Bob, I would like to take this opportunity to thank you for taking the time to visit with me concerning your experiences. I would like to start off by asking you a little about your background – where you were born, when you were born, your parents’ names, and a little about your young life. Capt Hagen: I was born in San Francisco, California, in 1919. That makes me 84 years old at this time. My mother was of good Irish descent, a Catholic. Her name was Margarete Clifford. My Father was a Norwegian by the name of Ole O. Hagen. You can understand why my mother did not make me a “Junior.” I went through highschool in San Francisco. I won an invitation to go to the Naval Academy starting in 1938. In the meantime, my father had a job with Pan American World Airways teaching the pilots how not to run into mountains. He was a graduate of the Naval Academy in 1911, but he had been retired early for physical reasons. His job with Pan American entailed that he move from San Francisco to Brownsville, Texas. Talk about the boondocks. On my way back to the Naval Academy, before my mother and sister moved down there, I stopped by to see my Dad and say goodbye. There were no blacks in the town. They had all been shot up or run out, or something, and the school system – well, I will get to that. I went back to the Παγε 1 οφ 50 Naval Academy and the first day I got back to Maryland they flunked me out because of my eyes. I was a weeping son, and I think that my dad was crying too for the expense of having to put me through college. I went back to Brownsville, Texas. My sister was a little older than I was, so she had already made plans to go to the University of Texas. When I got down there my Dad said, “We can’t afford to send both of you up there, so you go to Brownsville Junior College.” The comparison of education between San Francisco and Brownsville, Texas, was quite extensive. Also, I had gone to a year of prep school after graduating from highschool to get ready for the Naval Academy. I managed to amass 60 hours of college credits in one year at Brownsville Junior College. I took finals on various classes, etc. and I graduated from junior college in one year. Then I went up to the University of Texas. To go back a little, on my 17th birthday, my father marched me down to the enlistment place and said, “Line this young man up for the Naval Reserves.” I was duly sworn into the Naval Reserves as a Seaman Third Class at the age of 17. I was in the inactive reserves when I moved away from California, but I managed to stay in touch with the Navy, and in 1940 I heard from them. They wanted to know where I was, etc. I told them I was a senior in college. They said fine. All of this was by letter. In November of ‘40 I received orders to report for Navy training that I would become an officer when I graduated from college. This was rather standard procedure. I spent a month in the reserve fancy program, and in due time I graduated from college (University of Texas) in June 1940. They called it 90-day Wonder, S-7 program, or something like that. In 90 days I graduated and I was an Ensign. I was commissioned three months before the class that I would have been in at the Naval Academy, thereby I was senior to all of those fellows that had gone through the Naval Academy. After a few drinks I wouldn’t hesitate to let them all know it. The relativity of Ensigns was pretty insignificant at that time. My first assignment after graduating was to the Παγε 2 οφ 50 Great Lakes Naval Training Station. I’m hot to go because I want to go to sea and fight the Japs. Well, what a let down! I went up there in October of 1941 and they gave me a job that had the best title I had in all of my time in the Navy. The job was Assistant Service School Selection Officer. I wondered, “What the hell is that all about?” I had this one boss who was a nice, kindly mustang. Do you know what a mustang is? It is an enlisted man who rises in ranks. He said, “Well, there is nothing to this job, just do what you are told to do.” In a sense what I had to do was give talks to 6,000 boots a week. He trained me for maybe a week. I was to give talks and explain what a boiler tender was, a gunners mate, yeoman, etc. I would give six lectures a week to 6,000 enlisted men, and then we would test them. I had 24 enlisted men that did the work – tested them all for IQ, mechanical aptitude – a lot of things. Then the results were given to me on cards. Each week the numerous training schools would send us a list of the number of men they wanted that would be appropriate for their line of work. The first thing I would do with these 6,000 cards was go through and pick out the first thousand that had the highest IQ’s. Then I said, “Now I’ll start thinking.” They had a place on the cards where they wrote first, second and third choices, so I would try to give them first or second choice if I thought they were qualified. A lot of discretion was going on, and I have no claim to any profound competency along this line. The roughest part was getting a hundred a week to go to pharmacy school. Not many people wanted to become pharmacist mates. I would extol the merits at these lectures. If they put that down, even as a third choice, that is what they got. We had to fill the quota. We would get letters back, our first insulting letters in the Navy, saying, “What idiot is sending us these people? They don’t want to become pharmacist mates.” I would get those almost every week, and my boss would come and say, “Oh, I get those all of the time.” Mr. Cox: Don’t worry about it? Παγε 3 οφ 50 Capt Hagen: “Just keep doing your best Hagen. Don’t worry about it.” The two highlights there, well maybe three highlights – I was some how attached to one of the battalions of these men just because I was there and I was an Ensign. That meant that this one day we had to march, and I had a brand new sword. I had barely drawn it out because I’m left handed. Swords and I just didn’t get along very well. Out of the blue we were told we were going to have this big parade, so there was one Ensign at the front of the formation that had been there for six months or so, and then on the position to his left (port side) and rear would be Petty Officer, either a Chief Petty Officer or First Class, and he knew what the hell all of this was about. I was over on the right saying, “What do we do now?” I can remember marching along, passing in review with about 6,000 troops. Some Admiral was standing on the stand. I was supposed to salute and pull out the sword, whatever you do. Well, I yanked the sword out left handed and I was off to a bad start right then, and then I saluted as we were going by. I would salute and by then I had dug the sword into the ground. You should have heard the rippling of laughter behind me from all of these enlisted men loving to see me pulling the sword out of the mud. That was not a glorious moment for me. An interesting one came along sometime in November or December of ‘41. The Sullivan brothers came aboard with much fanfare. They were all going on the same ship. Then, sometime in January of ‘42 ... I mean between that time a war had started. Mr. Cox: You were still at Great Lakes? Capt Hagen: Yes, and I think that I know what I am doing by this time. One day my boss was out for some reason. He wasn’t very impressed by this job he had. Here, all of a sudden, I’m ushered into my office these five Sullivan brothers.