Wednesday, April 14, 1943
April 14, 1943
JFK reaches the island of Tulagi in the Solomon Islands and headed for his billet at Sestapi, which served as the PT boat headquarters, which was little more than a series of makeshift docks and a few thatched huts and tents for living and sleeping quarters. One biographer excerpted Kennedy’s sardonic thoughts on the situation contained in a letter he wrote to his parents shortly after arriving,
As to conditions, they are not bad here, though if this is the dry season the wet season must be considerably damp. Rains every day for four or five hours – solid rain – everything gets soaked and on my blue uniform a green-mold has grown almost one quarter of an inch thick. However, the food isn’t bad at all and the waters are very calm which makes it ideal for the boats…. We go out on patrol every other night and work on the boats in the day time. They get us up at 5:45 and the black-out begins at 6:30. The blackout is total as the huts we live in have no sides. They have just opened up an Officer’s Club which consists of a tent. The liquor served is an alcoholic concoction which is drawn out of the torpedo tubes, known as torp juice. Every night about 7:30 the tent bulges, about five men come crashing out, blow their lunch and stagger off to bed. This torp juice, which is the most expendable item on the island, makes the prohibition stuff look like Haig and Haig but probably won’t do any one any permanent harm as long as their eyes hold out.[7, 648]