Glenn H. Parkin, North Salt Lake City, Utah: an interview by Joel C. Calderon, 17 September 2001: Saving the legacy tape no. 315

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Glenn Parkin 17 ept mb r200 The ships went due west at flank speed all night long. The next morning w launched aircraft. Now if the Japanese had known we were out there they would have hit us in the morning. I know damn well they would have done. So does everybody else. They didn't hit us. But that's when they launched aircraft. Hell, we could have probably been steamed another four hours, another six hours due west and closed that gap, but we didn't. Was that a right decision or a wrong decision? It's kind of hard to say, isn't it? All right, so we launched the aircraft. We made a one hundred and eighty degree turn and hauled ass at flank speed due east. Twenty-four hours later we came in contact with our destroyers. We slowed down the thirteen knots, and went back to Pearl. We got up around Midway and we started picking up speed again because they were getting feedback from information of what was happening down at the Coral Sea. It just seemed like we were just at one end of that Pacific to the other. But it was a good thing. Then, of course, later on they brought a couple of the battleships from the east coast, the battleship Washington-! think the Wisconsin--was the same, but I can't place it. JOEL: I thought the Wisconsin was in New Jersey class. GLENN: Well, it could have been because they didn't come out until '43. See, so that was the years. In fact, when the Northampton got sunk, then a lot of the men that went back there on Boston were-a lot of the cruisers that had been sunk down in the Southwest Pacific, the light cruisers, the anti-aircraft cruisers, etc.--a lot of them were aboard the Boston. Oh, we get into some pretty good jam sessions at night, you know. Oh, really, we were just sitting outside the arena a little bit the night that the San Francisco, the Juneau, 25