TARAWA and the pirates

 

   This story is not about pirates, but about what the pirates left behind. It is not well known, but pirates are still active in parts of the world, especially in the Gulf of Siam and the northeast coast of Africa. They are thieves who hi-jack cargo and kidnap for ransom. My encounter with the aftermath of piracy occurred while I was serving aboard the USS TARAWA (LHA 1).

   The TARAWA was a fascinating ship. She was actually an experiment; a cross between an aircraft carrier and an amphibious ship, and the first of her kind. In 1979 she was on her first cruise having left San Diego to visit and show off to our allies in the Pacific. I was the Operations Officer, or “Ops Boss” and my job included mostly training and publishing the daily activities, and as the senior watch officer I spent a lot of time on the bridge. By May of 1979 we had made port calls in the Philippines, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Korea, Japan, and Singapore. We had just “rescued” an airplane of the Malaysian Air Force which had literally stuck in the mud when it landed on an unimproved strip in Borneo. We had hoisted it out of the mud with our heavy lift Sikorsky helicopter and delivered it to the Malaysian Air Force Base at Kuching, and were on our way to Australia - we didn’t make it.

   Here are more details about the TARAWA: She was about the size of a WW2 aircraft carrier, and also had a well deck which could hold a mix of tanks and landing craft. Our crew was about 600; all men because the Navy had yet to be enlightened of the abilities of women sailors. In addition to the crew we could carry a Marine Battalion Landing Team (BLT) with more than 2000 men along with helicopters and (sometimes) “Jump Jets”. The jump jets were Harriers who could take off and land vertically (a most delicate operation), the choppers were Hogs, Frogs and Snakes (Hogs = heavy lift, Frogs = troop carriers, Snakes = helicopter gunships). Earlier in the cruise we had landed our BLT in the Philippines where they could play in the jungle, and we had just a few Marines and Navy Hospital Corpsmen aboard. We also had the space and modern equipment of a multi-bed hospital.

   Now back to the cruise. We were just headed for points south when we were diverted to the Gulf of Siam where the USS PEARY (DE 1073) had

rescued 442 Vietnamese refugees (boat people) from their foundering derelict fishing boat. Thai pirates had captured the boat, raped women, stolen everything (all valuables and money, all food and all fuel) and left the boat adrift. The PEARY was a destroyer escort; a small ship with a crew of less than 200 - they had no way to feed and care for the refugees so we cranked up maximum speed and reached a rendezvous within 24 hours. On May 8, 1979 we took aboard the 442 refugees and since we had the capacity to care for 2000 Marines, we were ready for our cooks and medical men to use their skills.

   Then things got interesting. Where could we take the refugees? Obviously not back to Vietnam, and even though we were in the Gulf of Siam we couldn’t drop them off in Thailand because Thailand and Vietnam were not at all friends. The countries had been rivals and enemies for years; it has been only recently that they have become more friendly. We got in touch by radio with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), but giving or taking orders was way above our paygrades - so we waited while the Seventh Fleet Commander, The Chief of Naval Operations, and the U.S. State Department got together and came up with a plan which got the government of Thailand to go along. I was like a fly on the wall as the plan developed. The UN hired a great number of gaudy tourist buses which were to line up on the highway at Pattaya beach in Thailand, a popular resort which was full of tourists mostly from northern Europe. It seemed that there were more Europeans than Thai citizens there, which was just what was wanted. We were to load the refugees into our landing craft and “hit the beach” just like a WW2 movie of Marines landing on Iwo Jima. The refugees were to hustle as fast as possible a few hundred yards across the beach and into the buses, which immediately took them to a U.N. refugee camp on the Cambodian border. The first thought was to do this at night, but we thought that could be dangerous. So the landing was accomplished early on May 12 before there was anyone around.

   The highlight of the whole operation was that 442 refugees came aboard and 443 departed. On May 10 Grace Tarawa Tran was born on board, with 600 Godfathers. The young Hospital Corpsman (HM2) Richard Reed delivered Grace at 0320 hours and she was perfectly well at 6 lbs 11 oz, as

she joined her family of father, mother and two older brothers. She was also immediately a U.S. citizen. In 2010 she met HM2 Richard Reed for the second time on board the TARAWA shortly after the ship was decommissioned. In 2010 the young hospital corpsman was then the Rev. Richard Reed, a minister who said delivering Grace changed his life; Grace was living in Philadelphia and working as a financial analyst for an insurance company.