A gritty, humorous, and knowing account of an enlisted man's life aboard World War II aircraft carriers, this memoir captures the tedium of a seaman's routine and the terror of the war's great battles, from Pearl Harbor to Hiroshima.
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A gritty, humorous, and knowing account of an enlisted man's life aboard World War II aircraft carriers, this memoir captures the tedium of a seaman's routine and the terror of the war's great battles, from Pearl Harbor to Hiroshima.
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In 1941, 17-year old Alvin Kernan borrowed five dollars from a friend and rode from a desolate Depression-plagued Wyoming ranch to enlist in the Navy. Kernan (1923 -- 2018) served for five years and attained the rank of chief petty officer while receiving many decorations, including the Distinguished Flying Cross. Kernan wrote this memoir of his naval experiences "Crossing the Line: A Bluejacket's Odyssey in World War II" in 1994 and revised it into final form in 2007. The memoir is rightly regarded as a classic of WW II literature. I was first interested in the book because I had work in travel experiences in some of the islands and atolls that formed the Pacific Theater of the War. I read the work in the outstanding recent collection "World War II Memoirs: The Pacific Theater" (2021) published by the Library of America and edited by Elisabeth Samet.
Kernan's beautifully written memoir describes his own experiences and responses to the War rather than presenting a broad history. Still, there is much to be learned about the Pacific Theater from his account. Kernan discusses his navy life from boot camp to discharge. He had three lengthy tours of duty at sea in which he served as an aviation ordinanceman, gunner, and pilot. He was involved in some large-scale and hazardous battles, particularly on the carrier USS Hornet which sank at the Battle of Santa Cruz Islands on October 26, 1942. Among other things, Kernan participated in the Battle of Midway and in the invasion of Okinawa late in the war. He describes his activities, his fears, his brushes with death and his relationship with his comrades.
There is more to the story than combat as Kernan describes his youthful introduction to sex through prostitutes and to love through an unsuccessful relationship. He describes life on board ships, with long periods of boredom and gambling and alcohol. Kernan's service on ship was punctuated by periods of shore time, either in training or on leave. He returned home to rural Wyoming and briefly was feted as a hero. I enjoyed the depictions of his experiences in Hawaii and California and his friendship with Richard Boone, who would become famous in film and as Paladin in the television western "Have Gun Will Travel".
In passages throughout the book, Kernan shows a reflective turn and a strong interest in books and in the life of the mind. In a philosophical passage near the end of the book, Kernan observes:
"[W]ars cruelty and randomness, its indifference to human life, and the speed and ease with which it erases existence are not aberrations but speeded-up versions of how it always is. The evidence is there, I went on to reason, to anyone who will look and see the plain facts his senses including common sense offer him-- and what else is there to trust, fallible though they may be?-- that men and women, like everything else in the world, are, in the poet's words, begotten, born, and die. A young man's desire to live made me avoid worrying about the bleakness of total extinction, but we all knew it; it was in our faces, it was the basis of our shared attitude toward one another and life."
Kernan's memorandum ends with his discharge from the navy, following a successful night at the poker table, and his determinination to pursue an education under the GI Bill and, as he decided, to study literature. Kernan became a distinguished teacher, scholar, and administrator at elite universities, including Yale and Princeton, as I want to discuss in the concluding part of this review.
Kernan was "outside Plato's cave" during the Navy service of his youth, but he entered the cave with his education. Late in life, in 2000, (before the final version of "Crossing the Line"), Kernan wrote another memoir, an intellectual autobiography of his education and career titled "In Plato's Cave". The book throughout shows the influence of Kernan's navy service on his subsequent life. It begins where "Crossing the Line" ends. I was fascinated and read "In Plato's Cave". Kernan writes of his decision to pursue education and the life of the mind rather than to remain in Wyoming:
"I was one of those who feel that the most satisfactory end of life is knowledge, not money or power or prestige but an understanding of people and the world they inhabit. I assented to Socrates's view that the unexamined life is not worth living. I had in my innocence developed a view of life that will seem laughable in our skeptical days. Read the right books and listen to the right people, think in the most intense and logical fashion, I believed, totally and without question, and all the darkness of Plato's cave of illusions would burn away in the bright sun of understanding. I did not think that truth remained to be discovered; I believed that in the main it had already been found and that I had just not yet been informed of the results. The true nature of evil and of good, the structure of the cosmos and what existed beyond it, the workings of cause and effect, the laws of history, the nature of the mind, the rules that governed social life, what distinguished good art from bad, these were all, I believed, lying about like golden nuggets on the American campus, just waiting to be picked up."
Kernan's intellectual autobiography tells of his lifelong search to escape Plato's cave. It is the story of his remarkable career. Even more importantly, the book consists of his reflections of the change in education and in the university during his life. Broadly, the change began with the GI Bill and the democratization of education, making it available to all. But his story tells of the growth of skepticism and relativism and deconstruction, of challenges to the notions of objectivity and of truth and, of what Kernan sees as the tendency to politicize education. Kernan is visibly uncomfortable with many of these trends. But rather than reject them out of hand, he seeks to understand, incorporate, and move forward.
I was glad to find and read "Crossing the Line" and to learn of Kernan and his navy life. It was a stunning way for a young man to come to adulthood. I also was moved to spend more time with Kernan in Plato's cave and to explore with him the nature of reason, study, and the life of the mind.
