HAROLD KIRKPATRICK

Harold Kirkpatrick was born to teenage parents on a farm near Indianola, Iowa.  In the summer of 1918 his family drove a 1915 Model T Ford to Idaho where his dad commenced farming, later moving near Lapwai Canyon.  When he was six he started his education at a one-room school.  He liked spelling and went on to win a gold medal in a five-county spelling bee.  He rode a sturdy Shetland pony the four and a half miles from the farm to Reubens High School, where he graduated in 1931.  He worked in Blister Rust until he saved four hundred and fifty dollars, mostly at sixty cents an hour, then started college at the University of Idaho, majoring in accounting. 

He met Gladys Smith in 1935 and soon began dating her, riding bicycles on the gravel roads around Moscow and treating her to ice cream cone and bags of popcorn for five cents each.  They married in May of 1940.  In the meantime, Harold had taken flying lessons and had become a pilot.  In the summer of 1941 he was offered a job with the audit section of the Army Air Force, based at Vultee Aircraft, salaried at two thousand dollars per year.

On the weekend of December 6^th that same year he and Gladys drove from Long Beach to Fort Ord to visit friends.  As they entered the gate at the Seventeen-Mile Drive around Pebble Beach Golf Course, the gate keeper told them about Pearl Harbor. 

Soon they were moved from Vultee to the Douglas plant near Long Beach where they were building fighter planes.  Kirkpatrick requested a commission from the Navy and was made an Ensign in March of 1943.  After training at North Island in San Diego, he was sent to Navy Supply School at Harvard where his wife and first two children joined him.  After a short stay in Jacksonville he was sent to Sanford, Florida.  He was then sent back to California and assigned to Carrier Aircraft Service Unit CASU #40, destined to be shipped overseas from San Francisco. 

CASU 40 was encamped originally at the dirigible base at Moffett Field, just south of San Francisco, California.  He was given a one hundred thousand dollar budget to gather supplies which he took to Alameda Naval Air Station for shipment into the Pacific. 

When his unit was ready to ship out, his commanding officer and Kirkpatrick flew on a four-engine clipper plane so heavily loaded they had to make three runs across the bay to lift off and it took eleven hours to get from San Francisco to Honolulu.  He then boarded a two-engine PBY and flew for ten hours to Christmas Island, then flew to Canton Island, then Funa Futi, and on the fourth day they got to Efate. 

"That ocean is awfully big," said Harold.  "The navigators did well finding those tiny atolls all over the ocean."

The Seabees had set up Quonset buildings for his unit's five hundred and fifty men.  Harold had the only source of money for payroll.  Men could draw up to a certain amount of their pay in advance, and Harold would count it out by hand and pass it to the Chief who would count it out to the man.  "The money we got on the islands got really dirty," Kirkpatrick recalls. 

He had two fine Chiefs, one helped with payrolls, clothing, laundry, and supplies.  The other was a commissary steward who saw that three meals were served daily.  The men were charged with taking planes from aircraft carriers, uncrating them, flying them and getting them ready to go to forward areas as replacements.

It was so humid on the islands that they had to leave a light on in the closet to help dry their clothing and shoes.  They slept under netting to keep away the mosquitoes.  The heat was oppressive, but they soon got used to it. 

Later they moved to Espirito Santo, still in the New Hebrides.  They were once slated to go to Emirau, and on the way Harold stayed one night on Guadalcanal.  Early in 1945 CASU 40 was sent home, but Kirkpatrick only got as far as Honolulu.  He flew back out to the islands the day Franklin Delano Roosevelt died.  He saw new bombers land on a small island on their way to the front, barely having room to land.  He reported to Harold Stassen who later ran for president many times.  Stassen sent him to Tarawa to salvage things worth sending back, such as engines.  Harold was in the communications shack the night they first heard about the atomic bomb falling on Japan. 

"We, of course, were very glad, since we knew that invading Japan would have meant a great loss of life and equipment," Kirkpatrick stated.

When it was time to head home, Harold hitched a ride by plane back to Pearl Harbor, but had to ship out on the carrier Saratoga, which was very full.  The enlisted men slept on hammocks seven tiers deep and the officers had cots in the mess hall, but they had a nice easy crossing.  The ship had to stay at sea an extra half-day so they could come in under the Golden Gate Bridge for viewing by the public.  They were on the first carrier to come home.  

"The bridge was lined with people and I still have the newspaper that told of our return to Alameda," Harold noted.

He got a job in Spokane with the IRS and received his C.P.A. certificate in 1948, then moved to Colfax in 1949 where, early in 1952 he and Lee Utgaard started their partnership and he and Gladys raised their five children.