Interview with Morris Plummer [5/21/2003]

Amy Huffman:

This is Morris Plummer. He was born March the 19th, 1933. He lives in Indianapolis, Indiana. He served with U.S. Navy from September of 1951 to August of 1955. His highest rank was Signalman Second Class. Today is May 21, 2003. My name is Amy Huffman, and I work with Senator Lugar's office. And I'm doing the interview here in Senator Lugar's Indianapolis office. What made you decide you wanted to enlist in the military?

Morris Plummer:

Well, I just got out of high school and the Korean War was going full force, and I decided that that would be the best place to go, and I didn't want to get drafted in the Army. So I picked the Navy.

Amy Huffman:

Why did you pick the Navy?

Morris Plummer:

Because I think it was a better branch of service.

Amy Huffman:

Had you had dreams as a child of --

Morris Plummer:

No.

Amy Huffman:

-- of being on board ship or anything?

Morris Plummer:

I served in ROTC in high school for three years, and I had lot of army and military training.

Amy Huffman:

Uh-huh.

Morris Plummer:

And I just decided I didn't want to be in a tank or in the infantry in Korea.

Amy Huffman:

Where did you go to basic training at?

Morris Plummer:

Great Lakes Naval Training Station.

Amy Huffman:

And what did you think of it?

Morris Plummer:

It was fine. It takes a boy and turns him into a man.

Amy Huffman:

What do you think were the parts that really changed you or matured you?

Morris Plummer:

The discipline. The discipline and the -- you had to take care of yourself.

Amy Huffman:

Was this your first time away from home?

Morris Plummer:

Uh-huh. Yes, it was.

Amy Huffman:

A new home base?

Morris Plummer:

Brand new.

Amy Huffman:

When you got out of boot camp, where did you go?

Morris Plummer:

I went to -- we got transferred -- I got assigned a ship out of boot camp. We got on a train in Chicago with 700 sailors and 700 Marines, and we headed for San Francisco.

Amy Huffman:

How was that trip?

Morris Plummer:

Long. Five days to get to San Francisco.

Amy Huffman:

What did you do for those five days?

Morris Plummer:

Well, we played a lot of cards and we read and we slept, and that's about all there was to do. There wasn't anything else to do.

Amy Huffman:

What was it like to be around 1400 military people?

Morris Plummer:

It was pretty wild for a little boy from Indianapolis. There were guys there from all over the country.

Amy Huffman:

What were some of the things you remember most about the trip? Are there one or two things that just stand out?

Morris Plummer:

Eating in a cattle car, standing up, eating all your meals. We did have beds to sleep in when they converted our seats to beds so that we did have beds to sleep in. And other than that, it was just a long, boring trip.

Amy Huffman:

When you got to San Francisco, what did you do?

Morris Plummer:

We were assigned to Treasure Island. We were on Treasure Island for two weeks, and that was the Christmas of 1951.

Amy Huffman:

What was it like being far away from home?

Morris Plummer:

That was very tough. I had never spent a Christmas away from home. Consequently, it was very lonely and you were with a lot of people that you didn't know. And you make friends quickly for something to do. We spent Christmas Eve in San Francisco; and the next morning, we went back to the base because we just didn't have anything else to do. And then shortly after that, right after the first of the year, we got on another transport, a Navy transport, with seven other sailors and seven other Marines, and we headed for Japan. And that took something like 14 days, and that was quite a trip. The first five days we were sick. We didn't eat. We were cramped into these crews' quarters like cattle. And after we did finally get over being seasick, some of us got to work up on the bridge where we could get some fresh air, which was fine.

Amy Huffman:

Which is what you did as a signalman?

Morris Plummer:

Uh-huh. And they just kept us pretty busy, doing mess work and mess hall, peeling potatoes, and anything -- different things. Anything they could do to keep us busy.

Amy Huffman:

Right.

Morris Plummer:

They kept us out of the way of the Marines. They tried to separate the Marines from the Navy.

Amy Huffman:

Why is that?

Morris Plummer:

Well, because the Marines and the Navy didn't get along very well. And once we got to Japan, we got on a train. And for the life of me, I can't remember why, but we got on a big train, a troup train. And we went through Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Amy Huffman:

What was it like going through there?

Morris Plummer:

That was really, really something. Everything was very quiet on that train. Both cities were pretty well still leveled. It was kind of sad to see that, you know. But once we got through there, we went to Yokohama. And I stayed in Yokohama then for three or four days, and they put the guys on the (outstar)? ship that I was going to be on. They put us on a tanker. And then we took off for Korea. And we finally rendezvoused with the USS Purdy on the 24th of January, 1952. And they transferred 27 guys across by high lines from the tanker to the ship.

Amy Huffman:

How was that?

Morris Plummer:

That was scary, but you didn't let anybody know that you were frightened.

Amy Huffman:

How does it happen? Do they just send a rope across?

Morris Plummer:

They send ropes across, and then you get in this big boatswain's chair and the guys on the other ship tow you across. Sometimes you get your feet wet or your whole body. Sometimes they dip you in the water. But the ships get in too close, and then sometimes they go out like this, you know, and they bring you up. It's a harrowing ride. But, you know...

Amy Huffman:

Was it a relief then to get to your ship?

Morris Plummer:

Well, yes and no, because we were aboard about 30 minutes, and there was "general quarters" sounded, and they herded us to the mess hall, and we almost hit a mine. So the 27 of us were quite frightened of that. And after that we got sick again. And we went about three days with seasickness. And when we got over that, then we were assigned where we were going to work.

Amy Huffman:

And what did you do?

Morris Plummer:

I started out working on the deck force (?) as a boatswain, you know, on the deck force. It's a drawn job. But it was up where it was cool. Of course, it was cold over there in January of '52, very, very cold. We stood watches with 40 millimeter guns, four hours on and eight hours off, around the clock, seven days a week. It was awful. We had to work. The food was good. We were on (?) as compared to the guys on the beach who were getting shot at. Our station was about a quarter of mile off the shoreline. There was kind of a lot of firing on the beach, a lot. We stayed there until April, 1952, and then we headed home by Japan, Hong Kong. And I forget all the ports, but there was a lot of ports. We came through the Persian Gulf; we went through Singapore, Ceylon, and Arabia, which is now Yemen. And we went up through the Red Sea and to the gulf, the Suez Canal, and up through the Mediterranean and stopped at Naples, Gibraltar, and back to Newport, Rhode Island.

Amy Huffman:

Do you have a favorite port along all those stops that you really liked?

Morris Plummer:

Barcelona, Spain, was good. That was a nice port.

Amy Huffman:

Why did you like it?

Morris Plummer:

It was just a nice city. There is a lot to see and a lot to do there. Hong Kong. But that was the old Hong Kong. You don't see Hong Kong today like it was in 1952. It was pretty much with the old Chinese people, the way they were. Japan was all under Marshal Law back then. And all the time we were there, it was under Marshal Law. When we got back to the United States, then we spent from April, and probably May or June, I think it was, of '52 until April of '53 in and out of Newport, Rhode Island, on different short cruises. And then we went back to Korea again. And this time we went the other way. We started from Newport, went down to Norfolk, and then we went through the Panama Canal, Pearl Harbor.

Amy Huffman:

When you came to Pearl Harbor, had it been rebuilt or anything?

Morris Plummer:

No, not really. There was a lot of -- they were building a lot. But the original super- structure, they were still picking it up. No. It was still pretty bad. Then we went on to Midway and then to Japan, and then we were sent to Korea. We stayed in Korea quite a long time.

Amy Huffman:

Off the coast again?

Morris Plummer:

Uh-huh. A quarter of a mile out off the coast of Korea.

Amy Huffman:

What's it like to have a daily life on a ship when you are so close to what's going on?

Morris Plummer:

You don't have time to think about it. You spend a lot of time on watch; I spent my whole time on the bridge. And we had to be very alert and active. And we kept all the ship's logs. We done all the signaling between the ships. And we knew where we were all the time. And so consequently we did set up there with big, powerful binoculars and watched the shoreline. We knew what was going on, which is what I liked about being a signalman.

Amy Huffman:

Okay. What kind of messages were you sending out back and forth?

Morris Plummer:

Oh, the ship's position and the mainland. You didn't send a whole lot through light or semaphores that wasn't coded. Most everything was coded for fear that because we were so close to the shore.

Amy Huffman:

Right.

Morris Plummer:

So we didn't want people to read our messages back and forth if they wanted to. So it was all, you know, a pretty tight setup, but it wasn't really -- we didn't send anything that was really secretive. It was just Navy policy to send it in code. We took a lot of Marines in to the beach way up in the north of Korea to run (..) type of things.

Amy Huffman:

What was that like?

Morris Plummer:

That was scary. I was on a boat twice that took the Marines in. And I had to go in and get them afterwards. And sometimes they would get home, and sometimes they wouldn't. There would be some guys missing. I did land on Korea once, just to step my feet on it, but that's all. I didn't want to stay.

Amy Huffman:

I don't blame you.

Morris Plummer:

And the sailors are not ones to want to get out and do a lot of hand-to-hand fighting. We are not trained for that really.

Amy Huffman:

Right.

Morris Plummer:

But it was a good experience. I loved the Navy. I really enjoyed it. I enjoyed every minute of it. I would do it again.

Amy Huffman:

Yeah?

Morris Plummer:

I would tell any kid to go into the Navy or go into the service. It's good for a boy or a girl.

Amy Huffman:

Do you have any especially memorable experiences that you would like to share from your time aboard (...)

Morris Plummer:

Yes. The first day out when we almost hit a mine. And then from then on out, we had a lot of nights in Korea that was (.) from mines. And we had to go out of our quarters because the mines were close by. Sometimes in the winter, sometimes in the summer. I met a lot of nice people. In fact, I'm still in touch with a lot of them. We've got a ship's reunion every year. And I'm the ship's historian.

Amy Huffman:

That's nice.

Morris Plummer:

So I have a website and the ship's history. And I just enjoyed the Navy. I went to a lot of places that I would never get to go. But I look at those places today, and they are not the same places that I went to 50 years ago.

Amy Huffman:

Right.

Morris Plummer:

It was a nice time. I wouldn't take anything for it.

Amy Huffman:

You say you are involved as the ship's historian. Do you have any stories about your ship that are your favorites?

Morris Plummer:

Oh, do I. You just asked the magic question. I brought the ship's history with me, and I have some history in here. There is one in here in particular. There's two. There's one in here written by a gentleman named Bruce Knoll. And if you have time to read it, you should read it. It's the day that they got hit by a bomb and how this man's tale of it. It's very accurate. He was also in Readers Digest in the September issue, 1989. And the article is named "The Ship That Saved the Ship Outsailed Time." We saved another ship (?) by putting out their fires. I wasn't on there. These were World War II guys. I am in touch with a lot of the original crews. We have reunions and I talk to them and I e-mail them a lot. So I have a complete history. If you would like to have it, you can have it.

Amy Huffman:

Okay.

Morris Plummer:

And one of them has been sent to the Naval Historic Center. And I haven't sent one to the Library of Congress.

Amy Huffman:

I'll submit this one.

Morris Plummer:

That's -- I just printed that out this morning. And there's a story in here, as I recall, by Bruce Knoll, April 12, 1945. And Bruce is still alive, and he is in Florida. So there's a lot of information in there. It started out as a ship's history, it started out to be. I had about 10 different ships; histories. It started out a half a page to four-and-a half pages long. This one turned out, I think, up to about five months of putting it all together. It's 44 pages long. So there is a lot more information in it.

Amy Huffman:

What made you decide to be interested in all of this?

Morris Plummer:

Well, I don't know. I guess, being retired and being a computer nerd and being on the Internet a lot and meeting all these people that I just got active and being on a ship and being active in the Navy. And so, you know, I just wanted to do it. It's something that I had time to do.

Amy Huffman:

Right.

Morris Plummer:

When you are growing up and you have family and you have jobs, you don't have a lot of time in the world.

Amy Huffman:

Right.

Morris Plummer:

But when we get retired, then you have the time.

Amy Huffman:

When you got home and got out of the Navy, did you take advantage of the G.I. Bill or any of those things?

Morris Plummer:

Yes. As a matter of fact, I did. I went to work for Indiana Bell, and I got the on-the-job training with the G.I. Bill, and I participated in that for 32 years. College, no, I didn't take advantage of any college, which was a mistake.

Amy Huffman:

What did you do for your career?

Morris Plummer:

I worked at Indiana Bell.

Amy Huffman:

Until you retired?

Morris Plummer:

Uh-huh. I ended up retiring with AT and T.

Amy Huffman:

Right.

Morris Plummer:

In 1985.

Amy Huffman:

When you think about your time in the Navy and your time afterwards, how do you think being in the Navy impacted the rest of your life?

Morris Plummer:

Well, it gave me an education. Not necessarily a book education or a college education, but it gave me an education about people. It gave me an education on how to act, how to treat people. It gave me an education in practical. When you go through high school, you don't -- you take all the high-school courses, and you want to throw them out the window, and you don't pay much attention. Consequently, I've never read very much. But when I went in the Navy, I started reading. And I'm an avid reader, and I have been ever since I've been out of the service. I love to read all kinds of books, especially American history. But the Navy impacted my life because it taught me a lot of things. It taught me to be self-reliant and disciplined and how to get along with people. It was just a good experience.

Amy Huffman:

And when you think about it, what does it mean to you to be able to say that you're a veteran and that you served this country?

Morris Plummer:

I'm very proud of my country. I'm very proud. In fact, I probably -- I get a little weepie when I hear the national anthem or when they play taps. And I was -- I was out to see President Bush last week.

Amy Huffman:

How was that?

Morris Plummer:

A little emotional to see the most powerful man on earth right there close, very close, you know. It was very emotional for me.

Amy Huffman:

Did it come out of your service?

Morris Plummer:

Some of it comes our of patriotism. I'm very proud of my country. I love America. It gives me goose pimples.

Amy Huffman:

Well, I really appreciate your sharing your experiences with me. Do you have anything else that you would like to share?

Morris Plummer:

No, not that I can think of unless you have questions of things that you want to know. I'll be glad to answer them.

Amy Huffman:

I think I've asked enough.