THE FOOTNOTES

Our minesweeper, the USS YMS-176 was docked at Pearl Harbor on July26, 1944. That's the day President Roosevelt came to Hawaii to meet with General Douglas MacArthur. MacArthur was our top general in the Pacific theater of operations. When I heard Roosevelt and MacArthur were coming, I rushed to the dock where Roosevelt's ship, the USS Baltimore, would tie up. I got into the front row and had a very good vantage point. Admirals were lined up like boy scouts on the dock. The ship came in, and MacArthur in his dramatic fashion went aboard . He was a very charasmatic guy. He and Roosevelt came down the gangplank together. Roosevelt looked very ill, very gray and very old. They drove away to whereever they went to plan the rest of the Pacific campaign.

A book I found in Tolland Library called "MacArthur" by Richard B. Frank, described the scene I just described in the opening remarks about MacArthur's return to the Philippines in the invasion of Leyte. I scanned the first few paragraphs for your perusal.