Dale Earl Crocker
Era: World War II
Military Branch: Navy
Dale Earl Crocker, from Cloquet, Minnesota enlisted in the Navy in February 1944 with deferred entry until his high school graduation from Cloquet High School 3 months later.
He was one of 14 members of his graduating class to join the Navy at this time. The day after graduation he went to Minneapolis, Minnesota for a physical and was then sent to the Naval Training Center at Farragut, Idaho on Lake Couer d’Alene.
After boot camp he was shipped to the Naval Construction Center at Port Hueneme, California where he was in the Seabees.
As a bit of interesting trivia, he used to hitchhike to Santa Monica on weekend leave and was once picked up by movie star Betty Grable and a male companion.
In October 1944 Crocker was ordered to Guam. Guam had been retaken from the Japanese but there were still some snipers and also many Japanese soldiers who had retreated and were in hiding in the hills and jungle. While on Guam, he was in the Construction Maintenance Unit (CMU) #619 and operated heavy equipment, making and repairing airfields, roads, etc. Crocker stated that they always had a Marine with a machine gun riding on the equipment and at times a sniper would fire at the equipment; the Marines would return heavy fire in the direction of the sniper.
Later, Crocker was sent to Saipan and Tinian of the South Pacific Northern Mariana Islands. He was on Tinian when the Enola Gay took off with the Hiroshima atomic bomb aboard. After Japan surrendered, he was held over on the islands for six months, to train the islanders how to operate and maintain the heavy equipment, which was left behind for them to rebuild their islands, damaged from the war.
Crocker returned to San Francisco, California in April 1947 and was processed out of the Navy. Dale’s seabag was one of thousands in a huge pile on an airport runway, and was virtually impossible to locate, so he went home without it. The only thing of “value” in it to Crocker were some photographs. However, a couple of years later, a knock on his door was the delivery of the seabag.
In 1950, a letter came from the Navy, with orders to report to the Great Lakes Naval Training Center. Crocker was being recalled to active duty because the Korean War had started. He had to quit his job, put his household things in storage, and send his wife and kids to stay with her mother in Wrenshall, Minnesota. He was at the Great Lakes Training Center about 5 weeks when they sent him home; they had enough Machinist’s Mates who were either unmarried or had no children to fill the needs of the Navy at that time.
