The USS Erben is seen underway after the end of World War II. A Fletcher class destroyer, this was the type of ship that Negaunee resident John Pavaglio served on during the war. (Public domain photo)

NEGAUNEE — In 1943, guys and dolls were gliding across the dance floor to Glenn Miller’s band playing “That Old Black Magic” and Bing Crosby was tugging at heart strings, singing “I’lll Be Home for Christmas.”

John Pavaglio of Negaunee wasn’t taking a turn on the dance floor with his girl, and he wasn’t home for Christmas that year. He was a sailor on a destroyer in the Pacific Ocean near Hawaii. And he was only 14.

He lied about his age, of course, when he enlisted in the Navy. “I was just a kid. I hadn’t even turned 15 yet when I joined. Recruiting officers would fudge on the age back then because they needed people so badly,” he recalled.

Pavaglio was sent to Pearl Harbor on a transport. As a fresh-faced youngster, he quickly earned the nickname “Baby Duck” and it stuck.

While at the gates of the harbor, an officer called out to him and “told me to put my whites on.”

Pavaglio explained he knew what that meant. When ships pass through, a group of four sailors in their fresh white uniforms would stand at attention at the bow of ships on either side of the outgoing vessel and snap a salute as the battleship passed through going out to sea.

He may have been half a world away from his Michigan home, but at that moment he realized it was a small world. He looked across the bow and into the eyes of a young man from Marquette in his white uniform on the opposite side.

“He was older than me, closer to my brother’s age. I don’t think he recognized me, but I knew who he was,” Pavaglio said.

Pavaglio served his entire deployment in the Pacific Theater. He recounted that he spent a short time on a submarine. He didn’t remember exactly how that transpired, but he met the size requirements. There are height and weight limits for submariners, he said.

He spent the majority of his deployment on a destroyer. While he was in a group of six submarines, Pavaglio remembered seeing a battleship get hit by a torpedo.

He also remembered the horrific sight of a nearby aircraft carrier being bombed as they were nearing the harbor.

“I still remember the sound of the Japanese bombers. They sounded like noisy (off-balance) washing machines.

“It got hit badly and killed a lot of people on deck. You could see bodies flying. Then they were airlifting the wounded and flying them out. When the ship rolled over, we couldn’t get them out fast enough. So many died. I had a lot of nightmares about that,” he said, bowing his head.

He didn’t have much to say about his own misfortunes. But, Pavaglio did spend time in 1945 at a hospital in Japan before being sent to a hospital in California. He remembered near the end of his time in Japan being invited to go up in a small plane for a flight over Hiroshima if he wanted to come along. He said, at one point, a nurse pointed out what she thought was the outline of a man standing next to a building. He said it was actually an imprint of where a man had been standing when the bomb hit.

“He burned an image into the wall. Can you imagine the heat that had generated?” Pavaglio shook his head, remembering the sight.

The moment he locked eyes with the young man from Marquette, very early on in his service time, never left his mind. That sailor never came home from the war. When he was back in Marquette, Pavaglio went to visit his parents and relay his experience of seeing him and saluting directly across from him.

As soon as he was back in the Upper Peninsula, he called on and started dating the woman who would become his wife. She was one of five high school girls who wrote letters to him while he was in the hospital in Japan.

She was the one who didn’t stop writing. They fell for each other pretty quickly and had a long happy marriage.

The nightmares he had from the war had awakened her many nights, he recalled with some sadness.

She passed away suddenly the day after their 50th wedding anniversary.

Vickie Fee can be reached at 906-228-2500, ext. 542. Her email address is vfee@miningjournal.net.