From the Mesabi Range to the Big City: Herman Joins the Merchant Marine
Merchant mariners were recruited from cities and towns across the nation as the federal government put the wheels of mobilization in motion following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.
One such town was Virginia, Minnesota, where Herman Pederson was born in 1922. He grew up in this commercial center of the Mesabi Iron Range, attending Roosevelt High School and the local junior college. Duluth, the important iron ore port on Lake Superior, was about sixty miles away, so it is likely that before he joined the Merchant Marine Herman had already seen a limitless horizon from the shores of that great inland sea.
Below: Three letters of recommendation supporting Herman's application to the Merchant Marine indicate he was the kind of person any employer would like to hire. The predictions of his high school English teacher resonate in a unique way later in the exhibit.
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TRAINING FOR MERCHANT SEAMEN AS THE NATION GOES TO WAR
Once accepted by the Maritime Service, in March, 1943, Herman was sent to Sheepshead Bay Training Station, built the year before on seventy-six waterfront acres at Brooklyn, New York. Training schools for merchant seamen were also established at St. Petersburg, Florida, and Avalon, California, on Santa Catalina Island.
“Sheepshead Bay is a city within a city, larger by far than the home towns of millions of Americans. Its men come from every state of the Union, and for many of the apprentice seamen who enter its gates, the waters that surround the station on three sides are the first salt water they have ever seen.”
—from American Merchant Marine at War: www.usmm.org
(Note: This pale green hyperlink is one of several throughout the exhibit that will lead to supplemental information.)
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A statement by President Franklin Roosevelt upon the opening of Sheepshead Bay appeared in The New York Times on Dec. 13, 1942:
“It is with a feeling of great pride that I send my heartiest congratulations and best wishes to the officers and men of the new U.S. Maritime Service Training Station at Sheepshead Bay, New York. Ten thousand apprentice seamen in training at one station is a magnificent achievement, and the entire country joins me in wishing you every success and in paying tribute to you men of the Merchant Marine who are so gallantly working and fighting side by side with our Army and Navy to defend the way of life which is so dear to us all.”
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Training aubjects included customs and traditions of the sea, safety at sea, first aid, night vision, lifeboat handling, and the use of fire equipment, life preservers, breeches buoy, gas masks, and exposure suits. Because merchant ships were armed with machine guns, Navy personnel provided gunnery training.
Two of the advanced training categories were Pursers and Hospital Corpsmen. Pursers were responsible for the ship's finances, clearance papers, and engine logs, among other things. Showing an aptitude for both, Herman became one of hundreds of seamen to earn the dual rating of Junior Assistant Purser and Pharmacist Mate. This enabled him to serve in a position newly created by the Maritime Service which combined the two responsibilities.
To earn a corpsman rating the seaman studied anatomy, physiology, pharmacology, nursing, learned to give shots and treat fractures and wounds. After a month of practical experience at a Marine Hospital a corpsman was prepared to serve, in effect, as ship's doctor.
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Below: Herman earned this meritorious service award as a "trainee petty officer." A petty officer is a non-commissioned officer in the Coast Guard or Navy, similar to the rank of sergeant in the Army and the Marine Corps. The term "staff officer" seen on other documents is equivalent to "petty officer."
Below: On October 8, 1943, Herman was certified in the petty officer grade of Junior Assistant Purser in the Coast Guard, a job he performed along with his Pharmacist Mate duties on the three long voyages of his Merchant Marine career. He may have been "junior" in some bureaucratic sense, but as the only purser aboard he was never an "assistant."
Also shown below is Herman's Hospital Corps/Pharmacist Mate diploma and the information printed on the reverse: a list of subjects studied and class hours spent on each.
Herman also earned the oddly named Certificate of Efficiency to Lifeboat Man. The fine print explains that having mastered the skills of lifeboat handling he is "rated an efficient Lifeboat Man."
The Seaman's Certificate of Identification (below) came with a protective leather case stamped in gold leaf.
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Below: Herman's class at Sheepshead Bay.
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From Sheepshead Bay Herman was sent to the U.S. Public Health Service Marine Hospital in Seattle for a month of practical experience before traveling down the coast to Portland, Oregon, where the ship he had been assigned to was about to be launched.
Left: Herman's hospital corpsman arm patch
Historical Note: The Seattle hospital had opened only ten years before. Designed in the Art Deco style popular in the Thirties, it was an impressive building, years later accorded landmark status and now owned by the City of Seattle as the multi-purpose "Pacific Tower."
All Marine Hospitals were re-designated Public Health Service Hospitals in 1951. The system, which had begun as early as 1798 for merchant seamen alone - hence the name -was consolidated in 1981 with the hospitals of the Veterans Administration.
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