u.s. navy

Harry Emerton

—Jennifer Osborn

Emerton was drafted into the service in 1943 at age 22. He worked in the depths of the destroyer as a water tender, taking care of the ship’s four boilers.

Harry Emerton The U.S.S Idaho was one of the ships that accompanied the U.S.S. Missouri and the U.S.S. Buchanan in Tokyo Bay during the treaty signing. Harry Emerton in 1943 as a water tender for the U.S. Navy.

The Buchanan sailed to the Philippines, Okinawa and Iwo Jima, among other locations.

One of the most memorable events of Emerton’s Navy career was the typhoon he survived in the South China Sea in 1944. The experience was “very rough,” he said.

Emerton said west of the Philippines “is when the hurricane really got us.”

The waves were so strong they caved in a steel gun mount, he said. The ship lost its Gerald compass and all its life rafts.

“People don’t realize how powerful the water is,” Emerton said.

Conditions were hairy, to say the least, for the crew during the typhoon. “Once you went on watch you stayed,” Emerton said.

Certain areas of the ship could only be reached by catwalk, a narrow bridge with only cables to hold onto. Negotiating a catwalk “was quite a memorable situation,” said Emerton.

He remembers lighter moments, too. He has photos of crewmembers dressed in costume, including one as a pirate brandishing a large knife and another as King Neptune.

“We had fun,” said Emerton. “It wasn’t all grief.”

Emerton remembers the sight of U.S. ships as far as he could see the night before the atomic bomb was dropped.

“So we figured either we’d get them or they’d get all of us,” he said. “The next day the war ended, which was good.”

Emerton was in Tokyo Bay when the peace treaty was signed.

The USS Buchanan transported Gen. Douglas MacArthur and other dignitaries out to the battleship Missouri to sign the papers.

While in Japan, Emerton and two buddies went ashore. They encountered a Japanese officer who spoke perfect English, Emerton said. He had been in the U.S. training with General Electric before the war, at which point he had to return to Japan.

The Japanese officer helped the American sailors find souvenirs — chopsticks, among others — to take home. The men got cigarettes, too. “Flimsy little cigarettes,” Emerton said.

One experience Emerton thought he might not survive occurred when a depth charge, which is a 50-gallon drum full of high-explosive that was dropped on submarines, went off too soon, he said. No one was injured. It would have been like getting hit by friendly fire, he said.

While Emerton was away at war, his wife, Lillian, anxiously waited for his return with their first son, Nelson Emerton, now a carpenter in Franklin.

“I was on the point gathering blueberries when I heard church bells ringing,” said Lillian Emerton.

She knew the war had ended.

Lillian Emerton said she knew her husband was on his way home when a dozen roses arrived. The roses were a prearranged signal.

The couple will be married 63 years in July.

Mrs. Emerton, who is 80, noted the difference between the contact the WWII generation had with their loved ones and the degree of communication today.

“They never got to call home,” she said.

Today, there are phone calls as well as frequent contact through e-mail.

Nonetheless, Lillian was stoic about the time apart from her husband, raising a baby alone for several months.

“Things you have to do in this life, you might as well do them,” she said.

When Emerton returned home in 1945, “there was no work,” he said.

He and his brother bought a piece of land and cut wood. He also worked at a blueberry factory in Franklin.

For several years, Emerton and his wife lived in northern Nevada where he worked in a gold mine. In 1996, the couple returned to Maine to be near their family.

Besides the oldest son, Nelson, the couple has a son named Wayne Emerton, also a carpenter, who lives in Bangor.

The Emertons have six grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

Emerton, who turned 84 on June 5, is a Blue Hill native.