USS Juneau sailor, sister
to donate letters from ship's past By Greg
Tyler, Sasebo bureau chief
Courtesy USS Juneau
Seaman Apprentice John Moriner, who serves aboard the USS Juneau homeported at Sasebo
Naval Base, stands by the ship holding two envelopes he recently received as a belated
Christmas gift from his sister. The envelopes have special historical significance to the
ship. |
SASEBO
NAVAL BASE, Japan — Seaman Apprentice John L. Moriner recently received a couple of
pieces of history in a belated Christmas package.
The
20-year-old interior communications specialist from the USS Juneau, an amphibious assault
ship homeported in Sasebo, opened the package sent by his sister, Lisa C. McCrum, and
found two historical envelopes at the bottom of the box.
One of the
letters was mailed from the Juneau and postmarked July 12, 1969 — the date the ship
received its commission at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard, Bremerton, Wash. There was a
six-cent Franklin D. Roosevelt stamp on the envelope.
"I was
shocked … like, whoa. I looked at the dates on one of the envelopes and realized that
was the commissioning date of the ship. It was kind of weird," said Moriner, of
Concord, Mass., who’s been in the Navy 18 months.
The other
envelope was mailed using a three-cent stamp and is postmarked Nov. 27, 1949. It was sent
from the second Navy ship to be named Juneau and mailed to an L.G. Dutcher of San
Francisco.
Moriner
later received another envelope from the second Juneau. The postmark indicates it was
mailed on April 10, 1953, to an M.P. Procton in Philadelphia.
Three Navy
ships have been named Juneau. The first was commissioned in February 1942. This light
cruiser was torpedoed off the Solomon Islands and lost that November, and is the ship
where the famous five Sullivan brothers perished, Moriner said.
The second
Juneau, also a light cruiser, was commissioned in 1946. It later was re-designated as an
antiaircraft light cruiser and it served in both the Atlantic and Pacific fleets, and was
decommissioned in 1956.
Moriner’s
sister, who is an executive secretary in the Ann Arbor, Mich., mayor’s office, bought
the envelopes on an Internet auction for $7 each.
"She
wasn’t even looking for this type of stuff when she found it," he said. "It
was accidental, really. She collects police insignias and patches from around the nation,
and that’s what she was looking for."
Moriner
said he suspects the envelopes once contained letters from Juneau crew members to family
members or friends. And he and his sister plan to donate the envelopes to the ship for
display.
Courtesy USS Juneau
This is a historical envelope connected to the USS Juneau owned by Seaman Apprentice John
Moriner. The postmark shows that this was mailed from the second ship named Juneau in
1953. |
"We
have a small display case on the mess deck with items that represent parts of the
ship’s history and awards and so forth. She’s also in the process of getting
three more envelopes from the ships named Juneau."
The two are
especially interested in finding memorabilia from the first Juneau.
"There
have been a few hits on material from that ship, and due to the history involving the
Sullivan brothers, it is more expensive. The other problem is authenticating things,"
Moriner added.
He said
receiving the special gifts sparked his curiosity about the history of the Juneau.
"Yes,
this has made me more interested, and when I have time, I am still trying to figure out a
way to get more on the story behind these letters and the people who were involved."
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