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Biffin Daily News
four Navy Defectors
Why Did They Do It?
liter's Note:
I Oct. 24 four young
Irican sailors went AWOL
I the carrier Intrepid when
tiled from Tokyo. On Nov.
■Michael Lindner, Richard
ey, John Barilla and Craig
rrson appeared on Moscow
lision as defectors from the
rd States.
|e Navy has now declared
t deserters.
py did they do it?
nited Press International
out four correspondents to
lo find some of the answers,
following team report is the
Igamation of the findings of
four reporters—Charles
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19
Thursday, Dec. 7, 1967
A1 ding e r, Larny Hat ield,
Robert Strand and Jack V. Fox.
By JACK V. FOX
United Press International
The four young men who
appeared on Moscow television
seemed so typically American,
so clean cut, so well-mannered
and smiling.
So the propaganda effect was
all the more damning as they
told the Russian people they
were sailors who had turned
their backs on their country
because they were ashamed of
what it was doing in Vietnam.
They had walked off the
United States ship Intrepid in
Tokyo, they said, because they
had concluded that helping
launch carrier strike planes in
the Tonkin Gulf was making
them accomplices to “murder.”
In their home towns, the
reaction was astonishment and
bewilderment because a first
glimpse into their backgrounds
seemed to come up with only
one thing they had in common—
they were so “normal,” so
highly unlikely to become
deserters through political be
liefs.
Last week United Press
International sent four reporters
to those home towns to talk
with parents, teachers, minis
ters, neighbors, classmates,
friends.
Ski Country
One went to Mt. Pocono, Pa.,
a hamlet in the deer and ski
country where Michael Lindner,
19, had lived in a white house
on the mountain road to
Scranton.
Another visited the sunny
suburban home in Jacksonville,
Fla., where Richard Bailey, 19
grew up with a family cabin
cruiser for recreation and a
business executive father who
flew carrier missions 15 years
ago.
A third rapped with the brass
door knocker bearing the
inscription “God bless our
home” on a one-story squarish
house in the Italian section of
Catonsville, Md., outside Balti
more where John Barilla, 20,
lived and played the accordion
so well.
The last made his inquiries in
San Jose, Calif., where Craig
Anderson, 21, once moved with
a swinging motorcycle crowd,
played all-league tackle and
went through the wrenching
tragedy of the suicide of his
father.
Out of this unpleasant poking
into their lives emerged a
different picture than “normali
ty.” There had been one
consistent strain of doing badly
in school but outside of that
they were four strikingly
different youths with behavior
that began to explain what they
have done.
Had Been Stresses
None had ever been interested
in politics before they went into
the service but there had been
stresses, rebellion against
parents and authority, a refusal
to take on responsibility.
Ist add 600 xxx responsibility.
Here are the four pictures
that emerged:
Michael Lindner’s family
moved to Mt. Pocono two years
ago from Millbury, Ohio, and
Mike lived there only one year
before enlisting in the Navy. His
father, Charles, has worked for
years for the Army as a civilian
employe and both he and Mrs.
Lindner now are employed at
the U.S. Army Signal Corps
Tobyhanna Depot where their
combined income is around sl3-
14,000 a year. He has an older
brother who is doing well in
college, and a married sister.
Mike had a high IQ but his
grades were so bad that he did
not graduate with his High
School class in the spring of
1966 because he failed English
and a history course called
“Problems of Democracy.” He
went to summer tutoring and
finally got his diploma just
before going into the Navy.
“Mike just wouldn’t accept
that he wasn’t going to
graduate until the day we
practiced the graduation exerci
ses and he was left out,” says
Mt. Pocono Junior-Senior High
School Principal Lawrence Wile.
“He thought some good fairy
was going to come down and
wave him through.”
Clarence Dennis, a former
Marine captain and father of
four young boys, was the
teacher of the “Problems of
Democracy” course.
“People say Mike was such
an average boy,” says Dennis.
“He wasn’t. He had a deep
seated resentment of any
authority. He was a clean-cut
and nice-looking kid and he
would “Yes, sir” you and “No,
sir” you with a big smile but
then he would do exactly what
he intended to do. He simply
wouldn’t hand in assignments.”
Michael’s father, a pleasant
and courteous man, says he has
no explanation. “My God, how
can I until I talk to him,” he
says.
Richard Bailey had lived in
Jacksonville since moving from
Philadelphia in 1948. The family
lives in a green and white
concrete home within suburban
Arlington and have two cars
and a cabin cruiser. Richard
was a good-looking, dark blond
intelligent boy who made
friends easily and was well
liked.
His father, Homer, enlisted in
the Navy in 1942. He served as
a flight instructor in World War
II and was recalled In the
Korean war when he flew night
missions in Corsairs from the
Sixth Fleet Carrier Force. He is
an insurance executive, a
handsome articulate man. Rich
ard’s mother, a diabetic,
entered the hospital last week,
suffering from shock over her
son.
Bailey says the family never
had any trouble with Richard
except for his failure to study
during later grades in school.
“He told me he couldn’t see any
reason for learning,” the father
said. At one time, in an attempt
to make him study, Bailey sold
the family television set.
The Rev. M. McCoy Gibbs,
pastor of the Arlington Metho
dist Church, is a psychologist as
well as a minister. He says
young Bailey was a classic
example of “youth versus
parents today.”
“It is an example of
rebellion,” says Gibbs. "The
boy is not a Communist any
more than you or I. He simply
did something drastic and went
in too far before he could get
out.
“This is my personal opinion,
understand, but I don’t think he
dropped out of school for any
reason other than to show his
parents he could do as he well
pleased.”
If any of the four young men
could be classified as a leader,
Richard Bailey would be the
one. He also has given evidence
that he was against the
American intervention in Viet
nam before he got into the
hands of a Japanese peace
organization and the Russians.
In a letter to his parents on
Aug. 22, Richard wrote:
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“When I stand back here in
the Tonkin Gulf and take a look
at the mess we have gotten
into, I wonder if I want to live
there (the United States) when
I get out. The war is the thing
now and I think Mr. (President)
Johnson and his cronies are
using the war as a diversion
from the domestic problems in
the states now ...”
If there was an “average”
boy among the four and one
whose action seems inexplicable
it would be John Barilla in the
Catonsville suburb of Baltimore.
A quiet neat lad, he finished
high school (with only fair
grades) worked in a supermark
et before enlistment and played
the accordion so well he
appeared on the Ted Mack
Amateur Hour among other TV
programs.
His father, Nicholas, a
mechanic, and his wife, Mary,
have been badly hurt. Thumping
his chest with two fingers,
Barilla said: “People ask me
about it . . . what can I say. I
can tell them about the pain I
have in here.
“If he was a bum, I could
just say so and not feel so bad
or worry so much. But he
wasn’t a bum. He was a good
boy. No one could ask for a
better son.”
Mrs. Barilla was crying.
“I’m not ashamed," she said.
“How could I be ashamed. He’s
a wonderful son. I just want
Johnnie home.”
John appeared to have been a
very reserved boy and those
who knew him felt he could be
easily led. Said one classmate:
“He was, well, he was just
there. I never saw him around
except at school. He never
seemed to be with anybody.”
Craig Anderson's grandfather,
Henry Anderson, Sr., was a
captain In the San Jose Fire
Department and retired in 1956.
His father, Henry Anderson Jr.,
also became a fireman and was
injured in 1954.
On June 13, 1963, Craig
returned from swimming with
his best high school friend,
Dennis Hamll, to see an
ambulance in the neighborhood.
The father had stepped out on
the front lawn and fatally shot
himself.
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26 Years Ago
Pearl Harbor Was
Mistake For Japs
By BRUCE ALLAN COOK
PEARL HARBOR (UPD—On
a lazy Sunday morning 26 years
ago today the first wave of
J apanese warplanes came
screaming over the Hawaiian
coastline.
Streaking through the marsh
mallow-like clouds from a
rendezvous point 200 miles at
sea, the propellor-driven forma
tion unleashed the first of its
torpedoes and 500-pound bombs
at 7:55 a.m.
Wheeler Field absorbed the
initial attack. Minutes later
Hickam Field erupted. Then the
pilots swung toward Pearl
Harbor where the U.S. Pacific
Fleet was anchored in forma
tion.
The grimness of the two-hour
attack is recorded in numbers
and in the still-visible outline of
the USS Arizona beneath oil
seaps which have surfaced
every day since Dec. 7, 1941.
Many Hawaii residents say
the gleaming white monument
above the sunken battleship
seems to glow a little brighter
on this day each year.
Special Radiance
“Maybe it’s in the imagina
tion, but it always seems to
have a special radiance today,”
said an oldtimer who remem
bers the day the bombs killed
2,409 Americans and wounded
1,178.
Usually on Dec. 7, no special
ceremonies are held aboard the
Arizona memorial because the
Navy has set aside one day—
Memorial Day—to honor its war
dead.
However, there was a comme
moration last year on the 25th
anniversary of the attack, and
there was a brief one today so a
special presentation could be
made.
The Fleet Reserve Associa
tion, an organization composed
of retired and active Navy
enlisted men, was to give the
Navy a 6-foot-long scale model
of the Arizona.
The sunken battleship, on
which more than 1,000 still are
entombed, has drawn hundreds
of thousands of visitors over the
years. More than 250,000 have
boarded the monument this
year and heard the Navy guide
described the events on that
Sunday morning.
First Wave
At 6 a.m., the Japanese
launched the first of 353
warplanes which were to carry
out the attack in three waves.
The code name for the raid was
“Tora, Tora, Tora” (Tiger,
Tiger, Tiger).
Capt. Mitsuo Fuchlda, who led
the attack and who since has
converted to Christianity and
expressed a desire to become a
U.S. citizen, later wrote about
the inviting target he saw In
Pearl Harbor.
“It was a sight I would not
have dared to dream in my
most optimistic dreams,” he
said. “Below me lay the whole
U.S. Pacific Fleet in a
formation.”
In the first 30 minutes of the
assault, the West Virginia,
Oklahoma and California were
sunk, the Nevada took five hits,
several smaller ships were
blown apart or set afire.
Explosions threw men into the
harbor waters aflame with oil
leaking from the broken vessels.
Arizona Hit Hard
The Arizona got the worst of'
the barrage. Her forward maga
ine was blasted open by a
bomb which ripped her bow
away. Then in a stroke of fate,
a 500-pound bomb dropped
through her stack into the fire
room below. Most of the
crewmen never knew what hit
them.
When the last of the Japanese
planes left at 10 a.m., 18 of the
97 ships berthed at Pearl,
including all eight battleships,
were sunk or seriously da
maged. The Army and Navy got
only 38 of their 394 planes into
the air during the attack. Ten
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were shot down.
The Japanese lost 29 planes
and 55 airmen, five midget
submarines and one large
submarine with an undeter
mined number of men aboard.
Lt. Gen. Victor Krulak, who
commands the U.S. Marines in
the Pacific headquarters over
looking Pearl Harbor, recently
called the attack “the greatest
mistake in modern history.”
“It united our nation,” Krulak
said. “It hardened us and made
every American resolved to go
ahead.”
NO PHOTOS
PLYMOUTH, England (UPD
—Mrs. Nadine Baker, 31, may
not put a photograph of her late
husband on his tombstone lest
some people get the idea the
soul of the dead man lives in
the grave, a Church of England
court ruled Monday. The
practice is not unusual in
Europe but a church spokesman
said it turns cemeteries into
“glorified photograph exhibi
tions.”
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