The Sullivans arrived in San Francisco Bay on July 9, 1945. Shortly after docking, George received orders that could have been no better received had he written them himself. “Mendonsa! Get your blues on! You’re getting a flight to New York.”
Over the past year and a half George had worn his working uniform while carrying out his duties on board ship. That ensemble consisted of dungaree pants and a light blue shirt. During the interim, his formal blues had remained cooped up in his locker. When George went to put on the dress uniform, the outfit appeared tattered to him. In addition, the government-issued uniform hung loosely on George’s body. Though the sloppy appearance bothered George, he laughed when first putting on the uniform. He thought, “After two years on this tin can, we must both be a sight for sore eyes.” For the short term, George figured he and his uniform made a perfect match.
George took a bus to the San Francisco Municipal Airport to catch a plane heading northeast. During the bus ride he sat beside a woman for the first time since The Sullivans set out on its deployment to the Pacific in December 1943. Ironically, being confined in a tin can while a fanatical enemy was hell-bent to ensure his destruction caused George less apprehension than the bus ride with a strange woman by his side. Still, despite the momentary awkwardness, the homesick sailor welcomed a female’s sweet scent and soft voice. “We must have talked about the weather,” he reminisced years later.
When George returned to Newport, he found that circumstances had changed from two years prior. For one, while George had fought for his country, a Newport girlfriend he left behind in 1943 found time to talk about more than the weather with male civilians. While the relationship with his boyhood sweetheart had not been very serious, news of her activities over the past two years disappointed the returning sailor. She had never mentioned the other men in her letters to George. The discovery of his old girlfriend’s activities bothered him for the early part of his military leave.
In addition to his old girlfriend’s new status, his father, the family’s strong-willed disciplinarian, had aged beyond two years. Working without the help of his sons had taken a toll on the fishing boat captain. His back ached, his hands cramped, and he moved slower. But the father’s compromised state did yield some positive results. The old workhorse found time to relax with his son. He and George fished the familiar spots and talked about the past. Narragansett Bay’s lapping waters proved the perfect venue for the father and son reunion.
George’s father was not the only family member who changed during the war. George’s younger sister, Hilda, had married a Navy chief boatswain’s mate from Long Island. With George on leave in July 1945, Hilda visited with the family. The Petrys, Hilda’s in-laws, joined her. “They came to get a good feed,” George remembered. And no doubt the Portuguese food and his mother’s lack of portion control contributed to the draw. The menu included linguica, chourico, blade meat, Portuguese rolls, sweet bread, and kale soup. While not supportive of a healthy cardiovascular system, the pleasures of the palate outweighed such concerns.
When they made this journey for their “feed,” as George described it, the Petrys brought their niece Rita with them. Rita had planned to visit her grandmother in Merrick, Long Island, but at her aunt’s urging, and her grandmother’s good wishes, she decided to make the jaunt with her uncle and aunt to Newport, Rhode Island.
Rita, reserved and attractive, grew up among a close-knit family, in Forest Hills, New York, a suburban area on the western part of Long Island. Days spent playing hopscotch with girls from down the street and being home a half-hour after the street lights came on made up the tapestry of her childhood. However, similar to many girls and boys of her generation, the whirlwind that emanated from Japanese propeller planes suctioned a portion of that childhood innocence from her grasp.
In 1941 Rita attended the Academy of St. Joseph, a Catholic boarding high school. At 5:00 pm on December 7 of that year, a nun announced over the loudspeaker that the Japanese had attacked the United States. However, even with this intrusion from the outside world, Rita and the other girls did not understand the full ramifications of what had happened. And owing to fortunate circumstances, she remained protected from some the war’s most painful consequences. Rita’s brother, three years younger than she, could not enlist until near the war’s end. He never saw combat. Her father was too old for the draft. Rita’s connection to the fighting overseas remained relatively limited for most of the war.
Her only direct link to the war turned out to be a Portuguese American sailor from Newport, Rhode Island. Rita met him at the Mendonsa-Petry cookout in July 1945. He arrived late but entered the family gathering in grand fashion. Carrying a bag of clams and lobsters he had caught that day, George Mendonsa was noticed by every Petry in attendance. One of those Petrys drew his attention. He couldn’t look away. Rita Petry’s wavy, dirty-blond hair framed an attractive smile and wide, blue eyes. He thought, “My God, she looks like a model.” Others had thought so, too. A year earlier when Rita visited family in Florida, an area businessman asked her to model swimsuits for a local advertising campaign. Against her grandfather’s protestations, she took the shop owner up on his offer. At her grandfather’s insistence, she turned down future photo shoot opportunities.
George was not a model, but the look of a tall, fit fisherman with the bounty from his labors swung over his shoulder must have had its appeal. When George asked Rita to go bowling the next night, she accepted the invitation. During the next few days the Navy quartermaster first class introduced Rita to many of Newport’s attractions: the mansions, the coastline, and, apparently, George. The introduction went well. When Rita returned to Long Island, she and George remained in touch. During one of their frequent phone conversations they made plans to get together for a few days on Long Island, just before George’s return to San Francisco.
As the last week of George’s leave approached, on August 6, 1945, the United States dropped an atomic bomb, “Little Boy,” over Hiroshima, Japan. The new weapon had far greater destructive capabilities than its nickname suggested. Though the bomb killed thousands of civilians instantly, and committed many others to a miserable and slow death, most U.S. citizens expressed no remorse. In fact, most Americans relished the news, including President Harry Truman. The new president had assumed the nation’s highest office in April 1945, upon President Franklin Roosevelt’s death. Truman’s reaction to the atomic bomb’s detonation bordered on gleeful. After reading the news, the president grabbed a nearby officer and said, “This is the greatest thing in history.”1
The “greatest thing in history” had a limited impact on Rita and George. Neither knew what to make of it. President Truman’s announcement did not describe the awesome devastation or speculate on the future ramifications of a weapon seemingly more suited for 1950s science fiction movies than 1945’s sobering realities. All George knew was that if the Japanese did not surrender soon, he would likely take part in some aspect of the dreaded invasion of mainland Japan. That concerned him more than the type of bombs U.S. planes dropped from the sky. As he and other servicemen noticed, the closer American forces approached to the enemy’s home turf, the more desperate and formidable the Japanese defenses became. The extent to which the enemy would go to save their motherland had become frighteningly clear in the battles at Leyte Gulf, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa.
As George prepared for his trip to New York to see Rita, on August 9, 1945, Japan’s Supreme Council for the Direction of the War met to consider surrendering to the United States. After intense deliberation, the six-member body was deadlocked. During that meeting, they learned that the United States had dropped the next greatest thing in history, “Fat Man,” another atomic bomb, on Nagasaki. That explosion had even more force than “Little Boy.” Soon thereafter the group adjourned.2 They had reached no definitive position on whether or not to continue the war against the United States.
While Japan’s high command continued to weigh their options in secret, George bid his father farewell. Arsenio Mendonsa was not one to succumb to emotion. In truth, as far as his son could determine, Arsenio lacked the slightest trace of sentimentality. But on this day, as George said his good-byes to family and friends and set out once again to do battle with the Japanese military, Arsenio put his arm around his fourth born, the fisherman turned sailor. Perhaps the old man contemplated the rising number of gold stars in Newport, Rhode Island, windows. Whatever prompted the father’s change in temperament, the departing embrace served not only as Arsenio’s first openly emotional gesture toward his son, it proved to be his last.
As George left Newport for Long Island on August 10, 1945, he worried little about the prospects for the future. He knew only two things for certain: a pretty girl waited for him in New York, and on August 14 a plane departing from LaGuardia Airport would take him back to San Francisco, where he and his shipmates would board The Sullivans to finish what the Japanese had started on December 7, 1941.