KAPA‘A — U.S. Navy Senior Chief George T. Tsukamoto’s career spanned 26 years with duty ranging from Hawai‘i and Japan, to the North Pole and the Pentagon. Tsukamoto retired in June and returned to Kaua‘i with his family. It was
KAPA‘A — U.S. Navy Senior Chief George T. Tsukamoto’s career spanned 26 years with duty ranging from Hawai‘i and Japan, to the North Pole and the Pentagon.
Tsukamoto retired in June and returned to Kaua‘i with his family. It was where he joined the Navy in 1986, a Kapa‘a High School graduate and an employee of Big Save.
“I wanted to get off the island and see the world, experience new things and meet people,” Tsukamoto said.
A heavy pidgin accent was a real barrier at first, he said. He adopted the Navy slang and Mainland style of speech over time without thinking, he said.
“I didn’t realize it until I came home and my dad said, ‘You speaking good English.’”
After completing boot camp in San Diego, and then yeoman school in Meridian, Miss., he volunteered for Naval Submarine School in New London, Conn. He was assigned to the Western Pacific fleet based at Pearl Harbor, and would continue to serve half of his career as a submariner during the waning Cold War years.
Tsukamoto was a junior yeoman when he served on the Queenfish and the Pintado. Both were 292-foot, Sturgeon-class nuclear pursuit submarines that pushed 20 knots.
“I enjoyed the tightness of the crew on a submarine, where there are only 150 people and you know everyone by name,” he said. “There is more camaraderie and I still keep in touch with a lot of those shipmates to this day.”
The pursuit subs were the front line, he said. They averaged 90 days at sea on their own or as part of a battle group.
“These were not ballistic subs that have to stay out and remain undetected,” he said. “We are fast attack hunters.”
As a Petty Officer First Class, Tsukamoto became leading yeoman in charge of personnel records and the postal clerk. He typed the captain’s reports and handled official secret communications.
As sea he used the time to educate himself for higher ratings and performed collaborative duties including sonar. Through on-the-job-training he could fill in as a battle station helmsman. Today’s sub pilots use digital controls whereas they used levers, he said.
In 1988 the Queenfish completed an Arctic expedition to the North Pole, and then on to an American base at Holy Loche, Scotland.
“There is a lot of condensation in the colder waters,” he said. “The boat got colder and I slept with three blankets in the rack.”
Submarines are not a place for the claustrophobic, he said. You have to be able to pop your ears at certain depths, be able to multitask, handle stress, and live in tight spaces with other people.
“A lot of guys crack under the pressure of submarine duty,” he said. “They would be sent to surface fleet.”
It worked well for Tsukamoto because he gets seasick, and the motion of a submarine is not the same as a ship. He would not have his first sea duty above the waves until his final months in the Navy aboard the USS George Washington.
Following his re-enlistment, Tsukamoto was transferred to Sub Group Seven in 1990 to the Intelligence and Administration at Shore Command at Yokosuka, Japan, until 2003.
He worked as the intel yeoman and commodore’s writer for captains Tom Fargo and George Voelker.
Tsukamoto met his wife, Rie Abe of Sagamihara, in 1991 through mutual friends. They married in 1992 and have one son together, Keoki, a 16-year-old Kapa‘a High School student.
By that time, Navy life was natural and gave Tsukamoto’s life a sense of purpose, structure and security for his family.
He climbed Mount Fuji and his unit volunteered with area orphanages.
On his third tour, Tsukamoto joined the Pintado at Pearl Harbor.
The crew accompanied the sub for decommissioning in Bremington, Wash., in 1998. His job was to relocate families to generate orders for the crew.
The Pintado decommissioning was also a time of transition for Tsukamoto. He became an executive assistant to a flag officer, also known as a flag writer.
In this position Tsukamoto worked with Group Seven Rear Admiral Joe Krol, and then Krol’s replacement, Rear Admiral Joe Enright.
From sea to Pentagon
In 2003 Tsukamoto was assigned to the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. He worked for Rear Admiral Joe Sestak until Sestak retired in 2005. He then worked for Vice Admiral Mark Edwards until 2007.
“Going to D.C. was another big career move, and I got to see the other side of the Navy,” Tsukamoto said. “In the subs I was with the front line of the fleet. In D.C. I saw the grind and the politics of working with Navy policies and planning that is coming 20 to 30 years down the line.”
Tsukamoto said he felt a little naïve coming into “all the action,” where his military bosses testified before Congress and defense contractors lobbied for contracts. He got a bird’s-eye view of inter-service cooperation.
“A lot of it was new to me,” he said. “The first two years were the hardest with a lot of long hours, but by the end of the tour I got out and saw more of D.C.”
That was a year after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, and the Pentagon was still undergoing reconstruction. The memorial was being built outside of his office and was nearly completed by the time he was reassigned to Japan.
Two civilian office workers shared their stories about the day the building was struck by the plane, he said. All the lights went out and it was terrifying chaos in absolute darkness. Green reflective tape is now on all hallway floors, he said.
Back to Japan on his next enlistment, Tsukamoto went to work for Rear Admiral James Kelly and his successor, Rear Admiral Rick Ren, who commanded all U.S. Naval Forces based in Japan and Diego Garcia. His last tour in 2011 was with Rear Admiral J.R. Haley, commander of Carrier Strike Group Five and the George Washington Battle Group.
On March 11, 2011, Tsukamoto and his visiting father and other relatives were on a tour boat ride of Yokosuka harbor when the earthquake and tsunami struck. The epicenter was much further north but he said the small buildings of the little harbor shops were shaking and people were running around.
Everyone went to the base and waited to hear more news. There was an air of uncertainty in the days that followed.
The GROUP was in maintenance status and so Ren was in charge of conducting briefing conferences with Washington and PAC fleet in Hawai‘i, Tsukamoto said.
The nuclear crisis that followed produced an evacuation order for military families. His wife and son left and would not return for two months.
“We were in the office from early morning to late at night doing shift work, handling logistics and answering phones to be sure they reached the right people immediately,” he said.
Tsukamoto would have re-enlisted again but his rank of E-8 senior chief allows a maximum of 26 years service. “It is harder to stay in the Navy now,” he said. “I found that out my last couple of years.”
Returning to Kaua‘i is one step in readjusting to a new life, he said. He wants to do volunteer work at the schools and the Veteran’s Center as he looks for work.
“The Navy has been good to me and everything worked out,” he said. “When you look back, none of the bad things matter, and I learned a lot even from the difficult bosses, from their leadership styles that I incorporated into my own.”
Family legacy
The sea is in the Tsukamoto blood.
His father, also named George Tsukamoto, served in the U.S. Navy from 1962 to 1966 as an engineman on Marine landing craft transports to Vietnam.
While serving in Washington, Tsukamoto brought his father to see the Vietnam War Memorial. They both visited the recently unveiled Japanese American Veterans Memorial, and the World War II Memorial to remember Takeshi Tsukamoto, who was a Merchant Marine during World War II.
Takeshi was Tsukamoto’s grandfather. Tsukamoto researched and verified his grandfather’s service on 19 ships from 1937 to 1941. Some of those ships were sunk by enemy subs just months after he signed off, he said.
After the attack on Pear Harbor, his grandfather came home and ran a pig farm in Hanama‘ulu. He passed away in the early 1970s. “He was basically told to get out and go home,” he said. “I am trying to find out what happened.”
Tsukamoto’s research paid off. The U.S. Department of Transportation, Maritime Administration sent the family posthumous awards of the Pacific War Zone Medal, the World War II Victory Medal and the Merchant Marine Defense Medal.
A certificate of service was included from President Harry Truman.
“If it wasn’t for the Navy I wouldn’t have learned about my background and the genealogy of my grandfather,” he said. “Just being there put me onto a different level and I appreciated where I came from and grew up.”
Another generation of Tsukamotos is about to carry on the Navy tradition. A cousin, Christian Tsukamoto of O’ahu, is in his final year at the U.S. Naval Academy.
