Norbert E. Hines

Age 90

Born near Guckeen, MN in 1926 on the family farm

Currently lives in Fairmont, MN

U.S. Navy World War II Veteran

Like many farm boys during the war years of the 1940s, Norbert Hines joined the military to help in the war effort. Hines enlisted in the U.S. Navy in May of 1944, just before graduation from Fairmont High School. He was sent to Great Lakes, Illinois for basic training then out west to Treasure Island Naval Base in the San Francisco Bay to attend Navy cook and bakers school. 

Following that stint, Hines was sent to San Diego's Coronado Island in February of 1945 for training and assignment on the attack transport ship USS Fillmore APA-83. An interesting side note, the ship, a Gilliam-class attack transport, was named after Fillmore counties in Minnesota and Nebraska.

Hines admitted he had never been to sea before joining the navy. “I decided to enlist in the Navy instead of getting drafted,” Hines said. “I had heard stories from the Army guys of having to deal with snakes and having to dig your own bed every night to sleep.”

Hines eventually earned a deck division boatswain's mate rating and was put “in charge of everything on the top side of his ship,” Hines said. “That was quite a jump in pay,” he added. “As a boatswain's mate 3^rd class I was making $100 per month. When I first went in as a seaman, I was only making around $25 per month.”

The ship hauled everything from gun boats to troops and various military cargo. Loaded to capacity with cargo and passengers, Fillmore sailed from San Francisco April 25,1945, bound for Lady Bay in the Philippines. Hines remembers the ship being tracked by a Japanese submarine. “We had to zig-zag to avoid them,” he recalled. “We were loaded up for the invasion of Japan, and hadn't yet heard word of the Japanese surrender. Boy, there were a lot of fireworks that lit up the sky to celebrate Japan's surrender,” Hines said. 

Hines and his shipmates made numerous voyages across the Pacific Ocean between the South Pacific, Pearl Harbor and Seattle, Washington carrying returning veteran troops and supplies.

One of Hines most interesting post war memories was being part of the 'Operation Crossroads' atomic bomb testing in the Marshall Islands during 1946. “It was right at the end of the war, and most of us had never heard of the atomic bomb,” he remembered. “The USS Fillmore was one of two ships on the site of the bomb testing. We were stationed about ten miles out from ground zero and were part of two different tests of the bomb.” 

The Navy anchored numerous ships at the test site, and some ships even had live animals on board. The veteran seaman still remembers the eerie sight of the tall mushroom cloud that rose from the horizon. He still has a faded and dog-eared photo of the bomb cloud right after detonation. What they witness once on-board the surviving test ships at ground zero was also something not soon forgotten, he admitted.

“We had to wait about ten-to-twelve days before we could go on board those ships to see what had happened,” he said. "The animals that were on board had died and were frozen in place from the bomb's massive radiation blast.” Hines said medics were always checking the men to see how much radiation was in our blood streams. The 90 year-old jokes that the radiation must of help him, since he's still feels healthy and is alive and kicking after his experience with the atomic bomb.

Hines was 21 years old when discharged from active duty in 1947. He joined the Navy Reserves and returned to the Fairmont, MN area after that. The Korean War was just starting but Hines never was called up. He got married in 1950 and remained in the reserves until April of 1952. 

Hines summed up his military experience serving his country. “I never did anything big. No honors, and I never got into combat. So, I guess I lucked out that way.”