By Correne Martin
Rather than being drafted, Bob Hazen signed up for the Navy in 1944. He was just 17 years old.
His brother George, the first ever Army soldier drafted from Crawford County, advised Bob in written correspondence to join the Navy.
“He said at least I’d have a warm bed and good food ‘til they blew up my ship,” he remembered.
Bob graduated from Wauzeka High School one night and was on the train the next morning, at 5 a.m., headed for Great Lakes Naval Station in Illinois. He endured only six weeks of training and then went off to California, where he boarded a Navy ship.
“I was scheduled to go to Okinawa (Japan) but, on the way over, [the U.S.] dropped the atomic bomb, ending the war. So I never went there,” he said.
Aboard the 1,500-man ship for the two-week trip overseas, Bob said he cooked for all the passengers three times a day.