After transfer from the Portsmouth navel base to the Fleet Marine force 5th Division at Camp Pendleton near Oceanside, CA, we trained for future battles. We lived in tents there, four to a tent, and began forming the 5th Marine Division. I remember one morning almost stepping on a scorpion in my shoe but luckily saw the bug first. A short while I was sent to transport quartermaster school at San Diego harbor and was one of many marines training to load a ship for combat, mostly where to put the ammunition so it would be readily obtained. At this time Mary Margaret (Mom) was able to fly to California for five days to visit me, arriving there about on my birthday, July 11 and we had a nice visit in a small hotel room. Coming from Portsmouth, Mom had landed in Camp Pendleton and after much inquiry found out that I was in San Diego, a few hours away. I found out that Mom was in Camp Pendleton and I hopped on a bus to go there. Mom took a bus from Pendleton to San Diego and we passed each other on buses going the opposite way. Mom went to the hotel where I was staying in San Diego and talked the clerk into letting her into my room and went to bed not knowing exactly where I was. I returned to San Diego from Pendleton late at night; we finally met each other. It was happy for us to be together but very stressful for both of us because I was under a lot of pressure learning how to load a troop ship and worried about Mom who caught a very bad cold and ear ache on the plane coming out. We had a nice birthday celebration and enjoyed a few hours walking around the town enjoying the beautiful flowers. On my return to Pendleton from San Diego I was ordered to lead a few young officers to the Parker Ranch on the big island of Hawaii to help establish a 5th Marine Division base there. Eventually the main body of the 5th Marine Division arrived at the Parker Ranch and I was assigned as the Platoon leader as a 2nd lieutenant, to a sixteen m.m. (millimeter) mortar platoon. The Parker Ranch I believe was and is the largest ranch in the world; however, I never saw any cattle there but just rugged terrain where we spent month after month of heavy training. Again we lived in tents there with 3 or 4 to a tent. The tents were very dark and pretty rugged. We soon got help from some C.B.s construction battalion people who would fix our tent up with a door entrance and wood frame inside the tent with various shelves around the wall for us to put things on. The price to do this was a few bottles of some kind of alcoholic drinks. From where our tents were on the ranch we could see the big volcanic mountains of Moana Lei Moana Kaya. While there I was able to get together with my friends Ted Yund and Chuck Yund in Hilo, the main city of Hawaii. Ted was stationed with the 3rd Marine reserve division as a lieutenant and Chuck was stationed at Maui as a navy chief petty officer involved in training navel people. We got together in Hilo for one day. I also got together there sometime with Mike McCullough a very good boyhood friend from Stanley Street, who was a marine corps sergeant. Incidentally it was so cold that New Year’s Day and evening at Hilo that Ted and I were freezing and went to bed in some small hotel at Hilo where we shivered through the night. There was no celebration of any kind in Hilo because of the war. New Year’s Day Ted returned to his unit and I returned to mine. There were many many Japanese people on Hawaii at that time owning or working on sugar cane fields or pineapple fields or coffee bean fields. Many were suspect because we were at war with Japan. Our days were filled with long field training maneuvers and the nights with sleeping or trying to go to sleep and thinking of our loved ones at home, and the war. We wrote e.mails and or letters to people back home . E.mail was a small sheet of paper, actually photographed, folded and mailed home. Each letter or e.mail was censured and any hint of where we were or what we were doing was inked out. I was one of the censors and I could censor my own mail.