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Baruch Blumberg - Why I joined the navy (2/80)

157 views · Published 30 June 2017 · 6:14 · Indexed 24 October 2026

Channel: Web of Stories - Life Stories of Remarkable People · 2017 · Science & Technology

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To hear more of Baruch Blumberg’s stories, go to the playlist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QedXwz9QEXY&list=PLVV0r6CmEsFyPwAEJ9YaYAsj3ANqc9teW

The late Baruch Blumberg (1925-2011) was an American scientist and doctor whose most significant contributions to medicine include the identification of the Hepatitis B virus. He was one of three co-recipients of the 1976 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. [Listener: Rebecca Blanchard; date recorded: 2007]

TRANSCRIPT: Well, the thing that dominated our early, well late childhood I suppose and our teenage, was the Second World War and essentially… and I was 16 I guess when the war started, 15 or 16, 15 when the war in Europe started, but, and they were… and people were being drafted when they were… when they were  at that… at that time, at 18 - the draft age dropped to 17 later in the war - but there was, and everyone… and everybody was talking about not how they could get out of being in the army because there was sort of essentially no way of doing that, or very few ways of doing it, but everybody was talking about what they were going to do. Well, it turns out that in the navy at that time, if you volunteered, you could sort of pick what you wanted to do, to some extent. And the navy, and also the army, had started a rather remarkable program where they decided that they, that it was going to be a long war; the predictions were that the war would extend at least to 1948, and of course it stopped in ’45 after the… after the nuclear weapons were dropped. But in any case, they had… they had a program where they gave a test, a national test, several hundred, more than a hundred, two hundred high school seniors took the test and if you got above a certain level, you were admitted to this college training program from… then you were destined to go to midshipman school briefly. But they also had a provision if in your first year of college, which I was, then you could, if your grades were a high standard and you were physically okay, you could go in the program.

So when I was 17, I went into the navy and went into this college program and then eventually went to midshipman school, and then I was commissioned as a line officer and I was assigned to several amphibious ships, but I did nothing heroic. And as a matter of act when I was watching this, the television program that’s on nightly now, Ken Burns' program on the war, I’m... you know, it's sort of all very familiar. I can name all the guns, the airplanes, you know, and  I knew what the divisions… the military divisions where doing. But there is, I think people like myself who got into, you know, who went into the military and didn't see that kind of action, there's always a funny kind of regret which I… I still have, you know, it's what, 60 years or so later on. And… but in any case, so, it did have the advantage that I didn't get killed or… or wounded or traumatized very much, but I must say I… I enjoyed… I liked the navy. I liked going to sea, I liked the equipment, you know, we had, I ended up... I was the executive officer, that's the second in command, of one ship and I was captain of another one for a short time. You just suddenly realize, I've got this big yacht with a bunch of people who, you know, mostly do what I tell them to, and you can order all the equipment you need. You can only go where they tell you, but, and… and standing top deck watches, that, you know, the way ships are handled, and I think still now, there is an officer on the bridge, that's the…  that’s… that's called top watch, if you're in charge. Now the officer on the bridge may be a junior officer but he's in command during the period that he is on the bridge and there's a… there’s a  great sense of what’s, well, confidence you know when you… I was… I was pretty good, I was not a bad navigator and I was pretty good on piloting, you know, that's navigating when you're near shore. I wasn't a very good ship handler, you know, that is bringing a dock along… a ship along dock and so forth, but the kinds of ships that I were on were very difficult to handle. They were very underpowered, single screw in some cases, and that were really hard to— and that's another one of my regrets, by the way, that I was never… was never a very good boat hand. I'm still not, with my own motorboat. So… so that was, and I had, I made many of my friends that I still have who - well had, they're beginning to die now - who I met when I was in… when I was in the navy. They were… they were really a wonderful bunch of friends and very good people.

Well, you know, it’s something very topical now, they're talking about the GI Bill. So, well the GI Bill at that time changed my generation and it, I think, made a big contribution to the prosperity of the country... 

Read the full transcript on [https://www.webofstories.com/play/baruch.blumberg/2].

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