Seamans Quarters  -  USS Kawishiwi AO-146
The last photo Vern took before leaving ship - his bunk was that top one.

...
Living
and
Working
on the
Kawishiwi

 
1968. It's 11:45 AM, and somebody is waking you up. You struggle out of sleep--hell, you've only been asleep barely five hours. Your stomach rumbles, informing you it's time to eat, and your sheets are soaked in sweat. Not surprising, since you live in a compartment 30 feet long by 20 feet wide with steel walls, with 97 other men, and it's 115 degrees in here. The fans are on, but all they really do is stir around the hot air. You gingerly hop out of your bunk, which is second in a tier of three and consists of a mattress supported by wire and aluminum tubing, suspended by chains and hooks to the bulkhead. It doesn't seem like much, but it's comfortable, especially when you've been on duty for seven hours.

You pad over the floor-whoops, it's not a floor, it's a deck-and open up your locker, which contains your every possession in a three foot long by three foot high by three foot wide space. Time for a shower. 
Toiletries in hand, you head down to the, well, the head, what non-sailors call a bathroom. You get into the shower and turn on the water and get wet. Then you turn it off and soap down. Turn on the water, rinse off, and turn it off. It's a Navy shower: the tanker you serve on can distill 8,000 gallons of fresh water from the saltwater ocean all around you, but 245 men live on this ship, and that works out to about 33 gallons per man per day. Toweling off, you hum a snatch of song from the Ventures or Booker T and the MGs and head back "home." Putting on fresh dungarees, it's time to go eat---and then go back on watch. You try to ignore the fatigue, knowing you've got five hours to go on watch, then six off--not that you can sleep during then, not with all the people moving around, the heat. Time enough to write a letter home to the folks or to the girl you just met back in Honolulu, maybe catch a movie or the news on the closed-circuit TV. Maybe just watch the ocean, or better yet, watch the refueling operations. That's always exciting. Well, in a week or two, there's a port call in Subic Bay or Hong Kong, or will it be Sasebo this time?
..