Chapter 846: Chapter 39: Depth Charge
[My father, Frank Bellman, is now 78 years old. I love basketball; he prefers baseball even more.]
He’s not very tall, just 5 feet 10 inches, with a sturdy build. Perhaps his height is one of the reasons he dislikes baseball.]
When I was 11, he divorced my mother and moved from New Jersey to Miami, saying he liked the sunshine and ocean there.]
The reason for the divorce was his gambling.]
As for why he gambled, he said he couldn’t escape the shadow of depth charges.]
During WWII, he was a submarine soldier. He joined the Navy before the outbreak of the Pacific war in 1940.]
After a period of training, he passed through the selections and boarded his first submarine: the U.S. Navy S-21.]
It was an old-fashioned submarine from WWI, and he served on it in Pearl Harbor until the Japanese people launched their surprise attack.]
When the war in the Pacific broke out, he and the vintage submarine were thrust into the conflict, targeting every Japanese ship they encountered.]
Frank told me that submarine warfare is the pinnacle of teamwork, where everyone unites as one, not for winning a game, not for money, but for survival.]
In war, every minute, every second decided the outcome of a battle and the life and death of all onboard.]
When a Zero fighter flew by with a howl, if you didn’t close the conning tower quickly, the crew might all meet death.]
Many fantasize about becoming submarine soldiers, finding it cool, yet overlooking how dangerous and high-pressured the job is.]
American submarine soldiers during WWII were very young, with captains around their thirties and the average age of the crew around 21-22.]
This age structure is similar to an ordinary basketball team, much like when I was at the University of Notre Dame, or at Gonzaga University.]
Selection for submarine soldiers was extremely stringent, from height to physical fitness, from knowledge level to personality traits, with multiple layers of screening.]
Because the pressure on submarine soldiers is much greater than most other military branches, amid the tight, hot confines of the metal can, enduring tremendous water pressure and the potential for sudden destruction, someone with fragile nerves would quickly collapse.]
"That’s a very strange kind of pressure," Frank recalled, "We were far from the beautiful tropical islands of Hawaii, sailing on the sun-drenched, sparkling Pacific Ocean, with gentle breezes and an extraordinarily clear view, sometimes encountering schools of fish, seeing birds flying in the sky... and then ten minutes later, coming up against depth charges that could nearly shatter everything. It forced us to stay sharp.]
"I’ll never forget a mission near Japan, when I was the sonar operator in the submarine. We had spotted an enemy ship through the periscope. Earlier, we had sunk a transport ship carrying high explosives, and the explosion was enormous, drawing the attention of the Japanese naval patrol boats, making us their prey. For the next few days, we started to play cat and mouse with these patrol boats, not just thinking of fleeing but waiting for a chance to fight back and sink them.]
"For days on end, we were sweating profusely, highly strained, often surfacing at night to run the diesel engines and charge the batteries. Finally, one morning, we encountered the enemy ships; there were two patrol boats. We fired a torpedo at one and sank it, but our periscope had been out of the water too long, we were spotted. When we dived to escape, we were targeted by the other patrol boat, and a depth charge exploded just above the rear of our submarine!]
"It felt as if we had been struck by a giant hammer, the shock sent the front of the submarine skywards, mercury spilled out from the gyroscopes, and we lost our bearings. The captain decided to dive, almost to the limit. Everyone went silent, the ventilation system was shut down, and an eerie silence enveloped us all, occasionally pierced by muffled explosions above. We just waited, waiting for the patrol boats to leave, dressed in nothing but shorts and sandals inside the submarine, you could wring water from our belts; it was that hot.]
"Eventually, we escaped alive, the captain handed out a shot of brandy to everyone. The shadow of the depth charges continued to haunt us, each one of us. But I want to say, nothing brings a team together quite like depth charges do.]
When I was dismissed from my coaching position at the University of Notre Dame because of a gambling incident, Frank found me and told me his submarine soldier story, and how to deal with pressure.]
Truthfully, at the time I didn’t quite understand; I thought he was boasting, so I replied: "If you were sunk, you would be even closer together.]
Because then the pressure of the sea water would squash you all into a pulp, achieving true ’togetherness’—my mouth really was foul.]
Frank was angry, and as a result, didn’t speak to me for several years, but I gradually came to understand the pressure he spoke of, and the unity under pressure.]
In the 1989 season, when I became the head coach of the Trail Blazers, the playoff defeat was like a depth charge that shook my body and spirit.]
Although there were many reasons to excuse the loss, defeat is defeat. Before that we were a team with three consecutive championships, but in my first season of coaching, we fell in the Western Conference Finals, and to the Los Angeles Lakers no less.]
In the 1990 season, we made a successful comeback, with the entire team carrying a strong belief in revenge, reclaiming what was rightfully ours with overwhelming regular-season and playoff victories.]
