1945 San Francisco

In June 1945, I happened to be in San Francisco when the United Nations Conference was going on. It was being held at the Fairmont Hotel at the end of a steep hill. When the parade went by, I saw every major leader in the world from 15 feet away. President Truman was in the lead car. There was a small boy in a wheel chair next to me and the Secret Service made him stand up when the President came by I suppose to make sure the little kid didn’t have a bomb on his lap. Truman’s Secret Service men were huffing and puffing when they finally reached the top. After Truman was Molotov, Madame Chiang Kai Shek, Anthony Eden, Secretary of State Edward Tetanus, Air Force General Hap Arnold, Field Marshall Jan Christian Smuts of South Africa, Jan Masaryk of Czechoslovakia, who was assassinated in 1948, and many other world leaders.
I walked up the hill to see the cars outside the hotel. As I went up the hill, I noticed a distinguished looking Arab flanked by two tall dark body guards. A gust of wind blew up his “dress” and he had two pearl handled pistols strapped on. It was Crown Prince Faisal of Saudi Arabia. I read someplace afterward that he had put on his western type suit and had a few beers with some friends at UC Berkeley. He was later assassinated in a coup in Saudi Arabia.
The city was full of military men from all countries. I was walking toward Market Street a few days later and saw this huge burly bear of a man, a Russian admiral, coming toward me. Russians don’t wear ribbons like our service men but wear the actual medals and they were going “cling..cling..cling” as he neared.
Our servicemen are supposed to salute officers of friendly foreign nations and these sailors saluted and said “Hi, comrade!”. He turned and you could tell he didn’t like the way they saluted him, as he growled something in Russian at them.
Another day, I went out to the amusement park along the ocean. This one roller coaster was full of black suited Russian Maritime Marine sailors most of whom had had too much vodka. While I was watching, one of them in the front seat crawled over the rest to talk to his buddy in the last seat. Another stood up in his seat to see the sign, in English, which said “Do not stand up” and nearly got wiped out by a cross bar.
Another interesting service man I happened to see was a French sailor who was wearing a tam-o-shanter type of cap and a horizontal striped shirt. The different thing was that he was black with dyed red hair and he was talking with a buddy and sounded just like Charles Boyer.
Finally, another thing I saw on Market Street, was a large motorcycle seat, probably for a Harley, being carried by 3 sailors and a 4th was riding it.
Many memories of a famous time of our country’s history with the people who made it.