World War II dog tags turn up on Waikiki Beach
By Will Hoover
Advertiser North Shore Writer
It took six decades for a couple of World War II sailors' dog tags to wash up near the Royal Hawaiian Hotel in Waikiki.
Eugene Tanner • The Honolulu Advertiser
Even then it took the keen hearing of beach prospector Fred Didier to pinpoint the corroded IDs in the salty sea using a metal detector.
Stephen Gould of the North Shore Surf and Cultural Museum holds two dog tags from World War II found on Waikiki Beach.
But retrieved they are, and the long-lost dog tags have now earned a place of distinction at the North Shore Surf and Cultural Museum in Hale'iwa.
One tag reads, "Counce Mills Bush/ 272 82 54/ O/ USN." Bush, who's still alive and living in Pensacola, Fla., can be forgiven for not recalling the particulars of the moment the tags slipped off his neck.
After all, that was way back when — and Bush is 89.
"They found them where?" Bush asked with a chuckle yesterday when he was told. "Waikiki Beach? Well that's really something! I don't even remember losing my dog tags."
Bush said he was stationed aboard the battleship USS Idaho from 1942 through 1946.
The Idaho was not at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, but it still saw plenty of action in the Pacific throughout World War II.
And it sailed into Pearl Harbor for brief periods in 1942, 1943 and 1945 — plenty of time for Bush to have taken a swim off Honolulu's most famous beach.
"I would say that's very unusual to find them after all these years," said Charles Hinman, education specialist at the USS Bowfin Submarine Museum at Pearl Harbor.
"I would assume that they were lost very near where they were found. I don't think they washed up from deep water. They were probably on R&R, like many sailors were, and went down to Waikiki to party."
Which is exactly what Lloyd Barclay, a Kahala Mandarin Oriental Hawaii lifeguard and Didier's fellow treasure hunter, believes happened.
Barclay said the sands shift at certain times of the year in Waikiki, and in that area near the Royal Hawaiian old things occasionally appear. Barclay said
Didier, a retiree in Longview, Wash., who prospects in Hawai'i between November and April every year, found the tags during his last stay.
"I don't know how he does it, but Fred's got super hearing," Barclay said. "He finds stuff that none of the rest of us ever do. He's found rings dated in the 1800s. We don't find that stuff. Like I say, he's got super hearing."
Near the same location, Didier also found the dog tag of Everette Raymond Bass, who died in 1991 at age 93.
Didier gave the tags to Barclay to hand over to Stephen Gould, curator of the surf museum in Hale'iwa.
"He thought Steve might like them for his museum," said Barclay.
Bush said Gould is welcome to his. Maybe he'll check them out next time he's vacationing in Hawai'i.
Reach Will Hoover at 525-8038 or whoover@honoluluadvertiser.com.
