Let's Sell These People a Piece of Blue Sky: Hubbard, Dianetics and Scientology by Jon Atack Page A

contempt which permeates all
of his descriptions of the natives of the places he visited. The “President
Madison” took Ron and his mother to the Philippines, where he complained about
the idleness and stupidity of the inhabitants. In Cavite, where they joined the
Navy transport USS Gold Star, a Lieutenant McCain told Ron that under the
derelict cathedral crawling with snakes were tunnels full of gold. Hubbard
vowed to his diary that he would return.
    They left Cavite on the “Gold Star” for the rough seven day
passage to Guam. In his diary, Hubbard gave his analysis of the natives of Guam
(he called them ‘gooks’). Hubbard had been warned that his red hair would generate
considerable interest; as it was, he claimed that the Chamarros fell silent at
his approach.
    Hubbard spent about six weeks on Guam in 1927. On July 16,
he left on the USS Nitro , leaving his parents behind. The pages covering
the journey back to the US preserve his only philosophical speculation of the
trip. Hubbard and a young friend were perplexed by a book about atheism, so
much so that Hubbard decided he would have to wait until his return home before
resolving this difficult issue.
    Ron was the first to sight Hawaii. An officer told him to
wake the lookout, and Hubbard described his perilous climb to the crow’s nest.
The Nitro docked at Bremerton, Washington, on August 6th, 1927.
    According to his later accounts, Hubbard’s diaries were the
product of a 16-year-old who had studied Freudian analysis, read most of the
world’s great classics, and had started to isolate the rudiments of a
philosophical system some four years earlier. 13 In fact, none of
these subjects is even touched on in the diary.
    Hubbard was at Helena High School from September 6, 1927, to
May 11, 1928. 14 While there, he joined the 163rd Infantry unit of
the Montana National Guard. 15 In his diaries, he described the
events which led him to leave school, and make his second trip to Guam. These
accounts show that Hubbard had a fanciful imagination, even then.
    On May 4, 1928, the inhabitants of Helena celebrated a
holiday called Vigilante Day. In a later journal, Hubbard described the procession
of clowns and pirates along the Main Street. After the parade, he was driving
two friends around in his 1914 Ford, when a baseball struck him on the head. He
pulled up and started a fight with his assailant, claiming to have broken four
of the bones in his right hand in the process 16 (though later
medical records give no indication that he had ever broken any of the bones of
his hand). 17, 18
    The fight supposedly took place a few days before school
examinations, so Hubbard failed to collect the necessary credits toward graduation.
As it was, he had been doing badly, having had to repeat the first semester’s
geometry and physics. 19
    Hubbard visited his aunt and uncle in Seattle, and from
there, in June, revisited the Boy Scouts’ Camp Parsons. After a week or two, he
grew restless and went off on a lone hike. The first night, he made camp about
two miles beyond Shelter Rock. While asleep he fell fifty feet, and when he
recovered consciousness found blood gushing from his left wrist. 20
    At the end of June, Hubbard learned that the USS
Henderson would be leaving for the Philippines on July 1, and on impulse decided
to join her. He would return to his parents on Guam. Hubbard raced to San
Francisco only to discover that the USS Henderson had already left port.
He decided to sign on as an ordinary seaman with the President Pierce, which
was China bound, but at the last minute changed his mind, and went chasing
after the Henderson again. He caught up with her in San Diego.
    According to Hubbard’s notebook, the Henderson’s Captain said Hubbard would need permission from Washington to join the ship.
Time was running out. Washington said his father’s permission would be needed.
An answer from Guam usually took two days, but Hubbard was in luck. Permission
came an hour before