Subic: A Sailor’s Memoir: (Based on the Story of Bobby Earl Perkins)

Growing up in the South, Bobby Earl Perkins, a native of Montgomery, Alabama, knew firsthand the abrasive issues of segregation and racial tension; as a way to escape, he joined the military only to find himself in the middle of it again as a 23 year old, an E-4, and a ship’s cook many oceans away. This is Perkins’s untold testimony on the plight of African American sailors during the late 1960s while stationed on the shore of Subic Bay Naval Base, a U.S. military installation situated in the Philippines. Although serving on foreign soil, Perkins and fellow black servicemen suffered the same intolerance there–from getting demoted in rank to facing criminal charges– all because of their skin color. A Sailor’s Memoir reads like a diary format covering almost two years of Perkins’s duty tour while taking the reader on a heartfelt journey. The subject gives a panoramic glimpse into the happenings around the naval base. For example, Martin Luther King Jr.‘s assassination in 1968 spurred racial outbreak and riots inside Subic Bay. This piece of history is shrouded in the story of Subic since it mirrors the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. This little-known but historically relevant testimony is a story that is not so ordinary; however, its significance is not alien to many.