The protest started with four friends from the USS Cochrane, based at Pearl Harbor. When the ship sailed for Alaska on October 8, 1971, they were not on board. The men were identified in a newspaper clip as Leo A. Lockard, Jim L. Chumbers (or Chambers?), Ron Ballard, and Henry Venelderen. They were later joined by David Mills, a crew member from the USS Ouellet.

After a tour of duty off the coast of Vietnam, the Cochrane had been ordered to sail for Alaska, where their assignment was to block protesters from disrupting the scheduled nuclear test.

For several days, while AWOL and discussing their options, two of the guys stayed with my wife, myself, and our two cats in our two-bedroom, 4th floor apartment in Kaimuki.

Here Leo Lockard checks out one of our albums.