By Donna Beth Weilenman
Staff Reporter

FRANK SHOEMAKER WAS BORN IN SAN FRANCISCO ON JUNE 18, 1921, two days before a full moon. That could be considered an auspicious sign, suggested the mostly retired CalTrans electrical engineer who now lives in Benicia.

After he spent three years at the University of California-Berkeley, he was drafted at 21 by the U.S. Army. It was spring 1942, and the war was on.

To his surprise, the Army didn’t send Shoemaker to a war zone. Instead, he had a chance to further his education at Oregon State University.

He spent a year as a soldier, gaining education credits that brought him closer to his career. He also went to schools for signal corps and radio repair.

Finally, though, the Army sent him to the Pacific. “Our happy group went to New Guinea,” he said. “We were 30 miles from the Japanese.” He was assigned to work in a repair shop.

By the time the United States bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, Shoemaker was in Manila, the Philippines. But he managed to be assigned to Tokyo after the conclusion of the war.

To his surprise, he was treated with courtesy and respect by the people of the defeated nation. “There was never a bad word,” he said. “Everybody was polite.”

In fact, one man he met told him, “You must learn the tea ceremony.” Shoemaker agreed, and the Japanese man patiently taught the American the step-by-step ceremony that is heavily influenced by the Buddhist principles of harmony, respect, purity and tranquility.

His time in Tokyo is still a treasured memory, and led to his collection of Asian furniture that is one of the reasons he chose to live in Benicia.

One of his favorite pictures shows Shoemaker as a soldier in 1945, standing next to a smiling young Japanese woman.

Dan Graf, owner of Computer 1, 737 First St., has a copy of that photograph in his store, where he has displayed other memorabilia from Benicia’s World War II veterans.

“Do you know what Frank’s doing there?” Graf said about the picture.

“Frank won’t tell you. But he’s protecting them —” and Graf pointed to the girl — “from them” — indicating American soldiers who had arrived in Japan with money and time to spend looking for fun.

Instead of those stories, Shoemaker described his respect for President Harry Truman and his decision to drop the hydrogen bombs.

“He said yes on the bomb,” Shoemaker said. Those bombs led to the rapid end of the war against Japan, he explained.

“That saved my life,” he said. “Half of us would have never come home.” Instead, the cost in Allies’ lives could have compared to the losses during the invasion at Normandy, France.

Of the 16 tanks deployed on Normandy’s Omaha Beach June 6, 1944, only two were intact post-invasion; American casualties reached 5,000, most lost in the first hours of that famous three-day assault.

Even now, Shoemaker readily defends Truman’s decision, just as he did the day he responded to someone on Telegraph Avenue, near his old college school grounds in Berkeley, who spoke to him of “that terrible bomb.”

After the war, Shoemaker began his new career as a professional electrical engineer, starting on street signals in Marysville, then working on CalTrans bridges from San Diego to Antioch.

“My last jobs were the cash registers on the toll bridges,” he said.

He said CalTrans must use toll money to stabilize soil, but observed that the bridge toll grant awarded to Benicia, used for bus stop improvements, also paid for more attractive landscaping along Military West from First to West Second streets.

While Shoemaker has lived through significant events in American history, his interest in the past goes back further.

“My family has been here since 1656,” he said.

The descendant of German Mennonites who were recruited by Quakers to move to America, he’s joined the Germantown Historical Society in Philadelphia, Pa., where he helps support a home.

One of his ancestors was a mayor in the English colonies, escaping Revolutionary forces when the British Army left the area. But, “By the time of the Civil War, we were on the right side,” he said.

His great-grandfather was captain of ordnance at Fort Union, N.M., where a railway siding is named for the Shoemaker family. Shoemaker has visited there.

In addition to the Germantown historical organization, he’s a member of Chapter 1 Yerba Buena of E Clampus Vitas (ECV). Its public face is full of fanciful writing, such as Honorable Brother Al Shumate’s “The Mysterious History of E Clampus Vitus,” in which Shumate explains that the translation of the organization’s name “is the greatest mystery of all, because none of us know(s) what it means!”

Shoemaker wouldn’t elaborate or clarify.

“It’s a secret society!” he said, but it’s also the organization that suggested that his birth near the time of a full moon could be considered significant.

He’s more open about his life membership in the National Ski Patrol, which he joined 50 years ago.

At one time, he traveled extensively to snow ski. He wears a sporty Australian hat that reminds him of taking to the slopes there, and he’s skied twice in France, and in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, too.

The National Ski Patrol taught him the importance of First Aid and CPR classes. He also learned an important tactic if someone aiding a heart attack victim needs to send someone for one of the new portable defibrillators that require no experience to use.

“Send two people,” he said. “One will disappear.” But if the responder asks, “Will you two go get it?” chances are much better they’ll get the job done, he said.

When Shoemaker retired from CalTrans, he was living in Oakland. A ski buddy suggested he consider moving to Benicia, “and I looked the town over.”

He looked at one house, and saw that its design included Japanese shoji screens. Realizing that his Asian collections and furniture would fit in the house, Shoemaker made the move.

He has joined the Benicia Yacht Club, where he often goes for lunch. He chuckled at the invitation to join.

“I don’t have a boat,” he told the member who urged him to join.

“Do you have a checkbook?” was the answer. And like about half the club’s members, Shoemaker may ride on others’ watercraft, but still has no boat of his own.

He’s still a traveler, though he no longer takes to the ski slopes. He’s ridden a camel near the Egyptian pyramids. He also takes multi-day rail excursions with friends, including a trip in the historic Silver Solarium domed car, and the former business car Tamalpais. He has joined two railway societies, one in Santa Clara and the other in Sacramento.

And he still keeps his hand in electrical engineering.

He’s been asked to take a job at the Port of Oakland, an offer that has amused him.

On the other hand, “I still have a license, and I’ll do a job if I like it.”