A China Sailor's dog's tags, Tientsin (Tianjin) China, 1935. "Pasteur Laboratoire"

[aerialbridge]

James Henry "Hank" Norwood was a mustang sailor who served from 1923 to 1949. He lost his battle with a medical review board and was forced to retire after he had a stroke while off Japan several months into his first ship command, USS Karin (AK-33), a refrigerated stores ship. Retired as a commander because of an award of the Bronze Star and Navy Commendation medal for two separate kamikaze attacks on USS Alpine (APA-92), Jim Norwood went on to fully recover and lived another 45 years, dying peacefully on his 93rd birthday in Fullerton, CA. If he hadn't been forced to retire, he would have added the National Service Medal; Korean Service Medal; Armed Forces Expeditionary Medal; United Nations Korean Service Medal and Republic of Korea War Service Medal (retroactive) to his substantial medal group, which I recreated (3 rows of 6 across, yup 6) and posted awhile back.

 

http://www.usmilitariaforum.com/forums/index.php?/topic/235373-18-medal-valor-group-of-mustang-cdr-james-henry-norwood-51401-51494-regretfully-given-away-in-1955-at-san-francisco/

 

Jim was in China from '29 to '37, serving on three different ships, the last one USS Finch (AM-9), famously the only ship command of Admiral Hyman Rickover. Both men detached from Finch in October 1937 at Shanghai, during the Battle of Shanghai, a couple months before the Panay was sunk in December that year.

 

[aerialbridge]

Jim married Lydia, a Russian refugee that he met at Tientsin (Tianjin). They were married on her 20th birthday, Valentine's Day, 1931. The couple loved animals, and had dogs and birds. Pictured here are Hank and their favorite dog that they had in China, Norka. Norka came home with the family in 1938, when Jim went to his next ship, USS Texas (BB-35) flagship of the Training Detachment, United States Fleet. Late in 1938 or early in 1939, Texas became flagship of the newly organized Atlantic Squadron.

The Pasteur Institute in the French concession at Tientsin, was established and staffed by mostly foreign healthcare workers from 1922 to 1951. The public health areas it focused on were research and vaccinations to contain the widespread incidence of small pox, rabies and blindness in Tientsin in the first half of the last century. Pasteur Institutes were established globally in the early part of the 20th century and their namesake, Louis Pasteur, developed the first successful rabies vaccine in 1885.

1935 Pasteur Laboratoire, Tientsin, Vaccination Antirabique dog tag:

https://cloudfront.escholarship.org/dist/prd/content/qt8n2727vb/qt8n2727vb.pdf

[aerialbridge]

Hank Norwood and Norka in China, circa 1935. Cheers to Man's Best Friend, through the years and across the globe.