POULSBO — After an unprecedented six deferments, Clare Earl Johnson knew it was only a matter of time before he was drafted into the military during World War II.

“In 1941, I was working in the shipyard as a joiner foreman and we built four minesweepers for Britain and eight for the U.S.,” Johnson said.

One of those ships, the YMS 341, would make another appearance in Johnson’s life even as he was one of the youngest shop foremen at the Seattle Ship Building and Dry Dock Co.

Having learned the millwork and cabinet trade in Spokane, Johnson said when the war broke out he headed west to Seattle in hopes of landing a job with a military contractor.

Once he was hired at the shipyard as a joiner, Johnson was quickly promoted to shop foreman at the tender age of 22 when the previous shop foreman was transferred to Bellingham.

“I was only 22 years old and sometimes I had as many as 12 men working for me,” he said. “I would lay out all of the work and do all the machine work myself.”

Because of the high demand for ships, Johnson said he and his crew worked 10 hours a day, seven days a week with great regularity and only took off major holidays such as Christmas and New Year’s Day.

As a shop foreman, the possibility of being drafted into the service was always in the back of his mind, but he received a series of six deferments before finally being drafted in 1944.

“I had six deferments because I had a key job, but when we were between contracts I received my draft notice,” he said.

That notice meant the end of his career at the shipyard and the beginning of his enlisted career.

“It was kind of tough to leave that job, because I really felt I did the most good on that job and was more productive than when I was in the Navy,” he said.

All the draft notice meant was that he was in the service with the branch to be determined and fortunately, Johnson said he was able to serve in the Navy rather than another service branch.

From the Puget Sound, Johnson returned to his native Idaho, where he completed basic training at Camp Waldron and was subsequently shipped out to the New Herbides Islands before ending up in Guam on the dry docks.

“I was a little older than they were and they looked up to me,” he said of his fellow draftees. “It was an interesting time.”

At the Navy operating base in Guam, Johnson said he was able to return to some of his duties at the shipyard yard before he entered the Navy.

“I would survey the damage on wooden vessels and write up job orders for them to be fixed,” he said.

One of those ships happened to be the YMS 341, which had sustained damage in earlier action in the Pacific.

“It left there and went over to Okinawa and was caught in a typhoon and rolled over,” he said.

The YMS 341 was the only ship he built as a civilian that he saw while in the Navy and it brought a special feeling, he said.

“It was kind of nice to see one that we knew so well,” he said with a smile.

Finally in 1946, Johnson returned to the shipyard, where he began building commercial fishing boats that were in high demand after the war. He later moved on to the cabinet and millwork industry.

“I was happy to be home and to be in one piece and not have to kill anybody,” he said.

As he looks at today’s Navy and sees all the modern improvements, Johnson simply stated, “They’re so much bigger and faster these days and it’s a little different Navy.”