For American surfers in the Vietnam War, the R&R pass to China Beach was a golden ticket to just about everything good in life—sun, trunks, down time, beer, parties, pickup football, and best of all a storage area filled with boards, plus lots of warm tropical-flavored beachbreak waves. The first section of this post is written by Dan Emerson, co-founder of the China Beach Surf Club in 1966.

I was born and raised in San Francisco, California and began surfing as a teenager at Pedro Point. As soon as I was old enough to drive I was heading south to Santa Cruz on weekends to surf Pleasure Point and Steamer Lane.

In September of 1965 I joined the US Naval Reserve, and after bootcamp I was stationed at Pearl Harbor. While in Hawaii I would go to Waikiki and surf every chance I’d get.

In July 1966, after a short stay in San Diego for Survival, Evasion, Resistance & Escape (SERE) Training, I shipped out to Da Nang, Vietnam, where I was assigned to ship’s company on an APL-27 barrack barge in Da Nang Harbor. I was a mail carrier between the barracks barge, Camp Tien Sha, and White Elephant—the old French hotel in Da Nang city that served as a Naval communications station.

I would leave the ship early in the morning, armed with a pistol and carrying my pouch, and begin the daily route. I had to hitchhike my way to an area where I crossed the Da Nang River to get to the White Elephant and work my way back to Camp Tien Sha to pick up the mail for the crew on the barracks barge. If all went well, I’d have some extra time on my way back to Camp Tien Sha, so I’d stop off at China Beach to take a break and watch the waves roll in.

As a native son of California, the beach was the one place I could find solace. It made me feel closest to home. I missed surfing and would think about all the good times I had spent in the water and at the beach. As I watched the surf one day, I realized it was getting up to about three feet. I started wishing I could paddle out and catch a few, but I'd never seen a surfboard in Vietnam.

The next time I went to Camp Tien Sha to pick up the mail, I starting talking to a Yeomen Petty Officer, whose name I don’t remember, about China Beach and how I wished I had a surfboard. He was a surfer as well and understood my enthusiasm. I asked him how we might go about getting some boards. He knew someone in special services in Hawaii and said he’d try to requisition some for us. It was a longshot, but gave us something to look forward to. A month later, ten surfboards arrived, we got them to China Beach, hit the surf and had a great time! There was a vacant shack on the beach next to the volleyball court, which we used it to store and secure the boards. That was the beginning of the China Beach Surf Club. We created the club so others could check out and enjoy the boards as well. The Yeoman Petty Officer was the President, a friend of his that had helped out was the Vice President, and I was the Secretary-Treasurer. We issued the first membership cards (mine being number 003). I surfed every opportunity I got until I left Da Nang in late July of 1967.


In 1968, Larry Martin of Pensacola Beach, a Navy sailor, also experienced this little in-country slice of paradise. This profile on Martin was written by John Robinson, and was originally published in the September 1989 issue of SURFER.

Chaos, death and insanity flourished in Vietnam, but these evils were not allowed within the perimeter of one small, sandy corner of the country: China Beach was for pleasure only. West and inland of China Beach were an Army hospital, supply depots, fuel tanks and two large hills—which the Viet Cong used as rocket launching pads. Beyond the hill was a jungly no-man’s land, and for hundreds of miles north and south was the Vietnam war, and a world of dirt, grim, blood and shit. Barbed wire and guard stations marked both ends of China Beach, with thick woods, a Catholic orphanage and a Marine helicopter base to the north, and a civilian beach to the south. Straight east from the shore was a couple hundred yards of beach, with the South China Sea to the horizon and the Philippines beyond. If the waves were good, a surfer could pick a left or right and noseride beyond the marker buoys and into the war zone. China Beach definitely wasn’t Waikiki, Malibu or New Smyrna, but the 200-yard strip of sand was the next best thing for a group of surfers in the Vietnam War. It was an oasis of freedom, sanity and surf in a world gone crazy

For Larry “Woody” Martin, that little nook of paradise was also home for more than a year. In 1967 Martin was a 21-year-old surfer-turned-Navy sailor from Pensacola, who found himself pulling storekeeper duty in Da Nang, a large port city about 100 miles south of the DMZ. After a month on the day shift, Martin was switched to nights. With a surfer's optimistic spirit, Martin used his new freedom to look for waves.

Just two miles distant—but a world away—Martin found good surf, a half-dozen waterlogged boards and a handful of surfers. China Beach was beautiful, with a graceful curve of white sand and blue, tropical waters. Long, glassy beachbreak walls with streaking rights and lefts would pop up offshore and slide into the beach. Martin headed off to the beach the moment his nighttime watch at the supply store ended. He'd get there any way he could, and remembers hitching a ride one morning on top of a tank, wearing his uniform of the day: combat boots and boardshorts. Martin was not the only one who used heavy equipment to get to the surf. “There was one officer who'd fly in for supplies with a surfboard strapped to his helicopter. He’d surf for a bit, take off and come back in two months. He always had his board ready.”

As Martin became a local at the Navy-controlled rest-and-recreation center he met an unending line of servicemen who came to China Beach to heal, swim, drink beer, watch movies, eat real food, and try to ease their fear, tension and homesickness: “If you were in-country and got some R&R, they sent you to China Beach or another beach, and there would be USO shows, surf and surfboards available. Whole platoons would fly in. We'd make them check their weapons right away. They’d get down to the beach, cut off their fatigues with a knife and run straight into the water.”

China Beach was a brief return to what soldiers called “the world,” and for three days they would party nonstop, going a little crazy to blow off steam and make up for lost time. Some would take stagger out into the surf and get in trouble instantly: “There were all these guys from the Midwest who would take a board out and almost drown, or run other people over.”

The military lost enough men in combat without having more debilitated on R&R. The two full-time China Beach lifeguards had enough on their hands with sea snakes, rip currents and bad swimmers, and were happy to let Martin take over the responsibility of fixing the surfboards, distributing them and keeping an eye on the guys who were flailing around. Martin was glad to have a reason to stay around the beach all day.

After three months at Da Nang, Martin earned Red Cross lifeguard certification and started taking surfers out to safety-check their ability before he'd let them use a board. China Beach Surf Club thrived, and soon added a headquarters made of plywood and other materials scavenged by club members. When Martin wasn’t working at night, surfing in the morning or sleeping in the afternoon, he was fixing boards, looking around for better equipment and signing up new club members. He had found a comfortable niche within the heat, boredom and madness of Vietnam.

The fetch between the Philippines and China Beach is about 400 miles—more than enough to generate good waves. “You’d be surprised how perfect it would get," Martin says. "The summer swells were pretty small, but during monsoon season the surf was unreal, with huge waves up to 12' that were extremely easy to ride.”

According to Martin, China Beach was a surfer’s and soldier’s dream: “A guy’s been in the jungle for six weeks, tensed up the whole time, then he comes in and finds a surfboard. He paddles out and forgets about Vietnam. It makes him remember the old days in California. It didn’t look like you were in ’Nam, except for the lack of women on the beach.”

To a lot of Marines, China Beach had the look and feel of the beach area at Camp Pendleton. If you squinted hard enough, the gun emplacements, tents, barbed wire, and sandbags might blend into the beach. If you could somehow ignore the gunships floating out past the lineup and the helicopters headed in-country, it might, just might, seem a bit like home. But these servicemen were never allowed to forget for any real length of time that they were in Vietnam; even at China Beach they were surrounded at all times by the bewildering juxtapositions of the war.

“I remember buying my first surfboard in Vietnam," Martin recalls. "A nurse who was leaving had a beer party, and said she’d sell me her board for $80. We were walking up to her compound at the hospital to get it, and as we crossed the landing pad these helicopters started bringing in wounded.

“Right in front of us they start pulling out guys who were all shot up. Medical people are running out with surgical clamps hanging all over their shirts, and they started jamming them into the wounds, trying to stop the bleeding. I was walking between the blades and I couldn’t believe it. It was the first time I saw people really hurt.”

Martin picked up the board—a 9'6" Surfboards by Phil—and as he walked back across the landing pad more helicopters were coming in. He stood there with his new board under his arm and watched. “Here were these guys who’d been in the jungle an hour earlier, getting shot at and killed, and there I was buying a board. When I got back to the beach the surf was about 5'. I sat by my board in the shop and didn’t go out that day."

That's how it went. China Beach was like Shangri-La, right up until the moment it wasn't. One morning Martin walked across the airstrip and saw flag-draped coffins stacked in rows, waiting to be flown back to the United States. On other occasions he saw Vietnamese war dead wash up on the beach. Now and then enemy zappers (guerrillas) would infiltrate the compound with hand grenades and explosive packs. “We were out surfing one afternoon, sitting outside a few hundred yards. We heard rockets coming in and felt the compressions as they exploded. You’d see a rocket hit and count to four, then hear the sound. The Marine base up the beach was getting hit. Helicopters were trying to lift off and get clear, tents were collapsing and there were flashes from explosions. My buddy and I just sat there watching it all for about 15 minutes. All of a sudden the machine-gun fire started walking across the water toward us. Some VC from the beach were trying to shoot us. We paddled straight out and stayed out of range for three or four hours. It was kind of spooky; it was dark. Finally we heard guys on the beach hollering that it was safe.”

Larry Martin spent 15 months in Vietnam, almost all of it at China Beach. “The only time I left was to go to Hawaii with an officer and another lifeguard to pick up eight new boards.” In fact, Martin was due to leave Vietnam after a year of service, but signed on for an extra three months to surf the monsoon season. By the time he left, the club had distributed 179 China Beach Surf Club membership cards and increased its quiver of Titan, Dexter, Cutlass, Healthways’ surfboards to 20.

In 1969, Martin returned to America to find that surfboard length had dropped almost two feet. He learned to surf an eight-footer during the few days he spent at Huntington Beach, then returned to Pensacola. For 20 years Martin tried not to think about Vietnam, or talk much about his experiences there. Then, in 1987, 

 made its TV debut. The ABC drama focuses on the lives of doctors and nurses stationed at the hospitals near China Beach, and includes scenes of servicemen relaxing and surfing at the club. Martin saw the show, and memories flooded back: “I was longboarding with a friend, sitting outside talking, and I said, ‘You know that deal about China Beach? Hell, I was over there'."

Lately, Martin has been collecting photos and stories to go with his own, and finding that everybody else remembers China Beach in the same way—as a small, healthy and mostly peaceful zone within the noise, blood, and machinery in the Vietnam war.

CHINA BEACH: OUT OF THE SHIT, INTO THE SURF

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