SUBIC: A Sailor’s Memoir: Based on the Story of Bobby Perkins

In this riveting memoir, Bobby Earl Perkins recollects the constitutional issue of racial discrimination and how his Christian faith ushers him amid the seemingly insurmountable struggles for equality while stationed in Subic Bay Naval Base, Philippines. This sailor's account somehow mirrors the Civil Rights Movements happening back in the U.S. soil in 1960s and provides a glimpse of how a group of Black servicemen who were treated with prejudice--from getting demoted in rank to facing criminal charges all because of their skin color-- upholds their sense of pride and dignity that every American is entitled of--even aboard a foreign land. When Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in 1968, his death became a platform for racial outbreak and riots inside Subic Bay. The structure of the story is like a diary format and is told by Bobby himself, who at that time was only 23 years old, an E-4, a cook, and from Montgomery, Alabama. Growing up from the South, he knew firsthand the abrasive issues of segregation and racial tensions between the Blacks and Whites. Bobby joined the military to possibly get away from all of it only to find himself in the middle of it. Subic is a story that is not so ordinary; however, its significance is not alien to many.