Description
When Mehmet Munir Ertegun, the Turkish ambassador to the United States, died, his body was returned to Istanbul aboard the USS Missouri. While anchored in the Bosphorus, the Missouri fired a 19-gun salute honoring the late ambassador. The pomp and circumstance of this eastern Mediterranean voyage was one way that President Harry Truman told the USSR's Joseph Stalin to keep his hands off Turkey and Greece. Each of the sailors and marines aboard the mighty battleship was presented with a special box of thirty Turkish cigarettes.
My dad was a sailor aboard the Missouri at the time, which was April 5, 1946
