11 July 2010
 
Nimitz Hill


(The View from Nimitz Hill, Guam. Photo Peter Kelsey 2009)
 
I am hot this morning, or at least tepid as the fumes of the pool party waft away from my brain. Great evening, once the clouds and rain blew off to the east.
 
I find I have a couple matters to take personally, and they are about the road ahead for us all. It is a big deal, since a while bunch of people died to establish a principle about where and when a couple generations of Americans could go in peace.
 
Admiral Mac’s description of his close call with joining the doomed USS Wahoo is a case in point, and it still has me a little agitated. That was a classic evening at the warm wood bar at Willow, and we talked about many things that brought the sacrifice of another time back to vivid life.
 
My time with the gypsy crew of the Midway Maru in the Yellow Sea makes it intensely personal in a way the policy wonks on the National Security Council apparently don’t get.
 
We talked about that at the bar. I said “We are being quite solicitous about our friends the Chinese these days,” while looking at the $5 items on Tracy’s Nighborhood Bar Menu. “Did you see that bi-annual report from the boys and girls at Treasury? It was delayed so as not to disrupt the G20 love-in last month. It popped out at the end of the news cycle last week, timed to pass into the summer weekend news cycle without a trace.”
 
The Admiral nodded and sipped from the straw in his Virgin Mary that emerged from the giant olives and celery.
 
“The Chinese announced last month that they would allow the renmimbi- I thought it was the “yuan,” to float in value against the dollar. The Administration viewed it as a triumph at the time, and the float so far amounts to .08%.”
 
I snorted.
 
There is overwhelming evidence from a variety of sources that the Chinese government has systematically intervened in currency markets over years to keep the renminbi undervalued by as much as 40 percent, so you can understand there is a little ways to go.
 
“We are walking on little cat’s feet, and don’t think that Asia isn’t looking on with a great deal of interest, just as China’s bad step-children the North Koreans run around putting torpedoes into things.”
 
“I understand the that a big joint naval exercise intended to demonstrate US resolve about the Pyongyang’s murderous conduct was scheduled to be conducted in the Yellow Sea with the USS George Washington Strike Group. Apparently we have meekly succumbed to Chinese sensibilities and moved it elsewhere to accommodate them.”
 
The Admiral and I take freedom of the seas personally, and that is something else that Asia is watching with great interest.
 
The generation that saw the last big change is fading away, and that is why drinks with Mac are so special. Bill McCullough and Mac are among the last of the warriors who remain to tell their stories, and dammit, their stories need to be told.
 
Bill was on Saipan because CICPAC Commander Chester Nimitz was told to seize the Marianas Islands. I asked Mac if he knew about the B-29 requirements. He said the Admiral might have been told about that, but as a junior officer he just knew that there was an objective to be met, and he and his comrades were just engaged on whipping the Imperial Fleet and get it done.
 
What was happening was the joining of great currents of activity. Bill and Hal McCullough were part of the stream of the B-29 capability. Mac was part of the Navy, Marine and Army push to secure airfields for the Super Fort that could strike the home islands. The submarine force was cruising the waters up close and personal to cut off imports of critical supplies of war materials, fuel and food.
 
There were plans and backup plans for everything. There was a back-up aircraft in production in case the B-29 did not work out; there were multiple islands to be seized; MacArthur would be permitted to continue west to return to the Philippines.
 
The resolve demonstrated by the Allies forces was quite remarkable, and Asia was watching.
 
Guam, ringed by reefs, cliffs, and heavy surf, represented a formidable challenge. It was not fortified in the manner that Saipan and the other old German mandates in the Mariannas chain were. Guam had been American until 1941, after all, but it would be a tough nut to crack.
 
On July 21, 1944, the Third Marines and the 1st Provisional  landed on both sides of the Orote peninsula on the western side of Guam. Rain and thick jungle made conditions difficult and casualties high. The Japanese line collapsed after a sharp fight at Mount Barrigada two weeks later, and after August 4, the rest of the battle was a pursuit to the north.
 
As in other battles of the Pacific War, the Japanese refused to surrender, and in the apocalyptic climax to the conquest, hurled themselves from the rugged cliffs.
 
The SeaBees commenced construction operations on two airfields and a new command center on the Fonte Plateau, a broad, rolling plateau that dominates the topography of the central island. It is the place that the Japanese general, Takashina, had his command post on until he was killed on 28 July.
 

(FADM Nimitz greets a CoDel on Guam, 1945. The Admiral is in shorts. Navy Photo)
 
They call it Nimitz Hill now, in testament to the resolve of the CINCPAC Commander to take back what the Japanese had usurped.
 
There were still Japanese soldiers holding out, and they ambushed a patrol as late as December 8th and killed three Marines, even as Mac was packing his seabag to go forward.
 
The CINCAPAC staff was moving forward by increments from Pearl to stay close to the diminishing front lines around Japan. Mac could have stayed in Pearl, but he went to his boss, Captain Eddie Layton, and volunteered to go to Guam.
 
Eddie said he would be pleased to have him, on the condition that he convince bring the best Air, Naval, and Ground geographic analysts at the Joint Intelligence Center- Pacific Ocean Area (JICPOA) along with him. Mac took the challenge and convinced his first draft choices to volunteer, along with a remarkable Yeoman First who could type as fast as you can talk.
 
His name was Harry Truman, of all things.

(SeaBees put the fields up fast. A company street at Isley Field, 1944. Air Force Photo.)
 
Mac told me that they arrived on Guam in January 1945. Hal McCullough had been flying high-altitude missions against Toyko for weeks, and Bill McCullough was de-arming the Super Forts as they returned, and servicing the automatic gun systems.
 
The campaign was not going well. Washington was directing the tactics and targets, based on their European campaign against the Germans. The thinking behind the strategy was that high-altitude precision strikes against key nodes in the manufacturing infrastructure were the keys to immobilizing the enemy.
 
The raid on Schweinfurt-Regensberg in 1943 was the template. What the Mighty 8th Air Force called "Mission No. 84" was intended to take out the German aircraft production capability based on the destruction of strategic components like ball-bearings.
 
It did nothing of the sort, but that would not be revealed until the completion of the Strategic Bombing Survey chartered by FDR in 1944 was done.
Mission 84 also resulted in catastrophic losses to the Mighty 8th, with sixty bombers and their crews lost and many more that limped home with casualties, damaged beyond repair. The Air Corps was unable to reconstitute a follow-on strike.
Targets for the campaign against Japan were directed by the Joint Target Board in Washington. The JTB was following the European plan against a completely different set of circumstances. Hal McCullough and Crew 17 were sent against aircraft engine factories, at high altitude, in swirling weather conditions at the very edge of the envelope.
 
The situation was far more difficult than Washington could imagine. Mac told me about the way the SeaBees constructed the fields to wring every ounce of performance out of the fire-prone Wright R-3350-23 engines. “The runways were peaked to allow the rain to run off, and had a long down-grade to help the Super Forts gain altitude. The end of the runways on Guam led to the cliffs that the Japs committed hara-kiri from.”
 
He looked off past Peter, who was delivering a little plate of Tracy’s custom deviled eggs to the side of my long-stemmed wine glass.
 
“I had a jeep assigned to me, and we would take the forty-five minute drive from CINCPAC Hill to Anderson Field to watch the raids depart in the morning. The end of the strip had a little upslope that was supposed to act like a ramp. The Super Forts would get to the end of the runway and then pop up and disappear behind the cliffs. They actually settled down a few hundred feet as they gained speed and cleaned up the gear and flaps and started to gain altitude again. We would not see them against until they were a mile or two beyond the cliffs.”
 
Down on Isley Field, Hal McCullough was flying with volatile extra tanks of fuel in the bomb bay to extend range. The Super Forts where subject to fires on the best of days, and loaded with bombs and AvGas, they were torches waiting to be lit. If Hal was pretty wound up after one of those missions out of Isley Field on Saipan, he made sure he got his cousin back to his quarters without incident.
 
I will have to tell you about why and how the tactics changed in the final struggle against the stubborn Japanese tomorrow.
 
There is a certain relevance to all the recollections of some old warriors. The bones of  “Mush” Morton and tens of thousands of their comrades remain where they fell. Their sacrifice and triumph was long remembered in Asia, but memory does fade.
 
New generations are watching current events with interest, including the value of currency and the freedom of the seas. There is a solid core of resolve beyond the waters of the Pacific. After all, the last Japanese hold-out on Guam was  Sergeant Shoichi Yokoi, who was discovered by hunters on January 24, 1972.
 
He had lived alone in a cave for 27 years, true to his Emperor.
 
I wondered if we can be true to the sacrifice of our fathers. If our warriors must defer to the wishes of others about where and when we pass on the world’s ocean, I imagine Mush Morton and the crew of his Yahoo are rolling in their watery grave.

(Last know picture of the crew of the USS Wahoo, 1944.)

Copyright 2010 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
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