29 July 2010
Written Consent
(Back of Mac’s first Navy ID card, Iowa City, Pay Entry Base Date 15 Aug 1940. Photo at Willow, Socotra)
The wine was chill in the dimness of the Willow Bar. They turn the lights down at 5:15 each afternoon to encourage the enthusiasm of the regulars. The pork spring rolls from the neighborhood restaurant menu were hot.
Humidity was down on the sun-drenched streets outside. Jake was doing some business at the bar, and Mac and I were at one of the little tall cocktail tables that line the deep brown wooden divider that separates fine dining from the usual suspects in the lounge.
I was scribbling like mad, since I have everything out of order. I have hundreds of Willow napkins now, some numbered and others bled with ink from the moisture on the bottom of dozens of frosty beverages. Mac brought some documents and books to review as he talked. He had the CIA monograph on the end of the Pacific War, and the new book on the Berlin Airlift. Just what I needed, more books, but the craving to understand is an ongoing imperative, as insistent as thirst at the end of a summer business day.
“Charles Nathan” were the Christian names of Mac’s father, but he was on travel someplace on that day long ago. His Mom, Hedwig (“Hattie”) came to the door as Captain of Police Laurence N. Ham told her why he had driven her son over from the field house at the University of Iowa.
The Draft Act had not been yet been passed, and there were some legal niceties that had to be accommodated, even though they would soon be swept away on the road to global war. Turning 18 didn't get you anything in those days. The age of majority was 21.
Lieutenant Ham cleared his throat. “Your son is just ten days away from his 21st birthday, Ma’am. I need to get your written consent for him to join the Navy.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” Hattie asked with a Mother’s concern. The world, ot at least the rolling low hills of Iowa was at peace. The trouble in Europe was someone else’s problem for the moment. Mac nodded, and she went ahead and signed her name.
With that, Lieutenant Ham was one body closer to meeting his prodigious quota list for August, and Mac smeared his thumbprint on the faded document that Mac produced from an envelope and placed on the table in front of me.
I was careful not to drip the savory dipping sauce from the spring rolls on it, or on his draft registration that he produced as a companion piece a moment later.
“My Dad was president of the Johnson County Draft Board, and when the Draft Act was passed the next month, he insisted that I sign up, even though I was already in the Navy,” he said, taking a sip of his savory red beverage. “He said no son of mine is going to be accused of not doing his duty.” He shook his head at the ancient remark. “I was long gone before anyone could utter a word.”
(FDR signs the Selective Service Act, September 14, 1940. Photo AP)
It was the 15th of August, 1940. By acting as he did, Mac missed the lottery choice that everyone a month younger faced. Mac instantly became a Seaman Apprentice in the United States Navy. Had he waited, his lottery number (like mine, a generation later) would have given him a few more months of liberty, but perhaps delivered him a second lieutenant of Infantry in some dog-face outfit assaulting a beach somewhere.
He wrote down the number on his Draft Card, just in case. 6618-238-2523.
With the passage of the Selective Training and Service Act of 1940, also known as the Burk-Wadsworth Act, millions of American men a month younger than Mac were subject to the whims of the Selective Service.
(The newest officer candidate in the USN at the moment of truth, July 2010, Andrews AFB. No consent required. Photo Socotra.)
My son got a much better deal on Tuesday. He raised his right hand, recited a few words back to the LT, and with multiple signatures on a seemingly unending series of forms, became a push-button E-5. An instantly created second-class Petty Officer, for training purposes only.
I think this is a good thing, though it fills me with the same sort of trepidation that Hattie felt about Mac. I thought forward, as you might, to the day three years later he told Dudley “Mush” Morton he would sign on to the crew of the submarine Wahoo for her seventh (and last) war cruise.
Mac enjoys his Virgin Maries, and frowned when it arrived without the three fat olives skewered on a stick. Jim was embarrassed to have forgotten. I have cracked the code on the Happy Hour loss-leader glasses of wine. If I let Peter choose the vintage, it can be pretty hefty by the glass. The special was a pedestrian Pino Grigio, and it was fine. I was writing like crazy anyway, anxious to get to February of 1942.
Chronologically, this is all backwards, and I apologize. We did the end of the War last time out, but bear with me. I am still curious about the middle part. We have been through the prelude, and the pure chance that divided his OCS class into two parts, the first of which wound up in Manila, just in time to be marched into captivity by the Japs.
Mac, of course, wound up in Hawaii, and by chance, delivered into the hands of Joe Rochefort the famous Japanese linguist and cryptologist. His original fate would have been to serve as an investigator, since that was his training at the Naval District HQ in Seattle. But the Head Bull in Naval Investigations in Honolulu with his pearl-handled pistols said he couldn’t use an unseasoned newbie Ensign like Mac.
He had an unfilled requirement to augment some mystery unit at the naval base at Pearl, and that is how Mac wound up in the Combat Intelligence Unit in the basement of the Admin Building.
There is a plaque there, near the closed stairwell that once led down to the desks and IBM card-sorting machines. That is where Mac went to work in February of 1942 at the Combat Intelligence Unit, working for Jasper Holmes, Lieutenant, United States Navy.
"Holmes was also known as Alec Hudson, but that is another story," said Mac, taking a sip of tomato juice. I made a note to ask.
Copyright 2010 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
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