17 August 2010
 
Put Up Your Dukes

(USS South Dakota, (BB-57) in war colors as Flagship of the Pacific Fleet Commander, Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz. Official Navy Photo).

The bill was paid, and people were starting to drift out of the bar area and over to the restaurant side of Willow. It is Restaurant Week, after all, and the prie fixe menu with choice of appetizer, entrée and dessert for $35 bucks is an attractive deal. Tracy O’Grady is always trying innovative things at Willow, and that is one of the reasons it is so much fun.
 
We need some fun. It could be that the recession is finally going to come to Arlington, which has ignored it thus far. At least the Defense sector has, what with two or more wars running through the decade. “Secretary Gates says he is going to retire next year, and take the national security succession issue out of the Presidential equation,” I said.
 
Mac was straightening the stack of books and papers he had brought to the bar to aid the discussion. “He has done a fine job. One of our better Secretaries, in my judgment, and I have seen them all come and go, from James Forrestal on.”
 
“It sure was a different world,” I mused, looking at the empty wine glass in front of me. “I heard the Chinese are asserting sovereignty over the Senkaku Islands west of Okinawa.”
 
“Oil, I would imagine,” said Mac. “The islands were part of the U.S. military mandate that we gave back to the Japanese in 1972 along with Okinawa. The Administration doesn’t seem to have the grit to explicitly tell the Chinese that they are Japanese territory, and subject to the provisions of the mutual defense treaty.”
 
“I guess we don’t want to irritate the Chinese,” I said. “But it seems like we are going to look like a Paper Tiger. If we cut carrier strike groups in the defense retrenchment, and the ASEAN nations are afraid to let us land-base the Air Force in Asia, what the hell do we think we have as a credible threat? Send a couple carriers against the whole of China?”
 
“Certainly is a policy conundrum,” said Mac. “It is a complete circle from 1940, only with Japan playing the role of today’s China. Article 5 of the 1960 Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security with Japan states that the Treaty specifically applies to the Senkaku Islands. Try as Secretary Clinton might to soft pedal things, it is hard to get around that."
 
“It seems like we are surrendering the issue without discussion,” I said. “Like when the Japanese strafed the American gunboat Panay on the Yangtze River after the Rape of Nanking in 1937.”
 
“Yes indeed. And we did not respond, and four years later, the Fleet was on the bottom of Pearl Harbor. Take your stand, put up your dukes. It is pay me now or pay me later.” Mac leaned forward. “I will give you a last story before we go.”
 
I picked up my pen and flipped to a clean page on the Senate note pad.
 
“Eddie Layton was one of the few guys who saw the beginning and the end of the war, said Mac quietly. “He started it in Admiral Husband Kimmel’s office on the day of the attack. It is quite a professional tribute to his abilities that Admiral Nimitz took him along as his personal guest to the Surrender in Tokyo Bay. Eddie actually masqueraded as his bodyguard and carried a pistol. As a member of the Pacific Fleet Commander’s official entourage, Eddie was quartered in USS South Dakota, (BB-57).”
 
“She was a battlewagon,” Mac continued “New construction in 1939, and she had thirteen battle stars before it was all over. Seven hundred feet long and bristling with guns, she carried twenty-four hundred officers and men, plus the embarked staff, if there was one. She had a Panamax beam on her, built to within inches of fitting through the locks on the Canal, so she was roomy and the wardroom was vast.”
 
“I have been in the wardroom on Alabama, one of her sister ships,” I said. “It was a lot different than the carriers I rode. Stately. I think they had cutlass racks on the quarter deck.”
 
“They probably did. It was a the continuation of an old tradition, carried almost to the ultimate level that the four Iowa-class battlewagons represent. Halsey was embarked in Missouri in Tokyo Bay for the surrender, and Admiral Nimitz took South Dakota as his.”
 
Mac chuckled. “She was a ship that set a unique record. A twelve-year-old managed to sign up for the Navy after Pear Harbor, and he actually got assigned to her in time for the battles in The Slot. He was wounded, too. Calvin Graham was his name,” Mac said with satisfaction. “You can look him up. He wound up getting a Big Chicken dinner- a bad conduct discharge- when his Mother disclosed his real age.”

(Collapse of Japan. The rebuilt battle cruiser Haruna was sunk at her moorings in the naval base of Kure on 24 July, 1942. Official Navy Photo)

South Dakota had the same sort of wild change of circumstance that everyone did. In early August she was shelling northern Honshu and supporting carrier strikes against Tokyo, right up to the last surface action of the War on the 15th of August. On September 2nd, she was anchored in the Sagami Wan with Admiral Nimitz and his guests on board.”
 
“Eddie told me about it later. He was not senior enough to see the ceremony, but he said it was honor enough to be there. Following the ceremonies, the Allied delegates and spectators began to leave Missouri. General MacArthur boarded a destroyer to be transported back to Yokohama. Admiral Nimitz left by boat after that  and was soon back on board South Dakota. Halsey stayed on his flagship, and enjoyed a conversation with his old friend, VADM John S. McCain, who would die of a heart attack just four days later. That would be Senator McCain’s grandfather.”
 

“Stress,” I said. “Pity to live just long enough to see the end of it, and not the beginning of the new world.”
 
Mac nodded. “So here is where it gets interesting. Eddie was playing acey-duecy in the wardroom of South Dakota when Admiral Richmond Kelly Turner strode into the room. “Terrible” Turner was in a state of high excitement. He was another of Admiral Nimitz’ personal guests. He executed all the amphibious landings in the Pacific, from Guadalcanal to Iwo Jima, after all. But he was a son-of-a-bitch to his staff, and liked the bottle. Eddie said he was pretty fired up that evening. He started to shoot his mouth off and the wardroom hushed at the sound of an inebriated four star’s booming voice.”
 
“What was he saying?” I asked.
 
“He was going off on Admiral Kimmel, of all things. Something to the effect that “Goddamned Kimmel had all the information and he didn’t do anything about it. The court of inquiry said so, and they ought to hang him up higher than a kite!”
 
“But it was Turner himself who did not allow the critical Bomb Plot messages go to Pearl Harbor!” I exclaimed. “He must have known that. The court of inquiry was a white-wash to scapegoat Kimmel.”
 
“Eddie sat there, stunned at what he was hearing. He had been there at the beginning, and here at the end, the architect of the disaster was shouting that Kimmel ougt to be hung up by his fingernails.”
 
“I guess you can’t do anything against four stars,” I said thoughtfully, trying to imagine the scene.
 
“Well, Eddie got pretty fired up, too. He corrected Turner in mid-rant. He told the Admiral that he had been there as Kimmel’s intelligence officer, and he had been there in person.”
 
“So what happened?”
 
“Eddie said the Admiral charged across the deck and grabbed him by the throat. Eddie was putting his dukes up to pummel the Admiral when the skipper of South Dakota, Emmet Forrestal, got in between them and broke it up.”
 
I looked at Mac with amazement. The idea of decking a four-star Admiral made me admire Eddie Layton even more.
 
“Why on earth did Admiral Nimitz put up with Turner?” I said. “The man seems to have been unstable, and even if his war record was good, his poor judgment at the beginning is what brought on the disaster.”
 
Mac looked at me thoughtfully. “Admiral Nimitz always believed a man should get a second chance. Turner got his after he screwed up in War Plans so desperately before the war. The cover-up split a generation of senior officers and fueled a political and historical controversy over who was to blame for the defeat at Pearl Harbor.”
 
“Not to mention that fact that the wars over who controls Signal Intelligence have continued right down to this year. We even had different officer designators for the Cryppies and the Intelligence officers, and never the twain did meet until sixty-five years later.”
 
“I could have been either,” said Mac, gathering up his papers. “But of course, that is another story.”


Copyright 2010 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
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