(The Alexander Young Building on Bishop Street in downtown Honolulu. The place was on the register of Historic Buildings until it was torn down).

Sorry- I have been telling you stories from the lovely islands, including the one that is (so far) incomplete. I mean it is complete, has been for 32 years, and the miracle of the birth of my first son was written down years ago. Recreating it in digital format is an exercise in typing, and wincing a bit at the way I handled my words when I was half my current age.

Being in Hawaii again, after all those years away, has caused me to fall periodically into a tropical reverie. I will complete the exercise in typing- I can do that later in the day- but the outcome is not in doubt and Hawaii bit me on the ass again last night at Willow.

OK, OK, I admit it. I am tired to the bone. Completing the 15th travel segment of the odyssey that included Hawaii has run me just about completely out of gas, but Brian dropped me a note and said he had run across some stuff that might be of interest, based on the experience of interviewing Mac Showers over the last decade. I agreed, and we arranged to meet up at the bar for a drink and a chat about what he had found.

Brian and I used to work together in the Pentagon, and his lovely wife was in uniform as one of our cadre of Naval Intelligence Officers. Brian’s Dad had been a Navy Chief, assigned to the 14 Naval District’s Counter-intelligence unit. He had a background at Hawaii Telephone, and part of his duties included conducting phone taps targeting likely saboteurs and stuff like that.

(CAPT Jasper Holmes at his desk in Station HYPO during the war. Photo USN).

Brian was interested in the matter of his involvement with the detailed assessment of beach composition and gradients. That is how he came to be hooked up with the legendary Jasper Holmes, Mac’s Boss in the Estimates Shop of the Joint Intelligence Center- Pacific Ocean Area (JIC-POA).

You will also recall that it was Jasper whose last-minute cancellation of Mac’s orders to ride USS Wahoo’s last war cruise with legendary skipper “Mush” Morton saved his life. Wahoo did not come back.

I was drinking white wine, which I started to do years ago because I don’t like it very much and it tends to slow me down, but that either isn’t working any more, or I was more fatigued from the driving than I thought.

Owlishly, I mentioned that our departed pal Mac Showers had met with the District Intelligence Officer, a hot-shot who wore a brace of pearl handled pistols in view of the clear and imminent threat from Japanese nationals in Honolulu. Or something.

He was a hot dog, of course, and an attorney in the islands when in private life.

The Military had taken over the Alexander Young Building, a magnificent structure on Bishop Street downtown, not far from the Aloha Tower and the piers where the Matson Liners tied up. Designed by California architect George W. Percy in the Second Renaissance style, it opened as a 192-room hotel in 1903, two years after the fabulous Moana Hotel opened as the first hotel on the Waikiki Beach.

(The original Moana Hotel, the first of the grand hotels on the Waikiki Beach. Photo Moana Westin Surfrider).

Owner Alexander Young made a fortune on the place, and later also owned the famed Moana as well as the original pink-stone Royal Hawaiian. Young was known as “the father of the hotel industry in Hawaii.”

The Navy was also not shy about taking the place over- the Roof Garden on top of the Alexander Young Building was one of Honolulu’s most fashionable social venues. After the war, the building was converted to commercial offices and eventually ripped down the year I reported for duty as CINCPACFLT IN 1981.

Anyway, when Mac walked over to the Alexander Young Building from the YMCA where he had a room to report for duty, he was ushered by a Petty Officer into an office where he met an officer with his feet up on the desk. Mac was surprised to see a pair of pearl-handled pistols on his belt, like Honolulu was the Wild West.

The officer grilled Mac on his operational experience in CI work. ENS Showers gave his resume honestly- he had completed the basic CI course in Seattle and had no practical experience at all.

The man with the six-shooters dismissed him, saying “I have got no use for you in my line of work. I do have a requirement to provide an officer to some special activity nobody talks about out at the Naval Station, so that is where I am going to send you.”

Brian’s eyes opened. His father had talked about an officer who wore a brace of pistols, and he was a jerk. One night when busy tapping phones, the gun-toting Counter-intelligence officer showed up at his work-space in the Young Building and began pounding on the door to gain access.

Brian’s Dad had been told that his mission was highly sensitive and that no one was to be given access. So the Chief did what he needed to do, which was to say “No admittance.”

There was some shouting and blustering and the LT insisted that there was going to be hell to pay for this insubordinate behavior. Brian took a sip of his beer and said his Dad never heard another word about the incident.

That got us to talking about who the LT might have been, and his greater significance in the history of the Pacific War.

Captain Irving H. Mayfield was the 14th Naval District Intelligence Officer, in charge of all intelligence matters in the Hawaiian Sea Frontier, and not a Counterintelligence specialist, so it wasn’t him. Besides, Mayfield later made RADM, and I suspect he was a straight-laced Annapolis type, unlikely to strap on wild-west pistols.

Based on my research this morning- which has thrown me completely off balance, I think the man with the Pearl Handled pistols might have been William B. Stephenson, Lieutenant, U. S. Naval Reserve, who was recalled to duty in June of 1941 and assigned in July to be head of Section B7J, which, in the Naval Intelligence parlance of the time, was the Japanese Counter-Espionage Desk of the D IO.

The decision of Bill Stephenson to send Mac away might have been one of the most significant intelligence developments of the War.

I am kicking myself for not getting better notes from Mac while I had the chance. I guess I thought he was eternal. Bill Stephenson is lost to history, but the course he put Mac on certainly changed Naval Intelligence, and may have impacted Victory in the Pacific.

All because Mac had no practical experience, and Stephenson had no idea with the Fleet Radio Unit- Station HYPO- actually did for a living.

Mac was even less qualified for that, but as it turned out, he had a certain aptitude for the job.

I will get back on track tomorrow. I swear. But there is something about the war years in Hawaii that have a real hook in me, almost as real as the birth of a first child.

Copyright 2015 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303