(70th Anniversary of the Battle of Midway coins from USPACOM and COMFACFLT, with macadamia nuts and dried peaches. Photo Socotra.)
Kimo was in town on other business- important stuff, dealing with aging family and surgery and you can imagine how well attuned to his circumstances I was.
Except that I was on the other side of it, and not completely comfortable with the vantage. I mean, they say that when you are over the hill you pick up speed, but being confined to a rolling chair most of the day, it is uncomfortably apparent where you are going. And look out for the crest of the hill. It is all downward velocity from there.
Kimo came by for dinner. I offered- a little half-heartedly- to cook, since if I am braced between the counters of the little kitchen I have a reasonable confidence I can stay upright. He took pity on me, though, and graciously brought a feast from Vapiano, the restaurant on the ground floor of his hotel.
“Hope you like it,” he said, producing plastic containers from white upscale paper bags with little rope handles.
He gave me the blow-by-blow on events in Hawaii last weekend over a fine smoky bottle of ’09 Centine Toscana with a bottle of Pellagrino mineral water, con gas.
It was a little surreal, being so continental: strawberry spinach insalada, tabouleh with just the right touch of basil and yoghurt, tiramisu ai mille limoni with delicate little clams. Of course, the irony of the Eastern Med cuisine coupled with the subject matter only heightened the conversation.
Sometimes people ask me where I am from, and Michigan was so long ago now that I just say: “From the Navy.”
Kimo is one of my favorites of the new generations. He has had a singular focus on Asia since his earliest days, and now he sits as the Assistant Chief of Staff to the Commander of the Pacific Fleet.
Just between us, we agreed to just call the place “CINCPACFLT,” the traditional name for the command before Uncle Don Rumsfeld got the vapors and decreed that only his boss was the “Commander in Chief,” and prohibited the use of the title by those of us little people who thought the command had actually won a war. Go figure.
Anyway, I was so dim as a junior officer that I thought being forward and operational was what counted. That gave me a 7th Fleet tour on Ma Midway, and then a follow-on in the wilds of Yongsan Garrison in Seoul, with a bonus five years on O’ahu at PACFLT and then at THIRD Fleet.
What a parade of characters from that time! There were irate Iranians, bellicose Koreans, militarist juntas and a resurgent Soviet Pacific Fleet presence that bristled with nuclear arms.
Around that time I wised up to the game and decided to be a careerist weeine. I was tired of the East Coast looking down on us Far East vagabonds. The further from Norfolk you were, I discovered, the more translucent your career became.
I got back to the East Coast, and ensured that I got a Med deployment under my belt so I could more effectively deal with the Norfolk Mafia who shuttled between the World’s Largest Naval Operating Base (NOB) and the hothouse of Naval District Washington.
Kimo did not do that. He has his standards, and they are high one. He had a single-minded fascination with the Far East, and he has had the coolest operational and staff tours to prove it. He is the current occupant of the chair in which our pal Mac sat years ago, and Jake later on, and of course where legendary Eddie Layton advised CINC Chester Nimitz on how to dismember the Empire of Japan.
Over the slowly diminishing level of wine, we were two old Asia hands again, talking about , talking about our favorite topic: the rise of the Dragon of the Middle Kingdom, and where America’s Navy was going to play in the strategic pivot back home to Asia.
It is heady stuff, considering how limited my horizon has been of late, and once dinner was shoveled aside, he showed me the pictures and video from the commemoration of the battle.
In the pictures, Mac looked indomitable. He of course is the only survivor of the CINCPACFLT staff that pierced the JN-25 Naval Code and enabled the courageous kids to smack the Japanese where they least expected it. Mac was not up to the ceremony, or better, he could have done the ceremony, but the air flight looked to be too much for him in the wheelchair.
I am with him. This was a real event, though, since it may be the last one to be held with vets on the island itself 800 miles northwest of Honolulu.
Kimo went. There were two other 90-somethings who were along for the ceremonies, one of them a still-ramrod straight Marine who had been on Midway Island when the battle occurred.
(Two hung-ho Goonies at Midway Island.)
There was a ceremony there, too, three hours by airplane to the place where the Fish and Wildlife Services now manages the United States strategic inventory of Gooney Birds. The pictures were fabulous, and the video Kimo captured of the memorial wreath laying in the lagoon’s tranquil waters off the pale white sand beaches made me a little misty.
Not as funny as the Gooney Bird who tracked him down with an implacable gaze, but that is another story.
Kimo is off for Seoul or Beijing, or Singapore or someplace. He is part of this strategic pivot to the East, and I am here to tell you, that Greatest Generation crap didn’t end with Mac.
They are still here. And we are damned lucky they are.
(Reverse of the commemorative coins. Photo Socotra.)
Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com