Editor’s Note: The pain incurred at the loss of an old friend dulls over time, but there is always something that will bring you up short with sudden regret. It was seventy years ago that the Emperor Of Japan gave up. Our Pal Mac Showers was at Chester Nimitz’s Forward Headquarters at Guam, chief of the Estimates Section that was helping to plan the invasion of the Home Islands. His private opinion was that Operation DOWNFALL would entail the death or wounding of a million young American men.
The picture above is how people felt about it in the States. It should be hauntingly familiar- it is the iconic sailor and nurse are the ones made famous in a photograph by Alfred Eisenstaedt tin Times Square in New York. This is a near-simultaneous image captured by Navy photojournalist Victor Jorgensen. As a Government employee working on Government time, his picture is in the public domain, and the estate of Mr. Eisenstaedt can’t bust me for violating their ownership rights.
The War was over. Everyone left alive would stay that way.
At least for a while.
I had hoped that I would celebrate the 70th anniversary of VJ Day- the final end of the most horrendous conflict in human history- with Mac at the Willow. By the time the next round number comes around for the observation, the survivors and veterans will be as sparse as the Civil War Drummer Boys of my youth. It didn’t work out that way. But at the last one for which we were together, he remembered.
He remembered for all of them.
(HMS King George V (41)- “Cagey Five”- enters Apra Harbor, Guam, with sailors manning the rail in August, 1945. Photo National Archive 80- G- 328942)
I picked up my pen after inhaling a deep draft of an impertinent white wine. “Now, where were we?”
Mac looked at me with a twinkle. “You never know where to start, do you? Why not at the beginning. That is a good place to start.”
“Nah,” I said. “I like to jump around. I think I might have ADD.”
“You think?” growled Old Jim.
“The alcohol helps,” I said. “What with the word that the Navy is going to start using breathalyzers on sailors when they come on the ship. It is ridiculous.”
“I heard that,” said Mac. “Would not have been popular in my day.” He took a sip of Bell’s, a fine golden lager out of Kalamazoo, Michigan. His duck tacos arrived on a rectangular white plate and he began to nibble on the dark morsels.
“It is like they want to make General Order Number One permanent,” I said indignantly. “You guys won World War II and you had a wine mess at the forward headquarters on Guam.”
“Yes, we did.”
“Well, let me ask you this. Your Boss Eddie Layton almost punched out Admiral Richmond Kelly Freaking Turner onboard the USS South Dakota at the end of the war. Turner was drunk onboard ship.”
“So was Eddie,” said Mac. “There was probably more alcohol flowing on that ship the night of the victory as ever was poured on a man-o-war. People used to ask me how I tolerated Eddie, but he was always OK with me.”
“That is an interesting cultural snap-shot,” I said. “What about Admiral Nimitz? Did he drink?”
“Never saw him do so,” said Mac. “He may have had a glass of wine with dinner, but he certainly wasn’t a booze-hound like some of them were.”
“Did you ever socialize with the Fleet Admiral?” I asked.
“Not really. Well, wait, there was one time.” He took a bite of duck and looked pensive.
“Was that on Guam?”
(Admiral Sir Bruce Fraser, Commander in Chief of the British Pacific Fleet. Photograph taken on board HMS Duke of York at Apia, Guam, 1945. Photo Imperial War Museum.)
Mac nodded. “Yep. Admiral Sir Bruce Fraser- F-R-A-S-E-R” he spelled out as I scribbled, “He brought HMS King George V into Apia to present Nimitz with the Order of the Bath.”
“Wow. Were you there for that?”
“Yes, I was. The Admiral sent out a note that anyone who had a set of dress whites could go out to King George V- Cagey Five, we called her- and attend the ceremony. I happened to have a set of whites, and I was included in the party. It was around August 12th, 1945, I think.”
“Did the Admiral drink at lunch?”
“Dunno. He and Fraser went to the Flag In-port Cabin, and the rest of us were in the wardroom with the Brit officer s . We had lunch, and then we drank all afternoon, and then through dinner.”
“That must have been pretty fun. I have gotten smashed on Canadian warships, the last time being at Fleet Week in San Francisco in ‘98. I miss a civilized wardroom.”
“This was on the way to not being so civilized, so we decided to get the boat and go back ashore. We were walking down the brow to board when we heard Cagey Five’s 1MC crackle to life. The Captain announced that the Imperial Japanese government had made a decision to honor the terms of the Potsdam Declaration.”
“What a moment,” I said in wonder.
“Yes indeed. It may not have been official, but we turned around and climbed back up and had more drinks in the wardroom before we finally went ashore to sleep it off. On the way we stopped to ask Colonel Purple, the crusty old senior Marine on the staff, if he had heard anything, and he said he hadn’t.”
”Wasn’t that the guy whose house you flooded when your car hit the fireplug out front?”
Mac smiled. “Yes, it was. He didn’t think much of the junior Navy officers.”
“That was funny. But as to the merriment, you were entitled to it,” I said. “It meant that everyone was going to live, and no one was going to have to die in the invasion of the Home Islands.”
“Everything changed. Everyone had a different reaction, and most just wanted to go home as fast as possible.”
“Except you.”
Mac nodded. “I didn’t have a job to go home to. I joined the Service right out of college. I was single. I liked the Navy.”
“It was a Navy that I remember, but is just a fading memory now.”
“I think you will be surprised by that. Any institution that has survived a couple centuries will probably survive what is going on now.”
“I hope so. I sure had fun in my Navy.”
“So did I. The next day we resolved to host the Brits ashore in thanks for the open bar in their wardroom on Cagey Five. Then they had us back. It went on, back-and-forth, for four days.”
“Sounds like fun,” I said, taking a sip of happy hour white from a glass that never seemed to get dry.
“It was. But by the time the actual surrender was announced by Hirohito on the 15th everyone had been partying for days. I went up to the club at Nimitz Hill to have a cocktail to commemorate the day.”
“Must have been wild,” I said.
Mac shook his head. “Nope. It was kinda funny. There was no one there. Too much merriment over the last four days, and no one came.”
“Not quite what I would have expected,” I said, putting two fingers across the side of my glass and winking at Liz-S.
“Well, that pretty much sums up the whole thing, in my experience,” said Mac. He dipped the last bit of duck in a dash of hoisin sauce, and happily popped it in his mouth.
Copyright 2015 Vic Socotra
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Twitter: @jayare303