We are at an interesting time in the Production Cycle this morning. It caused some discontinuity as the New Week edges toward the middle. There is normally a lurch toward the Weather Report for this week in an attempt to stay organized. Those things are supposed to rouse a little mirth in the general readership, since the concept of “weeks” as actionable chunks of the calendar is purely subjective.
The good news? “A Little Traveling Music” is still in manuscript format, but there have been earnest discussions about how to wrap some humor into an account of how “Official Government Travel” used to work at your expense. We talked to Christine, who has provided the final copies of the “Literary Trifecta” as those three volumes went to press. That was a little congested time for the Writer’s Section, since it involved the decade of discussions with Rear Admiral Mac Showers.
Mac had been in charge of the Estimates Section at the Pacific Fleet Forward Headquarters on Guam in 1945. He was responsible for briefing Admiral Nimitz on the things “that were likely to happen” on fluid days in a lively war. One of the more interesting sessions was about providing the Admiral the consequences of the use of the highly secret Bombs to bring peace to the Pacific. Mac was comfortable that they delivered the accurate assessment, and that was that use of the secret weapon would actually save both American and Japanese lives. “Cocktails with the Admiral” was the manuscript that resulted.
To reinforce the conclusions made in a briefing room on Guam nearly eighty years ago about weapons of mass destruction we dug out another old narrative that held a great sea story. It was the tale of Ed Gilfillen’s shanghai duty assignment as the last XO of the last Japanese battleship, IJN Nagato. Ed had been in Japan as a member of the scientific and intelligence team assigned to dig up promising bits of new Japanese technology left over from the savage conflict.
What emerged was a book called “Voyage to the CROSSROADS.” Ed had been a pal of one of our Uncles, and Ed had a problem. He had a great story to tell, but parts of it were still classified when Ed discovered he had a serious melanoma from his proximity to the atomic blasts of the Operation CROSSROADS tests conducted immediately after the war. The Uncle promised Ed that his story would be told. That promise was fulfilled last year, though Ed and Uncle were long gone from this world.
Their stories were worthy for re-telling, and there are other ones from that period that are candidates for the “Ready List” in the manuscript queue. One of those came from the recollections about our national security apparatus and The Mob. The story had some impact when parts of it were revealed some twenty or thirty years ago. Rear Admiral Tom Brooks had a lucid series of memories about how the underworld of New York City provided some of the strong-arm expertise to the Office of Strategic Services, the World War Two predecessor to the CIA.
Some of that story wound up in another one. that attempted to encapsulate some of the history about the National Security Act of 1947 that rolled out an independent Air Force, the CIA and NSA from the wreckage of an ad hoc assortment of commands and people who had won the greatest struggle in human history. That manuscript was almost complete as “The Lucky Bunch,” named for Charles “Lucky” Luciano, a New Yorker of Italian descent who learned the trade in the Five Points Gang, and wound up establishing the modern organized crime network in the United States that exists and operates today.
That story was not nearly as clear as it could have been, and there were more tidbits flying around about relationships between New York and DC organizations involved in all sorts of inappropriate activities. Recent events have shown spotlights on some of it, and work had to be renewed on research. So, as the manuscript for an otherwise only mildly controversial book is poised on the end of the assembly ramp for release, we had to think for a moment about what is coming next.
The Snake Ranch Project is one of those things that has followed us around almost as long as Ed Gilfellin’s tale and with the same sort of imperative. It represents the accidental start to a career in Naval Intelligence. We had been interested in seeing more parts of the world than we had run into, and joining the Sea Service seemed a way to do it. The orders to USS Midway seemed to meet that requirement. Midway (at the time) was home-ported in Japan and the orders were for two years duration. Included in those two years were visits to the Philippines, Australia and Keyna as well as operational tensions with Iran.
There was a complicating factor though. Most Navy orders for incoming new officers were for three years, which with training and travel completed the hour year obligation of service. Due to the distances and hardship involved, orders to Midway were only two years. In order to “even things up,” our assignment officer at the Bureau of Personnel (BUPERS) offered a one-year assignment in Korea.
That turned into a year that lasted 14-months in the midst of a Military coup d’etat in Seoul.
Seeing the World on those three sequential years included trips on The Night Train to Nairobi in East Africa, a variety of intimacies in Perth, West Australia, others in Subic Bay, and then a dramatic transition to the Night of the Generals and the Kwang-Ju Massacre.
That was a time when computers were still new and triplicate forms were used to provide “carbon” and “file” copies to normal correspondence. That limited distribution to an even smaller group that provided a certain anonymity. Like the “Last Cruise,” this manuscript was created on sheets of annoying thin paper with the scars at the top where the copies were separated. They were what we called “letters” compiled in a folder kept under the little desk in the six-man hooch on South Post, in the Yongsan Military Garrison in Seoul.
It was interesting to transition from planning military operations against Iran on a warship to observing Korean military operations against students at Chon-nam National University. That uprising began after students were “fired upon, killed, raped, and beaten by the South Korean military.” That would have been bad enough, but the North Koreans had just killed two American officers at the DMZ over what was called “The Tree Chopping Incident.” Things were tense regardless of which direction we were looking.
We could go on, but this is a morning piece and we will leave it with that. The cover attached is only a draft of what will eventually bind the volume. It but harnesses the picture of the American soldier assigned to guard the south end of the Bridge of No Return. The North Korean doing the same duty for his government at the northern end of the bridge. We saw him later, peering in through the window at the Joint Security Area, fully prepared to take us out when we walked slowly across the conference table. On the northern side.
That was our first trip to North Korea. We just finished an account of the second one, but we are trying to stay a little organized. Stay with us on this one. It will be fun!
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