(West Coast Guy, the Lovely Bea, and the indomitable Admiral Mac Showers in 2012, the year everything changed. The youngsters of World War II began their exit, and in the over the next few years they were all gone from this earth and on to others. We passed Arizona’s monument on the ferry each day going to work on Ford Island in Hawaii, and the memory of this day in that year were always with us in the rays of the rising or setting sun).

Editor’s Note: This tribute to the memory of that day in Pearl which President FDR told us would live in Infamy. Mac was our link to the people who worked in The Dungeon at Pacific Fleet Headquarters. He wasn’t there on Infamy Day, arriving a month or two later when the salvage crews were still working on the sunken battleships…he would say, “Remember.”

We were at Willow for the Weekly Happy Hour Update. We were usually there on the other days, but Admiral Showers tried to keep things reasonable for his age and the wheelchair. We were working on an unclassified oral history of momentous events soaked in the fine selection of Willow’s wine. “I have to drink the wine when I am out because I have to drive home,” I said.

The Willow’s front bar was raucous for a change, people seeming to have come past the first holiday of the new year with minimal damage. The usual suspects were there including the good, the bad and, well, Old Jim Champagne and I were there too.

“Any trips from here further away from The Madison than the Willow will feature a wheelchair. Then I can drink because I won’t have to walk!” Mac was in a festive mood, and dressed to the nines in a suit, nice dress shirt and a boldly patterned cravat.

“I hate to plow this ground again, but until they release your oral history I have to keep trying to get it straight. What was it like when you guys got back from Guam? You had plenty of points to qualify to go back to the continental mass of states. We called the mainland CONUS when we were out there.
”
“Sure. I had been ‘forward’ since early 1942. The problem was that everyone was promised their old jobs back after demobilization.”

“That was a good thing. People would like that right now.”

“Sure they would. But remember, I went into the Service after graduating from Iowa- so I had no job to go back to. I went back to being Eddie Layton’s deputy on the Pacific Fleet Staff.”

“It must have been surreal, that transition from total war to abrupt peace. What was it like?” I asked.

“We didn’t do much intelligence stuff, that is for sure. Mostly it was cleaning stuff up, like my buddy Wendel Furnas- “Wendy” – cleaning out the captured swords and guns and binoculars from the trophy room at the Joint Intel Center, Pacific Ocean Area.” He used the abbreviation we all understood- the JICPOA. “Plus, there was complete turmoil with the personnel turnover with the career guys. I didn’t know I was one of them then.”

“So, as a Lieutenant you were the acting Fleet Intelligence Officer?”

“Yes, I was. CAPT Layton- later Rear Admiral Layton- was called back to Washington to testify at the Congressional hearings about the Pearl Harbor attack, and how to apportion blame for the disaster.”

“I thought the Navy and the Army already had their Boards of Inquiry right after the attack. Admiral Kimmel was relieved just before you got to Pearl in February of 1942.”

“Yes, and he never accepted the blame that they shoved on him. In fact, neither has his son, who is still fighting a rear-guard action to exonerate his father. I am in touch with him periodically.”

“I published some of his stuff in the Naval Intelligence Professionals Quarterly magazine when I was editor,” I said, taking a healthy swallow of Happy Hour white and adjusting the napkin on which I was writing. “There is new stuff out there even after all these years. Did you know that FDR had a recording device in the Oval Office?”

“No, but we all knew that those things existed long before Nixon and LBJ.”

“There is a new book out by Joe Persico. He says that the recordings were lost until 1978. There is supposed to be a wire recording from a few month before the attack in which the President discusses a letter to him from the Japanese, via a third party. The letter stated that if the U.S. Navy was pulled out of Wake, Midway and Pearl, the Japanese would consider that as a confidence-building gesture that FDR would not screw with them in the Western Pacific.”

Mac pursed his lips in response. “That sounds like the misunderstanding about how America’s sphere of influence in the Far East did not include Korea. If Persico is right, the Japs were drawing a line around the limits of their ambition.” He took a sip of red wine and smiled.

“The presence of the Fleet at Pearl was key. Remember, the battleships were moved to Hawaii from California in order to send a message to Tokyo. If we withdrew our naval forces from Wake, Midway and Pearl Harbor, the government of Japan would consider such a move a signal that the U.S. would not contest Japanese ambitions in the Pacific.”

“Kimmel was not informed about that letter, or the Japanese Bomb Plot messages which were sent to Tokyo. They tracked the exact moorings of the ships in the harbor.”

Mac nodded. “If those stray bits of intelligence had been available, it would very likely have changed what Joe Rochefort thought.”

“What do you mean, Sir?”

“Well, I wasn’t there, but one of the reasons that Joe worked so hard was that he felt he should have done better on predicting the attack at Pearl. That is why the second attack on Pearl was so astonishing.”

“That was the night attack by the two Japanese flying boats that damaged a high school in 1942. You told me about that and it blew my mind. You said Joe was upset about it, and they tried to blame Jasper Holmes for writing a story about just that prior to the War in the Saturday Evening Post.”

“There were some interesting moments,” said Mac, looking off into space, or at the Lovely Miss Bea, I couldn’t tell. We all preferred looking at her.

“Elliot Carlson talks about Joe and the hour-and-a-half meeting he had with Kimmel before the attack, down in the dungeon where you worked at the Shipyard.”

“I have talked to Elliott dozens of times. I think he might be a little harsh on Joe. His guys at that time had not broken any of the Japanese naval codes. They were basing their analysis of IJN Fleet movements on traffic analysis alone, since they could not recover the text of the messages, only information from the headers.”

“I would like to talk about that in more detail,” I said, putting down my pen and reaching for my wallet.

“It is all conjecture, since neither Elliott nor I were there. But I do know that if all the intelligence had been passed to Joe at Pearl, there is no question that Kimmel would have been more ready than he was.”

“Wish we could ask the questions,” I said, a bit wistfully, looking at graceful Liz-with-an-S as she walked down the bar with another Bud long-neck for Old Jim.

“That is why oral history is so important. It is a shame mine is classified, and I recorded 28 hours of it. Maybe they will release it while I am still alive.” He slid to his feet from his chair at the bar. “I will talk to you tomorrow.”

“I am looking forward to it, Sir.”

I stuffed the napkins with the notes in my suit jacket pocket. And looking at them on this morning, the years fall away to this day 13 years ago, talking about another day ten years before I was born. Eighty four years ago, this morning.

Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra
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