{"id":29580,"date":"2010-08-14T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2010-08-14T03:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/WP-IMPORT\/2010\/08\/14\/seated-under-a-tree\/"},"modified":"2010-08-14T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2010-08-14T03:00:00","slug":"seated-under-a-tree","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/seated-under-a-tree\/","title":{"rendered":"Seated Under a Tree"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n


(Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, 1942, photo wiki commons via ?????)
<\/strong>
Jim filled my wineglass to the precise point in the Tulip where the air could mingle sufficiently with the ambient air to produce a delightful aroma while not encouraging the alcohol to evaporate. I was getting to the point that I did not care, pleasantly warm in all my appendages, but the ritual was a comfort.
\u00a0
Mac contemplated another Virgin Mary, which could only evaporate the essence of tomato and olive, and decided he had enough vegetables for the day. I knew we were about to draw to the end of this session at Willow, so I underlined the notes about Pearl getting surprised again- or better, warnings ignored- and asked the question.
\u00a0
\u201cThey found the Admiral seated under a tree, from what I have read.\u201d
\u00a0
Mac nodded, shifting gears from his earliest months in Hawaii to nearly a year later. A fresh fish in the Dungeon basement under Joe Rochefort and Jasper Holmes to a seasoned analyst, thousands of dittoed cross-indexed files, looking at other fresh fish arriving each day with veteran eyes.
\u00a0
\u201cYes,\u201d he said. \u201cThere are conflicting reports about it. Some say the initial Army patrol to the crash site found Isoroku Yamamoto still in his seat, very peaceful looking, holding his kitana- his sword- by the hilt. Thrown clear of the wreckage of the Betty bomber, they say. Other accounts had him with a couple flesh wounds. But he was dead, all right. Maybe shock.\u201d
\u00a0
\u201cThey didn’t try to recover the body?\u201d I asked with surprise.
\u00a0
\u201cThey sent a Navy patrol the next morning, at first light. There was a great deal of service deference. The Army connection was useful, though,\u201d Mac said, swirling the ice in the bottom of his highball glass. \u201cThe message notifying the local commands of Yamamoto\u2019s inspection visit was passed to the Army in a less secure code than JN-25, and the Japanese assumed that was the way we were able to intercept the flight. The kitana and the insignia of rank were missing by the time the Navy patrol got there. Someone got some great souvenirs, but they have never turned up.\u201d
\u00a0
\u201cI will look on eBay,\u201d I said. \u201cThis was April of 1943, right?\u201d
\u00a0
\u201cThe 18th,\u201d said Mac. \u201cBut we had been watching the traffic out of Rabaul very closely for months. We recovered all the traffic about the Combined Fleet moving its headquarters, and the comings and goings of fleet units in and out of Rabaul. The Harbormaster was a big help to us. He was meticulous about reporting everything that moved, and the merchant ships were on a lower-level cipher system which enabled us to recover the unit identities for some of the combatants.\u201d
\u00a0
\u201cKeep Cool, Fool, it\u2019s Rabaul.\u201d I recited the old rhyme like a modern rapper. The Admiral smiled.
\u00a0
\u201cIt certainly was, then.\u201d
\u00a0
\u201cSo, I understand there was a relationship between Eddie Layton and Yamamoto. His book recounts a bridge game \u201d
\u00a0
\u201cThere certainly was, but he told me it was poker, not bridge. The Navy established a Japanese language program way back in 1910. Under the provisions of the plan, two officers a year who had completed five years of sea duty were sent on independent duty to learn the language. Eddie was sent in 1929, after serving his time on the four-stack destroyer Stack<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cJoe Rochefort was there at the same time, right?\u201d
\u00a0
The Admiral nodded. \u201cThat is where they met for the first time, and that highlights one of the lies that the Redmans spread, that Joe was not a qualified linguist. He most certainly was.\u201d
\u00a0
\u201cEddie actually knew Yamamoto, didn\u2019t he? That makes the whole thing sort of creepie.\u201d
\u00a0
\u201cWe didn\u2019t look at it that way. After all, \u201cTerrible\u201d Turner had his picture taken with Yamamoto when his ship called there. Eddie actually knew him pretty well. Yamamoto had participated in the Japanese equivalent of our language program, since we both knew there would ultimately be a show-down in the Pacific, and some familiarity would be useful in killing each other. Eddie first came in touch with the Admiral when he was Naval Vice-minister, and the search for Amelia Earhart was going on.\u201d
\u00a0
\u201cDid the Japanese kill her and Wylie Post?\u201d I asked.
\u00a0
\u201cWon\u2019t ever be known, for sure. Certainly they were very defensive about what they were doing in the former German colonies, pouring all that concrete.\u201d
\u00a0
\u201cEddie and Isoroku were on a first-name basis. He told me they attended an evening of kabuki, which Eddie loved. Yamamoto seemed to appreciate Eddie\u2019s interest in the cultural life of Japan, and mostly they stayed away from business.\u201d
\u00a0
\u201cWasn\u2019t there a strict prohibition on the Americans doing anything like intelligence collection.\u201d
\u00a0
\u201cAbsolutely. The Japanese militarists were clamping down hard on security, and placed whole distracts off limits to foreigners. But Yamamoto was always correct. He hosted a duck-netting party in the late thirties- maybe 1938- for the foreign attaches. It was one of those Japanese things where the outcome is ordained, and there will be duck sukyaki whether everyone got a duck or not.\u201d
\u00a0
I referred to my notes. \u201cEddie\u2019s book says it was three rubbers of bridge after dinner with the Admiral, and he won all three. They were drinking \u201cJohn Begg whiskey in square ceramic jugs.\u201d It was Johnny Walker Black in my days in Yokosuka that they liked.\u201d
\u00a0
Mac shook his head. \u201cI always heard from Eddie that it was poker. He loved the game, and he was a skilled player and usually won. I should tell you about his mission in China to play cards with the aircrew of the Warlord Chang Hsueh-liang\u2019s Ford Tri-motor to get intelligence on his travel itinerary.\u201d
\u00a0
\u201cI would like to hear about that, but for now, the story about Eddie and the Admiral seems like it has a real personal element.\u201d
\u00a0
\u201cI suppose it did. I can only imagine what he really thought when Jasper called him on the secure line from the Dungeon and told him what we had. Jasper brought me the original message and told me to plot it out to see if it made sense, and our decrypts of the place names were correct.\u201d
\u00a0<\/p>\n


(Rabaul Strategi Area. Chart Courtesy Wikicommons.)
<\/strong>
\u201cNTF131755 was the message,\u201d I said, peering at my notes, \u201cand it was addressed to the commanders of Base Unit No. 1, the 11th Air Flotilla, and the 26th Air Flotilla.\u201d
\u00a0
\u201cYes, it was copied by our Hypo personnel and two other stations in the Pacific.\u201d He remembered it almost verbatim, and recited it:
\u00a0
\u201cOn 18 April CINC Combined Fleet will visit RYZ, something something, In accordance with the following schedule:
\u00a0
Depart RR at 0600 in a medium attack plane escorted by 6 fighters. Arrive RYZ at 0800. Proceed by minesweeper to somewhere else arriving at 0840.
\u00a0
At each of the above places, commander in chief will make a tour of inspection and at unknown location he will visit the sick and wounded but current operations should continue.\u201d
\u00a0
\u201cThat sounds like there were a lot of holes in it.\u201d
\u00a0
\u201cYes, but Dick Emory managed to identify some of the outlying fields, and things began to come together. Jasper knew it was significant, and after he talked to Eddie, he was told to bring it with the plot I did to the Headquarters at the Sub Base.\u201d
\u00a0
\u201cDidn\u2019t Justice John Paul Stevens work on the message?\u201d I asked. \u201cThat is a remarkable part of his biography.\u201d
\u00a0
\u201cThere were a lot of lawyers in the intelligence billets,\u201d said Mac. \u201cThey had the sort of skills that Forest Sherman was looking for when he set up the air intelligence program. As far as Stevens being part of the decryption team, he was in Estimates with me, which is when we used to go to lunch at the Makalapa BOQ. But I don\u2019t remember him being there at the time. I could be wrong.\u201d
\u00a0
\u201cYou don\u2019t seem to be wrong about much,\u201d I said.
\u00a0
\u201cThere are some things that just need time to get straight,\u201d said Mac firmly. \u201cAnd what happened next just gets to the point.\u201d
\u00a0
I sighed. This was going to take another glass of wine, and my notes were starting to soak up the moisture from the base of the tulip glass. I waved to Jim at the bar, and signaled for reinforcements.<\/p>\n

Copyright 2010 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
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