The Jersey Brothers

by Sally Mott Freeman

  At Guam, Bill was greeted by his old friend Chuck Barber, Admiral Spruance’s flag secretary. The two men had not seen each other since their late-night meeting with the Fifth Fleet’s chief surgeon aboard the USS New Mexico. After discussing Bill’s classified delivery, he was off to Washington, DC.

  THE OPPORTUNITY TO RETURN to Washington should have provided a happy, if brief, family reunion for Bill and his wife and children. But Romie and the children were in Nova Scotia, and Benny was away on a multiplant inspection tour. Pressing questions regarding Barton that Bill had hoped to resolve would have to wait.

  His family’s absence may have felt like a reprieve, if an uncomfortable one. Bill had changed since going to sea, and not just in terms of new gray hairs, the doubling of his Lucky Strike habit, or even the new lines creeping across his forehead from a constantly furrowed brow. Between ill health, a frustrating struggle to find Barton, and sequential, increasingly violent amphibious campaigns, Bill’s time-honored optimism was flagging. Perhaps he wasn’t ready for that to be detected by those who knew him best. Like Larry Darrell in Maugham’s The Razor’s Edge, Bill had been altered by war in ways he was only beginning to understand himself.

  “Sixteen hundred Pennsylvania Avenue,” Bill instructed the driver as they pulled away from hot, dusty Bolling Field.

  Returning here for the first time in two years, Bill indulged a deferred moment of grief. The absence of President Roosevelt struck first, but also missing was Mrs. Roosevelt’s warm greeting and concerned inquiries about his family. As he turned corner after corner in the familiar manse, he absorbed the absence of one White House colleague after another—all departed following FDR’s death in April and the abrupt arrival of the Truman administration.

  Gone were the old reliables who had taught him his White House knots—Grace Tully, Steve Early, Admiral Brown—along with so many other ghosts of Roosevelt’s tight-knit White House staff. Despite the warm hero’s welcome Bill received from butler Alonzo Fields and switchboard operator Hacky Hackmeister, there were few other familiar faces. As his footsteps echoed along the black-and-white harlequin hallways, he belatedly mourned the passing era.

  Bill understood his delivery had to travel via the most secure of conduits, an important consideration when Admiral Turner assigned him the task. The materials he carried had a higher classification than “Most Secret.” The term “Ultra” was rarely spoken aloud, and documents carrying that designation were usually destroyed following eyes-only reviews by select officials. His rigorous White House training in the absolute primacy of their security made him the ideal delivery boy.

  But what were President Truman’s habits for receiving classified enemy intercepts? Admiral Leahy’s method for getting these to President Roosevelt was to have Map Room naval aides personally present them twice a day. On many a morning, Bill had been the presenter while Roosevelt shaved in his bathroom. He would simply close the toilet seat, sit down, and read the secret digests aloud.

  The afternoon briefings had been held either in the Map Room or down the hall in Admiral McIntire’s office. There Roosevelt either read or was read the material while McIntire massaged his withered legs or packed his chronically congested sinuses with a cocaine-based antihistamine. Regardless of where he was, Roosevelt was always keenly interested in these briefings, sometimes even asking to read the individual decryptions on which they were based.

  The intelligence value of these intercepts was so high that Bill had no reason to suspect Admiral Leahy had discontinued sharing them with President Truman. But with Leahy and Truman both now at Potsdam, there were only two secure methods for getting them the sensitive materials. The first was via the White House Map Room encoding machine (ECM), which transmitted to a receiving unit in the traveling map room that accompanied the president. The second was via a locked, specially keyed mail pouch, in which pressing documents were assembled daily at the White House and dispatched by air to President Truman and Admiral Leahy.

  Using the Map Room ECM presented at least two drawbacks: not only were the documents of the most sensitive nature, but also they were likely too lengthy to be encoded verbatim. Map Room watch-officer procedure for conveying the import of long documents was to distill them to a page or less, which in this case Bill feared might result in critical omissions. That concern was exacerbated by the fact that a very new trainee was currently manning the Map Room: Bill’s former watch officers, the seasoned George Elsey and Frank Graham, and Truman’s new naval aide, James Vardaman Jr., had all gone to Potsdam.

  Vardaman, a Missouri banker and political operative with a brief wartime reserve commission, inspired little confidence as an intelligence officer. Moreover, just before departing for Potsdam, he had hastily recruited a St. Louis confidant, an attorney named Clark Clifford, to cover the Map Room in his absence. While Bill had no specific objections to the initiate Clifford, this was a far cry from the exacting recruitment protocols of 1942 that he had painstakingly put in place. In any case, this was not a mission to risk entrusting to a novice trainee with scant military background.

  So he decided on the air dispatch option and addressed it to Admiral Leahy’s attention. It would be in his hands at Potsdam by the next morning. Regardless of who logged the pouch at the other end, Bill knew that Admiral Leahy would find this intelligence of seminal interest and that he had the final say on what—and in what order—was placed before the president. Bill then delivered his final copy to the Pentagon, presumably to Admiral King’s attention, and headed back to the airfield.

  WHILE BILL NODDED ON and off on his long return journey to Manila, confirmation of the altered Kyushu defense picture was already shaking things up on the ground. At the Pentagon, a memorandum was prepared by the Joint War Planning Committee—the staff arm of the Joint Chiefs—suggesting alternative recommendations:

  [T]he possible effect upon the Olympic operations of this build-up and concentration is such that . . . commanders in the field should review their estimates of the situation, reexamine objectives in Japan as possible alternates to Olympic, and prepare plans for operations against such alternate objectives.

  MacArthur was furious, particularly given the source of the information: his own intelligence operation. In an attempt to discredit his intelligence chief General Willoughby, MacArthur replied:

  I am certain . . . that the Japanese potential reported to you . . . is greatly exaggerated . . . I do not, repeat do not, credit the heavy strengths reported to you in southern Kyushu. There should not, repeat not, be the slightest thought of changing the Olympic operation. The plan is sound and will succeed. Throughout the Southwest Pacific, intelligence has pointed to greatly increased enemy forces. Without exception this buildup has been found to be erroneous.

  With all evidence so irrefutably to the contrary, MacArthur’s emphatic statement gave even his supporters pause, some already aware of MacArthur’s potential for mendacity. General Marshall had recently confided to War Secretary Stimson that MacArthur “is so prone to exaggerate and so influenced by his own desires, that it is difficult to trust his judgment.” But none ever said so publicly, so enormous was MacArthur’s popularity and perceived importance to American morale in wartime.

  Bill’s first return leg concluded at an Oakland airfield on Monday evening, August 6. His next flight wasn’t scheduled to depart until August 8. Before making for the officers’ quarters on the Presidio, he telephoned a few friends in the area, hoping to avoid spending the next two days alone. With luck, he reached a law school classmate who invited him to lunch in downtown San Francisco the next day. Bill would be very impressed by their fellow diner, the friend said, and gave him directions to the Bohemian Club at the northeast corner of Post and Taylor Streets. They certainly had plenty to discuss, didn’t they?

  The reference was lost on Bill, who had been in the air during the White House’s climactic announcement on the Pacific War’s climactic event. And due to the three-hour time difference, the report was in none of t
hat day’s West Coast papers. But by the time Bill reached the assigned San Francisco street corner for lunch on August 7, he was up to speed on the biggest war news since Pearl Harbor.

  President Truman himself had issued the statement: that on August 6 the United States had exploded an atomic bomb over a city named Hiroshima, “a major quartermaster depot and port of embarkation for the Japanese. In addition to large military supply depots, it manufactured ordnance, mainly large guns and tanks, and machine tools, and aircraft-ordnance parts.”

  Like the rest of the country, Bill was surprised. He could only make educated guesses as to this bomb’s impact on the war or its relationship to his very recent mission to the White House. At first reading, it was hard to imagine a weapon of exponentially greater power than those he witnessed in the withering bombardment of Saipan, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa. But one of the West Coast accounts claimed that this single bomb was “equal to the load of 2,000 B-29s and more than 2,000 times the blast power of what previously was the world’s most devastating bomb.”

  He also learned that President Roosevelt had appointed a commission back in 1939 to investigate use of atomic energy for military purposes. Suddenly Bill wondered anew: Could this have been the meaning behind Roosevelt’s parting comment to him regarding a peace conference? “Well, son, I’m not sure there will ever be one.”

  Bill combed the morning newspapers for details ahead of his luncheon. The August 7, 1945, San Francisco Chronicle could only speculate on its impact:

  JAPAN HIT BY ATOM BOMB—MIGHTIEST WEAPON IN HISTORY! TOKYO ADMITS HEAVY DAMAGE

  Associated Press WASHINGTON, August 6—

  The most terrible destructive force ever harnessed by man—atomic energy—is now being used against Japan by the United States. The Japanese face a threat of utter destruction and their capitulation may be greatly speeded up . . . The existence of this great new weapon was announced personally in a statement by President Truman, released by the White House at 11:15 Eastern Standard Time.

  With newspapers tucked under his arm, Bill entered the Bohemian Club beneath its Shakespeare-inspired motto, “Weaving Spiders Come Not Here”—intended to discourage business or political conversation. He located his luncheon party in a wood-paneled dining room adorned with blinking mahogany owls. It turned out Bill recognized both men; the surprise addition was former president Herbert Hoover—an apparent fellow Bohemian. Here, finally, was a bit of news he could share with his mother that would meet unequivocal approval.

  Given the august company and the day’s headlines, the diners’ conversation was lively from the start, if strictly out of compliance with the club’s motto. Prognostications on the bomb’s power and impact on Hiroshima led the way, followed by guesses as to its impact on the war. Could an invasion of Japan now be avoided? Hoover surprised the table with his remarkably detailed understanding of homeland invasion logistics as well as its potential casualty yield. How this one-term, extremely unpopular Republican president was so thoroughly well informed on the topic was a mystery to his luncheon companions.

  Conversation then turned to conjecture on the new weapon’s chemical properties. Hoover, who had something of a science background, pulled out his engraved gold pen and began scratching out periodic table configurations and isotopic ratios for uranium on a “BC” engraved napkin. He also hazarded a few guesses on the chain of reactions necessary for nuclear fission. The busy calculations ran over onto the linen tablecloth, which visibly irritated their waiter. In any case, by the arrival of coffee, the diners agreed on one thing: if this terrible new weapon could expedite the end of the war, it would be well worth the reported devastation.

  ON THE AFTERNOON OF August 8, another uncomfortable air transport lumbered off an Oakland runway bearing Bill on the next-to-last leg of his five-day odyssey; a distance of 5,800 miles. The mid-Pacific dot that was Guam was growing fatter and greener as they lowered toward the island’s airfield—when something unusual caught Bill’s attention. Against Apra Harbor’s deep blue waters, otherwise stocked with gunmetal-gray warships, a zinc-white vessel drew the eye like a splash of paint on dress blacks. A hospital ship was making anchor.

  A phalanx of nurses and hundreds of sailors hovered near the mooring, and a long queue of stocky ambulances with red crosses on their roofs stretched beyond the bend in the road. Bill looked on with a sense of dread as the USS Tranquility’s crew secured her lines. With no Pacific battles raging at the moment, what could this spectacle mean?

  He was soon to learn that the line of stretchers being handed down Tranquility’s gangway carried surviving Indianapolis crew members. Out of a crew of 1,199, these were the 316 lucky survivors of four days in shark-infested waters.

  After its top secret delivery of the first atomic bomb to awaiting pilots on Tinian Island, Indianapolis had sailed south, stopped briefly at Guam, then set out for Leyte, another 1,350 miles. Traveling without escorts or shipboard sonar, the storied cruiser was defenseless against a Japanese submarine lurking halfway between the Philippines and Guam. In the dead of night, it had fired two torpedoes into Indianapolis, cutting the ship in half. She sank almost immediately. CINCPAC’s forward headquarters at Guam was in a collective state of shock that the one-time Fifth Fleet flagship could have gone missing, unreported, for so long. Bill drew no closer to the scene after he landed. His threshold for absorbing the death of friends had long since been reached.

  By the time he completed his seventeen-thousand-mile odyssey and reported back to Admiral Turner in Manila, alternatives to Olympic were already under consideration, despite General MacArthur’s vigorous objections. Bill’s delivery to Washington had, he believed, helped bring about the desired result.

  Yet next steps in the Pacific were anything but clear. Despite the dropping of a second atomic bomb on August 9—on Mitsubishi Steel and Arms Works at Nagasaki on the island of Kyushu—Allied firebombing of mainland Japan had continued apace. And reluctantly redeployed troops from the European theater were still arriving by the thousands in Manila for retraining against a very different enemy.

  Even after the stunning devastation conferred by two atomic bombs, Japan had not communicated any intention to surrender. It was the Japanese military, not her emperor or diplomats, who were running the war, and they had shown no inclination for retreat. Accordingly, General Marshall made no change to his imminent vacation plans, evidence alone that Japan’s capitulation was not expected.

  But before the second week of August 1945 was out—a week that included Russia’s declaration of war against Japan and the Red Army’s entry into Manchuria—Japanese military leaders were finally brought to their knees by their own emperor. On August 14, Prime Minister Kantaro Suzuki notified the Allies of Emperor Hirohito’s issuance of an Imperial rescript accepting the unconditional surrender terms laid out in the Potsdam Declaration. The next day, Hirohito made a rare radio address to a weeping nation, announcing his decision.

  Developments proceeded at a sprint after that. Truman named General MacArthur supreme commander for Allied Powers (SCAP), in which capacity he would lead postwar occupation of a vanquished Japan. Not surprisingly, MacArthur’s crowning rankled navy feathers. But when Admiral Nimitz learned that MacArthur was also chosen to accept Japan’s surrender, he displayed a rare flash of anger. He growled that this appeared to give the army credit for winning the Pacific War and resolved not to attend the ceremony. Only when Navy Secretary Forrestal stepped in was the day saved for both Admiral Nimitz and navy posterity.

  Forrestal suggested that the surrender ceremony be held aboard a US Navy battleship, USS Missouri, in Tokyo Bay. Secretary Forrestal also ensured that the Pacific Fleet commander would cosign the surrender document with MacArthur. Thus assuaged, Nimitz flew to Tokyo Bay, arriving a day ahead of MacArthur. In this, deservedly, the commander in chief of the Pacific Fleet was the first to witness the most formidable display of naval power ever assembled in a single anchorage.

  Admiral Nimitz settled into temporary quarte
rs aboard the USS South Dakota and promptly convened a large group of war correspondents. He had a few things to say for—and on—the record. On the evening of August 29, Nimitz reminded the press of the pivotal role the US Navy had played throughout the Pacific conflict. Japan’s surrender came before any invasion was necessary, he said, because of “sea power, spearheaded by carrier-borne aircraft and an excellent . . . submarine force.”

  Nimitz said that US naval sea power had made the use of the atomic bomb possible by its seizing of mid-Pacific atolls from which planes could carry it to Japan. “Without sea power,” said Nimitz, “we could not have advanced at all.”

  AS THE WAR’S CLOSING events swirled around Manila, one in particular stood out for Bill Mott: the order to immediately free all prisoners of war. Better yet, Operation Swift Mercy decreed that prisoners being held in Japan must be transported to and processed in Manila before their repatriation to the United States. After enduring weeks of wildly fluctuating assumptions, Bill felt a shiver of expectation.

  Admiral Halsey promptly dispatched hospital ships and a special task force to Japan to retrieve Allied prisoners from camps previously located by aerial reconnaissance. Most were suffering from severe malnutrition and other illnesses, ranging from serious to critical. In late August, navy photos of the first ecstatic group of liberated prisoners—from Omori, a camp near Tokyo—appeared on the front page of nearly every major American newspaper.

  Preparations were under way in Manila to receive the tens of thousands of emaciated ex-POWs, with first arrivals expected by the third or fourth of September. Offices were set up to evaluate hospital and troopship rosters against uncorroborated grave-registration lists and lists of the missing. Infirmaries, dispensaries, and reception centers—and thousands of cots—were requisitioned and set up all over Manila.