24 After three years of reading about her brilliant exploits in the Pacific, crowds gather as victorious Enterprise returns stateside after the war. More than a quarter million visitors toured the Big E during Navy Day festivities in New York City the week of her return.
25 Shusuke Wada listens to charges against him at the Japanese War Crimes Tribunal in Tokyo. The despised interpreter’s life sentence for inhumane treatment of war prisoners was commuted after the end of Allied occupation of Japan. His boss, Davao Commandant Lieutenant Toshino, was convicted and executed for ordering the killing of war prisoners in his charge.
26 Conference delegate Bill Mott at the 1947 International Red Cross Convention in Stockholm. Here he helped draft the Geneva Convention’s new Article III, which put in place the strongest ever protections for prisoners of war. The measures were adopted by the Swiss Federal Council in 1949. To date, 196 countries, including Japan, are signatories.
27 The author’s parents before a White House dinner in the early 1950s.
28 Three Mott siblings (author far left) with cousin Barton Cross-Tierney and a new generation of Lilac Hedges dogs on the property’s south lawn. The photo was taken during a visit that ended abruptly after an emotional adult argument on the porch.
29 Author-bride with her father in the Bishop’s Garden of Washington National Cathedral before her marriage to John Freeman in 1996. Bill Mott passed away on All Saints’ Day in 1997 at the age of eighty-six.
Acknowledgments
When I stumbled upon my father’s White House correspondence files shortly after his death, I was shocked and thrilled in equal measure. How long, I wondered, had this historic cache—found stacked behind a cabinet in the rear of my parents’ attic—been up there? That discovery, along with a curled black-and-white photograph of the three brothers with “Christ School” written on the back, marked the beginning of this long journey. But this effort was emphatically not a solo quest; scores of people helped me along the way.
For their love, patience, and faith in this project, I am deeply grateful to the following people: my husband, John Freeman, who provided insightful commentary on more drafts than he may care to recall; my two sons, Christopher and Bobby Lawrence, for their early reads and unwavering support, and also my stepson Alexander Freeman for his uncanny ability to produce file cabinets out of thin air; to my siblings, Janie Mott Fritz, Adam Sutherland Mott, Diane Mott Davidson, Lucy Mott Faison, and Bill Mott Jr., and my cousins, Barton Cross-Tierney and Mara Mott Hodgson, for sharing their own memories and family archives; to my late brother-in-law, beloved Captain Tom Fritz, for his early feedback and accumulated trove of stories told him by my father and, as a former chief of staff at the Office of Naval Intelligence, his expert ability to interpret their high relevance; and to Bremen Schmeltz of Patagonia, Inc., attorneys Bob Lawrence and Mark Weeks, and translators Kayoko Morimitsu and Jennifer Connelly of the Tokyo office of Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliff LLP, for their invaluable assistance in translating Japanese documents.
Thanks also to my many-decade friend and Sweet Briar classmate, Megan Morgan, for her persistent faith, insightful comments, reliable wit and humor, and technical expertise in readying this manuscript for submission; to Major General Matthew Caulfield, USMC (Ret.), I offer a smart salute for his generous military review of an early draft, which greatly improved key sections on the US Marines and the amphibious campaign, and to both he and his wife, Patricia, for all those delightful and encouraging dinners at the Army Navy Club on Farragut Square. I am also indebted to the late Heno Hutson, Citadel graduate, US Marine, Christ School graduate and, later, its headmaster, for opening Christ School’s door to me and making key introductions—to Denis Stokes, director of Christ School’s External Affairs, and Paul Krieger, headmaster. These gentlemen, together with Mary Pope Maybank Hutson and Claire Dennison Griffith, provided valuable insight into Christ School’s history and culture.
Thanks, too, to the following individuals, who gave of their knowledge, resources, moral support, and time in so many different ways: Ron Parsons, USMC (Ret.), Grace Lourence Brunner, Ted and Diane Cadwaller, Elsie Zamora, Mike Rawl, Kathleen Kernisan, Ann Brinsmead, Leigh and Rick Leverrier, Liz Haile Hayes, Barbara Kafka, Al Leonard, Betty Jo Dominick, John Duff, Tad Tharp, Lynn O’Roarke Hayes, Anita McBride, former Chief of Staff to First Lady Laura Bush and board member, White House Historical Association, and to family friend Kevin Kinsella, at whose San Diego home I typed “The End” in front of a window overlooking the mighty Pacific.
My deep respect and gratitude are also due to PhD historians and Mott family history experts Cousin Margaret “Peg” Steneck and her husband, Nicholas Steneck; Judith and the late Duane Heisinger for sharing their painstaking research regarding the movement of navy prisoners of war in the Philippines; to Robert Granston, for filling in so many blanks, and to both he and his wife, Iris, for their gracious hospitality; to John Lukacs, for his superb research and book, Escape from Davao, and for introducing me to the late Colonel Jack Hawkins, USMC, a Davao escapee; to Dee Grashio, widow of another escapee, Sam Grashio; to the late Roger Mansell, preeminent archivist of Pacific POW databases; to archivist James Zobel, MacArthur Memorial Archives, as well as the archivists at the Citadel, Wellesley College, USNA, UNC Chapel Hill, the Asbury Park Press, and Bernadine at the Morris County Clerk’s Office; to Washington Navy Yard historian Jack Green, archivists Randy Sowell, Truman Presidential Library, and Bob Parks, FDR Presidential Library, and Don Pettijohn, Andersonville, GA, National Prisoner of War Museum; to Sandra Rosenquist, daughter of Harold Rosenquist, for sharing her recollections and a copy of her father’s wartime diary; to author Barrett Tillman, for his canon of excellent books and articles on the USS Enterprise, and for sharing his early interviews with Benny Mott. I am also grateful to the heroes who make up the USS Enterprise Association, and Benny’s Enterprise shipmates, Barney Barnhill and Bernard Peterson.
On the craft of writing a book of this nature, there is another group of friends and mentors to whom I am deeply grateful: the marvelous instructors, my fellow board members, and the strong literary community at the Writer’s Center, with particular thanks to Barbara Esstman, Jim Mathews, Tom Young, Catherine Mayo, and Ken Ackerman; and the professors and classmates at the Iowa Summer Writing Festival, where during a transformative few weeks the structure for telling this story emerged. And last but not least, I am endlessly grateful to my all-star ICM literary agent, Binky Urban, and her colleague Molly Atlas, for their enthusiastic embrace of this life project, as well as to my all-star team at Simon & Schuster: Executive Editor extraordinaire Priscilla Painton, president and publisher Jon Karp, assistant editors Megan Hogan and Sophia Jimenez; just the best!
About the Author
© VICTORIA KORZEC PHOTOGRAPHY
SALLY MOTT FREEMAN is serving her fourth term as board chair of the Writer’s Center (TWC) in Bethesda, MD. The Writer’s Center hosts hundreds of writing workshops annually and over seventy literary events a year, featuring authors of local, national, and international renown. Freeman previously served as a media and public relations executive in both the public and private sectors.
She was a speechwriter at the Federal Communications Commission and later the agency’s News Media Division Chief, as well as Director of Legislative and Public Affairs for FmHA, the finance arm of USDA. In the private sector, she was a vice president in the telecom practice at Fleishman Hillard, Inc., and later ran corporate communications for two technology trade associations.
Freeman graduated with a degree in English literature from Sweet Briar College, which awarded her its 2016 Distinguished Alumna award, and spent a year studying Renaissance literature at the University of Exeter, England. She and her husband, John Freeman, have four adult children and live in Bethesda, Maryland.
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Notes
1: APRIL 1942, LUZON, THE PHILIPPINES
At approximately 1100 hours: Details of December 8–10 Japanese attacks on Cavite Naval Base and Manila: Clay Blair Jr., Silent Victory: The U.S. Submarine War Against Japan (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1975), 129–35.
Barton missing from USS Otus, December 10, 1941: Otus Ship’s Log, December 10, 1941, National Archives (NARA), College Park, MD.
US Navy patients left behind at Sternberg Hospital:
• Recollections of Captain Ann Bernatitus, USN (nurse): Oral history dated January 25, 1994. Bernatitus recalled the shock of navy nurse Bertha Evans: “The Army got their patients down [to the docks] and put them on a hospital ship. Bertha said, ‘What about the Navy patients? What’s supposed to happen to them?’ Nothing. They just sat there.” Historian, Bureau of Medicine and Surgery (BUMED), Washington, DC.
• Pass in Review (newsletter of the Idaho Military Historical Society and Museum) interview with Dorothy Danner, nurse, USN: “On December 31, they were really jolted when the army patients were rushed down to the port area to be taken aboard an inter-island ship bearing a huge red cross. They wondered, why not our navy patients? They thought they would be evacuated any minute.”
Charles Armour’s fragile mental state and attempted suicide prior to the outbreak of war was disclosed in a letter written to Canacao Hospital personnel by the USS Louisville ship’s doctor. Armour’s file, National Personnel Records Center, St. Louis.
“A total of 224 officers and enlisted men:” George Korson, At His Side: The Story of the American Red Cross Overseas in World War II (New York, Coward-McCann Inc., 1945), 22.
Over the next several months: Re Prisoner movement from Canacao to Sternberg, Santa Scholastica, Pasay, and Cabanatuan:
• Captain L. B. Sartin (Medical Corps, USN) kept a journal of the movements of all medical personnel and patients (later prisoners) that had been on the original Canacao hospital patient roster (BUMED).
• Pharmacist’s Mate Robert Kentner recorded medical personnel and patient movement from outbreak of hostilities until February 5, 1945. Entries included descriptions of the patient marches and boxcar ordeals. “Kentner’s Journal” was recovered from Sangley Point, Philippines, in September 1960. Source: BUMED, Washington, DC.
• Letters to Cross family from surviving prisoners, and UNC/Chapel Hill alumni newsletter obituary on A. Barton Cross.
• Chi Phi Chuckett article on Cross, November 1945 issue.
The Kempeitai eyed the navy patients and:
• “We were the only American unit left behind in Manila”: Captain Robert G. Davis (Medical Corps, USN), Journal, 1941–1945.
• “Dr. Kentner’s Journal” also confirms the capture of USN medical personnel and their navy patients from Sternberg Hospital on January 1–2, 1942.
He didn’t want his family to know: Barton Cross “Happy Christmas” telegram sent from Army and Navy Club, and MacArthur radiogram (original, printed on heavy card stock) re wounded patient evacuation from Manila to Australia aboard SS Mactan: William C. Mott, official correspondence file, 1940–1943.
2: BENNY
“Battle Order Number One”: Captain E. Bertram Mott (USN, ret.), Shipmate, May 1985.
Enterprise return to Pearl Harbor following Japanese attack: Edward P. Stafford, The Big E: The Story of the USS Enterprise (New York: Ballantine Books, 1962), 14–60.
“Hundreds of thousands of pounds”: Ibid., Big E, 33.
“It’s up to you carrier boys now”: Eugene Burns, Then There Was One: The USS Enterprise and the First Year of War (New York: Harcourt Brace & Co., 1944), 18.
3: HELEN
Barton Cross was born prematurely (Fall River, MA), while Helen and Arthur were touring textile plants for Arthur’s company. Fall River was a strong northeastern textile center at the time.
“One eleven-year-old neighbor”: Interview with Bill and Benny’s childhood friend Al Leonard, March, 2006.
4: BILL
Merchant ship sinkings by U-boats along US East Coast: David Kennedy, Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1925–1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 488.
District of Columbia’s transition to wartime footing: David Brinkley, Washington Goes to War (Thorndike, ME: Thorndike Press, 1988), 215–20.
“I have my eye on a chap named Mott”: John McCrea, Oral History, Setting Up Map Room in White House and Other Incidents in Connection with Service There, March 1973, FDR Presidential Library, Hyde Park, New York, 4.
“Fix up a room for me like Churchill’s”: George Elsey, An Unplanned Life: A Memoir (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2005), 18.
USNA induction protocols in the 1930s: Kendall Banning, Annapolis Today (New York: Funk & Wagnalls Company, 1938), 65–79.
Snellen vision tester used at USNA: Ibid., 7–12.
“Dear Benny, My new job is quite interesting”: WCM official correspondence file, April 1942.
WCM Republican background, working for a Democratic president: from the John Toland interviews:
The first time the President came into the Map Room when I was there—I hadn’t been there very long—the Secret Service announced, “The President of the United States.” The Secret Service was not allowed to remain in the room, so I took over the president’s wheelchair. Now, we had a lot of equipment in there, and we put ramp-coverings over all the wires so you could wheel his chair over them. First I took him around and showed him the disposition of the fleet. We had a file cabinet in the corner and somehow I got the wheelchair stuck in the corner between the map of North Africa and the file cabinet. And the damn thing wouldn’t come out. You know how the little wheel in the back goes cross wise? The sweat began to pour down my back, and I thought of all the places they sent naval officers who got presidents stuck in corners. Like Iceland. And the President looked up at me and said, “Young man, are you trying to file me?” Well, this kind of broke the ice and I had sense enough to straighten the wheel and got him out of there.
Well, my grandfather was chairman of the New Jersey State Republican Committee. So was my uncle, after him. The President eventually found me out and kidded me about it. But anyway my grandfather considered the family disgraced because I went to work for “that man.” I tried to explain to him, you know, naval officers follow orders. These were my orders. When I finally got leave to visit Rockaway [NJ] my grandfather was still upset about this—he wouldn’t even listen to the fireside chats—and my grandmother said, “Why don’t you go in and tell Grandfather that story. It’s a good story.” So I went into his study, and he was sitting at his roll top desk. He listened very quietly while I told the story, kind of rapidly. When I repeated the punch line, “Young man, are you trying to file me?” in a heartbeat, my grandfather said, “Young man, you have just missed the opportunity of the century.”
“Every task force, every convoy”: War Secretary Stimson’s diary entry, April 12, 1942.
Map Room procedures and personnel memoranda: Boxes 194 and 195, Roosevelt Presidential Library, Hyde Park, NY.
Map Room cables: Robert Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins: An Intimate History (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1948), 498–510.
Map Room initiate process and annotated “Three Monkeys” cartoon vignette: George Elsey, An Unplanned Life, 20–48.
In penning Mott’s promotion, Captain McCrea wrote:
“The Situation Room at the White House, which is now administered by Lieutenant Mott, is a receiving room for all military matters
of interest to President Roosevelt. It is the function of Lieutenant Mott to collect and organize all military intelligence of interest to the President.
Mott must have many contacts with high ranking officers of our own military as well as officers of the British Chiefs of Staff. [H]e is entrusted with specific directives dealing with most secret matters by the President, Mr. Harry Hopkins, Admiral Leahy, myself and others. Also, in my frequent absence, Lieutenant Mott is the Senior Naval officer present in the White House to carry out naval matters.
In view of these responsibilities as well as his outstanding performance of his duties and furtherance of the prestige of the navy, his promotion to the rank of Lieutenant Commander is recommended.”
5: CABANATUAN, SPRING 1942
Prisoner work details, rising incidence of disease and death, and other insights and observations on life at Cabanatuan: Lieutenant Colonel William E. Dyess, The Dyess Story (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1944), 120–37; Duane Heisinger, Father Found: Life and Death as a Prisoner of the Japanese in World War II (Maitland, FL: Xulon Press, 2003), 237–64; Kenneth Wheeler, “Friends,” in . . . For My Children (unpublished memoir); Donald Wills, The Sea Was My Last Chance (London: McFarland and Co., 1992), 26–35; Bob Wodnik, Captured Honor: POW Survival in the Philippines and Japan (Washington State University Press, 2003), 59–68.
6: WHITE HOUSE MAP ROOM, APRIL 1942
WCM routine in Map Room, examining incoming cables, adjusting grease pencil markings on maps: Elsey, Unplanned Life, 19–25.
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