Almond shook his head, “no.”
“General Stratemeyer?”
Lieutenant General George E. Stratemeyer, the senior Air Force officer on the SCAP staff, who was sitting next to Almond, shook his head, “no.”
“Admiral Joy?”
Rear Admiral C. Turner Joy, the senior Naval officer on the SCAP staff, who was sitting across the table from Willoughby’s own empty chair, shook his head, “no.”
“General Whitney?”
Major General Courtney Whitney, the SCAP G-3, who was sitting next to Stratemeyer, shook his head, “no.”
Willoughby looked at Brigadier General Fleming Pickering, who was sitting next to Stratemeyer and across from Almond.
“Thank you, Major,” Willoughby said. “That will be all.” Then he added, “Leave the map,” and took his seat.
“Yes, sir,” the major said, and walked out of the room.
General Almond got to his feet and walked to the end of the table, so that he was standing in front of the map.
“Sir?” he asked MacArthur.
“General Pickering,” MacArthur asked, “have you anything to add?”
Brigadier General Fleming Pickering rose.
“No, sir,” he said.
Was that simply courtesy on El Supremo’s part? Or was he letting Willoughby know he shouldn’t ignore me?
“Then I believe our business is concluded,” MacArthur intoned, getting to his feet. “Thank you, gentlemen.”
The dozen officers at the table, all general or flag officers, rose to their feet as MacArthur walked to the door that led to his office and passed through it.
General Almond pushed the map back into its storage space.
The other senior officers began to stuff the documents they had brought to the briefing back into their briefcases.
Almond sensed Pickering’s eyes on him and walked to him.
“You look as if you have something on your mind, General, ” he said.
Pickering met Almond’s eyes.
“I didn’t think the briefing was the place to bring this up . . .”
“But?” Almond asked.
“I had people on the wharf in Pusan yesterday when the 29th Infantry debarked from Okinawa,” Pickering said. “They told me the regiment has only two battalions . . .”
“Peacetime TO and E,” Almond said. “You told me the 1st Marine Division’s regiments were similarly understrength. ”
“Yes, sir,” Pickering said. “General, my people . . .”
“You’re speaking of . . . your aide-de-camp?” Almond asked, a slight smile on his face.
Pickering nodded. “Yes, I am.”
Almond had been present at a luncheon meeting when MacArthur had announced that Pickering was going to have to do something about an aide-de-camp.
“I have one, sir,” Pickering said. “Captain McCoy.” That had not been the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Pickering did not have an aide-de-camp. He didn’t think he needed one. But he knew MacArthur well enough to know that if MacArthur thought he needed an aide-de-camp, and there was no suitable young Marine officer available, he would give him a suitable young Army officer “for the present.”
There were a number of things wrong with that, starting with the fact that any bright young officer assigned to SCAP would naturally feel his loyalties lay with SCAP—either the SCAP, MacArthur, or SCAP generally, which would include Almond, the SCAP chief of staff, and Willoughby, the SCAP G-2, rather than solely to Brigadier General Fleming Pickering.
That was understandable. The Supreme Commander was the Supreme Commander. Supreme Commanders were in command of everything, especially including all one-star generals.
And MacArthur and Willoughby—and possibly Almond, although Pickering wasn’t sure about Almond—had done a number of things, possibly simply courtesy, to make Pickering seem like, feel like, a member of the SCAP staff.
He had been given an Army staff car (a Buick, normally reserved for major generals or better, rather than a Ford or Chevrolet) and a driver, for one thing. He had been given an office, staffed by a master sergeant and two other enlisted men, in the Dai Ichi Building, “on the SCAP’s floor.”
A seat had been reserved for him at the daily briefings/staff conference. He had been offered quarters, in sort of a compound set aside for senior officers, and two orderlies to staff it.
This would have been very nice if Pickering had been assigned to the SCAP staff, but that wasn’t the case. Officially, he was the Assistant Director of the Central Intelligence Agency for Asia. The CIA was not under MacArthur’s command, although the CIA station chief in Tokyo was under mandate to “coordinate with SCAP.”
More than that, Pickering was under orders from the President of the United States to report directly to him his assessment of all things in the Far East, including General of the Army Douglas MacArthur.
Pickering had quickly learned that the CIA Tokyo station chief (whose cover was senior economic advisor to SCAP) had quarters in the VIP compound, a staff car, and considered himself a member of the SCAP staff.
If he could have, Pickering would have relieved the station chief on the spot for permitting himself to be sucked into the MacArthur magnetic field. The CIA was not supposed to be subordinate to the local military commander or his staff. But he realized that would have been counterproductive. For one thing, it would have waved a red flag in MacArthur’s face. For another, he didn’t know who he could get to replace him.
Pickering had declined the VIP quarters, saying that he was more comfortable in the Imperial Hotel. When Willoughby heard about that, he replaced the driver of Pickering’s staff car with an agent of the Counterintelligence Corps wearing a sergeant’s uniform, and assigned other CIC agents, in civilian clothing, to provide around-the -clock security for Pickering in the Imperial Hotel.
Willoughby’s rationale for that was that the Assistant Director of the CIA for Asia obviously needed to be protected. That was possibly true, but it also meant that CIC agents, who reported to Willoughby, had Pickering under observation around the clock.
Pickering typed out his own reports to President Truman, personally encrypted them, and personally took them to the communications center in the Dai Ichi Building, waited until their receipt had been acknowledged by Colonel Ed Banning at Camp Pendleton, and then personally burned them.
When Pickering told MacArthur that he already had an aide, Captain McCoy, General Willoughby had been visibly startled to hear the name, and Almond had picked up on that, too.
“The same McCoy?” MacArthur had inquired.
“Yes, sir.”
“Ned,” MacArthur said to Almond, “during the war, when we were setting up our guerrilla operations in the Philippines, Pickering set up an operation to establish contact with Americans who had refused to surrender. He sent a young Marine officer—this Captain McCoy—into Mindanao by submarine. Outstanding young officer. I personally decorated him with the Silver Star for that.”
That was even less the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. MacArthur had originally flatly stated that guerrilla operations in the Philippines were impossible.
President Roosevelt had learned there had been radio contact with a reserve officer named Fertig on Mindanao. Fertig, a lieutenant colonel, had promoted himself to brigadier general and named himself commanding general of U.S. forces in the Philippines. MacArthur and Willoughby had let it be known they believed the poor fellow had lost his senses, and repeated their firm belief that guerrilla action in the Philippine Islands was, regrettably, impossible.
Roosevelt had personally ordered Pickering to send someone onto the Japanese-occupied island of Mindanao to get the facts. Lieutenant Kenneth R. McCoy, Gunnery Sergeant Ernest Zimmerman, and twenty-year-old Staff Sergeant Stephen M. Koffler, a radio operator, had infiltrated Mindanao by submarine and found Fertig.
McCoy’s report that Fertig was not only sane (he had promoted himself to brigadier general o
n the reasonable assumption that few, if any, American or Philippine soldiers who had escaped Japanese capture would rush to place themselves under the command of a reserve lieutenant colonel) but prepared, if supplied, to do the Japanese considerable harm. Roosevelt had ordered that Fertig be supplied. At that point, MacArthur had begun to call Fertig and his U.S. forces in the Philippines “my guerrillas in the Philippines.”
When the U.S. Army stormed ashore later in the war on Mindanao, Fertig was waiting for them with than 30,000 armed, uniformed, and trained guerrillas. USFIP even had a band. In very real terms, except for artillery and tanks, USFIP was an American Army Corps. Army Corps are commanded by lieutenant generals. MacArthur continued to refer to Fertig as “that reserve lieutenant colonel.”
In the face of that gross distortion of the facts, Pickering had felt considerably less guilty about saying McCoy was his aide.
“And what did your ‘aide-de-camp’ have to say about what he saw on the wharf at Pusan?” Almond asked, smiling.
“General, this was an observation by an experienced officer, not, per se, a criticism,” Pickering said.
Almond nodded his understanding.
“McCoy said that most of the enlisted men are fresh from basic training, and that the officers and noncoms are also mostly replacements. There has been no opportunity for them to train together, nor has there been an opportunity for them to fire or zero their weapons.”
Almond looked pained.
“Zimmerman checked their crew-served weapons,”
Pickering went on. “He knows about weapons. The 29th has been issued new .50-caliber Browning machine guns; they were still in cosmoline when they were off-loaded from the ships in Pusan. None of their mortars have been test-fired.”
“God!” Almond said.
“The 29th was ordered to move immediately to Chinju, where it will be attached to the 19th Infantry of the 24th Division. The 19th has taken a shellacking in the last couple of days—you heard the G-3 briefing just now. In these circumstances, McCoy doesn’t think that either unit is going to be able to offer much real resistance to the North Koreans.”
Almond was silent a moment.
“I agree. That information would not have contributed anything to the staff conference, in the sense that anything could be done about it by anybody at that table. But I thank you for it.”
“I thought you should know, sir.”
“What Walker is doing is trying to buy enough time to set up a perimeter around Pusan, and hold that until we can augment our forces.”
“I understand, sir,” Pickering said.
“Between you and me, Pickering, that’s all that can be done at the moment. The arrival of the Marine Brigade will strengthen the perimeter, of course, and the 27th Infantry is about to arrive. I understand they’re better prepared to fight than, for example, the 29th is.”
Pickering didn’t reply.
“Maybe we’ll get lucky,” Almond said, as if to himself. And then he added, “Your ‘aide.’ Is he still in Korea?”
“No, sir. He came in early this morning.”
“I’d like to talk to him,” Almond said. “Would that be possible?”
“Yes, sir. Of course. You tell me where and when.”
“Would it be an imposition if I came by the Imperial?”
“No, sir. Of course not.”
“I have to see General MacArthur,” Almond said. “He normally sends for me fifteen, twenty minutes after the staff meeting. And there’s no telling how long that will take; he’s doing the preliminary planning for the amphibious operation up the peninsula. But when that’s over, I think I’ll be free. If I’m not, I’ll call. That Okay with you?”
“That’s fine with me, sir. McCoy will be waiting for you.”
“I don’t want to make talking to him official,” Almond said. “You understand?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then I’ll see you in an hour or two,” Almond said, offered his hand, and left the conference room.
X
[ONE]
THE DEWEY SUITE THE IMPERIAL HOTEL TOKYO, JAPAN 1105 25 JULY 1950
When Captain Malcolm S. Pickering of Trans-Global Airways started to walk down the corridor toward the Dewey Suite, he was mildly curious to see an American in a business suit—a young one, not more than twenty-one, he thought—sitting in an armchair in the corridor reading the Stars & Stripes.
He had apparently been there some time, for on a table beside him was a coffee Thermos and the remains of breakfast pastries.
Pick just had time to guess, some kind of guard, when there was proof. The young man stood up and blocked his way.
“May I help you, sir?” he asked.
“I’m going in there,” Pick said, pointing at the next door down the corridor.
“May I ask why, sir?”
“I’m here to see General Pickering.”
“Are you expected, sir?”
“No, I’m not.”
“Sir, I’m sorry. . . .”
“Knock on the door and tell General Pickering that Captain Pickering requests an audience,” Pick ordered, sounding more like a Marine officer than an airline pilot. He heard himself, and added, “I’m his son. It’ll be all right.”
After a moment’s indecision, the young man went to the door to the Dewey Suite and knocked.
Captain Kenneth R. McCoy, in khakis, tieless, opened the door, then made a gesture to the young man to permit Pick to pass.
He entered the room. His father, dressed like McCoy, was looking at a map spread out on a table in the middle of the sitting room. He smiled when he saw his son.
“When did you get in?” he asked.
“A couple of hours ago. I dropped Stu James off at the Hokkaido and then came here. What’s with the guard?”
“That’s General Willoughby’s idea,” Fleming Pickering said.
“Oh?”
“He said it was his responsibility to see that ‘someone like me’ was ’secure.’ ”
“Secure from what?”
“Captain McCoy,” Pickering said wryly, “who some people suspect is a cynic, suggests that General Willoughby wants to keep an eye on me for his security. Anyway, when I declined to move into some officers’ compound where he could keep an eye on me, he sent me a guard here for the same purpose. Guards, plural. There’s some young man sitting out there around the clock.”
“I thought maybe he was there to protect our well-publicized hero—Dead-Eye McCoy—from a horde of adoring fans.”
General Pickering chuckled.
“You saw the story, I gather?”
“The whole world has seen the story,” Pick said. “I understand the recruiters have long lines of eager young men wanting to emulate him.”
“I knew that fucking woman was trouble the first time I saw her,” McCoy said.
“Speaking of women, Dead-Eye,” Pick said, “you better clean up your language and send the native girls back to the village. Your wife’s about to arrive.”
“I hope you’re kidding,” General Pickering said.
“Uh-uh,” Pick said. “Expect her in seventy-two hours, more or less.”
“Jesus, couldn’t you talk her out of it?” McCoy asked.
“Your wife took lessons in determination from his wife,” Pick said, nodding at his father. “I tried, honest to God.”
“I won’t be here,” McCoy said.
“Ken’s been sort of commuting to Korea,” General Pickering said. “It’s the only way I can get accurate information in less than a week.”
“And how are things in the ‘Land of the Morning Calm’?”
“Not good, Pick,” General Pickering said.
“Well, fear not, the Marines are coming,” Pick said. “You know there’s a provisional brigade on the high seas, for Kobe, I suppose?”
“They’re being diverted to Pusan,” General Pickering said. “We found out yesterday.”
“If we still hold Pusan when they get there,” McCo
y said.
“Are things that bad?” Pick asked.
“Yeah, they are,” McCoy said, matter-of-factly.
“What shape is the provisional brigade in?” General Pickering asked.
“I saw General Dawkins at Pendleton,” Pick said. “Ed Banning was there. They knew I was coming here, and asked me to relay this to you.”
“Relay what?” McCoy asked.
“Okay. The 1st Marine Division at Pendleton was not, apparently, a division as we remember. Way understrength. And that got practically stripped to form the provisional brigade. So the way the Corps decided to deal with that was to transfer people from the 2nd Marine Division at Camp Lejeune to Pendleton to fill out the 1st Marine Division, bring it to wartime strength. Since there weren’t enough people to strip from the 2nd Division to do this, they also ordered to Pendleton whatever Marines they could find anywhere—Marine Barracks at Charleston, recruiting offices, et cetera, et cetera. No sooner had they started this than the word came to bring the 2nd Division to wartime strength. The only way to do that was mobilize the entire reserve!”
“Including you?” General Pickering asked.
“VMF-243 was mobilized two days ago,” Pick said.
“So what are you doing here?” McCoy asked.
“I got a delay for Stu James and me, so that we could come here and get the lay of the land,” Pick said. “We go on active duty when the squadron gets here.” He paused and looked at McCoy. “I don’t suppose you’re brimming with information about airfields, et cetera, in Korea?”
“Not much,” McCoy said. “The ones we still hold are full of Air Force planes.”
“I really want to take a look at what’s there,” Pick said. “Dad, can you get me an airplane?”
“Get you an airplane?” General Pickering asked, incredulously.
“I’m not talking about a fighter. What I’d really like to have is a Piper Cub, something like that.”
“I don’t know, Pick,” General Pickering said, dubiously.
“There’s a Marine Corps air station at Iwakuni,” Pick said. “I don’t know what’s there. That’s one of the things I want to find out.”
“Where’s that?” McCoy asked.
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