The Color of War

by James Campbell

  Replacements for the upcoming invasion were coming in from every direction, tenderfeet hustled out of boot camp and regular Marines wearing campaign ribbons. Borta could have been stuck with any number of jerks. But at Hilo he lucked out, sharing a tent with a group of stand-up guys: Glenn Brem, Milt Lemon, William Landers, William Larson, and Richard Carney, a tough Irishman and former Golden Gloves boxer from the Bronx. Carney was also Hollywood handsome. The word around camp was that after being spotted in a Los Angeles bar he had received a letter from a motion picture talent scout. Perhaps after the war, he would make it onto the big screen. Women would howl for his autograph and he would date what Landers, in his Missouri drawl, called “Hollywood sireens.” Most important, Carney was the kind of man a guy wanted to go into battle with. Rumor had it that he was up for a Silver Star for taking an enemy bunker on Tarawa. “Stick with Carney,” the guys said, “and you’ll come out okay.”

  Lemon and Larson were the greenhorns of the group. Lemon was a naïve country boy from the Panhandle of Texas who loved banjo and fiddle music and talked about going home after the war and striking it rich in the oil fields. Lemon, like Borta, was a runner. Larson was a sweet-natured kid from Wisconsin who had two brothers fighting in the 2nd Division, and was the practical joker. He had been wounded at Tarawa on the first day. Although the wound was not a bad one, it got him out of the rest of the fighting. Larson always said that he had not done anything on Tarawa except get a big scratch on his throwin’ arm.

  Brem was a farm kid from Gilroy, California. His dad planted row crops and ran a 5,000-acre family spread in the wild hills of Pacheco Pass, a stagecoach route that had once connected Chicago to San Francisco.

  The outdoors was Brem’s passion. He loved deer and duck hunting best. He was adept at handling a shotgun, but with a rifle he was pure magic. He could shoot as easy as most men draw a breath. In San Diego, on record day, he shot 326 out of 340 bull’s-eyes with a twelve-knot wind. They wanted him to stay on as an instructor until they learned that he was only seventeen, two years too young.

  Compared to the others, Brem was the quiet one, the independent loner. Landers, who had a penchant for nicknames, dubbed him “Pluto” because he had a funny way of talking, like he had just taken a gulp of helium. The name stuck. Even the officers called him Pluto. Landers hung the name “Chick” on Borta because, even among a bunch of youngsters, Borta, with his baby-smooth skin and affection for Coca-Cola instead of beer, was so obviously the spring chicken of the group. Borta tried to affect a street-smart Chicago attitude, but his buddies knew that he was just a wide-eyed kid. They said he was so young and inexperienced that he would not have a clue what to do if a beautiful girl lifted her dress for him.

  As spring approached, Sergeant Rachitsky informed his men that they would soon be headed back to Camp Tarawa for intensive training. Chick Borta and his tentmates were ambivalent about the news. They hated unloading ships. Nevertheless, intensive training meant that soon they would be sent into combat. Would the battles all be as bloody as Tarawa?

  Knowing that their days in Hilo were numbered, the tentmates spent as many nights in the bars as they could. Back at camp, they could get Chick Borta’s beer ration, but a few cans of beer was not the kind of drinking they had in mind. On one particular night, Landers, Carney, and Borta went into Hilo to drink. They had just sat down when they noticed a black Marine—the first any of them had ever seen—sitting at the bar. Well, I’ll be, they thought. A goddamn Negro Marine. White or black, it did not matter to Borta. If what lay ahead was anything like Tarawa, the Marines could use all the help they could get. As long as they knew how to fight, he did not give a shit if the soldiers were white, black, yellow, or brown. Maybe the Marines were bringing in Negroes as night fighters.

  Landers was ordering the first round when a drunk U.S. Army private walked up and began to heckle the black Marine. “Look, dogface,” the Marine threatened. “I’m a United States Marine. I’ll kick your ass.”

  Landers, Carney, and Borta looked at each other. “He sure told that doughboy,” Carney said, using the World War I slang for a GI. Then Carney got up, walked over to the black Marine, and bought him a beer.

  CHAPTER 21

  Ernie King’s Victory

  In the spring of 1944, as Chick Borta and his tentmates prepared to leave Hilo and return to Camp Tarawa, the Marine combat structure was undergoing significant changes. The biggest change, at least for the average Marine rifleman, took place at the squad level. Each squad was split into four-man rifle teams, which were built around a BAR (Browning Automatic Rifle) man. The idea was to free up small teams of men and make them less dependent on squad, platoon, and company supervision. It was the exact opposite of the top-down Japanese command structure. If a Japanese captain or lieutenant died in combat, the men under him found it impossible to implement orders. No one was willing or able to take charge. The Marine Corps was aware of this, and in the process of revising its own command structure for the chaotic fighting ahead, it gave its riflemen greater rather than less autonomy, believing that a decentralized chain of command was the key to victory.

  The key to victory, according to Admiral King, was taking the Marianas sooner rather than later. In early 1944, King had flown to San Francisco to meet with Admiral Nimitz and Admiral Halsey, commander of the South Pacific Area, to try to convince them that the seizure of the Marianas was the essential piece in the Navy’s drive across the Central Pacific, and should be moved up from its scheduled date of November 15. King left the city with the impression that the admirals believed similarly. In the ensuing weeks, however, Nimitz wavered. In late January, General Richard Sutherland, Douglas MacArthur’s chief of staff, met with representatives of Nimitz and Halsey in Pearl Harbor to discuss an alternate plan. Sutherland argued that combining resources, and giving priority to the Southwest Pacific rather than the Central Pacific, would guarantee the seizure of the Philippines and provide the quickest route to China. Nimitz’s staff filled him in on Sutherland’s presentation, and the admiral seemed persuaded. Overjoyed, the staid Sutherland wired MacArthur that he had won Nimitz’s support.

  Reading the minutes of the Pearl Harbor conference, King grew furious. How had Sutherland managed to inveigle the admiral? In a scathing letter, King wrote Nimitz, “I have read your conference notes with much interest and, I must add, with indignant dismay. Apparently, neither those who advocated the concentration of effort in the Southwest Pacific, nor those who admitted the possibility of such a procedure, gave thought nor undertook to state when and if the Japanese occupation and use of the Marianas and Carolines was to be terminated. I assume that even the Southwest Pacific advocates will admit that sometime or other this thorn in the side of our communications to the Western Pacific must be removed. In other words, at some time or other we must take our time and forces to carry out this job.…” Continuing, King wrote, “A number of conferees, particularly Towers [Admiral John Towers, deputy commander-in-chief, Pacific Ocean Area and deputy commander-in-chief, Pacific Fleet], stated that his [Sutherland’s] statements were allowed to go unrefuted.… The idea of rolling up the Japanese along the New Guinea coast, throughout Halmahera and Mindanao, and up through the Philippines to Luzon, as our major strategic concept, to the exclusion of clearing out Central Pacific line of communications to the Philippines, is to me absurd. Further, it is not in accordance with the decision of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.”

  Buoyed by Sutherland’s report, MacArthur followed up with General George Marshall, the U.S. Army chief of staff, in writing. A dual drive, he said, although already authorized by the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) and the Combined Chiefs of Staff (CCS), would constitute “two weak thrusts” and would inevitably delay an Allied victory over Japan. Addressing himself to King’s plan, he argued that seizing the Marianas and the Carolines would be of little value. Neither provided the harbors or airfields to support an eventual assault against the Philippines. MacArthur ended his missive by asking Marshall to m
ake available to him “all ground, air and assault forces in the Pacific.”

  King, too, pressured Marshall. Irate that MacArthur had decided to flout the decisions of the JCS and CCS at Cairo, King recommended that Marshall chastise the general and command him to obey orders. Marshall, however, demurred, choosing instead to let the JCS decide what to do about MacArthur’s proposal. On the very same day King sent his indignant letter to Nimitz, General Sutherland arrived in Washington to again do his boss’s bidding.

  The jockeying continued. A month after the fall of the Marshall Islands, King wrote to General Marshall, “I am as anxious as you are to have a comprehensive plan for operations against the Japanese, but I feel that we should not put off a decision as to what is to be done in the immediate future, at this time when our tremendously powerful forces can be thrown against an enemy who is obviously bewildered by recent events.” Those “recent events” to which King referred were Vice Admiral Marc “Pete” Mitscher’s devastating attacks on Truk. After the seizure of the Marshalls, Nimitz had accelerated his Central Pacific timetable. Realizing that he would have to neutralize Truk and enemy airpower before attacking the Japanese base at Eniwetok—350 miles northwest of Kwajalein in the Marshall Islands—the admiral gave Mitscher the go-ahead.

  Lying 1,000 miles east of the Philippines, Truk was the operational base of the Combined Fleet, and, according to Nimitz, the Japanese “cojones.” Ringed by a coral reef, it consisted of a dozen volcanic islands and thirty smaller ones and contained the fleet anchorage, a bomber airfield, three fighter strips, seaplane bases, docks, and supply installations.

  On February 12 and 13, Mitscher’s Task Force left Majuro. In a series of attacks on February 17 and 18, the admiral demolished the once-impregnable base, taking out three hundred planes, three cruisers, four destroyers, and 200,000 tons of military and merchant shipping. While roving the islands, Admiral Raymond Spruance, commander of the United States 5th Fleet (originally the Central Pacific Force), and Mitscher’s boss, sank a cruiser, a destroyer, a subchaser, and a trawler as they tried to escape the bombardment. The big prize, however, Admiral Mineichi Koga, commander of the Imperial Combined Fleet, was nowhere to be found. Following news of the Allied victory in the Marshalls, the admiral and his fleet fled Truk for the Palaus, 925 nautical miles to the west, at the far end of the Carolines. After destroying Truk, Mitscher headed northwest to reconnoiter the Marianas. On February 23 his carrier planes photographed and then bombed Saipan, Tinian, and Guam.

  Two and a half weeks later (March 11 and 12), the Joint Chiefs called an emergency meeting in Washington. Admiral Nimitz and General Sutherland were on hand for the discussions. Realizing that the JCS would no longer find compelling his arguments for focusing the bulk of the Allied thrust on New Guinea and the Philippines, and aware that he might be left behind while the Navy and the Marines charged to glory, MacArthur instructed Sutherland to request permission of the Joint Chiefs to leapfrog his forces four hundred miles up the New Guinea coast to the enemy air base at Hollandia. The Joint Chiefs honored MacArthur’s request, and General Kenney’s Fifth Army Air Force knocked out Hollandia just over two weeks later.

  In the meantime, King’s one-man battle to get the Joint Chiefs to recognize the importance of the Marianas was about to end. On March 12, the JCS reached a decision on the Marianas. The Joint War Plans Committee had advised that the Marianas be excluded from the master plan, but the JCS instead heeded the advice of the Joint Staff Planners and included them. King was elated. The JCS not only authorized the attack on the Marianas, but moved up the assault date by a full five months.

  CHAPTER 22

  Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition

  In late April 1944, Captain Merrill Kinne reported for duty at Port Chicago. Although he was brought on to run the Naval Magazine (his official title was Officer-in-Charge of the Naval Magazine), Kinne, like many of the depot’s officers whom he criticized for being book-taught and “too academic” about ordnance, had little experience with ammunition. After graduating from the Naval Academy in 1915, he worked with ordnance for just two years during a seven-year stint in the Navy, and then returned to civilian life. Twenty years later he rejoined the Navy, serving as an officer on a general cargo ship.

  The day after Captain Kinne arrived at Port Chicago, Frank Knox, FDR’s longtime Secretary of the Navy, died suddenly of a heart attack. Acting Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal announced Knox’s death in a dispatch and directed all naval establishments at home and afloat to fly the colors at half-mast until sunset on the day of Knox’s burial. Although Knox’s death was mourned by many, for Negroes in the Navy, it represented a new day.

  When James Forrestal became the Navy’s new secretary, blacks got a leader dedicated to providing equal treatment and opportunity for all men regardless of their color. Forrestal was a member of the National Urban League and a proponent of social equality, but he was no moral crusader. As undersecretary of the Navy and then secretary, he saw the issue of using blacks as full combat seamen as one of efficiency and simple fair play. While he accepted the argument of Chief of Naval Personnel Vice Admiral Randall Jacobs’s argument that “you couldn’t dump two hundred colored boys on a crew in battle,” he also agreed with the Special Programs Unit of the Bureau of Personnel that large concentrations of blacks in shore duties lowered efficiency and morale.

  One of the first things Forrestal did was to order the Bureau of Naval Personnel to prepare an experimental plan for the integration of some fleet auxiliary ships. In a letter to the president, he explained his motivation. “From a morale standpoint,” he wrote, “the Negroes resent the fact that they are not assigned to general service billets at sea, and white personnel resent the fact that Negroes have been given less hazardous assignments.” Then he assured the president that his plan would be a gradual one. Initially blacks would be used only on the large auxiliaries, and only at 10 percent of the ship’s complement. If the plan worked, then they would be added to other types of ships “as necessity indicates.” President Roosevelt responded to Forrestal’s proposal, “J.F. OK, FDR.” Having received the president’s approval, the secretary’s victory was sealed when Admiral King gave his conditional okay.

  In early May, not long after coming to the depot, Captain Kinne held a meeting of all the division officers. “From all I hear,” he said, “it’s only by the grace of God that Port Chicago is on the map. I want ammunition handled carefully, and I mean carefully.”

  Lieutenant James Tobin, head officer of the 2nd Division, approached the captain after his talk. He warned him that with a new attention to safety, there could be a drop in tonnage. Kinne did not even hesitate. “Don’t you worry, Lieutenant,” he replied. “I will take the brunt on the matter of tonnage.”

  But with the invasions of Saipan, Tinian, and Guam scheduled for June, and of the Palau Islands and Morotai for mid-September, and under an amphibious doctrine that called for massive naval gunfire and superior firepower once the troops had landed, tonnage again took top billing at Port Chicago. Contradicting himself, as he often would, Captain Kinne told his officers that “the war could not wait.” The depot would operate full blast, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.

  With the imperious Captain Kinne in charge, the pressure on Port Chicago’s 1,400 naval enlisted men and eight loading divisions to push became even greater. Convinced that officers and seamen had to “continually keep in mind the necessity for getting the ammunition out,” Kinne posted on the wall of the dock office daily tonnage totals for each division, and each week he awarded the winning division a pennant to fly over its barracks. Some of the seamen adopted the spirit of competition and competed for bragging rights. Most, though, regarded it as child’s play. How could a pennant ever make up for poor working conditions, poor pay, and a lack of ratings and promotional opportunities?

  Shortly after Kinne arrived, Port Chicago underwent other changes, the most significant being the expansion of the loading dock. On May
10, construction was completed on Pier No. 1, which meant that the pier was not only twenty feet wider than it had ever been, but it had both an inboard and an outboard berth. For the first time, Port Chicago could load two ships simultaneously. The depot was also acquiring land for a permanent magazine for holding ammunition and high explosives. Port Chicago was also slotted to get a number of new buildings, including a recreation building. The improvements, though cheered by the men, did not meaningfully change conditions at the depot, but they did allow Captain Goss to persist in the delusion that at Port Chicago “extreme care and patience” was being paid to take care of the black seamen.

  As far as Percy Robinson and Sammie Boykin were concerned, the most important development was the addition of the “Jolly Roger,” a training apparatus resembling a Liberty ship, with booms, rigging, and steam winches. The Jolly Roger was fully operational by February 1944, and both Percy Robinson and Sammie Boykin volunteered to train on it. Whenever they could, they practiced bringing empty boxes in and out of the Jolly Roger’s holds. Robinson, in particular, was happy about the prospect of getting out of the hold. Increasingly, he had to “coax, threaten, and bully” his men to get them to pull their weight. The new work gave him a sense of purpose and accomplishment. Here was a skill that required more than a strong back, something he could use after the war to get a decent-paying job. Both Robinson and Boykin excelled, and after ten or so days Lieutenant Commander Holman, Port Chicago’s head loading officer, moved them down to the pier to serve as hatch tenders and to get a feel for the job. When he thought they were ready, he would move them to the winches for real.