He pondered anew what the late president had meant. Had Roosevelt sensed his imminent death? Or had he hinted at some other terrible meaning beyond Bill’s comprehension? Bill paused at the forecastle rail and watched with an aching heart as hundreds of national ensigns fluttered to half-mast.
A memorial service on Eldorado’s fantail was scheduled for the following morning, April 14. Rites would begin at 1000 hours to coincide with the late president’s state funeral in Washington, DC. They had learned by radio that Mrs. Roosevelt wanted Dewitt Moore—a popular American soloist and, coincidentally, Eldorado’s radar intelligence officer—to sing two of the Anglophile president’s favorite hymns at the ship’s service, both by British composers. One was “Faith of Our Fathers”; the other, not surprisingly, was “Eternal Father Strong to Save,” or simply the “Navy Hymn,” known and cherished for a century by sailors of the American and British navies.
The next morning, a throng of war correspondents looked on as Chaplain Valentine Junker, Admiral Turner, and hundreds of officers and sailors in their crisp dress whites lined up in arrow-straight rows on the Eldorado’s aft deck. But Chaplain Junker barely got off his opening line of prayer when the familiar wail of sirens and nerve-shattering general quarters signaled the approach of another horde of kamikazes.
Kikusui number three had begun.
The tidy assembly burst apart like so much spilled milk, and the fantail emptied in seconds. Every crew member dashed to battle stations—above, below, fore, and aft—to defend against the onslaught. They all knew that triangulation of Eldorado’s steady radio beacon made her a prime and constant target.
Admiral Turner himself—onetime fleet gunnery officer—took over the ship’s voice command circuit and began directing fire. He took this unusual step increasingly at Okinawa, to provide an extra measure of reassurance to a thoroughly rattled crew.
Officers and crew made a determined trek back to the fantail after the wave of assailants was repelled. The enemy would not cancel Eldorado’s tribute to their beloved late president. Waiting on the aft deck were radio correspondents who had lashed together a bouquet of microphones so that all Americans might hear Moore’s sonorous rendering of the “Navy Hymn”—from the heart of the fleet in the heat of battle—sung in dirge for their president:
Eternal Father, strong to save
Whose arm hath bound the restless wave,
Oh hear us when we cry to thee,
For those in peril on the sea.
Admiral Turner seemed in a trance during the service, likely reflecting on his own experiences with his late commander in chief. His most memorable had been in the tension-laden spring of 1939. Roosevelt had personally requested that Turner lead a goodwill mission to Tokyo, ostensibly to escort the late Japanese ambassador Saito’s ashes to home soil.
Not one to be tapped for diplomatic anything, a flattered Turner executed the ceremonial mission flawlessly. In Tokyo Bay, throngs of Japanese had toured his ship, the USS Astoria, and Imperial poets and musicians dedicated verses and lyrics to the vessel that had brought Saito’s ashes home. A special Japanese “Welcome Astoria March” was composed and formally performed before the ship’s company. Turner’s mission helped measurably in thawing diplomatic relations with Japan at the time, but the sentiments were short-lived—demonstrated not least by Astoria’s sinking at Guadalcanal three years later.
Returned from his musings, Admiral Turner spoke briefly before Chaplain Junker’s benediction:
“The president’s death is a great loss to our country, and especially it is a loss to the war effort of which he was our firm and unquestioned leader. Undoubtedly, the fact that President Roosevelt personally spent himself so freely in this struggle was the underlying cause of his death. Thus he is a battle casualty in exactly the same sense as those who give their lives in battle out here.”
BY MID-MAY 1945, PRESIDENT Truman’s burdens had shifted, if not lightened. Nazi Germany had surrendered, but in the Pacific, the US Army’s struggle to claim Okinawa had ground to a halt. Lines had barely advanced in the face of savage Japanese resistance on ambush-ridden terrain, all the more treacherous from eleven inches of rainfall. Unabating kamikaze attacks continued to pummel the sentinel Fifth Fleet; casualties both on and off shore were running sky high.
Navy losses at Okinawa had already surpassed all records for a single campaign. “I doubt if the army’s slow, methodical [approach to] fighting really saves lives in the long run,” Spruance grumbled to his chief of staff. In late April, Admiral Nimitz told General Buckner that the stalemate was losing him “a ship and a half a day.” Nimitz proposed that the marines make an amphibious landing behind enemy lines to break the impasse. Buckner objected vigorously: this was a ground battle under US Army command, and the navy should not interfere.
Nimitz was also concerned about the toll that the vicious, protracted engagement was taking on his three top Okinawa commanders, Admirals Spruance, Mitscher, and Turner. To Bill and the rest of Eldorado’s flag staff, Kelly Turner seemed to be suffering the most. The continuous high alert and murderous destruction of his amphibious vessels and crews afforded Turner little rest and exacerbated his chronic back pain.
At Okinawa, Terrible Turner was as irascible and foulmouthed as any of them had ever seen him, itself a milestone. Things got worse in May with the introduction of kamikaze speedboats, or kaiten, which took aim at ships’ hulls in the dark of night. At each kaiten alert, Bill reluctantly awoke Turner to make the call on whether a “smoke” order should be issued to enshroud the ships for protection. The procedure had become a critical defense tool by spoiling the aim and navigation of these seaborne assailants.
On May 17, well after Turner had retired to his quarters, the alert came once again: kaiten were on the prowl. Reluctantly, Bill knocked on his exhausted boss’s cabin door. Getting no response after several tries, he turned the handle and peeked inside. Admiral Turner was in a deep slumber—very deep. The scent rising from a nearby glass told the story.
A mix of pineapple juice and grain alcohol—the latter procured from Sick Bay—was the suspected somnolent. Unable to arouse Turner, Bill quietly closed the admiral’s door and made for the deck. He first advised Commander Paul S. Theiss, Turner’s chief of staff, to evaluate the need for a smoke order. Then he visited the ship’s doctor, who needed no introduction to Turner’s condition. The doctor, an unsmiling New Hampshire reservist, got defensive.
“He said it was for a sore on his foot, and, to be honest, I didn’t follow that story,” the doctor said without a trace of empathy. “I just want you to know that I can’t be taking this responsibility,” he continued. “I’m going to have to put something in it that will make him throw it up. It won’t kill him, of course, but it will make him violently ill.”
Of all the crises Bill had come to anticipate at Okinawa, this was one he hadn’t seen coming. He quietly asked the doctor to forbear until he took the matter under advisement. He then called a meeting of the Eldorado flag staff. After much deliberation, the higher-ups made a decision: Bill should make his way over to Spruance’s flagship New Mexico and report the problem to the Fifth Fleet’s head surgeon.
Incredulous, Bill reminded them of his relatively junior status on the flag staff and recommended that someone more senior be elected to ferry their collective concerns over to the New Mexico. But Bill was the only reserve officer among them, they reasoned. The rest of them were on a promising career trajectory in the regular navy. In their view, he could afford the certain career disembowelment that would result from reporting one’s commanding officer for drinking on the job in the middle of the largest amphibious campaign of the Pacific War.
As the specter of Bill’s cancelled naval career played out in his head, he proceeded to Admiral Spruance’s flagship with the same enthusiasm he might feel for being a kaiten’s next victim. He paced New Mexico’s quarterdeck for an hour, discussing the problem with the fleet surgeon and Admiral Spruance’s own flag secretary, Ch
uck Barber. When they finished, the fleet surgeon indicated he would take the matter from there. Not at all sure what that meant, Bill returned to Eldorado with a heavy heart.
The following morning, Admiral Turner was advised that Admiral Harry Hill, his second in command, was taking over for him at Okinawa. Turner was to report to Admiral Nimitz at his forward headquarters on Guam. A contagious glumness spread across Eldorado en route to Guam. It affected everyone except, curiously, Admiral Turner. For the duration of the trip, he rested, read, and sipped orange juice without additives from the granite-faced ship’s doctor.
At Guam, Turner received a desultory flag staff salute as he debarked Eldorado. Smartly returning the salute, Kelly Turner appeared fully restored—confident, self-possessed, and impatient as ever. He charged up Guam’s Fonte Plateau, nicknamed “Nimitz Hill.” It was the eve of his sixtieth birthday.
Chester Nimitz greeted Turner with a broad smile. In fact, he had decided to order a respite from battle for all three of his Okinawa commanders—Admirals Spruance, Mitscher, and Turner—out of a growing concern that the prolonged, high-stress nature of that campaign would diminish their effectiveness, not to mention their mental and physical health. All three men had been in continuous combat since the start of pre-bombardment at Iwo Jima, a record three months straight.
When Admiral Halsey and his new flagship the USS Missouri arrived at Okinawa to take over command from Admiral Spruance, the Japanese were confused anew. Once again, it seemed, the Third Fleet had overnight “replaced” the Fifth Fleet.
KELLY TURNER EMERGED FROM his meeting in Guam with a promotion to full admiral. Nimitz had chosen to mark the occasion by giving credit where it was due, pineapple-juice additives notwithstanding. Turner had brilliantly conceived, executed, and prevailed in every Pacific campaign he had undertaken. Nimitz would say later that he knew of no other navy admiral who could have performed that feat.
Along with his prized fourth star, Turner carried new orders back to Eldorado. They were to make sail for Manila immediately. Their mission was to coordinate Operation Olympic—the Allies’ long-anticipated assault on Japan’s home islands—with General MacArthur. The objective was to seize the island of Kyushu and secure its airfields and ports for Operation Coronet, the subsequent invasion of the island of Honshu and its capital, Tokyo. The sequential operations were code-named Downfall.
Of all Eldorado’s celebrants, Bill Mott was perhaps the most electrified by Admiral Turner’s reversal of fortune. Not only did it seem that both their once-careening naval aspirations were back on course, but also they were returning to Manila! Bill’s best and last chance to reach Barton had just fallen into his lap.
Spirits were well restored aboard Eldorado en route to Manila. Admiral Turner, too, was pleased by the turn of events, particularly over the other options, but he was deeply skeptical about Olympic and Coronet. With the stratospheric losses at Okinawa top of mind, he knew the death toll from a mainland Japan invasion would be exponentially higher.
Turner’s naval superiors agreed. They believed that a greatly weakened Japan could be finished off (with far fewer casualties) by adopting a dual strategy of aerial bombing and imposition of a naval blockade. Admirals Nimitz, Spruance, and King had all made this case. But the Joint Chiefs of Staff had proceeded instead with MacArthur’s preference: a heroic, decisive, and dramatic ground invasion of Japan.
With the war in Europe concluded, Americans—including President Truman—had turned their full attention to the shocking slaughter at Okinawa. Its soaring cost in human life was attracting greater and greater public scrutiny. Hundreds of thousands—including Americans, Japanese, civilians, and Okinawan conscripts—had already died, and the battle continued to rage.
Okinawa headlines coincided with those announcing the doubling of mandatory Selective Service call-ups and mass troop redeployments from Europe to the Pacific. The impact of these sobering reports was exacerbated by the belated and brutal physical evidence of the Pacific War pouring into mainland US hospitals. Aiea Heights Naval Hospital had long since filled to overcapacity. The Pacific wounded were now overwhelming stateside medical facilities. It was against this grim backdrop that President Truman became increasingly uncomfortable with the potential for calamitous casualties from an amphibious invasion of mainland Japan.
Truman made clear to a war-weary public and his Joint Chiefs that he intended to end the Pacific War with as few additional American casualties as possible. In his two short months as president, preventing “another Okinawa from one end of Japan to the other” had become a paramount objective. In mid-June 1945 he decided to give Olympic and Coronet another hard look.
Meanwhile, with Admiral Turner’s repeated blessing, Bill debarked Eldorado as soon as she made anchor in Manila Bay. Olympic’s scheduled invasion date was at least four months away, allowing him enough of a reprieve to complete his investigation into Barton’s whereabouts. Finding prisoner files at Bilibid much better organized, he was able to get right to work. He was only a few hours into poring over manifests and prison population lists when he came across an electrifying new document. It was a tally of the dead and missing from the fated Oryoko Maru.
During his March visit to Bilibid, Bill learned that Barton had boarded Oryoko Maru on December 13. He also learned that that ship was sunk in Subic Bay two days later. This newly discovered document confirmed both those findings, and now that Barton had survived the Oryoko Maru, his name was not on the official casualty list.
With renewed optimism, Bill peppered Bilibid office staff with questions on what else was known about the prisoners who swam from the wreck and made it ashore. At the end of the day, he thanked them and made his way back to Eldorado. These new discoveries—and the range of possible scenarios for survival that they offered—left room for hope. Back in his quarters, he wrote of the day’s findings to his sister Rosemary instead of Benny, despairing of his brother’s continued noncommunication.
Office of the Commander
Amphibious Forces,
US Pacific Fleet
Lieutenant Rosemary Cross
Office of the Commandant
Brooklyn Navy Yard
Brooklyn, New York
July 3, 1945
CONFIDENTIAL
Dear Muff,
I have delayed writing you or any of the family as I wanted to first investigate further into Barton’s status. Every time I started a letter, he was always uppermost in my mind, and I found it difficult to speak of anything else.
Before departing for Okinawa, I spent some time in the Philippines and naturally did everything humanly possible to run down concrete news of Barton. At that time, I wrote rather completely of my findings to Benny and asked him to investigate further in Washington. I enclose copies of those two letters, to which, incidentally, I have not yet received an answer.
Perhaps, there was no answer. At any rate, I can now take up where I left off in my letter of March 24th. Most of the information is negative, but is of the most reliable kind. I have pursued an exhaustive investigation of the rumor in the attached letter that the ship Barton boarded was sunk. I am now able to report the following with fair assurance of accuracy:
(a) Barton survived the sinking of December 13 in Subic Bay. I learned this from a list of the dead and missing from this sinking that the Japanese left behind at Bilibid Prison.
(b) He was evacuated to Japan or Korea on a ship which left the Philippines on December 27th.
(c) It is not known whether this ship ever reached port nor is it known, on the other hand, that it did not. The presumption is that it did.
(d) People out here are expecting that Japan will notify Washington through Geneva of the prisoners which were taken to Japan or Korea in that ship.
Of course I shall continue to do everything I can from this end. I am trying desperately, with every available minute, to turn every stone where there might be a clue. I am going to visit in the near future several of the places where Barton was
held, in hopes that someone will remember him, for whatever small comfort that may be. In this I am somewhat handicapped by not having with me a picture of him. Could you forward a snapshot by return mail?
Much of the information which I have given you is confidential and its disclosure in the wrong places could get me in very serious trouble; therefore I beg of you to see to it that it stays within the family. My request is that you talk it over with Arthur and, above all, keep it away from crack pot [POW] organizations like that one in North Dakota or Texas. Please ask Arthur—and whatever you decide to tell Mother—not to disclose any of the information I have given.
What if anything, Benny has done to contact Ensign Petritz (see enclosed letters), I do not know. It seems to me that a talk with him might be fruitful, especially since [Petritz] knew Barton. You can find out where [Petritz] is by going to, or calling, Washington and asking George Elsey at the White House to get the information on his present whereabouts from the Bureau for you. If George is not there, Lt. Marian Enright in the Navy Bureau of Personnel, or her boss who is a classmate of mine named MacDonald, will help you I’m sure.
There is also in the Bureau a section which deals exclusively with prisoner of war problems. It used to be headed by a Commander Jacobs (now a Captain and still there), but I am sure he has been superseded by now. All of these places should be visited, but I can’t be both places at once. Please don’t disclose to them the source of your information and I implore you to keep Mother from writing letters to Senators and the Navy Department. They will do no good and would very probably handicap me in further investigation. Also, don’t jump down Benny’s throat till you know what he’s accomplished. He may have done everything possible. I have some hope of being in Washington later this month, and there is much more I will be able to tell you then. In the meantime, please let me know what you find out, if anything. I feel as though my other two letters on this matter were dropped down the drain. I know Benny has his troubles and is terribly busy, but the uncertainty of not knowing what he was doing and not hearing from him prompted me to put the facts in your hands. Please handle them circumspectly.
The Jersey Brothers Page 42