The Soviet government expected that Japan would be divided as Germany had been, into four zones, each individually controlled by the Four Powers—France, England, Russia, and the United States. But that wasn’t going to happen.
The English and French presence in occupied Japan was negligible. Japan and the Japanese economy were in ruins. Japan could not be levied upon to support an occupation army, because they simply didn’t have the where-withal. And the English and the French, themselves reeling from the expense of World War II, simply couldn’t afford to pay for an Army of Occupation of Japan. The English were having great difficulty with India—which wanted out of the British Empire—and with the French, in what was known as Cochin-China and became known as Vietnam.
And, of course, the French and English had the expense of maintaining their armies in occupied Germany, now not so much to keep the defeated Germans in line as to prevent the Soviet Union from charging their armies through the Fulda Gap to take over continental Europe.
The British, additionally, were having a hard time supporting their forces in liberated Greece, where Communist forces—primarily Albanians supported by the Soviet Union—were trying to bring Greece into the Soviet orbit. In 1948, the British simply announced they could no longer afford to stay in Greece and were pulling out.
Truman picked up that responsibility, supplying the Greek army, and dispatching Lt. General James Van Fleet and an American military advisory group to Athens. The American anti-Communist battle in Greece—almost unknown to the American public—is considered by many to be the first “hot war” of the Cold War, and the American “advisors,” many of whom fought in small groups “advising” Greek units in the lines, as the precursor of U.S. Special Forces.
The absence of British and French forces in Japan made it easier for the Supreme Commander in Japan, Douglas MacArthur—who had no doubts of Soviet intentions, and didn’t want his occupation of Japan facing the same problems the Army of Occupation of Germany was facing vis-à-vis the Communists—simply to refuse to permit any Soviet presence in Japan.
The Soviets protested their being kept out of Japan to Truman, who ignored them.
Washington also ignored what was going on in Korea. The American commander, General John R. Hodge, in the absence of specific orders—in fact, any orders—from Washington, took matters into his own hands.
As early as late 1945, he began to establish, first, a South Korean police force, and then a South Korean army. To counter the Soviet surrogate, Kim Il Sung, Hodge permitted an anti-Communist Korean, Syngman Rhee, then living in exile in the United States, to return to Korea.
By 1948, the division of Korea along the 38th parallel was complete. North and South Korea each had a president, a government, and armed forces, and each proclaimed it was the sole legitimate government for the whole country.
The sole substantial difference between the two was that North Korea was far better armed—with captured Japanese and newly-furnished Soviet equipment—than South Korea. Fearing that the fiery Syngman Rhee would march against North Korea, the U.S. State Department prevailed upon Truman to deny South Korea heavy artillery, modern aircraft, and tanks, and ultimately to order all but a few hundred soldiers in a Greek-style “Korean military advisory group” out of the country.
Hostility between North and South Korea grew. In the eight months before June 1950, more than 3,000 South Korean soldiers and border policemen died in “incidents” along the 38th parallel.
On January 12, 1950, Secretary of State Dean Acheson outlined President Truman’s Asian policy in a speech at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. Acheson “drew a line” of countries the United States considered “essential to its national interests,” a euphemism everyone understood to mean the United States would go to war to defend.
Acheson placed Japan, Okinawa, and the Philippines within the American defense perimeter. Taiwan and Korea were not mentioned.
Five months later, on June 25, 1950, the North Koreans invaded across the 38th parallel.
I
[ONE]
ABOARD TRANS-GLOBAL AIRWAYS FLIGHT 907 NORTH LATITUDE 36 DEGREES 59 MINUTES, EAST LONGITUDE 143 DEGREES 77 MINUTES (ABOVE THE PACIFIC OCEAN, NEAR JAPAN) 1100 1 JUNE 1950
“This is the First Officer speaking,” the copilot of Trans-Global Airways Flight 907 said into the public-address system microphone. “We are about to begin our descent into Tokyo’s Haneda Airport, and have been advised it may get a little bumpy at lower altitudes. So please take your seats and fasten your seat belts, and very shortly we’ll have you on the ground.”
Trans-Global Flight 907 was a triple-tailed, five-months-old Lockheed L-1049 Constellation, christened Los Angeles.
The navigator, who wore pilot’s wings, and who would move up to a copilot’s seat when TGA accepted—next week, he hoped—what would be the eighteenth Constellation in the TGA fleet, did some calculations at his desk, then stood up and murmured, “Excuse me, sir,” to the man in the jump seat.
The man in the jump seat (a fold-out seat between and immediately behind the pilot’s and copilot’s seats) looked over his shoulder at him in annoyance, finally realized what he wanted, muttered, “Sorry,” and made room for the navigator to hand a sheet of paper to the copilot.
The navigator made his way back to his little desk, strapped himself in, and put on his earphones, in time to hear:
“Ladies and gentlemen, this is the First Officer again. I have just been advised by our navigator—this is all subject to official confirmation, of course—that it appears that a very, very favorable tailwind in the last few hours is probably going to permit us to again set a world’s record for the fastest regularly scheduled commercial flight time from San Francisco to Tokyo, with intermediate stops at Honolulu and Wake Island.
“The current speed record is held by a TGA Constellation flown by Captain M. S. Pickering, who is our captain today. If our computations are correct, and are confirmed by the appropriate authorities, TGA will be delighted to send each of you a certificate attesting to your presence aboard today. Keep your fingers crossed.”
Captain M. S. Pickering turned and looked at the man in the jump seat.
“You’d better get in the back, Dad.”
Fleming Pickering—a tall, large, well-tailored, silver-haired, rather handsome man who was, as he privately thought of it, One Year Past The Big Five Zero—nodded his acceptance of the order and moved to comply with it, although he had really hoped he would be permitted to keep the jump seat through the landing.
He wasn’t wearing earphones and had not heard a word of either of the copilots’ announcements.
He left the cockpit, musing that they were now starting to call it the “flight deck,” and then, when he saw his seat and seatmate, musing that while there was a good deal to be said about the benefits of crossing the Pacific Ocean at 325 knots, there were certain drawbacks, high among them that if you found yourself seated beside a horse’s ass when you first boarded the aircraft, you were stuck with the sonofabitch for the rest of the flight.
It was different on a ship; you could avoid people on a ship.
Had been different on a ship, he corrected himself. Passenger ships, ocean liners, were as obsolete as buggy whips. There once had been fourteen passenger ships in the Pacific & Far East fleet. Now there was one.
Pickering nodded politely at the horse’s ass in the window seat, sat down beside him, and fastened his seat belt.
“Up front, were you?” the horse’s ass inquired. “I didn’t know they let passengers go in the cockpit.”
“My son is the pilot,” Pickering said.
“And I guess if you’re the pilot, you can break the rules for your old man, right?”
“And I work for the airline,” Pickering said.
“No kidding? What do you do?”
“I’m in administration,” Pickering said.
That was not the whole truth. Trans-Global Airways was a wholly owned subsidiary of the Pacific &
Far East Shipping Corporation. When the Wall Street Journal, in a story about Trans-Global, mentioned P&FE, it used the phrase “privately held.” The Pickering family owned P&FE, and Fleming Pickering, pater familias, was chairman of the board.
“So you’re on a business trip?” the horse’s ass asked.
“That’s right,” Pickering said, smiling with an effort.
That wasn’t exactly true, either.
While it was true that he was going to Tokyo to participate in a conference between a dozen shipping companies—both air and what now had become “surface”—serving the Far East, it was also true that he was going to spend as little time as possible actually conferring with anyone. He was instead going to spend some time with a young couple—a Marine captain and his wife—who were stationed in Tokyo. He had never told either of them, but he regarded both of them as his children, although there was no blood connection.
When Pickering had been a young man, being groomed to take over P&FE from his father, Captain Richard Pickering, his father had told him over and over the basic rule of success as a mariner or a businessman: Find capable subordinates, give them a clear mission, and then get out of their way and let them do their jobs.
Fleming Pickering had capable subordinates who knew what he expected of them. And—very likely, he thought, because he did not get in their way and let them do their jobs—they did their jobs very well; in his opinion, far better than their peers elsewhere in the shipping business.
They would do the conferring in Tokyo, and he would not get in their way.
What had happened was, the previous Wednesday, Chairman of the Board Pickering had, as was his custom, arrived at his San Francisco office at precisely 9 A.M.
It was an impressive office, occupying the southwest quarter of the upper (tenth) story of the P&FE Building. In some ways, it was museumlike:
There were four glass cases. Two of the four held precisely crafted models of each of the ninety-one vessels of the P&FE fleet, all built to the same scale, and each about two feet in length. There were tankers, bulk-carriers, freighters, and one passenger liner.
The other two glass cases held far larger models. In one was a six-foot-long, exquisitely detailed model of the clipper ship Pacific Princess (Richard Pickering, Master), which had set—and still held—the San Francisco-Shanghai speed record for sailing vessels. The other glass case held a thirteen-foot-long model of the 51,000-ton SS Pacific Princess (Fleming Pickering, Master), a sleek passenger ship that had set—and still held—the San Francisco-Shanghai speed record on her maiden voyage in 1941.
Hanging on nearly invisible wires above the clipper’s glass case was a model of a Chance Vought CORSAIR F4U fighter aircraft. It had been built by the same firm of crafts-men who had built the ship models, and, like them, was correct in every detail. The legend “MARINES” was painted in large letters on the fuselage. Below it was lettered VMF-229, and below the cockpit window was the legend “M.S. Pickering, Major, USMCR” and nine small representations of the Japanese battle flag, each signifying an enemy aircraft downed by Major Pickering.
Suspended above the glass case holding the model of the SS Pacific Princess, there was a model of the Trans-Global Airways Lockheed Model L049 Constellation San Francisco, a four-engined triple-tailed airliner, in which TGA Chief Pilot Captain Malcolm S. Pickering had set two world’s records, one for fastest commercial aviation flight between San Francisco and Honolulu, and the other for fastest commercial aviation flight time between Honolulu and Shanghai. The latter record was probably going to be on the books for some time, because the Chinese Communists were now in Shanghai, and American airlines were no longer welcome to land.
Behind the chairman’s huge, antique mahogany desk, the huge wheel of the clipper ship Pacific Princess and her quarterdeck compass stood guarding an eight-by-twelve-foot map of the world
Every morning, at 6 A.M., just before the night operations manager went off duty, he came up from the third floor, laid a copy of the more important overnight communications—“the overnights”—on the chairman’s desk, and then went to the map and moved ninety-one small ship models, on magnetic mounts, from one position to another on the map to correspond with their last reported position.
The previous Wednesday morning, at 9:01 A.M., Chairman of the Board Pickering had taken a look at the map, read the overnights, poured himself a cup of coffee, and with that out of the way was, at 9:09 A.M., where he had been the day before at 9:09 A.M., and would almost certainly be tomorrow at 9:09 A.M.
That is to say, bored stiff and without a goddamned thing to do for the rest of the day.
Unless one counted the Second Wednesday Luncheon of the Quarterback Club of the Greater San Francisco United Charities, Inc., and he hadn’t even wanted to think about that.
Captain Richard Pickering had been right on the money about that sort of thing, too. “Flem,” his father had counseled, “the trouble with giving people something is that, since they get it for nothing, they tend to consider it worthless. ”
Fleming Pickering had long ago painfully come to conclude that what Greater San Francisco United Charities—and at least six other do-gooding or social organizations—wanted of him was his name on the letterhead and his signature on substantial checks, and in exchange they were willing to listen politely to his suggestions at meetings, while reserving and invariably exercising their option to ignore them.
At 9:11 A.M., Mrs. Helen Florian, his secretary for more than two decades, had announced over the intercom, “Boss, Pick’s on line three.”
Pickering, who had been sitting with his feet on the windowsill, watching the activity—there hadn’t been much—in San Francisco Bay, spun around, and grabbed the telephone.
I am, he had realized, in one of my “Boy, do I feel sorry for Poor Ol’Flem Pickering” moods, and I don’t want Pick picking up on that.
“Good morning,” he said cheerfully. “What’s up?”
“Mom still in New York?” Pick asked.
“I think today’s Saint Louis,” Pickering replied. “You know your mother.”
A picture of his wife of thirty years—a tall, shapely, silver-haired woman with startlingly blue eyes—flashed through his mind. He missed her terribly, and not only because she made him feel as if he were still twenty-one.
When Fleming Pickering had heard the sound of trumpets and rushed off to the sound of musketry in World War II, Mrs. Patricia Foster Pickering had “temporarily” taken over for her husband as chairman of the P&FE board. Surprising everybody but her husband, she had not only immediately gathered the reins of authority in her delicate fingers, but pulled on them with consummate skill and artistry.
When he’d come home, there had been some talk of the both of them working at P&FE, but Patricia had known from the start that, if their marriage was to endure, she would have to find something to do other than share the control of P&FE with her husband.
The temporary chairman of the board of P&FE had become the chairman of the board of Foster Hotels, Inc., in part because she was the only daughter of Andrew Foster, majority stockholder of the forty-two-hotel chain, and partly because her father—who had wanted to retire—had made the cold business decision that she was the best-qualified person he could find to run the company.
While Patricia Foster Pickering shared her husband’s— and her father’s—belief that the best way to run an organization was to select the best possible subordinates and then get out of their way, she also shared her father’s belief that the best way to make sure your subordinates were doing what you wanted them to do was to “drop in unannounced and make sure there are no dust balls under the beds and that the liquid in the liquor bottles isn’t colored water.”
Which meant that she was on the road a good deal, most often from Tuesday morning until Friday evening. Which meant that her husband was most often free to rattle around—alone—in either their penthouse apartment in the Foster San Franciscan or their home on the Pacific Ocean near
Carmel from Tuesday morning until Friday evening.
While he frequently reminded himself that he really had nothing to complain about—that in addition to his considerable material possessions, he had a wife who loved him, a son who loved him and of whom he was immensely proud, and his health—the truth was that every once in a while, say once a month, he slipped into one of his “Boy, do I feel sorry for Poor Ol’ Flem Pickering” moods and, logic aside, he really felt sorry for Poor Ol’ Flem Pickering.
“Let’s go to Tokyo,” Pick said.
“Why should I go to Tokyo?”
“Because your alternative is watching the waves go up and down in San Francisco Bay until Mom gets home,” Pick went on. “Come on, Pop. Let her wait for you for once.”
It probably makes me a terrible husband, Fleming Pickering thought, but there would be a certain justice in having Patti rattle around the apartment waiting for me for once.
He had another thought:
“I thought it was decided you weren’t going to Tokyo,” he said.
He hadn’t ordered Pick not to go to the conference, but he had happened to mention what Pick’s grandfather had had to say about picking competent subordinates and then getting out of their way.
“Bartram Stevens of Pacific Cathay is going to be there. Charley Ansley called me from Hong Kong last night and told me. Charley doesn’t want him pulling rank and taking over the conference; he asked me to go.”
Bartram Stevens was president of Pacific Cathay Airways, which was to Trans-Pacific Shipping what Trans-Global was to P&FE. J. Charles Ansley, who had been with P&FE longer than Pick was old, was general manager of Trans-Global.
Charley didn’t call me. There’s no reason he should have, I suppose; he was asking/telling Pick to go, and that would be Pick’s decision, not mine.
But if I needed one more proof that I am now as useless as teats on a boar hog around here, voilà!
Under Fire Page 2