The Great Fire

by Lou Ureneck

  After returning to Washington, Halsey Powell was transferred to Peking as a naval attaché and then assigned to command the USS Pittsburgh. He drew admirers in all his postings for his quiet and reliable competence. In 1936, President Franklin Roosevelt approved his nomination to the rank of rear admiral, but days before the promotion was granted, Powell died of a heart attack in Washington at age fifty-three. He had continued to list Kentucky as his home address. He is buried in Arlington National Cemetery. In 1943, the U.S. Navy launched the USS Halsey Powell, a destroyer. The ship and its men served with distinction during World War II.

  Mark Bristol served in Turkey until 1927. He was then sent to China to take command of the Asiatic Fleet. After two years, he returned to Washington and retired in 1932, serving as chairman of the Navy Board. He died at age seventy-one in 1939. The navy named two destroyers for Bristol during World War II. Bristol is remembered fondly in Turkey. Helen Bristol, ever the industrious woman, opened a business selling baked hams from her home in Washington. She died in 1945.

  Dr. Hatcherian and his family traveled on board the refugee ship to Mytilene. The family stayed there for seven months, during which time Dr. Hatcherian provided medical care to other refugees. In April 1923, the Hatcherians moved to Salonika, and Dr. Hatcherian became director of the Armenian hospital there. His granddaughter, Dora Sakayan, who brought his diary to the world through its publication, was born in Salonika. In the 1950s, the Hatcherians moved to Buenos Aires, where Dr. Hatcherian died in 1952.

  Theodora Gravou and her sisters also went to Salonika but were soon taken to Athens. Theodora was placed as a servant in a home in Athens, and her two sisters were put into the Amalion Orphanage. Theodora eventually married George Kontos, also from the Smyrna region, and together they raised a family in an apartment in a Piraeus neighborhood with many other Anatolian refugees until their deaths. Her daughter, Eleni, eighty-four, was still living in the apartment in 2012.

  Mustapha Kemal married Latife Hanum in 1923, but the marriage lasted only two years. He became Turkey’s first president and served from 1923 to 1938, introducing sweeping reforms to nearly all aspects of Turkish society. He sought to modernize and secularize the country, greatly reducing the role of Islam in the affairs of government. He took the name Atatürk, “Father of the Turks” and transformed the nation in countless ways and set it on a path of independence and national pride. He died in 1938. He remains a hero in Turkey.

  Arthur J. Hepburn rose to the rank of admiral and served as chief of Naval Intelligence and commander in chief of the fleet. In the 1930s, with the prospect of war looming for the United States, President Roosevelt gave Hepburn the job of reviewing American defenses. When World War II came, he served as chairman of the Navy Board. He died in 1964 in a Washington nursing home.

  IN JANUARY 1923, Greece and Turkey agreed to an exchange of populations—Christians would be required to leave Turkey, and Moslems would be required to leave Greece. It was an internationally sanctioned forced transfer of people. The agreement carved out minor exceptions for Greeks in Constantinople and Moslems in western Thrace. About one and a half million Greeks departed Turkey, and about a half million Moslems left Greece. Later in 1923, the Allies and Turkey signed the Treaty of Lausanne, which officially ended World War I. It also affirmed the existence of a new nation, the Republic of Turkey.

  The United States and Turkey negotiated a separate treaty of amity and commerce in 1923. Powerful opposition to the treaty arose in the United States among religious leaders and prominent Americans such as Henry Morgenthau. Despite a State Department campaign with Dulles at the point to win the treaty’s approval, the Senate defeated the treaty. A new president, Calvin Coolidge, decided not to resubmit the treaty and established diplomatic relations with Turkey by executive authority. In 1929, with Herbert Hoover as president, a new version of the treaty was submitted, and the Senate accepted it. In the years that followed, Turkey and the United States developed a close relationship, and following World War II, Turkey joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and became a key strategic ally of the United States on the Soviet Union’s southwestern flank.

  The regard with which the United States is now held in the Middle East is beyond the scope of this book. It is of course a long and complicated story. Suffice it to say that the United States became more deeply immersed in the region’s politics and feuds as it sought to ensure its access to the region’s oil.

  The Turkish government continues to reject the term “genocide” as a description of what happened to the Armenians, Greeks, and Assyrians, though its position has softened in recent years. It now acknowledges that many people died as a result of the deportations. In speaking of the Armenian deaths, President Obama, mindful of the potential damage to US-Turkish relations, has avoided use of the word genocide. He has referred instead to Metz Eghern, the Armenian phrase for the Great Catastrophe.

  Today, Christians are mostly absent from Anatolia. Smyrna was rebuilt as Izmir in the 1950s. It is a gleaming glass and concrete city of four million people. Cafés and restaurants line the Quay, but very few if any of the well-dressed patrons on the harborfront know the story of what happened there in September 1922.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I first encountered the story of Smyrna thirty-five years ago in Marjorie Housepian’s important book, The Smyrna Affair. Asa Jennings made a brief appearance in her story, and it set me wondering about this man who seemed a forgotten hero. I only got around to seriously researching his achievement in 2010. The work took me to Turkey and Greece five times. I walked the Izmir Quay with an old map in search of the few buildings that were not destroyed by the fire and flipped through pages of old newspapers at the Izmir Municipal Archives. I also traveled to Theodora Gravou’s village, dipped my hands in the Sakaria River, climbed to the top of Kocetepe, and walked the battlefield at Dumlupinar with the guidance of a friendly and helpful Turkish army officer. In Greece, I spent days at the Asia Minor Research Center in Athens, met descendants of Smyrna survivors, and combed the backstreets of Piraeus to find Theodora’s daughter. In the United States, I traveled to Asa Jennings’s home and pastorates in upstate New York, dug deep into the rich files of the Library of Congress, the National Archives, and the YMCA archives. Along the way, countless people helped me in my work. This book would not have been possible without them.

  Among the many people who guided me along the way are these: Roger Jennings, Asa’s grandson, who shared family papers and photos, patiently answered innumerable questions, and took me to Asa’s birthplace; George Poulimenos and Achillias Chatziconstantinou, two Athenians who have done deep and original research into the cityscape of old Smyrna and repeatedly answered my questions about the streets, buildings, and families of Smyrna; Professor Sevda Alankus, who warmly welcomed me to Izmir and connected me to the city’s historians and translated documents and book passages that would otherwise have been inaccessible to me; Professor Ahmet Can Ozcan, whose good humor and knowledge of the city and region was both a delight and a gift; and David and Miriam Levi, who guided me through Izmir and explained its Jewish past.

  Nancy Horton, the daughter of George Horton, gave me many afternoons in her Voula apartment as we talked of her father and Smyrna. Sadly, the grandson of Captain Theophanides, Ioannis Theophanides (himself a retired admiral), passed away during the book’s preparation. Always generous and gentlemanly, Admiral Theophanides spent many hours with me and provided useful documents. Professor Thanos Vermis of the Hellenic Foundation for European & Foreign Policy in Athens helped me understand the rise of nationalism in the Balkans and Turkey. Professor Nikos Leandros and his wife, Maria, invited to stay in their home in Athens as I pursued my research, and Professor Nikos Bakounakis and his wife, Maria, also welcomed me in their home and provided guidance and encouragment. Kika Kyriakakou helped with translation and many other tasks in Athens, as did Katerina Voutsina, who led our search for Theodora’s daughter. Others who helped with translation, from Greek
, Turkish, and French, were Petros Kasfikis, Adamantia Pattakou, Gökser Gökçay, Serkan Savk, and Rejean Lebel. Professors Robert Shenk and Paul Halpern offered expert research guidance, and Professor Shenk read the manuscript for errors. (If there are any, they are mine, not his.) Others who provided invaluable guidance were Professors Simon Payaslian, Pelin Boke, Jonathan Winkler, Halil Berktay, Michail Psalidopoulos, Michaelis Meismaris, Klaus Kreiser, Hakan Özoðlu, Elizabeth Prodromou, Alexandros Kyrou, the Reverend Robert Hill, and Erik Goldstein.

  Among the early and helpful readers of the manuscript were David Kallas, Elizabeth and Nigel Savage, Adam Ureneck, Dan Mariaschin, Michael D’Antonio, and Irving Rimer.

  Librarians and archivists often went to great lengths to help me. First among them is Vita Paladino of the Howard Gotleib Archival Research Center at Boston University. Also: the staff at the Asia Minor Research Center; Valerie S. Ellis at the Mobile Public Library; Jeffrey Monseau at Springfield College; Rhoda Bilansky at BU’s Mugar Library who tracked down many rare books for me; the staffs at the Izmir Muncipal Archives, the Nea Smyrni Library in Athens, and the Gennadius Library at The American School for Classical Studies in Athens; Amanda Pike at the Mudd Manuscipt Library at Princeton; Jamie Serran, Archivist at the Yarmouth County Museum & Archives, Nova Scotia; Stratis Karamanis and Efthalia Tourli of the Refugees of Asia Minor Museum in Skala Loutron, a tiny village on Lesbos inhabitated by surivivors of the Smyrna fire and their descendants; Robert Hitchings, formerly of the Norfolk Public Library, and Lynn Sullivan of the Omaha Public Library. Also: Theresa Roy, Kirsten Carter, and Rodney Ross at the National Archives, and Rosemary Hanes at the Library of Congress; Barbara Price of the Gloucester Count Historical Society; Candace Bundgard of the Natchez Historical Society; Heather Home, Queen’s University Archives; Nat Wilson, Carleton College Library; Christopher Carter, Amistad Research Center; Nancy Adgent of the Rockefeller Archive Center; Robert Smith, Navy Memorial Library; Mary M. O’Brien, archivist at Syracuse University Archives; David D’Onofrio of the U.S. Naval Academy; and Ryan Bean of the Kautz Family Archives.

  I must single out Amalie Preston of Harrodsburg, Kentucky, for her persistence in tracking down the papers of Halsey Powell. They added immeasurably to my understanding of the man.

  I would like to thank also for their valuable assistance and support: Elias Papadopoulos, Ray Alcala, William Skocpol, John Makrides, Maria Ilou, Joe Nocera, Lee Tstinis, Ümit Kurt, Evgen Titov, Julie Norman, Tom Mullins, Steve and Ann Marie Pitkin, Rev. Carl E. Getz, Rev. James E. Barnes II, Jonathan Powell, Giorgos Dimitrakopoulos, Rifat Bali, Don Kehn Jr., Chrysovalentis Stamelos, and Katerina Titova for her prayers and lighted candles. I fear that I have left off someone important from this list: I apologize for the oversight in advance.

  I had the assistance of hardworking graduate students over the long course of the research: Chen Shen; Emma Dong; Shang Jing Li; Kasha Patel; Siutan Wong, Gabriella Kashtelian; Siu Tan Wong; and Sara Bost. I want to also thank Boston University, Dean Tom Fiedler, and colleagues Mitchell Zuckoff, Richard Lehr, and Bob Zelnick for their support. Hilary Redmon, my editor, saw the story’s potential from the beginning and made valuable suggestions along the way. I also want to thank Emma Janaskie and Laurie McGee for their skills and careful attention to the book’s production. The support of my brother, Paul, never flags, and Irene, my wife, has been patient and supportive beyond measure. This book is dedicated to her. Finally, I must thank Jill Kneerim, my agent. Her wisdom, encouragement, steadiness, and skill were crucial in turning an aspiration into a book.

  NOTES

  The pagination of this electronic edition does not match the edition from which it was made. To locate a specific passage, please use the search feature on your e-book reader

  ABBREVIATIONS

  ABCFM American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions

  AKJP Asa Jennings Papers

  ARC Amistad Research Center

  ARI American Research Institute (Istanbul)

  ASMP Aaron Stanton Merrill Papers

  BWD Bristol War Diary

  CLP Caleb Lawrence Papers

  GHP George Horton Papers

  KFYA Kautz Family YMCA Archives

  MLB Mark Bristol Papers

  NA National Archives

  NER Near East Relief

  NPRC National Personnel Records Center

  RAC Rockefeller Archive Center

  STANAV American High Commissioner in Constantinople

  PROLOGUE

  1Smyrna was burning Details of the fire and the evacuation from Arthur J. Hepburn, “Smyrna Disaster; Report On,” Sept. 25, 1922. Record Group 45, Naval Records Collection, NA. There are several American and British eyewitness accounts of the first night of fire. Among the most vivid are the dispatch by Ward Price in the London Daily Mail, September 16, 1922, and “Smyrna and After, Part III,” Naval Review, publication of the Naval Society, London, Vol. 1, 1924. A moving description of the fire, based on primary sources, appears in Philip Mansel, Levant: Splendour and Catastrophe on the Mediterranean (London: John Murray, 2010), 215, 216.

  1It would also serve as The Ottoman Empire did not officially end until 1923 with the signing of the Treaty of Lausanne, which brought a formal end to World War I and affirmed Allied recognition of the Republic of Turkey, but the military victories that led to the occupation of Smyrna made it clear that the future of Turkey was with the Turkish nationalists under the aegis of the Grand National Assembly and its leader, Mustapha Kemal. The defeat of the army of Greece and occupation of Smyrna was the event that clarified the country’s future.

  4Hepburn, a veteran officer Hepburn’s conflict with Horton is described in Hepburn, “Smyrna Disaster,” 20, and Aaron S. Merrill Diary, Sept. 11, 1922, “Diaries of Lieutenant A. S. Merrill,” Box 7, Folder 62, Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

  5There was also one American Asa Kent Jennings, “Report for Mrs. Emmons Blaine of Work Accomplished at Smyrna, Turkey,” March 1, 1928, Asa K. Jennings File, 1922–1928, KFYA.

  5Several hours earlier, Jennings “Mrs. Jennings Relates Tale of Horrors,” Syracuse Journal, Oct. 27, 1922.

  6Before it burned itself out Vice Consul Maynard Barnes to State Dept., Nov. 22, 1922, NA 767.68/463.

  CHAPTER 1: END OF AN EMPIRE

  9Decades after For a discussion of Raphael Lemkin’s work on the genocide of the Greeks, see Leonard Jacobs’s “Genocide of Others: Ralph Leminkin, the Genocide of the Greeks, the Holocaust and the Present Moment,” in Tessa Hofmann, Matthias Bjørnlund, and Vasileios Meichanetsidis, The Genocide of the Ottoman Greeks—Studies on the State-Sponsored Campaign of Extermination of the Christians of Asia Minor, 1912–1922 and Its Aftermath: History, Law, Memory (New York: Aristide D. Caratzas, 2011). Also, Samantha Power, A Problem from Hell: America in the Age of Genocide (New York: Basic Books, 2002), 17–30, 40–35.

  9“The aim of war is not …” Adolf Hitler’s “Obersalzburg Speech,” August 22, 1939, Modern History Sourcebook, Fordham University, http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/hitler-obersalzberg.asp. The Nazi fascination with Turkish nationalism, Mustapha Kemal, and the slaughter of the Armenians is examined in Stefan Ihrig’s Ataturk in the Nazi Imagination (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014).

  9The Armenians, an ancient people The Armenian genocide has been described and discussed by scholars in numerous works including these: Power, A Problem from Hell; Richard G. Hovannisian, ed., The Armenian Genocide: History, Politics, Ethics (New Brunswick: Transaction Books, 1986); Richard G. Hovannisian, ed., Remembrance and Denial: The Case of the Armenian Genocide (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University, 1998); Taner Akçam, A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility (New York: Metropolitan, 2006); Taner Akçam, From Empire to Republic: Turkish Nationalism and the Armenian Genocide (London: Zed, 2004); Vahakn N. Dadrian, “The Documentation of the World War I Armenian Massacres in the Proceedings of the Turkish Military Tribunal,” I
nternational Journal of Middle East Studies 23, no. 4 (Nov. 1991); Mark Levene, “Why Is the Twentieth Century the Century of Genocide?” Journal of World History 11, no. 2 (Fall 2000); Andrew Bell-Fialkoff, “Brief History of Ethnic Cleansing,” Foreign Affairs 72 (Summer 1993).

  10The deportations and executions Tessa Hofmann, “The Massacres and Deportations of the Greek Population on the Ottoman Empire (1912–1923),” in Hofmann et al., Genocide of the Ottoman Greeks, 35–108; Michelle Tusan, Smyrna’s Ashes: Humanitarianism, Genocide and the Birth of the Middle East (Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2012), 145, 207.

  10Up until the early twentieth century A scholarly and sympathetic history of the late Ottoman Empire can be found in Bernard Lewis, The Emergence of Modern Turkey (London, NY: Oxford University Press, 1961).

  11In secret, and beginning with the Treaty of London The Treaty of London in 1915 was signed between the Entente Powers (Britain, France, and Russia) and Italy to bring Italy into the war against Germany and Austria-Hungary. Italy was promised the Dodecanese Islands, parts of southern Turkey, and other lands. The Sykes-Picot Agreement between Britain and France (with Russian assent) divided the Arab lands of the Ottoman Empire between Britain and France and assigned Constantinople and eastern sections of Anatolia to Russia. In 1915, the British offered Greece territory in western Anatolia (Smyrna) to gain its entrance into the war. See Michael Llewellyn Smith, Ionian Vision: Greece in Asia Minor, 1919–1922 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1973), 35; and Laurence Evans, United States Policy and the Partition of Turkey, 1914–1924 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1965), 49–87.