After the Fact

by Owen J. Hurd

  For the record, Jackie Robinson did perform at least one act of civil disobedience. In 1959, while waiting for a flight at an airport in Greenville, South Carolina, Jackie and some associates were approached by a security official who instructed them that they were trespassing on a whites-only waiting room. Robinson replied that he had every right to be there and he refused to leave, even though he was threatened with arrest. The standoff ended when it was time for Robinson to board his plane. He also threatened boycotts against various corporations and participated in protest marches.

  Robinson’s life in baseball, business, and politics made it difficult to be an attentive father to his three children. The eldest, Jackie Robinson Jr., had an especially difficult time as the son and namesake of a baseball legend. A poor student, he joined the army and served in Vietnam, returning to the United States traumatized by the violence he witnessed. In addition to being wounded, the younger Robinson also came home a heroin user. He struggled for years with his addiction and eventually seemed to have beaten it. Unfortunately, just months after getting clean, he died in a car accident on June 17, 1971.

  Branch Rickey, the part owner and general manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers who recruited Jackie Robinson, didn’t stay with the Dodgers for much longer. In 1950, he sold his share of the club and later became the general manager of the Pittsburgh Pirates. Rickey and Robinson shared mutual respect and even love for the rest of their lives—Rickey filling a fatherly void in Robinson’s life.

  Pee Wee Reese was the captain of the Brooklyn Dodgers when Robinson joined the team in 1947. Without Reese’s support, Robinson’s integration of the league would have been much more difficult. First, Reese chose not to join other Dodger players who said they would refuse to play if Robinson joined the team. Reese’s principled stand put an end to the threatened walkout. Also, during one road game the fans of the opposing team were taunting Jackie with especially offensive racial slurs. Reese came over and put his arm around Jackie. This display of solidarity again muzzled Jackie’s critics. After retiring, Reese managed the Dodgers for one season. He also worked for the Louisville Slugger company and provided color commentary for television broadcasts of Major League Baseball games. Later, Reese owned a bowling alley, also in Louisville. Reese was one of the pallbearers at Jackie Robinson’s funeral. He died of lung cancer in 1999.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  WORLD WAR II

  WARS tend to define the lives of their combatants. In this chapter you’ll meet soldiers who never had a second thought about what they did and whose pride sustained them throughout the rest of their lives. You’ll meet those scarred by their experiences—some who endured their pain silently and those who flamed out in self-destruction. You’ll also meet those who, profoundly changed by their war experiences, dedicated their lives to promoting peace and understanding between former foes.

  Pearl Harbor

  The Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, is of course remembered by all Americans as the most devastating and unexpected military defeat in our nation’s history—up until September 11, 2001. On that “date which will live in infamy,” 2,390 Americans were killed, the great majority being sailors on the USS Arizona. Tragic as it was, in terms of human loss and the damage it did to the nation’s morale, it could have been worse. Japan failed to follow through on the victory with further attacks that would have completely crippled America’s westernmost military outpost. In the lull that followed December 7, the U.S. military quickly rebuilt many of the damaged ships and replaced many of the destroyed aircraft. In doing so, it avoided a retreat to the mainland, maintaining a Pacific force that ultimately checked and then reversed the Japanese onslaught of eastern Asia. Within just six months of Pearl Harbor, the United States won the decisive and pivotal Battle of Midway. From that point on, the United States never relinquished its naval superiority over the Japanese.

  One unforeseen result of the attack was the great unity of purpose that it inspired in Americans. Up until then, many were unenthusiastic, to say the least, about intervening in the world war. However, the humiliating defeat aroused a bloodlust throughout America, reflected in an unshakable determination to exact revenge against the newly hated “Japs.” In words ascribed to Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto—the principal architect of the Pearl Harbor attack: “I fear all we have done is awakened a sleeping giant and filled him with terrible resolve.”

  Things were not so clear-cut on the island of Hawaii, where the stench of defeat lingered in the air, months after the battle was over. A pall fell over the islands’ residents, fed by the fear of additional attacks, concerns about the loyalties of Hawaii’s sizable Japanese population, and a sense that someone should have known what was coming and made the necessary preparations. Hawaii was not yet a state, but as a protected U.S. territory, it was still governed by a democratically elected civil government. After the attack, the military imposed martial law, requiring nightly blackouts and curfews. Habeas corpus was suspended, and military courts supplanted the civilian judiciary. Freedom of speech was severely curtailed, as Japanese-language newspapers were shut down, along with many other Japanese businesses. It wasn’t even legal to speak Japanese on a long-distance phone call. The military government did not impose a wholesale internment—there were far too many Japanese living on the islands for that—but they did inter some whose loyalties were in question.

  In the meantime, the military forces were placed on high alert, taking defensive measures in case of ensuing attacks—measures that should have been put in place weeks earlier, according to some. In the years after the attack, inquiries have determined that military cryptologists had deciphered messages indicating an attack was imminent. However, that intelligence was never shared with the military commanders on Pearl Harbor. Besides, the messages contained no information about the target of the attack. Navy Commander in Chief Admiral Husband Kimmel did not believe that Pearl Harbor was in Japan’s range. If an attack did occur, he reasoned, it would probably befall the Philippines. As a result, the only preparations he made were offensive instead of defensive, assuming that their forces would be called on to counterattack the enemy. Kimmel and Army Commander Lieutenant General Walter Short were relieved of their duties in the weeks after the attack. Kimmel was replaced by Chester W. Nimitz, who assumed control of the entire Pacific fleet.

  The battle produced heroes as well as scapegoats. When the bombs started falling, Navy sailor John Finn rushed to his base and grabbed a large-caliber machine gun. He stood in a clearing, shooting at enemy planes for two hours, stopping only to reload, even though his body had been pierced by more than twenty bullets and pieces of shrapnel. Finn was awarded the Medal of Honor for his bravery. He continued to serve throughout the war and after, reaching the rank of lieutenant. He retired in 1957. When Finn returned to Pearl Harbor in 2009 to visit a boat christened in his name, he was the final surviving recipient of the fifteen men awarded the Medal of Honor for duty in the Pearl Harbor attack. He died six months later at the age of one hundred.

  The first African American to receive the Navy Cross, Dorie Miller, also distinguished himself during the attack. A navy steward, he rushed to his battle position and began firing a machine gun at Japanese planes, continuing to do so until he was ordered to take cover. After bestowing Miller with his cross, the navy called on him to fulfill a different duty. They sent him on a speaking tour of the United States where he addressed recent African American draftees. Later reassigned to the aircraft carrier USS Liscome Bay, Miller died along with more than six hundred other sailors when the ship was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine on November 24, 1943.

  After the “dastardly attack” on Pearl Harbor, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was determined to strike a retaliatory blow upon the Japanese mainland. Dubbed “Doolittle’s Raid” after the secret mission’s leader, Lieutenant Colonel Jimmy Doolittle, the plan was to launch sixteen B-25 bombers from an aircraft carrier four hundred miles off the Japanese coast. Th
e pilots would bomb key sites in Japan and then land in safe havens in China. Unfortunately, on April 18, 1942, the carrier was detected by the Japanese six hundred miles off the coast. With their cover blown, the pilots took off anyway, determined to accomplish their mission, even though they would not have sufficient fuel to get them beyond the Japanese-controlled region of China.

  The pilots successfully dropped their bombs, hitting targets in Tokyo and several other major cities. In addition to the damage caused by the bombs, the raid had a far-reaching symbolic impact on both the United States and Japan. It provided a major morale boost to Americans still smarting from the Pearl Harbor attack. Being the first attack on the Japanese mainland, it struck a devastating blow to Japan’s former sense of superiority and security.

  Several planes crashed, killing two crew members, but the rest of the crew successfully parachuted to the ground, ditching their planes rather than letting the Japanese take them. Most of the eighty crew members made their way to safety, but eight were captured behind enemy lines. One of them starved to death in captivity, and three were executed by their captors. The remaining airmen survived the ordeal, gaining their freedom at the end of the war.

  One of the survivors, Jacob DeShazer, converted to Christianity during his captivity and later returned to Japan in the postwar years, preaching the gospel and doing missionary work. In the 1950s, DeShazer made the acquaintance of a recent Christian convert, Mitsuo Fuchida, who had been the head pilot in the battle of Pearl Harbor. After the war, Fuchida had expressed regret for his role in the sneak attack. Fifteen years later, Fuchida actually traveled to the United States to conduct a six-month evangelical tour. Despite some protest and even a few violent threats, especially during his weeks in Hawaii, Fuchida was for the most part warmly greeted by congregations across the country. Fuchida even had an opportunity to meet Admiral Nimitz. The two former adversaries broke bread and shared stories about the war years. He also met and became a good friend of Billy Graham. Fuchida made several trips to the United States over the years, a country he came to love. With his children and grandchildren living there, he may have adopted it as his home, but ultimately returned to his homeland, where he later died at the age of seventy-three.

  Mitsuo Fuchida was not the only Pearl Harbor protagonist to cause a stir in the United States after the war. Minoru Genda, the Japanese fighter pilot who devised the bombing strategy for the Pearl Harbor attack, survived the war despite participating in numerous battles. Japan’s military complex was completely defeated and dismantled after the war, but in the 1950s the need for defensive forces became apparent as the Cold War progressed. Genda joined the Japanese Air Self-Defense Force, part of the limited defense forces created with the blessing and assistance of the United States. As a high-ranking general, one of Genda’s jobs was to evaluate and select aircraft to be used by the new air force—a job that resulted in a scenario that most Americans—especially ones still harboring painful memories of December 7, 1941—would consider unthinkable: Genda spent several months test-flying jet fighters in the United States. Ironically, Genda also received the Legion of Merit award from the United States Department of Defense in 1962, the same year he retired from military service.

  In a later visit to the United States in 1969, Genda was invited to speak at the U.S. Naval Institute in Annapolis, Maryland. As reported in the Houston Chronicle on the 2009 anniversary of Pearl Harbor, the visit prompted angry protests by several U.S. Navy survivors of the attack. One of them sent a telegram to the Naval Academy saying, “It is alright to forgive and forget but not to toast and honor the coward Gen. Minoru Genda who planned the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor.”

  After his military career, Genda served in the upper house of Japan’s legislature for over twenty years, where he promoted the remilitarization of Japan, even arguing in favor of keeping the door open to future uses of nuclear weaponry. Genda died on August 15, 1989, forty-four years to the day after Japan’s surrender in World War II.

  LOOSE ENDS

  Isoroku Yamamoto went on to orchestrate several more victories in the months after Pearl Harbor, but he also had a target on his back. On April 18, 1943, American fighter pilots, acting on intelligence gathered by U.S. code breakers, engaged Yamamoto’s aircraft in a dogfight over the Solomon Islands. Yamamoto’s plane was shot down, and his bullet-ridden body was recovered from the crash site the next day.

  Disgraced commanders Husband Kimmel and Walter Short spent the rest of their lives trying to restore their reputations, but despite numerous investigations, they were never entirely exonerated for failing to protect their territory and personnel from the deadly Pearl Harbor attack.

  Japan deployed five “midget submarines” as part of the attack. The two-man sub crews were supposed to conduct a suicide mission: to torpedo American ships and then to destroy their submarines before enemy forces could capture them. One of the subs lost power and ran aground during the operation. The two sub operators attempted to scuttle the craft in the rough seas, but one drowned and the other washed up on shore, unconscious but alive. Kazuo Sakamaki became America’s first Japanese prisoner of war. Sakamaki begged his captors to permit him to commit suicide, but they refused. While in captivity, the prisoner repeatedly burned himself with cigarettes to punish himself for failing to complete his mission. After the war, Sakamaki wrote a memoir, I Attacked Pearl Harbor, and later worked as an executive at Toyota.

  One Japanese aircraft plummeted to the ground on the tiny Hawaiian island of Niihau. The two surviving crew members took two native Hawaiians captive, but the husband and wife hostages fought back, disarming one captor and killing him. The other one shot himself in the head.

  On January 19, 1942, Franklin Roosevelt sent a handwritten note to Vannevar Bush, a scientist lobbying for government support to fund a top secret bomb in its theoretical stages. “V. B. OK-returned-I think you had best keep this in your own safe FDR.” This effort, later joined by Enrico Fermi and J. Robert Oppenheimer, would eventually result in the development of two atomic bombs.

  Iwo Jima: After the Flags Came Down

  On January 24, 1955, a Native American man with the unlikely name of Ira Hayes was found dead on a garbage-strewn street in the Gila River Indian Community near Phoenix, Arizona. An acquaintance of the family had found the young man—he was only thirty-two—in the cold early morning hours, face down in a puddle of vomit and blood. The coroner determined the cause of death to be exposure. Apparently, Hayes had drunk too much, passed out and froze to death. It would be a sad end to any life, but it was especially pathetic in this case, because of who the man was and what he had come to represent to a nation at war.

  Ira Hayes had been one of the six men during the pivotal World War II invasion of Iwo Jima, who helped raise the flag on Mount Suribachi, a volcanic crater overlooking the desolate beaches below. The moment, captured by Associated Press combat photographer Joe Rosenthal, became one of the most iconic photographs taken in U.S. history. In the following weeks, the photo was featured on the front pages of newspapers all over the country. The six flag raisers were hailed as heroes, but things turned out badly for just about every one of them.

  On March 30, 1945, President Franklin Roosevelt issued orders to retrieve the six men from the battlefront and bring them back to Washington. FDR wanted the Iwo Jima flag raisers to headline a war bond tour to raise much-needed funds to finance the war’s final stages. But identifying and finding the soldiers proved easier said than done. It had all happened so fast and at the time was considered such a trivial act that no one bothered to figure out just who was in the picture. In fact, Rosenthal wasn’t even sure he got the shot. Distracted by trying to get into the proper position, he almost missed it altogether. Just in case, he also assembled a larger group of men to pose under the flag for a backup photo. Identification was also complicated by the perspective of the photo. All the soldiers’ backs are turned, or their faces are obscured by arms, shoulders, and helmets.

  By the tim
e they figured out who was most likely in the photograph, sad news came back to Washington: Three of the men had already died in the three weeks of fighting after the flag was raised on February 23. Many people assume that the flag raising came at the end of the battle, a symbolic gesture declaring a triumph already won. But it really occurred four days into a monthlong siege. The casualties after the flag was mounted far outnumbered those that occurred before. The first to die was Mike Strank, who succumbed to friendly fire, most likely a missile fired from an offshore U.S. destroyer. Hank Hansen, identified as the guy guiding the bottom of the flagpole into its rocky base, was shot by Japanese defenders. Frank Sousley almost made it through, but he was felled by an enemy sniper on March 21.

  By the time the Battle of Iwo Jima was over, the U.S. invasion force suffered its worst casualty rate of the war. Of the seventy thousand men who landed at Iwo Jima, almost seven thousand died and another twenty thousand were wounded. Of the eighteen soldiers who posed for Rosenthal’s staged photograph beneath the just-hoisted flag, only four made it back relatively unscathed.

  Three of them were flag raisers Ira Hayes, Rene Gagnon, and John “Doc” Bradley. They came out of the battle with their bodies intact—though Bradley required several surgeries to repair a leg injury. Their psyches, however, sustained damage that could not be fixed so easily.

  Following orders from President Franklin Roosevelt, the two marines, Hayes and Gagnon, and the navy corpsman, Bradley, were whisked off the island and flown to Washington, where they began a national war bonds tour. They enjoyed the fanfare at first, but as the tour progressed, all three began to consider it a tedious grind. It was bad enough that they were living out of suitcases, spending the majority of their time on planes, buses, and cars or in cheap hotel rooms. Even worse were the constant reminders that they had survived what so many of their buddies had not. It may have also been gnawing at them that many of their friends were still in the trenches, while they sat in parades and got slapped on the back for being heroes.