Liebenow received the Silver Star for his actions of the nights of July 2–3, and August 14–15, 1943, when he attacked Japanese destroyers and used the PT 157 as a decoy to divert Japanese planes from attacking a slow-moving U.S. convoy carrying U.S. Marines. Liebenow also received the Bronze Star for missions aboard allied PT boats in dropping off and picking up U.S and Allied spies, soldiers, and airmen along the French coast prior to D-Day.
After the war, Liebenow went on to become an environmental engineer in the railroad industry. “As Jack Kennedy’s political star rose, every incident in his life became news,” recalled Liebenow. “People became interested in everything he did or said, from the way he combed his hair to what he thought of the pope. When my connection with Kennedy became known through news accounts during the 1960 campaign I began to get ‘fan mail’ and phone calls. Ninety-nine percent were from people expressing good wishes and sending compliments. The other one percent, which of course you felt the most, were expressions of hate. These expressions came mostly from anti-Catholics. They were worried about having a president under control of the pope. The amazing thing was they somehow blamed me!”
In the 1960 presidential campaign, JFK asked Liebenow to join him on an old-fashioned railroad “whistle-stop” campaign trip across Michigan, where Liebenow was then living. Liebenow was delighted to accept the invitation. According to Liebenow, “Almost everywhere we went, someone would jump out and say “Hey, Jack I was on that boat that picked you up!”
Kennedy would nicely say “thank you,” turn to Liebenow, and quietly ask, “Did you ever see this guy?”
“Never saw him before in my life,” was his inevitable reply.
“Lieb,” Kennedy would say, “if I get all the votes from the people who claim to have been on your boat that night of the pickup, I’ll win easily!”
When Kennedy spotted Liebenow and his wife in the audience at one of his inaugural balls in January 1961, he beckoned them to join him on the ballroom stage. A team of Secret Service agents summoned the couple from the audience, and created such a grand path through the huge crowd that to Liebenow, “It felt like the parting of the Red Sea.”
“Lieb, I’d like to meet the girl you married,” said Kennedy.
Introducing himself to Lucy Liebenow, Kennedy said, “I just want to thank you for what your husband did during the war.”
Then Kennedy introduced Bud Liebenow to his Vice President-elect Lyndon B. Johnson, saying, “I owe this guy a lot.”
When Kennedy told Johnson about Liebenow’s rescue of the PT 109 survivors, remembered Liebenow, the tall Texan “slapped me so hard on the back that I was practically knocked off the stage.”
Today, Bud Liebenow lives in a retirement community in North Carolina with Lucy, his wife of seventy-two years. They met in a science lab in college and got married in 1942, days before he shipped off to the South Pacific. His son served as a U.S. Marine Corps captain in Vietnam, and his granddaughter served as U.S. Army captain.
These days, Liebenow works out every day. Four days a week, he presses weights in his gym. On the other three days, he catches a ride to the community pool, where he swims laps.
He just turned ninety-five years old.
On November 19, 2013, John F. Kennedy’s daughter, Caroline, was carried in a horse-drawn carriage through the streets of central Tokyo onto the private Imperial Palace grounds of Emperor Akihito of Japan, the son of Japan’s wartime emperor, Hirohito.
Entering the imperial reception room, she bowed to Emperor Akihito and presented her credentials as the U.S. ambassador to Japan, a country that still held fond memories of her father. “I think that my story in a way is a great metaphor for the U.S.-Japan alliance,” she later told a reporter. “Countries that were once adversaries and enemies in war are now the best of friends and allies.”
In her first year and a half in the highly visible post, Caroline Kennedy proved to be a popular, capable, and occasionally outspoken ambassador, who forged a strong working partnership with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and charmed Japanese audiences with her warm, humble personality.
On March 5, 2015, Prime Minister Abe and Ambassador Kennedy attended the opening ceremony for an exhibition titled “JFK: His Life and Legacy” at the National Archives of Japan in Tokyo. One of the guests was an elderly wheelchair-bound woman in a gold kimono. She was the widow of Kohei Hanami, commanding officer of the Imperial Japanese Navy destroyer Amagiri. Ambassador Kennedy leaned down, held her hand, and said, “I’ve been hoping to meet you ever since I became ambassador.”
Caroline Kennedy, U.S. Ambassador to Japan, meets the widow of Captain Kohei Hanami in Tokyo, March 5, 2015. (U.S. Embassy, Tokyo)
One day early in his presidency, John F. Kennedy sent a televised greeting to the people of the nation he once was at war with, a country he briefly glimpsed as it rose from the ashes of destruction, and a nation he yearned to visit again someday.
“I am a great admirer of Japan,” he said. “We are about to have in Washington the annual flowering of your cherry trees which were a gift of your people to us which make our city so beautiful.”
“Whenever I look out the window, I’ll be reminded of Japan.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I thank my wife, Naomi Moriyama, for translating a wide variety of Japanese documents I consulted in the research for this book; my father, William Doyle, for a lifetime of conversations about what it was like to be at war in the South Pacific in World War II; my mother, Marie Louise Doyle, for her memories of the Kennedys in New York in 1960; and my seven-year-old son, Brendan, for his constant encouragement and enthusiasm.
I also thank:
My editor, Peter Hubbard (whose idea this book was), publicist Sharyn Rosenblum, and their colleagues at HarperCollins; and my agent, Mel Berger of William Morris Endeavor.
The people I interviewed for this book, especially William Liebenow, Welford West, and their fellow veterans of PT boat service in World War II, and Ethel Kennedy and Maxwell Taylor Kennedy for sharing their memories of Japan and the Solomon Islands for this book. Mr. Liebenow was a tremendous help to me in my research and I am very grateful to him for his enthusiasm, encouragement, and the many hours he spent answering my questions about arcane PT boat details and events and dialogue that occurred over seventy years ago.
John K. Castle, Nicholas Meyer, Charles Rockefeller, Lucy Liebenow, Fumiko Miyamoto, Frank J. Andruss, Sr., Bridgeman Carney, Jay Barksdale, Harold E. “Ted” Walther Jr., Tim Connelly, Terrence Finneran, Charlie Jones, (President of PT Boats, Inc.), John Flynn, Shane Kennedy, Danny Kennedy, Dennis E. Harkins, Francis I. Piorek, Eric Klee, John Fairfax, Jan-Losa Naru Butler, and Tom Putnam and the superb staff at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, including Stephen Plotkin, Michael Desmond, Stacey Chandler, Laurie Austin, and Corbin Apkin. The JFK Library is a “gold standard” model of what a research archive should be.
Ambassador Caroline Kennedy for making available to me the portrait of her father as a U.S. Navy ensign in 1942 from the closed Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis papers at the JFK Library.
Alyce Guthrie of PT Boats Inc. for helping me track down a number of PT boat veterans; and Nancy Hogan Dutton for helping me track down veterans of the JFK White House.
Ken Kotani, Senior Fellow, International Conflict Division, Japanese Center for Military History and Lecturer of the Japanese National Defense Academy; and Anna Annie Kwai, historian and scholar based in the Solomon Islands.
I am especially gratefull to PT boat experts Bridgeman Carney, Charlie Jones, and Harold E. “Ted” Walther, Jr., for reviewing the book and making a number of useful corrections and suggestions.
NOTES AND SOURCES
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
This book is based on an examination of a wide range of declassified documents and other materials in the research collections of the Joh
n F. Kennedy Presidential Library (JFKL) and a variety of archives in Japan, Australia, and the Solomon Islands.
It is based on author interviews with sixteen surviving contemporaries of John F. Kennedy in the PT boat service, and an extensive series of author interviews with William “Bud” Liebenow, the PT boat commander who bravely and expertly navigated his own PT 157 forty miles into enemy waters in the dark of night to rescue Kennedy and his men, several of whom were wounded. It is also based on author interviews with the very rarely interviewed Ethel Kennedy and her son Max Kennedy, both of whom have intimate family connections with events in this book.
This book is also influenced by the impressive insights of three independent PT boat historians: Frank J. Andruss Jr., Bridgeman Carney, and Harold E. “Ted” Walther Jr.; and by rare or never-before-publicized private letters, photos, and other materials given to the author by them and by friends and relatives of key players in the events.
And finally, this book is influenced by the work of other writers and historians who have examined the PT 109 incident, including John Hersey, author of “Survival,” a seminal June 17, 1944, New Yorker article on the event; journalist Robert J. Donovan, author of the 1961 book PT 109: John F. Kennedy in World War II (McGraw-Hill), which was written with the cooperation of JFK and was the basis of a 1963 movie produced under the direct supervision of JFK and his father; naval historians Clay Blair Jr. and Joan Blair, authors of the 1976 book The Search for JFK (Berkley), which included an authoritative exploration of the PT 109 incident and was based in part on a wide range of original interviews conducted by the authors; and historian Nigel Hamilton, author of JFK: Reckless Youth (Random House, 1992), an essential biography of the early years of JFK, including his wartime experiences.
AUTHOR INTERVIEWS
William “Bud” Liebenow (skipper of PT 157, tent mate of John F. Kennedy at Rendova base prior to PT 109 sinking, participant in Blackett Strait action on August 1–2, 1943, commander of lead boat in rescue of JFK and PT 109 survivors on August 7–8, 1943), Welford West (PT 157, participant in Blackett Strait action, August 1–2, 1943, participant in rescue of JFK and PT 109 survivors on August 7–8, 1943), John Sullivan (PT 107, participant in Blackett Strait action, August 1–2, 1943), Chester Williams (PT 106, participant in Blackett Strait action, August 1–2, 1943), John Klee (then named Jack Bernard Kahn, served on PT 59 under JFK in November 1943), Edwin Foster Ockerman (instructed by JFK at Melville PT training base, later skipper of PT 103), Howard Aronson (PT 103), Jerome Francis “Pat” Crowley (PT 104), Vernon Byrd (PT 106), Donald Frost (PT 161), Jack Duncan (PT 103), Vincent Conti (PT 171), Bob Kirkpatrick (PT 169), Jack Marshall (PT 171), Joseph Brannan (PT 59), Joseph Derrough (PT 59).
Ethel Kennedy (Mrs. Robert F. Kennedy), Maxwell Taylor Kennedy (son of Robert F. Kennedy), Dan Fenn (JFK White House assistant), Charles Daly (JFK White House assistant), Richard Donahue (JFK White House assistant), Harris Wofford (JFK presidential campaign aide and White House assistant), Jerry Blaine (Secret Service agent on Kennedy White House detail), Clint Hill (Secret Service agent on Kennedy White House detail), Frank J. Andruss Sr. (PT boat historian), Donald Shannon (PT boat historian), Harold E. “Ted” Walther Jr. (PT boat historian), Bridgeman Carney (PT 157 historian and author), Connie Martinson (wife of Leslie Martinson, director of PT 109 movie), Dunstone Aleziru (grandson of Benjamin Kevu, by email), Mark Zinser (son of PT 109 crewman Gerard Zinser), Jack Kirksey (son of Andrew Jackson Kirksey, crewman on PT 109), Hoyt Grant (stepson of Andrew Jackson Kirksey, crewman on PT 109, by email), Fred Ratchford, Jr. (son of Fred Ratchford, on PT 157 mission to rescue PT 109 crew), Julie Nash and Clint Nash (children of Coastwatcher Benjamin Franklin Nash), Melody Miller (served on U.S. Senate staff of Edward M. Kennedy, met with President John F. Kennedy in White House, by email), Haruko Hosono (daughter of Gunji Hosono, interviewed by her daughter Fumiko Miyamoto), Leo Racine (longtime aide to Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., interviewed by John K. Castle), Tom Cluster (son of JFK’s squadron commander, Al Cluster), James MacGregor Burns (JFK historian and author), Susie Wilson (journalist who accompanied Robert and Ethel Kennedy on 1962 Japan trip), John Seigenthaler (Justice Department official who accompanied Robert and Ethel Kennedy on 1962 Japan trip), Brandon Grove (State Department official who accompanied Robert and Ethel Kennedy on 1962 Japan trip). Interviews on JFK as president for author’s books Inside the Oval Office and An American Insurrection: Theodore Sorensen, C. Douglas Dillon, Ralph Dungan, Myer Feldman, Edwin Martin, Pedro Sanjuan, Robert Bouck, Burke Marshall, Nicholas Katzenbach, David Bell.
CHAPTER NOTES
Foreword
“Without the PT 109”: Providence Journal, November 22, 1993.
“Everything”: Los Angeles Times, September 20, 1962.
“I firmly believe”: Edward J. Renehan Jr., The Kennedys at War: 1937–1945 (Doubleday, 2002), p. 2.
Prologue: Samurai in the Mist
Kohei Hanami’s memories of the collision with the PT 109 are from: translated Japanese newspaper clippings from August 1943 [including an article apparently written by an unnamed Japanese news correspondent or military press officer and filed in Rabaul that was based on interviews with Amagiri officers and crew, and another article that includes an extended statement by Hanami, who is not named, presumably for censorship purposes] in Charles O. Daly Papers, PT 109 file, JFKL; Kohei Hanami, “The Man I Might Have Killed Was Kennedy,” Yomiuri (English-language edition), November 2, 1960; Associated Press article by Kohei Hanami that appeared in various U.S. newspapers on January 17, 1961; Bill Hosokawa, “John F. Kennedy’s Friendly Enemy,” American Legion Magazine, June 1965.
“We are more a freighter convoy”: Francis Pike, Hirohito’s War: The Pacific War, 1941-1945 (Bloomsbury, 2015) p. 555.
Yamashiro’s account: Yamashiro wrote JFK on several occasions from 1958 to 1962, attempting to explain in detail how he ordered the Amagiri to steer away from the PT 109. On August 2, 1962, Yamashiro wrote to author Robert Donovan, demanding apologies and a correction for Donovan’s publishing Hanami’s version of an intentional ramming. At one point, he declared flatly, “Hanami is telling a lie.” Yamashiro also told his story in an article titled “Collision with American PT-109 Boat” in the September 1960 issue of Sukio magazine. This material is in President’s Office Files, Box 132, Personal Secretary Files: PT 109 — Correspondence—Japanese, JFKL. Donovan maintained that Hanami’s version was more credible. Based on the evidence, including Donovan’s interviews of Japanese witnesses, the current author agrees, while entertaining the possibility that Yamashiro might have uttered a contradictory order, perhaps mumbled, garbled, or not clearly heard.
These Nippon News newsreel reports (in Japanese), archived on the Japanese network NHK website (http://www.nhk.or.jp/shogenarchives/) offer fascinating details on the Japanese side of battles in the Solomon Islands: Rabaul landing, Nippon News No. 87, February 3, 1942; Battlefield New Guinea-Solomons, Nippon News No. 194, February 16, 1944; Japanese floatplanes, Nippon News No. 182, November 29, 1943; Attack on Rabaul Base, Nippon News No. 192, February 2, 1944.
“Tokyo Express” convoy shipments: “Detailed engagement report and wartime log book from June 1, 1943 to January 31, 1944, Kure 6th Special Naval Landing Force” (in Japanese), National Institute for Defense Studies, Ministry of Defense Navy Records, Japan Center for Asian Historical Records, National Archives of Japan, contains detailed engagement reports for actions on Kolombangara, North Munda, and other islands, including supplies delivered to the garrison at Kolombangara by the “Tokyo Express.”
A key source for detail on the Solomon Islands campaigns is the U.S. Navy Office of Naval Intelligence Combat Narratives series published in 1944 and available on the Japanese National Diet Digital Collection Library http://dl.ndl.go.jp, which contains a wide assortment of other Japanese and Allied documents on the Pacific War. Another valuable source is the Japan Center for Asian Historical Records, National Archives of Japan: http://www.jacar.go.jp.
An essential Japanese source on the Pacific War from 1937 to 1945 is the 102-volume Senshi Sosho (in Japanese), assembled by the War History Office of Japan’s Ministry of Defense in Tokyo in the 1960s and 1970s and based on military records and personal papers and diaries by participants.
Japanese military veteran memories of Solomon Islands campaign: “Air Operations by Japanese Naval Air Force Based at Rabaul, Including Solomons and New Guinea, Serial No. 446, Records of the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey, Entry 43, USSBS Transcripts of Interrogations and Interrogation Reports of Japanese Industrial, Military, and Political Leaders, 1945-46,” Japanese National Diet Library.
“Why didn’t your radio report say”: Nigel Hamilton, JFK: Reckless Youth, p. 572.
Chapter 1: Give Me a Fast Ship
“I wish to have no connection”: Willis Abbot, The Naval History of the United States (Peter Fenelon Collier, 1890), p. 82.
“I have been interested in the sea”: JFKL News Release, “New Exhibit to Celebrate JFK’s Love of the Sea,” March 27, 2000.
“I really don’t know why”: Remarks in Newport at the Australian Ambassador’s Dinner for the America’s Cup Crews, September 14, 1962, Public Papers of the Presidents: John F. Kennedy, 1962.
“an easy, prosperous life”: James MacGregor Burns, John F. Kennedy: A Political Profile (Harcourt Brace, 1960), p. 23.
“the sound of Joe banging Jack’s head”: Evan Thomas, Robert Kennedy: His Life (Simon & Schuster, 2013), p. 39.
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