MacArthur's War: A Novel of the Invasion of Japan

by Douglas Niles

  Yamamoto grunted from the belly. He wasn’t sure he was in the mood for one of Nagumo’s jokes, which were as heavy-handed as his tactics. “Today, no. Please tell me.”

  “It is because you refuse to give in to thoughts of victory and happiness. No matter how many enemy carriers I sink, to you it is not enough. If I sink them all, why are there battleships left? If there are no battleships left, then what about cruisers and destroyers? Why did I not capture Midway Island? If I had captured Midway, why have I not yet captured Hawaii? And if I capture Hawaii, why have I not occupied Los Angeles, California? Such a high standard motivates all around you to strive endlessly for higher reaches of excellence, demonstrating yet again your glories as an admiral.”

  Yamamoto chuckled. That wasn’t bad, especially coming from him. “Nagumo-san, I am indeed pleased with results at Midway, which turned out to be a more complex and problematic operation than we had planned. Your performance was exemplary and exceeded my expectations. By launching your strike against the American carriers as soon as they were discovered, you inflicted critical damage—and probably saved your own fleet. As to the island itself, it is unimportant, useful to us as bait but not as a base. You have my undying gratitude and respect. If I am called a great admiral, it is only for my great fortune in having such superior tactical, strategic, and leadership abilities in my honored fleet commander. You have been covered in glory for this day’s work.”

  “But you’d still like more.”

  “Who would dare ask for more when given so much? It is always true in war that more success is preferable, but it is also always true that success deserves recognition, and your success in this battle matters.”

  “But you’d still like more.”

  “Yes, Nagumo-san. Capture Los Angeles for me. Especially that part of Hollywood where the movie stars live. Specifically, Marlene Dietrich’s house.”

  While everyone was laughing, Nagumo said, “One day we’ll do it. We have a destiny.”

  It is a funny joke, thought Yamamoto, but the old fool actually believes we might conquer Los Angeles.

  He has no idea.

  My nation. What is going to happen to you?

  • FRIDAY, 12 JUNE 1942 •

  OFFICERS’ CLUB, SCHOFIELD BARRACKS, OAHU, HAWAII, 2117 HOURS

  The trade winds cooled the evening so that the temperature on the veranda of the club was perfect. The bar within was crowded, and Ellis Halverson drew a breath of fresh air, relieved to be outside, finally able to move his arms without bumping into some raucous young officer. He held his highball in his left hand, a cigarette in his right, and reflected that the amenities here in Hawaii beat hell out of the sandy dugout that had been his home on Midway Island.

  People sometimes said Ellis looked like Buster Crabbe, who played Flash Gordon in the serials. Ellis played up the similarities as much as he could; he even wore his hair like Crabbe. It was his starring role in an accidental movie that brought him here today.

  During the final defense of Midway against the approaching Japanese troop transports, his twin engine B-26 light bomber, the Skylark of Space, came under fire, so he went into a steep dive to get away from them. When he tried to pull out of the dive, he was too heavy. He dropped the bomb load to lighten the plane, and to his utter amazement, the bombs skipped across the water like stones and smashed into the hull of the Japanese troop transport approaching Midway. He had wondered if anyone would ever believe his story, but the gunner/camera operator happened to catch the miracle.

  He was surprised to find out what he’d done had a name: skip bombing. Major General George Kenney’s aide informed him that General Kenney had thought up the idea himself. No one had done it deliberately. That made his accidental discovery even more important. The orders for Hawaii showed up within a day, and tomorrow he’d meet with General Kenney in person. Tonight, he was planning to get stinking drunk and, with any luck, find himself a sweet, pliable companion to while away the rest of the evening. Midway had been hell on his social life.

  A chorus of laughs came from the young pilots at the table Ellis had just left. His head was spinning a bit, from the mixture of whiskey and the realization of his sudden, albeit minor, celebrity status. He hadn’t had to pay for a drink all night. He had, however, told his story over and over, to a rapt audience including captains and majors—once even to a full bird colonel, a veteran of the old Army Air Corps who had graciously bought a round for the exuberant pilots. It was heady stuff for a young man less than a year out of Baltimore, Maryland. Yep, a fellow could get used to living like this.

  This sure beat hell out of whatever kind of mudhole prisoner-of-war camp Johnny was sitting in right now.

  If he was still alive.

  Here’s to you, big brother. I’m coming for you in the Skylark as fast as they’ll let me. He finished his highball and threw the glass at a large stone about five feet from the veranda, where it shattered with a very satisfactory sound. There was more broken glass around. He wasn’t the first person to make a toast like that.

  In disgust he stubbed out his cigarette in a nearby pail of sand, then moved to the edge of the porch, trading the smell of sweat and tobacco for the sweet fresh smells of the hibiscus bushes, the blooming frangipani, and the green lawn.

  There was a grip on his shoulder. Ellis turned, expecting to shake off some other drunken airman, but stopped at the sight of navy whites. A captain. Navy officers at the army club were not uncommon but a definite minority. Then he recognized the face. “Frank?” he said, startled. Ellis had heard his brother-in-law was somewhere in the Pacific, but the Pacific was a big place.

  Captain Frank Chadwick grinned. “Hiya, Ellis. Damn, it’s good to see you.” Frank had met the oldest Halverson daughter while he attended the Naval Academy. “Anything new about Johnny?” he said, concerned.

  Ellis shook his head. “No. Nothing. I was going to ask you if you’d heard anything from back home.”

  “Not a thing,” Frank replied. “Not a damned thing.” He paused, then changed the subject. “I hear you’re the hero of Midway. Good shooting.”

  Ellis laughed. “Nope. It was a happy accident. But it’s got the brass interested in finding out if it can be done deliberately. I’m supposed to meet with the commanding general of the Fifth Air Force in the morning.”

  “Fifth Air Force. That’s in SWPA, right?” The Southwest Pacific was MacArthur’s theater.

  “I think so. Why? I thought it’d put me closer to Johnny.”

  Frank paused. “I wasn’t looking at it from that angle, but since you put it that way, I guess you need to take the assignment if it’s offered. Though I’m sure it will be offered,” he amended.

  “I don’t think they were planning to leave the choice up to me, anyway,” Ellis said. “The Army Air Corps is funny about things that way.”

  Frank laughed. “Listen, Ellis, I really did come here tonight to see if I could find you. As soon as I heard your name, I was pretty sure you’d be coming to Hawaii. Unfortunately, tonight’s a busy night, and I can’t stay. Are you in town for a bit?”

  “I guess even if they send me to Australia it’ll take a week or two to get me shipped out.”

  “With typical army efficiency, it could be years,” Frank added with a grin. “Anyway, it looks like we’ll have some time. I’ve got a place on the other side of the island.”

  They made a tentative agreement for Ellis to come out to Frank’s apartment for the weekend, and the navy captain slipped away.

  He turned back to stare into the darkness, and there was another grip on his shoulder. “Frank?” he said, thinking his brother-in-law might have returned, but as he looked over his shoulder he was irritated to recognize one of the pilots from his previous table. The drunken lieutenant shook him eagerly.

  “Did you hear? He’s coming—gonna be here any minute.” The drunken lieutenant’s voice was slurred, but still understandable.

  “Who”

  “Mac! Came to Hawaii yesterday
!”

  Ellis had heard that bit of trivia, General MacArthur having arrived a day after Ellis himself, with considerably more fanfare. At the time, the information had been just another tug at his memories of Johnny.

  Already officers were spilling out onto the veranda as the news shot through the crowd. Army wives in evening dress clutched the arms of their uniformed husbands, straining to see. The higher ranks pushed through toward the front, and Halverson was content to let them pass. He spotted the colonel who had earlier bought the round for the pilots and was surprised when the senior officer waved him over.

  “Come along, Lieutenant. There’s someone I want you to meet.”

  People, faces, voices swirled around in a rising frenzy. Ellis felt stone sober, experiencing everything through precise, even magnified, vision. A long staff car, four stars flying from the pennant, was drawing up to the club as he made his way to the colonel’s side. “Just wait here, son,” the colonel said.

  The car came to a stop and a sergeant stepped forward, opened the rear door, and saluted. MacArthur got out and stood, noticeably tall, handsome, and dashing in his battered cap, a pipe held casually in his left hand. The crowd of army officers and wives grew still. The General was followed by several other men, all wearing one or two stars but clearly his inferiors in rank, bearing, prestige. As he strode up the steps, MacArthur returned the salutes of the men in front, graciously chatting as the brass closed in and whisked him into the club. It was only then that the colonel—Leemann—started forward, pulling Ellis along with him. He was making a beeline for one of the generals in MacArthur’s retinue, an affable-looking fellow with the wings of the Army Air Force on his chest.

  “General Kenney, sir!” called out the colonel.

  “Ah, Ted!” the general replied, falling out of the entourage, shaking hands with Ellis’s companion. “Good to see you! Got your bags packed?”

  “Good to see you, too, sir. And yes I do. General, this is Ellis Halverson, the pilot who accidentally skip bombed that Jap transport that turned back the whole Midway invasion fleet.”

  Ellis saluted on cue.

  “Good to meet you, Lieutenant,” General Kenney replied. “We’re set up for tomorrow morning, right?”

  “That’s right—I mean, yes, sir,” Ellis said, his liquor making him a bit more flustered than he otherwise would have been.

  Kenney grinned. “This lieutenant is already ahead of me, Ted. Lead on in the direction of the bar.”

  “Right this way, General.” The colonel led the general and the lieutenant through the crowd.

  Shortly, Ellis found himself once more recounting the accidental hit. He was in the senior officers’ private lounge, the only lieutenant present—in fact, the only one lower than a major as far as he could see. “I was too low, sir, and way too slow—since my plane had been shot all to hell. But we got the bombs away, and they bounced across the water a couple of times—like a skipped stone, you know?—and punched right through the Jap’s hull. They tell me the ship sank less than an hour later. I got lucky, that’s all.”

  Kenney chuckled. “Luck is a good thing in a pilot. I’m interested in whether you could do it again, and then whether you could teach it to others. I’ve had this idea for some time, you know. I’d like to be able to do it in a B-17.”

  Ellis thought as hard as he could given the amount of alcohol he’d consumed. “A B-17? Sir, it was tough enough in my little hot rod. I’m not a heavy bomber man.”

  “So you aren’t. But you’re all I have. Want to fly something bigger than a Marauder?”

  “Sir, I’m from Baltimore, and so a Baltimore Whore’s good enough for me.” He regretted the words as they slipped out of his mouth. The manufacturer, Martin, was located in Baltimore, and the “whore” referred to the plane’s tiny wings—the bomber had no visible means of support.

  Kenney had the grace to laugh, to Ellis’s relief. It gave the lieutenant a chance to add, “But it would sure be fine to hit a Jap ship with what a B-17 could dish out.”

  “What do you think, General?” Colonel Leemann asked.

  “That’s a decent answer. Okay. You’re coming with us, Halverson. Let’s still talk tomorrow, but I’ll have the orders cut to bring you over to the Fifth Air Force. Leemann, anybody else you think we ought to have,” Kenney asked.

  “Um … General?” Ellis interjected. “My brother … he was on Bataan. I haven’t heard from him, but I’m hoping he’s a POW. I want to be out there where I can hit back at those bastards.”

  Kenney nodded. “All right. We’ll see that you can.”

  A balding general whom Ellis had previously noticed in MacArthur’s wake reappeared. “Let’s go, George,” he said curtly. “The General wants to show you off.”

  Kenney nodded. “Dick, here’s a young pilot who’ll be coming with us. His brother was back on Bataan. Lieutenant Ellis Halverson. Lieutenant, this is General Sutherland, chief of staff to General Douglas MacArthur.”

  Sutherland paid no attention to the introduction or to the lieutenant until the word “Halverson,” then his head jerked around. “What did you say?”

  “General, this is Lieutenant Halverson. He’s our new skip-bombing instructor. I’m going to introduce him to the General.”

  Ellis had the distinct sensation that Sutherland loathed him on sight, and he had no idea why. In an effort to build rapport, he repeated, “My brother was on Bataan.”

  “There were over seventy thousand soldiers on Bataan, Lieutenant,” Sutherland snarled. “It’s ridiculous to think I’d know your brother. It’s more ridiculous to expect the General to know. Kenney, I wouldn’t waste the General’s time with this boy if I were you.”

  Ellis was taken aback by Sutherland’s reaction. By the look on his face, Kenney was surprised, too.

  Ellis stood quickly, surprised to realize that he was drunk again—as if all the alcohol he had suppressed during his conversation with Kenney had surged to the surface. He didn’t like this staff general, not at all.

  “I’m going to help myself, and the army, sir,” he said, barely articulating. “As to General MacArthur, I’d like to ask why he left my brother behind when he came out of Bataan!” Ellis was swaying a little bit. “Why didn’t he stay there with them?”

  Sutherland’s face flushed. “Listen, you miserable little son of a bitch. He was ordered out by the president because that great man is needed here! And if you can’t get that fact through your thick skull, you oughta stand up for a court-martial—”

  “Dick, we’re not going to court-martial him!” snapped Kenney.

  They all realized simultaneously that another person was looming over them, obviously hearing every word of the conversation. General MacArthur stood nearby, staring. Ellis tried to meet that stare, but he couldn’t; instead, he took an involuntary step backward, made a fumbling salute.

  “Lieutenant Halverson, sir!” he said, voice slightly slurred.

  MacArthur stopped in his tracks. “Halverson?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Your brother is Johnny Halverson?”

  Sutherland looked slightly panicked. General MacArthur looked concerned and kind.

  “Um … yes, sir, he is,” Ellis replied.

  “He was on the list to go,” MacArthur said. “He was on the dock. But it was a long list. At the end, there was a space left. But there were two of them …” MacArthur’s eyes were far away.

  “General, we really need to go, sir,” Sutherland said, doing his best to push MacArthur away from Ellis.

  “I wanted to bring him out,” MacArthur said. He turned and looked at Sutherland with a questioning look. Sutherland looked daggers at Ellis, then turned and stomped away. General Kenney followed, giving Ellis a reassuring clap on the shoulder. Sutherland looked back as the retinue of generals approached the staff car. His eyes met Ellis Halverson’s, and Sutherland flashed a look of fury, menace, and something even darker.

  • MONDAY, 15 JUNE 1942 •

  WASHI
NGTON, DC, 0917 HOURS

  The petty officer knocked, entered. “Secretary Knox is calling.”

  Admiral Ernest J. King, chief of naval operations, picked up the telephone and waved at the rear admiral (lower half) serving as one of his assistant chiefs of staff to sit down and wait while he talked to the secretary of the navy. “Frank, good morning,” he said.

  “Ernie, are you reading the headlines?”

  “Of course, Frank.” All weekend, an unrelieved parade of newspapers and magazines full of anti-Navy propaganda. All of it, as far as King was concerned, was originating from MacArthur’s well-oiled public relations machine.

  “Looks like you’ve got an extra little shooting war going on in the Pacific. I think fighting one enemy at a time is enough, don’t you?”

  “If that son of a bitch will agree to a cease-fire, I’ll stop, too.”

  “Then set one up. What do you need, me to hold your hand?”

  “Now wait just a goddamn minute!”

  “No, Ernie. You wait. The President spoke to me. He said that as a former assistant secretary of the navy, it embarrassed him to see those stories. He would be very appreciative if I could get them stopped. I’d like to see those stories gone as well.”

  “I don’t think he ‘11 stop until he gets what he wants.” King didn’t feel he needed to name names.

  “In that case, he might have to get it.”

  “Not a goddamn chance in hell!” King roared.

  MACARTHUR’S WAR

  “Then find another answer, but find it fast. The President wants it, Henry wants it”—Henry was Henry Stimson, secretary of war—“and I want it. Get those stories off the front page and preferably out of the paper. No matter what it takes.”

  There was ultimately only one thing to say. “Yes, sir,” replied King, his sense of duty overtaking his outraged sense of fitness.

  But if the Coward of Corregidor thought he had the U.S. Navy over a barrel, he hadn’t reckoned with Ernie King. As soon as he could hang up on Knox, King flipped the intercom switch. “Get me Vinson,” he barked.