10. Buell, Master of Sea Power, pp. 76–78; King, Fleet Admiral King, pp. 195–204; Moffett to King, February 8, 1928, EJK/LC, Box 3; and “I hardly know” and “developments regarding,” King to Moffett, February 13, 1928, ibid.
11. Bureau of Navigation to King, July 7, 1928, and Bureau of Navigation to King, August 4, 1928, confirming July 28, 1928, dispatch, EJK/LC, Box 1; King, Fleet Admiral King, pp. 206–7; “He learned to his disgust,” p. 206; “annoying period,” p. 207.
12. “love the job,” King, Fleet Admiral King, p. 207; “It seems to me” and “Admiral, I request,” Buell, Master of Sea Power, p. 79; turning down the Saratoga, King, Fleet Admiral King, pp. 213–14; “the finest ship,” Buell, Master of Sea Power, p. 79.
13. Buell, Master of Sea Power, p. 81.
14. J. J. “Jocko” Clark with Clark G. Reynolds, Carrier Admiral (New York: David McKay, 1967), p. 45.
15. Buell, Master of Sea Power, pp. 80–89; “Where the hell,” p. 84; “Everyone was out,” p. 84; “Ballentine, what is wrong,” p. 86; “Under King, ” p. 92; “You ought to be,” p. 89.
16. King, Fleet Admiral King, pp. 228–30.
17. Halsey, Admiral Halsey’s Story, pp. 47–48.
18. Potter, Halsey, pp. 123–25; Halsey, Admiral Halsey’s Story, pp. 50–55; “buying and abandoning,” p. 54; “one of the most delightful,” p. 50; “I jumped at,” p. 52.
Chapter 10: First Stars
1. Adams, Witness to Power, pp. 52–53; “had an excellent chance,” p. 58. Six proposed battleships, numbered BB-49 through BB-54, whose hulls had already been laid before the Washington treaty, were never completed and were sold for scrap in 1923; a seventh—Washington (BB-47)—was sunk as a target in 1924.
2. The publication was the Roll Call, with sketches reproduced in WDL/Diary, undated, 1928.
3. Adams, Witness to Power, p. 60.
4. WDL/Diary, October 14, 1927.
5. Ibid., undated, 1930; Adams, Witness to Power, pp. 60–65.
6. London Naval Treaty, April 22, 1930, part 4, article 22, in Treaties and Other International Agreements of the United States of America, 1776–1949, vol. 2, Multilateral, 1918–1930 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of State, 1968), p. 1070.
7. Adams, Witness to Power, p. 66.
8. “Japanese Invasion of Manchuria, September 1931,” BlacksAcademy.net, http://www.blacksacademy.net/content/3112.html, accessed January 7, 2010.
9. WDL/Diary, October 19, 1931.
10. Ibid., January 29, 1932.
11. Ibid., July 1, 1932.
12. Ibid., July 16, 1932.
13. Ibid., September 8, 1932.
14. Ibid., November 12, 1932.
15. Ibid., January 26, 1933.
16. Ibid., March 7, 1933.
17. Adams, Witness to Power, pp. 71–72.
18. WDL/Diary, January 10, 1935.
19. Swanson to Vinson, June 21, 1935, WDL/LC, insert in WDL/Diary, June 1935.
20. WDL/Diary, March 27, 1935. The “Propaganda Book” was a handbook “who’s who in the opposition” for Japanese naval officers, as well as a general puff piece for Japan’s own navy.
21. Ibid., September 29, 1936.
22. Halsey, Admiral Halsey’s Story, pp. 54–55.
23. Potter, Bull Halsey, pp. 127–29; orders of May 28, 1934, and August 21, 1934, WFH/LC, Box 1; “What do you think,” Admiral Halsey’s Story, p. 57.
24. Halsey, Admiral Halsey’s Story, p. 62.
25. Ibid.
26. LaChance to King, April 29, 1933, and King to LaChance, May 18, 1933, EJK/LC, Box 4.
27. King to Spafford, May 19, 1933, EJK/LC, Box 4.
28. Buell, Master of Sea Power, p. 98.
29. Ibid., p. 101.
Chapter 11: Projecting Power
1. Potter, Nimitz, pp. 142–43, 147.
2. Ibid., p. 150.
3. Ibid., p. 152.
4. Ibid., pp. 156–57.
5. Ibid., pp. 158–60; “I think one can,” p. 160.
6. Ibid., p. 1.
7. Adams, Witness to Power, p. 86.
8. WDL/Diary, November 10, 1936.
9. “Leahy: Would-Be West Pointer Climbs to Top of Navy Ladder,” Newsweek, November 21, 1936, p. 12.
10. WDL/Diary, November 4, 1936.
11. Ibid., December 31, 1936.
12. FDR inaugural parade, ibid., January 20, 1937.
13. Harold L. Ickes, The Secret Diary of Harold L. Ickes, vol. 2, The Inside Struggle, 1936–1939 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1954), pp. 192–93.
14. WDL/Diary, September 21, 1937. The internal Chinese civil war between the Communists and Nationalists had been put on hold late in 1936 to counter this renewed Japanese threat. The infamous Rape of Nanking that followed the Japanese capture of Nanking continues to be controversial and a source of contention in Sino-Japanese relations.
15. Ibid., September 21, 1937.
16. Joseph C. Grew, Ten Years in Japan (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1944), p. 234; Samuel Eliot Morison, History of United States Naval Operations in World War II, vol. 3, The Rising Sun in the Pacific (Boston: Little, Brown, 1948), pp. 16–18.
17. WDL/Diary, December 12 and 13, 1937. Years later, Time published an apocryphal account of that meeting which had FDR asking, “Bill what will it take to lick Japan?” Leahy supposedly replied, “Fifty billion dollars a year—and I’d like the job.” The president shook his head and replied, “It’s too much. Send for Cordell Hull”—meaning a diplomatic rather than a military solution (Time, May 28, 1945, p. 15).
18. “ships of the Fleet,” WDL/Diary, December 14, 1937; “we then blockaded,” Leahy, I Was There, p. 64.
19. Morison, Naval Operations, vol. 3, p. 18.
20. Adams, Witness to Power, pp. 101–2; Brands, Traitor to His Class, pp. 495–96, 505; “subjected to a very severe,” WDL/Diary, December 31, 1937; Norman Alley’s footage, “China: Bombing of USS Panay Special Issue, 1937/12/12,” at bliptv, http://blip.tv/file/898740, accessed November 11, 2009, including the narration phrase “war-crazed culprits.”
21. Roosevelt to Leahy, December 30, 1937, WDL/Diary, December 30, 1937.
22. King to Standley, September 28, 1936, EJK/LC, Box 6. One of the books King probably took with him on this cruise was Edwin A. Falk’s just-published Togo and the Rise of Japanese Sea Power; book order in King to Naval Institute Press, May 1, 1936, EJK/LC, Box 4.
23. King to McCain, September 12, 1936, EJK/LC, Box 6. McCain’s philosophical response was, “It is an ill wind that blows no one any good” (McCain to King, October 23, 1936, ibid.).
24. Buell, Master of Sea Power, p. 108.
25. King to Andrews, February 17, 1938, EJK/LC, Box 7.
26. Andrews declined King’s proposal with a “My dear Rey” letter, Andrews to King, February 23, 1938, EJK/LC, Box 7.
27. Buell, Master of Sea Power, pp. 110–11.
28. King, Fleet Admiral King, p. 274.
29. Buell, Master of Sea Power, p. 113.
30. Halsey to King, November 15, 1938, EJK/LC, Box 7. Later, the Essex-class carriers of 1943 introduced deck-edge elevators that created more flight deck space and kept the shuttling of planes between the flight deck and hangar deck out of the way of most flight operations.
31. King to Halsey, November 18, 1938, EJK/LC, Box 7.
32. Halsey, Admiral Halsey’s Story, p. 66.
33. King, Fleet Admiral King, p. 292.
34. Whitehill notes of conversation with King, undated, EJK/NHC/NWC, MS 37, Box 2, File Folder 1.
35. Buell, Master of Sea Power, p. 100.
36. Halsey to King, June 22, 1939, EJK/LC, Box 7.
37. Halsey, Admiral Halsey’s Story, p. 68.
38. WDL/Diary, May 12, 1939.
39. Leahy to Bloch, May 17, 1939, Charles Claude Bloch Papers, Box 2, Naval Historical Foundation Collection, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
40. Washington Post, May 28, 1939.
41. Washington Times-Herald, June 2, 1939.
> 42. WDL/Diary, July 28, 1939; “The extraordinary qualities,” Distinguished Service Medal citation, insert in ibid., August 1, 1939.
43. Roosevelt to Leahy, July 28, 1939, insert in ibid.
44. “This brings to an end,” ibid.; “Bill, if we ever,” Life, September 28, 1942, p. 102.
Chapter 12: At War All but in Name
1. Nimitz to Bloch, March 23, 1939, Bloch Papers, Box 2; “While the Navy,” Bloch to Nimitz, April 14, 1939, ibid.
2. Hutchinson to Nimitz, June 16, 1939, CWN/NHHC, Series 2, Box 25.
3. Nimitz to Bloch, November 17, 1939, Bloch Papers, Box 2; “Whether this is important,” Bloch to Nimitz, November 20, 1939, ibid.
4. Potter, Nimitz, p. 169.
5. Buell, Master of Sea Power, p. 123.
6. Ibid., p. 125; see note at p. 571 for Buell’s analysis of FDR’s role in King’s assignment with Edison; temporary duty orders, March 23, 1940, EJK/LC, Box 1.
7. “peace-time psychology,” Buell, Master of Sea Power, p. 125; “throw off a routine,” p. 127; temporary duty orders, May 14, 1940, EJK/LC, Box 1.
8. Buell, Master of Sea Power, p. 127.
9. Ibid., pp. 127–28; orders, November 14, 1940, EJK/LC, Box 1.
10. Adams, Witness to Power, p. 131.
11. “simply would disappear” and “this streak,” Harold L. Ickes, The Secret Diary of Harold L. Ickes, vol. 3, The Lowering Clouds, 1939–1941 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1954), p. 206; “Leahy thinks,” p. 349. Certainly, no one ever questioned Leahy’s personal courage. Getting into his car outside the El Cortez Hotel in San Diego in the fall of 1932, Leahy encountered a masked man in the rear seat who pointed a pistol at him and told him to get in quietly. Leahy slammed the door shut and dodged behind an adjacent car to enter the hotel and immediately call police. “This was my first close contact with a bandit and of course being in America I was unarmed” (WDL/Diary, October 1932).
12. “The senior officers,” George C. Dyer, On the Treadmill to Pearl Harbor: The Memoirs of Admiral James O. Richardson (Washington, D.C.: Naval History Division, 1973), pp. 425, 435; WDL/Diary, October 8, 1940. Richardson later professed that his relief three months later came as “a real shock to me.” In his memoirs more than thirty years later, he was still frank in his opinion of FDR: “I was deeply disappointed in my detachment, yet there was some feeling of prospective relief, for I had never liked to work with people whom I did not trust, and I did not trust Franklin D. Roosevelt” (Dyer, On the Treadmill, p. 420).
13. Naval message, FDR to Leahy, November 17, 1940, insert in WDL/Diary; “I can leave,” Adams, Witness to Power, p. 5.
14. Buell, Master of Sea Power, p. 131.
15. CINCLANT Serial 053, January 21, 1941, in Buell, Master of Sea Power, pp. 521–23.
16. Buell, Master of Sea Power, p. 131.
17. Orders, February 12, 1941, EJK/LC, Box 1; Kimmel to Nimitz, January 12, 1941, CWN/NHHC, Series 13.
18. King to Knox, January 17, 1941, and Knox to King, January 27, 1941, EJK/LC, Box 12.
19. King to Nimitz, February 12, 1941, EJK/LC, Box 8; “I expect the officers,” King, Fleet Admiral King, pp. 325–26.
20. Buell, Master of Sea Power, p. 150.
21. King, Fleet Admiral King, pp. 329–31.
22. Winston S. Churchill, The Second World War, vol. 3, The Grand Alliance (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1950), p. 307.
23. Buell, Master of Sea Power, p. 140.
24. Ibid., pp. 142–44; King, Fleet Admiral King, pp. 331–36; Churchill, The Second World War, vol. 3, pp. 431–32, 443–44; “formed a very good opinion,” Robin Brodhurst, Churchill’s Anchor: The Biography of Admiral of the Fleet Sir Dudley Pound (Barnsley, South Yorkshire: Leo Cooper, 2000), p. 186, quoting Pound to Cunningham, September 3, 1941.
25. Franklin D. Roosevelt, “Message to Congress on the Sinking of the Robin Moor, June 20, 1941,” in The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, comp. Samuel I. Rosenman, vol. 10 (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1950), p. 230.
26. Buell, Master of Sea Power, p. 146.
27. Woody Guthrie, “Sinking of the Reuben James,” 1941.
28. King to Nimitz, November 10, 1941, EJK/LC, Box 8. King, Halsey, and Leahy were all awarded the Navy Cross during World War I for similar routine service. At that time, the medal functioned as a form of distinguished service award. In 1942, the decoration was changed to a combat-only honor.
29. Life, November 24, 1941, pp. 92–108.
30. Halsey, Admiral Halsey’s Story, pp. 69–71.
31. Stark to Bloch, July 14, 1941, Bloch Papers, Box 3.
32. Bloch to Nimitz, July 24, 1941, Bloch Papers, Box 2.
33. Bloch to Stark, November 14, 1941, Bloch Papers, Box 3.
34. “How far do you,” Halsey, Admiral Halsey’s Story, pp. 73–74.
Chapter 13: Searching for Scapegoats and Heroes
1. Albert A. Nofi, To Train the Fleet for War: The U.S. Navy Fleet Problems, 1923–1940 (Newport, R.I.: Naval War College Press, 2010), p. 231.
2. Halsey, Admiral Halsey’s Story, pp. 76–77.
3. Potter, Nimitz, p. 6.
4. Orders, December 10, 1941, EJK/LC, Box 1; King, Fleet Admiral King, p. 3.
5. WDL/Diary, December 8, 1941.
6. Fleet Admiral King draft notes, EJK/LC, Box 35.
7. Potter, Nimitz, p. 9.
8. Buell, Master of Sea Power, p. 153.
9. Exec. Order No. 8984, 41, Fed. Reg. 9587 (December 19, 1941).
10. King, Fleet Admiral King, p. 349.
11. Buell, Master of Sea Power, p. 154; King, Fleet Admiral King, p. 355.
12. Potter, Nimitz, p. 10.
13. Ibid., p. 172.
14. Potter, Nimitz, pp. 11–15; casualty reports, Gordon W. Prange, At Dawn We Slept: The Untold Story of Pearl Harbor (New York: Penguin, 1991), pp. 520, 539; Nimitz to Catherine Nimitz, December 20–24, 1941, CWN/NHHC, Section 14.
15. WDL/Diary, December 21, 1941.
16. Leahy to FDR, insert in WDLDiary, December 22, 1941.
17. Knox to King, December 20, 1941, and Roosevelt to King, December 20, 1941), EJK/LC, Box 1; King, Fleet Admiral King, p. 352.
18. King, Fleet Admiral King, pp. 352–53.
19. “hoping that history,” Buell, Master of Sea Power, p. 161; “Well, what are,” Whitehill interview with King, August 14, 1949, EJK/NHC/NWC, Box 7, File Folder 13.
20. “What news” and “When you get,” Potter, Nimitz, p. 16; “must be very,” Nimitz to Catherine Nimitz, December 26–31, 1941, CWN/NHHC, Series 14.
21. For Nimitz’s views of command ashore and the inadequacies of the Japanese attack, see Potter, Nimitz, p. 18. Japanese reactions to the attack, including Yamamoto’s displeasure with Nagumo, are documented in Prange, At Dawn We Slept, p. 550.
22. Fred Borch and Daniel Martinez, Kimmel, Short, and Pearl Harbor: The Final Report Revealed (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2005), pp. 40–41. The Roberts Commission report was released to the public on January 24, 1942. Short retired on February 28 and Kimmel on March 1. Borch and Martinez note that there is no evidence to support claims that they were “forced into retirement.”
23. “because of one man,” Halsey, Admiral Halsey’s Story, p. 82; Husband E. Kimmel, Admiral Kimmel’s Story (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1955), pp. 168–69, quoting Halsey to Kimmel, July 20, 1953.
24. King to Kimmel, December 17, 1941, and February 27, 1942, Husband Edward Kimmel Papers, 1907–1999, Accession Number 3800, Box 3, File Folder J-F 1942, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming, Laramie.
25. Borch and Martinez, Kimmel, Short, and Pearl Harbor, p. 42.
26. “Random Notes,” EJK/LC, Box 35. King further wrote, “I again repeat that I have never been able to understand how or why F.D.R. could fire Admiral Stark without doing the same to General Marshall. In my opinion one could not possibly be more suspect than the other.”
27. Jacobs to Kimmel, January 15, 1942, Kimmel Papers, Box 3, File Folder J-F 1942. This letter on
Bureau of Navigation stationery is signed by Jacobs. A copy of the letter, with no underlying stationery but initialed “CWN” in Nimitz’s hand in the signature block, can be found in CWN/NHHC, Series 13, causing some confusion as to the author.
28. William Manchester, American Caesar, Douglas MacArthur, 1880–1964 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1978), pp. 205–12; Prange, At Dawn We Slept, p. 591; MacArthur recorded his own version: “Our bombers were slow in taking off and… our force was simply too small to smash the odds against them” (Douglas MacArthur, Reminiscences [New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964], p. 117).
29. Eisenhower, January 13, 1942, in The Eisenhower Diaries, ed. Robert H. Ferrell (New York: Norton, 1981), p. 43.
Chapter 14: Spread Thin
1. Edwin T. Layton, “And I Was There”: Pearl Harbor and Midway—Breaking the Secrets (New York: William Morrow, 1985), pp. 74, 275; “certain key members,” Potter, Nimitz, p. 21.
2. Halsey, Admiral Halsey’s Story, pp. 84–85.
3. Ibid., pp. 88–89.
4. Ibid., pp. 90, 93.
5. Ibid., pp. 94, 96. Halsey was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal for the Marshall operation. When Nimitz sent word to Halsey of the honor, he “quoted with pleasure” Secretary of the Navy Knox’s message “to Vice Admiral William Henry [sic] Halsey Junior U S Navy… for his brilliant and audacious attack against Marshall and Gilbert Islands….,” CINCPAC to Halsey, February 11, 1942, WFH/LC, Box 1). How Knox managed to get Halsey’s middle name wrong is another matter. Later, the Enterprise and its crew were awarded a Presidential Unit Citation for their exploits in the first year of the war as the “galloping ghost of the Oahu coast.”
6. Halsey, Admiral Halsey’s Story, pp. 97–101.
7. Buell, Master of Sea Power, p. 178. Stark’s role in wartime strategy, particularly with the British, has been traditionally downplayed. For a British perspective suggesting a greater importance of his role, see Brodhurst, Churchill’s Anchor: The Biography of Admiral of the Fleet Sir Dudley Pound.
8. Exec. Order No. 9096, 42 Fed. Reg. 2195 (March 12, 1942).
9. Hopkins to King, March 13, 1942, EJK/LC, Box 12.
10. Life, March 23, 1942, p. 28; Time, March 16, 1942, p. 58.
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