A Navy Veteran's Note
Ernest Borgnine
Congratulations. Your crew did a wonderful job with the April 2010 issue of Naval History. How good
I have ordered extra copies for friends and family.I lived the history of World War II and share my experiences every chance I get. I have been proud over the years to visit veterans' hospitals and make personal appearances to help support America's men and women in uniform. The crew at the U.S. Navy Memorial have kept me very busy these past ten years.
Now, the challenge is finding organizations to carry the torch of history. You folks at the Naval Institute have done it well. What better example than this issue labeled "The Marines' Pacific War." This issue works so closely with the HBO miniseries The Pacific (at which unashamedly I cried, remembering when it really happened) that it both prepares you for what is viewed each week and is a "keeper" to go back and read once the miniseries is over.
Thanks for this unique Marine Corps history lesson, which should educate and inspire future generations.
I am a spokesman for Stories of Service (www.stories-of-service.org), a national initiative that is mobilizing tech-savvy youth to use computers to produce "mini-movies" documenting the lives of veterans of World War II and other eras, so that they can be shared with schools, museums, libraries, memorials, and the public. Thank you again for all that you do to carry the torch of naval history, and the cause of freedom.
Unnamed Indian Marine
Charles P. Neimeyer, director, U.S. Marine Corps History
The April 2010 issue is an absolutely outstanding edition in all respects. I would point out only a minor correction to the sidebar on Robert Leckie, "The Marine-Journalist" (pp. 26-7), provided by Lieutenant Colonel Brendan Greeley Jr. The incident described by the author (who was quoting from Roger Butterworth's wartime account of Al Schmid) and also mentioned by Robert Leckie in Helmet for My Pillow, took place during the 21 August 1942 night attack on Marine lines by the 800-man Japanese Ichiki Detachment.
The unnamed "Indian" Marine machine-gunner is actually Marine Private First Class John Rivers, who was instantly killed during the initial stages of the attack. It remains unclear from the official record whether Rivers was Native American or not. However, his casualty card from World War II notes that he was from New Jersey and enlisted in the Marine Corps in Philadelphia. He may have been Native American but I am not certain. There is no indication one way or the other.
His assistant gunner was indeed Al Schmid (a native of Philadelphia). His name was misspelled Schmidt in the article. Further Schmid was not a Medal of Honor recipient but instead was awarded the Navy Cross, although I personally believe that he should have received the Medal. As for the "rest of the story," once it was clear that Rivers was dead, Schmid did take over as gunner and continued firing the machine gun.
Another member of this gun crew, Corporal Leroy Diamond, was seriously wounded in the arm, neck, and shoulder and could not help with the weapon's operation. But while Schmid was firing away, a Japanese soldier crawled up to his fighting position and hurled in a grenade that blinded and seriously wounded Schmid. Incredibly, while he was no longer able to see, Schmid asked the wounded Diamond (who could still see) to verbally point him in the direction of the attacking Japanese, which he did. Schmid kept firing and drove off the surviving Japanese. Schmid's story was later immortalized by Hollywood in the movie Pride of the Marines (1945) starring John Garfield, who played the role of Schmid.
Matt Clark
I would like to add something to Colonel Greeley's profile of Marine Robert Leckie. His description of the death of the "Indian kid, the flat-faced anonymous prizefighter from Pittsburgh," refers to Johnny Rivers from the little village of Apprebachsville in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, who also had been a football hero at Quakertown High School.
As an eighth grader, I remember the superintendent of schools coming to our classroom to announce that Johnny had been killed on Guadalcanal, the first death in our town in World War II.
Congratulations on a magnificent issue of Naval History.
Editor's Note: Leckie identified Private First Class John Rivers by name and provided a graphic description of his death in Challenge for the Pacific: The Bloody Six-Month Battle of Guadalcanal (Doubleday & Company, 1965).
Comment on Perspective
Mark D. Stotzer
I have looked forward to the telecast of The Pacific as further work in documenting the triumphs and sacrifices of the World War II generation as was done with Band of Brothers and other Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg efforts. Overall, I feel that the April 2010 issue of Naval History can and will be very useful as a viewer's guide, as I assume it was intended.
My positive feelings, however, do not extend to some of the material presented in this issue, especially two articles by Richard B. Frank. In his first article, "An Overdue Pacific War Perspective" (pp. 14
17), he states, "German commanders urged a coordinated Axis strategy" to link up via a Japanese drive into the Indian Ocean and a German drive through the Middle East and Persian Gulf. This point is so important that documentation and references should have been provided.The author spends much time fiddling with casualty figures, land area, and size of conquered populations attempting to make the Pacific war the rough equivalent of the European war in strategic importance, violence, savagery, or whatever metric would sell us on such equivalence. He also offers interesting observations, such as "the elemental force propelling the Pacific War into unsurpassed savagery was not race but culture," and Hitler was not the worst evil until the "second half of 1941" because he had not killed millions until then.
There are other metrics we should add to the author's perspective. First, if Japan was more evil than Germany before late 1941, why did we have a Europe-first strategy
I think it may be because the Nazis were determined to be the biggest threat. Second, I do not have the references but I've read in multiple sources over the years that the United States only expended about 25 percent of our total war effort to defeat Japan in the Pacific War.I believe to put the Pacific and European Wars in true perspective one must consider the war fought on the Eastern Front, briefly mentioned by Mr. Frank, in more detail.
Mr. Frank responds: I attempted to address in my articles the difference between how Americans understood and viewed events between 1937 and 1945, and how current memory typically represents
if at all the Asian-Pacific War.Gerhard Weinberg, A World at Arms (First Edition) pp. 323
8, 346 8, and Hans-Joachim Krug, et al., Reluctant Allies, pp. 51 7, highlight the fateful prospects of the two Axis powers joining hands across the Indian Ocean.I believe that racism fails as the fundamental explanation of the Asian-Pacific War on two counts. First, the United States was in the war over Japan's aggression in China. Their conflict transpired across the largest physical feature on the planet at a time of dominant American insularity. Manifestly, if racism cannot explain the reason for the war, it lacks something vital as an interpretative tool. Second, unlike the Germans, the Japanese followed a set of battle ethics that dictated a war of extermination and coupled them with specific behaviors on the battlefield like routine torture and mutilation of captives that fueled unsurpassed American rage. Racism served to aggravate what were these deeper wellsprings of fury.
One obvious metric among many one could choose on the distribution of the American effort between the Europe and the Pacific is that American battle deaths totaled 181,720 in Atlantic and 103,571 in Pacific theaters. This ratio roughly echoed the distribution of combat forces.
I did not argue that Japan should have been the primary enemy on the basis of relative "evil." I did point out how the visual imagery and the basic facts of the situation prior to mid-1941 influenced American attitudes from 1937
45 and how ahistorical it is to imagine that what we now know about the Holocaust shaped their views then.Finally, I agree with H. P. Willmott that the failure to acknowledge the stupendous Soviet losses in the memory of the European struggle is a grave error. But my point stands that without continued Chinese resistance preventing the Japanese from joining the attack on the Soviets and triggering American entry into the war, whether the Soviet sacrifices would have defeated Germany remains thoroughly debatable.
'Who was Pedro
'Lieutenant Commander J. G. Castro, U.S. Navy Reserve (Retired)
Colonel Joseph Alexander mentions in his article "The Old Breed Girds for Battle" (pp. 18
21, April 2010) that the "situation improved with the arrival of the division's own artillery regiment, the 11th Marines." It did a lot more than improve. After all, none other than Major General A. A. Vandegrift, the commanding officer of the 1st Marine Division, said "Without Pedro's artillery, the issue would have been in doubt."Who was Pedro
He was Colonel Pedro Augusto del Valle, a native of San Juan, Puerto Rico, and a 1915 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy. The colonel was a veteran of the so-called Banana Wars, having served in Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and Nicaragua. In March 1941 del Valle became CO of the 11th Marines, and he later landed with the division on Guadalcanal. For his service there, he was awarded the Legion of Merit and promoted shortly thereafter to brigadier general. Subsequently, as a major general, del Valle led the Old Breed during the Okinawa campaign, for which he earned the Distinguished Service Medal.After the war, he was promoted to lieutenant general and served as the first inspector general of the Marine Corps. Del Valle ended his military career as director of Marine personnel. The general retired in 1948 and passed away in 1978.
'Willy Fudds' Forever
Warren R. Hansen
In the April 2010 issue's "Historic Aircraft" (pp.78-9) column Norman Polmar wrote a very good synopsis of the E-1 Tracer "Willy Fudd." I believe, however, that he is wrong about the last detachment being on board the Oriskany (CV-34) in 1976. I was on the last cruise of the Franklin D. Roosevelt (CV-42) in 1976-77. We had three Fudds (RVAW-110 Det 4) on board. They had just finished the 1976 cruise with the Oriskany (her last) and came from Westpac to be our airborne early warning. I'm sure I won't be the only one to point this out as there are still quite a few guys around who made the cruise.
Mr. Polmar replies: Authors who use such terms as "first," "last," "largest," and "smallest" must always realize the risk involved. Naval Aviation News
the Navy's official aviation magazine in the July 1976 issue, page 20, in discussing the Tracer, stated, "the last RVAH-11 detachment retiring with its return on Oriskany earlier this year." Now, further research does confirm that the (very) last E-1B detachment was aboard the F.D.R. with RVAW-110 Det. 4.Toy Ships on a Map
Captain John K. Ertz, U.S. Naval Reserve (Retired)
I recently passed my 80th birthday, and Commander Thomas Cutler's article, "MacArthur, FDR, and the Politics of Leyte Gulf" (pp. 16
23, October 2009), brought back memories of an 11 year old going over his National Geographic maps and placing his Tootsietoy-ship castings in position to come to the aid of Pearl Harbor. Ever since that time, the history of World War II in the Pacific has always fascinated me and drawn my attention, even though my own active duty and reserve time was spent in the Atlantic and its environs. I have also wondered about the politics of the Pacific war. This article put a piece in the puzzle.Changing Times and Trousers
Captain Akikiko Yoshida, Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force (Retired)
In his "Looking Back" column (p. 8, April 2010), Paul Stillwell writes of some of the numerous changes in the Navy since his service.
Yes, everything has changed! When you received $3 a day with a bunk and three meals in the 1960s, I, as a young married lieutenant (junior grade) was receiving about $55.50 per month
about $1.85 per day without any bunk or meals. My wife and I washed my white uniforms and had to buy cleaner from the pitiful pay. These were bitter days for us as newlyweds.Everything has changed as the author described. But was it for better or worse
For the JMSDF, I dare to say that morale is low and scandals have increased, and hard, disciplined Old Salts like me are not regarded with much favor by the "new" Salts.
Tuck Fuller
Paul Stillwell mentions the old uniform's traditional combination of "white hat, jumper, neckerchief, and bell-bottom trousers." That uniform, which included the 13-button trousers with lacing in the rear, was a pain to wear. No belt loops meant the only way to hold your pants up was to tighten the laces. Then, you had to sneak away to loosen them after a large meal if you were ashore. Also, the trousers were not bell bottomed, but "stove pipe," which meant there was no taper from thigh to cuff.
The ship's store never sold bell-bottom trousers; they were only available in a civilian uniform store. I remember being told we would not be allowed on liberty if we were caught with "belled" pants on. Bell-bottom trousers were only part of the old British song with the refrain: "Singin' bell bottom trousers, coats of navy blue, Let him climb the riggin' like his daddy used to do." It wasn't the U.S. Navy.
Michael Schwerer
Like Paul Stillwell, I am a Navy veteran from the 1960s, having served from 1959 to 1963.
Things do change, and not always for the better. However, I can't say that the uniform changes, by themselves, are bothersome to me. Those traditional 13 buttons on the dress blue uniform were a pain in the you know what. But we didn't wear them all the time. Most of my work days were spent wearing dungarees and the occasional whites. (All of which we kept cleaned and pressed by ourselves.) I guess it's the loss of traditions that the recent uniform hodgepodge represents that doesn't set too well with me. It seems to represent a confusion of identity, the loss of an icon. Even though the uniform was not my favorite thing, the loss of the tradition makes me nostalgic for 13-button trousers with bell bottoms. It was the Navy!
Fleet at Pearl Harbor
Rear Admiral Peter K. Cullins, U.S. Navy (Retired)
In the December 2009 issue, Robert J. Hanyok states in his excellent article "How the Japanese Did It" (pp. 44
50): "The fleet had been based in San Diego" before "President Roosevelt ordered the Pacific Fleet to remain in Pearl Harbor." If the author means the battle fleet, I think he is wrong since I saw so many cruisers and battleships in the Long Beach/San Pedro harbors during the 1930s.
Mr. Hanyok responds: I think there is some confusion over the times (1930s) mentioned in Admiral Cullins' comment and that to which I referred in my article. From the 1920s to 1940, the Pacific Fleet conducted annual fleet problems/exercises in the Pacific. Usually, the fleet deployed to Pearl Harbor for the exercise and then returned to its main base at San Diego, though units could be based elsewhere on the West Coast. In June 1940, President Roosevelt ordered the Pacific Fleet to stay at Pearl after that year's annual fleet problem. Most of the "battle line," i.e. the battleship divisions, remained at Pearl. However, some ships did sail to West Coast bases, where better facilities existed, for refits and some battleships were transferred to the Atlantic (at least three over the next year). The remaining nine battleships of the Pacific Fleet were stationed at Pearl Harbor on 7 December.