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During World War II, I spent several years in the Southwest Pacific area where supplies and ships always seemed to be sparse. The difficulty in getting quick action from Washington on our needs was obvious. At that time, I decided that if I were ever in Washington and received a reasonable call for help from Someone in the forward area, that person would get immediate action from me.
My opportunity came in the fall of 1955 while I was on duty in the Navy Comptroller’s Office. There was a bad flood from fall rains at Tampico, Mexico. Rear Admiral M. E. Miles, as Commandant of the Naval District in Panama, had proceeded in a ship to Tampico to survey the situation and see what could be done to help the flood victims.
Admiral Miles sent a priority dispatch to Naval Operations asking for several tons of pinto beans and rice to provide badly needed food in Tampico. Three days after the dispatch had been received in Washington, it arrived on my desk at about 1430. Because a priority dispatch should be answered within 30 minutes, I wanted to know the reason for the delay. I called Naval Operations and was told, “We did not know where to send it.”
I took the dispatch for action.
My immediate superior was out of town, but I knew that the Navy had no funds for relief operations. I carried the dispatch to the Office of the Secretary of the Navy, but the Secretary was out of town. Then I went to the budget office of the Secretary of Defense and asked the legal officer whether or not the Secretary of Defense had any funds for this purpose. I was told that nothing could be done. At that point, I said that I was going to see the Secretary of Defense and added, “If you want to go with me, come along.” Against his better judgment, he did accompany me. But we found that the Secretary of Defense was away for three days. That stopped my immediate search for money.
As I recall, there was a penalty of one year in jail and a $5,000 fine for spending funds for a purpose other than for which they had been appropriated. I decided to forget the money and get the food moving.
A call to the Department of Agriculture provided me with the Midwest telephone number of the “Surplus Foods Section.” A call there located the beans and rice which could be loaded in trucks the next day for shipment to New Orleans for arrival in two or three days. A call to the operations officer of the Naval District Headquarters, New Orleans, located two small ships which could be chartered to carry the food to Tampico and Admiral Miles. All this took two hours.
The next day, I called the Mexican “desk” in the State Department and explained what I had been doing. I asked State to inform the Mexican Ambassador that the U. S. Navy was sending food to Tampico where it should arrive in three or four days. I explained that we couldn’t just run a ship into a foreign country and start unloading a cargo without letting them know in advance.
About an hour later, my contact at State reported that the Mexican Ambassador said that the food was not required in Tampico and asked, “What do we do now?” I told him to leave it to me.
I sent a priority dispatch to Admiral Miles which briefly stated: “Mexican Ambassador says food not required. Suggest you contact governor of local state if food desired and request he so inform President of Mexico and that the President inform his ambassador in Washington.”
The next day the State Department called and said that the Mexican Ambassador reported that Mexico would be pleased to receive the food in Tampico.
Admiral Miles conducted a very successful Navy rescue and relief operation with the use of helicopters from one of our small carriers. The food arrived and was distributed. Admiral Miles later told me that the Mexicans were most appreciative of the Navy efforts and that this had done more than
anything else to ease the bad feeling generated by our bombardment of Vera Cruz more than 40 years before.
There were still no funds to pay for the food. No one asked me about it, and I did not bring up the subject. Perhaps the problem would just go away. Possibly there would be no charge for surplus food.
At any rate, six weeks later I received a call from my friend in the State Department. He told me that State had received a bill from the Department of Agriculture which was to be sent to the Mexican Government for payment for the food I had sent down there. He asked me what we were going to do about this.
1 couldn’t see us sending a bill to Mexico for surplus food which we gave them in their time of need. They did not ask for it, and we offered to help them. If we sent a bill for payment, we would deserve to lose all the good will generated by our efforts. So I asked my friend, "Doesn’t the State Department send a daily plane to Denver with some mail and papers to
be signed by the President?”
(For some time, President Eisenhower had been recovering from a heart attack in a Denver hospital. I knew that the State Department must keep him well informed by daily correspondence from Washington.) He confirmed that State sent a plane out there every day.
“I’ll tell you what to do then,” I said. "Write a letter from the President to the Secretary of Agriculture and say briefly, ‘This bill will not be forwarded to the President of Mexico. The costs for this surplus food will be paid by funds available to me.’ Then put the President’s name at the bottom for his signature. Write a short explanatory note and attach it to the top of the letter. This note should say, ‘These funds are in payment for surplus food sent to the assistance of the people of Tampico during the heavy floods which occured there recently.’ Then attach the bill to the bottom of the first letter. The President will sign it.”
Two days later there was another call from my friend in State who said, “He signed it.”
For the ten years that he has been Director of the Naval Institute’s Oral History Program, Doctor John T. Mason has been helping people to dip into their memory to recall and record those events they witnessed firsthand. The number of transcripts of his conversations is large and growing. Today, nearly 100 volumes are available to historians at the Naval History Center, the Naval Academy Library, and the Naval War College. The foregoing is an extract, edited only for clarity and continuity, from one of those bound volumes, published for the first time with the permission of Admiral Charles Adair.
Nobody asked me and 1 have never before told anyone how we paid for this food. Now, 24 years later and with the expiration of the statute of limitations, the word is out.
The Far China Station is a thoroughly detailed account of the U.S. Navy’s activities in Asian waters during the first century of American and naval history. Dr.
ROBERT ERWIN JOHNSON
Far China Station
The U.S. Navy in Asian Waters 1800-1898
Robert Johnson, author of Thence Round Cape Horn, has superbly chronicled this controversial but little studied period of naval history; a period that includes the cruise of the Peacock, Biddle’s failure to open Japan and Perry’s success, and Dewey’s victory at Manila Bay. Readers will come away with a feel for what it must have been like to serve in the naval squadrons that sailed Asian waters in support of U.S. political and commercial interests.
19791352 pages I25 Illustrations