The military history With of the United States sparkles few characters as influential and enigmatic as Earl Hancock Ellis. Lieutenant Colonel Ellis—or Pete, as he was known—served in the U. S. Marine Corps from 1900 to 1923, both in the Far East and in France, where he distinguished himself during World War I. From 1911 when he entered the Naval War College, until 1921, he submitted his famous and prophetic Advance Operations in Micronesia, his brilliance as a war strategist was unparalleled. As early as Ellis saw that Japanese control of Micronesia would so strength that country's strategic position that war with the United States in the Pacific would be inevitable. Working in the realm of pure theory, he pointed out one by one the island bases the United States would have to seize to its sea power within striking distance of Japan. Ellis had such a complete grasp of the many elements involved in a prolonged island-hopping campaign that 23 years later, 1943-44, the Navy’s drive across the central Pacific followed virtually every essential of Elli’s plan.
Ellis’s career in the Marines began when he enlisted in Chicago in 1900. It was a time of great excitement; the Corps was basking in its reputation for valor, gained during its involvement in the Spanish-American War. In 1901, Ellis was commissioned as second lieutenant and began his rise through the officer ranks when the Marines were experiencing not only a rapid expansion in numbers, but an increase in the general level of training and competence as well. Specialized schools were established, and young officers had to participate and excel in them to be promoted. Ellis, who graduated first in his high school class in Pratt, Kansas, took advantage of these educational opportunities. His first officer assignment was with the First Marine Brigade at Cavite in the Philippines. Duty there consisted of policing some towns in the province of Cavite, where Filipino insurgents were still active, as well as guarding lighthouses and various other installations. This first exposure to the Orient led Ellis to consider the international political and strategic issues important to the area. In 1903, he was assigned to the Marine detachment in the USS Kentucky and visited the major ports of China and Japan during a year’s tour. After duty at Mare Island, California, and other mainland locations, he was reassigned to the Philippines in 1906. During these years, he sharpened his technical competence, studied tactics, and traveled at every opportunity. He rose to the rank of captain by 1908.
By the end of his first decade of military service, Ellis firmly believed that the fundamental mission of the Marine Corps was to develop offensive advance base operations. Other officers also held this view, but Ellis led the way; during his second tour of the Philippines, he organized training in advance base operations for the Marine units stationed there. From 1911 to 1913, the period of his most active intellectual development, Ellis attended the Naval War College at Newport, Rhode Island, where he delivered a number of papers relating to the strategic importance of naval bases. On Guam in 1915, presaging his later fame as the “father of amphibious warfare,” Ellis and a small group of men took a 3-inch gun across the reef at Orote Point, thus demonstrating for the first time that artillery could be landed from boats. From 1915 until the United States entered World War I, Ellis served in Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, and Quantico. He attained the rank of major in 1916. In France during the war, Ellis planned and helped execute a difficult operation along Blanc Mont Ridge on the Hindenburg Line; for this, he was awarded the Croix de Guerre and Navy Cross.
The Marine Corps had risen to a strength of some 75,000 men during World War I, but within a year had dropped to 43,000. By March 1920, it was down to 15,000.1 Ellis met this reduction with chagrin and was outspoken in blaming the government for it. He served a five-month stint in Santo Domingo before the commandant of the newly created Operations and Training Division, Major General John Archer Lejeune, assigned him to his Washington headquarters. There, after seven months, he completed his remarkable Operations Plan 712-H: Advance Base Operations in Micronesia. Ellis was 41 years old, and his professional military record proved him to be a high achiever and an indefatigable worker, dedicated to his service. A contemporary referred to him as “one of the brilliant officers in the Marine Corps.”
But the personal side of his life was darker. This tragic fact helps explain some of the mystery surrounding his subsequent Pacific mission, which occupied the last 21 months of his life. Throughout his adulthood, Ellis suffered from nervous disorders and depression. He began drinking after joining the Marines, and by the time he was a captain, he had a serious alcohol problem. On Guam in 1915, his medical record shows for the first time that he was hospitalized for this difficulty. After this, his record is spotted with treatments and recuperations. Ellis’s fits of depression and drinking bouts were sometimes accompanied by bizarre behavior. On one occasion at Grande Island, he started shooting plates off a dinner table following a meal; in Saipan, during his Guam tour, he reportedly shoved a Japanese man down a staircase with little provocation.2 Doctors diagnosed his problem as “neurasthenia” or “psychosthenia”—vague tum-of-the-century terms that were often used to describe the depressions, phobias, nervous uncertainties, and other irrationalities that were little understood then. Graphologists analyzing Ellis’s handwriting at different stages in his life have also called attention to evidences of confusion and disturbance. At age 19, before he joined the Marines, his handwriting displayed what one analyst described as “fighting an inner battle with himself.” Possibly, his joining the Marines was one effort to resolve his inner conflicts and feelings of inadequacy. But from 1915 onward, his drinking problem became steadily more serious, and he was hospitalized repeatedly for extended periods. In 1920, he spent nearly three weeks in Ray, Arizona, in an effort to “dry out. Yet in spite of these maladies, people who knew Ellis liked him and spoke well of him. The Marine officer corps was something of a fraternity in Ellis’s day, small enough for most of the men to know each other personally. Men with problems were helped along by others, and their blunders covered up. Alcoholism was not then recognize as the serious disease that it is. General Lejeune, a close friend of Ellis, was certainly aware of Ellis’s alcoholism but nevertheless retained him and allowed him the satisfaction of exercising his talent-for strategic planning. But Ellis caused frustration and consternation in the Corps as well as sympathy. According to his medical records, his behavior followed a pattern of increasingly severe binges and depressions from which he always emerged apparently recovered; thus he obtained reprieve after reprieve with exhortations from his superiors to abstain and reform.
Ellis’s final mission had the aspect of a last chance. His alcoholism had affected him permanently, and he continually suffered from nephritis, a kidney disorder, by the time he joined the headquarters staff. In addition, his intense devotion to his task absorbed and enervated him. His paper Advance Base Operations in Micronesia, recognized even then as an outstanding work, brought him fleeting relief and a sense of accomplishment. Having outline the plans for an advance base campaign against the Japanese, he naturally wanted to travel personally to the mandated islands to reconnoiter, evaluate, and refine his work The idea was not new. He had first requested such travel as early as 1912 while at the War College, when Micronesia was still under German control. Assigned to the headquarters after World War I, Ellis renewed his effort International events provided a sound rationale for the mission: the Japanese took Micronesia from the Germs at the outbreak of World War I, gaining Pacific dominant and limiting U. S. access to the Philippines. When the war ended, Micronesia was awarded to Japan by the Treaty of Versailles. U. S. acceptance of the Japanese claim contingent upon Japan joining the League of Nations and governing the islands by a mandate that prohibited fortifications. The Japanese agreed and instituted a civil government but denied foreigners access to Micronesia. This prompted rumors that the islands were being fortified— rumors that were heightened by some Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) reports. The Washington Naval Conference of 1921-22 limited the growth of the Japanese and U. S. navies and virtually eliminated any chance for the United States to build up bases in its Pacific possessions.
In the 1920s, intelligence information could be gathered only by getting people on the ground to observe. General Lejeune made queries to ONI regarding such a mission and then assigned Ellis to it. Undoubtedly, Lejeune had serious reservations about allowing Ellis to go, and the two men probably had some candid discussions about the mission and Ellis’s physical and psychological ability to undertake it. In the end, Lejeune decided to let Ellis undertake the mission by taking extended leave, thus avoiding the necessity of getting official approval. In return, Ellis, fully aware of the risks, gave the commandant a signed, undated letter of resignation to save the Marine Corps possible embarrassment.3
Ellis prepared himself for the mission by arranging for his pay to be deposited directly into his bank account. For a ruse, he arranged cover as a traveling agent buying copra for the John A. Hughes Trading Company of 2 Rector Street, New York City. Ellis also procured maps, charts, and navigation and code books for his journey. All these preparations were made presumably without the ONI having any direct or official knowledge.
Ellis departed on his final mission in August 1921. His sister, recalling his last visit with his family, said that Ellis implied that he might not come back. At San Francisco, en route to the Pacific, he telephoned an old Marine comrade, Hans G. Hombostel, whom he had known in Guam and who was also on his way across the Pacific as a collector for the Bernice P. Bishop Museum in Honolulu. The two may have made tentative arrangements to meet later in the Mariana Islands, where Hombostel was undertaking archaeological excavations.
After departing from San Francisco in the SS Maheno, Ellis visited Australia, Samoa, and possibly Fiji, then returned to Australia to obtain a visa to enter the Japanese mandates. From there-, he went to Manila and then on to Japan. At every stop, with the exception of Samoa and Fiji, he became ill and was hospitalized. His drinking aggravated his nephritis, now quite advanced. Nevertheless, he pushed on toward Japan after cabling Washington to report his whereabouts. By the time he got to the Philippines, he was sick again and entered a private hospital. There, he chanced to meet a Marine acquaintance, Major Howard H. Kipp, who had him transferred to the naval hospital at Canacao. The hospital entry read: “Complains of nervousness . . . very restless, twitching of muscles of face and arms . . . diagnosis changed to nephritis acute.” Ellis recovered sufficiently to move to the Delmonico Hotel in the walled city of Manila for further rest. After a brief stay there, he cabled General Logan Feland in Washington that he was proceeding to Japan.
In late July 1922, Ellis sailed in the SS President Jack- son from Manila to Yokohama, where he stayed at the Grand Hotel. Soon after his arrival, he once again became ill. The Japanese hotel manager summoned Commander Ulys R. Webb, commanding officer of the U. S. Naval Hospital in Yokohama, who came to see Ellis and, diagnosing nephritis, had him admitted to the hospital immediately. For the next two months, Ellis was in and out of the hospital several times. On 12 September 1922, he was admitted with delirium tremens, suffering from hallucinations. Dr. Webb assigned Chief Pharmacist Lawrence Zembsch to attend Ellis constantly, then consulted privately with the U. S. naval attaché. Captain Lyman A. Cotten. Cotten and Webb arranged to have Ellis sent home and gave him his choice of leaving either by commercial liner or government transport. This alarmed Ellis and forced him to make a difficult decision. If he returned home, he would not only have been disgraced for failing to accomplish his mission, but he also would have disappointed General Lejeune, who had shown confidence in him. He would probably have faced early retirement. If he proceeded with the mission, he would be defying orders, but he could gain some vindication if he were ultimately successful. Perhaps, Ellis now realized that he would soon die from his illness and concluded that he could best serve his country by completing the task on which he had set out. He determined not to go home. On 4 October 1922. he wired his bank for money and two days later left tire hospital, removing himself from all military authority.
Ellis probably sailed from Kobe on board the Kasugo Maru of the Nanyo Boeki Kaisha (NBK) Lines. He got off at Saipan, where a Spanish Jesuit missionary residing there at the time, Brother Gregorio, recalled that he stayed at the home of Jose Ada for the two weeks he was on the island. Ellis kept company with Kilili Sablan, a Saipanese whom he knew to be an informant and friend of Horn- hostel’s and who could speak some English. Together, the two men traveled the length and breadth of Saipan, and Ellis made extensive notes. Hombostel and Ellis did not meet at Saipan, but Ellis possibly left some notes with Kilili, which the latter may have passed along to Hornbostel later.
Ellis’s next stop was Yap in November. There, he visited briefly with a businessman, Henry Fleming, who was half Marshallese and half German. Fleming, who had been educated in Germany where he learned a little English, remembered that Ellis arrived in the Matsuyama Maru, stayed for only a short time because the ship was sailing on to Palau that evening, but displayed during his brief tour an impressive knowledge of the copra trade When the ship arrived at Koror, Oikong Tellei, chief of the local police, checked his papers at the dock and noticed that Ellis was listed as going to Jaluit. Again, Ellis’s visit was brief, only a couple of days long. He stayed at a Japanese hotel in Koror.
The NBK Line fleet, which was composed of several large ships, sailed through the mandates from west to east, stopping at Saipan, Yap, Palau, Truk, Ponape, Kusaie, and finally Jaluit. No one at Truk or Ponape recalled Ellis but at Kusaie, he was remembered by an American resident, Victor J. Hermann. The ship proceeded to Jabwor, Jaluit; en route, Ellis became very ill. On Sunday, 31 December 1922, Jesse Rebecca Hoppin, an American Protestant missionary, was awakened at 0200 by Police Chief Tanaka Shoji. Together with the resident medical doctor Ishoda Uichi, they went on board the Matsuyama Maru to bring Ellis, who was now gravely ill, to the hospital. After two weeks, he was released and moved to the mission compound as a guest of Jesse Hoppin. The Japanese authorities watched Ellis closely but were cautious, even respectful. They had identified “Mother” Hoppin—as the Marshallese affectionately called her—as the best person to attend to him. Undoubtedly, Ellis told her about his mission, although she was in no way a collaborator. She provided separate lodgings on the compound and arranged that school children should do various chores for him. One of these, Benjamin Lajipun, became his houseboy. He toured Jaluit with Ellis on foot and by canoe, all the while tailed by the Japanese.
Periodically, a small sailing ship, the Caroline Maru, made field trips through the Marshall Islands to collect copra and deliver supplies; Ellis joined the mission party on one of these trips to the Ratak Chain, taking copious notes. Next, the Caroline Maru was scheduled for the Ralik Chain, but the Japanese attempted to prevent Ellis’s passage. He finally prevailed, but the Japanese sent Dr. lshoda to watch him. Ellis slept on the deck; at each island, he charted the reefs and took inventory of facilities, local products, and local populations. The Japanese became increasingly suspicious. By the time the small ship reached the southern end of the chain, she was so loaded with copra that walking on deck was almost impossible. A sudden shift in the wind nearly caused the ship to founder, and all hands had to work quickly to avoid disaster. Ellis pitched in with agility and resolve. He impressed the Japanese crew with his expert seamanship and probably further confirmed their suspicions that he was more than simply a copra trader. Following this trip, the Japanese bolstered their surveillance. Ellis took even greater precautions. But he could not refrain from imbibing in spirits, which he kept hidden in his quarters, and he occasionally became sick. Mother Hoppin scolded him and warned the local shopkeepers not to sell Ellis whiskey. But somehow he found liquor, and he drank continually.
The Japanese conclusively identified Ellis as a spy through a clever rase. With the approach of a British ship to Jaluit in late February 1923, Police-Chief Tanaka went to Ellis’s quarters ostensibly to get a picture of the Union Jack from one of Ellis’s navigation books to make a copy for display. He waited until Ellis was asleep. Inside, he examined the notes and reef charts Ellis had made during his Ralik-Ratak cruises, which were spread in full view on his work table. Returning from bathing, the houseboy Lajipun discovered Tanaka. To avoid embarrassment, Tanaka awakened Ellis to request the flag pictures. Ellis became enraged, caused an ugly scene, and threw both Tanaka and the boy out of the house. Not long afterwards, Ellis departed from Jaluit, after leaving his brother’s address with Jesse Hoppin so that she could write to him if the worst happened and he was not heard from again.
Returning to Kusaie on his trip back through the mandates in mid-March 1923, Ellis stayed at the home of J. V. Millander, a naturalized American of Swedish birth who owned a trading company. The company foreman, Arthur Hermann, was Millander’s nephew. Arthur’s brother Victor had met Ellis on his first brief stop there three months earlier. The Japanese continued their surveillance, and it was well known by this time, even among the local people, that Ellis was “an officer in the U. S. Navy.” Again, Ellis traveled about, meeting people and making his usual maps, charts, and notes. Arthur Hermann, who disliked the Japanese, was most helpful to Ellis, providing him with a place to stay and local guides to show him around.4
From Kusaie, Ellis headed for Palau, stopping briefly at Ponape. Ponape is a high island with adequate but small harbors, evidently not of much interest to Ellis. Victor Hermann accompanied Ellis on the trip to Ponape, which was the first leg of his journey back to the United States. The two became friendly on the trip and, upon reaching Palau, enjoyed a few drinks together at the hotel before the ship left. When they parted, Ellis gave Hermann an envelope and ten dollars and asked him to mail the envelope in San Francisco. He told Hermann he planned to stay in Palau, then go on to Menado in the Celebes.
By this time, Ellis had developed a pattern of staying in local accommodations to avoid Japanese hotels. Soon, he began an association with William Gibbons, the son of a Jamaican who had jumped ship in Palau in the 1850s. Gibbons, who had learned some English from his father, was also the Ibedul, or high chief of Koror. He suggested that Ellis move to local quarters, and Ellis did so directly. The Palauans provided Ellis with a wife, a woman named Metauie who was 25 years his junior. Oikong Tellei, chief of the local police force, was one of four people assigned to watch Ellis closely. Ellis traveled all of Koror, the harbor at Malakal, and the adjoining Arakabesang Island, but he was not permitted to travel to Babelthuap, Peleliu, or Angaur. Tellei recalled that Ellis sought out the high places and frequently gazed out over the sea. In the evenings, Ellis would settle down in his Palauan house and begin drinking. The house, a small, thatched affair, was not far from the NBK store, where beer and whiskey could be obtained. Ellis had his houseboys, Felix Rechuuld and Antonio Ngirakelau, get liquor for him by special arrangement with the store manager, as Palauans were not permitted to buy spirits of any kind. When he became sicker and his delerium tremens increased, the Japanese sent Dr. Isake Isoroku to attend him, but Ellis sent him away several times. In spite of urgings from the Palauans and Japanese, he continued to consume large quantitites of beer and sake. Occasionally, he would rant and rave, and once, according to a witness, he pranced around the house “life a soldier and punched his arm through the wall.”
Metauie remembered clearly the day of Ellis’s death. He had been violently ill for several days and was attended constantly by herself, William Gibbons and his wife Ngerdoko, and the houseboys. Ellis sobbed and talked incoherently, sometimes about his home and family in the United States. At one point, he confided to them that he “was an American spy sent by higher authority from New York.” Dr. Isake came one last time to persuade him to stop drinking and offered him medication, which Ellis refused. By midaftemoon on 12 May 1923, Earl Hancock Ellis was dead.
One can only speculate about the sequence of events which immediately followed Ellis’s death. The Palauans, led by the high chief, saw to Ellis’s burial in the local cemetery. More than a week passed before the authorities notified the U. S. embassy in Tokyo on 21 May 1923. His belongings, among them his copious maps, charts, notes, and his code book, were confiscated by the Japanese. The Japanese governor may have prepared a full report, but no record of this has ever been found. The Japanese were undoubtedly relieved to get his notes and charts.
After the story broke in the United States and in years since, there have been suggestions that Ellis was poisoned by the Japanese. There is absolutely no evidence of this Every effort was made to offer him medical assistance, which he refused, usually rudely. As far as is known, he never took any medicine. That the Japanese would have placed poison in his whiskey is unlikely, since, for Ellis, whiskey itself was poison enough. Nothing but his own stubbornness and self-destructive tendencies killed him
In Washington, the news of Ellis’s death was received with shock and suspicion. Since the mandates were strictly closed to outsiders, stories flew throughout the Asiatic Fleet about Japanese duplicity and were echoed in the U. S. press. Lejeune was saddened. His letters to Ellis's family were compassionate. He had Ellis kept in pay status from 5 May 1921 to 20 September 1922 to provide his family with sufficient funds to pay debts on his account amounting to more than $1,500. The missing code book caused concern at ONI, whose agents-interrogated Victor Hermann, now back in California. But Hermann knew nothing about it. After a couple weeks, the matter faded from public view.
The U. S. Navy, however, wanted to get to the bottom of the matter. Unaware of any particulars of Ellis’s mission other than the cryptic testimony of Victor Hermann, they determined to investigate. For all they knew, there could have been foul play. In Tokyo, Captain Cotten tried to arrange for a U. S. ship to call at Palau to retrieve Ellis’s remains. The Japanese refused this request, but agreed to allow an individual representative to go to Koror as their guest to bring back the body. Cotten saw a chance to gather some intelligence, but he lacked trained agents- He finally settled on Lawrence Zembsch for the mission Zembsch, a chief pharmacist, was a 17-year veteran and had attended Ellis at the Yokohama Naval Hospital. After receiving a briefing on the seriousness of his mission and the possibility of danger, Zembsch departed for Palau by Japanese steamer on 5 July 1923. He followed the same route Ellis had some nine months earlier. Brother Gregorio met Zembsch at Saipan. He remembered Zembsch as being “well-dressed in a naval uniform, courteous and polite.” At Koror, Zembsch stayed at the Japanese barracks, where he was introduced to everyone who knew Ellis and was escorted by Police Chief Oikong Tellei. At the cemetery, Ellis’s remains were exhumed, photographed, and cremated. William Gibbons told Zembsch that Ellis was suspected by the Japanese of spying, and that they had watched him closely. Gibbons offered to pay any debts Ellis had left, but the Japanese would not permit this. Zembsch left Palau with Ellis’s ashes and little more information than he had when he arrived. He could neither affirm nor refute allegations of foul play. The Japanese had remained courteously arcane. Realizing that he had nothing much to report caused him anguish enough. But soon his discomfort worsened with diarrhea and fever during the return voyage. Stopping again at Saipan, the Japanese steamer captain sent him ashore to see a doctor. This time, Brother Gregorio described Zembsch as “very ill, acting like a mad person, unable even to attend his toilet.” When Zembsch finally arrived at Yokohama on 14 August 1923, he had to be carried from his cabin and taken immediately to the hospital. Brother Gregorio reported that “he was much depressed, sleepless, and rather rambling and incoherent in speech.” The strain of the trip had apparently caused Zembsch to have a nervous breakdown. He was recovering nicely when, at approximately noon on 1 September 1923, the great Kanto earthquake completely destroyed the hospital, burying him “beneath the falling debris beyond possibility of rescue.”
Almost as much speculation has sprung up about Zembsch as about Ellis. Some have suggested that the Japanese drugged him. Commander Webb noted that after his return to Yokohama, Zembsch mistrusted the Japanese at the hospital and said that he thought Ellis’s death “was not natural.” Drugging seems unlikely, however, because during the two weeks before the earthquake, any drugs that could have been administered while Zembsch was on his mission would have been out of his system. It seems implausible, too, because Zembsch did not see anything in the way of fortification, and to drug him for no reason would have incited an unnecessary international incident. The mission of Zembsch served only to spin a tighter web of mystery around the mission of Ellis. More questions were raised than answered, and few have since been answered. Nor had Zembsch provided any intelligence about Japanese activities in the mandates.
In retrospect, history has little to show for Ellis’s mission. Nothing was discovered that was not already known. The notes, charts, and maps made on the trip were lost. In 1915, the Director of Naval Intelligence instructed the Guam governor to collect intelligence of Japanese activities in the mandates. Hans Hombostel made several trips to the northern Marianas between 1922 and 1925 under this order and provided some information; however, whether he picked up any of Ellis’s notes from Kilili Sablan at Saipan is not known. Ellis himself would have found no fortifications as early as 1923, only rumor and gossip. He was most interested in making on-site inspections of the islands he had designated in his Advance Base Operations in Micronesia as being critical to an islandhopping campaign, so that he could improve upon his plans. Had he survived, such information would have been most useful.
Shedding light on the details of Ellis’s Micronesian mission in no way detracts from his efforts in the cause of his work. As a spy, he does not receive high marks. From a military standpoint, only the most dismal appraisal could be made of the way he carried out his mission: a seriously ill, neurotic, sometimes drunken Marine officer, AWOL and carrying a code book, openly discussing his mission with U. S. nationals, and, in full view of the Japanese, traipsing through the islands making notes and maps. U. S. naval authorities would have been embarrassed had they known of Ellis’s antics. The Japanese must have also been embarrassed. They had not yet fortified their islands and probably wondered what Ellis was looking for.5 Surely, they were alarmed at his advanced state of ill health, because at every location, they provided him access to medical assistance. That the U. S. Marines would send such a person on a spy mission must have seemed incredulous to them, even ludicrous. Considering their restrained behavior and tolerance, they were probably hoping to get Ellis out of the mandates before he died. A more sinister, but less plausible interpretation is that they recognized his self-destructive tendencies and knew that it was only a matter of time before he drank himself to death. But Ellis’s belief in, and commitment to, his cause is undeniable and borne out, albeit tragically, by his experience. His inability to conquer his alcoholism was pathetic, but he doggedly moved ahead in the face of what he must have known to be impending personal doom.
Ellis’s war prophecies have outlived the mystery of his mission. Although he was by no means alone in recognizing that the balance of power in the Pacific had shifted with Japan’s acquisition of Micronesia, he knew what the Marine Corps should do about the threat. And he acted on that belief. Beginning in the 1920s, the various agencies of the Navy, led by the Office of Naval Intelligence, prepared a series of general forecasts of a transpacific war against Japan. Specific portfolios emanating from these studies came to be known as “Orange Plans”—“orange” meaning Japan, the enemy. Ellis’s Operations Plan 712-H: Advance Base Operations in Micronesia, some 50,000 words long and approved by the Commandant on 23 July 1923, was the initial and fundamental Marine Corps contribution. It revolutionized Marine Corps thinking. Ellis foresaw that Japan would start the war. He outlined, using precise manpower requirements and suggesting new and specialized weapons and equipment, how the U. S. advance would proceed through the Marshalls, Carolines, and Marianas. He indicated that Marines would not only defend bases, but seize them as well, and thereby project the fleet toward Japan. The Marine Corps has never since retreated from this essentially offensive attitude and mission. The military genius of Earl Hancock Ellis is clear, and his contributions are permanent. The U. S. victory in World War II further enhanced the Ellis legend, since his prophecies appeared to have been so strikingly accurate.
In the years since the war, more than a dozen accounts—some creative fiction, some representing careful research—have retold the “Pete” Ellis mystery. Some of the myths enshrouding Ellis’s career have become ingrained in Marine folklore. For example, his genius as a strategist and his outspoken but accurate war prophecies have led some authors to represent him as a singular voice prodding the complacency of military and congressional bureaucracies. Others have praised him as an insightful area specialist who could speak several languages, including Japanese, and who had the respectful ears of the superior officers who depended upon him for advice and guidance. The events surrounding his fateful mission have spawned the greatest fiction and hyperbole. He has been represented as a master spy who was engaged single-handedly in the most sinister cloak-and-dagger conspiracies of the time and who was finally and reluctantly done in by the inscrutable, cunning, and ruthless Japanese. A careful examination of Ellis’s official records, an historical consideration of the times in which he lived, and a thorough investigation of his Micronesian mission, including eyewitness accounts, provide a more realistic view and allow an appraisal which leaves the significance of his contributions intact and his personal sacrifices in the line of duty uncolored by exaggeration.
1. C. H. Metcalf, A History of the United States Marine Corps (New York: G.P- Putnam’s Sons, 1939).
2. J. J. Reber, "Pete Ellis: Amphibious Warfare Prophet," Proceedings, November 1977, pp. 53-64.
3. There are no notations in Ellis’s file officially assigning him to such a mission. On 9 April 1921, he did request leave to go to Europe. Lejeune forwarded this to acting Secretary of the Navy, Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., who approved it and returned it the next day.
4. Arthur Hermann later became a voluntary agent-informant for the ONI. The Japanese made things difficult for his business and wanted him to leave the mandates.
5. Investigations following World War II established that no fortifications were begun until after 1935; most were made after 1941.
Bibliographical Note
Eight primary sources were used in the preparation of this article. At the National Archives in Washington, D.C., Record Group 80 contains the general files of the Navy, and Record Group 38 has documents from the Chief of Naval Operations, including Reports from the Office of Naval Intelligence. The Ellis File at Marine Headquarters Historical Division in Washington, D.C., is a compilation of materials from various sources accumulated over the years. The Ellis Medical Record at Marine Headquarters requires a special clearance to be used. Zembsch Medical Record requires a similar clearance. The U.S. Naval War College Archives at Newport, Rhode Island, have Ellis’s papers in Record Group 8, Intelligence and Technical Archives, 1894—1946. The American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) Archives contain letters and reports from missionaries in Micronesia and are housed at the Houghton Library in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Ellis Personal Papers with his family at Pratt, Kansas, contain an assortment of papers, pictures, letters, and a journal which he kept. Finally, the Ellis Collection at the Micronesian Area Research Center at the University of Guam contains exhaustive testimonies of all Micronesian eyewitnesses, as well as testimonies of officers and others who knew Ellis personally. They also contain graphological reports and particulars on the code book which Ellis carried on his mission.