Annapolis, page 58
I hope you will not be angered that I profit from the family legacy. But then, you did nothing to enhance the legacy in 1898, so it may not matter to you. We might have stopped a war, Abraham, but there was a ladder of rank to be climbed.
Unless I hear otherwise, I shall consider this deal consummated.
Abraham accepted immediately.
The truth was that he did not care particularly for the house. And he did not have time to negotiate because he was now the navy representative on the Joint Board advising the president on military matters, and a crisis had arisen.
San Francisco had segregated “Mongolian” schoolchildren as a first step in controlling Japanese immigration, which had so many West Coast whites worried about the yellow peril. The Japanese were outraged. A Tokyo newspaper cried, “It will be easy work to awake the United States from her dreams of obstinacy when one of our great admirals appears on the other side of the Pacific. Why do we not insist on sending ships?”
And once again, Roosevelt brokered a compromise, a gentleman’s agreement between the sovereign government of Japan and, of all things, the San Francisco School Board. The Japanese agreed to limit emigration to the United States, so long as the children of Japanese in America were not segregated in American schools.
But Roosevelt told Abraham that he did not want the Japanese thinking they could snatch the Philippines or Hawaii because they negotiated over San Francisco. “I have nothing but the friendliest possible intentions toward them. But I’m not afraid of them, and the United States will no more submit to bullying than it will bully.”
“As you say, sir, ‘Speak softly and carry a big stick.’”
When Abraham and the rest of the Joint Board were invited to Oyster Bay on June 27, Abraham brought the navy’s recommendation for waving its big stick—a Pacific Ocean exercise by the combined American battle fleet.
What evolved was something more: a grand world-circling cruise of America’s white warships. The Japanese would be comforted by America’s friendliness, yet reminded that her navy had grown under Roosevelt to the second largest in the world, and American ships would cruise wherever and whenever they wished. The rest of the world would hear the message, too.
IN DECEMBER, IN waters where the Merrimack and Monitor had dueled half a century before, the Great White Fleet assembled—sixteen battleships, with pennants fluttering, guns polished, crews at attention, and spotless white hulls reflecting the afternoon light.
When the president’s yacht, Mayflower, hove in sight, the ships delivered a twenty-one-gun salute that must have been heard in Washington.
Most of the midshipmen and ensigns whom Will Stafford knew were somewhere in the fleet—Spruance, Halsey, even Dawson. Will was assigned to the new battleship, Missouri.
His father was sailing as a member of Rear Admiral Robley D. Evans’s staff. It was clear that he would make admiral before anyone else in his Academy class, except for William Sims, now Roosevelt’s right-hand naval man.
Will had never seen his mother so happy as at Thanksgiving, when they had all gathered at Stafford Hall: the house was newly painted and papered and furnished with all the best from the Fine Folly; the family was newly expanded—Will with his fiancée Jane Lord, Katherine with her Harvard boy, Harold Blake; and their father had been newly promoted, so that their mother could refer to herself as Mrs. Captain Julia Stafford.
Will knew, as he looked out from his ship on that December day, that his mother and sister were somewhere on the shore, amid the thronging crowds, watching Evans’s flagship, the Connecticut, lead the parade out through the Virginia capes while her band played “Auld Lang Syne.”
“Have you ever seen such a fleet on such a day?” Roosevelt exulted to reporters aboard his yacht, the Mayflower. He stood in the bow, doffing his top hat again and again to the ships and the waving sailors. Then, like a little boy trailing after his father, he ordered her to follow the armada through the Virginia capes and tag along for a few miles more. It was reported in the papers that Roosevelt cried with emotion when his white ships disappeared at last.
He had built a new navy after the vision of Alfred Thayer Mahan. Of course, in Europe they were already building even newer navies, and Dreadnough t-type battleships, with more armor and bigger guns; and somewhere, someone was figuring out how to fix guns and bombs to those flying machines.…
ON THAT SAME bright December day, Ethan Stafford watched a bulldozer dig into the garden behind the Fine Folly. It was good that it was winter, he thought. That made it easier to uproot the old cherry trees and rhododendrons. He had rewritten his will to include the hotel he would build here. Half would go to Alexandra and Gabriel, half to the young Spanish woman who shared his California bed.
He intended to leave nothing to Commander Abraham Stafford or his descendants except a pair of powerful Zeiss binoculars, “to help you find your way.” Beyond that, he would recall what Abraham Stafford once said: that he could fend for himself and did not need his uncle’s help.
x
Samurai
Will Stafford filled reams of paper with his observations on the voyage and mailed them at every opportunity to Jane.
When the white ships passed through the Strait of Magellan at the tip of South America, Will thought of his ancestor in the lonely Essex, fighting for weeks in these treacherous waters. He even read passages of David Porter’s journal to his messmates, emphasizing the name Jason Stafford wherever Porter mentioned it.
Under steam, the hellish passage of eighty years before was reduced to two twelve-hour days.
At Valparaiso Harbor, a quarter-million people greeted the American ships, and Will picked out the little inlet where the Essex had made her last stand. Then it was on to San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Puget Sound. In every port, there were balls, parties, receptions, fireworks, ship illuminations, rounds of drinking, and entertainment such as a midshipman could never have imagined.
BY JULY, THEY had reached the fabled Sandwich Islands. Hawaii.
Will wrote to Jane that when they paraded through Honolulu, he needed only to raise his ceremonial sword and he could catch the flowered leis being tossed through the air.
The next day, I met my father, whom I had not seen in six weeks. He took me on a tour of a magnificent harbor. Its name does it justice. They call it Pearl Harbor. Fine heights surround it. The anchorage is deep and extensive. And a large island sits in the middle. Were there facilities here—docking, coaling, repair, and the like—we could tie up the whole fleet and still have room to entertain the Japanese navy, too.
Father is writing a report on Pearl Harbor, because Congress has put up a million dollars to make it a Pacific Fleet base. As Father said, Congress makes its share of mistakes, but not in this case.
We leave tomorrow for the South Pacific, New Zealand, Australia, the Philippines, Japan. I do miss you. It is said that we will be gone another seven months. I hope you can stand it. I’m not sure I can.
The Great White Fleet arrived in Yokohama in October. Any fears of Japanese unfriendliness were dispelled before the anchors were dropped. Houses were hung with Japanese and American flags. Receptions and parades took them from Yokohama to Tokyo and back. And during a visit aboard HIJMS Mikasa, American admirals were hoisted onto the shoulders of Japanese junior officers and paraded around the deck like conquerors… or comrades.
Ensign Hiroaki Tanaka, of HIJMS Nisshin, was part of a group invited aboard the USS Missouri. After a tour of the ship and a fine luncheon, American and Japanese officers posed for a photograph under the battleship’s turret, their arms linked in friendship. Hiroaki and Will Stafford sat cross-legged in the front row.
“So,” whispered Will as the photographer set up the shot, “tell me about the old Japanese proverb, ‘Know your enemy.’”
Hiroaki smiled. “It is a universal proverb. Why else would you be here?”
That night, in a Yokohama geisha house, Hiroaki introduced Will to Japanese culture, and once Will had gotten over his modesty in the presence of women, he enjoyed himself completely.
After separate baths, in which the geishas washed the men as gently as if they were children, Will and Hiroaki slipped together into a large steaming tub of water, where they soaked and talked and recalled their plebe summer.
Then, wearing luxurious silk kimonos, they ate sushi. Will had expected to be repulsed by a plate of raw fish. But he should have known that the Japanese would offer only delicacy in the flavors and beauty in the presentation. Each taste of fish, wasabi, and rice was like a little explosion of energy in his mouth. The warm sake reminded him of mild turpentine, but it did its job, and soon he and Hiroaki entered into a round of toasting.
“To Theodore Roosevelt,” said Hiroaki.
“To the Emperor,” answered Will.
“To the Missouri.”
“To the Nisshin.”
“To your beautiful sister and her lifelong happiness.”
“To your beautiful geishas and our night-long happiness.”
“To our glorious Admiral Togo.”
“To meeting him tomorrow.”
“To knowing one’s enemy.”
“To the friendship such knowledge will bring.”
“To the gift that a friend can bring.” Hiroaki clapped his hands.
And two new girls emerged. Their hair was arranged even more elaborately than that of the others. Their faces were covered in white powder, which made their skin look like delicate porcelain; their red lips were like small blossoms. They sat before the men and sang songs that Will knew were a prelude to something more.
Then they knelt and unfastened the men’s kimonos. Will told himself that this was part of the culture they had traveled so far to understand. He could not insult his old friend, and there was no graceful way for him to stand up and leave. And he had never seen anything more enticing than a red kimono drawn back to reveal the dark hair between a young geisha’s legs.
THE GREAT ADMIRAL Togo appeared before American midshipmen and ensigns the next day, in a Yokohama garden. It may have been that he wished to show them the implacable face of the samurai warrior. Or perhaps he wished to gaze upon the young faces of the American navy that he might someday be forced to fight.
Whatever the reason, Will found it the most memorable scene of the journey.
Togo, through an interpreter, delivered a few words on the glories of naval life and the battle of Tsushima Strait. Then the Americans crowded in around him.
Three cheers were called, to which Togo responded with three formal bows.
Then the Americans, growing more exuberant and bolder in the presence of a man who was a bona fide naval god, raised Admiral Togo onto their shoulders, as the Japanese junior officers had done to the American admirals aboard the Mikasa.
Will was at the edge of the crowd, cheering with the rest. In the middle of it all, Bill Halsey was whispering something to the interpreter, who smiled a bit, then whispered to Togo’s aide, who looked shocked, but passed Halsey’s words to Togo nevertheless.
The admiral looked down at the sea of American faces, his own face as cold and controlled as a kabuki mask, and he gave one brief nod.
There was a great cheer and Togo was carefully lowered to the ground.
A blanket appeared from somewhere and was spread before him. At the urging of the Americans, Togo took his place in the middle of the blanket, sitting with arms folded and legs crossed. Once he was in place he looked at the young Americans and nodded again.
And with a roar, they lifted the blanket, and with a rising and falling chant—one… two…three—they flung him skyward.
He rose into the air in the same position in which he sat—arms folded, legs crossed, expression frozen.
“One!” cried the young Americans.
Then, with another joyous roar, the admiral was thrown into the air again.
“Two.”
And then again, the highest yet. Admiral Togo flew upward, as tightly wrapped as a human cannonball. And for a split second, he looked straight at Will Stafford. Will felt the eyes dig into him, take the measure, challenge him.
Then Togo dropped from view, but Will was still looking up at the sky…
…And he heard another thunderous roar…
… another explosion, but not of voices… of ordnance…
… and the roar grew louder.…
• • •
IT WAS THE roar of time racing ahead and shooting backward simultaneously.
Will Stafford was twenty-four, and in a flash… he was fifty-five.
And the eyes of the samurai were still looking right at him, taking the measure of him.
Was Will young, or was he fifty-five? Was he awake, or was he asleep?
The plane, an Aichi Type 99 carrier-based dive bomber, went roaring away over the heights to the north.
Jane came running out of the house. “Will! What’s—”
“Get inside!”
“Oh, my God!”
Two miles to the south, Pearl Harbor was disappearing.
Huge columns of black smoke were billowing into the air. The swarming planes looked like bees attacking a string of wallowing water buffalo. And the concussion of the blasts, felt up there on the Aiea Heights, was like the gasping of the air itself.
Even from where Will and Jane were standing, they could see the explosions against the sides of the battleships, and the huge geysers of water that seemed to rise in slow motion until they towered five times higher than the basket masts that gave the American ships their distinctive silhouettes.
“Captain! What’s happening?” Maureen, their daughter-in-law, rushed out of the house with a pair of binoculars in her hand. “Is this some kind of drill?”
“This is no drill,” said her father-in-law, snatching the binoculars.
“Just thank God the Enterprise isn’t here,” said Jane. “Otherwise we’d be losing a carrier, too.”
“And maybe Billy?” asked Maureen.
Jane put her arm around the young woman. “Don’t you worry about our Billy. He’s smarter than all of us put together.”
“He’s smarter than I am, that’s for certain,” said Will, peering through the binoculars. “The West Virginia’s hit. The Oklahoma… Jesus!”
Now Juan, their Filipino houseboy, came running out. “Captain Will… Captain Will, they call you from Admiral Kimmel office. They say fuckin’ Jap planes everywhere—Hickham, Kaneohe—”
“Juan,” said Jane coolly.
“Wheeler, Bellows, Ewa… they say this is no fuckin’ drill—”
“Juan,” she repeated.
“They bombin’ the shit out of everything—”
“Juan.”
“Huh?”
“I’ve told you not to swear.”
Two more planes were rising up from the harbor toward them. Nakajima 97s, known as Kates—torpedo bombers.
“Get down!” cried Will.
As the Kates went over, the lead plane loosed a burst of machine-gun fire that tore up the lawn, ripped up the veranda, and blasted through the house.
“Sons of bitches!” cried Jane Lord Stafford.
“Missus, no be swearin’,” said Juan.
“It’s this,” said Will, gesturing to his crisp white dress uniform. “They’re shooting at this. They should be… Jesus, we were stupid!”
“They’re shooting at all of us,” said Jane. “There’s nothing special about you.”
“I read the war warning two weeks ago,” said Will. “I helped to write Plan Orange at the War College. ‘Japs open Pacific War with Sunday morning attack on Pearl Harbor.’ I’ve seen the war warnings for forty years.”
Just then a tremendous column of smoke shot straight up from one of the ships. At the same moment, a long, furious jet of fire shot out over the bow. A moment later, the windows of the Staffords’ little hillside house rattled, and they felt the concussion of the blast, then they heard it echoing.
By the time it roared past, the whole forward section of the Arizona had disappeared behind a hundred-foot curtain of flame. The main magazine had erupted—a million pounds of explosives. No one could have survived the blast.
“Oh, God!” cried Maureen.
Jane pressed her hand to her mouth and thought of her sons.
Will Stafford thought, briefly, of suicide.
“Oh, good Lord, Will, how could this happen?” cried Jane.
“Opportunity is all,” said Will. “If the enemy leaves a door open, you rush in.”
“So now what?” asked Maureen.
“Now that he’s rushed in, we slam the door shut and beat the shit out of him.”
“That good,” said Juan. “But I think they just blow the fuckin’ door off its hinges.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Meeting the Admiral
October 12
Susan had not forgotten her 1992 trip to Pearl Harbor.…
She had resisted the idea of visiting the hull of an old battleship on her second honeymoon. Just another guy thing. She wanted to go straight to the Big Island. She had heard that Honolulu was just a mid-Pacific Miami, with so many Japanese tourists that you couldn’t tell who had won the war.
But the marriage counselor had told Susan and her husband, Rob, that they should solve their problems through compromise, so a few days of history at Pearl Harbor would be followed by a few days of volcano hiking on Hawaii. Then they’d get the divorce they both sensed was inevitable.
At the National Park Service Visitor Center, they saw a film that told the story of the attack—16mm news footage enlarged for the wide screen, booming stereo sound track, authoritative narrator. Susan was no student of history, maybe because Rob was a frustrated assistant professor of history, and he had taken out his frustrations on a few willing female history students. But she was glad he had given her a summary of the events on the drive from Honolulu. It was good background for the film.
