Navy Reads

A Case for Optimism: Navy Energizes

2012-01-28T12:54:00.024-10:00

by Bill Doughty

In some distant future, will people read Thomas Friedman’s books and think, “So that’s why we’re in this mess”?

That Used to Be Us: How America Fell Behind in the World It Invented and How We Can Come Back, published in 2011, begins and ends with self-described “frustrated optimism” that we will see, read, understand and heed the warnings all around us -- ecological, political and economic.

The book combines the progression and global perspective of Friedman’s previous works -- Hot, Flat and Crowded and The World is Flat, an original title on the Navy Professional Reading Program.

Friedman and co-author Michael Mandelbaum show that the nation’s energy policy is a strategic issue. Embracing clean renewable energy and reducing the use of fossil fuels would:

Make troops and supply lines in Afghanistan less vulnerable,
Free us from economic dependency from despots and radical Islamists,
Trigger innovation and make us more competitive in the global market,
Strengthen the dollar and improve our trade deficit, and
Provide cleaner air and reduce related health-care costs.

Secretary of the Navy (SECNAV) Ray Mabus talks with Sailors and Marines
in Afghanistan about Ground Renewable Expeditionary Energy System (GREENS).
(Photo by MCC Sam Shavers)

The authors single out the Department of the Navy, recognizing the Navy’s success in promoting new energy.

Led by Ray Mabus, President Obama’s Secretary of the Navy and the former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia, the Navy and Marines are not waiting. Using their own resources, they have been building a strategy for “out-greening” al-Qaeda, the Taliban and the world’s petro-dictators.

The authors amp up their optimism in discussing the historic first flight of a Navy F/A-18 Super Hornet fighter in 2010 powered by a fifty-fifty blend of conventional jet fuel and biofuel. But they express their frustration about how the nation is currently dealing with education and politics.

Last September the U.S. Navy flight demonstration team, the Blue Angels, flew using the fifty-fifty blend for the first time.

An "Energy Security" logo on an F/A-18 Hornet.
(Photo by MC1 Rachel McMarr)

Friedman and Mandelbaum show how trust, creativity and innovation are top traits in what they call today’s hyper-connected world and dealing with such issues as global climate change, fossil fuel depletion and a root cause: overpopulation. They report that the world’s population is projected to grow to 9.2 billion by 2050 from 6.8 billion at the time their book was published.

We learn that in the "flattened" world, in which workers from China and India are competing for jobs down the street, we need new ways of learning new skills. Here are the traits employers now want in their work force:

They are looking for workers who can think critically, who can tackle non-routine complex tasks, and who can work collaboratively with teams located in their office or globally.

Creative, innovative thinking is valued not only in the marketplace but also in the classroom.

EOD Sailors demonstrate IED
detection. (Photo by J. Johnston)

The authors cite Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin E. Dempsey’s vision and support of outcome-based training as a model for education. Dempsey says that peer-to-peer hands-on training is the most effective way to learn.

Dempsey champions wiki doctrinal manuals, for example, on how to deal with IEDs and bridge-crossings in Afghanistan. The manuals are continually updated with new information from the troops on the ground -- literally of the people, by the people, for the people.

The bottom line: “Collaboration is important on the battlefield, and trust is the cement of collaboration,” said Dempsey. “And trust is the prerequisite for creativity. You will never be creative if you think that what you have to say will be discounted. So creativity cannot happen without trust and collaboration cannot happen without trust. It is the essential driver. And that is why you build authority now from the bottom up and not the top down.”

Writing in one voice, Friedman and Mandelbaum do their own teaching, using references to Orson Welles, Galileo, Pasteur, Darwin, Einstein, Lewis Carroll and Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed.

They praise two key points in Amy Chua’s Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother: “The need to hold children to the highest standards that push them out of their comfort zones, and the need to be involved in their schooling.” Like Chua, they encourage strategies that challenge young people to think critically and understand science.

Global warming is a call to action, according to the authors, who explain why the United States has failed so far to meet the challenges of climate change and moving to alternative energy use.

In a subchapter called Of Science and Political Science, they write, “For starters, climate change occurs gradually and may not produce an equivalent of Pearl Harbor -- until it is too late.”

The authors salute President Richard Nixon for creating the Department of Natural Resources and the Environmental Protection Agency and pushing Congress to pass the landmark Clean Air Act of 1970.

Presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter addressed the Arab oil embargo of 1973-4 and faced down OPEC. [Memories of 1974, Tower of Power’s Only So Much Oil in the Ground. Lyrics: “There is only so much oil in the ground / Sooner or later, there won’t be much around... / Alternate sources of power must be found / Cause there's only so much oil in the ground / There's no excuse for our abuse...”]

Under President Reagan, then-Secretary of State George Schultz oversaw negotiation of the landmark Montreal Protocol on Substances That Deplete the Ozone Layer. Later, President George H. W. Bush introduced the idea of “cap-and-trade” to address environmental problems.

Navy’s commitment to renewable energy was a key point in President Obama’s State of the Union speech last week. Discoveries of natural gas and safer means of extracting traditional energy sources may be reasons for optimism in 2012. Last year the automobile industry agreed to raise fuel efficiency to 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025.

And there appears to be a growing commitment to wind, solar, and energy efficiency and conservation. Can we take advantage of the positive trends and deal with the negative: deficits, educational challenges and marketplace competitiveness?

That Used to Be Us concludes that the American Dream can still be achieved and sustained by reading and re-discovering our history, which brings us back to how Friedman’s books will be read and reflected upon in the future: “So that’s why we're in this mess?” or “Thank goodness we listened to the warnings!”

Warfighting First - Schneller’s ‘Top Ten’

2012-01-15T21:59:00.007-10:00

(In 2012 I am pleased to present a series of guest posts offering “top ten” choices of books and authors for our Navy Reads audience. In the months ahead we’ll have “top ten” recommendations from noted thinkers. The recommendations in this post -- books on American naval history -- are from historian Robert J. Schneller Jr., Ph.D., historian with the U.S. Naval Historical Center and author of Farragut: America’s First Admiral, which Navy Reads reviewed last September. Schneller’s suggestions align with the first tenet in the CNO’s Sailing Directions: Warfighting First. -- Bill Doughty)

by Dr. Bob Schneller

This list reflects my own personal interests as well as the books I think everyone connected with the naval services should read. Most of the books focus on war, for that always has been and always will be the Navy and Marine Corps's primary reason for existence. As you will soon notice, I like stories about the past told by those who were there; hence my list is heavily laden with memoirs and biographies. It is also rife with recently published books, because the focus on the individual's experience in war is a relatively recent historiographic phenomenon. Narrowing the list to ten proved impossible for me, hence the fourteen titles, listed in chronological order of subject. Enjoy!

Theodore Roosevelt. The Naval War of 1812. Reprint, Kessinger Publishing, 2010.

Despite the amount of historical literature that has come out since The Naval War of 1812 appeared in print a century ago, Roosevelt's book remains arguably the most accurate, impartial, and intrepid account yet written. A particularly timely book this is, too, with the bicentennial commemoration kicking off this year.

Holzer, Harold, and Tim Mulligan, eds. The Battle of Hampton Roads: New Perspectives on the USS Monitor and CSS Virginia. Fordham University Press, 2006.

The historical literature on the Civil War is so vast that I would have great difficulty in choosing only ten from that conflict alone. Renowned Civil War scholar Holzer and his sidekick Mulligan have presented us with a collection of essays from fellow experts William C. Davis, who provides an overview of the battle; Craig Symonds, who recounts the construction of the ironclads; and Howard Fuller, who examines the battle from the British perspective, as well as the renowned historian of technology David Mindell, who tells us what life was like aboard the ironclads. There's also a nifty essay on the battle's historiography. The slugfest at Hampton Roads was neither the most significant nor costly naval battle of the War of Rebellion by a longshot, but it remains the most written about, most famous, and most symbolic.

Morison, Samuel Eliot. The Two-Ocean War: A Short History of the United States Navy in the Second World War. Little, Brown, 1963.

For the big one, World War II, I have to list more than one title, as the war included history's most titanic clashes at sea. This book, although dated -- for example, information about codebreaking remained classified when Morison wrote up the battle of Midway -- remains the best introduction to the war at sea. Morison, a Harvard grad, two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, and buddy of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, gained unparalleled access to records, interviewees, and staff assistance to produce a 15-volume history of the war (of which this is a condensation), as well as a commission as a rear admiral in the Naval Reserve and permission to take part in operations. Morison was a gifted writer, too.

Frank, Richard B. Guadalcanal: The Definitive Account of the Landmark Battle. Random House, 1990.

Frank's brilliantly researched and well written book seems to be exactly what it claims to be. Subsequent scholarship has overturned some of his findings, but I remain convinced that Guadalcanal was the Pacific War's most important campaign. It was also, by necessity, a joint campaign.

Wukovits, John F. Black Sheep: The Life of Pappy Boyington. Naval Institute Press, 2011.

Pacific War expert Wukovits gives us a deeply personal window on the life of a Marine Corps aviation icon. The author lays bare Gregory Boyington's chequered life as a boozer, brawler, and iconoclast. All this the Marine Corps forgave Boyington, because he excelled at two things -- shooting down enemy aircraft and commanding men in battle. During the months he flew in the Solomons, his "Black Sheep" squadron ruled the skies. This book strips away the myths behind the man, yielding an unbiased, unflinching, but sympathetic portrait of a true war hero, with "warts and all," to borrow a phrase from Samuel Eliot Morison.

Jernigan, Emory J. Tin Can Man. Vandamere Press, 1993.

Here we have an autobiography straight from the deck plates, written by an enlisted destroyerman who served in the Pacific throughout World War II. Officers who read this book might want to avoid becoming martinets, for stewards might urinate in their coffee, as happened with one of Jernigan's unpopular officers. Enlisted men will learn what it was like to experience combat against the weather and the enemy inside a small ship, the vital importance of teamwork and bonding with shipmates and the value of "leading up" good officers.

The 1st Marine Division fights in Okinawa.

Photo by SSgt. Walter F. Kleine, Okinawa, 1945.

Sledge, Eugene B. With the Old Breed At Peleliu and Okinawa. Presidio Press, 1981.

William T. Sherman said "war is all hell" and Sledge leads us right into the inferno. Written from the grunt's perspective, Sledge's memoir exposes the horror, brutality and ugliness of war more fully than any other book I've read. A gently raised teenager, Sledge witnessed the way war strips away the thin veneer of civilization and results in unthinkable acts by beloved comrades. His patriotism never wavers, but neither does the grittiness of his story. Anyone who has the power to declare war or to command people in battle, as well as those who will experience battle, must read this book. If I had to narrow my list to one, this would be it.

Calvert, James F. Silent Running: My Years on a World War II Attack Submarine, with a foreword by Edward L. Beach. John Wiley & Sons, 1995.

This is my favorite book on the Silent Service during the war because it provides a view from the deck plates, or in this case, from inside the pressure hull. Silent Running opens with the renowned submariner Ned Beach's renowned screed against early war U.S. torpedoes, and then Calvert recounts his nine war patrols in the Pacific against the Japanese. World War II certainly included more renowned and controversial submariners than Calvert, but his understated style and clarity of expression landed his book on my list.

Dower, John. War Without Mercy: Race & Power in the Pacific War. Pantheon, 1986.

Winner of many prestigious awards, Dower argues that the Pacific War was essentially a race war between the Americans and Japanese, with each race believing itself superior to the other. On both sides the results included poor estimates of the enemy's capabilities, other military miscalculations, and a much higher level of brutality than Americans faced in Northwest Europe. War Without Mercy yields vital insights into what can happen when two different cultures clash; when each side uses a different rulebook for warfare.

Daws, Gavan. Prisoners of the Japanese: POWs of World War II in the Pacific. William Morrow, 1994.

Daws dwells on one particular product of the Pacific War culture clash -- the brutal Japanese treatment of POWs. The book is, in many ways, a collection of horror stories, including the fact that Japanese "physicians" performed vivisection -- dissection of a living being without anesthetic -- vivisection, on members of downed B-29 aircrews. I still shudder to think of it. The warning implicit in Prisoners of the Japanese, like that in War Without Mercy, is that different cultures have different rules of warfare than we do and will not behave as we do in fighting wars.

Thompson, Neal. Light This Candle: The Life & Times of Alan Shepard, America's First Spaceman. Crown, 2004.

Naval officers and enlisted men and women do lots more than fight, including, among other things, conducting humanitarian operations, performing rescues at sea, and exploring space. With exclusive access to private papers and interviews with his subject's family and closest friends, Thompson examines the life of one of the first men to fly off aircraft carriers, one of the world's most fearless test pilots, and one of the Navy's iciest, brashest, cockiest and most competitive officers, beating out John Glenn for the first Mercury spaceflight and then later, as a crew member of Apollo 14, whacking a golf ball on the moon. I recommend this one because the Navy still needs test pilots, and Thompson is a brilliant writer.

Reardon, Carol. Launch the Intruders: A Naval Attack Squadron in the Vietnam War, 1972. University Press of Kansas, 2005.

In this book Reardon, one of America's finest military historians, recounts the history of Medium Attack Squadron 75 from multiple perspectives (the cockpit, the bomb handler, the wives left behind), and sets it within multiple layers of context. The Journal of Military History described it as "a model unit history." So here we have a group biography.

Schneller, Robert J. Jr. Blue & Gold and Black: Racial Integration of the U.S. Naval Academy. Texas A&M University Press, 2008. With a dust jacket endorsement by Admiral Mike Mullen.

Honestly, I'm not including this to stroke my ego, but I consider this book, along with its predecessor, Breaking the Color Barrier, to be my masterpieces. Using a deep dive into the documentary records along with scores of interviews with largely black midshipmen, I've examined how the Naval Academy was transformed from a racist institution into one that genuinely ranks diversity among its fundamental tenets. The documentary research lays out the Naval Academy's racial policies, how they changed over time, and why. The interviews provide the impact these policies had on the experiences of black midshipmen, told through their own words. The third part of the book includes information on integration of women into the Academy, because many of those women are black. Naval officers and enlisted men and women should read Blue & Gold and Black because it explains the price minority and female shipmates will have to pay as long as parents teach prejudice to their children.

Scheuer, Michael. Through Our Enemies' Eyes: Osama bin Laden, Radical Islam, and the Future of America. Potomac Books, 2003.

During his 22-year career as a CIA Intelligence Officer, Scheuer served as chief of the Bin Laden Issue Section from 1996 to 1999 and as special advisor to the chief of the bin Laden unit from September 2001 to November 2004. He began this book in 1999 as an unclassified manual for counterterrorism officers. Initially, Potomac Books listed the author as "Anonymous," but with the publication of his follow-on book, Imperial Hubris, his name came to light. As for Through Our Enemies' Eyes, "The crux of my argument," declares Scheuer, "is simply that America is in a war with militant Islamists that it cannot avoid; one that it cannot talk or appease its way out of; one in which our irreconcilable Islamist foes will have to be killed, an act which unavoidably will lead to innocent deaths; and one that is motivated in large measure by the impact of U.S. foreign policies in the Islamic world, one of which is unqualified U.S. support for Israel." It is a harrowing argument, but one that must be understood by all who are serving in the global war on terrorism, the current war, the war we are now in, or whatever we're calling it now.

(A big thanks to Dr. Schneller for sharing his thoughts and recommendations... Look for more thinkers’ suggestions in the weeks and months ahead. -- BD)

1812: The Navy’s War

2012-01-01T21:35:00.011-10:00

by Bill Doughty

We don’t know what we don’t know, and ignorance of history condemns us to repeat past mistakes.

That could explain why the bicentennial of the War of 1812 -- which has lots of lessons from the past, of the present, and for the future -- is so important to the Navy.

It was:

Our second war for independence;

A war with Great Britain and Canada, now among our strongest allies; and

A rebirth for the U.S. Navy, inspiring the Star Spangled Banner.

Author George C. "America's Navy... Keeping the sea free for more than 200 years." gives a Navy-oriented history lesson in his 2011 overview, 1812: The Navy’s War. A reading of the history of the War of 1812 teaches why this conflict was so important to the nation’s development, especially as a world economic power.

We see familiar themes and how they apply today in chapters like “Free Trade and Sailors’ Rights,” “Jefferson’s Embargo and the Slide to War,” and “From Temporary Amistice to Lasting Peace: The Importance of the War.”

The book reveals how the Navy committed to being a blue water, forward-deployed and ready force for a nation that was less than 40 years old, just 25 years since the Constitutional Convention of 1787, and a mere five years after two big milestones: Robert Fulton development of the first practical steamboat and the British Parliament’s declaration that it was illegal to buy, sell and transport slaves.

Daughan shows that the strength of the Navy -- demonstrated at Lake Erie, Plattsburgh Bay, Baltimore and New Orleans -- proved to the British that their former colonies made a formidable partner. The collaboration and cooperation earned on the seas and in the littorals in 1812 would prove invaluable in the next century in two world wars.

Madison - Painting by Chet Jezierski

The book begins and ends with a discussion of economics and commerce. President Madison was enthralled with the British Empire’s economic might but, like Thomas Jefferson, championed the more French ideals of human rights and equality.

Daughan shows how Madison’s pragmatic approach with former enemies and strategic conduct of the War of 1812, “within the confines of the Constitution,” contributed to lasting military and diplomatic success. “In conducting himself in this manner, he immeasurably strengthened the democratic forces that had been building in America since the start of the Revolution and that had accelerated under Jefferson.”

1812: The Navy’s War inspires the reader to think about the rise of nationalism, the effects of the Industrial Revolution, and everything else that was happening in the world during that pivotal time, including and how it might affect history in generations to come:

1812 - Napoleon led his Grand Army from France, Germany and Poland into Russia (read Tolsoy’s War and Peace), which had just finished fighting the Russo-Finnish War and was already fighting the Russo-Turkish and Russo-Persian Wars;

From 1808 to 1813 - Napoleonic Peninsular War in Spain and Portugal;

From 1811 to 1818 - the Egyptian war with Wahhabis, with Egyptian forces retaking Mecca from the Wahhabis in 1813;

From 1811 to 1825 - Latin-American wars of independence;

1812 - Russian establishment of Fort Ross outpost near Bodea Bay in Northern California, Fort Ross. (The Russians tried to lay claim to Alaska in the previous century and established three forts on Kauai, Hawaii beginning in 1817.)

From 1804 to 1813 - Serbian Insurrection (with WWI implications); and

1812 - Siamese invasion of Cambodia.

Connecting all of those nations, directly or indirectly: the world's oceans and a still-developing world economy. The slogan for the bicentennial is "America's Navy... Keeping the sea free for more than 200 years." The Navy has a 200-years-ago-today timeline on its 1812 bicentennial site as well as an interactive map, historic paintings, classroom curricula, and a list of events, starting with the Navy's kickoff event in April 2012 in Washington, D.C.

Last year we reviewed books tied to the Centennial of Naval Aviation. This year we look forward to exploring the significance of the bicentennial of the War of 1812 and how it shaped the Navy, the United States and the world.

The USS Constitution had a special role to play in 1812, as did its skipper.
According to history.navy.mil: "Captain Hull's time on Constitution was eventful. He took the ship on a European cruise in 1811-12, returning home before the War of 1812 broke out between the United States and Great Britain. An enemy squadron closely pursued his ship off the East Coast in July, but Hull skillfully evaded them. On 19 August 1812, Constitution encountered the British frigate Guerriere at sea and pounded her to a wreck in an action that electrified the Nation and demonstrated that the small U.S. Navy was a worthy and dangerous opponent for Britain's otherwise overwhelming maritime might."

Heinlein, Haldeman, ERB & Mars

2011-12-26T17:25:00.002-10:00

by Bill Doughty

Robert A. Heinlein, whose Starship Troopers is a surprising fiction title on the mostly nonfiction Navy Professional Reading Program list, owes much to Mary Shelley, Jules Verne, H.G. Wells and Edgar Rice Burroughs (ERB). But, unlike most of the fantasy and science fiction that preceded him, Heinlein’s literary fiction opened doors to a future history through human eyes, concentrating more on the heart and hands heading to Mars than on the tools those hands operated.

If former Lt. Cmdr. Heinlein represented the WWII and Korean War period SF of his generation, then Joe Haldeman is a Vietnam-era and Post-Vietnam counterpoint starting in the early-mid 70s, especially with his masterpiece The Forever War. Both writers established powerful characters of both genders and moved away from earlier genre fantasy and SF that tended to objectify women or stereotype people of other backgrounds or cultures.

Sir Ridley Scott

Haldeman, praised by Heinlein and vice versa, served as a combat engineer in Vietnam, where he was awarded the Purple Heart. His combat experience shapes his writing and gives credibility to his military SF. The Forever War concepts show up in the films Avatar and Aliens. It will be fascinating to see how Ridley Scott brings Haldeman to the big screen if/when it happens. Scott, who created Blade Runner, Alien and now Prometheus, has the rights to make The Forever War.

Haldeman’s skill in writing about war, space and time led Stephen King to endorse him: “If there was a Fort Knox for the science fiction writers who really matter, we’d have to lock Haldeman up there.”

Haldeman’s latest work is a trilogy beginning with 2008’s Marsbound, which shows a Heinlein-like commitment to characters and heart but with a warped look into what can happen after first contact with a “Martian” race and “Others.” Interestingly, Haldeman writes in the first person as a female protagonist.

Marsbound gives a distinct nod to Edgar Rice Burroughs, author of the Barsoom series -- A Princess of Mars, The Gods of Mars, John Carter of Mars, etc. The spaceship that carries characters to and from Mars is named the John Carter. The aliens are red, green and yellow, like the characters created by ERB, but unlike ERB’s swashbuckling swordplay, Haldeman employs psychology, sex and Sun-Tzu.

Mars, named after the Roman god of war, has long been a destination for science fiction writers.

Giovanni Schiaparelli, Italian scientist, discovered what he thought were continents, seas and “channels” on Mars. American astronomer Percival Lowell hypothesized that the channels, interpreted as “canals,” showed signs of water and vegetation. His views were part of a worldwide meme imagining life on Mars.

In the final years of the 19th Century, H.G. Wells captivated human imagination with the The Crystal Egg and War of the Worlds, where Martians who had depleted the resources on their planet came as predators to stake their claim on Earth.

Discoveries and conjecture about Mars inspired the young Edgar Rice Burroughs, who was educated at Michigan Military Academy and then served in the Army with the 7th U.S. Cavalry before devoting most of the rest of his life to writing.

Like Heinlein, ERB and Haldeman, Arthur C. Clarke, Ray Bradbury, Lester del Rey, Philip José Farmer, Philip K. Dick and Frederik Pohl all had great works revolving around the red planet.

Heinlein created a mindbending look at Mars and spirituality with his Stranger in a Strange Land. In The Number of the Beast Heinlein pays tribute to ERB with characters named Zebedia John Carter and Jacob Burroughs traveling to Barsoom and Oz.

As we’ve seen in earlier posts, ERB as a staple reading choice of Sailors who fought in World War II. Pearl Harbor Survivors enjoyed SF, westerns and other adventure books. Like the Greatest Generation service members who inspire Sailors today, Golden Age SF writers and imagineers like Haldeman inspire the writers and filmmakers of today.

What Pearl Harbor Survivors Read

2011-12-11T10:18:00.001-10:00

by Bill Doughty

What did Pearl Harbor Survivors read before and after Dec. 7, 1941?

Clark J. Simmons

Clark J. Simmons of USS Utah told me last week, immediately after the 70th Commemoration of Pearl Harbor Day, “My mother was a librarian. We did quite a bit of reading. She inundated us with books. I had three sisters and all of us were readers. I would read anything I could get my hands on.”

Marshall LaFavor, son of Chief Warrant Officer Machinist Franklyn LeFavor, grew up in a Navy family. “One of the first things we did when we went to a new base was check in at the library and get our library cards,” Marshall said. “My dad was a big Zane Grey fan. Being at sea for so long he said he wanted to read something with sand in his boots.” LeFavor also enjoyed reading C. S. Forester’s Horatio Hornblower books, and after the war he read Day of Infamy.

Ray Emory of USS Honolulu told me earlier in the year, on his way to a Sacred Tea Ceremony aboard USS Arizona Memorial, that he only had time for his ship’s manual during the war. He distinctly remembered its oil-stained and sea-sprayed pages and mentioned losing it during action in the western Pacific. Today, Emory helps write the books of what happened at Pearl Harbor; he is a champion of the unidentified casualties of WWII.

Delton "Wally" Walling

Delton “Wally” Walling, who happened to be with Watchstanders in the Shipyard water tower during the attack, even though he wasn’t on duty, also read only the manuals he needed be an effective signalman during the war. “We were young kids coming in. We had nothing, no supplies, no libraries,” he told me. “After the war I wanted to try to forget.”

George Bennett, National Secretary of the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association, which is to disband at the end of this month, said he enjoyed reading books of short stories and, after the war, about the history of what went on behind the scenes leading up to and during WWII -- especially about intelligence and cryptanalysts and code breakers who did so much to help Nimitz and Spruance win at the Battle of Midway and across the Pacific throughout the war.

WIlliam F. Howell of USS Phoenix, was a fan of Adm. Halsey during and after the war. “Read Sea of Thunder,” he told me. “Read about Halsey.”

Simmons, whose librarian mother instilled a love for reading, said, “I recommend history books -- all history. And don’t forget to study math and science!

If Carrots and Sticks Don’t Work, What Does?

2011-11-27T11:47:00.006-10:00

(Special thanks to shipmate Nancy Harrity for this guest review of two books that explore what science reveals about human nature and how those lessons can be applied by Navy leaders to motivate their teams.)

By Nancy Harrity

With budgets decreasing and demands on our teams increasing, the best leaders are looking at what they can do differently to motivate their teams and improve morale.

Author Daniel H. Pink looks into if what we know about motivation is true in Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us. He finds there is a gap between what science knows about what works and how leaders actually motivate people.

Most Navy leaders have been taught some variation of reward what you want more of and punish what you want less of – an extrinsic, or outside of oneself, model. According to Pink, this approach is all wrong because it doesn’t account for how we organize what we do, how we think about what we do nor how we actually do what we do. Pink explains that carrots and sticks don’t work because they extinguish intrinsic motivation, diminish performance, crush creativity, crowd out good behavior, encourage cheating, shortcuts and unethical behavior, become addictive and foster short-term thinking – all things that helped to create many of the issues we face today. So what has science learned that can help us effectively motivate our teams?

Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy Rick D. West, left, congratulates Basic
Underwater Demolition/SEAL Class 290 upon their completion of Hell Week, Aug. 5, 2001.

Pink discusses how scientific studies have uncovered that motivation must come from within and has three essential elements – autonomy, mastery and purpose. Autonomy means focusing on results and allowing your team members to work on their own terms as much as possible. To foster mastery of the work at hand, leaders need to match what their teams must do with what their team members can do and like to do as much as possible, as well as allowing the activities to be their own reward. To foster purpose, leaders must allow their team members to find a way to do what is meaningful to each of them. Leaders also need to answer the question of why the work is being done and how it fits into the bigger picture.

Lastly, Pink notes that constant rewards can transform interesting tasks into drudgery and play into work. He advises his readers to shift from “if you do this, then you’ll get that” type of rewards in favor of the occasional “now that you’ve accomplished this,” type rewards. He also advises considering the use of non-tangible rewards such as praise and feedback.

In The 5 Languages of Appreciation in the Workplace by Gary Chapman and Paul White provide leaders with some concrete suggestions on how to use non-tangible rewards in the workplace. Many Sailors may recognize the five languages from Chapman’s The 5 Languages of Love from Fleet and Family Service Center homecoming briefs.

The concept is a simple evolution of the basic communication model. As with the five love languages, everyone has a way or language that he likes to receive appreciation in. Message of appreciation (and of love, and in general for that matter) are best received when they are sent in the language valued most by the recipient, not the language most valued by the sender. Chapman and White point out that many supervisors miss the mark when they try to show appreciation to their team members because they express their appreciation in the language they, as the senders respond best to, not the language the intended recipient responds best to.

The five languages are:

Words of Affirmation – using words to convey a positive message to the person you wish to show appreciation to, the classic “atta boy.” When using words of affirmation, take care to keep in mind that the recipient may prefer private, one-on-one recognition over a public awards ceremony, or a written note over the spoken word. Words of affirmation are most effective when they are specific and speak to the individual’s character or his personality.
Quality Time – giving the person you wish to appreciate your undivided attention for a period of time. Quality time can take many forms from working closely together on a project, to small group dialogue, to quality conversation or even shared experiences.
Acts of Service – helping the person you wish to show appreciation to do what he does the way he does it. When offering acts of service, volunteer, ask before you help, do whatever it is the way the recipient would, finish what you start and most importantly, check your attitude.
Tangible Gifts – giving a gift the person you wish to show appreciation to. When giving tangible gifts, give the recipient a gift that he values – it could be time off, a small token or an experience.
Physical Touch – giving the person you wish to show appreciation an appropriate, affirming, non-sexual touch. Tread carefully when using physical touch as not everyone wants to be touched.

Commander, Navy Region Hawaii Rear Adm. Frank Ponds, Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam
Commander Capt. Jeff James and Joint Base Command Master Chief CMDCM(SS/AW)
Gregg Weber serve military families at JBPHH on Thanksgiving, Nov 24, 2011.

As you prepare for the New Year, take some time, look into yourself and consider how you might use these approaches to make 2012 your team’s best year yet.
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(Coming soon, a look at what Sailors were reading on Dec. 7, 1941.)

Tribute to Veterans

2011-11-11T16:28:00.007-10:00

by Bill Doughty

CNO Adm. Jonathan W. Greenert delivers Veterans Day remarks.

(U.S. Navy photo by MC2 Jacob Sippel)

Veterans are being honored today from coast to coast and around the world. Today, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Jonathan W. Greenert delivered remarks at Madison Square Park during the New York City Veterans Day parade opening ceremony. This year the Navy is the parade’s featured service.

In San Diego, the Navy hosted a history-making sports event aboard a historic aircraft carrier. More about that in a moment.

Last year Navy Reads reflected on Veterans Day and Sailors who transited both the Atlantic and Pacific. The context was Tom Ashbrook’s On Point radio interview with Commander, U.S. Pacific Command Adm. Willard and Simon Winchester, author of Atlantic. We also discussed a special radio interview with veterans, including a conversation with former Command Master Chief Jim Taylor, Pearl Harbor Survivor Liaison for Commander, Navy Region Hawaii.

Since then we’ve featured other posts of interest to veterans.

In “Faith, Fear and Tom Hanks” I reprinted some of Hanks’s remarks at a commencement address at Yale, including his challenge to the college graduates about veterans, especially wounded warriors, returning from Iraq, Afghanistan and other deployments. His words are worth reposting today:

"Whatever your opinion of the wars, you can imprint the very next pages of the history of our troubled world by reinforcing faith in those returning veterans," Hanks told the seniors. "Allowing them rest, aiding in their recovery ... empathizing with the new journey they are starting even though we will never fully understand the journey they just completed, even though we will never understand what they endured. We will all define the true nature of our American identity not by the parades and the welcome-home parties, but how we match their service with service of our own."

Over the past year I reviewed Army veteran Wes Moore’s remarkable book, The Other Wes Moore. Moore talked about the key that unlocked his passion for education, his mother’s encouragement to read Mitch Albom’s Fab Five, a book about the Michigan University college basketball team. Moore writes:

I was riveted by that book. The characters jumped off the page, and I felt myself as engulfed in their destiny as I was in my own. I finished Fab Five in two days. The book itself wasn’t what was important -- in retrospect, I see that it was a great read but hardly a work of great literature -- but my mother used it as a hook into a deeper lesson: that the written word isn’t necessarily a chore but can be a window into new worlds.

Navy veteran Nancy Harrity guest-reviewed two windows into new worlds of strategic thinking, Seven Deadly Scenarios and Power Rules. Always insightful and thought-provoking, Nancy has a new review on the way. Stay tuned.

In a review of Ganbare! I discussed the juxtaposition of achievements of the veterans and heroes like the 442nd Regimental Combat Team with what happened to some of their families -- the WWII interment of Americans of Japanese ancestry.

Guest reviewer Theresa Donnelly reviewed Use Your Head to Get Your Foot in the Door, a book that can help new veterans who face challenges after leaving the service. Theresa wrote, “This is why it is important to have a robust plan in place for your post-military transition.”

Since last November we wrote other posts with with a focus on veterans: a review of USS Arizona’s Last Band, Culturnomics (Honor/Courage/Commitment) and Revolt of the Admirals in the Centennial of Naval Aviation, with some interesting history and perspective on Congressman Carl Vinson and his vision of a two-ocean Navy. Revolt ties in nicely, by the way, with the latest post on Courageous Followership and an interview with author Ira Chaleff.

The Navy Reads blogpost on the late Navy veteran “Amazing Grace” Hopper and her 2011 milestones was reposted on a number of other blogs, including GHC Bloggers in conjunction with the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing going on now (Nov. 9-12) in Portland, Oregon.

Rear Adm. Grace Hopper’s namesake, USS Hopper (DDG 70), recently transited the waters of the Battle of Leyte Gulf and observed a moment of silence exactly 67 years to the day of that historic battle. You can read about the veterans of WWII who fought in “the U.S. Navy’s Finest Hour” in Leyte and off Samar, Philippines in James D. Hornfischer’s Tin Can Sailors.

This Veterans Day, 2011, in addition to tributes and commemoration ceremonies around the world, the Navy is hosting a season-opening college basketball game aboard USS Carl Vinson (CVN 70) in San Diego. The Commander in Chief and First Lady attended the Quicken Loans Carrier Classic featuring the University of North Carolina and Michigan State University. That’s a pretty cool, all-American thing to do for and with our veterans. The game is going on now as I post this.

The University of North Carolina team practices aboard USS Carl Vinson. (U.S. Navy photo by MC2 James R. Evans)

Check out how USS Carl Vinson was transformed, and see ESPN’s “a look at life on USS Carl Vinson.” ESPN also featured a Veterans Day profile of J. P. Bolwahnn, a 34-year-old former Navy SEAL, who plays football at the University of San Diego as a walk-on.

Interview with Ira Chaleff - Courageous Followership

2011-10-30T09:45:00.005-10:00

by Bill Doughty

Remember the Hans Christian Andersen story of The Emperor’s New Clothes, in which the emperor is fooled into thinking he was wearing the finest regal wear even though he was naked? His ministers were too afraid or powerless to tell him the truth even though he paraded in front of the townspeople (until a young boy, free of fear or pretension, told the truth).

How does a follower tell the emperor he’s not wearing any clothes?

Courageously.

A courageous follower can counteract evil advisors, sycophants and the leader’s own inner demons by taking initiative, assuming responsibility, building trust and challenging tactfully, always focusing on the common purpose (vision/mission).

Ira Chaleff shows how to do all of the above and more in The Courageous Follower: Standing up to and for our leaders. The third edition is updated to incorporate strategies and techniques within a hierarchy.

I met Chaleff recently after he spoke at a conference and presented some of the science behind his revelations. We conducted this interview on Oct. 10, 2011.

____________________________

Can your principles of questioning authority -- challenging the hierarchy -- really work in the military chain of command? How?

“Challenging authority is best based on a record of supporting authority. When senior leaders get push back from excellent performers they pay attention. Their reflexive action may be ‘You’re out of line!’ but if the high performing junior officer holds his or her ground, most senior officers know they need to pay attention.”

You make the point that “Complaining has become acceptable in the culture” as a “substitute for courageous, honest and productive dialogue.” Do you think the pendulum will swing back? How can we encourage less cynicism and sniping and more constructive engagement?

“Complaining may be less prevalent in the military due to the high degree of professionalism and discipline. When it occurs, what is needed to interrupt and transform it is peer-to-peer courage. ‘I know the CO acted like a jerk, but he’s under a lot of pressure. How can we help him?’”

Is questioning authority the ultimate expression of patriotism in a free society?

“Our relationship to authority is complex. Some people are always rebelling against authority. This isn’t by itself patriotic. But questioning authority from a serious, values based perspective, and backing up that questioning with action when needed is what keeps a free society free. In this case yes, it is a deeply patriotic act, often taken in the face of significant personal risk.”

You admit to a North American, English-speaking perspective, but many of your principles seem to come out of nature and may be universal. Is it possible that courageous followership is a universal principle at work in the Arab Spring?

“It’s risky to claim knowledge of dynamics in another culture. We don’t know what we don’t know. Our military in Iraq and Afghanistan have learned more about cross cultural communication than most of us will ever experience. I will say that applying the principles of courageous followership effectively in different cultures requires framing upward communication in culturally sensitive ways. I have seen it done well in India where the underlying caste system still has a powerful hold. The challenge for the Arab Spring will be to sustain the free dialogue when cultural norms reassert themselves in each country. It’s high on my wish list to see The Courageous Follower translated into Arabic so it can be a resource for sustaining the transformation. If any reader can help connect me to an Arabic publisher (through one or more degrees of separation) please let me know.”

The nation’s Maritime Strategy is all about preventing war by building partnerships and cooperation, driving out fear between navies and nations. Can cooperative courageous followership be used to support the Strategy -- between leaders and other leaders, Navy and other navies?

“Preventing war is the highest measure of a military’s success. But the vision of driving out fear between navies and nations is aspirational and borders on utopian. It seems to clash with principles in the military classics (Clausewitz, Sun Tzu) on the value of deception and surprise. So I doubt that it will ever be fully achieved. But it can be strived for through as much authenticity as possible in dealing with peers and allies. Trust is the currency of leadership and (along with shared interest) the glue of alliances. Followers can do their part by refraining from fueling mistrust between leaders with poor or biased data and working behind the scenes on ironing out the details that support trust.”

In Chapter 7 you address the issue of metrics. What is the inherent dangers of relying on numbers and data alone to base decisions? Aren’t there some things or some services whose value is unmeasurable (and perhaps immeasurable)?

“You are right that the value of the most precious resources such as trust, love and honor are immeasurable. They are qualitative, not quantitative. At the same time we need to know the measure of things that are measurable to make decisions – ship readiness, personnel complements, fuel range, spikes in communication patterns, etc.

“The danger arises when we become so focused on what we are measuring that we neglect to pay attention to the risks and opportunities in the things we are not measuring. If we then tie performance rewards and penalties to measurements we further fixate attention, and we create incentives for gaming the metrics. This is very dangerous. Courageous leaders and courageous followers must stay alert for the consequences of the way metrics are being used and correct for distortions they create in the decision making field.”

Bob Dylan wrote, “You may be a businessman or some high-degree thief, They may call you Doctor or they may call you Chief, But you’re gonna have to serve somebody...” Isn’t nearly everyone in the military a leader, serving and accountable to someone else?

“Everyone in the military had better be accountable to someone else or we have rogue units and potentially a constitutional crisis.”

Bust of Aristotle

A thread running through your book is “balance.” Is the successful balancing of leadership and followership the definition of success itself? Is it helpful to redefine “success”?

“Balance is a condition of success. We go back to Artistotle’s golden mean here. Virtue is not at either extreme of the spectrum. For example, courage is a great virtue but courage without prudence is recklessness. Sometimes a leader operates at the extreme in a situation and pulls off a victory. There is a danger that he then comes to believe that operating at the extreme is at the core of his personal success strategy. That is a recipe for disaster.”

Another common thread seems to be the art of listening. What’s the most important thing to know about listening?

“A senior officer who is being given critical feedback or a divergent perspective will have the very normal human impulse to defend herself and explain her actions. A core competency of leadership is learning to override this impulse and substitute genuine interest and curiosity in what is being said. Seek to understand fully by asking clarifying questions and for examples that will help you understand what you are being told.”

You were inspired by a book: M. Scott Peck’s “People of the Lie” about My Lai. Should everyone, especially everyone in the military, read Peck’s book? Why?

“Scott Peck is both a psychiatrist and a clergyman. His book People of the Lie is a courageous attempt to understand evil from both religious and psychological perspectives. It is an exploration, not a definitive mapping. As in all explorations the work is uneven. I would not necessarily put it at the top of the reading list. I probably would put Stanley Milgram’s book Obedience to Authority high on the list of training officers and enlisted personnel on the dynamics of appropriate and dangerous obedience. With some sensitivity to recommending a resource from a foreign military, I would encourage viewing the Singapore Defence Force’s training video on Followership viewable on YouTube, and even more strongly encourage the development of similar resources of our own.”

You also recommend Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search For Meaning. Besides the books in the bibiliography of Courageous Follower, are there other inspiring works by other philosophers/thinkers you’d recommend, especially for a Navy audience?

“Frankl’s book, Man’s Search For Meaning is the ultimate expression of our internal freedom to choose our response even in the most dire circumstances.

“For those working closely with Flag Officers I would also recommend the book Lion Taming by Steve Katz. After working in senior political environments such as the White House, Katz studied lion taming at Ringling Brothers school for lion tamers. The lessons he extracted from observing the behavior of lions in a hierarchy, and of lion tamers who successfully interact with them, are extraordinarily applicable to working with elevated leaders of different ranks.”

How important is reading to the leader and follower?

Statue of King Alfred

“One of my heroes in history is Alfred the Great, 848 – 899, the first Anglo-Saxon King who repelled the Viking invaders and effectively founded what became England. He and those in his court were illiterate. He knew that military victory alone was insufficient. He invited a literate monk to his court to teach him to read and insisted the same of his senior officers. He then personally engaged in the project of translating key Latin works into the Anglo-Saxon language and began the process of creating an educated citizenry. Alfred divided his time between ruling, reading and contemplative reflection. A balance we would do well to achieve in our own lives!”

_________________________

Chaleff’s work belongs on book shelves with the best business and management books: Covey’s The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Deming’s Out of the Crisis, Drucker’s The Practice of Management and Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People.

Chaleff offers philosophical insights and common sense tactics. He gives practical advice not only to followers but also for leaders, who must have the courage to accept criticism, dissent and challenge. His guidance can be applied beyond the workplace. And, because his cited research is based on human nature, many of his conclusions are universal.

To learn more about Ira Chaleff, visit courageousfollowers.net. Courageous Follower can be ordered through Amazon.

Spruance

2011-10-23T10:25:00.009-10:00

by Bill Doughty

Now read this:

“He is a man of the age ... not rash, but a go-ahead man, he combines valor with discretion, and will not rush into anything he cannot see his way out of. Everyone respects him, and our men will fight to the death for him.”

These words were written of David Farragut in late April 1862 just after his dramatic conquest of the “impossible” at the Battle of New Orleans. It was a truly decisive battle of the Civil War, capturing the South’s largest city ... Without change the same words could have been said of Admiral Raymond A. Spruance after his conquest of the “impossible” in the Battle of Midway -- as the years lengthen this significant victory will loom larger and larger as another of the decisive battles of history.

The highlighted words in this post of Navy Reads come from the introduction in a 1966 edition of Admiral Raymond A. Spruance, USN: A Study in Command. The introduction is by Rear Adm.(ret.) E. M. Eller, former Director of Naval History. The words were written 45 years ago this year, yet only 24 years after the Battle of Midway!

Vice Adm.(ret.) E. P. Forrestel, who served on Spruance’s staff during WWII, wrote A Study in Command, commissioned by the Navy as a Command Study to help chart a career course for other naval officers. It’s packed with great photos, a foreward by Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz and personal eyewitness insights, but for me the highlight is Eller’s introduction, which puts Spruance’s leadership style in context.

Eller quotes Spruance discussing his biggest revelation from the war:

Vice Admiral Raymond A. Spruance, Commander, Central Pacific Force, (center)
is flanked by Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Commander in Chief, Pacific, (right)
and an unnamed Brigadier General, touring Kwajalein Island. NHHC.

“The things that I remember best are the times when we had considerable differences of opinion about what we should do,” writes Spruance. “These were generally resolved satisfactorily, and there is no point in rehearsing them. I think the fact that we could have differences in our ideas, and could argue and debate our various points of view up and down the line is the important thing to remember. Time for preparing our plans was short, and they had to proceed more or less simultaneously on all echelons to get things done. If orders had been handed down the line from on high, and no one had been allowed to question or any part of them, things might, at times, have gone differently.”

In other words, Spruance encouraged “courageous followership,” a concept we’ll explore in my next special blogpost (or preceding post depending on when you read this.)

And, Eller shows how Spruance embraced change in technology and innovation in warfighting. Eller then makes the case that the Navy has promoted change throughout its history.

Unknowledgeable men often speak of the Navy as “barnacle crusted,” or of “battleship admirals” opposing change of every sort. The truth of course is the contrary. The Navy is always changing. It has always led the nation in much major progress ... ship building ... astronomy and hydrography ... in many fields of physics ... in radio and radar ... aviation and underwater operations; in a host of other developments of this century including, particularly, atomic energy for ship propulsion.

Admiral Spruance saw nothing but “a changing Navy.” His career encompassed more fundamental changes in navies than in any other period of history. From crude beginnings, the United States Navy developed strength under the sea and in the sky with dramatic increase in total power...

The most significant part of these almost unbelievable changes, as demonstrated by the universally successful amphibious assaults in World War II, was the growing shift of power away from the land to the sea. As one looks back into history, he sees that this is not a sudden shift. It is a long one that has steadily expanded with the growth of science, invention and technology.

An early revolution of large import came with the age of sail. Great Britain led the world toward freedom, that the free sea offers, through the power of wind on sails. This brought navies easily into the great oceans and opened all horizons to man.

Yet, as we have noted, even greater change lay ahead; in steam, for example, that released ships from wind and tide. Electricity and internal combustion engines were some of the developments that projected navies under the sea and into the heavens with far reaching impact on destiny. In this century progress has accelerated with lightning speed comprising such fundamental changes integrated into deep sea navies as submarines, aircraft, radar, guided missiles and atomic energy. Admiral Spruance himself, like most officers to some degree, played his part in shaping these momentous changes.

Vice Adm. Spruance presents the Purple Heart to
Cpl John K. Galuszka, USMC, aboard a hospital ship
at Pearl Harbor, Dec. 17, 1943. NHHC.

Eller remembers conversations he had with Adm. Spruance “on the staff at Pearl Harbor and at times on his flagship afloat,” and reflects on Spruance’s understanding of the strength and synergy of a force -- the United States Navy -- that provides defense not only on the surface of the sea but also above and below.

Eller’s words should not be lost in the ether of history. Spruance’s legacy will not be forgotten. Tomorrow, USS Spruance (DDG 111), one of the newest ships of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, arrives at San Diego. Like her namesake, Spruance will work to keep sea lanes and people free.

To read more about Adm. Spruance, the Navy Professional Reading Program recommends a well-documented biography by Thomas B. Buell, The Quiet Warrior: A Biography of Admiral Raymond A. Spruance. The NPRP is endorsed by the Chief of Naval Operations.

USS Spruance (DDG 111) heading for San Diego. U.S. Navy file photo.

‘The U.S. Navy’s Finest Hour’

2011-10-10T16:33:00.007-10:00

Review by Bill Doughty

The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors: The Extraordinary World War II Story of the U.S. Navy’s Finest Hour is James D. Hornfischer’s powerful tribute to surface warriors and naval aviators and one of the very best books in the Navy’s Professional Reading Program.

Through exceptional prose the book explores the WWII Battle off Samara -- part of the Invasion of Leyte, Philippine Islands, Oct. 17-25, 1944. It’s a good read for the Navy’s Birthday this week (Oct. 13).

In The Last Stand Hornfischer explores:

The bravery and sacrifice of American Sailors
The hubris of Adm. Halsey
The strategic mistakes of Imperial Japan
The power of creative, instinctive free-thinking, even in the heat of battle

The author shows a McCullough-like historian’s skill in revealing characters, introducing us to heroes like leaders Lt. Cmdr. Robert W. Copeland, CO of USS Samuel B. Roberts (DE-413); Cmdr. Ernest E. Evans, the Cherokee American CO of USS Johnston (DD-557); pioneer of aviation Rear Adm. Clifton A.F. “Ziggy” Sprague, commander of Escort Carrier Group Task Unit 77.4.3 “Taffy 3”; and dozens of others.

Hornfischer introduces us to real sailors like Chief Radioman Tullio Serafini and Gunner’s Mate Paul Carr and describes the horrors of the sea battles. And, in a compelling tribute, he publicizes the names of the Sailors of Task Unit 77.4.3 killed in the battles, with hundreds of names listed from USS Heermann (DD-532), USS Hoel (DD-533), USS Johnston, USS Samuel B. Roberts, USS St. Lo (CVE-63), USS Gambier Bay (CVE-63), other ships and various composite squadrons.

In The Last Stand the surface Navy Sailors seem to breathe again. The ships -- from the Tin Can “Kaiser coffins” to the giant Japanese battleships bristling with “armor and steel” -- sail again. The reckless, fearless American pilots who changed the balance of the battle through innovation and bold action fly again.

Some excerpts:

(A description of the Imperial Japanese high command’s plan) “The Sho-1 plan was massive in scale, Byzantine in complexity, and exacting in its requirement that four fleets separated by thousands of miles of ocean time their movements with near-impossible precision. From the far-flung imperial anchorages in Japan’s Inland Sea, from Borneo in Malaysia, and from Singapore’s Lingga Roads, the fleets would sortie to the attack.”

(At the moment of discovery of the enemy fleet by naval aviator Ens. William C. Brooks and turret gunner Joe Downs) “Looking down as the armada filed by below him, Brooks made out the tall pagoda towers of Japanese battleships and cruisers. The doubt evaporated into a stunning realization: they are Japanese.”

(On the realities of warfare at sea) “The shells’ screeching impacts scrapped the innards of the Kalinin Bay right before the crew’s horrified eyes. Armor-piercing shells penetrated the thin hull and flight deck without exploding, turning the ship into an oversized colander. Shells hitting below the waterline let torrents of ocean water rush in.”

(After the battle) “At one point Copeland counted as many as fifty shark fins cutting the surface near him. Thanks to the oil that bathed the survivors in his group, these predators were all swim and no bite. But because no one could be too confident of that, the men feared the worst whenever a fin moved closer and then disappeared under water.”

(The context) “The three-day series of melees around the Philippines in October 1944 was by multiple measures the most sprawling, spectacular, and horrible naval battle in history. If it was not as decisive, in the word’s purest sense, as the victory at Midway, it was the greatest naval battle ever fought for the distances it spanned, for the tonnage of ships sunk, for the duration of the duels between surface ships,and for the terrible losses of human life...”

Adm. William "Bull" Halsey

Hornfischer focuses on the desperate requests for back-up support from U.S. Seventh Fleet Commander Vice Adm. Thomas C. Kinkaid and how Adm. Halsey’s and Gen. MacArthur’s personalities influenced the placement of forces.

Halsey, ever on offense, was chasing a Japanese fleet decoy with his Task Force 34, leaving San Bernardino Strait unguarded.

MacArthur had insisted all Third Fleet and Seventh Fleet messages be routed through his headquarters, which ultimately delayed the Seventh Fleet requests to Halsey for help.

Adm. Nimitz, Commander in Chief of the Pacific Fleet, saw the delay and intervened with a message that included a possible historical literary reference from Lord Tennyson’s poem, “The Charge of the Light Brigade.” The explanation, context and Halsey’s strong negative reaction to receiving Nimitz’s message is just another reason to pick up this great book.

Two more reads to add to the (growing) to-read list: Hornfischer’s Ship of Ghosts and Neptunes Inferno: The U.S. Navy at Guadalcanal.

The Clifton A. F. Sprague memorial, near USS Midway Museum, San Diego.

Damn the Torpedoes...

2011-09-30T18:42:00.003-10:00

Review by Bill Doughty

The Navy’s first four-star admiral began service as a preteen in the War of 1812. He was a son of the South who fought for the North in the Civil War and later served as a pallbearer at President Lincoln’s funeral. He commanded blue-water naval warships in brown-water littoral operations in the Mississippi river, reclaiming New Orleans and later winning at Mobile Bay, famously having himself lashed to the upper rigging to ensure command and control.

“...full speed ahead.”

It’s not till the final pages of Robert J. Schneller, Jr.’s Farragut: America’s First Admiral that Farragut’s hispanic ethnicity is discussed.

At the tender age of 12 Glasgow “David” Farragut sailed as a midshipman with his mentor Captain David Porter aboard the 32-gun frigate USS Essex, fighting in the War of 1812 to stop the British from interfering with commerce on the seas.

After a stormy passage around Cape Horn and a stop in Valparaiso, Chile, the Essex roved through the Galapagos Islands, capturing a dozen British whalers and earned Porter the distinction of commanding the first American warship in the Pacific. During the voyage Farragut saw albatrosses, flying fish, seals, sea lions, redheaded lizards, iguanas, Galapagos terrapins and other exotic wildlife. He also weathered fierce storms and choked down his share of worm- and weevil-ridden food.

Farragut served aboard, sailed with or commanded USS Vandalia, USS Boxer, USS Consellation, USS Erie, USS Pennsylvania, USS Saratoga and USS Hartford. Ashore, he served as commandant of Mare Island Navy Yard.

Commodore Farragut aboard USS Hartford, 1864.

Schneller describes the admiral’s distinguished service in the Civil War, fighting against the Confederate Navy, despite his roots in the south -- born in Tennessee, a resident of Virginia.

Farragut achieved a hero’s status after the Civil War. He was promoted as the nation’s first four-star admiral on the same day that Ulysses S. Grant became the nation’s first four-star general.

After his final promotion to admiral, Farragut was assigned by Secretary of State William Seward as commander of the European Squadron, where his Hispanic heritage and Spanish fluency helped him succeed in building partnerships and promoting peace.

The author provides a CliffsNotes version of Farragut’s life, purposely focusing on the historical details of key battles and military strategy. Farragut is revealed as a courageous leader unafraid to make bold decisions in the heat of battle but unwilling to fully adapt to new technologies of ironclad ships, rifled cannons and mechanical means of propulsion.

For those who wish to delve deeper into Farragut’s life, Schneller offers these suggestions: Loyall Farragut’s The Life of David Glasgow Farragut, First Admiral of the United States Navy, Embodying His Journal and Letters, Alfred Thayer Mahan’s Admiral Farragut, and Charles Lee Lewis’s two-volume study, David Glasgow Farragut: Admiral in the Making / Our First Admiral.
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Today Adm. Mike Mullen turned over the reins as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The former Chief of Naval Operations prior to Adm. Gary Roughead and now Adm. Jonathan Greenert, Mullen initiated the Navy Professional Reading Program.

As a student and teacher of history, Mullen often invoked memories of naval heroes. Six years ago at a dedication ceremony of the Commodore Uriah P. Levy Center and Jewish Chapel at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md., Mullen said:

“I believe in the power of our past to inspire and instruct, and I believe in the power of our convictions, which have sustained generations of leaders...

“We think of heroes like John Paul Jones, Stephen Decatur, David Glasgow Farragut; as well as Carl Brashear, Grace Hopper, and Jim Stockdale.

“Their legacy is our tapestry, a uniquely American tapestry, sewn of many diverse faiths and beliefs, cultures and backgrounds, colors and creeds.

“We recall those leaders not in terms of where they came from, but for what they left us.”

President Barack Obama offered remarks at Mullen’s change of responsibility ceremony held Sept. 30. After reporting on the killing of al Qaeda leader and terrorist Anwar al-Awlaki, another achievement announced on the final day of Mullen’s watch, Obama said, “..if there’s a thread that runs through his illustrious career, it’s Mike’s sense of stewardship -- the understanding that, as leaders, our time at the helm is but a moment in the life of our nation; the humility, which says the institutions and people entrusted to our care look to us, yet they do not belong to us; and the sense of responsibility we have to pass them safer and stronger to those who follow.”

President Barack Obama, left, shares a moment with Navy Adm. Mike Mullen, outgoing chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, during the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff change of responsibility ceremony on Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall, Va., Sept. 30, 2011. Mullen was succeeded by Army Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, who became the18th chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, during the ceremony. DOD photo by U.S. Air Force Tech. Sgt. Jacob N. Bailey

Confidence, Commitment, Character

2011-09-10T11:50:00.007-10:00

Review by Bill Doughty

On Sept. 11, 2001 Michael P. Murphy was an ensign in Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL training.

Michael Murphy, a graduate of Penn State University, who grew up in Patchogue, Long Island, New York, internalized and personalized what happened on 9/11, according to colleagues, mentors and writer Gary Williams, author of SEAL of Honor: Operation Red Wings and the Life of Michael P. Murphy, USN.

Murphy led a SEAL team into Afghanistan in 2005 where he faced a profound ethical dilemma after capturing some civilian non-combatants. His dilemma and moral decision is examined in detail in another book about Operation Red Wings, Lone Survivor by Marcus Luttrell.

The team then endured a prolonged firefight against a larger Taliban force. At the end of the terrifying and deadly fight, Murphy faced a second, more personal moral choice. At great personal risk, he put himself directly in the path of enemy fire in order to call in help for his team.

In SEAL of Honor Williams introduces us to Murphy’s family, shows in detail his training regimen as a Navy SEAL, describes the mission Murphy led in Afghanistan during Operation Red Wings, and describes the honors paid to Murphy and his family after he was killed. SEAL of Honor documents history and offers a well-documented biography of an American hero.

Murphy’s bond with first responders from his home state is legendary. He had his unit wear the bright orange patch of FDNY Engine Co. 54, Ladder Co. 43 -- “El Barrio’s Bravest” -- on their uniforms as a team symbol and constant reminder of 9/11 and why the SEALs were in Afghanistan, according to Williams.

Marcus Luttrell refers to the patch several times in Lone Survivor.

Luttrell’s book is understandably an autobiographical account. Before describing Operation Red Wings, Lone Survivor explores Luttrell’s upbringing in Texas, his SEAL training in San Diego and a mission in Iraq desperately searching in vain for weapons of mass destruction: “chasing shadows out there in that burning hot, sandy wilderness.”

Luttrell’s telling of the firefight with the Taliban in Operation Red Wings is gripping and graphic, but at the end of Luttrell’s book the reader is left with a hunger to know more about the hero of the tale, leading protagonist Michael P. Murphy.

Spartan warrior culture depicted in the movie 300.

Seal of Honor shows us how Murphy’s qualifications as a leader developed starting in early childhood. As a toddler, Michael’s favorite book was Wally Piper’s The Little Engine that Could. He was a voracious reader at Canaan Elementary School.

According to Williams, Murphy’s favorite book was Gates of Fire by Steven Pressfield, a historical fiction novel about the 480 B.C. Battle of Thermopylae, in which 300 brave Spartans protected their homeland and democracy from an invading Persian Army.

Greek warrior culture is part of the SEAL tradition.

The never-give-up attitude, willingness to sacrifice for a cause and strong personal ethos all contribute to what makes a Navy SEAL, provided the individual can tough it through BUD/S training, described in detail by Williams.

Despite the brutal training, Michael soon realized that almost anyone could meet the physical requirements of the SEALs, but the unending challenge from day one would be the mental toughness, that never-ending inner drive that pushes you forward when every nerve and muscle fiber in your body tells you to stop -- to quit. That warrior mind-set -- the mental toughness -- is what separates a Navy SEAL...

SEAL of Honor includes inspiring SEAL Creed excerpts or, in some cases, complete remarks from SEAL leaders like Adm. Eric T. Olson, Chief Warrant Officer Mike Loo and Commodore Pete Van Hooser. All focus on leadership expectations and maintaining high standards.

Williams describes the tragic rescue attempt in which Lt. Cmdr. Erik S. Kristensen and 15 other would-be rescuers were killed when their MH-47E Chinook helo, call sign Turbine 33, was shot down by the Taliban.

Both Lone Survivor and SEAL of Honor showcase the importance of the concept: “no one left behind.”

Near the end of SEAL of Honor, Williams lists each of the warriors who died trying to rescue Murphy and his team.

Lt. Michael P. Murphy. U.S. Navy photo.

He describes the many tributes to Lt. Michael P. Murphy, including the awarding of the Medal of Honor by President George W. Bush. One of the most significant tributes, especially as far as Sailors is concerned, is the naming of an Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer for him, dedicated May 7, 2008.

During his remarks, Secretary Donald C. Winter predicted, “Every Sailor who crosses the bow, every Sailor who hears the officer of the deck announce the arrival of the commanding officer, and every Sailor who enters a foreign land representing our great nation will do so as an honored member of the USS Michael Murphy,” writes Williams.

Osama bin Laden haunts both books, written prior to President Barack Obama’s authorization to kill or capture the terrorist leader of al-Qaida, the group responsible for the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. After a Muslim ceremony, bin Laden was buried at sea from USS Carl Vinson (CVN 70) just days before the USS Michael Murphy christening.

USS Michael Murphy (DDG 112) was christened at Bath Iron Works, Maine on May 7, 2011 (after publication of Williams’s book), on what would have been Murphy’s 35th birthday.

“It is my sincere belief that this ship will build on the momentum gained by our special operations forces in the fight against extremism and sail the seas in a world made more peaceful by sustained American vigilance, power and dignity,” said Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Gary Roughead. “This ship will carry Michael’s legacy and values to Sailors several decades from now and to a new generation of Americans...”

Deeply Rooted in the American Dream

2011-08-28T09:53:00.004-10:00

Review by Bill Doughty

Peace, justice and equality can be born from tension and conflict. Love, compassion and understanding can prevail in the face of hatred and violence.

Taylor Branch’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Parting the Waters - America in the King Years 1954-63 - shows how Constitutional ideals were embodied and emboldened by the civil rights movement, led by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Today marks the 48th anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. The march culminated with King’s I Have a Dream speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

Branch leads us to that watershed moment in history, one that informed a nation and showcased the movement’s strength and determination, much like the new expression on the face of the new Martin Luther King, Jr. National Memorial. Organizers and sponsors note that the King Memorial is aligned visually with the Jefferson and Lincoln memorials on the National Mall and in sight of the Washington Monument.

The Memorial, an expression of determination.

In his life, King aligned with the ideals of Freedom. Like Thomas Jefferson (and, contemporaneously, like John F. Kennedy, Jr.) he didn’t always live up to the professed moral ideals in his personal life, as Branch shows.

Like Abraham Lincoln, King championed the Constitution and used reason, diplomacy, courage and compassion to achieve his goals, always trying to understand and make peace with others, especially his rivals.

In his preface, Branch writes: “My purpose is to write a history of the civil rights movement out of the conviction from which it was made, namely that truth requires a maximum effort to see through the eyes of strangers, foreigners and enemies.”

Parting the Waters actually begins at the end of the 19th Century and gives us a fascinating look at the role of black churches and colleges and the effects of a then-new enlightened way of thinking -- a non-fundamentalist, unorthodox liberal theology.

At Crozier Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania King discovered:

There are moral laws of the universe that man can no more violate with impunity than he can violate its physical laws. -- MLK

Branch writes, “At Crozier King expressed the belief that love and reason could bring out in all people a basic goodness that was deeper than racial hatreds or personal animosities.”

Branch shows us the books and authors that inspired Dr. King. He was influenced by thinkers like Frederick Douglass, Mahatma Gandhi, Reinhold Niebuhr, Baruch Spinoza and W. E. B. DuBois. Books by DuBois were passed around by Sailors during WWII, according to Branch.

W. E. B. DuBois

Books helped shape his world view as a self-aware young man struggling under a strong patriarch, armed with a good classical education and dealing with discrimination and segregation in a mid-20th Century south.

Out of conflict between competing ideas came compromise and creativity and a universal world view.

Branch delves into many of the personalities of the civil rights movement. We see Harry Belafonte’s sustained involvement, Rosa Parks’s principled inspiration and John Lewis’s key influence.

Lewis made it clear that the movement would continue until freedom for all citizens was achieved, “until the revolution of 1776 is complete.”

We also see the intransigence and meanness of characters like Bull Connor, Gov. Barnett and Gov. George Wallace. He writes about the murders of Emmett Till and Medgar Evers and unlikely martyrdom of independent marcher William Moore, murdered in Alabama.

Nonviolent protests met with violence in Birmingham, 1963.

Branch writes about the painful anger, hatred and violence in Birmingham, Montgomery, Albany and elsewhere that seethed in 1963. In the rising heat of that summer King stood for cool, nonviolent determination despite political in-fighting by other church leaders and a separatist movement by the Black Muslims and others.

Branch shows that the march on Washington was originally planned 70 years ago this year. In 1941 A. Philip Randolph, president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, threatened publicly to lead a massive march to D.C. unless President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued an order banning racial discrimination in defense industries.

Randolph was a key planner and leader for the 1963 march, like King, committed to nonviolence.

With his unscripted and inspired "I Have a Dream...rooted in the American dream" remarks, King rose to become “a national spokesman for a significant minority of whites as well as a vast majority of Negroes,” writes Branch. King speaks to the inalienable human rights outlined in the Declaration of Independence and Constitution of the United States.

In Parting the Waters, the author continually shows the tension and conflict that forged the nonviolent fight for civil rights.

King persevered in the face of home and church bombings and the jailing or imprisonment of students and civil rights leaders, including himself. He was stabbed in the chest by a would-be assassin.

King fought on, despite wiretapping investigations and communist-sympathizer allegations by J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI. Because of scandals, fear and Machiavellian palace intrigue, Hoover was only temporarily successful in slowing the civil rights movement through his innuendoes and allegations.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., 1963: "I have a dream."

According to Branch, “Most unforgivable was that a nation founded on Madisonian principles allowed secret police powers to accrue over forty years, until real and imagined heresies alike could be punished by methods less open to correction than the Salem witch trials.”

Conflict and tension between Dr. King and President Kennedy, called a “mysterious duel” by Branch, is a centerpiece of the latter part of Parting the Waters.

“Where the interpretations of freedom overlapped, they inspired the clear hope of the decade,” Branch writes. “Where incompatible, they produced conflict as gaping as the Vietnam War.”

Parting the Waters concludes shortly after Kennedy’s tragic assassination in 1963 and foretells the tragedy that would befall King in 1968. In the intervening years he would become a “Pillar of Fire,” the last words of Branch’s epic study, and the title of the second book in his trilogy, Pillar of Fire, America in the King Years 1963-65. The trilogy concludes with At Canaan’s Edge, America in the King Years 1965-68.

This book is recommended by the Navy Professional Reading Program.

To the Shores of Tripoli

2011-08-14T21:40:00.006-10:00

Review by Bill Doughty

The War of 1812, in which the young U.S. Navy defeated the British Fleet, was preceded by a war against terrorists -- Barbary pirates and their sponsor states along the northern coast of Africa in and around what is now Libya.

To the Shores of Tripoli -- The Birth of the U.S. Navy and Marines by A.B.C. Whipple, is the account of the original United States war against Arab tyrants and introduces us to colorful characters such as President Thomas Jefferson, Commodore Edward Preble, Consul William Eaton, Marine Lieutenant Presley Neville O’Bannon and Navy Captain Stephen Decatur.

These main characters are revealed with all of their strengths and weaknesses in the context of political intrigue and, quite literally, personal battles. The book describes two duels to the death.

Duels occurred frequently in the new U.S. Navy, whose officers were overzealous about rank and “honor.” Two thirds as many naval officers were killed in duels as by enemy action in all U.S. naval engagements from 1798 until the Civil War.

The greater "duel," of course, was between freedom of the seas and piracy. Credit is given to Thomas Jefferson for his commitment to end the tradition of paying tribute and ransom to pirates who preyed on American shipping, capturing and imprisoning sailors in the late 1700s and early 1800s.

Jefferson saw the dangers of trading arms for hostages. He lobbied for more and better Navy ships.

Yet, Jefferson was criticized for not waging all out naval war on the pirates and their sponsors and for settling for peace treaties.

According to Whipple:

Such criticism overlooks both Jefferson’s determination to fight rather than pay off the Barbary powers, and the fact that it was Congress that denied his requests to declare war against them.

Naval hero Stephen Decatur fights pirates in Tripoli.

Still, President Jefferson was in office when the first major interaction of the Barbary War occurred 210 years ago this month -- Aug. 1, 1801 -- when Lt. Andrew Sterrett led the sloop-of-war Enterprise against the 14-gun warship Tripoli, commanded by Adm. Rais Mahomet Rous, known for raiding American and other commercial shipping.

After Rous pretended surrender and then opened fire on the Enterprise twice, Sterrett and his Marines, led by Lt. Enoch Lane, used precision firepower and seafaring prowess to utterly defeat the enemy -- 30 killed, 30 injured out of a crew of 80, with not even one injury to Sterrett’s men.

In several examples, the author shows the power of discipline, training and readiness over laziness and political expediency.

The heart of Whipple’s book deals with several key events: the 500-mile march across the desert to Tripoli, a courageous attack on the fort at Derna, sea battles in the Mediterranean and gunboat assaults against pirates and tyrants.

Commodore Preble, mentor to a generation of heroes.

The author shows how the Navy and Marine Corps team developed and became stronger.

He also shows the importance of books in developing leaders. Eaton was inspired after reading Plutarch’s Lives as a young man. Preble, a mentor to a generation of U.S. naval heroes, whose flagship was USS Constitution, had more than 100 books in his cabin.

Today, USS Preble (DDG 88) is part of the USS Ronald Reagan (CVN 76) Carrier Strike Group. Preble was one of the first U.S. Navy assets on the scene in Japan last March to provide rescue and relief support as part of Operation Tomodachi in the wake of the tragic earthquake and tsunami there.

After reading and enjoying Whipple’s To the Shores of Tripoli (written twenty years ago in 1991) I checked out Jefferson’s War by Joseph Wheelan (published in 2003), a book which examines the same period and, like Whipple’s work, is carefully researched and documented.

To comprehend the present and future, one should read to understand the past...

‘Amazing Grace’ Hopper’s 2011 Milestones

2011-07-31T08:34:00.013-10:00

Review by Bill Doughty

If she didn’t invent the computer revolution in the United States, Rear Adm. Grace Murray Hopper gave it a voice – and a language in which to communicate.

“Amazing Grace” Hopper (1906-1992) played a pivotal role in developing COBOL (COmmon Business-Oriented Language) and creating FLOW-MATIC (the first data processing language to use English).

She promoted computer standardization for the Navy with the Air Force and eventually throughout DoD. A lifelong inventor who preached common sense, she considered herself a discoverer rather than an inventor, according to Kathleen Broome Williams, author of Grace Hopper – Admiral of the Cyber Sea, recommended by the Navy Professional Reading Program.

Always unconventional in her thinking, Hopper scorned the customary and traditional, was impatient with the status quo, and approached problem solving with instinctive innovation.

In 2011, and especially in August, there are some significant Grace Hopper milestones to remember:

Eighty years ago, 1931, Hopper began teaching at Vassar College.

Seventy years ago, 1941, she earned a faculty fellowship at Vassar. On Dec. 7, 1941, there were no women serving as commissioned officers in the Navy, but Hopper wanted to joint the war effort. She became one of the early WAVES – Women Appointed for Voluntary Emergency Service – during WWII and began working at Harvard on the Mark I computer (which was formally dedicated Aug. 7, 1944).

At the time, the few computers that existed in the world were the size of a room and were known as “computing machines.” The term “computer” was used for the women who operated the machines, entering data to generate calculations, according to Williams.

Sixty-five years ago, 1946, Hopper was promoted to lieutenant, recognized for her computer programming skills.

Sixty years ago, 1951, she began working on the world’s first compiler, completing it the following year. A compiler is a program or set of programs that transforms complex source code into a simpler code. Hopper’s invention or “discovery” was a fundamental contribution to the evolution of computing.

Grace Hopper helped develop COBOL.

In Grace Hopper – Admiral of the Cyber Sea, Williams takes us through “Amazing Grace’s” career. The author shows us that the biggest challenge Hopper faced was an established bureaucracy’s resistance to change, but many leaders in the Navy began to fully embrace the potential of computing between 1950 and 1960. In the 50s Hopper and her team developed some of the world’s first compiler-based languages for programming: ARITH-MATIC, MATH-MATIC and FLOW-MATIC; by the end of the decade she was playing a key leadership role in developing COBOL.

Fifty years ago, in August 1961, Hopper was promoted and appointed director of research in systems and programming for the Remington Road division of Sperry Rand.

Forty-five years ago, 1966, as Hopper was about to turn 60, then-Cmdr. Hopper received a letter from the Chief of Naval Personnel, asking her to apply for a resignation from the Navy due to her age and length of service. When she then retired, Hopper called it, “the saddest day of my life.”

But, on August 1, 1967, the Navy recalled her from the Reserves to active duty. The computer age was accelerating.

Thirty-five years ago, August 1976

Hopper, who wrote curriculum for the Navy’s “A” and “C” schools (basic and advanced training) and set up an operational analysis division for the Bureau of Naval Personnel, was now a recognized leader in computer science and the information technology revolution.

Forty years ago, in August 1971, 12,000 copies of Hopper’s manual, Fundamentals of COBOL, had been sold – 25 years after she’d worked on the Mark I.

Williams describes Hopper’s principal role working with the Air Force, Secretary of Defense and Government Services Administration to standardize computer language throughout federal agencies.

On August 2, 1973 Hopper was promoted to Captain.

She continued to be a teacher, mentor and recruiter for the Navy in the 70s and early-mid 80s. Then, 25 years ago, on Aug. 14, 1986, Grace Hopper retired a second time, at the rank of Rear Admiral. Her retirement was held aboard USS Constitution in Boston Harbor. She was awarded the Defense Distinguished Service Medal.

Twenty years ago, on Sept. 16, 1991, Grace Hopper was awarded the National Medal of Technology, the highest honor of its type in the United States. (Steve Jobs and Bill Gates are other recipients of the medal, now known as the National Medal of Technology and Innovation.) Williams reports what President George H. W. Bush said at the time, that it was Hopper who “pioneered the revolution that put personal computers on the desks of millions of Americans – and dragged even this president into the computer age.”

The voice of Navy’s computer revolution was silenced when Hopper passed away on New Year’s Day in 1992.

Fifteen years ago, during the summer of 1996, Sailors – men and women – began reporting aboard a new guided missile destroyer bearing Hopper’s name. USS Hopper (DDG 70), “Amazing Grace,” was commissioned Sept. 6, 1997. The Arleigh Burke class destroyer, homeported at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Hi, is equipped with state-of-the-art computerized systems.

Author Williams achieves both a history of the development of computing in the Navy and a look at the professional milestones of this dynamic woman whose voice continues to echo decades later.

On July 30, 2009 USS Hopper (DDG 70) launches a standard missile (SM) 3 Blk IA, successfully intercepting a sub-scale short range ballistic missile, launched from the Kauai Test Facility, Pacific Missile Range Facility (PMRF), Barking Sands, Kauai. (U.S. Navy photo)

Taking Nothing for Granted

2011-07-24T15:45:00.003-10:00

by Bill Doughty

Grace Hopper -- a woman who literally gave voice to the computer revolution and the information age -- retired in 1986 as a Navy rear admiral at the age of 79.

Reading about Hopper’s struggles and achievements is rewarding in two ways...

It can be easy to take our laptops, iPads and smart phones for granted. From paper tape feeds to floppy disks to wireless digital computing, we’ve come so far in our ability to connect and communicate.
As recently as during Hopper’s lifetime -- less than one hundred years ago -- women achieved the right to vote in 1920. Today, free nations cannot take the rights of women for granted.

My next blogpost will focus more on “Amazing Grace,” a visionary thinker who contributed so much to the information age and who, thanks to her family’s influence, valued reading, math and science.

According to Kathleen Broome Williams, author of Grace Hopper, Admiral of the Cyber Sea, “Surrounded by books in their home... Grace was raised in a family where intellectual curiosity was encouraged and acumen rewarded."

More next week...

Thirty-five years ago, August 1976, Capt. Grace M. Hopper, USNR, Head of the Navy Programming Language Section of the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations (OP 911F), works at her Desk. Official U.S. Navy photograph, by PH2 David C. MacLean.

Sun-Tzu and the Art of Football

2011-07-17T11:30:00.010-10:00

by Bill Doughty

Imagine how unthinkable it would be in World War II... that someday the United States would be playing a World Cup soccer final against former enemy Japan... in a stadium in Germany!

It’s proof that the world can coexist when the values of freedom, democracy and a commitment to peace are fully embraced.

Such a peaceful ideal was completely unthinkable to most people in China more than 2,200 years ago during the Warring States period. That’s when “Master Sun,” Sun-Tzu, wrote his classic, The Art of Warfare, one of the key works on the Navy Professional Reading Program reading list. Sun-Tzu’s insights about discipline, organization, planning and contingencies apply equally to military, business and sports, including football/soccer. His tactics about terrain, troop deployment and the art of surprise still apply in modern military strategic thinking.

Ed Halter’s intriguingly titled From Sun-Tzu to Xbox discusses the art of war from an electronic video game perspective, showing how strategy and tactics literally play out.

To read Sun-Tzu’s The Art of Warfare is to attempt to think from a different non-Western perspective -- not only Chinese, but also classical Chinese. It’s best if the reader tries to understand the concept of Yin-Yang balance and harmony, a world view less linear and more contextual. It requires open-minded reasoning and empathy.

New discoveries in the 1970s of texts written on bamboo slats removed from tombs expanded Sun-Tzu’s known works.

Various translations of The Art of Warfare are available, so the first question my librarian asked when I told her what I was reading was, “which translation?” I found Roger T. Ames's work, which included a lot of history and commentary, to be profound and thought-provoking.

Here’s what Sun-Tzu says about leadership:

The traits of the true commander are: wisdom, humanity, respect, integrity, courage, and dignity. With his wisdom he humbles the enemy, with his humanity he draws the people near to him, with his respect he recruits men of talent and character, with his integrity he makes good on his rewards, with his courage he raises the morale of his men, and with his dignity he unifies his command.

These ideals for coaches or world leaders are alive and well, especially in an evolved modern world.

Even though a world at peace may have seemed impossible in early human history -- in China, Greece and Rome -- and even 70 years ago in Europe and the Pacific, not to mention in the Middle East today, the study of world philosophy leads one to contemplate a different way.

Can we have collaboration and competition over confrontation and destruction?

FIFA and the World Cup -- Japan vs. United States in Germany, and winning -- shows us these insights: people can make a difference once they are committed to building partnerships as the tao, pathway, toward peace.

Individuals, from team captains to goalies, from parents to politicians, can make a difference for themselves, their teams, their country and the world. It’s proof of the strength of those American, human values of freedom, democracy and a commitment to peace.

Everyone wins when that’s the goal.

Japan's 2011 World Cup winning women's team.

Freedom & Responsibility - United States Constitution

2011-07-04T10:11:00.015-10:00

by Bill Doughty

What do the Casey Anthony trial, the right to vote, assault weapon restrictions, abortion debate, and the debt ceiling crisis have in common? For one thing, the U.S. Constitution...

The Constitution, Bill of Rights and the other amendments outline the rule of law, voting rights and federal-state balance of power, to “establish Justice, ensure Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Prosterity.”
People on both sides of political divides figuratively wrap themselves in the parchment of our founders.

One side may feel the words are immutable, that the Constitution is a sacred “covenant,” to quote some; the other side may feel the ideas are more important than strict interpretations of the words, a “compass,” a “blueprint,” a “living document,” according to others.

Both sides struggle with the meaning of the words, then and now.

Some Supreme Court justices believe in interpreting and obeying the words of the Constitution as perfect, fixed and unwavering; others see the document as imperfect and evolving, an attempt “in Order to form a more perfect Union...”

On Jan. 5, 2011 the U.S. Congress read the Constitution aloud on the floor of the House of Representatives but purposely did not include the original parts allowing and extending slavery or counting African Americans as only three-fifths of a person. The Constitution did not allow women the right to vote till 1920. The eighteenth amendment initiated prohibition in 1919, only to be repealed by the twenty-first amendment in 1933. Native Americans did not have the right to citizenship until the 1924.

With all its imperfections and course-corrections, the Constitution -- along with the Declaration of Independence we celebrate this July 4th, 2011 -- is viable and strong for We the People and an inspiration for all people around the world.

The United States Constitution is worth defending for the liberty, justice and peace it tries to guarantee people everywhere; it’s worth reading and understanding for the robust give-and-take debate it most certainly guarantees in our country.

A wise U.S. Marine sergeant major, my dad, told me you cannot have freedom without responsibility.

ANNAPOLIS, Md. (May 27, 2011) Chief of Naval Operations (CNO)
Adm. Gary Roughead administers the oath of office at the U.S. Naval
Academy Class of 2011 graduation and commissioning ceremony.
(U.S. Navy photo by Chief Mass Communication Specialist Tiffini Jones Vanderwyst)

Perhaps our greatest responsibility is to not only defend the Constitution but also read and appreciate how and why it was drafted. What was George Washington’s critical role? How did Alexander Hamilton and James Madison contribute?

The nation’s founders, especially Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, men who benefited from the Enlightenment, knew they were creating a work that would have to be amended. What they established for us was a sublime system for regulating government and balancing power, reaching compromise, and ensuring freedom with responsibility.

According to historian Eric Foner:

Americans have sometimes believed they enjoy the greatest freedom of all -- freedom from history. No people can escape being bound, to some extent, by their past. But if history teaches anything, it is that the definitions of freedom and of the community entitled to enjoy it are never fixed or final. We may not have it in our power, as Thomas Paine proclaimed in 1776, ‘to begin the world over again.’ But we can decide for ourselves what freedom is. No one can predict the ultimate fate of current understandings of freedom, or whether alternative traditions now in eclipse -- freedom as economic security, freedom as active participation in democratic governance, freedom as social justice for those long disadvantaged -- will be rediscovered and reconfigured to meet the challenges of the new century. All one can hope is that, in the future, the better angels of our nature (to borrow Lincoln’s words) will reclaim their place in the forever unfinished story of American freedom.

Our United States Constitution is one of the core documents recommended in the Navy Professional Reading Program and included in The Declaration of Independence and other Great Documents of American History. NPRP was introduced to the Navy aboard USS Constitution in Boston on Sept. 19, 2006.

BOSTON (June 3, 2011) USS Constitution greets the guided-missile frigate USS Carr (FFG 52).
(U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Kathryn E. Macdonald)

Use Your Head to Get Your Foot in the Door

2011-06-12T10:57:00.001-10:00

Many Sailors are having to learn a new vocabulary of PTS, ASVAB and ERB. Others are facing an upcoming retirement. Some are choosing to leave military service and go back to school or into a challenging job market. In the process of moving from military to civilian life, it can be helpful to have a book that helps make the transition easier. This week Lt. Theresa Donnelly returns to review such a book, with both practical advice and context -- answering what is at the heart of personal motivation.

Use Your Head to Get Your Foot in the Door - Job Search Secrets No One Else Will Tell You -- by Harvey Mackay

Review by Theresa Donnelly

With the military facing drastic personnel cutbacks, a book examining how to stay prepared for the next career chapter is a must-have for all separating and retiring service members.

On May 18, Department of Defense Sec. Robert Gates gave a press conference where he announced plans to reexamine military compensation. This initiative gives a clear indication that a comfortable military retirement is NOT a guaranteed outcome after twenty years of service. Around that same time, the Department of Defense announced that all services have consistently exceeded their recruiting numbers and the military is looking at many options to cut down on personnel costs.

This is why it is imperative to have a robust plan in place for your post-military transition.

Use Your Head to Get Your Foot in the Door provides excellent tips for everyone from recent college graduates to a seasoned professional looking at their next career move. In fact, author Harvey Mackay is so confident in the book’s outcomes he offers readers a refund of the book should they apply the principals listed and not reach their intended goals.

The book is a quick and easy-to-digest read. The short chapters contain many real-life examples of successful strategies for landing that dream job. Much of it resolves around one’s attitude towards the search, such as living as though you’re already in demand. During that time when you don’t have the job you want, Mackay suggests filling the void with volunteer passions, fitness and education. Bottom line: find projects that give you joy, even if you’re stuck in the wrong job, or diligently working on getting the next one.

He also spends quite a bit of time examining how to plan down days to include constructive pursuits, such as building a network of like-minded friends who share your goals and to fully research the field you desire.

Five years ago, I remember “interviewing” public affairs officers here in Hawaii when I was a Navy surface warfare officer so I could get an idea of what exactly a Navy public affairs officer does. I needed to understand their day-to-day duties, drawbacks of the career, and their advice for someone like me just getting started. I found this to be a very effective strategy for obtaining the position I’m in now.

As for your goals, Mackay advises that they be measurable, identifiable, documented, attainable and specific. These adjectives can help make your search clear and realistic. And, accepting setbacks must be part of the plan. I often think that there isn’t anything worth doing without its own set of issues or what I call “no”-fairies who will always come out and oppose your ideas. The trick is learning how to work around these obstacles and make your objectives better as a result of what you learn through the process.

Reading and education are key to future success.

Lastly, I want to touch upon the importance of networking. This is examined pretty thoroughly in the book, and it’s worth highlighting here. It is through these friends the majority of jobs will often come. Being a friend, mentor, teacher and resource to others (and doing so unconditionally) can provide you with the greatest, intrinsic satisfaction of all. Facebook, Linked-In, Meet-Up groups and Twitter are all free resources and can help you stay connected to others. Planning lunches and outings with friends just to socialize and not to work an angle can be enjoyable and productive. It may also lead you down a new and unexpected path.

What I liked most of all about this book is the focus was centered upon being passionate and sharing your time with others, not a power-hungry ploy to climb a corporate ladder. As someone who is not motivated by making a lot of money, it was refreshing to dive into the advice generated, which was geared toward finding ways to be fulfilled through a job, and not ways to be important, noticed or rich. This book is definitely a great tool to aid in that endeavor.

Theresa provided her first guest review for Navy Reads two years ago this month: Dee Dee Myers’s Why Women Should Rule the World.
What motivates you? How passionate and committed and focused are you? For help with these questions, turn to a classic in the Navy Professional Reading Program list: The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. -- Bill Doughty

Faith, Fear and Tom Hanks

2011-06-05T10:29:00.001-10:00

by Bill Doughty

Tom Hanks was a military dependent, a Navy family member whose dad served in the Pacific in World War II.

Tom Hanks has acted in some of the most memorable films of our time — Forrest Gump, Saving Private Ryan, Apollo 13, Sleepless in Seattle, The Green Mile and Charlie Wilson’s War. He produced From the Earth to the Moon, Stephen Ambrose’s Band of Brothers, David McCullough’s John Adams and the controversial, powerful The Pacific. And, he’s no doubt achieved immortality -- as the voice of Woody in the Toy Story trilogy.

Tom Hanks transcends genres.

He is a champion of history and reading, and he frequently encourages people to pick up a book. Reading — especially reading nonfiction — has nourished his intellectual curiosity and ability to put history in context.

Former Navy Captain NASA astronaut James "Jim" Arthur Lovell, Jr.,
makes a cameo appearance in Tom Hanks' Apollo 13.

Yale University invited Tom Hanks to speak to its 2011 graduating class recently where he said their imprint on history would be determined by how well they handle fear and inspire faith. Here’s what Yale Bulletin reported:

In the ceremony... (May 22), Hanks urged the soon-to-be graduates to begin their future by coming to the aid of the U.S. veterans of the Iraq and Afghan wars, whose "faith in themselves is shadowed by the fear of not knowing what is expected of them next," he said.

Hanks spoke about the positive and negative aspects of technology for the perpetually plugged-in and connected graduates. While Facebook and Twitter and other e-media ensure “boredom is vanquished” and certainly help us communicate, there’s a certain shallowness to the celebrity-driven culture that’s being created, he said.

Again, from the Yale Bulletin:

The continual instant access and instant communication, Hanks suggested, has also created a world where fear easily becomes contagious and divisive.

"Fear has become the commodity that sells as certainly as sex," Hanks told the seniors. "Fear is cheap, fear is easy, fear gets attention.... It's fast, it's gossip and it's just as glamorous, juicy and profitable. Fear twists facts into fictions that become indistinguishable from ignorance."

Tom Hanks on Navy’s John Paul Jones and faith and fear:

Hanks... told the seniors that he has a passion for history because of the lessons it teaches. He quoted American naval commander John Paul Jones: "If fear is cultivated, it will become stronger. If faith is cultivated, it will achieve mastery."

"Fear or faith — which will be our master?" Hanks asked the seniors.

"Throughout our nation's constant struggle to create a more perfect union, establish justice and ensure our domestic tranquility, we battle fear from outside our borders and within our own hearts every day of our history," Hanks commented. "Our nation came to be despite the fear of retribution from the king across the sea. America was made strong because people could live free from the fears that made up their daily lives in whatever land they called the ‘Old Country.' Our history books tell of conflicts taken up to free people from fear — those kept in slavery — in our own states, and to liberate whole nations under the rule of tyrants and theologies rooted in fear...

Tom Hanks on a commitment to Veterans and service:

"But we live in a world where too many of us are too ready to believe in things that do not exist," Hanks continued. "Conspiracies abound. Divisions are constructed and the differences between us are not celebrated for making us stronger but are calculated and programmed to set us against each other."

Tom Hanks at Yale: "Move forward, move ever forward."

Hanks told the seniors that they will make choices between fear and faith every day of their lives. He urged them to "take the fears [of U.S veterans] head on" for at least four years — the same amount of time they've been at Yale.

The soon-to-be graduates' new "career," Hanks said, is a permanent one: "To stand on the fulcrum between fear and faith — fear at your back, faith in front of you.

"Which way will you move? Move forward, move ever forward," he encouraged them, "and tweet out a picture of the results."

According to Douglas Brinkley, in an insightful profile last year in Time magazine, “Hanks has become American history's highest-profile professor, bringing a nuanced view of the past into the homes and lives of countless millions.

Brinkley reported that Hanks became intensely interested in military history after reading the two-volume, 1,882-page Library of America Reporting World War II: American Journalism (1938 to 1946).

Hanks read William Manchester and John Hersey. His Pacific is based on Eugene Sledge's With the Old Breed and Robert Leckie's Helmet for My Pillow. He was inspired by McCullough, Ambrose, Barbara Tuchman and Doris Kearns Goodwin. According to Brinkley, “Leon Uris's fact-anchored novels — Mila 18, Armageddon and Exodus — taught Hanks to feel history in a way no high school teacher ever did.”

According to Brinkley, author of The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America, “There's no such thing as a definitive history. But what was once a passing interest for Hanks has become an obsession. He's a man on a mission to make our back pages come alive, to keep overhauling the history we know and, in the process, get us to understand not just the past but the choices we make today.”

I heard the Tom Hanks Yale address on one of my favorite podcasts, Tom Ashbrook’s On Point, from WBUR Boston. Tom is also a big champion of books, authors and reading.

Truth, Consequences at Midway

2011-05-30T14:58:00.004-10:00

Review by Bill Doughty

Written by a former flight deck Sailor who was at the Battle of Midway -- as an 18-year-old aviation ordnanceman aboard USS Enterprise (CV 6) -- The Unknown Battle of Midway by Alvin Kernan is a loving tribute to “brave men and old shipmates.”

It’s a compelling look at some of the personalities, tactics, aircraft and lessons of the Battle of Midway, under Kernon’s subtitle: The Destruction of the American Torpedo Squadrons.

Historian-scholars Donald Kagan and Frederick Kagan endorse Princeton Professor Emeritus Kernan in a foreward to the book:

“His new book (2005, Yale University) is a model of scholarship of an unusual kind. The Unknown Battle of Midway is the clearest and most persuasive story of the Battle of Midway we have ever read or heard. It asks the right questions directly and answers them clearly, simply and convincingly, basing its conclusions on keen analysis of the primary sources and much new evidence rarely if ever used by other accounts.”

The book opens with the Imperial Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor of Dec. 7, 1941, at once a success -- destruction of the U.S. Navy battleships -- and a failure -- no aircraft carriers in port at the time, as expected.

Kernan gives a first-person account of what he saw from the deck of USS Enterprise in the aftermath of the attack.

When the Enterprise entered the harbor to refuel, late in the afternoon of December 8, we were flabbergasted by the devastation we saw as we proceeded to our dock, moving slowly around the harbor from east to west. One battleship, the Nevada, was lying athwart the narrow entrance channel, beached bow first, allowing barely enough room for the carrier to squeeze by and move past the great battle fleet lying in ruins at its anchorages alongside Ford Island. The water was covered with oil, fires were burning still, ships were resting on the bottom mud, superstructures had broken and fallen. Great gaps loomed where magazines had exploded, and smoke was roiling up everywhere. For sailors who had considered these massive ships invincible, it was a sight to be seen not not comprehended, and as we made our way to a dock on the west side of Ford Island, just beyond the old target battleship Utah, turned turtle, we seemed to be mourners at a spectacular funeral.

As the “battle line” was destroyed, a new more multi-dimensional era -- based on naval aviation -- was born. After Pearl Harbor, Kernan says, it became critical to ask, “where are the enemy aircraft carriers?” as what would become known as the centennial of naval aviation entered its fourth decade.

Pearl Harbor marked the end of an ancient mode of warfare -- of ironclads and broadsides on a vast watery plain. Kernan reminds us what the great American author Herman Melville said about those ancient sea battles in beautiful prose from 1854’s Israel Potter:

There is something in a naval engagement which radically distinguished it from one on the land. The ocean, at times, has what is called its sea and its trough of the sea; but it has neither rivers, woods, banks, towns, nor mountains. In mild weather, it is one hammered plain. Strategems, -- like those of disciplined armies, ambuscades -- like those of Indians, are impossible. All is clear, open, fluent. The very element which sustains the combatants, yields at the stroke of a feather. One wind and one tide operate upon all who here engage. This simplicity renders a battle between two men-of-war, with their huge white winds, more akin to the Miltonic contests of archangels than to the comparatively squalid tussles of earth.

In the new generation of warfare, almost unimaginable in Melville’s time, the Navy and nation embraced sea-based, forward operating, power projecting naval aviation.

The Battle of Midway, a turning point in the war in the Pacific, was won, according to Kernan, in spite of well-documented problems associated with defective torpedoes, insufficient training, lack of communication and poor alignment of tactics.

Lt. Cmdr. John C. Waldron

Where other authors -- Gordon W. Prange (Miracle at Midway), Samuel Eliot Morison (Vol. 4 of History of United States Naval Operations in World War II) and Jonathan Parshall and Anthony Tully (Shattered Sword) -- discuss the shortcomings associated with Cmdr. Stanhope C. Ring, commander of the Hornet Air Group at the Battle of Midway, Kernan provides an eviscerating portrayal. Decisions taken and routes flown (or not flown) contributed to the loss of 44 of 51 torpedo planes and their aviators.

Despite the losses and mistakes, the Battle of Midway was a great overall success thanks to Cmdr. Rochefort’s communication intelligence at Station Hypo; strong leadership by Admirals Nimitz, Fletcher and Spruance; round-the-clock efforts by Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard to repair USS Yorktown (CV 5); and the courage and sacrifice of heroes like Lt. Cmdr. John C. Waldron and Lt. Cmdr. Gus Widhelm.

Like Molly Kent’s USS Arizona’s Last Band, The Unknown Battle of Midway introduces us to key individuals and shows their real-life characters and quirks through personal description.

Like David McCullough’s 1776, Kernon paints the battle from all sides and brings history to life, spicing the narrative with literary references and contextual insights.

But Kernon adds the priceless perspective of a deckplate Sailor -- a member of the flight crew at the Battle of Midway. He was there.

Ganbare!

2011-05-15T10:37:00.002-10:00

Review by Bill Doughty

Juxtaposed: the glory earned by Hawaii’s famed 442nd Regimental Combat Team in WWII and the humiliation endured by some of Hawaii’s Japanese immigrants and Americans of Japanese Ancestry incarcerated during the war.

Along with other people of Japanese ancestry in the mainland and in Central and South America, immigrants and their families in Hawaii were literally caught up in the aftermath of the attack on Pearl Harbor of Dec. 7, 1941 and placed in internment camps in Hawaii and on the U.S. mainland.

The story of these prisoners is told by Patsy Sumie Saiki in Ganbare! An Example of Japanese Spirit, copyright 1982. “Ganbare,” a word used frequently in everyday conversation in Japanese, means “don’t give up,” “keep going,” “persevere,” “keep trying.”

Saiki interviewed dozens of Japanese American internees and several former military internment camp leaders, giving her book the feel of an oral history.

She shows examples of the unintended consequences of war and how quickly some people are ready to shed moral or ethical values in the name of assumed greater security. Saiki reveals how immigrants’ fishing boats were strafed and how even U.S. planes were shot down in friendly fire incidents in the foggy aftermath of the attack. She introduces us to the families torn apart when an Imperial Japanese military pilot was shot down and stranded on the island of Ni‘ihau.

Internee tents at Sand Island in December, 1941.

We learn about the stockades and camps at Kalaheo, Kauai and Haiku, Maui. We see how the prisoners lived and adapted on Sand Island, Oahu and at camps in Wisconsin, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Arkansas, Texas, New Mexico and other states.

Prisoners had creative ways of dealing with the humiliation of incarceration. When they had to use the latrine they would have to report to the guard and say “Prisoner.” Instead, the internees would purposely mispronounce the word and report as “Pissoner.” Such pranks have a familiar ring. It’s how POWs, like Gerald Coffee in Vietnam, dealt with similar situations.

The concept of “Ganbare!” -- endure and overcome -- is raised time and again as detainees faced family separation, loss of dignity and other hardships.

What also helped them the most? The Hawaiian concepts of “ohana” (family) and “aloha” (love and caring).

In her “oral histories,” Saiki reveals that what the prisoners most remembered the kindness, caring and sharing not only of their fellow inmates but also of the camp guards such as Sgt. Launcelot Moran, Lt. Col. Horace Ivan Rogers and Capt. Siegfried Spillner.

These characters show the strength of humanity and the importance of “home” despite national origin or religious affiliation.

One online dictionary shows the meaning of “ganbare” as “bear up!, hold out!, keep going!, Never say die!, Come on!, Hang in there!, Go for it!”... similar to the 442nd’s “Go for Broke!”

Ganbare! -- enduring, persevering, overcoming -- is reflected in the way Japan is dealing with the aftermath of the earthquake and tsunami of 2011. It’s also a lesson learned from 1941 to help people prevent conflict and not repeat the mistakes of war.

This week Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Gary Roughead served as keynote speaker at the 26th Annual Federal Asian Pacific American Council (FAPAC) National Leadership Training Conference, during Asian American Pacific Islander Month.

"We as public servants, all of us, with the trust of the American people must leverage our uniquely American advantages in diversity if we are to lead institutions poised to deliver greater peace and prosperities to the generations to come," Roughead said.

100 Years of U.S. Navy Air Power

2011-04-17T14:09:00.006-10:00

Review by Bill Doughty

“Where are our aircraft carriers?”

It’s a question the Commander in Chief asks when facing crises, according to Kennedy, Kissinger and Clinton -- and personally attested to by former President George Herbert Walker Bush in his forward to One Hundred Years of U.S. Navy Air Power, edited by Douglas V. Smith, of the Naval War College.

The ability to project power from the sea and the agility/flexibility of patrol planes, helicopters, jets and other Navy aircraft, past and present, is celebrated in this book, published to coincide with the Centennial of Naval Aviation.

With fifteen chapters, each written by a professor, historian or strategist, the book “tells a tale rife with courage and sacrifice, dangerous experimentation and awe-inspiring innovation, tenacity and dedication,” according to Bush, Sr.

Glenn Curtiss

The development of naval aviation is shown in the context of history by Dr. Stephen Stein, who teaches at the University of Memphis. Practical aviation started in 1783 with the first balloon flights. Ten years later, France’s Revolutionary Army used observation balloons, although Napoleon found little use for them in his war with Britain.
Civilians operated balloons for the Union Army in the American Civil War to sketch Confederate fortifications and artillery positions.

We see the fragile beginnings of carrier aviation with Eugene Ely’s flight in a Curtiss pusher airplane from USS Birmingham (CV-2) on Nov. 14, 1910.

When World War I began, the U.S. had less than one tenth the number of airplanes as Russia or Germany and about a fifth as many as Britain.

In Chapter 4, “Ships in the Sky,” Professor John E. Jackson writes about lighter-than-air craft and tells the story of Akron (ZRS-4), a Goodyear-Zeppelin fleet airship that demonstrated an unprecedented ability to gather intelligence. Akron was lost in 1933 in a violent storm, with a loss of 73 of the 76 crew, including Rear Adm. William A. Moffett.

The book introduces us to other proponents of naval aviation: Adm. Joseph Mason “Bull” Reeves, President (and former assistant secretary of the Navy) Franklin D. Roosevelt, Marine Corps 1st Lt. Alfred A. Cunningham, Coast Guard Cmdr. Frank Erickson, inventor Glenn Curtiss, Adm. Ernest J. King, Lt. John Towers, Lt. Cmdr. Henry C. Mustin and Capt. Mark Bristol and Adm. Charles Badger, along with the pantheon introduced in Revolt of the Admirals.

How did leaders deal with geographic challenges in the Pacific in WWII? What did Adm. Reeves do to organize carrier flight deck operations? How did fighters and patrol aircraft evolve and how was rotary wing aviation born? Why did naval aviation succeed in Korea, Vietnam and the Middle East? All good questions explored in One Hundred Years of U.S. Navy Air Power.

In Chapter 13, “Naval Aviation in the Korean and Vietnam Wars,” Professor Gary J. Ohls says that strong weapons and skilled personnel are not enough to prevail in war:

“The most important lesson of Korea and of the history of warfare in general is that wars are won by adequate strategy and not tactical or operational excellence alone. This seems to have been completely lost on America’s leaders of the 1960s.” Knowing how to attack may not be as important as knowing whether to attack, with an understanding of the full spectrum of capabilities.

Dr. Mike Pavelec, who teaches at the School of Advanced Air and Space Studies at Maxwell Air Force Base, shows in Chapter 14 how the Navy developed a perspective of Maritime Strategy when it introduced aircraft and submarines, giving the Navy a 3D aspect in integrated abilities above, below and on the surface of the oceans, helping advance a new naval and maritime strategy.

F-14 and F\A-18 aboard USS Enterprise (CVN-65)

In “Conclusions” Douglas V. Smith returns to the question asked by U.S. presidents and advisors: “Where are our aircraft carriers?”

Smith says it’s no accident that nearly half of American presidents since WWII -- six of 13 -- have served in uniform in the U.S. Navy: Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter and Bush (41).

“All came to their office aware of the options afforded by, and comfortable with, the strategic and operational applications of Navy -- and particularly carrier air wing -- aviation as an instrument of national power.”

Smith concludes, “In the centennial year of U.S. Navy air power it is hoped that all Americans pause to salute those patriots who have ‘carried America’s flag into battle in pursuit of a just cause.’ They have shaped America’s history and will continue to do so in the second century of U.S. Navy air power.”

Speaking of a good cause, recently the USS Ronald Reagan (CVN-76), along with various Navy patrol squadrons and helicopter squadrons and other assets, joined other U.S. military teams and the Japan Self-Defense Force to perform humanitarian relief missions in Operation Tomodachi, in the wake of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan.

This review only scratches the surface of what can be learned about the history, heroes and hardware in One Hundred Years of U.S. Navy Air Power, must reading for anyone interested in the topic. This book is published by the Naval Institute Press and is available at www.usni.org.

Memorial, Senate Resolution, SOS, Recovery: CoNA

2011-04-09T10:59:00.003-10:00

by Bill Doughty

A Marine aerial observer’s memorial service, a State Senate resolution, an ‘SOS’-in-the-sand rescue and the recovery of a downed helicopter in Kaneohe -- all in the past five days in my home state of Hawaii -- made the week especially poignant during this centennial year for naval aviation.

The memorial service for Cpl. Jonathan Faircloth of Marine Heavy Helicopter Squadron 363 was held April 7 at Marine Corps Base Hawaii, Kaneohe, Oahu. He lost his life when his CH-53D Sea Stallion helicopter went down on the night of March 29. Three other Marines were injured.

State Senator Will Espero paid tribute to Cpl. Faircloth in a speech on the Senate floor at the State Capitol April 5 during a resolution honoring the Centennial of Naval Aviation.

Last week we experienced the tragic loss of a Kaneohe-based Marine - Corporal Jonathan D. Faircloth, crewmember of the downed CH-53D helicopter. His memorial service will be held on April 7. His death reminds us of the dangers faced by our military service members who put their lives at risk every day on our behalf. Corporal Faircloth was part of the naval aviation family. We join with our Marine Corps and Navy family in mourning his loss.

Naval aviators - Navy and Marine Corps - have put themselves in harm's way for 100 years, training, testing, and - when called upon - fighting to defend freedom... They patrol the skies to defend us.

Naval aviators provide humanitarian relief. They provide support for Pacific Partnership to build peace and prevent war. They are saving lives in Japan...

We want to take this opportunity to recognize, in absentia, the naval aviators, including the "Skinny Dragons" of VP-4 who cannot be here today because they are participating in Operation Tomodachi, helping the people of Japan after the earthquake and tsunami there. This is our opportunity to recognize the courage, sacrifice and support of the families of naval aviators. Representing VP-4 is Mrs. Kathy Newlund, wife of Commanding Officer Navy Commander Steven Newlund... (Speech presented by Hawaii State Sen. Will Espero)

On the same day as Cpl. Faircloth’s memorial service, naval aviators on Kauai responded to an SOS scrawled in the sand at a remote beach off of Kalalau. The pilots and air crewmen from both sides of the Pacific and Hawaii were training at the Pacific Missile Range Facility at Barking Sands.

The aviators responded to a report of the SOS and saw a mirror flash. A Helicopter Antisubmarine Squadron Light HSL-37 SH-60B "Seahawk" helicopter, piloted and crewed by Helicopter Maritime Strike (HSM) Weapons School Pacific, of NAS North Island, Calif., and HSL-51, from Naval Air Facility Atsugi, Japan rescued two women, who were brought back to PMRF for emergency treatment and transported by ambulance to Kauai Veterans Memorial Hospital. The HSL-37 “Easy Riders” are located at Marine Corps Base Hawaii.

On the next day, April 8, back at Kaneohe, Navy divers from Mobile Diving and Salvage Unit One worked to complete the recovery of the downed CH-53D helicopter. The Navy divers worked hand-in-hand with Marines, the Coast Guard and various civilian agencies.

The recovery was successfully completed when the last two huge segments of the downed helicopter were lifted one at a time from a sandbar in Kaneohe Bay, brought safely back to the base and gently set down.

I’m almost finished reading One Hundred Years of U.S. Navy Air Power, edited by Douglas V. Smith, published in tribute to the Centennial of Naval Aviation, one hundred years of courage and commitment, achievement and progress. It will be the next Navy Reads review.

Special thanks to the previous guest review posted last month during Women’s History Month by Nancy Harrity, a friend and strategic thinker who helps us understand future communication now. Nancy headed up the public affairs for the Pacific Partnership humanitarian and civic assistance mission in 2009. (The 2011 mission just launched and can be followed at www.cpf.navy.mil).

Future Strategic Thinking... Lambs and Lions

2011-03-29T22:54:00.004-10:00

Guest reviews by Nancy Harrity

I remember my grade school teachers saying March roars in like a lion and goes out like a lamb about the weather. Watching the news at the beginning of this month, I truly hoped this saying would be true about world events, too. As this month comes to a close, it’s clear March will not go out like a lamb this year.

So many things happened around the world that no one saw coming – the peaceful fall of the Canadian, Egyptian, Syrian and Tunisian governments, popular uprisings in Bahrain, the United Emirates and others, a 9.1 earthquake followed by tsunami and a nuclear plant meltdown in Japan, and a coalition of allies coming together to protect the people of Libya from its leader.

The U.S. Government would find responding to the scale and number of these events to be taxing if they occurred over the course of a single year, much less over the span of six weeks or so.

How does the U.S. Government plan for the unexpected? Throw up its collective hands in defeat? Ask the old timers how they responded to similar situations? Punt? Attribute it all to 2012? These are all gut level responses. Fortunately, many government departments have teams who constantly reevaluate what we think we know, exercise creativity by thinking through the most likely and the most unlikely things to happen and build some scenarios of how to effectively respond. This process is known as scenario planning and the Department of Defense uses it extensively. While all major military exercises are designed to test the readiness of military units, they also are based on likely scenarios and help military units to prepare and test possible response before they are needed.

In Seven Deadly Scenarios: A Military Futurist Explores War in the 21st Century, Andrew F. Krepinevich, asks what is the worst that could happen, how would the U.S. respond and is it ready about seven scenarios he thinks could threaten the U.S. in the coming years. As I read this book, I could see the possibility of any of his seven scenarios coming true. Krepinevich explores the collapse of Pakistan, nuclear warheads ripping through San Antonio and Chicago, a global avian flu pandemic, Iran attacking Israel using Syria, Lebanon and Hezbollah as proxies, a Chinese blockade of Taiwan, a mass disruption of the global supply chain, and an Iraqi chaos following the withdrawal of U.S. troops. For all of his meticulously written scenarios, Krepinevich didn’t even begin to hint at the reality of the worst of what the world is facing today. Yet, that doesn’t mean his advice to American leadership isn’t valid.

Krepinevich sees the value in a stronger strategic planning process for the National Security Council. With this recommendation and all of his others that stem from it, Krepinevich hits the crux of the problem the U.S. finds itself in with all of these events – a lack of a coordinated, cohesive strategy to respond to events abroad equally.

Developing and consistently applying a coordinated, cohesive foreign policy strategy also is the theme of Leslie H. Gelb’s Power Rules: How Common Sense Can Rescue American Foreign Policy. Gelb, a longtime fixture in America’s foreign policy scene, examines what power is and is not, rules for exercising power, how policy enhances or detracts from a nation’s power and changes the U.S. Government can make to restore America’s footing on the world stage.

As anyone who as completed a course on military strategy or joint professional military education was taught, the military is but one part of a nation’s power, with diplomacy, intelligence and economics being the other components of the DIME. Gelb takes this paradigm a few steps further, explaining how strategy and power are intertwined with the ability to set the world stage and the strength of intelligence,
U.S. domestic policies, military and the economy all playing a role.

With the U.S. supporting a no-fly zone in Libya, yet not supporting the rebellions in Tunisia, Egypt, Syria, United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, many Americans are trying to figure out where the commonsense and consistency is in U.S. foreign policy strategy today. They looked for it in President Obama’s March 28th address to the nation, where he provided a glimmer:

“There will be times, though, when our safety is not directly threatened, but our interests and our values are. Sometimes, the course of history poses challenges that threaten our common humanity and our common security -– responding to natural disasters, for example; or preventing genocide and keeping the peace; ensuring regional security, and maintaining the flow of commerce. These may not be America’s problems alone, but they are important to us. They’re problems worth solving. And in these circumstances, we know that the United States, as the world’s most powerful nation, will often be called upon to help.”

Let us all hope the government can build on this foundation and that April showers do bring the May flowers our grade school teachers promised – the U.S. military, the U.S. Government and the world could use the break.

Editor’s Note: Nancy Harrity is currently enjoying a career sabbatical after 20 years of naval service.

'Wired For War' Author Peter Singer to Kick Off Winter Lecture Series at ONR

2011-03-02T12:44:00.000-10:00

By Geoff S. Fein, Office of Naval Research

Peter W. Singer, author of Wired For War

ARLINGTON, Va. (NNS) -- The Office of Naval Research (ONR) announced that Dr. Peter Warren Singer, author, senior fellow and director of the 21st Century Defense Initiative at the Brookings Institution, will speak on the science fiction and science reality of war in the 21st century, from 2 to 3:30 p.m. March 8 at ONR.

The event kicks off ONR's Directorate of Innovation Winter 2010-2011 Distinguished Lecture Series.

Singer, author of the 2009 best-seller "Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century," is considered one of the world's leading experts on changes in 21st-century warfare. He was named by the president to the Joint Forces Command's Transformation Advisory Group. Besides having written for a variety of publications and journals, Singer has also penned books on children at war and the privatization of war.

"Singer highlights the challenge ahead for the military: the technologists are advancing the state of the art at an ever-increasing pace, yet the doctrine and policies for use are lagging," said ONR's Director of Innovation Dr. Lawrence Schuette. "Lectures, such as Peter Singer's, are critical to the discussion, as it will bring a mix of technologists, operators and policy-makers together."

Questions about the event should be directed to Melody Cook at melody.cook.ctr@navy.mil or (703) 696-2924.

The Crisis of Islam

2011-02-05T11:29:00.003-10:00

Review by Bill Doughty

Osama bin Laden is violently against the separation of church and state, which he sees as America’s greatest sin.

Author Bernard Lewis

That’s one revelation from Bernard Lewis in his eye-opening The Crisis of Islam - Holy War and Unholy Terror. Lewis gets to the core of understanding fundamentalist extremism.

For bin Laden and his followers, Islam is not just a private religious belief but also a cultural identity.

Not just another way of life, fundamentalist Islam is the only allowable way of life, say the extremists.

“The literal divinity and inerrancy of the Qur’an (Koran) is a basic dogma of Islam, and although some may doubt it, none challenge it,” writes Lewis, Princeton University Professor of Near Eastern Studies Emeritus.

Explaining fundamentalism in the Muslim world, Lewis says, “Most Muslims are not fundamentalists, and most fundamentalists are not terrorists, but most present-day terrorists are Muslims and proudly identify themselves as such.”

He recommends, “In devising means to fight the terrorists, it would surely be useful to understand the forces that drive them.”

At the Heart of Intolerance

Lewis’s book, on the Navy’s Professional Reading Program list, is a springboard to learn more about the history of the Middle East and what caused the intense feelings of persecution, anger, hate and violence.

What was the impact of Western sea-based discovery and commerce five centuries ago? How did the loss of the Ottoman empire affect the psyche of believers? Why did most followers of Muhammad turn their backs on the enlightenment and all it represents in freedom, tolerance, scientific logic, and human rights for both men and women?

The terror-inflaming strain of Islam behind bin Laden, Wahhabism, encourages secular book burning, says Lewis. “The burning of books was often accompanied by the summary execution of those who wrote, copied or taught them.”

Author Ayaan Hirsi Ali

One author whom Islamist fundamentalists abhor is Somali expatriate Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Ali’s Infidel, her personal story of confrontation with fundamentalism and journey to freedom, is a good companion piece to Crisis of Islam. For Ali, the crisis of Islam is tyranny over freedom.

She writes, “By declaring our prophet infallible and not permitting ourselves to question him, we Muslims had set up a static tyranny. The Prophet Muhammad attempted to legislate every aspect of life. By adhering to his rules of what is permitted and what is forbidden, we Muslims suppressed the freedom to think for ourselves and to act as we chose. We froze the moral outlook of billions of people into the mindset of the Arab desert in the seventh century. We were not just servants of Allah, we were slaves.”

In the desert in 632 CE, Muhammad supposedly told followers in his farewell address, “I was ordered to fight all men until they say, ‘There is no god by Allah.’” It’s a quote restated by bin Laden to justify his vision and actions in attacks against embassies, the USS Cole, and the World Trade Center and Pentagon on 9/11.

‘On Vacation from History’

Lewis shows that it’s no coincidence that the most tolerant, least fundamentalist cultures are those with the highest education levels.

As Lewis points out, Muslim countries rank low in national performance indicators, including GDP, industrial output, life expectancy, number of phones and computers per 100 people, and -- especially -- the number of books sold. Lewis says of the top 27 countries in the human development index, from the U.S. (#1) to Vietnam (#27) not a single nation is a Muslim country.

Can Islam as a religion be embraced by followers as a matter of faith and practice rather than an identity and loyalty transcending all others? That, according to Lewis, is the “crisis of Islam.”

Last Sunday on Meet the Press, another expert on the Middle East, author Thomas Friedman said he hopes for a peaceful transition in Egypt, but noted, “Egypt, and really most of the Arab world has been on a vacation from history for the last 50 years.”

Friedman, Ali and Lewis frame the issue in similar ways: Can Islamic groups move beyond medieval authoritarianism and cultural stagnation and embrace freedom and democracy?

According to Lewis, “If the fundamentalists are correct in their calculation and succeed in their war, then a darker future awaits the world, especially the part of it that embraces Islam.”

On the other hand, it’s clear that a new generation of young people is emerging in a globalized world connected by social media, peacefully demanding freedom and democracy in previously autocratic societies. Can they see past the past and find common human values as inalienable rights?

President Barak Obama spoke to the young people in the Middle East on June 4, 2009 at Cairo University in Egypt:

“I know there are many -- Muslim and non-Muslim -- who question whether we can forge this new beginning. Some are eager to stoke the flames of division, and to stand in the way of progress. Some suggest that it isn't worth the effort -- that we are fated to disagree, and civilizations are doomed to clash. Many more are simply skeptical that real change can occur. There's so much fear, so much mistrust that has built up over the years. But if we choose to be bound by the past, we will never move forward. And I want to particularly say this to young people of every faith, in every country -- you, more than anyone, have the ability to reimagine the world, to remake this world.

“All of us share this world for but a brief moment in time. The question is whether we spend that time focused on what pushes us apart, or whether we commit ourselves to an effort -- a sustained effort -- to find common ground, to focus on the future we seek for our children, and to respect the dignity of all human beings.

“It's easier to start wars than to end them. It's easier to blame others than to look inward. It's easier to see what is different about someone than to find the things we share. But we should choose the right path, not just the easy path. There's one rule that lies at the heart of every religion -- that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. This truth transcends nations and peoples -- a belief that isn't new; that isn't black or white or brown; that isn't Christian or Muslim or Jew. It's a belief that pulsed in the cradle of civilization, and that still beats in the hearts of billions around the world. It's a faith in other people, and it's what brought me here today.”

What about bin Laden’s faith in people and respect for law and government?

With contempt for the human, secular values of independence and free-thinking, bin Laden said in his Letter to America from 2002 that the worst of all of our sins is the separation of church and state: “You are the nation who, rather than ruling with the Shariah of Allah in its constitution and laws, choose(s) to invest your own laws as you will and devise your separate religion from your policies, contradicting the pure nature which affirms absolute authority to the Lord and your Creator.”

Lewis argues that the solution to defeating Islamic terrorism starts with understanding its historical roots and the narrow view of its purveyors. The next step is for good people with moderate, tolerant views -- people like Ayaan Hirsi Ali -- to step into the spotlight and condemn extremism.

As always, education is key to achieving progress and helping people discover they have freedom of choice.

A Common Thread

On the centennial of President Ronald Reagan’s birth tomorrow and in light of the continuing turmoil in the Middle East, it’s timely to remember Reagan’s tribute to late President of Egypt Anwar Sadat, assassinated by Islamist fundamentalists on Oct. 6, 1981. (Nobel Peace Prize recipient Sadat tried to make peace with Israel, brought together by President Jimmy Carter at Camp David in 1976.)

Presidents Sadat and Reagan in 1981

“President Sadat was a courageous man whose vision and wisdom brought nations and people together. In a world filled with hatred, he was a man of hope. In a world trapped in the animosities of the past, he was a man of foresight, a man who sought to improve a world tormented by malice and pettiness,” Reagan said in his tribute address.

Sadat was murdered by Islamic Jihad, a group associated with the Muslim Brotherhood and Al Gamaa al-Islamiyya, who accused Sadat of apostasy and condemned him for the peace treaty he’d signed with Israel.

That group was tied to al-Qaeda in the 1990s.

Among the Al Gamaa al-Islamiyya’s leaders: Ayman al-Zawahiri, founder of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, proponent of Wahhabism, and, as al-Qaeda’s Number 2, deputy to bin Laden.

Roots/Routes to Choose: ‘The Other Wes Moore’

2011-01-15T11:26:00.012-10:00

Review by Bill Doughty

Considered by many as one of the best U.S. nonfiction books of the past year, The Other Wes Moore is a story of choice. Two men share the same name and neighborhood, same options. One chooses education, service and freedom; the other falls into drugs, violence and life in prison.

What gave author Wes Moore an awareness of his freedom of choice?

At least one answer: books.

Moore’s enjoyment of reading and study was ignited in high school by a book about sports, a book that led to other inspiring works.

Posted here, with the permission of the publisher:

My mother, sensing my apathy toward reading, had bought me the Mitch Albom book Fab Five. The book is about the Michigan basketball team led by Chris Webber, Jalen Rose, and Juwan Howard, a team with five freshman starters who made it all the way to the national championship game. The Fab Five sported baggy shorts, bald heads, and a swagger I recognized from the streets of the Bronx, all reflective of the way the hip-hop generation was changing the face of sports, and college basketball in particular. I was riveted by that book. The characters jumped off the page, and I felt myself as engulfed in their destiny as I was in my own. I finished Fab Five in two days. The book itelf wasn’t what was important -- in retrospect, I see that it was a great read but hardly a work of great literature -- but my mother used it as a hook into a deeper lesson: that the written word isn’t necessarily a chore but can be a window into new worlds.

From there I leaped into every new book with fervor. My fresh love of reading brought me to the transformational writers who have worked their magic on generations of readers. I explored Spain with Paulo Coelho. I listened to jazz on the North Shore of Long Island with F. Scott Fitzgerald. I was reminded by Walt Whitman to think of the past, and I awaited “The Fire Next Time” with James Baldwin. But there was a more recent author and public figure whose work spoke to the core of a new set of issues I was struggling with: the Bronx’s own Colin Powell. His book, My American Journey, helped me harmonize my understanding of America’s history and my aspiration to serve in her uniform. In his autobiography he talked about going to the Woolworth’s in Columbus, Georgia, and being able to shop but not eat there. He talked about how black GIs during World War II had more freedoms when stationed in Germany than back in the country they fought for. But he embraced the progress this nation made and the military’s role in helping that change to come about. Colin Powel could have been justifiably angry, but he wasn’t. He was thankful. I read and reread one section in particular: “The Army was living the democratic ideal ahead of the rest of America. Beginning in the late fifties, less discrimination, a truer merit system, and leveler playing fields existed inside the gates of our military posts more than in any Southern city hall or Northern corporation. The Army, therefore, made it easier for me to love my country, with all its flaws, and to serve her with all my heart.”

The canon of black autobiography sensibly includes scores of books about resistance to the American system. For instance, reading The Autobiography of Malcolm X -- a book that begins and ends in the madness and pathology of Americca’s racial obsessions -- is a rite of passage for young black men. Malcolm never stopped pursuing truth and the right course, based on the best information he had at any given moment. His response to the world he confronted in the middle of the twentieth century was profound and deeply felt, but he didn’t speak to my experience as well as Colin Powell did. Powell, in his pragmatic way, wanted what I wanted: A fair shot. A place to develop himself. A code that would instill discipline, restrain passion, and order his steps. A way to change the world without first unleashing the whirlwind. In the chaos of the world I grew up in, those were as appealing to me as Malcolm’s cry for revolution was to his generation. I don’t claim that Powell had it all figured out: American history bedevils the most earnest attempts to make sense of it. And, of course, the problems of race that Malcolm confronted have not disappeared by any means. But Powell gave me another way to think about the American dilemma and, more than that, another way to think about my own life.

Excerpted from The Other Wes Moore by Wes Moore Copyright C 2010 by Wes Moore. Excerpted by permission of Random House Group, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

Wes Moore chose service in the U.S. military, became an Army paratrooper and served in combat in Afghanistan. He became a Rhodes Scholar like former President Bill Clinton and worked as a special assistant to Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice as a White House Fellow. The other Wes Moore chose a different path toward hate, murder of a police officer in Philadelphia and a sentence of life in prison without possibility of parole.
Tavis Smiley endorses Moore’s book with a “call to action” following the epilogue: “My call to action, our call to action, is this: read these words but, more important, absorb their meanings and create your own plan to act and leave a legacy.”

Smiley spotlights the central message of The Other Wes Moore: “The choices we make about the lives we live determine the kinds of legacies we leave.”

This weekend Americans contemplate the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and his commitment toward nonviolence, civility and justice for all. Here’s what King said in his Letter from Birmingham Jail in 1963:

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. -- MLK

As the world becomes even more connected and humanity more threatened with senseless acts of violence (as in Tucson last weekend), King’s observation provides inspiration and hope.
So does The Other Wes Moore.

CONA and 'Revolt of the Admirals'

2011-01-08T15:44:00.014-10:00

Review by Bill Doughty

The Centennial of Naval Aviation (CONA) celebration throughout 2011 might not have been possible without a series of events chronicled in Revolt of the Admirals -- the Fight for Naval Aviation, 1945-1950 by historian Jeffrey G. Barlow.

Barlow gives a well-documented, you-are-there look at the struggle to define “air power” at the end of WWII, showcasing fundamental questions in a turbulent period in history:

Should our nation rely only on strategic bombing and atomic weapons; or should we have an agile, balanced and arguably more moral approach to defense?

Should there be a “unification” of the services and loss of naval specialties; or should we protect executive civilian control of the military and a commitment to air-sea power?

Barlow shows the raw courage of leaders, now legends, like then-Capt. Arleigh Burke; Admirals Arthur Radford, Raymond Spruance and Thomas Kinkaid; former Marine Commandant Gen. Alexander Vandegrift; Fleet Admirals William Halsey, Ernest King and Chester Nimitz; and others.

Fleet Adm. Nimitz shared his view in his valedictory on “The Future Employment of Naval Forces,” delivered on Dec. 15, 1947 when he retired as Chief of Naval Operations:

“If we are to project our power against vital areas of an enemy across the ocean before beachheads on enemy territory are captured, it must be air-sea power.” -- Fleet Adm. Chester Nimitz, CNO, 1947

Nimitz knew from his experience in the Pacific that the Navy’s strength was its capability to fight not just on the ocean but under and over, as well.

At the start of WWII, aircraft carriers had moved from being the “eyes” to becoming known as the “fists of the fleet,” says Barlow, who shows how the Navy proved the capability of naval aviation in the 1940s.

“During the final years of the war, the carriers of the Fast Carrier Task Force piled up an enviable record of successes against Japanese land-based air power as its aircraft hammered away at enemy shore targets, including those in the Japanese home islands. From 1 September 1944 to 15 August 1945 alone U.S. Navy F6F and F4U fighters destroyed 2,948 Japanese fighters (1,882 of them first-line Zeke [Zero] or other advanced model aircraft) in combat at a cost of only 191 American planes.”

Naval aviation, though, was still a relatively fledgling force six decades ago, threatened by competing interests, agendas and budgets.

While some politicians and others favored only strategic bombing of civilian populations, top Navy leaders championed a more nuanced approach to warfare.

Speaking against a strategy of indiscriminate destruction targeting civilian populations, Commander in Chief, Pacific (CINCPAC) Adm. Arthur Radford testified in 1949 at the House Armed Services Committee’s Unification and Strategy Hearings under Chairman Carl Vinson (D-GA):

“The types of war we plan to fight must fit the kind of peace we want. We cannot look to the military victory alone, with no thought to the solution of the staggering problem that would be generated by the death and destruction of an atom blitz.” -- Adm. Arthur Radford, CINCPAC, 1949 [pictured at left with Pres. Truman in 1950]

Today, the Navy-Marine Corps team offers a wide array of air capabilities, contributing to various aspects of the nation’s Maritime Strategy: Forward Presence, Deterrence, Sea Control, Power Projection, Maritime Security, and Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Response.

Some other insights in Revolt of the Admirals:

President Truman’s role in saving the career of Arleigh Burke (with the help of his aide Rear Adm. Robert L. Dennison).
The need for strong, honest public relations.
The advantage of courage and honor over timidity and expediency.

A moral of this book: True loyalty and integrity means commitment to doing what’s right, no matter what.

Revolt of the Admirals is on the Navy’s Professional Reading Program’s supplemental list of recommended books under “management and strategic planning.” It’s a must-read for anyone interested in exploring the history of air-sea power during this Centennial of Naval Aviation.

Aviation Machinist's Mate Airman Kevin Vincent organizes a bookshelf inside the library aboard the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson (CVN 70) on Jan. 4, 2011. Carl Vinson and Carrier Air Wing (CVW) 17 are on a deployment in the Pacific to the U.S. 7th Fleet area of responsibility. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Travis K. Mendoza/Released)

Honor, Courage and Culturnomics?

2010-12-26T16:20:00.005-10:00

By Bill Doughty

Imagine you could analyze all the words in all the books ever published. Google and a team of scientists and mathematicians are on their way. The team analyzed nearly 5.2 million books -- 4 percent of all books ever printed. They published their study in Science this month.

The concept is called Culturnomics, and the tool to access the database is available to readers everywhere in the form of the Google Ngram Viewer. Plug in a word or words or phrase and start the word genome fun.

What insights are revealed by evaluating 500 billion words?

You discover 500,000 English words previously missed by all dictionaries.
You can analyze the rise (and fall) of famous people, ideologies and cultural memes.
You can study trends in technology, history and grammar.

I entered the words of the Navy Core Values, “Honor, Courage, Commitment” and found some interesting trends in the English language from 1800-2008. The word “courage” peaked in usage in the early 1850s. Both words have been on a fairly steady decline ever since, but began to rise again in popularity within the past 30 years.

“Commitment” was much less used till WWII, when it began a steady climb. All three words intersected in 1970. Since then, “commitment” has been more popular in published works than “honor” and “courage,” but all three seem to be on course to intersect again.

There are in-depth reports on the concept, looking at Culturnomics from all sides, on Discover blog posts by Ed Yong and Razib Khan.

A great discussion about Culturnomics and the N-gram tool was held recently on Tom Ashbrook’s show on WBUR Boston. Tom and his guests provide context, like the Discover thinkers, reveal insights and show potential risks, including over-generalization of data revealed.

Have fun typing in “Pacific Ocean, Atlantic Ocean.” Which do you think is almost always dominant over two centuries? Look at the commotion around 1812. Punch in “submarine, destroyer, carrier.” Peaks in all three occur in 1920 (starting in 1910) and 1941-1945. Try “admiral, sailor” or “Chief of Naval Operations” or “Maritime Strategy” or “naval aviation.” All interesting results.

I'll be back in 2011 with some more Navy Professional Reading Program and related reviews. Happy New Year!