Tin Can Sailor Ben Bradlee Remembered

by Bill Doughty

Lt. j.g. Bradlee, courtesy USNI

Long before he became the legendary executive editor of the Washington Post, Ben Bradlee was in his early twenties in World War II, where he served as a Command Information Center officer aboard USS Philip (DD 498) in the Pacific. He deployed from Pearl Harbor in 1942 through 1944, and was involved in landings in the Solomons and Marianas, then as an expert advisor/trainer in CIC sent aboard 19 destroyers in and around the Philippines, Okinawa and near mainland Japan.

Bradlee, who died last week at 93, said in his 1995 autobiography, "A Good Life," that his experience in "the Tin Can Navy" aboard USS Philip were "certainly the most important two years of my life, then and maybe now."

He admits to enjoying his experience in the war in a chapter titled "Navy":

"My regular non-battle job involved communications, the care and feeding of the machines which provided raw information to the ship, and of the men who operated and maintained those machines. This responsibility was more educating than Harvard, more exciting, more meaningful than anything I'd ever done. This is why I had such a wonderful time in the war. I just plain loved it. Loved the excitement, even if it was only getting from Point A to Point B; loved the camaraderie, even if the odd asshole reared his ugly head every so often. For years I was embarrassed to admit all this, given the horrors and sadness visited upon so many during the years I was thriving. But news of those horrors was so removed in time and distance. No newspapers, no radio even, except Tokyo Rose, and of course there were none of television's stimulating jolts. I found that I liked making decisions. I liked sizing up men and picking the ones who could best do the job. Most of all I liked the responsibility, the knowledge that people were counting on me, that I wouldn't let them down."

He describes life on a destroyer as "intimate, noisy, informal, boring, exciting, dangerous, arduous, crowded, scary, and boring again."

"Three hundred and thirty men jammed into a 2,100-ton ship shaped like a steel greyhound. Long (380 feet), or longer than a football field. Narrow (32 feet, about as wide as an 18-wheel truck is long). And fast (36 knots, or 40 miles an hour). In a heavy sea, a destroyer can easily role as much as 90 degrees – 45 degrees to either side. Handles were welded to bulkheads everywhere, to be grabbed during heavy rolls. And the decks bristled with a variety of offensive weapons. Five 5-inch guns, roughly equivalent to 105mm howitzers. Eight torpedoes, in two four-torpedo mounds amidships. A pair of four twin 40mm anti-aircraft guns, plus another eight 20mm AA guns. And a dozen depth charges in racks along either side of the stern."

In "A Good Life" Bradlee considers himself lucky for surviving polio after being temporarily paralyzed after an epidemic hit his high school. He writes about his good fortune to serve and survive in the Pacific during the war and of his later success in business and life.

The Navy empowered and educated him as a leader at a very young age: "Each day of my naval life I had been learning perhaps the most important lesson of my life: You can't do any better than surround yourself with the best people you can find, and then listen to them. And I had done that."

He describes working "under the overall command of the flashy, charismatic Admiral William Halsey, or the brilliant, self-effacing Admiral Raymond Spruance, the admirals who taught our generation the art of 'calculated risk.' (We all preferred Spruance)," Bradlee writes.

He recalls action in The Slot from Rabaul.

"We worried more about the Japanese torpedoes, fired from ships or submarines. Our torpedoes were nowhere near as good. Rabaul is the island that a young congressman, somehow a lieutenant commander in the Naval Reserve, flew over one night as an observer, and flew back to Washington immediately. Got himself a [Silver] Star for that single flight, as the world would learn later. His name was Lyndon Baines Johnson."

He interacted with heroic Australian and U.S. Marine forward area observers and spotters in CIC, often helping direct barrages of the ship's 5-inch guns. A constant threat were Japanese submarines and ships and, later in the war, Kamikaze attacks. 

Bradlee remembers reading books during the war like James Boswell's, "Life of (Samuel) Johnson," Philip Wylie's "A Generation of Vipers," David L. Cohn's "Love in America," and Gladys Schmitt's "The Gates of Aulis." He also read Time, Newsweek and The New Yorker magazines and other Reader's Digest-sized publications. 

And he referred to the Encyclopedia Britannica in the ship's library when he had to help the Captain explain to the crew what had happened after the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945.

"Without knowing a thing, we sensed that this event was going to rival December 7, 1941, in importance to all our immediate futures. Was this the first time I wrote in ignorance? Knowing way too little about my subject? Or the last? I wish."

"A Good LIfe" reads like an honest, fearless, open, self-effacing account of the amazing history Bradlee saw and communicated: Vietnam, Watergate, Cold War, violence, CIA and D.C. politics, and of course JFK, a fellow Navy veteran.

The Bradlees were neighbors, "only a few doors away," of Senator and Mrs. John F. Kennedy in Georgetown.

In 1963 Kennedy, Niven and Bradlee shoot skeet as a petty officer assists.

After Kennedy became President they remained friends, though their relationship was complicated, thanks to Bradlee's association with the "Fourth Estate." Bradlee recalls yachting, skeet shooting and swimming with JFK and actor David Niven at Camp David in May, 1963, six months before the president was assassinated in Dallas.

Bradlee shares his deep appreciation of JFK and reflects on the "awful grief" that gripped the nation and that Bradlee tried to express in his elegy/eulogy at the time.

This autobiography, subtitled "Newspapering and Other Adventures," takes us into the newsroom with Woodward and Bernstein, among others. We get Bradlee's perspective on journalism, family and friendship as well as leadership formed in naval service.

(Recommended read: an interview by Fred Schultz with Bradlee from 1995 recently reposted by U.S. Naval Institute from Naval History magazine. Bradlee goes into more detail about his perspective on Halsey and Spruance, Vietnam and the post-Watergate era, with new insights about JFK and PT-109, race relations, the women's equality movement and all-volunteer service, among other topics.)

Vietnam, Suicide and Choosing Life

Review by Bill Doughty

My preteen grandkids know who Thomas Edison is. Their grandkids will know, in the same way, about J. Craig Venter.

Venter is a Navy Vietnam Veteran who faced challenges in life, made mistakes in and out of uniform, turned his life around, and eventually became one of the foremost experts in genetics. He mapped the human genome, created synthetic life in this century and is now working on ways to support life on Mars.

I read a passage to my grandsons from a chapter in Venter's autobiography, "A Life Decoded - My Genome: My Life" called "University of Death." The boys were fascinated by his capture of a deadly poisonous snake while Venter swam in the warm waters off China Beach. Two species of poisonous snakes in the South China Sea, Venter says, "travel in large herds measuring miles long and up to a half-mile wide."

Venter, a former Navy Corpsman who spent a lot of his off time swimming in the sea, felt the snake bump into his leg and reached down to grab it, fortunately getting it near the head and not the flattened tail:

"I knew I could not let go. Its jaws were wide open, and it was trying to bite. Sea snakes are strong swimmers, and it was all I could do to hang on. Swimming with one arm while being tumbled by ten to twelve-foot waves and holding on to a writhing snake is not something I would recommend. Finally I was able to stand and started to run but was knocked down by a wave once more. Stumbling breathlessly toward the beach I saw some driftwood and used it to hit the snake on the head until it stopped moving. A friend took a photo of me holding my trophy, recording one of those crossroads in life that, with the wrong luck, could easily have led to death. I did not want to forget what had just happened. I took my knife, skinned my attacker, and back at the hospital, pinned it with hypodermic needles to a board to dry in the sun. I still have the snake skin hanging in my office as a reminder of the encounter."

Venter, who says he always felt a need to race – bicycles, boats, people – and take chances, describes his childhood and early adulthood in "A Life Decoded" through a deep understanding of the mind and effects of the Y chromosome, now that he's literally in touch with his genes.

I didn't read to the grandkids about his suicide attempt (which also involved the sea) or the time his girlfriend's dad held a gun to his head or some of his other risk-taking behaviors.

A turning point came from an English teacher in high school who introduced him to "The Catcher in the Rye" by J.D. Salinger, but Venter admits to being a lousy student overall. A major turning point came in the mid-60s when he was drafted.

"I was very conflicted. I was personally against the war but had a long family history of military service. One ancestor was a fifer and medic during the Revolutionary War. My great-great-great-grandfather served in the cavalry during the War of 1812. My great-grandfather was a sharpshooter in the Confederate Army during the Civil War. My grandfather was a private in World War I, serving in France, where he was badly wounded and had to crawl for miles to safety. And, of course, both my parents had been Marines."  (Venter's parents were in the Marine Corps in World War II, serving on "different shores of the Pacific." They met at Camp Pendleton, California.)

Venter, front row, fourth from left, on his high school swim team.

Venter chose the Navy rather than be drafted into the Army. He hoped to be named to the Navy Swim Team, but those hopes were dashed when President Johnson amped up American involvement in Vietnam and Venter got his orders.

As a skilled corpsman he faced war and devastation in Da Nang, caring for injured Marines, civilians, enemy soldiers and other casualties of the war in a Quonset hut intensive ward. He helped at an orphanage, and he provided triage during the TET offensive of 1968.

"Vietnam would teach me more than I ever wanted to know about the fragility of life," he writes. "Death is a powerful teacher." No doubt the snake skin reminds him of overcoming fear, facing death, choosing to live and dealing with snakes along the way.

Venter is lauded by Clinton in 2000.

In "A Life Decoded" Venter lays bare the science, politics, setbacks and glorious achievements in his life and the various human egos he encounters as a scientist. He tracks in detail his race to understand the building blocks of life and his pursuit of the human genome. But the narrative returns to the biggest turning point and moment of insight: Vietnam.

After Venter mapped the human genome, he was invited to the White House June 26, 2000 by President Bill Clinton. Clinton compared the human genome map to the Thomas Jefferson-commissioned map by the Lewis and Clark expedition that "forever expanded the frontiers of our continent and our imagination." Clinton called Venter's and others' work "the most important, most wondrous map ever produced by humankind."

"Decoded" includes Venter's remarks from that day, as well as the deep emotion he felt as his watershed discovery was explained to the world.

"... in Vietnam I learned firsthand how tenuous our hold on life can be. That experience inspired my interest in learning how the trillions of cells in our bodies interact to create and sustain life. When I witnessed firsthand that some men lived through devastating trauma to their bodies, while others died after giving up from seemingly small wounds, I realized that the human spirit was at least as important as our physiology. We're clearly much, much more than the sum total of each of us. Our physiology is based on complex and seemingly infinite interactions among all our genes and the environment, just as our civilization is based on all the interactions among all of us. One of the wonderful discoveries that my colleagues and I have made while decoding the DNA of over two dozen species, from viruses to bacteria to plants to insects, and now human beings, is that we're all connected to the commonality of the genetic code in evolution. When life is reduced to its very essence, we find that we have many genes in common with every species on Earth and that we're not so different from one another."

Venter transcended and redeemed himself after his near-death experiences. "Life was my gift," he writes. He chose to understand life at the most fundamental levels. Today, he chooses to make a profound difference to help others. "We're all connected." A good lesson for everyone's grandkids.

(This is part I of essentially a two-and-a-half-part series of posts related to the life and work of Dr. Venter, the Thomas Edison of our time.)

Navy Corpsman Transforms Science ... and Life

Review by Bill Doughty

J. Craig Venter is transforming our understanding of the world and life itself.

The man who mapped the human genome first became fixed on understanding life at the cellular level (and beyond) as a Navy Corpsman in Vietnam. In 2013's "Life at the Speed of Light: From the Double Helix to the Dawn of Digital Life," he writes:

"As a young corpsman in Vietnam, I had learned to my amazement that the difference between the animate and inanimate can be subtle: a tiny piece of tissue can distinguish a living, breathing person from a corpse; even with good medical care, survival could depend in part on the patient's positive thinking, on remaining upbeat and optimistic, proving a higher complexity can derive from combinations of living cells."

The book follows "A Life Decoded" and continues to explain how the field of genomics is "blending biology and engineering approaches" in gene-splicing, recombinant DNA and creation of synthetic life. Venter explains how and why he continues his "empowering extraordinary journey," including when he and his team announced the first functioning synthetic genome, May 20, 2010:

"We also discussed our larger vision – namely, that the knowledge gained in doing this work would one day undoubtedly lead to a positive outcome for society through the development of many important applications and products, including biofuels, pharmaceuticals, clean water, and food products. When we made the announcement, we had in fact already started working on ways to produce vaccines and create synthetic algae to turn carbon dioxide into fuel."

Venter says his team's work was built "on earlier work and ideas that had originated from a range of talented teams, stretching back over many decades."

In "Life at the Speed of Light," he carefully maps the history of his science, starting with a seemingly simple question posed by the father of quantum mechanics, Erwin Schrödinger: "What is Life?"

He explains the work of James Watson and Francis Crick, Motoo Kimura, Lucy Shapiro, Barbara McClintock, Robin Hook, Frederick Sanger, Arthur Kornberg and dozens of other scientists, all within the context of thinkers and philosophers like Aristotle, Francis Bacon, Descartes, Erasmus and Charles Darwin, Pasteur, Einstein and Isaac Asimov.

Venter reminds us of when the first DNA virus was sequenced and artificially copied and activated by Kornberg, recognized publicly in 1967 by President Lyndon B. Johnson, who said the work, "unlocked a fundamental secret of life ... It opens a wide door to new dimensions in fighting disease, in building much healthier lives for all human beings."

Venter missed the quote and the news at the time because he was serving in Da Nang, Vietnam. That was nearly 50 years ago.

After Vietnam, Venter "became convinced of the direction my future my life should take," as he writes in "A Life Decoded." He used the G.I. Bill to pursue his education and he has not looked back.

In fact, he has continued to look within – literally examining his own life. And he has looked forward into the future: considering metagenomics, biological teleportation and support for life on Mars.

He promises the future "will be as empowering as it is extraordinary." The dawn of digital life, he says, has the potential for unlocking evolution and creating "a new era of biological design," where vaccines can be sent anywhere in the world at the speed of light during a pandemic and where climate change and other manmade problems can be countered with help from artificial and enhanced intelligence.

(I became interested in reading more by and about Dr. Venter after reading "Abundance" by Diamandis and Kotler.)

Reason for Hope in 'Abundance'

Review by Bill Doughty

In the face of Islamic State (ISIL/ISIS), ebola, overpopulation, poverty and global climate change is there reason for optimism? Yes, according to the authors of "Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think."

The first thing to do is determine how far we've come – from the stone age to what Peter H. Diamandis and Steven Kotler call the new "Cooperation Age": from millions of years as hunter-gatherers and nomads – to thousands of years as farmers – to hundreds of years in the industrial age – to decades in the information age – to now, a new age of cooperation.

The book opens with "The Lesson of Aluminum" and the recounting of a story by Pliny the Elder (b. AD 23 – d. AD 79). Pliny was a naval and army commander in the Roman Empire who became a philosopher and author of "Naturalis Historia." He tells about a goldsmith who presented Emperor Tiberius with an unnaturally light and shiny plate that had been extracted from plain clay (bauxite) through a secret technique known only to himself and the gods:

"Tiberius, though, was a little concerned. The emperor was one of the great generals, a warmonger who conquered most of what is now Europe and amassed a fortune of gold and silver along the way. He was also a financial expert who knew the value of his treasure would seriously decline if people suddenly knew the value of his treasure would seriously decline if people suddenly had access to a shiny new metal rarer than gold. 'Therefore,' recounts Pliny, 'instead of giving the goldsmith the regard expected, he ordered him to be beheaded.'"

Of course, aluminum would be rediscovered and, through technology, would become plentiful and cheap, certainly nothing to lose one's head over. 

Times have changed, at least in most parts of the world.  Over time people have become, in general, less superstitious, more accepting of new technology and more willing to cooperate. Can we continue to evolve beyond our reptilian amygdala part of the brain and move away from cognitive biases of the mind?

The authors of "Abundance" think so, despite obvious challenges.

Diamandis and Kotler show in dozens of charts and through examples from Ray Kurzweil, Google and the U.S. Air Force that the rate of change in the world is moving exponentially.

Some examples of future technology or innovation changing the world: artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, 3D printers, genetic engineering, the Cloud and smartphones.

Venter is awarded the National Medal of Science by President Barack Obama

Energy: Craig Venter, the scientist who sequenced the human genome, created synthetic DNA and hopes to create a new kind of algae that can make fuel from carbon dioxide and water.  Venter served a tour of duty as a Navy Corpsman in Vietnam from 1967 to 1968 before beginning his formal education at the University of California at San Diego.

Water: Self-taught physicist and entrepreneur Dean Kamen developed a distiller capable of recycling its own energy. "The current version [of Slingshot] can purify 1,000 liters (250 gallons) of water a day using the same amount of energy it takes to run a hair dryer."

Communication and connectivity: Vint Cerf, a father of the internet, foresees a future of networks and sensors that will be a "central nervous system for the planet."

Food: Former futurist Sir Winston Churchill foresaw synthetically grown food:

"In 1931 Winston Churchill said, 'Fifty years hence, we shall escape the absurdity of growing a whole chicken in order to eat the breast or wing by growing these parts separately under a suitable medium.' As it turns out, it took a few extra decades for biotechnologists to deliver on Churchill's promise, but more and more, it looks like it was worth the wait. Cultured meat (or in-vitro meat, as some prefer) is meat grown from stem cells."

The U.S. military pioneered modern development of hydroponics at the end of World War II on Ascension Island in the South Atlantic, later on Iwo Jima and in Chofu, Japan in the western Pacific, and even in Iraq and Bahrain in the Middle East, where troops guarded the oil supply. The idea was to grow food locally regardless of the availability or viability of soil and not to have to rely on transportation logistics.

The future of agriculture lies in rediscovering hydroponics, refining aquaculture, using aeroponics and developing vertical farming, including extensively in cities.

Hackers, do-it-yourselfers, garage biologists and techno-philanthropists – people inspired by the counter-culture movement of the 60s – are sharing ideas for how to tackle problems. They are committed to a world of sustainment, cooperation and hope and away from consumption, destruction and greed.

As always the key to the future lies in education and freedom, which is "both an idea and access to ideas." The authors postulate that freedom and the need to make a difference is at the hierarchy of needs for people. Freedom to educate and be educated is tied to good health:

"Recent research into the relationship between health and education found that better-educated people live longer and healthier lives. they have fewer heart attacks and are less likely to become obese and develop diabetes. We also know that there's a direct correlation between a well-educated population and a stable, free society. The more well educated the population, the more durable its democracy. But these advances pale before what's possible if we start educating the women of tomorrow alongside the men."

Two-thirds of the 130 million children who are not in school are girls. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) concludes that educating these girls is "the key to health and nutrition; to overall improvements in the standard of living; to better agricultural and environmental practices; to higher gross national product; and to greater involvement and gender balance in decision making at all levels of society." 

A quality education empowers women and reduces fear, poverty and birth rates.

Last Friday, Malala Yousafzai, 17, became the youngest winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. Malala, a muslim from Pakistan, along with children's rights activist Kailash Satyarthi, a hindi from India, were awarded the prize.  According to Nobel.org: "The Nobel Peace Prize 2014 was awarded jointly to Kailash Satyarthi and Malala Yousafzai "for their struggle against the suppression of children and young people and for the right of all children to education."

"Abundance" presents the ideas of dozens of thinkers, inventors and philanthropists, including Arthur C. Clarke, Stewart Brand, Margaret Mead, Catherine Mohr, Martin Luther King Jr., Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Salman Khan (Khan Academy), Matt Ridley, Bill McKibben and Ray Kurzweil: "Kurzweil learned that human ideas were all powerful. DaVinci's ideas symbolized the power of invention to transcend human limitations. Hitler's ideas showed the power to destroy."

In WWII, the free world cooperated to defeat Imperial Japan and fascist Germany. Both nations are now globally connected democracies, educated and free. Of note, the nation's Maritime Strategy for the Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard is called "A Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Seapower."

The idea of cooperation growing in an interconnected world comes together in a chain equation: new technology creates specialization that increases cooperation that leads to more capability that generates more technology, and the cycle continues – an engine of change and a reason for hope and optimism in "Abundance."

Farragut 'Touched by Fire'

by Bill Doughty

Admiral David G. Farragut (art by Antonio Verceluz)

Strong Confederate forts. Batteries of guns. Torpedo mines. The iron-clad "ram" CSS Tennessee. All these and more faced the Union Navy led by Adm. David Glasgow Farragut in Mobile Bay in August 1864, 150 years ago this past summer.

The intrepid hero of New Orleans/Mississippi sailed his wooden ships within range of the forts, as described by Farragut contemporary First Lieutenant John Coddington Kinney:

"The central figure was the grand old admiral, his plans all completed, affable with all, evidently not thinking of failure s among the possibilities of the morrow, and filling every one with his enthusiasm. He was sixty-three years old, of medium height, stoutly built, with a finely proportioned head and smoothly shaven face, with an expression combining overflowing kindliness with iron will and invincible determination, and with eyes that in repose were full of sweetness and light, but, in emergency, could flash fire and fury."

Kinney's is one of dozens of first person accounts and memoirs originally published in 1881 by "The Century" magazine and now part of a terrific compilation from 2011, "Hearts Touched By Fire: The Best of Battles and Leaders of the Civil War," edited by Harold Holzer. The book is divided into five parts, each for a year from 1881 through 1885.

In the introduction to "1864," historian Joan Waugh sets the stage:

"Two Federal naval victories in 1864 mitigated the disappointment of the seemingly endless ground campaigns. On June 19 the war sloop USS Kearsarge defeated the famed Rebel raider CSS Alabama off the coast of France in the Battle of Cherbourg. Writing for Battles and Leaders, the Union ship's surgeon, John M. Browne, recounted the war of wits ..."The second Union naval success carried an even greater lift for Northers at a critical time. On August 5, Admiral David G. Farragut seized control of Mobile Bay in Alabama, bringing an end to Confederate shipbuilding in that city and disabling the port's ability to offer a friendly harbor for Southern ships avoiding the Union blockade ... Farragut's triumph closed the last remaining major Confederate port on the Gulf of Mexico and boosted Lincoln's prospects for a fall victory."

Navy Reads contributor Craig Symonds does a masterful introduction for "1861" helping foreshadow the "horrible slaughter and wholesale destruction that would follow" the early months of the war.

The story of how the first compilation came to be published by "The Century" in 1881 involves some intriguing negotiation with President U.S. Grant after the Civil War. The editors ensured we get an accurate portrayal told in real and vibrant prose, not just dry war plans and reports. Illustrations from the time – paintings and etchings from both the Union and Confederacy perspective – are included.

In "Farragut at Mobile Bay" Kinney describes the fire and smoke of battle where "every minute seemed a second." Admiral Farragut climbed the rigging to get better command and control. He damned the torpedoes, faced and ordered broadsides and took his wooden ships into close battle with the enemy. We can almost hear and feel the wooden Hulls scraping and crashing against the iron-clad Tennessee that had been "strengthened by an artificial prow."

Kinney writes of a brief lull in the action:

"The thunder of heavy artillery now ceased. The crews of the various vessels had begun to efface the marks of the terrible contest by washing the decks and clearing up the splinters. The cooks were preparing breakfast, the surgeons were busily engaged in making amputations and binding arteries, and under canvas, on the port side of each vessel, lay the ghastly line of dead waiting the sailor's burial. As if by mutual understanding, officers who were relieved from immediate duty gathered in the ward-rooms to ascertain who of their mates were missing, and the reaction from such a season of tense nerves and excitement was just setting in when the hurried call to quarters came and the word passed around, 'the ram is coming.'"

Kinney takes us back into the intense fighting as Farragut and his fleet focused on what was thought to be the strongest vessel afloat, "virtually invulnerable." 

"The Tennessee now became the target for the whole fleet, all the vessels of which were making toward her, pounding her with shot, and trying to run her down," he writes. Lashed to the rigging, Farragut directed the battle as his sailors and marines continued the attack, with side-by-side bombardments and fearless full-speed attacks and cannon barrages leading to the enemy's surrender and a Union victory.

"Hearts Touched by Fire" is a fascinating you-are-there set of memories from the soldiers, sailors, leaders and citizens affected by that pivotal war that ended slavery and kept the states united.

(See the Navy Reads post about the Adm. Farragut, the U.S. Navy's first Hispanic admiral, from 2011, "Damn the Torpedoes." Hispanic heritage is celebrated in the United States from Sept. 15 to Oct. 15. The Navy Birthday is Oct. 13, 1775.)