‘Lethal Tides,’ Lifesaving WAVES and Science

Review by Bill Doughty––

Two western Pacific storms –– one in 1274 CE and another seven years later –– saved Japan from conquest by Kublai Khan and the Mongol Fleet.  The invading wooden ships were crushed by typhoons as they neared the Japanese coast. Tens of thousands of Mongols were killed in the invasion attempts.

Raijin

Back then, most Japanese people believed that a god or gods, including Raijin, had intervened on their behalf and had ordained the storms.

Superstition reined in Asia, as it did throughout most of the world for centuries. God or gods were the reasons for the actions of nature and of humans.

More than six hundred years after the storms, Imperial Japan, became the invader.  Headed by a revered god-like emperor, Nippon’s military invaded its neighbors, including Korea, Mongolia, and Indochina. On December 7, 1941, Imperial Japan attacked U.S. territories, including Pearl Harbor and other bases on Oahu.

But…

The United States Navy, Marine Corps, and Army/Air Force, with help from Allies, used science instead of superstition to win the war in the Pacific in World War II. How they did it is at the heart of “Lethal Tides: Mary Sears and the Marine Scientists Who Helped Win World War II” by Catherine Musemeche (HarperCollins, 2022).

Early in the last century, women had to fight against prejudice, discrimination, and another type of superstition: the belief that if women served aboard ships –– even aboard scientific research vessels –– it could bring about storms, shipwreck, pirates, or other calamities.

“The prohibition of women sailing on oceanographic vessels grew out of ancient taboos that originated in myths and legends, like Homer’s Odyssey, where after the Trojan War, Odysseus sails home with his all-male crew. Although he encounters numerous female characters during his stops along the way, nary a one dares to set foot on his ships. Ships are where men exercise their manly skills like war mongering and fending off monsters while simultaneously battling storms and rogue waves. Allowing women on board would only distract the crew from their duties and incite the wrath of an angry sea, leading to certain misfortune. For hundreds of years sailors clung to these beliefs and preserved the all-male domain at sea even while perpetuating the striking paradox that a female body carved into the bow of a ship would bring good luck on a voyage.”

“But not every woman was willing to adhere to this nonsensical restriction,” Musemeche writes. She presents a brief but good history of women breaking barriers on behalf of science, for greater equality, and to have opportunities for careers, including in the nascent field of oceanography.

Mary Sears

Fortunately, the hero of this story, Mary Sears, achieved quiet greatness thanks to her initiative, expertise, and record of achievement. She was helped indirectly by pioneers and champions of equality, including Naval Officer Joy Bright Hancock, Representative Edith Nourse Rogers, and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. Male mentors gave her a chance to excel. But she had to pay her dues at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, with opportunity ultimately provided by Lt. Robert Revelle, an oceanographer from Scripps Institute in San Diego.

Other men, though, stuck with old-fashioned views of “a woman’s place.” Senator David I. Walsh, chairman of the Senate Naval Affairs Committee, for example, declared “that to permit women to become members of the armed forces would destroy their femininity and futures as ‘good mothers.’” As a result, the Navy was slow to fully accept help from women who wanted to serve but eventually turned toward actively recruiting women for non-combat roles.

Sears persisted in her work and earned a leadership position at the Hydrographic Office during World War II, where, with other WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service) and scientists, she provided mapping, analysis, and much-needed intelligence, especially helpful to submariners and amphibious assault operations. “Her colleagues realized Sears could be depended on to provide the answers the military needed to wage war in the oceans.”

Though her background was anchored in biology, she and her team provided key and essential information about tides, waves, surf zones, reefs, currents, underwater obstructions, and the composition of shorelines –– analyzing “a fusion of hazards” for the military.

Such information, formulated in Joint Army Navy Intelligence Studies (JANIS) reports, was found to be much needed after the Battle of Tarawa, which revealed flaws in planning. “The resulting lack of preparation manifested on the blood-stained beaches of Tarawa,” Musemeche writes.

Marines wade ashore at Tinian, July-August 1944. (NHHC)

The Oceanographic Unit team Sears led became indispensable to war planners in the Palaus (Peleliu), Philippines (Luzon), and Marianas (Tinian was “a model amphibious assault”). Sears and her mixed gender team –– especially stalwarts Fenner Chace, Dora Henry, Mary Grier, and Roger Revelle –– helped guide ship captains who navigated unknown offshore waters and warned "of every possible danger to the troops risking their lives to go ashore in hazardous waters.”

“As the Pacific Campaign unspooled, getting the troops to shore presented a range of problems, confirming what Sears had said about the Navy’s lack of preparation. They had gone to war knowing very little about the ocean, at least about the offshore challenges of launching amphibious landings. But there was no stopping the action so American forces could rehearse and get better. The march to Japan would not wait.

The Americans had not fought this way or at this pace before. In World War I troops had sailed across the Atlantic into welcoming harbors, docked at piers, and unloaded without enemy resistance. Those operations were easily achieved without oceanographic information. The Allies rarely had such advantages in World War II. Harbors, if they existed at all at island targets, were not welcoming. There were no piers at which to dock. There was nothing simple about dropping marines into boats and tractors bucking in the grasp of heaving waves and sending them over jagged coral reefs, under a barrage of machine-gun fire and artillery shells toward plunging waves. The problem was, there didn’t appear to be any other way to win the war in the Pacific.

The success of the Pacific Campaign mandated capturing one island after another in far-reaching locales, as the military worked its way toward Japan.”

Musemeche tells of a set-back in planning for the assault of Iwo Jima. She writes of the hardship of rationing on the homefront, which impact the ability to do research. And, she shows how the war impacted everyone as the loss of loved ones in the Pacific and in Europe touched the lives of colleagues and friends.

Her description of the action on Palau is heart-pounding and searing. Admiral William H. McRaven endorsed the book: “Magnificently researched, brilliantly written, Lethal Tides is immensely entertaining and reads like an action novel.” (The book is lovingly dedicated, by the way, to Musemeche’s father, QM3 Frank M. Musemeche, who served in WWII.)

USNS Mary Sears (T-AGS-65) at Yokosuka, Japan. (MC2 Travis Bailey)

While Iwo Jima was a setback thanks to the special challenge of the volcanic island’s geography, the Battle of Okinawa demonstrated the team’s success at innovative research and applied science.

Imperial Japan’s military refused to surrender, with many leaders and troops and even some civilians preferring to commit suicide.

The kamikaze pilots who crashed their planes into U.S. Navy ships, were named “divine winds” after the storms that superstition said were brought about by the gods to protect Japan from invasion. It took the science of the atom to finally bring forth a surrender after the President Truman authorized nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz credited Lt. Cmdr. Mary Sears and her team more than once for contributing to successes in the Pacific War.

In 1946, Nimitz issued a postwar commendation crediting her “technical knowledge and administrative skill.” Sears’s use of science, data, and analysis, provided exceptional assistance to warfighters.

USNS Mary Sears, the first oceanographic survey ship named for a woman, was christened in 2000 by Mary’s younger sister Leila, who herself served as a WAVE in the Navy’s code decryption department.

Packed with under-reported facts, compelling photos, and actual data reports, this is a wonderful book for anyone interested in appreciating the depth of women’s history, the power of science and technology, and the strength of diversity and inclusion. BZ!

Pathfinder-class oceanographic survey ship USNS Mary Sears (T-AGS 65) hosted U.S. Ambassador to Australia Caroline Kennedy during the ship’s scheduled visit to Sydney, Australia, Nov. 8, 2022. Ambassador Kennedy toured USNS Mary Sears and received a Naval Oceanography overview from Commander Jonathan Savage during her time aboard. The visit was Ambassador Kennedy’s first to an oceanographic survey vessel and her first visit to a U.S. Navy ship since taking office as U.S. Ambassador to Australia in July 2022. Kennedy is former U.S. Ambassador to Japan. She is the daughter of Navy hero President John F. Kennedy. (Photo by Lt. Cmdr. Bobby Dixon)

Putin is a Cartoon. Literally

Review by Bill Doughty––

Russia’s President Putin is a cartoon in the seriously insightful “Accidental Czar: The Life and Lies of Vladimir Putin” by Andrew S. Weiss and Brian “Box” Brown, First Second, 2022).

Like the best graphic novels and graphic nonfiction, much is communicated in few words. For example ––

• “For Russia, geography is destiny”: With no natural defenses including oceans, unlike the United States, “Russia safeguarded its security through conquest and territorial expansion.”
• Quoting Gene Sharp, author of “The Politics of Nonviolent Action”: “Dictators are never as strong as they tell you they are, and people are never as weak as they think they are.”
• Fomenting fear, conspiracies, and disinformation: “Russian leaders simply can’t accept that brave people sometimes shape history all on their own.”
• Again quoting Sharp: “The extreme repression comes when a dictatorship really is frightened and therefore they act ruthlessly.”
• Irony: In May 2007 in a Victory Day speech in Moscow, Putin said, “We have a duty to remember that the causes of any war lie above all in the mistakes and miscalculations of peacetime.”
• Putin compared the United States to Nazi Germany and said, “These new threats, just as under the Third Reich, show the same contempt for human life.” Irony meets hypocrisy (condemning “contempt for human life”) when considering what Putin is doing to the people of Ukraine.

Weiss’s insights are succinct but deep. Brown’s simple art is both evocative and informative.

This book follows the rise of Putin from childhood to KGB apparatchik in East Germany, to Communist Party hack, to opportunistic sycophant, to power-mad leader. Picturing Russian history, Weiss and Brown show how Putin put forth grandiose ideas for restoring the “glory” of the Russian Empire and Russian Orthodox Christianity. Nearly 40 years ago, in 1989, Russian territory covered “one-sixth of the earth’s landmass.”

Faith in Russia’s system of nepotism, cronyism, and corruption is baked into its history, where serfdom was a close equivalent to slavery. The czar and the State were held above the individual or rule of law.

Putin’s invasion of Georgia in 2008 and Crimea in 2014 were telling signs that he would commit further international crimes. “Territorial expansion is at the core of Russia’s national identity,” according to Weiss.

We learn about the roles of a whole host of characters who endorsed Putin: former Russian President Boris Yeltsin, former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, Alexandr Torshin and Maria Butina, retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, evangelist Franklin Graham, actor Steven Seagal, Republican representative Steve King, and Trump advisor Steve Bannon.

Putin v. McCain

On the other side, we see Putin’s nemeses, including former President Barack Obama, entertainers Pussy Riot, philanthropist George Soros, and late Senator John McCain, who was a “perennial nemesis of Putin.” Navy hero McCain was pro-Ukraine and pro-democracy; he saw Putin as an autocratic war criminal.

The late former Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright endorsed: “Accidental Czar is an absorbing and visually stunning account of Vladimir Putin’s rise and take-no-prisoners approach to wielding power on the world stage. Andrew S. Weiss and Brian Brown have made one of the most consequential stories of our time more accessible and engaging for readers of all backgrounds. I would urge anyone who wants to better understand the forces shaping modern Russia, and disrupting our world, to open up this extraordinary book.”

Fiona Hill offers this endorsement: “This biography of Vladimir Putin deftly combines entertainment and serious analysis. Renowned Russia scholar Andrew S. Weiss and artist Brian Brown have found the perfect means to introduce the complexities of Russian politics and Putin’s peculiarities to a new set of audiences. Everyone should have a copy of Accidental Czar on their bookshelf.” Hill is senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and co-author of "Mr. Putin: Operative in the Kremlin." (She also authored the brilliant “There Is Nothing for You Here: Finding Opportunity in the 21st Century.”)

“Accidental Czar” is also blurbed by other notable thinkers, including former ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul, former President Bush speechwriter David Frum, conservative historian Max Boot, and New Yorker staff writer Susan B. Glasser. Author Gary Shteyngart blurbs: “A witty and comprehensive takedown of the annoying Putin-is-a-genius myth.”

In fact, Weiss and Brown show how Putin the cartoon is actually a deranged, dangerous, and destructive war criminal.

‘Caste’ for Young Einsteins –– Awake or Woke

Review by Bill Doughty––

When Albert Einstein, a Jew, escaped persecution in Germany –– just a month before Adolf Hitler became chancellor –– he arrived on America’s shore and was shocked to see institutionalized prejudice, discrimination, and often outright abuse of African Americans.

Albert Einstein

After establishing himself as a professor at Princeton University, New Jersey, Einstein took a personal stance against bigotry: For example, when black opera singer Marian Anderson performed in his new hometown she was shunned at Princeton’s Nassau Inn because of the color of her skin, Einstein invited her to stay in his home. He frequently used his growing fame and prestige to speak out on behalf of equality, justice, and humanity.

Referring to the racism he witnessed, he said, “The more I feel an American, the more this situation pains me. I can escape the feelings of complicity in it only by speaking out.

“Here was one of the most brilliant men who ever lived,” Isabel Wilkerson writes, “refusing to see himself as superior to people he was being told were beneath him.”

Alexander Wilkerson

In “Caste: The Origins of our Discontents” adapted for young readers (Delacorte Press, 2022) Wilkerson weaves the conclusions of critical thinkers and philosophers into her discourse as she examines the arbitrary concept of race, the power of hate and hierarchy, and the proliferation of Confederate monuments across American during the civil rights movement.

Isabel Wilkerson is the proud daughter of a Tuskegee Airman in World War II. After the war her father worked as an engineer building bridges. 

She sees patriotism as defending the ideals in the Constitution and standing up to authoritarianism in whatever shade or color.

Last year Wilkerson spoke at the University of Richmond and received a standing ovation.

“My father would be so proud to see this moment,” Wilkerson said, responding to the ovation. 

Her father was born in nearby Petersburg, Virginia. “In everything that I do, I think about my ancestors. It was against the law for my ancestors to read and write, and here I stand with a Pulitzer Prize.”

In 'Caste,' she recounts Einstein’s gentle but powerful heroism: first to escape Fascism and Nazism in Germany and then to stand up to racism and casteism in his adopted new country.

Wilkerson writes:

“To imagine an end to caste in America, we need only look at the history of Germany. It is living proof that if a caste system –– the twelve-year reign of the Nazis –– can be created, it can be dismantled. We make a serious error when we fail to see the overlap between our country and others, the common vulnerability in human programming, what the political theorist Hannah Arendt called ‘the banality of evil.’

‘It’s all too easy to imagine that the Third Reich was a bizarre aberration,’ wrote the philosopher David Livingstone Smith, who has studied cultures of dehumanization. ‘It’s tempting to imagine that the Germans were (or are) a uniquely cruel and bloodthirsty people. But these diagnoses are dangerously wrong. What’s most disturbing about the Nazi phenomenon is not that the Nazis were madmen or monsters. It’s that they were ordinary human beings.’

It is also temping to vilify a single despot at the sight of injustice when, in fact, it is the actions, or more commonly inactions, of ordinary people that keep the mechanism of caste running, the people who shrug their shoulders at the latest police killing, the people who laugh off the coded put-downs of marginalized people shared at the dinner table and say nothing for fear of alienating an otherwise beloved uncle. The people who are willing to pay higher property taxes for their own children’s schools but who balk at taxes to educate the children society devalues. Or the people who sit in silence as a marginalized person, whether of color or a woman, is interrupted in a meeting, her ideas dismissed (though perhaps later adopted), for fear of losing caste, each of these keeping intact the whole system that holds everyone in its grip.

‘Caste is not a physical object like a wall of bricks or a line of barbed wire,’ the Dalit leader Bhimrao Ambedkar wrote. ‘Case is a notion; it is a state of mind.’

No one escapes its tentacles. No one escapes exposure to its message that one set of people is presumed to be inherently smarter, more capable, and more deserving than other groups deemed lower. This program has been installed into the subconscious of every one of us. And, high or low, without intervention or reprogramming, we act out the script we were handed.

And yet, somehow, there are the rare people, like Einstein, who seem immune to the toxins of caste in the air we breathe, who manage to transcend what most people are susceptible to. From the abolitionists who risked personal ruin to end slavery to the white civil rights workers who gave their lives to help end Jim Crow and the political leaders who outlawed it, these all-too-rare people are a testament to the human spirit, that humans can break free of the hierarchy’s hold on them.

These are people of personal courage and conviction, secure within themselves, willing to break convention, secure within themselves, not reliant on the approval of others for their sense of self, people of deep and abiding empathy and compassion. They are what many of us might wish to be but not nearly enough of us are. Perhaps, once awakened, more of us will be.”

Key word: “Awakened” –– not the misappropriated, misunderstood and maligned “woke.”

Her book is a warning to us in 2023 and 2024..

To paraphrase Sinclair Lewis, who also warned of dictatorships, it can happen here.

“Caste” is a must-read book for anyone interested in bridging the great divide caused by the Big Lie, Lost Cause, and forces of fear, hate, grievance, and resentment. The book is indispensable when considering the fate of military monuments and namesakes that honor the insurrectionist leaders of the Confederacy. (In the weeks ahead many military bases and sites will be renamed to stop honoring insurrectionist Confederates.)

Secretary of the Army Christine E. Wormuth speaks with soldiers of 25th Infantry Division at U.S. Army Garrison Hawaii, Jan. 24, 2023. (Sgt. Rachel Christensen)

According to Defense News, U.S. Army Secretary Christine Wormuth recently finished reading “Caste: The Origins of our Discontents" after hearing Gen. Peter Chiarelli endorse it.

We had the privilege of reviewing Wilkerson’s compelling book last year, and a new paperback version was published last month.

The version of Wilkerson’s book in this particular review is written for young people, at least at a high school reading level. It’s accessible without watering down any of the message, vocabulary, or concepts. Not surprisingly, “Caste” has reportedly been banned at some libraries, including in Texas.

“Caste” was a Book Club recommendation by Military Families magazine when it was first published. According to reviewer Kate Lewis:

“Like Wilkerson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning debut, ‘The Warmth Of Other Suns,’ ‘Caste’ has already won near-universal adoration from literary circles. ‘This might be the most important book I’ve ever chosen for my book club,' Oprah Winfrey said when naming the book to her bestseller-making list, and Wilkerson’s powerful nonfiction narrative lives up to the acclaim.”

In fact, echoing Oprah, “Caste” is one of the most important books we’ve featured over fourteen years on our Navy Reads blog. And this version for young people is absolutely excellent.

‘Wings’ of First Women Naval Aviators

Four of the first six women aviators (NHHC)

Review by Bill Doughty––

In celebrating the achievements of women in the Navy over the past fifty years we remember the struggles involved in reaching equality and justice. Career opportunities for women were not the same as for men just a generation ago.

One of the things that bugged the first women naval aviators, for example, was inequality of training opportunities. While their male contemporaries learned sea service skills such as navigation and operations, women were often restricted to classroom lectures on administration.

Women officer candidates in the unrestricted line had to wear skirts and heels, even when marching in the snow. Women’s restrooms were few and far between. Pregnancy was punished.

As for training, a retired captain remembers how, while her male shipmates were learning how to operate patrol boats, she and her female classmates had to listen to “a representative from Max Factor instruct us on the proper wearing of makeup.”

In the early 1970s women were not permitted to serve aboard ships. Women were also not allowed to serve as Navy pilots.

But thanks to brave women and men –– military and civilian –– equality was achieved beginning in the 70s and over the following decades.

Beverly Weintraub, a winner of the Pulitzer Prize, tells the story of the fight for equality in “Wings of Gold: The Story of the First Women Naval Aviators” (Lyons Press, 2021). The book centers on the challenges, ordeals, and achievements of naval aviation’s first women pilots: Barbara Ann Allen Rainey, Judith Ann Neuffer Bruner, Jane Skiles O’Dea, Joellen Drag Oslund, Rosemary Bryant Merims Conatser Mariner, and Ana Maria Scott. (All but one of the women were military brats –– daughters of service members or veterans).

The first women in naval aviation faced a calcified male-centric culture within the Navy that was often either patriarchal or predatory, or both.

But the predicate for women serving in the military, even as aviators, had been made half a generation earlier.

The first class of WAVES to graduate from Aviation Metalsmith School in Norman, Oklahoma, July 30, 1943. (NHHC)

In “Wings” Weintraub presents a brief history of WAFS, WASP, and WAVES. She offers lots of first-person testimonials and snippets of oral history. And she carefully recounts the milestones achieved in the 70s, 80s, and 90s, thanks to activist women, fearless politicians, and forward-thinking military leaders.

“Fortunately for the female aviators determined to make the navy their career, there were officers up the chain of command willing to become not only mentors, but friends,” Weintraub writes.

Adm. Elmo "Bud" Zumwalt

Among the strongest pillars who championed integration and equality of opportunity (both for people of color and for women) was CNO Elmo Zumwalt, who famously said, “Equal means exactly that. Equal.”

Zumwalt released his Z-gram #116 in August 1972: “Equal Rights and Opportunities for Women in the Navy.” His Z-gram #116 eventually became the blueprint for ensuring women could serve in aviation, aboard ship, and eventually in combat and aboard submarines. Zumwalt was supported by Secretary of the Navy John Warner and later by Senators William Cohen, John McCain, William Roth, and Ted Kennedy, as well as Representatives Beverly Byron and the Patricia Schroeder (a champion of women in the military who passed away last week).

Another key reformer and champion for women’s rights was the remarkable Adm. William P. Lawrence, considered by some a “radical feminist.” USS William P. Lawrence (DDG-110) is home-ported in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. The ship’s commanding officer is Cmdr. Kellie Smith.

USS William P. Lawrence (DDG-110) participates in RIMPAC 2022 last summer. (MC3 Aleksandr Freutel)

Incremental change might have been accepted at first, but as more and more women came into the military, there was an inevitable backlash (similar to “replacement theory”). “While there is strength in numbers, there is also potential peril … As their ranks started to increase, broader resistance began to mount.” Some military men and some of their spouses felt threatened and aggrieved and took their anger out on those who championed equality.

Former SECNAV Jim Webb

On the other side were leaders who slow-rolled change or favored the male-dominated status quo: CNOs Adm. James Holloway, Adm. Thomas Hayward, Adm. Carlisle Trost, and Adm. James Watkins. Outside of the Navy, right-wing conservative Christian Phyllis Schlafly, who helped defeat the Equal Rights Amendment, said that a woman’s place is in the home, not in the cockpit. Perhaps the worst harm to women’s equality was caused inadvertently by Secretary of the Navy Jim Webb, who had come out forcefully against women serving in combat, saying “women can’t fight.” (Webb later expressed regret for publishing his opinion.)

Weintraub shows how Webb’s position fortified discrimination and justified harassment of women in the minds of some men, even helping lead to the watershed event that became a profound catalyst for change within the Navy: the Tailhook Convention at the Las Vegas Hilton in 1991.

Courageous women –– feminists, activists, and military members seeking justice –– accelerated change. “It would take a series of lawsuits by military women to bring policies, if not attitudes, in synch with the times,” Weintraub writes.

Change came within the executive and legislative branches as well as the judiciary, with key rulings by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Judge John Sirica. Women themselves formed networks of support. And organizations such as DACOWITS and Women Military Aviators assisted in bringing about change.

"Wings" fills a void in the important history of the advancement of women in the Navy. One of the best features of this book is the inclusion of interviews and testimonials of the first women aviators as well as other women who pioneered progress. Weintraub does a great job of following the lives of the first women naval aviators, including into retirement.

“I will always miss the smell of jet fuel and salt air,” said Jane Skiles O’Dea.

Rosemary Mariner, who once wrote “Adm. Zumwalt changed my life,” said in an interview about women being allowed to serve on submarines, “We will have made progress when this is not a newsworthy event.”

The book opens and concludes with a historic flyover on February 2, 2019, in which the Navy executed the first all-women missing man formation flyover in navy history.

That flyover may remind readers that an all-women team from California performed a flyover at Super Bowl LVII last month to honor fifty years of women in the Navy.

The All-Women flyover team for Super Bowl LVII poses for a group photo at Luke Air Force Base, Feb. 10, 2023. (MC1 Bobby Bladock)

Happy Women’s History Month.