USS Arizona’s Last Band, Thanksgiving Day Reflection, & A Promise Fulfilled

Review by Bill Doughty

Seventy years ago today -- Nov. 21, 1940 -- Molly Williams and her family sat down to Thanksgiving dinner in Okmulgee, Oklahoma. Her brother, Clyde “Proke” Williams, would leave soon after, to duty as a member of the U.S. Navy Band Number 22. Within months, his band would be serving aboard the battleship USS Arizona.

Molly (Williams) Kent pays tribute to Clyde and all the other members of the band -- young men killed in Imperial Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941.

USS Arizona’s Last Band chronicles the history of the band through hundreds of interviews, letters, citations, news clippings and other sources. Kent’s comprehensive research and commitment to the 21 members of Band 22 document their short journey to immortality.

“As far as the United States Navy can ascertain, it was the only U.S. Navy band which was formed together, trained together, transferred together, reported aboard a ship together, fought together, and died together,” she writes.

Kent shows how relatively simple life was before WWII, before television, before air conditioning. Music and dancing were important pastimes, as was listening to radio programs like Jack Benny, The Shadow, Amos ‘n Andy and Fibber McGee and Molly, where Ms. Kent got her nickname.

“We lived in the middle of the Bible Belt,” she writes. “Our churches taught very strict morals. They also taught us bigotry and prejudice, and it would be many years before we overcame their teachings.”

The Class of 1940 had limited options: Dark clouds of war formed in Europe because of Hitler’s imperialism; “warfare” in Washington between Congress and President Roosevelt pointed toward a mandatory military draft; and a lack of jobs throughout the country was a legacy of the Depression.

In USS Arizona’s Last Band the author tries to answer the question on behalf of all the families who asked, “How long did they live, how did they die, and did they suffer?”

Ms. Kent acknowledges, “Caution must be used in writing about the Pearl Harbor attack, since so many books offer so many opposing opinions.”

Nearly half of the 2,403 people recorded killed on the island of Oahu, Hawaii on Dec. 7, 1941 were from the Arizona. Arizona lost 1,177 of her reported 1,511 men. (Of the 334 Arizona Sailors who survived, fewer than 20 remain alive today.)

USS Arizona Dance Band at Bloch Arena, Nov. 22, 1941. (Official Navy photo by Tai Sing Loo)

Introductions of each band member near the beginning of the book, listing hometowns, nicknames, instruments, and other personal insights, contrast starkly with obituaries at the end of the book.

In between, Kent takes us to the Navy’s music school in Washington, to the ammunition ship USS Lassen (AE-3), which carried the band to Panama and then to Pearl Harbor, Territory of Hawaii.

Kent describes the band’s role playing ceremonies, concerts, marches, dances and daily performances at colors. And, she tells us what life was like back on the homefront.

“Thanksgiving Day 1941 was difficult for the families of Arizona’s bandmembers. For most of us, it was our first Thanksgiving without our boys,” she writes.

This is part of the Thanksgiving Day Presidential Proclamation of 1941:

I, Franklin D. Roosevelt, President of the United States of America, do hereby designate and set aside Thursday, the twentieth day of November, 1941, as a day to be observed in giving thanks to the Heavenly Source of our earthly blessings.

Our beloved country is free and strong. Our moral and physical defenses against the forces of threatened aggression are mounting daily in magnitude and effectiveness.

In the interest of our own future, we are sending succor at increasing pace to those peoples abroad who are bravely defending their homes and their precious liberties against annihilation.

We have not lost our faith in the spiritual dignity of man, our proud belief in the right of all people to live out their lives in freedom and with equal treatment. The love of democracy still burns brightly in our hearts.

Through Clyde’s and the other musicians’ letters home, Ms. Kent shows a surprising view of Hawaii. She takes us into the weeks-long “Battle of Music” and describes how the USS Arizona Band competed. They would not be able to compete in the Dec. 20 finals.

Read Molly Kent’s loving but sometimes bitter tribute to the USS Arizona Band to learn the depth of confusion, grief, resentment and anger that she and others experienced nearly seven decades ago.

Some of the strongest resentment is toward the treachery of Imperial Japan in 1941. But, anger is also directed toward those who don’t try to sort truth from myth. There is no evidence, for example, despite some reports in recent decades that the band was asleep on the morning of the attack; rather, Ms. Kent shows how they were most likely at their battle stations.

One “gossipmonger” was the minister of the church in Okmulgee, who reportedly “arose in his pulpit on Sunday, December 14, just a week after the attack, and thundered that all our servicemen were taken by surprise by the Japanese because they were all lying around on the beach drunk, after carousing all night in Honolulu. Just how that minister could possibly know that, living as he did in Oklahoma and having never been to Hawaii, is one of the mysteries we often encountered.”

This is just one of the fascinating insights in Ms. Kent’s heartfelt accounting, written “in loving memory” for “the best band in the Pacific” and dedicated to her family and the families of Arizona’s musicians.

The depth of the loss, she shows, must be matched with a commitment to remembering the sacrifice and loss of so many brave young Americans, our reflection for this Thanksgiving Day and the weeks ahead.

On Dec. 5, 2010 at 4:30 p.m., the U.S. Pacific Fleet Band will perform U.S. Navy Band Number 22’s set, with 1941 period music. On Dec. 7, 2010 Pearl Harbor Day will be honored at the WWII Valor in the Pacific Monument’s Pearl Harbor Visitor Center. The theme is, “A Promise Fulfilled.”

------------------------------

I asked Ms. Kent what she and her brother Clyde read prior to 1941. She shared the following with Navy Reads:

I do not remember many specific books that we read - In our young years, we had several Mother Goose books, Black Beauty, Little Women, Little Men, etc. As we grew up, I always had my nose in a book, but Clyde was more active. We had long walks to and from school, practice on three musical instruments each, homework and dates.

Although we lived in a small town of about 17,000 people, we had excellent teachers who did not allow us to speak bad English or to misspell anything. They also gave us a love of great literature which has lasted all these years.

I remember our Speech teacher making me stand up and repeat In Flanders Fields over and over to show the other students how to phrase that poem. I have always thought that turned out to be very ironic.

Since I met all of the Arizona musicians in Washington as they were shipping out and danced with many of them, they have remained "my boys."

So, speaking for "my boys," I thank you very much for your interest in their book.

Sincerely,

Molly Kent

From the first chapter of In Flanders Fields and Other Poems (a 1919 collection of poems by John McCrae):

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

A rainbow over the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan (CVN 76) falls onto the USS Arizona Memorial at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam on July 2, 2010 at the beginning of Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) exercises. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class N. Brett Morton/Released)

Post-75th – The Legacy of Pearl Harbor

Review by Bill Doughty

Parts II and III: Strike! to Victory...

Pearl Harbor survivor Donald Stratton renders a salute as USS Halsey (DDG 97) performs a Pass-in-Review during the 75th Anniversary National Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day Commemoration at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Hawaii, Dec. 7, 2016. (U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Christopher Hubenthal)

USS Arizona Seaman 1st Class Don Stratton represented all Pearl Harbor survivors in returning the salute of guided-missile destroyer USS Halsey at the Navy's and National Park Service's Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day ceremony – the 75th anniversary commemoration held at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam last week.

Young Sailor Don Stratton

In "Pearl Harbor: From Infamy to Greatness" author Craig Nelson quotes Stratton, who remembers his injuries: "'Both my legs were burn pretty bad,' Stratton said, 'My legs, arms, face, my hair. Lost a couple of tattoos ... don't recommend that way to get rid of 'em...'"

Nelson provides short vignettes of dozens of warfighters impacted by Imperial Japan's attack on Oahu. He introduces readers to John Finn, Peter Tomich, Lee Soucy, Max Middlesworth, Sterling Cale and Dorie Miller, among others.

He reports, "A great many of America's servicemen at this moment were teenagers or young men, untried by life and untested by combat – of the forty thousand enlisted men on Oahu in 1941, the average age was nineteen." And, "All were bonded by that special tick of the heart that make a life of duty."

Young men who were coming of age were branded by what they saw and experienced. But their preferred lasting memories were the days before the attack, according to Nelson. Those memories include "battles of the bands," such as those involving the USS Arizona Band. Every member of the band was killed on Dec. 7, 1941.

Imperial General Quarters; the Emperor seen as a "living god."

"Many Pearl Harbor survivors would, for decades, hold vivid and precise memories not so much of December 7 as of December 6, since that was the last moment they were with so many, many friends who would be taken from them." But all would have images of the attack and the war branded in their minds for a lifetime.

Nelson does not hold back in his vivid description of the violence and gore of the war in the Pacific.

His timely and well-researched book offers drama of the lead-up to the war, of the actual attack, and in the aftermath, including conspiracy theories. His lead-up to the attack is covered in our previous post showing the various roads that led to war, both political – as the military controlled the civilian government and populace, actively promoting patriotism in the guise of and faith-based nationalism and xenophobia. 

Matsuoka Yosuke, Japan's foreign minister in 1940-41, pictured on the cover of Time magazine, at left, orchestrated the tripartite pact with Germany and Italy. Matsuoka advocated for war against Russia and then the United States in the name of the emperor.

Imperial Japan's attack originated from a racist and religious extremist belief in racial superiority, exemplified in a verse by poet and war advocate Takamura Kotaro that include these lines:

Nippon, the Land of the Gods
Ruled by a living God

The "reluctant admiral," Adm. Yamamoto Isoroku, famously warned of awakening a sleeping giant – the United States – and instilling a "terrible resolve." Nelson describes that resolve, starting with heroic recovery, salvage and restoration in Pearl Harbor:

"The miracle of muscle and engineering that restored the American fleet at Pearl Harbor would continue on a grand scale in the United States, where a secret group of heroes now began turning the tide of war. The most brilliant of generals, the most inspiring of admirals, and the greatest of battlefield troops would pale in significance to the thousands of American Rosie and Ronnie the Riveters who outproduced both the Axis and the other Allied powers combined, contributing nearly three hundred thousand tanks to Roosevelt's arsenal of democracy in 1943. Like all wars, the winners of World War II were the guys with the most ships, guns, and planes; in 1944, Joseph Stalin even proposed a toast to the productivity of the American assembly live."

Why did Japan's warmongers prevail over the diplomats in bringing about the infamous attack? The militarists took control of the government and the press, and the people in power made irrational assumptions and decisions, which the largely uninformed populace followed blindly.

"...in the end, Japanese emotion won out over rational action. Starting with the fundamental theory – that killing thousands of Americans in a surprise attack would trigger the United States to falter and surrender – and ending with the decision to wage war – during which dozens in Tokyo, from graduate students to finance, foreign, naval, and prime minister, told the army that fighting the United States was nonsensical – Japan's course to pearl Harbor was irrational in the extreme. Sense, in the end, did not carry the day."

Stars & Stripes page one featuring Adm. "Bull" Halsey. 

Nelson shows how "The Pearl Harbor attack set in motion a series of events that rippled across the Pacific," to include an early turning point for the United States Navy – the Battle of Midway.

For the American Military "Remember Pearl Harbor" was a rallying cry. President Franklin D. Roosevelt's description of "infamy" captured the depth of shock of an adversary's deception – attacking under the cover of diplomacy:

"If the holocaust defined evil for the Americans of WWII, Dec. 7 was the embodiment of malignant treachery," Nelson writes.

"Pearl Harbor: From Infamy to Greatness" concludes with a hopeful context – that the world would learn the lessons of history.

"With a rage ignited by Tokyo, a confidence born with Doolittle, and the great idealism of ensuring such a thing would never happen again, Pearl Harbor's greatest legacy is our nation's continuing struggle to make sure that there will never be a World War III. Whatever you think of the United States of America, its foreign policy, its military, and its actions overseas, the world at overall peace since 1943 has been an American goal and an American triumph. What could be a greater legacy to those who served and died in World War II, beginning at Pearl Harbor?"

Pearl Harbor survivor Don Stratton gives his perspective as to why world leaders should commit to lasting peace: "'I seen everything that went on there, and I tell you what. There was more courage and more heroics and more valor and more sacrifice that day than a human being ought to see in ten lifetimes."

Minutes before Hawaii-homeported USS Halsey saluted USS Arizona, Don Stratton and survivors at the main ceremony last Wednesday in Pearl Harbor, the ship and its crew saluted USS Utah on the other side of Ford Island. USS Utah survivor Gil Meyer returned the salute for all of his shipmates past and present.

161207-N-QE566-008 PEARL HARBOR (Dec. 07, 2016) (right) Retired Chief Petty Officer Gilbert Meyer, a USS Utah and Pearl Harbor survivor, and Capt. Jeffrey Rathbun, U.S. Pacific Fleet Command Deputy Director, Logistics, Engineering and Security Cooperation, return honors to USS Halsey (DDG 97) as the ship sailed past the USS Utah Memorial in Pearl Harbor as part of a pass in review and salute to USS Arizona and Pearl Harbor survivors Dec. 7.  (U.S. Navy Photo by Petty Officer 1st Class Corwin M. Colbert)

Trump’s Wars in His Year of Infamy

By Bill Doughty––

On Dec. 27, 2016, President Barack Obama and Japan’s then-Prime Minister Shinzo Abe placed wreaths at the USS Arizona Memorial and spoke at Pearl Harbor. Obama said, “This harbor is a sacred place.”

Several months later, Obama again made history when he went to Hiroshima and brought a message of healing and understanding with –– and for –– the people of Japan. During that trip, the 44th president visited Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni (photo above by Cpl. Nicole Zurbrugg).

While Obama was in Japan, Donald Trump, then a candidate for president, tweeted: “Does President ever discuss the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor while he's in Japan? Thousands of American lives lost. #MDW” (Twitter; 28 May 2016).

Trump and First Lady place wreath at USS Arizona Memorial Nov. 3, 2017. (PO2 James Mullen)

On a tour of the USS Arizona Memorial in 2017, Trump asked then-Chief of Staff John Kelly to explain the significance of the attack, showing he was “dangerously uninformed,” according to The Washington Post’s Philip Rucker and Carol Leonnig, authors of “A Very Stable Genius.”

Kelly is a former U.S. Marine four-star general and a Gold Star father. 

Kelly has been quoted recently as telling friends this about Trump: ”The depths of his dishonesty is just astounding to me. The dishonesty, the transactional nature of every relationship, though it's more pathetic than anything else. He is the most flawed person I have ever met in my life.” Kelly praised retired Army Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, who was belittled and persecuted by Trump, for telling the truth during Trump’s impeachment hearings. “Here right matters.”

Trump castigated Kelly in a White House press conference Sept. 4. “I know John Kelly, he was with me, didn’t do a good job, had no temperament. And ultimately he was petered out. He was exhausted. This man was totally exhausted. He wasn’t even able to function in the last number of months,” Trump said, adding he asked for Kelly’s resignation.

President Trump and retired Marine

Kelly is considered a likely source to a story reported in the Atlantic magazine; he has not denied the report that Trump called service members “suckers” and U.S. war dead “losers.” Also, Trump called the late Senator John McCain a loser. Trump denies it, but he actually did call McCain “a loser” in Ames, Iowa, July 18, 2015.

Trump has repeatedly attacked McCain for his record of support for the Veterans Administration. Trump claims credit for VA Choice, but Obama signed that bill in 2014, and John McCain was one of the bill’s originators. Cindy McCain, the late senator’s widow, endorses former Vice President Joe Biden, not Trump, for president.

Trump fails to condemn right-wing domestic terrorism. Trump, a conspiracy promoter, has supported Q-Anon, even defending his retweets of a Q-Anon theory that former President Barack Obama and then-Vice President Joe Biden mistakenly killed the body double of Osama bin Laden, sponsor of the 9/11 attacks on the United States, including the World Trade Center and Pentagon. As part of that conspiracy, Q-Anon also accuses Biden of ordering the assassination of a team of Navy SEALs to cover up their so-called mistake. The commander in chief retweeted several related tweets.

Trump claims to love the military. But he belittles generals, including Gens. Kelly, Mattis, McMaster, McRaven, and McChrystal, among others. He takes away congressionally appropriated military funds to pay for his wall. He rescinds Pentagon orders and interferes in the military justice system, including pardoning war criminals.

U.S. Marines grind sections of the wall before installing concertina wire near the California-Mexico border, Nov. 14, 2018. (Lance Cpl. Jared Curtis)

He takes money from the military in order to construct a border wall, and he deploys troops inappropriately, including against migrants and protesters. 

Capt. Brett Crozier and Capt. Carlos Sardiello cut a cake at a change of command ceremony Nov. 1, 2019.

He belittled Navy Capt. Brett Crozier, former CO of USS Theodore Roosevelt, who called for help for his Sailors after an outbreak of COVID-19 aboard his ship earlier this year.

Trump refuses to confront Putin about reported Russian bounties on the heads of our troops in Afghanistan as he turns his back on the Kurds fighting ISIS and continues to offend NATO allies, South Korea, and other friends of the United States.

In 2020, Trump implies that pay raises to the military will buy their support. But he admits he likely doesn’t have the backing of senior, well-educated leaders. In fact, Trump accuses Pentagon military brass of being war profiteers.

Another of his former key administration officials, retired Army Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, one of Trump’s national security advisers, condemned Trump’s unwillingness to commit to a smooth transition of power after the election. “This is something that our founders feared," McMaster said. ”We have to demand that our leaders restore confidence in our democratic principles and institutions and processes.”

Trump and McMaster invited military service members to a luncheon at the White House, July 18, 2017.

On Sept. 7, 2020, at another White House press conference, Trump said, “I’m not saying the military is in love with me. The soldiers are. The top people in the Pentagon probably aren’t because they want to do nothing but fight wars so that all of those wonderful companies that make the bombs and make the planes and make everything else, stay happy.”

Is it possible Trump is projecting? He, himself, boasts about selling weapons and weapon systems to foreign nations, especially Saudi Arabia. He reportedly authorized selling F-35 stealth fighter jets to United Arab Emirates to persuade UAE to acknowledge normalization with Israel.

Trump famously boasted of being a “wartime president” in the fight against COVID-19. His “generals” in the pandemic war are CEOs of huge corporations, many of whom make a profit.

When he contracted the virus, Trump seemed to blame Sailors and Marines. A week later he appeared to blame Gold Star families. Here are some related haiku of Trump:

“It’s very hard when

you’re with soldiers, when you’re

with airman, … Marines”

+

“When they come over

to you it’s very hard to

say, “‘stay back, stay back.’”

(Fox News, 1 Oct 2020)

+

“Very, very hard

when you are with people from

the military”

(Fox News, 1 Oct 2020)

“would be a chance that

I would catch it … I met with

gold-star families”

+

“all came in and they

all talked about their son and

daughter and father”

+

“…an inch of my face

sometimes –– they want to hug me

and they want to kiss”

(Fox Business News; 8 Oct 2020)

He asks U.S. citizens to be “warriors” and to go into harm’s way without a unified national strategic plan, adequate testing, or mask mandates. 

HM2 Christopher Lopez inspects medical equipment during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The United States has about four percent of the world’s population and about twenty percent of the world’s death from COVID. As Trump seems to surrender to “an invisible enemy,” he treats citizens, including children, as kamikaze “warriors” –– pushing them to go back to schools and jobs no matter what.

Now Trump seems to be waging a war against a free and fair election, the rule of law, the U.S. Postal Service, and the Constitution itself. Trump seems hellbent on winning by any means necessary. Will he create his own “infamy” before election day and/or before he leaves office?

On Nov. 3, Americans have an opportunity to return to decency, integrity, healing, and understanding by voting for military Blue Star father Joe Biden and helping to elect Biden/Harris.

"Haiku of Trump: The Chasm, Schism & Isms of Donald J. Trump,” is available on Amazon Kindle and is free through Wednesday, Oct. 21.

Justice: Battle of Midway and the Constitution

Review by Bill Doughty

The Navy recruited one-day Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens when he was a senior at the University of Chicago. The well-read and academic Stevens agreed to learn codes and ciphers and become qualified to do cryptographic work for the Navy. That was in the summer of 1941.

Stevens on Oahu, his second duty location.

In early December the Navy notified him of his eligibility for a commission as an ensign. He reported to Great Lakes Naval Station for a physical on the eve of Imperial Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor, Oahu, Dec. 7.

Stevens recounts his time in the Navy briefly in his wonderful memoir, "The Making of a Justice: Reflections on My First 94 Years" (Little, Brown and Company, 2019). His first assignment was at the Navy Department in the Munitions building on Constitution Avenue in Washington, D.C.

"My first two chores as an officer in the Navy assigned to 'Op-20-G' – the communications intelligence section of the service – required skills unrelated to my training. Encrypted messages that were exchanged between one communications intelligence unit and another – between station 'Hypo' at Pearl Harbor and station 'Negat' in Washington, for example – were classified 'ultra' rather than merely 'secret,' 'confidential,' or 'restricted.' The originator of such a message typed the plain text into a cypher machine that created five-letter blocks of scrambled letters. The addressee, using a comparable machine, typed out the scrambled text to convert it back into plain language. When I arrived in Washington, the navy allowed only commissioned officers to decrypt 'ultra' messages. Though I had become a pretty good typist while working at the (student newspaper, Chicago Daily) Maroon, neither I nor any of the other commissioned officers doing that work could type as well as most of the enlisted men. The navy eventually permitted qualified typists to decrypt 'ultra' messages."

As a junior ensign, Stevens was assigned duties as typist and burn bag guard, armed with a .45-caliber handgun, before being assigned to the communications section to begin work in the traffic analysis section.

As a traffic analyst trainee, Stevens became familiar with kana in the Japanese language and was able to understand the transmission of messages from kana to Morse code.

His description, though brief, of how Japanese naval messages, sent in "JN-25" code, were studied and deciphered will be interesting to today's Navy cyber warriors. Stevens describes how cryptoanalysts hunted the identity ("call signs") of the senders and recipients of Japanese radio transmissions.



'Decisive" BOM & Duty in Hawaii

"In late May 1942, the cryptographers, language officers, and traffic analysts in the Fleet Radio Unit at Pearl Harbor (FRUPAC) had learned enough about Japanese naval communications to predict that a major assault on one of our Pacific outposts designated as 'AZ' was about to occur. They suspected, but were not certain, that AZ was Midway Island. Knowing that the Japanese were monitoring our naval communications, they arranged for an exchange of plain-language messages commenting on a supposed accident that had produced a serious water shortage on Midway Island; those messages produced a comment in the enemy's communications that confirmed our suspicions. As a result of that ruse, combined with the earlier intelligence obtained from decrypted JN-25 messages, Admiral Chester Nimitz's forces were prepared for the Japanese attack on June 6 and ultimately prevailed in what many experts have concluded was the decisive battle in our war with Japan."

Stevens is quick to say he had no direct role in "that historic triumph," however his next assignment – to Oahu – would take him to the heart of where the Battle of Midway was planned and launched.

"When I arrived in Pearl Harbor, FRUPAC was located in an unmarked area in the basement of a building near the headquarters of the Fourteenth Naval District. I was first assigned space in a house a short distance from the end of one of the runways at Hickam Field, and shortly thereafter I moved into the BOQ (bachelor officers' quarters) located near the main gate of the naval yard ... A few weeks after my arrival at Pearl, the name of the combat intelligence unit was changed from 'FRUPAC' to 'JICPOA' (Joint Intelligence Communications Pacific Ocean Area) and its location was moved from the navy yard to Makalapa, near Admiral Nimitz's headquarters."

Stevens served for 30 months in Hawaii and became one of a handful of watch officers who had the responsibility for reviewing all intercepted enemy radio traffic and writing a summary for Adm. Edward Layton, Chief Intelligence Officer of the Pacific Fleet once every 24 hours.

He remembers receiving "startling advice" to be on the lookout for one of the Imperial Japanese Navy's battleships – "I think it was the Musashi" – possibly headed to Truk, then a key naval base. The warning turned out to be a false alarm due to a garbled version of a call sign – a mistake due to operator error.

"In my later career as a judge," Stevens writes, "I have recalled that incident over and over again when confronted with the question whether a legislature actually intended a statute to have the meaning that its plain language seemed to convey. Legislatures, like radio operators, occasionally make mistakes."

Throughout this book we read the carefully considered words and meanings chosen by Justice Stevens throughout his career. We see the importance of definitions, meanings, intent and the need for precision when interpreting and applying the wisdom of the founders as outlined in the Constitution – balancing original intent with "evolving standards of decency." He reminds us of groundbreaking changes in society since the birth of the nation, back when the federal government sanctioned institutionalized slavery, disenfranchisement of Native Americans and anti-suffrage for women.

Stevens was on one of his 24-hour duty watches in Hawaii when he received the message confirming the success of an operation to target, intercept and kill Admiral Yamamoto, who was flying from Rabaul to an airfield on Bougainville. Yamamoto was the architect of the attack on Oahu that started the war in the Pacific and brought the United States into World War II.

Nimitz and Yamamoto

"I remember being somewhat troubled by the punitive motivation for the operation, but I also recognized that it had achieved a significant strategic benefit by terminating the most competent officer in the Japanese navy," Stevens writes.

After Yamamoto's death, the Japanese began to encode call signs. But, Stevens and "an exceptionally talented enlisted man" named Stanley Moe worked to decipher familiar call signs and figure out the "quite simple" pattern of kana that were changed each day. "The new system required more paperwork for us ... but otherwise did not impair our traffic analysis."

Read "The Making of a Justice" to see:

• how he inadvertently interrupted Admiral Nimitz's target practice, almost becoming the target himself; 
• how he met another future Supreme Court Justice (and NFL star) Byron White, a fellow Sailor who "saved the lives of sailors buried under debris" after a kamikaze attack on USS Bunker Hill in May 1945; and
• how he experienced and appreciated his time in Hawaii, including bodysurfing at Makapu'u and visits to Kauai, Maui and the Big Island of Hawaii.

Rare and endangered Silverswords in bloom on Haleakula.

"On Maui we drove to the parking area near the Kilauea (Haleakula?) volcano. We walked to a spot where we had an excellent view of the crater. The view was memorable, but less so than our decision not to investigate the area identified by a sign pointing to an uphill path containing the words 'silver' and 'swords.' Not until after we had returned to Oahu and Walt (Hopkins) satisfied his curiosity by a visit to the Honolulu public library did we learn that silverswords are beautiful flowers that grow only on that volcano and, more importantly, although they rarely bloom, they probably were in full bloom when we decided to terminate our sightseeing that afternoon. Over the years that incident has been a frequent reminder of the importance of deliberation before refusing to take advantage of once-in-a-lifetime opportunities."

After learning that an Army plane dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima and another on Nagasaki a few days later, resulting in Imperial Japan's surrender soon after, Stevens was pragmatic in his assessment.

"Tragic as those events were for the residents of those two cities, I was then convinced (and have remained convinced ever since) that that method of bringing the war to its inevitable end saved many, many more lives – of American soldiers as well as Japanese soldiers and civilians – than the number of victims of those two bombings. An invasion of Japan would have caused hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of casualties."

Monumental Meaning of Patriotism

"The Making of a Justice" includes the text of a speech Stevens gave in 2010 on the tenth anniversary of the establishment of the National Japanese American Memorial Foundation. The speech starts on page 522 of the hardbound edition, and it deserves to be read for what it says about tolerance, patriotism and core values.

Stevens, front and center, with Veterans and hosts to commemorate the NJAM Foundation.

In his speech he recounts his visit to Pearl Harbor in 1994, his first visit there since the war.

"Admiral Retz took me on a tour of the harbor on his barge, pointing out changes that had occurred in the past 50 years. The most memorable and moving event during that tour was our approach to the Arizona Memorial – which spans the USS Arizona and the over a thousand American Sailors [and Marines] still entombed in the sunken battleship. As we approached the Arizona I could plainly see that the dozens of visitors on board that day were Japanese tourists. My first reaction to that sight was more emotional than you might expect from a senior citizen. Several thoughts flashed through my mind: 'Those people don't really belong here. We won the war, they lost it. We shouldn't allow them to celebrate their attack on Pearl Harbor even it if was one of their greatest victories.' But then I realized that those visitors must also have been experiencing a number of mixed and conflicting emotions. Perhaps a few did remember Pearl Harbor with pride. Some of them may even have been descendants of pilots who participated in the attack. Others may have remembered relatives that died or were wounded during the war. Still others may merely have reflected about how horrible all wars are to all who participate in them and the costs that they impose on civilians as well as soldiers. Most significantly, I realized that I was drawing inferences about every member of that tourist group that did not necessarily apply to any single one of them..."

Stevens said a central message conveyed by both the National Japanese American Memorial and the USS Arizona Memorial is to "beware of stereotypical conclusions about groups of people we don't know very well."

The view of the USS Arizona Memorial from below. (NPS)

"The Japanese tourists were not responsible for what some of their countrymen did decades ago..." Stevens ties his initial reaction to seeing Japanese visitors aboard the USS Arizona Memorial to some Americans' reaction to the building of an Islamic Center in New York City near the location of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. He notes, "terrorists like those who killed over 3,000 Americans – including Catholics, Jews, Protestants, atheists and some of the 600,000 Muslims who live in New York – have also killed many more Muslims who disagree with their radical views in other parts of the world."

He notes that many Muslims who escape groups like the Taliban come to America to try to avoid religious persecution and intolerance.

In his speech Stevens salutes the Americans of Japanese Ancestry who fought in World War II, including the "military bravery and unselfish service. "The predominantly Japanese-American 442nd Infantry Combat Team, for instance, became the most decorated regiment, for its size and length of service, in the history of the United States Armed Forces. Its members earned over 9,000 Purple Hearts."

Finally, Stevens noted another message of the Japanese American Memorial, one he called "a monument to stupidity": the "unnecessary internment of literally thousands of loyal American citizens for the duration of the war." He notes that 40 years after FDR's regretted decision, President Ronald Reagan and the U.S. Congress offered a formal apology to those Americans who were "deprived of their liberty without due process."

"Our Constitution protects every one of us from being found guilty of wrongdoing based on the conduct of our associates. Guilt by association is unfair. The monument teaches us that it is also profoundly unwise to draw inferences based on a person's membership in any association or group without first learning something about the group. Its message is a powerful reminder of the fact that ignorance – that is to say, fear of the unknown – is the source of most invidious prejudice."

Stevens meets Pat Summitt and Bob Dylan, also recipients of the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

President Barack Obama awarded Stevens the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012. Among the recipients were singer-songwriter Bob Dylan and basketball coach Pat Summitt as well as several other renowned Americans.

At the same ceremony, Obama awarded the medal to Gordon Hirabayashi, one of several Americans of Japanese Ancestry to defy the executive order for involuntary incarceration. He, as well as Fred Korematsu and Minoru Yasui, took his case all the way to the Supreme Court where he was defeated.

Hirabayashi

(Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson wrote in his dissent in Korematsu v. United States: "If the people ever let command of the war power fall into irresponsible and unscrupulous hands, the courts wield no power equal to its restraint. The chief restraint upon those who command the physical forces of the country, in the future as in the past, must be their responsibility to the political judgments of their contemporaries and to the moral judgments of history.")

Obama repeated Hirabayashi's quote in his commendation: "It takes a crisis to tell us that unless citizens are willing to stand up for the [Constitution], it's not worth the paper it's written on." (Stevens says in error that there were no internment camps in Hawaii, but the Honouliuli Internment Camp near Pearl Harbor imprisoned as many as 4,000 people.)

Another distinguished recipient of the medal at the same ceremony was Senator John Glenn, a former Marine and Naval Aviator/Astronaut and the first American to orbit the Earth (in 1962).

Stevens said he appreciated Obama's kind remarks about him at the medal presentation ceremony, but even more than those words, he treasures the words of President Gerald Ford, a fellow World War II Navy Veteran, who nominated Stevens to the Supreme Court in 1975.

President Ford and Chief Justice Warren Burger pose with John Paul Stevens, who was sworn in as Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, Dec. 19, 1975. Ford nominated Stevens, of the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, Chicago, to fill the vacancy created by the retirement of Justice William O. Douglas. 

Ford wrote in 2005 about Stevens: "I am prepared to allow history's judgment of my term in office to rest (if necessary, exclusively) on my nomination thirty years ago of Justice John Paul Stevens to the U.S. Supreme Court. I endorse his constitutional views on the secular character of the Establishment Clause and the Free Exercise Clause, on securing procedural safeguards in criminal cases and on the Constitution's broad grant of regulatory authority to Congress."

This review barely scratches the surface of "The Making of a Justice," which could easily be called, "The Making of Justice." Although I've focused on the Navy-oriented biography covered in this review, most of this book is devoted to Stevens's perspective on cases, laws, decisions and dissents in the pursuit of an ethical democracy with roots deep in the Constitution. This is a study of critical thinking and core values at their best.