‘Amazing Grace’ Hopper’s 2011 Milestones

Review by Bill Doughty

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Grace Hopper helped develop COBOL.

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

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

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

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

Thirty-five years ago, August 1976

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

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

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

On August 2, 1973 Hopper was promoted to Captain.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Taking Nothing for Granted

by Bill Doughty

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

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

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

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

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

More next week...

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

Sun-Tzu and the Art of Football

by Bill Doughty

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here’s what Sun-Tzu says about leadership:

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

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

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

Can we have collaboration and competition over confrontation and destruction?

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

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

Everyone wins when that’s the goal.

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

Freedom & Responsibility - United States Constitution

by Bill Doughty

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

According to historian Eric Foner:

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

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

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

Use Your Head to Get Your Foot in the Door

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

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

Review by Theresa Donnelly

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Reading and education are key to future success.

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

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

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

Faith, Fear and Tom Hanks

by Bill Doughty

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

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

Tom Hanks transcends genres.  

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

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

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

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

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

Again, from the Yale Bulletin:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tom Hanks on a commitment to Veterans and service:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Truth, Consequences at Midway

Review by Bill Doughty

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lt. Cmdr. John C. Waldron

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

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

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

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

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

Ganbare!

Review by Bill Doughty

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

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

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

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

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

Internee tents at Sand Island in December, 1941.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

100 Years of U.S. Navy Air Power

Review by Bill Doughty

“Where are our aircraft carriers?”

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

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

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

Glenn Curtiss

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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



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

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

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

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

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

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