As we approach the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II next week, I thought I’d share some stories from a book about Adm. Chester A. Nimitz, who commanded the U.S. Naval Forces during the war.
The author is former U.S. Attorney Michael Lilly, whose grandparents, Una and Sandy Walker, were friends with Nimitz.
“Nimitz at Ease” was so named because his grandparents hosted Nimitz at their quiet Laie beach house innumerable times during the war. Nimitz, suffering chronic insomnia, said it was the only place he could get a good night’s sleep.
Nimitz coped with the stress of commanding the largest armed force in history — 2.5 million service members covering 65 million square miles during World War II — in part by relaxing with the Walkers in Laie when off duty.
Sandy Walker was president of American Factors and several sugar plantations. He was also director of food distribution during the war in Hawaii and chairman of the Territorial Board of Leper Hospitals and Settlements.
Walker was the only kamaaina member of the Military and Civilian Governor’s staffs during World War II, Lilly writes.
“While the government planned mass internment of Japanese in the islands, as happened on the U.S. mainland, and, indeed, what Secretary of the Navy William Knox proposed, it never came to pass, in part because of the intercession of Sandy Walker.
“Sandy, having grown up with Japanese all his life and knowing they were loyal, opposed the idea,” Lilly says.
“Accordingly, there was no wholesale internment in Hawaii. Only a relative handful of Japanese with direct ties to Japan or recent arrivals, representing about 1% of their island population, were actually interned.”
Ho’omanawanui
The day after Adm. Chester W. Nimitz took command of the Pacific fleet, the press asked what he was going to do, with his battleships underwater.
Nimitz replied with a Hawaiian word, ho’omanawanui, meaning, “Let time take care of the situation.”
“When I was troubled as a child,” Lilly recalls, “my grandparents and mother soothed me with a Hawaiian word for patience that gracefully rolls off the tongue like long ocean swells — ho’omanawanui. All things will work out in the fullness of time.
“My grandparents passed on that word to Nimitz before he took command of the Pacific Fleet in December 1941 because he needed a lot of patience with his fleet under water.”
First mobile phone
Nimitz was one of the first persons in the world with a radiotelephone — the first mobile phone — installed in his flag car to maintain contact with his headquarters. The device was cumbersome and consumed a lot of battery power.
Lilly’s 5-year-old sister, Maile, often rode with Nimitz to or from Laie and enjoyed toying with the heavy black Bakelite handset and cord long enough to reach into the backseat.
On one trip, Maile swung the handset by its cord, smacking Nimitz’s aide, Lt. Hal Lamar, in the face, breaking his front tooth. Maile was mortified and still is today. Poor Lamar’s next stop was the fleet dental clinic to have his fractured tooth capped.
34 hours in the air
Nimitz had to make several trips back and forth to Washington, D.C., from Hawaii. The Coronado Flying Boat took at least 34 hours in the air each way, plus refueling stops. Today, the same trip takes 10 hours nonstop.
Sink us
The military loves acronyms. The top admiral of the U.S. Navy at the time of Pearl Harbor was Ernest King, commander in chief, U.S. fleet. That was abbreviated CinCUS and pronounced “sink us.”
In the aftermath of Pearl Harbor, Adm. King wisely changed its acronym to CominCh.
Hara
The Walkers employed a Japanese national named Hara (no one in the Walkers’ family recalled his first name) as chef. “During the course of the war, Hara must have served over a hundred meals for Nimitz and other military and political leaders,” Sandy’s son Henry Walker said.
“It is an interesting footnote to history that if Hara should have wished, on many occasions, he could have poisoned almost the entire high command of the Pacific. The funny thing was that nobody ever thought about it until after the war was over.”
Let’s climb the stairs
During the first three years of the war the police department issued licenses to brothels to operate legally within a 15-square block area of Chinatown, Lilly writes, although the police chief commanded a $50,000 under-the-table bribe to get things going.
Most such brothels were on the second floor of Chinatown buildings, so the phrase, “Let’s climb the stairs,” became a common euphemism for visiting them.
The brothels were flanked by military medical clinics to help prevent venereal disease.
For three weeks in August 1942, poster-carrying prostitutes picketed the police station and Iolani Palace over grievances about onerous regulations, Lilly says.
Early in the war, Nimitz’s flag car and driver had an amusing if awkward encounter. One of his young Marine drivers, Robert Allen, drove the admiral’s black Buick, with a cover hiding the four stars on its license place, to pick up a package at a drugstore in Chinatown.
Unable to find an open parking spot, he double- parked while he ran into the store. What Allen did not know was that a brothel was above the drugstore.
Returning to the car, Allen found several military police examining the Buick with evident curiosity about Nimitz’s flag car parked next to an ignominious flight of stairs.
“Allen convinced the MPs he was alone and on a proper mission for the Commander in Chief,” Lilly says. “Instead of confessing the incident at headquarters, Allen said nothing, hoping it would simply go away. Wishful thinking.”
Nimitz had countless sources of information. A few days later, Allen was summoned by Nimitz, “who said to me in his quiet voice, with a twinkle in his eye, ‘Allen, we’re going to have to be careful where we park our car, aren’t we?’”
The Battle of Midway
Lilly writes that a subordinate of Nimitz, and the commander of U.S. forces at the Battle of Midway in June 1942, was Adm. Raymond A. Spruance. He had a hands-off approach that surprised me.
“I have never seen it published anywhere, but my grandfather told me that Spruance said that, once he set the battle in motion, he retired to his stateroom to read a mystery novel. He figured if he meddled, he would likely screw things up.”
Bob Hope
In 1944, Nimitz, Sandy Walker and his wife, Una, attended a USO show featuring Bob Hope, along with singer Frances Langford and comic Jerry Colonna. The red-tressed Langford brought down the house crooning, “I’m in the Mood for Love.”
Hope, a famous movie star and later television comedian, entertained troops for over five decades. Many consider him to be the first stand-up comic.
In one two-month period, Hope gave 28 performances before 180,000 servicemen, logged some 30,000 miles, and had at least one nonfatal crash landing before returning to the United States in September 1944.
Hope, Langford, Colonna and their USO troupe’s plane developed engine trouble and crash-landed in New South Wales, Australia, en route to Sydney from Guadalcanal.
“Our plane landed in a river and we beached it on a sandy little island,” Hope said. “People from the town came out in boats to meet us.” No one was injured. The troupe put on a show for the villagers that night.
You can read more about Nimitz and the Walkers in Laie in my 2013 column at 808ne.ws/2EyqMOd.
For more on next week’s 75th WWII Commemoration ceremony, see 808ne.ws/2YBxMAY.
Bob Sigall is the author of the “The Companies We Keep” books. Email him your comments, questions and suggestions at Sigall@Yahoo.com.
