Fleet Problem XVI

ARMY & NAVY

As the sun popped its red head over the San Bernardino Mountains early one morning last week, the main strength of the U.S. Fleet stood out of San Pedro and San Diego harbors, went nodding up the California coast with torpedo-shaped, mine-cutting paravanes hung from every grey prow and all hands at battle stations. In the preceding preparatory weeks the West Coast had thrilled to the report that, although not a shot was to be fired, the Fleet had taken aboard almost its wartime ammunition load. Thus began Fleet Problem XVI, grandest Naval maneuver in U.S. history. whose scene and scope agitated the nation as none of its annual predecessors ever had before.

While a smaller detachment proceeded to Puget Sound, the main force paused at San Francisco. Then spade-bearded, air minded Admiral Joseph Mason Reeves, one of the few Fleet Commanders-in-Chief to be distinguished with a second year's term, steamed into the Pacific at the head of his flotilla. With that, absolute censorship clapped down. On land, less than a dozen officers in the Navy's Operations Office at Washington knew with any accuracy the day-to-day whereabouts of the nation's first line of defense. "Confidential." Except for bare statistics, official Naval announcements about the maneuvers had been unprecedentedly vague and guarded. The operation would last until June 10, said the Navy, cover 5,000,000 sq. mi. in the "Pacific Triangle" between Hawaii, Puget Sound, the Aleutian Islands. Fifty thousand men would take part on 160 vessels, in 450 planes. Potent newcomers to the Fleet would be the battleship Idaho, just modernized for $14,000,000; the Ranger, first U. S. aircraft carrier built as such from the keel up; five more heavy "treaty" cruisers; destroyers Dewey and Farragut, swiftest blue-water craft ever to join the Navy and first of a long line to replace the obsolescent Wartime destroyers. It was a Fleet, the Navy could not refrain from boasting, which was not only the most powerful ever to fly the Stars-&-Stripes, but in fighting strength second in world history only to the British Grand Fleet at the end of the War.

"Will of Heaven" The Navy's secretiveness provided the final infuriating touch for a large section of professional U.S. peace-lovers. When pacifists failed to stop the exercises by direct appeals to the White House, 301 preachers and rabbis resolutely did their religious duty, chose the day the maneuvers began to address an open letter to "Our brothers and sisters in Japan" deploring the Navy's action and asking them to "unite with us in redoubling our efforts to maintain our historic friendship." The Fellowship of Reconciliation dedicated May 3 to 5 to "Peace Maneuvers," one aspect of which was a "cherry blossom procession" of Chicago churchmen and pacifists to the Japanese consulate.

These agitations did not fail to disturb the Navy, which cannot run without public money and naturally wants lots of friends. But vainly did Secretary Swanson declare that the maneuvers would not reach within 2,000 mi. of "Japanese territory."* In vain did Admiral William H. Standley, Chief of Naval Operations, explain that the operation had been scheduled a year ago, that the prime purpose of this or any other maneuver was not to stage a dress rehearsal of international conflict but to train men, test ships, familiarize officers with unfamiliar waters. Best spokesman for the U.S. Navy's point of view was Japanese Ambassador Hiroshi Saito, good friend of Japan's plump, placid Navy Minister (Admiral) Mineo Osumi. Amiably announced that whiskey-drinking, Westernized Oriental fortnight ago:

"The Japanese Government and our naval people have never misunderstood the matter. They know that navies are navies, and that it is the navy's business to be familiar with not just some of their waters but all of their waters. . . . The only misconception was in the minds of the public. But now that it is becoming known that none of the American ships will approach closer to Japan than the 180th Meridian . . . the misunderstanding is clearing up."

But was it? In U. S. and Japanese naval circles the 180th Meridian (International Date Line), which splits the Pacific, is known as "The Fence." Two years ago the Japanese came closer to "The Fence" than they ever had come before when they held maneuvers around the Caroline and Marshall Islands. This year they will edge up closer to the Date Line when their Grand Fleet operates off Kamchatka Peninsula. But Fleet Problem XVI brings Uncle Sam closer to "The Fence," U. S. naval men privately admit, than either Japan or the U. S. has come before. And Japanese, for all their Ambassador at Washington may say. are not liking it.

When the U. S. Asiatic Fleet's Commander Admiral Frank B. Upham arrived in Yokohama last week on what the Navy called a "goodwill visit" (pacifists promptly and melodramatically dubbed his Augusta a "hostage ship"), Yokohama tendered a polite but restrained welcome. Less restrained was an official pamphlet simultaneously issued by the Japanese Navy Office. Since Japanese are Shintoists, whose symbol is the Sword of Patriotism instead of the Cross of Mercy, the Navy Office propagandists took a somewhat different religious view of the facts than did the friendly U. S. churchmen. Upholding Japan's "mission to maintain peace in the Orient," the pamphlet pointedly warned any nation making "preparations . . . for offensive ocean-crossing operations" that it "may be said to be violating the Will of Heaven."

* Incorrect. Westernmost Aleutian Island is only 620 mi. from Japan's northernmost Kuril Island.

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