Retribution_ The Battle for Japan, 1944-45 - Max Hastings [25]
Born in 1885 into a German family who became successful hotelkeepers in Texas, Nimitz had intended an army career until offered a midshipman’s place at the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis, Maryland. A former submariner who was among the pioneers of refuelling at sea, he was well-known for his skilful management of committees, and meticulous personal habits—he was irked by the unpunctuality of politicians. The admiral invariably travelled with his schnauzer, Mak, a mean little dog which growled. His staff, like most wartime service personnel, worked a seven-day week, but were encouraged to take an afternoon tennis break. They inhabited a sternly masculine world, for Nimitz insisted that there should be no women on the team. There was just one female intruder—a mine warfare intelligence officer named Lt. Harriet Borland, who for administrative purposes was deemed not to be a member of CINCPAC’S headquarters. The admiral and his wife, Catherine, entertained generously in their home at Pearl, often serving fruit delicacies flown from the Pacific islands.
A natural diplomat, sober and controlled, Nimitz strove to defuse tensions with MacArthur, even when—as sometimes happened—the general flatly refused to surrender control of shipping temporarily diverted to him from navy resources. In March 1944 the two men and their senior staffs met in Brisbane, for what promised to be a stormy encounter. “Nee-mitz,” as MacArthur called the admiral sourly, opened the conference by telling a story of two frantically worried men pacing a hotel corridor. One finally asked the other what was troubling him. “I am a doctor50,” came the answer, “and I have a patient in my room with a wooden leg, and I have that leg apart and can’t get it back together again.” The other man said: “Great guns, I wish that was all I have to worry about. I have a good-looking gal in my room with both legs apart, and I can’t remember the room number.” Even MacArthur laughed, though it was unthinkable that he himself would have stooped to such perceived vulgarity. Carrier admiral “Jocko” Clark asserted reverently that Nimitz was “the one great leader51 in the Pacific who had no blemish on his shield or dent in his armour.” This seems not much overstated.
Why, on Hawaii, did Nimitz not voice the navy’s strong reservations about the Philippines plan? First, he found himself in a weak diplomatic position. Whatever MacArthur’s private contempt for Roosevelt, at their meeting the general deployed the full force of his personality to charm the president, whom he had known since serving under him as army chief of staff. The undemonstrative Nimitz found himself perforce playing a subordinate role beside two showmen. More than this, naval commanders were themselves divided about future strategy. Admiral Raymond Spruance, commanding Fifth Fleet, favoured an advance on Okinawa by way of Iwo Jima, rather than taking Formosa. Despite King’s order to plan for Formosa, Spruance instructed his staff not to waste time on it.
Nimitz himself, meanwhile, was more sympathetic to the Philippines plan than was King, his boss. Six months earlier, the Pacific C-in-C had been furiously rebuked by the chief of naval operations for advocating a landing on Mindanao rather than in the Marianas. While the navy certainly saw no virtue in protracted operations to recover the entire archipelago, Nimitz and his staff deemed it useful, indeed probably indispensable, to secure Philippines ground and air bases before advancing closer to Japan. Logistics would permit Mindanao-Leyte landings before the end of 1944, while no assault on Formosa was feasible before the spring of 1945. Furthermore, Japanese captures of U.S. air bases in China, and general disenchantment with Chiang Kai-shek’s nation as an ally, made Formosa seem far less useful as a door into China than it had done a few months earlier. Nimitz almost certainly