Ship of Ghosts - James D. Hornfischer [15]
If he did not wish away time entirely, Rooks marked its passing with the precision of a chronometer. “Well, September is almost gone,” he wrote Edith after a month in command of his ship, abandoning longhand and breaking in his new Underwood typewriter, acquired in Manila for forty-five dollars. “Day after tomorrow it will be one month since I took over the Houston, and two months since I left you in Honolulu. That makes two twenty-sixths of the time, or 1/13 gone. When you say it that way, it doesn’t sound so interminable, does it?”
In time he seemed to realize the cumulative effect on Edith of reiterating his pessimism. In his correspondence to her during the ensuing months leading up to war, one can sense him doing penance for his earlier candor. “The longer they keep from striking, the less chance that they will start anything. For one thing, America is growing stronger every day,” he wrote on October 5.
He told Edith he thought the Japanese would attack Siberia if they attacked at all. “They are really in what must be for them a very unsatisfactory position. An attack on Siberia will not solve their pressing need to obtain oil and other supplies. In a movement to the South, where such supplies are, they will inevitably be opposed by the combined power of the United States, the British Empire, and the Netherlands East Indies. If they make no move at all, our embargo will slowly but surely sap their economic and industrial strength and will probably ultimately defeat their effort in China.” Two weeks later he noted that “the Jap situation is sizzling this week end, with the fall of the cabinet, and with the torpedoing of our destroyer Kearny on the east coast. I suppose it means real trouble…. Well, come what may, I am ready for it.”
For a short time still, the Philippine capital would be a sanctuary from the kind of chaos that was overtaking Shanghai. A few months into his tenure as captain, with the Houston moored at Cavite, Rooks returned to his stateroom after an evening on the town and wrote Edith, “It is an interesting fact to me that there seems to be no particular fear or nervous tension here at all. Everyone seems calm, cool, and cheerful. They have of course been facing such crises for months, not to say years, and are inured to them…. As for me, I face the future with the utmost confidence. My job is turning into one of the biggest in the Navy at this time, and I am fortunate to have it. The ship is in excellent condition as far as material and training is concerned. Whatever weaknesses she has are those of design. Service in these hot southern waters is of course very uncomfortable when the ships are sealed up for war operations, but we will have to take that.”
He seemed eager to revoke his farewell prophecy in Honolulu. “I have a feeling that fate is going to be kind to me,” Rooks wrote to Edith, “and that on some happier tomorrow we will be walking the streets of Seattle in company, as we now do in spirit.”
CHAPTER 4
In November 1941, the tension that gripped the naval base at Cavite was palpable. A war warning was circulating. Aware of the Asiatic Fleet’s vulnerability in Manila, Admiral Hart scattered the vessels.* The Houston was stripped down for action. The admiral’s flag quarters were cleared of all unnecessary accoutrements. The nicer furniture was stored ashore in Manila, including the silver service and the baby grand piano. One afternoon, when the Houston’s softball team went out to meet a challenge from sailors at Canacao Naval Hospital, the familiar peacetime routine prevailed. Three hours later, the ballplayers returned to find the well-ordered chaos of a warship preparing to get under way.
A shore patrol went to round up stragglers still on liberty. Yard workers hustled to reinstall the ship’s four carbon arc searchlights, which had been detached and set aside for replacement by newer models. They doubled their efforts