Ship of Ghosts - James D. Hornfischer [92]
When ship and men went down, still fighting, they did not go down to defeat. They had helped remove at least two cruisers and probably other vessels from the active list of the enemy’s rank.…
The officers and men of the USS Houston drove a hard bargain. They sold their liberty and their lives most dearly.
The spirit of these officers and men is still alive. That is being proved today in all Houston, in all Texas, in all America.
Not one of us doubts that the thousand recruits sworn in today will carry on with the same determined spirit shown by the gallant men who have gone before them.…
Our enemies have given us the chance to prove that there will be another USS Houston, and yet another USS Houston if that becomes necessary, and still another USS Houston as long as American ideals are in jeopardy.…
The officers and men of the USS Houston have placed us all in their debt by winning a part of the victory which is our common goal. Reverently, and with all humility, we acknowledge this debt.
To those officers and men, wherever they may be, we give our solemn pledge that the debt will be repaid in full.
At the close of the ceremony, the new boots marched down to the railway station, where five trains would take them to west coast training centers. Ultimately, only one of the Avengers would actually come out of the personnel pool assigned to the new Houston: a reservist named William A. Kirkland, who worked as a banker in town. The rest were given to the Navy’s general personnel pool, which Secretary Knox called “an unparalled gift of manpower.”
The fate of those they were replacing remained a vexing open question when an AP wire dispatch published on July 2 cited a Japanese announcement that a thousand survivors of the USS Houston and HMAS Perth were being held at Batavia. No doubt mindful that the Japanese had been announcing the sinking of the Houston just about every other week since the start of the war, the AP discounted the news, referring to the essential untrustworthiness of enemy pronouncements.
The avenging impulse carried on. Later that year the city would organize a fund-raising campaign to pay for the new ship. By the time it closed on December 21, 1942, Houston residents rich and poor would pledge $85 million to cover the construction costs of the new Houston, delivered by check from FDR’s secretary of commerce, Jesse H. Jones, to Secretary Knox. And there was enough money to fund not only a new Houston but an aircraft carrier as well. In January 1943, a light carrier already under construction at New York Shipbuilding in Camden, New Jersey, was christened the San Jacinto (CVL-30) after Texas’s signature victory in its war for independence. That ship would slingshot a sometime Houstonian and future American president into desperate air battles in the far western Pacific. George H. W. Bush’s aircraft carrier would join a fleet that the survivors languishing on Java could only have fantasized about.
CHAPTER 26
Serang would be a way station to larger prisons. Consolidating the unexpected mob of prisoners—what imperial officer worth his sake could ever have imagined so many men surrendering?—the Japanese determined that more spacious accommodations were needed. On April 13 Imperial Army trucks arrived and the prisoners were mustered and told to prepare to move out. A Japanese officer ordered the Americans to line up against the jail’s wall. “Officer? Any officer?” he demanded to know. An American stepped forward. “Yes, I’m a naval officer.” It was Lieutenant Hamlin.
The Japanese, in broken English, elicited some basic biographical information from Hamlin. He was none too pleased to learn his prisoner was from the Houston. The Japanese officer alluded to a hospital ship sunk in Bantam Bay—“No good. No good,” he said—then he turned to weightier questions of honor. He asked Hamlin, “Who is the better man, Tojo or Roosevelt?”
“Roosevelt,” answered the lieutenant.
The Japanese officer turned and hollered at his troops, who jumped away from the American