#161: The Rest of the Story, JFK, Part VIII

After Jack's rocky years in the House, he runs for Senate and beats a guy who hasn't lost an election in years... and he does it with the endorsement of an old adversary who has become a new friend.

He really settles into life as a senator and, as you probably know, he goes on to become the second youngest president in US history. But I promise, there are probably a few things you don't know about the rest of the story, so I hope you listen.

Transcript

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Before we begin today, I just have to take a minute to say that the Artemis 2 launch back on April 1st was amazing. Hopefully you had the chance to watch it. I'm not entirely sure why. I mean, I kinda know a little why, but I was enthralled with the whole thing. I watched about an hour and a half of the pre-launch coverage, and that's only because I had to work and uh couldn't watch all, I don't know, five or six hours that they did. And then I probably watched another two or three hours post-launch. I mean, we've got people in space in high Earth orbit for the first time in fifty years, and since their translunar injection burn, I mean they're even beyond high earth orbit, and they are on their way to circle the moon and come back. I i this is just really cool stuff. It's reminding me of a lot of the things I talked about during the space race series, and to finally be able to see this stuff in my own lifetime is really cool. I am hoping and wishing all the best to those four astronauts that are out doing incredible things right now, and will continue to follow the whole Artemis mission with great interest. Hopefully we will be able to put humans on the moon again in two years. Although my son is a little less optimistic, he says give it four. So right now the plan is to land humans on the moon in 2028 during the Artemis IV mission. So uh we'll see if it ends up being 2028, 2030, or some other time. But hopefully I will get to see humans on the moon again in my lifetime. And yes, I couldn't resist playing the theme song one more time. But enough about space, let's finish up with President Kennedy. Before his world tour reaches Japan, US Representative John F. Kennedy spends three weeks traveling through Asia and improving his international affairs credentials as a soon to be candidate for the US Senate. All along the way from Pakistan and India in the south, and Thailand, Malaya, Indochina, and Hong Kong in the east and southeast, his father cables him with names of people he should meet and times to meet with them. Joe Sr. also feeds information and stories to the US press so the voters at home in Massachusetts can see the important people his son is rubbing shoulders with and the important topics he is discussing. When Jack finally lands in Tokyo on november second, nineteen fifty one, the city is in its sixth and final year of the post war occupation by the United States and is rebuilding from the ashes of World War II. On his first day in town, Joe Sr. arranges for Jack to meet and have lunch with Gunji Hosono, a distinguished Japanese international law professor with strong pre war ties to the United States. It is while at lunch that Jack shares the real reason for his visit, his desire to meet and take a picture with the captain of the destroyer that had sunk PT one hundred nine and killed two of his crew. Can you help me find him? he asks. Welcome back to Ghosts of Arlington. I am your host Jackson Irish tracing the shadows of Arlington National Cemetery through the lives buried there. Today JFK's search for the man who sank PT one hundred nine and Jack's rise to the White House. Thank you for joining me for episode one hundred and sixty one The Rest of the Story JFK Part eight. Jack doesn't even know the name of the ship he collided with. All he can provide Gungie with is the date and time of the collision and that it occurred around the Solomon Islands. With today's fast internet search results filtering through literally millions of data sets, this limited amount of information wouldn't be a problem. In nineteen fifty one, with zero digital databases to consult and incomplete archival records due to war damage, the request is daunting. But if anyone can help Jack, the well connected Gunji is the man for the task, and he agrees to look into things. Immediately after lunch, Gunji runs across town to the Navy Demobilization Bureau office. While no one can recall the case of a destroyer ramming a PT boat, employees scour the records and soon strike gold. They find the record of Kohei Hanami who reported colliding with and destroying a small American vessel. The now nearly fifty year old retired officer is reportedly living on his family farm in Shokawa, a remote hamlet in Fukushima Prefecture, nearly two hundred miles, more than three hundred twenty kilometers to the northeast. Unfortunately, Hanami's distance from Tokyo proves to be a problem, as post war travel is still difficult in Japan and Jack is scheduled to depart in a matter of days. Arranging a meeting will take more time than Jack has. Gunji considers calling Hanami on Jack's behalf, but phone service in rural Japan also proves unreliable at the time. It is during this time that Jack's Tokyo trip takes a sudden, dire and curious turn. The precise details of the next part of the story are still shrouded in mystery. Jack himself never spoke publicly of the event and the files at the Kennedy Presidential Library strangely lack many details of this part of the trip. Sometime between his lunch with Gunji and his return to the United States six days later, Jack experiences a medical emergency so severe that his brother Bobby, also on the trip, arranges for him to be evacuated to the US military hospital in Okinawa. Funny enough, the same hospital my younger son was born in. There, Bobby sits by Jack's bedside while his fever spikes to over one hundred six degrees Fahrenheit, more than forty one degrees Celsius. A fever this high is when hallucinations and convulsions can appear, followed by coma, brain damage and death if it doesn't break. Bobby is so worried that he calls in a Catholic priest to administer last rites. Jack's fever does eventually break and on november eighth he leaves Japan to return to the US without meeting Commander Hanami. The ever public relations conscious Joe Sr. announces to the newspapers that Jack had to cut his trip short after being taken ill in Okinawa, possibly with malaria, a calculated nod to Jack's wartime service in the Pacific where he first contracted the disease. The reality is, because the family never released specific details, we will likely never know what Jack actually fell ill with. About nine months later in late summer nineteen fifty two, Professor Gunji reads in Time Magazine about Jack's campaign for the Senate. He had stopped his search for Hanami when Jack abruptly fell ill, but now thinks that perhaps introducing the two could help get Jack elected. An in person introduction is probably out of the question, but what about an introduction over telegram and through letters? He tracks down Hanami and asks him to write a note endorsing Jack's Senate bid. In his own words, Hanami is flabbergasted. He clearly remembers the night he ran over the much smaller American craft, but in the years since has assumed all hands were killed. He is stunned to learn that not only did most of the crew survive, but that their captain is now an elected official running for higher office. He is immediately swept back in time. It had been years since I had even thought of the incident involving my ship and the Solomons. I could recall every detail, the sound of the collision as my ship raced over the PT boat, the feel of the damp night air and the smell of the gasoline flames that leapt higher than the deck of my ship, scorching Amagiri's paint. It had seemed impossible that anyone aboard the other ship had survived. Mr Hosono's letter filled me with relief and gratitude that so many Americans had come through that engagement of so long ago. Hanami gladly writes Jack a letter of friendship, telling the tale of PT one hundred nine from his point of view and closing by endorsing his new friend's candidacy for the US Senate. He also includes a wartime self portrait and a picture of the Amagiri. Given the delays in international communication at the time, the letter is delivered to Bobby Kennedy, Jack's campaign manager at his campaign headquarters in mid-October, about three weeks before the election. After showing the letter to Jack and Joe Sr. it is shared with the media along with a press release. Leading with Hanami's endorsement, the release also says in part Soon after the war, recovered from serious injuries he suffered in the sea battle, Kennedy toured most of the world, including Japan, where he took the trouble to find out who commanded the destroyer and almost succeeded in meeting him. Kennedy thought a hand of friendship to a former enemy might win a staunch Japanese spokesman for the United States. The gesture was instinctively understood by Commander Hanami. The Boston Globe runs with the story sharing it with thousands of potential voters. Jack's opponent, Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., has won four straight elections since nineteen thirty two and is initially projected to win this one by three hundred thousand votes, but he runs a weak campaign, stumbles in a debate with Jack, and eventually loses by a narrow margin. After the loss, Lodge admits I felt rather like a man who had been hit by a truck. After his victory, Jack says Hanami's letter was very beneficial to the campaign. Bobby admits it was a rather unusual endorsement, but it did help. After he is inaugurated into the Senate, Jack sends a warm letter of thanks to his former enemy, the man who gave him the greatest trial of his life to this point, on US Senate Letterhead. The two will keep in touch for the rest of Jack's life. Hanami sends best wishes when Jack gets married and sends a message of encouragement when he goes in for a major back surgery. In an interesting parallel, Hanami will also go into politics. He is elected councilman of Shiokawa in nineteen fifty four, a group of villages representing more than thirteen thousand people, and in nineteen sixty two he is elected mayor. In nineteen fifty three, Jack settles into life as a senator and a rising national political star. His World War II experience assumes a central position in his campaign and press images. He keeps a model of PT one hundred nine in his Senate office on this shelf directly behind his desk, and the now famous coconut he had inscribed is in a plastic memento case directly on his desk. This is the same year he marries Jacqueline Bouvier. In nineteen fifty six he just misses out on being selected as the nominee for vice president in Adelaide Stevenson's ultimately unsuccessful bid for the presidency, he has two serious back operations, and publishes the book Profile and Courage, for which he will win the Pulitzer Prize for Biography in nineteen fifty seven. This same year his first child, a daughter named Caroline, is born, and he is selected to serve on the prestigious Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Also in nineteen fifty seven, Jack agrees to serve as the technical advisor on an episode of a CBS TV show called Navy Log that reenacts the PT one hundred nine incident. During a visit to the set near Santa Monica, California, a gossip columnist describes him as giddy with excitement as he watches the cameras roll. Though laughably inaccurate, the low budget program does portray Jack as a war hero to its American audience and helps build his national profile. In nineteen fifty eight, he easily wins reelection to the Senate. When Jack runs for president in nineteen sixty, the PT one hundred nine saga is there again as an essential piece of the campaign. Aside from the story being repeated over and over in the press, thousands of PT one hundred nine tie clips featuring a PT boat with Kennedy sixty inscribed on the bow are handed out at campaign events. Several times he campaigns near the homes of former PT one hundred nine crewmates who speak at his rallies. I feel it is important to mention that Kennedy himself never boasts of or reminisces about his service in any of his campaigns, and he never mentions his wounds. One of the few times he directly says anything about World War II himself is during the Wisconsin primary when a young man asks him how he came to be a war hero. Jack famously quips, it was easy. They sank my boat. During a presidential campaign swing into the South, the Yankee candidate gets a huge boost from the family of Andrew Jackson Kirksy, one of the two men who had been killed in the PT one hundred nine incident. Jack had often looked in on Kirksy's family, mainly via letters and helpful intercessory phone calls, to make sure his widow Chloe and son Jack were taken care of. He personally helped them out with VA survivor benefits and made sure two thousand dollars from his portion of the reader's digest account of the PT one hundred nine event went to the Kirkses. Chloe used that money to buy a house near Warm Springs, Georgia. When Jack meets Chloe and her son during the campaign, a photographer captures the moment the senator shakes hands with the eighteen year old who never really knew his father. I am so glad to see you, he tells Chloe, and I am very glad to meet your son. After a quick photo, Jack takes the two into a private room to catch up. The younger Kurtsy remembers being dazzled by the moment. I couldn't hardly talk to him, but also recalls the genuine interest Jack had for the family. He was mostly interested in asking about my schooling and my life. He wanted to know if anyone had contacted me about veterans' education benefits, which they had not. He was interested in my mom and how she was doing and if everything was okay. He was an extremely compassionate guy. If you had any personal contact with him, you couldn't help but be bowled over. He was bigger than life. Chloe makes sure to tell all her southern neighbors how much her late husband admired his commander and how she thinks he would make a fine president. On november eighth, nineteen sixty, after an extremely close and hard fought election, with less than twenty days before the birth of his second child, JFK Jr., Jack beats fellow World War II Navy veteran and sitting vice president Richard Nixon by just one percent of the popular vote. Joe Sr.'s dream has finally come true. A Kennedy is in the White House. From his first election in nineteen forty six through the nineteen sixty presidential campaign, PT one hundred nine has been front and center in the narrative, so much so that longtime aide Dave Powers, who will serve as Jack's quote unquote special advisor during his presidency will later say without PT one hundred nine, there never would have been a president, John F. Kennedy. The president elect invites all the surviving members of PT one hundred nine to Washington, DC for his inauguration festivities on january twentieth, nineteen sixty one. The former sailors climb aboard a float that features a replica of their now famous lost torpedo boat. This boat happened to be the restored PT seven hundred six. All the crew rode on the PT-109 float in the parade as a surprise to the skipper, recalled Pappy McMahon. As we passed by the presidential reviewing stand, Kennedy stood up, grinned, whipped off his silk hat, and gave us the skipper's signal. This signal, speaking of the PT's engines, is how many skippers would give the order to begin each patrol. Wind em up, rev em up, let's go. Though not on the float, Chloe and Jack Kirksy also attend the inauguration as special guests of the president. Shortly after the inauguration, the director of the Atlanta, Georgia Veterans Administration office is shocked to be told the President of the United States is on the phone. Jack personally orders the director to send a car to the Kirksy's home, bring young Jack to Atlanta, and explain his education benefits to him. Benefits are arranged, and Jack Kirksy attends college accounting courses that ultimately launch his career. In spring nineteen sixty one, Jack sends Chloe an aerial photo of the American cemetery in Manila where the name of her late husband is inscribed on a memorial wall. He writes that if she ever makes it back to Washington, to let him know and he will arrange for tours of the White House and other prominent public places. Another person honored at the inauguration is Professor Gungy. Jack remembers his help during his first run for Senate and invites him and his daughter and gives them seats on the viewing stand directly behind Jack, his wife, and the new vice president, Lyndon Johnson. Five days later, Gunji and his daughter are Jack's first foreign visitors at the White House. They present Jack with a message of congratulations from the Japanese Prime Minister and an ornate ceremonial scroll signed by seventeen veterans who were all on the Amagiri the night it collided with PT one hundred nine, wishing the new president every success. Unsure of how to decorate, the Oval Office quickly fills up with mementos of his time in service and other trappings of a Navy vet, including his SOS coconut which has been turned into a paperweight, a ten inch glass ornament etched with the likeness of PT one hundred nine, and his Navy ID card encased in a glass ashtray. A plaque that Admiral Hyman Rickover, himself a future ghost of Arlington, had given to contain of the commanders of the Polaris nuclear submarine appears on his desk inscribed with a Breton fisherman's prayer O God, thy sea is so great and my boat is so small. On the wall on either side of the fireplace are paintings showing the famous War of eighteen twelve battle between the USS Constitution, nicknamed Old Ironsides, and the British HMS Gourier. Between them on the mantle is a model of the Constitution. Shortly after entering office, an official biography of the PT one hundred nine incident is published. Jack tries to dissuade its author from writing the book telling him the story is played out and about the literally thousands upon thousands of copies of the reader's digest version of events that his father freely distributed every time Jack ran for office, but writer Robert Donovan finally gets the president's blessing. He talks with survivors and travels to the Solomon Islands in Japan to interview other participants and ends up writing PT one hundred nine, John F. Kennedy in World War II, which will be considered the definitive work on the subject for decades to come. Being blessed off on by the president, the account is highly favorable of Jack and becomes a major bestseller. PR Master Joe Sr. himself couldn't have written a better opening line of the New York Times review of the book. This is a book that should be read by any American who is worried how John Fitzgerald Kennedy will react in time of deep, terrifying crisis. This review was published about six months after the Bay of Pigs fiasco and the failed Kennedy approved attempt to remove Fidel Castro and the Communists from power in Cuba and about one year prior to the Cuban Missile Crisis, two events that I am not going to get into here because it would take another forty five episodes to cover and quite frankly, ain't nobody got time for that. A movie adaptation quickly follows publication of the book and Joe Sr. is closely involved in the project until he suffers a debilitating stroke just before Christmas nineteen sixty one, which incapacitates him until his death in nineteen sixty nine. The project receives an unprecedented level of White House involvement in a movie production and is the first time a major studio makes a film about a sitting president. Jack goes so far as to make suggestions to star Cliff Robertson on how he should comb and color his hair. For her part, Jackie Kennedy wants actor Warren Beatty to play her husband, but Beatty correctly senses that the movie is doomed. Aside from micromanagement by the White House, it is plagued with script problems, production delays, and more than one director being fired mid project. In the end, the movie that costs about six and a half million dollars to produce is considered a flop and loses one million dollars at the box office. A few weeks after his inauguration, Jack receives a surprising letter from Buku Gasa, one of the Solomon Islanders who helped rescue him nearly twenty years earlier. Buku wanted to share his happiness with Jack's election. He writes This is my joy that you are now president of the United States of America. It was not in my strength that I and my friend were able to rescue you in that time of war, but in the strength of God we were able to help you. Jack writes back a fond letter that reads I can't tell you how delighted I am to know that you are well and prospering in your home so many thousands of miles away from Washington. Like you, I am eternally grateful for the act of divine providence which brought me and my companions together with you and your friend who so valorously effected our rescue during time of war. Needless to say I am deeply moved by your expressions and I hope that the new responsibilities which are mine may be executed for the benefit of my own countrymen and the welfare of all our brothers in Christ. You will always have a special place in my mind and in my heart, and I wish you and your people continued prosperity and good health as president, Jack still thinks of traveling to Japan and meeting with Commander Hanami. In early nineteen sixty two Jack sends his brother Bobby in his capacity as US Attorney General and Bobby's wife Ethel on an official visit to Japan. The trip is meant to pave the way for a later presidential state visit, the first by a US president to Japan in the election year of nineteen sixty four. The first stop on the tour is at Waseda University in the heart of Tokyo. When Bobby Ethel, the US Ambassador, a few State Department officials and no security enter an auditorium that seats fifteen hundred people for a live televised speech by Bobby, they are immediately engulfed in Bedlam. Three thousand people have crammed in to see the US delegation, including more than one thousand young communist protesters yelling things like free Okinawa, the lone Japanese prefecture still under US control and Kennedy go home at the top of their lungs. Anti communist supporters are yelling at the protesters, and others who want to hear what the Americans have to say are yelling at both sides to be quiet. One heckler in particular, a student named Yuzo Tachia, is front and center yelling over everything Bobby is trying to say. Instead of getting flustered or mad, Bobby speaks directly to the young man. There is a gentleman down in the front who evidently disagrees with me. If he will ask a single question, I will try to give an answer. Bobby invites him up on stage and shocks the audience and the millions of television viewers watching at home. He shakes the protester's hand and politely bows to him. Like a patient older brother, Bobby puts one hand on Yuzo's shoulder and holds a heavy microphone in the other and says you go first. Yuzo races through a ten minute diatribe on a list of hot button issues including nuclear war, the occupation of Okinawa, Article nine of the Japanese Constitution renouncing a military, the CIA's involvement in the Bay of Pigs invasion, and the early stages of America's intervention in Vietnam. When he finishes, Bobby gives a calm, off the cuff, point by point reply to Yuzo's arguments while the young man stands on stage beside the American. He begins by saying We in America believe that we should have divergences of views. We believe that everyone has the right to express himself. We believe that young people have the right to speak out and give their views and ideas we believe that opposition is important. It's only through a discussion of issues and questions that my country can determine in what direction it should go. This is not true of other countries, he argues would it be possible for somebody in a communist country to get up and oppose the government of that country? He explains I am visiting Japan to learn and find out from young people such as yourself what your views are as far as Japan is concerned and as far as the future of the world is concerned. The audience erupted into cheers and this became one of the biggest press stories of the trip recalls Susie Wilson, a journalist and friend of Ethel's who accompanies the Kennedys on the trip. He was not ruffled or angry, he knew what he wanted to say and he spoke from the heart about what he thought was right. This interaction sets the tone for the rest of the trip. Everywhere they go Bobby and Ethel are welcomed by large cheering crowds and the couple take time to speak to everyone from the famous to the unknowns everywhere they go. Their genuine interest wins over the country. As Dartmouth professor of government Jennifer Lind wrote Robert Kennedy's visit and the networks and institutions it created helped knit the US and Japanese societies closer together. Two countries once dismissed as impossible allies forged through careful and persistent diplomacy a durable and warm relationship. The trip heralded a new era in US Japanese relations. On the third day of the trip, Bobby meets a local mayor he comes to realize is the former commander Kohei Hanami. He immediately unhooks his PT one hundred nine tie clip and hands it to the man who nearly killed his brother. Hanami gives Bobby a painting of Mount Fuji to take back to Washington In the end, Jack never gets to meet with Hanami. The plans for his historic state visit to Japan are canceled when President Kennedy is assassinated in Dallas, Texas on november twenty second, nineteen sixty three The epilogue of William Doyle's twenty fifteen biography PT one hundred nine says that when Jack was killed, the Japanese response to the assassination was overwhelming. The US Embassy in Tokyo was deluged with condolence letters and thousands of people flocked to a memorial mass for the fallen friend of Japan. In a small Japanese town early in the morning on november twenty third, Kohei Hanami was awakened by a phone call. I have terrible news cried a neighbor. Your friend, the American president, has been assassinated Nonsense replied Hanami. How do you know? I stayed up to watch the first television program from the United States relayed by satellite. The program was interrupted for a news flash I don't believe it, Hanami retorted. Assassinations may occur in some other countries but not in the United States Soon after this call, a reporter called Hanami and confirmed the terrible news Hanami was devastated Who will lead the world to peace? he wondered What will happen to all of us? He felt sympathy for Kennedy's wife and little children. If only Kennedy had come to Japan instead of going to Dallas, Hanami thought, his life might have been spared Hanami was seized with a feeling of zanen, a Japanese word that describes emotions of melancholy, pity and disappointment over the idea that Kennedy escaped death in war by a few inches, but fell victim to a violent death in peacetime. Hanami's neighbors called upon his home, offering condolences as if one of his own family members had died. A few days later he traveled to Tokyo by train, attended memorial ceremonies and paid his respects at the American embassy There are more stories I could tell about Jack Kennedy. I could have gone into detail about the Bay of Pigs, I could talk about the Cuban Missile Crisis or his other showdowns with Khrushchev in Berlin and Laos, but I feel that all of those topics have been thoroughly covered by professionals much smarter and much more talented than I. I really just wanted to talk about how JFK's time in the Navy, particularly the PT one hundred nine incident, really shaped much of the rest of his life. I have now been out of the military almost as long as I was in it. This May will be the twentieth anniversary of my commissioning and while I can honestly say that with the exception of the many wonderful people that I was privileged to serve with, there's not a lot about the army that I miss. I never liked running. I still wake up earlier than I would like to for work every day, but this is my own fault since I am fortunate enough to set my own schedule I just don't like fighting with rush hour traffic. So I don't miss getting up at zero dark thirty, not that I would if I was able to sleep in a little more and I certainly don't miss the months long deployments to hostile parts of the world that separated me from my family. But despite all that I don't miss, I have to admit that for better or for worse, like Jack, my time in the service has really shaped the person I am today too. Okay, so here is the plan for the next probably two episodes. Next week I will give brief postwar vignettes about the other survivors of PT one hundred nine. Full transparency I haven't finished it yet so there's always a chance it will stretch into two episodes. After that I am going to repost episode thirteen, which was recorded I don't know, it feels like a million years ago, but that was the time I actually told the story of JFK's funeral. Beyond that I am still toying with a few ideas but as always thank you so much for your support. Please feel free to reach out on Facebook or at ghostsofarlington at gmail.com if you have any thoughts or questions about the podcast. Please share these stories with friends who might be interested and remember fear not death for the sooner we die the longer we shall be immortal