SERVICE BEYOND THE SEAS ADVANCED BASES, EXPEDITIONS, AND LANDING OPERATIONS - Section II
SERVICE BEYOND THE SEAS
ADVANCED BASES, EXPEDITIONS, AND LANDING OPERATIONS
1899-1923
SECTION TWO
SHAPING THEORY
After twelve years in the billet, Charles Heywood retired from the post of Brigadier General Commandant of the Marine Corps in 1903. When he took charge of the service, it had 77 officers, and 2,100 enlisted men. When he retired, 278 officers, and 7,532 Marines composed the Corps. He commanded the service through the Greer Board, the Guantanamo landing, and an unprecedented expansion. He also saw a company commander from the Cuban landing, George Elliot, replace him in the top post five years later.
The Navy continued working on landing operations with the Army in Fleet Exercises and associated landings in New England in the summer of 1903. Ten Marine officers acted as umpires for the exercises, observing how permanent Army fortifications “fought” the Atlantic Fleet. These would be considered “joint operations” these days and occurred simultaneously to the General Board of the Navy and the Army’s General Staff convening the Joint Army-Navy Board.[1]
And as much as the Navy and Marine Corps tried to observe their own mandate, the real world intruded on the training for the advanced base mission. Navy Secretary William Moody ordered the 1ST Marine Battalion, composed of Marines from Brooklyn, League Island, DC, and Annapolis, aboard USS PANTHER in September of 1902. The battalion, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Benjamin R. Russell, USMC, sailed for Colon, Columbia, arriving 11 days after the call-up. After Marines of the 1st Battalion landed, Captain Dion Williams secured the railroad across the Panamanian Isthmus, Major George Barnett, USMC, commanded a company at Colon while Russell took the rest to Panama City. A second battalion, under Colonel Percival C. Pope, USMC, was gathered at Norfolk in the familiar ad hoc fashion, stripping all available hands from the Navy Yards of the east coast. Having quelled disorder, and debilitated by fever and dysentery, the 1st Battalion proceeded to Culebra for the winter exercises, but they were too ill to participate. They returned to the states in December 1902.
The 2nd Battalion, under Pope, and aboard USS PRAIRIE, proceeded to Culebra for the exercises, arriving in late November. After coordinating with the caretaker on the island, Lieutenant Leof M. Harding, USMC, three camps were set up on the island, Roosevelt, Dewey, and Coghlan. Pope’s Marines set up the 4-inch and 5-inch guns stored on the island earlier in the year, strung wire, dug revetments and magazines, built roads, and established a defense in depth, “to fortify the island, according to plans worked out by the Naval War College.”[2]. The 2nd Battalion was joined by a company of Marines from Philadelphia, under the command of Captain Smedley Butler, later in the month. In his autobiography, Smedley Butler continued:
“We sweated and heaved to mount four and five-inch guns for the defense of the island from almost the moment we arrived. Each gun weighed several tons. It was no joke to drag those guns up hills four hundred feet high. We also had docks to build, and other jobs to occupy us, so that by the first of December we had not made much headway toward mounting the guns and digging emplacements for powder magazines.”
To show up the Marines, the squadron commander sent his best gun crews ashore to compete with the Marines to haul and assemble 15 tons of guns and platforms. In front of God, Admiral Dewey, and the entire fleet, Butler’s Marines assembled and fired their gun before the Bluejackets managed to get their gun up the hill.
The Marines continued making the camps on Culebra more robust, building a storehouse for the Navy, extending the wharves, constructing duckboard sidewalks, and digging a canal from Great Harbor to Target Bay. While the lumber for barracks and a mess hall was received and cut for assembly, the Marines and Navy medical personnel remained under canvas. Culebra remained important to the Navy as it had not established a permanent base at Guantanamo; despite American hegemony in the Caribbean, Cuba was still a quasi-independent nation, engaged in negotiations with the U.S. over the potentially leasing coaling stations.[3]
Along with some of the Marines of the advanced base unit, much of the materiel used in setting up the defense were delivered to Culebra aboard USS STERLING. The concept of “combat loading” cargo — placing materials aboard in a sequence and manner so that it can be offloaded in the most expeditious and tactical manner — had not been considered by the Navy stevedores who loaded supplies collected from Washington, New York, Newport, Rock Island, and Frankfort. As goods arrived at the various piers, Navy stevedores didn’t even conduct an inventory. As a result of the lack of preparation and planning, it took Marines at Culebra weeks to unload STERLING.[4]
In developing landing operation doctrine, the Navy and Marines would start to address issues that exist to this day. Combat loading is an obvious, but essential one. Possibly as important is the relationship between the ship’s commanding officer , the CO, and the commanding officer of embarked troops, or CO Troops. When USS PANTHER was transporting Huntington’s Battalion from Brooklyn to Key West to Guantanamo, the relationship between the ship’s captain and XO, and the embarked Marines, was reportedly toxic. Of course, Marines are obligated to complain about the conditions of every ship they’ve ever sailed upon, but PANTHER’s CO, Commander George C. Reiter, USN, went out of his way to show his disdain for the Marines in the way he treated them. He may have had a chip on his shoulder — he’d spent the previous decade tucked away in lighthouse duty after an embarrassing incident in Guatemala — the Barrundia Affair[5]— or didn’t want to spend the war providing taxi service for a bunch of Marines, but he did go out of his way to make Huntington and the embarked Marines miserable; Marines were not allowed on deck, and were forced to eat meals in shifts, which meant they stood in line a fair portion of the day. Conditions on PANTHER were bad enough — she was a merchant steamer retrofitted to be a troop transport cum unprotected cruiser — and was originally equipped with only 400 racks for 600 Marines, but she wasn’t laid out in a manner that made loading and off-loading easy. When she arrived at Guantanamo at noon on 10 June, 1898, Huntington’s Marines immediately turned to, offloading the vessel of all the tentage, rations, water, shovels, axes, barrows, timber, weapons and ammunition; Commander Reiter ordered his sailors to not assist in the offload. Reiter also indicated that he was going to keep a portion of Huntington’s ammunition on board as ballast in the ship’s hold. Huntington appealed this idiocy to the taskforce commander, Commander Bowman McCalla, who told Reiter that he would offer and provide the Marines every bit of assistance they requested or required. This relationship was a harbinger of how the interaction between two commands aboard ship, ship’s CO and CO Troops, would remain a challenge to Navy-Marine relations for decades.
Admiral Dewey bore witness to the successes and failures of the 1902 Fleet Exercises at Culebra. As he took leave of the General Board to observe the fleet maneuvers in the Caribbean, tensions between Great Britain, Germany, and Venezuela peaked. This crisis would result in the Roosevelt administrations interest in policing the hemisphere to a greater extent, with the aim of keeping European powers out of Caribbean waters. In the wake of the exercises Dewey commented on how Culebra was an excellent advanced base for the Navy and renewed his negative attitude towards the Kaiser’s Navy. His bias against the Germans remained after his return from Manila Bay in the summer of 1898.[6]
THE FLOATING BATTALION OF THE ATLANTIC FLEET[7]
PRAIRIE brought most of the 2nd Battalion back to the states in early January 1903, the remainder boarded PANTHER, and participated in Army-Navy Maneuvers at Frenchman Bay, Maine, in the summer of that year. After returning to League Island the 2nd Battalion was reinforced with a company of new recruits. Before the end of October 1903, newly under the command of Major John A. Lejeune, the 2nd Battalion transferred to USS DIXIE and sailed from Philadelphia for Guantanamo Bay. The Marines’ experience aboard USS PANTHER highlighted one of the most fundamental questions regarding Marines embarked aboard Navy transports; who’s in charge. Unlike Marines serving in the security guard aboard a battleship or cruiser, the Marines aboard a transport are not part of the ship’s crew; embarked Marines have training and preparations they need to complete prior to making a landing. Within the confines of a ship, they have drill, classes, and physical training to accomplish. Embarked Marines believe the ship’s CO and crew should understand this. And, once ashore, a Marine officer — CO Troops — commanding the unit needs to be the ultimate arbiter of command. The relationship between the ship’s CO, and CO Troops, and boundaries, can make or break an operation.
In his memoirs, Lejeune highlights the relationship he developed with DIXIE’s executive officer. Lejeune’s stated goal in developing a good relationship with the Navy was in optimizing the battalion’s “readiness for service on shore in the event of an emergency,” and to clear up command and control of his unit, both at sea and on shore. DIXIE and the 2ndBattalion diverted from Guantanamo, making port at Kingston, Jamaica to take on coal, before sailing for the Isthmus of Panama. In Colon, the 2nd Battalion of Marines reinforced the Marines of USS NASHVILLE, who’d been landed to protect American interests and the American owned railroad on the isthmus. The presence of a battalion of Marines persuaded Columbian forces to disengage, leaving the Panamanian rebels to their own accords.
The rebel government of Panama declared their independence on November 3, 1903; on November 13, the U.S. recognized Panama; on November 18 the U.S. and Panama signed the Hay-Buana-Varilla Treaty, granting the U.S. the Panama Canal Zone.[8] Panama granted President Roosevelt what their former countrymen in the Columbian government weren’t willing to; control of a ten-mile wide canal zone from the Pacific to the Atlantic. Many viewed a canal between east and west as the key to U.S. hegemony in the western hemisphere.
Having a battalion of Marines embarked on a Navy transport, at the ready to respond to crises beyond the seas, was essential to the relatively bloodless change in government in the Columbian province of Panama. The 2nd Battalion was well trained, and organized, and equipped for most foreseeable expeditionary evolutions, short of seizing and defending an advanced base. The Marines had prior experience in sending battalions to Panama; in 1885, they’d sent two, that time to defend the railway. But by having a sea-going battalion at the ready, and already aboard ship, meant they didn’t have to strip the barracks at the Navy yards to do so. Lejeune’s 2nd Battalion landed and went into camp at Emperador (Empire, midway across the canal zone, on the rail line) in early December 1903, and was joined by an expeditionary battalion not long thereafter, to dissuade Columbia from attempting to overthrow the new Panamanian government.
Marines continued with their traditional ship’s guard landing party operations, landing in March of 1903 in Honduras, and in April 1903 in the Dominican Republic. Marines and sailors from BROOKLYN, SAN FRANCISCO, and MACHIAS landed in Djibouti, French Somaliland, to escort a diplomatic delegation across the desert of Abyssinia to Addis Ababa during the end of 1903 and beginning of 1904. As long as Marines remained dispatched aboard ships, the Navy would employ them in landing parties, shoulder to shoulder with Bluejackets. It’s unclear how the Navy would have handled the emergencies that cropped up from time to time if they didn’t have a Marine Corps.
A FORWARD BASE FOR ASIA
Five years after defeating the Spanish Armada, the U.S. Navy in the Philippines had spread itself out to ten stations, decentralizing their coaling assets for the Pacific and Asiatic Fleets while they decided where their central naval station would be located. The dispersion of bases also helped the Navy in assisting the Army fight rebels across the vast archipelago. The General Board, under the guidance of Admiral George Dewey was particularly interested in the Advanced Base Force mission on the Asiatic Station. As Navy war planners were scheming out the defense of U.S. holdings, they began to recognize that the Philippines were much closer to the sphere of influence of Japan than to the American west coast. With this in mind, the board recommended that the Navy and Marines take Grande Island, at the mouth of Subig (Subic) Bay in December of 1902, and the following January.[9] Two hundred Marines from the 2ndRegiment at Cavite set out on with the weapons and equipment needed to fortify and defend the island. Subic had been of interest to naval leaders because it offered a better deep water anchorage than did the water off Cavite in Manila Bay. Admiral Dewey remained concerned about German expansionism in the Pacific islands. Germany had made moves during the war with Spain to exert influence in the Philippines, and had purchased Spain’s other Pacific possessions in the summer of 1898. The European interest and presence in the western Pacific was on full display during the international relief of Pekin during the Boxer Rebellion. German forces were active in the relief, and the Kaiser shipped a large force of troops to China upon the end of hostilities. The Navy hadn’t yet determined who their major competitor in the Philippines would be. The U.S. Army maintained a greater presence in the Philippines, due to their operations against Filipino rebels, so decisions about where the Navy would establish its great western base affected the Army locally, as Army Coastal Artillery units would be the ones defending any permanent Navy installation. In the consideration of any temporary advanced bases required in future conflicts, the General Board recommended the command of the Asiatic Squadron stage weapons and gear required by the Advanced Base Force Marines at Cavite.[10]
The 1902-03 Fleet Exercise in the Philippines pointed out that the advanced base mission would require perpetual maintenance, ongoing training, and additional thought on the composition and deployment of the force. Despite having weapons and materials stored at the Cavite Naval Station, their inventory was incomplete, and unserviceable. When two hundred Marines of the shore-based 2d Regiment of the 1st Brigade of Marines traveled from Cavite to Subic Bay aboard the transport ZAFIRO, and landed at Grande Island, they brought with them deck guns (naval rifles) to set up on hilltops to protect minefields laid by ships of the fleet in the east and west channels of the bay. These Marines moved four 6-pounder guns from Cavite storage, including associated mounts and heavy timber-platforms, and manhandled them up steep hillsides to firing positions. Marines from USS VICKSBURG and ANNAPOLIS dismounted two 4-inch guns from their ships and landed them in support of Cavite’s Marines. All rigging, shears, rollers, and lumber required to move guns was transported with the guns. The shore-based automobile torpedoes — torpedoes launched from dry land using compressed air — were not to be found in the inventory at Cavite; the guns and mines that the Asiatic squadron had on hand had to suffice. A search of the former Spanish facility at Olongopo turned up 500 yards of industrial railway track, and three bogies, upon which the Marines moved the guns, mounts and platforms up the steep slopes of Grande Island.
Unfortunately, when it came to the timber platforms used by the Marines, naval engineers had “over engineered” the platforms. The decks, composed of 12”x12” timbers bolted together, were too large and heavy to move by hand; it was found that 30 Marines could not lift an assembled platform. Double layering of these timbers was not required, one layer would have been enough. Once the Marines had done all the heavy lifting, Bluejackets landed, and made the technical adjustments of the guns on their mounts, as they were more experienced with the traverse and elevation, and sighting mechanisms of naval rifles than did the Cavite Marines.
After the initial installation, the Navy reviewed remaining guns, mounts, and platforms in storage at Cavite, and determined that the 6-inch guns in storage, and associated mounts, were too large and heavy for deployment by Marines lacking specialized lifting equipment. The Navy also determined that more specialized industrial rail equipment would be required to move guns and accoutrement in the future. It took the Marines five days to erect the weapons, and after the defenses were tested by mock battle, Navy umpires judged the installation effective. They found that the searchlights of the Navy ships tasked with assisting in the defense of the minefields were anemic and would require an upgrade in intensity and quantity. With the inspection completed, the Marines broke down the defenses. Marines from VICKSBURG and ANNAPOLIS returned to their ships, and a company of the Cavite Marines transferred to the new navy station at Olongapo.[11]
Marine officers had been exposed to some of the technical aspects of the Advanced Base Force mission for years. The syllabus of the School of Application, which always attempted to provide Marine officers with a well-rounded course of training to cover many inevitabilities of service, covered many of the new skills required in the advanced base mission, including the United States Navy Code of Visual and Sound Signaling, gunnery drill for naval guns, Bureau of Ordnance material on submarine mines and countermining, field engineering for beach defenses, and military topography. When Colonel Commandant Charles Heywood established the school in 1891, he was seeking to boost professionalism in the junior officer and NCO ranks. Heywood regarded the school as essential to the improvement to the Corps, and classes had been held up until when the war with Spain began.
In October, Brigadier General Commandant Charles Heywood left the Marine Corps at the mandatory retirement age of 64. Breveted twice during the Civil War for bravery, his lasting mark was in accepting the charge of the Advanced Base Force mission, and overseeing the sometimes-contentious deployment of ready battalions aboard Navy transports. The Marine Corps he turned over to Brigadier General George Elliot was nearly four times larger than the service he took control of in 1891.[12]
Elliot had been a company commander in Huntington’s battalion at Guantanamo in 1898. Slightly older than the cohort of Marine officers who’d graduated from Annapolis, Elliot had washed out of West Point in 1870, but took a commission in the Marines shortly after. Since that point, he experienced the standard officer career path; numerous periods of sea duty interrupted by assignments ashore in the barracks aboard navy yards.
By the end of 1903, the Corps’ strength was at 278 officers and 7532 men. The Marine Corps had been a key element in supporting the rebellion in the Columbian province of Panama, enabling President Roosevelt to land a treaty that would create the Panama Canal. Landing Marines in battalion sized units was not entirely novel, but the instance of keeping the 2nd Battalion whole and embarked was. Astute observers must have recognized keeping forward deployed forces in readiness and aboard ship contributed to meeting the goals of American naval power.
In January 1904 the two expeditionary battalions ashore in Panama formed a brigade with two battalions fresh from the United States. Brigadier General Commandant George Elliot, who’d just succeeded Charles Heywood, commanded the brigade. The 1st Regiment was commanded by Colonel William P. Biddle, with Major John Lejeune commanding the 1st Battalion and Major Eli K. Cole the 2nd. The 2nd Regiment was commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Littleton W.T. Waller — already famous for his expedition to Samar, and the relief of Pekin during the Boxer Rebellion. Major James E. Mahoney and Major Louis C. Lucas commanding the 1st and 2nd battalions of his regiment.
The Panama expedition was significant because, despite the lack of hostilities, Brigadier General Elliot and the U.S. Navy had delivered 1,400 Marines to forward bases where their mere presence stabilized the political situation in a foreign country. While ashore, the brigade took to honing their skills and acclimating themselves to the tropics. Rifle ranges were laid out, and the Marines patrolled the jungle, searching for Columbian interlopers. Not advertised as a mission of this expedition was that Elliot’s 1st Provisional Brigade was prepared to take the fight to Colombia on its own soil. When Elliot traveled from League Island to Colon, he carried landing plans for the brigade to take Cartagena[13]. The Joint Army and Navy Board had delivered these plans to Roosevelt after the U.S. recognized the new state of Panama, anticipating Colombia pushback in the Pacific and Caribbean.
The presence of the brigade gave the U.S. the time to arrive at a protection treaty with Panama, and Columbia took no actions against the U.S. In February 1904 the Brigade stood down, with Lejeune remaining in command of his independent battalion at Emperador. The rest of the brigade returned to the barracks stateside from whence they came, and others reported to Guantanamo to take part in the winter fleet exercises. The supplies and material for future expeditions was put in storage at the League Island barracks.
Marines and Bluejackets made several landings between the fall of 1903 and February of 1904 at Santo Domingo, to protect American citizens and the consulate. On February 11, 1904, Dominican insurgents fired from shore on the American steamer SS NEW YORK. The rifle fire injured no one, but USS COLUMBIA and NEWARK landed their Marine guards and fired on insurgent positions with the ships’ 4-inch guns for half an hour. The landing parties withdrew that night. In Morocco, Captain John Twiggs Myers, USMC, who defended the Pekin Legation for 55 days during the Boxer Rebellion, landed in Tangier with BROOKLYN’s Marine guard to secure the U.S. Consulate in May and June.
In January of 1904, USS ZAFIRO sailed from Olongopo to Seoul, Korea, landing a company of 102 Marines and establishing security for the legation. As intended, having Marines forward deployed to the Philippines Territory allowed the U.S. to maintain the “Open Door” on the mainland. Due to the large commitment at the start of the year in Panama, the ongoing commitments at 10 shore stations in the Philippines, as well as rotating Marines in and out of the islands, and commitments at the other new Pacific shore stations — Hawai’i, Guam, Samoa, and Midway Island — Commandant Elliot excused his service from participating in the Winter Caribbean Exercises. Given the amount of interest the naval war between Japan and Russia generated, and a seeming resolution of issues with Germany over Venezuela, a focus on the Pacific could probably have been expected. In Kuehne’s history of the General Board he noted,
“By the end of 1904 it had produced a whopping forty-three different studies. Of these, nearly one-third were on base and advanced base topics, five were on fleet composition and number, five addressed equipment and ordnance, four focused on Marine Corps issues, and three were on naval tactics.”[14]
Japan attacked the Russians early in 1904, killing a Russian fleet commander, landing troops in Korea, and bottling up the remaining Russian ships in Port Arthur. President Roosevelt’s concerns about Japan’s burgeoning strength in Asia dated back to 1897, in his days as Assistant Secretary of the Navy, when he asked for plans to defend Hawai’i.
When Colonel George C. Reid retired from the General Board in 1904, Admiral Dewey opted to not install another Marine to replace him.[15] This may have been due to Commandant Elliott’s irascibility and intra-service politicking the year prior. Despite any friction between the Board and the Elliot, the board remained committed to the advanced base mission; in September, the board asked the commandants of the navy yards and stations where any advanced base materials and ordnance were stored and directed them to submit detailed inventories of materials on hand.[16] With the service already manned to its largest size ever, at around 7800, Commandant Elliott requested another 1200 Marines to staff new ships, and new stations. Not accounting for rotations, 1300 Marines were serving in the Philippines by that point. Despite an unprecedented period of growth, the Corps remained under strain from an accelerated operational tempo.
ADVANCED BASES AND THE ARMY
On July 18, 1903, Secretary of the Navy William H. Moody issued General Order 136, establishing The Joint Army and Navy Board. This move was in response to the potential of general war breaking out, involving Great Britain and Japan facing off against Germany, France, and Russia. Admiral Henry Clay Taylor, chief of the Bureau of Navigation, pushed for increased coordination between the two services. Lessons learned in the war with Spain, and operations in the Philippines showed that the two services were often at odds operationally, and strategically. Given the vast expanse of the ocean that protected the United States, the Army was by nature a reactive, constabulary force, dependent on the support of the Navy and secure transport of troops to war. At a time when the Navy was looking outwards, intent on becoming competitive with the navies of the great powers in the 1880s and 1890s, the Army remained engaged in closing the western frontier. In a country averse to large, standing armies, and with the memory of the carnage of the Civil War omnipresent, the Army was at a cultural disadvantage where the Navy generated excitement over technology and exploration. Strategically, maritime diplomacy and naval operations flex between offensive or defensive, dependent on “American interests, fleet locations, cruising range, and the location of advanced bases. Army operations of the day were dependent on “timetables for mobilization and embarkation in support of navy-designed offensives.”[17] These conditions set the stage for the American conduct in the war of 1898 and would most likely repeat itself should war break out in the Pacific or Caribbean.
And while Germany remained a challenge in the Pacific, California nativism created heightened friction with Japan, and the Japanese defeat of Russia triggered warning alarms in the U.S.. Navy and Army planners differed on where the threat to the U.S. dwelt. The newly acquired Panama Canal Zone and Philippines garrisons were of utmost importance to the Army, as they were semi-defendable by land; the Navy concerned itself with control of the western Pacific, and focused on fleet development and advanced bases.
The discussion on advanced bases in the Philippines started almost immediately after the creation of the General Board in 1900. Members of the Board, as well as Theodore Roosevelt when he became Vice President, pushed for a major base at Olongapo, a village on a deep-water harbor sixty miles to the northwest of Manila. The army found this position flawed, as it was open to an over-land attack from the rear. The Russian failure in 1904 at Port Arthur did little to dissuade anyone to the notion that with a concerted landing operation it was possible to take a harbor from landside.[18] As a result, the General Board recommended reinforcing Olongopo and Subig Bay to the point where they could withstand attacks for 90 days, which was the time they estimated it would take the Army would to mobilize, and travel to the Philippines from the West Coast.
Critics of this plan, eventually identified as War Plan Orange, included Major General Leonard Wood, USA, a close friend and mentor to President Theodore Roosevelt. Wood, commanding the Philippine Division, and William Howard Taft, Governor General of the Philippines, faced off against Admiral Dewey, the General Board, and Navy planners and convinced President Roosevelt to abandon the fortification of Subig Bay. The Army preferred to fortify the approaches to Manila Bay, and recommended the creation of a harbor for the Navy on the island of Corregidor; no one in the Army wanted a naval base spoiling the waterfront and commercial port of Manila. The Navy and Army remained divided on how to defend the key navy base in the western Pacific. So, as these debates continued, the Navy put the Marines to work, erecting temporary fortifications to defend the fleet at Subig Bay.
With an eye on having ready relief forces for any emergency in the western Pacific, the General Board instructed Commandant Elliot to station two battalions at the Mare Island Navy Yard, just north of San Francisco, in 1905. The Marine garrison at Olongopo provided the 100-man detachment relieving the Army as the legation guard at Peking. The Army had been at Peking since the end of the Boxer Rebellion; the relief began a long relationship between the Marines, and China only ending when the communists took power. In Philadelphia, the Quartermaster Department directed the construction of a new warehouse from which they could supply expeditions and ships’ guards with tentage, equipment, rations, and arms, in deployments from China to Cuba. Lejeune’s battalion in Panama dealt with an attempted coup conducted by the Panamanian Army against its government, by deploying a company of Marines to Ancon, Panama from its base in the canal zone.
With an eye towards having an advanced base unit ready to deploy at any time, the General Board directed Commandant Elliot to determine where he had buildings available to store the equipment of the advanced base unit. The board told him to review facilities at both Subig Bay, and at a yet-to-be-determined location on the eastern seaboard of the United States. The Board also took the step to designate the Marine Corps as the unit committed to the advance base force mission — the Army would not be involved in the seizure or defense of temporary advanced bases for the Navy.[19]
The defeat of the Russian fleet at Tsushima in May of 1905 energized the imagination of war planners at the Naval War College, echoing the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1898. Like the Spanish, the Russians attempted to conduct naval operations at distances far beyond their organic logistics. Sailing half-way around the planet to engage in a decisive battle requires more than a belief in one’s own moral superiority, so the need for advanced bases was nowhere as evident as it was in the Tsushima Strait. If the U.S. Navy was going to be able to react to an attack in the Philippines, or an attack on U.S. interests in China, the ability to take, and defend, advanced bases for the fleet would be most essential. In light of Tsushima, the establishment of an advanced base was not a defensive measure; it was a mission decidedly essential to offensive operations.
Training Marines and professional development were essential to the continued development of the Corps; in January of 1905, Dion Williams was assigned to permanent staff at the Naval War College, “as a lecturer and instructor in military matters, as well as military advisor in matters connected with land operations, and to perform such military work as may, from time to time, be referred to the college by the general board.” Captain John Twiggs Myers, USMC, of Boxer Rebellion fame, attended the summer course at the NWC, before being assigned as an instructor at the NCO school in DC. In May, 29 officers, including Lieutenant Logan Feland, and 24 NCOs, attended a five week course in “submarine mines” at the Navy Torpedo School in Newport; submarine mines were just one layer in the development of the defense of advanced bases, along with naval rifles, machine guns, and engineered obstacles.
At the Naval War College, planners received first-hand information on the Russo-Japanese war from Office of Naval Intelligence dispatches routed through the Philippines. The three surviving Russian warships from the Battle of Tsushima retreated to Manila after the destruction of the Baltic Fleet. Subic Bay was establishing itself as a major key to U.S. defenses in the western Pacific, but manning in the Philippines remained an issue, even with two-year rotations of individual Marines. The ability of the Brigade in the Philippines to keep up the strength depended on the Department of the Navy, and the decisions in made in regards to expeditions it dispatched Marines upon. Commandant Elliot testified to this before Congress in January, and that the “Corps could best carry out the advanced base mission because the Marines ‘can get there quicker than the Army can.”[20]
The Navy’s Bureau of Navigation, the loci of doctrine, operations, and tactical training, published the latest iteration of “The Landing Force and Small Arms Instruction”, a composition of existing drill manuals and instructions for Navy officers. This edition was much like what the Navy has been promulgating since they started considering printed instructions for landing-parties in the 1880s. This time, the board composing the manual had no Marine representation, and was headed up by Lieutenants-Commander William Fullam and William Sims, both members of the naval reform movement; neither man was shy about their desire to remove Marines from shipboard postings.[21]
During December the Marine battalion stationed in the Panama Canal zone was rotated back to the states and replaced by a fresh battalion under the command of Major Charles G. Long, USMC; building upon efforts to maintain morale of Marines stationed in the Philippines , a rotation like this was a “unit deployment program” decades before it was formalized during the Cold War.
In January of 1906, Major General Commandant George F. Elliot appeared before Congress again; again pleading for an increase in the size of the Marine Corps, due to its expanded advanced base mission, continued commitments in the Philippines, and the increasing size of the Navy. More ships required additional Marines to provide shipboard security. And he took the time to explain the advanced base mission to the committee as thus:
“If we should go to war anywhere, we should be obliged to hold some port so that the torpedo boats might have some place to rest. The ships of the fleet can go into a harbor that is not thoroughly protected, and they would put the marines ashore from the transports and then the marines would get together and throw up a temporary fortification.”[22]
The General Board had advised Elliot that the Marine Corps was exclusively the service the Navy wanted to accomplish the advanced base mission, and they would not be using the Marines assigned to ships guards to do so.[23]
In July of 1906, the Journal of the U.S. Infantry Association, (presently INFANTRY), published an article written by Major Dion Williams, USMC, titled “Military Landing Operations”. The article shows a certain level of sophistication in landing doctrine of the time, given so little had been put to paper in the form of manuals or formal doctrine. Williams had his own experience with landing parties — he led Marines ashore at Cavite following Dewey’s victory at Manila Bay and had been an instructor on landing operations at the Naval War College. His writing reflects the experience of the landings at Guantanamo, as well as the Army’s experiences in Cuba and Puerto Rico, and those encountered in various fleet exercises. He also reflects on the decades of “corporate knowledge” gained by Marines and Bluejackets executing landing parties the world round since 1775. What may be most interesting in his piece, is that in putting pen to paper on this subject he initiated the crafting of what would one day evolve into broader American amphibious doctrine.
“Military Landing Operations” may be viewed as a primer for today’s amphibious planners; Williams covers hydrography of landing beaches, drawing on anecdotes of landings made in the Philippines; he explores the equipment and boats a regiment-sized landing expedition would require, including the advantages of flat bottomed landing craft; he repeats the critically essential planning function of loading transports “last on - first off” to ensure efficient operations and reduced confusion on landing beaches; and in keeping with naval doctrine of any age, he reiterates the importance of sea-control to any landing operation; Williams describes the execution of ship-to-shore movement, and speaks of the challenges of landing under fire, decades before official doctrine addressed the matter. Using sketch-maps, Williams lays out landing beaches, their approach, and covering naval gun fire, and touches on best uses of beach reconnaissance. Before closing, Williams outlines what is needed for an effective defense of a landing beach and roughly sketches out the ratio of defenders to attackers required.
In his closing, Williams argues that the training for the landing force and for the sailors aboard transports and landing craft is essential to operational success, otherwise landings on foreign soil will be restricted to only permissive landings at commercial ports and wharves. In addressing the Army officer corps, he asks them to bury “personal ambition” in dealing with the Navy. Decades before anyone coined the term “joint operation” Williams made the case for cooperation between the services by reminding the reader of the challenges of the recent war with Spain. While Williams’ writing offers us insight into the level of sophistication in the conceptualization of landing operations at that time, it does not offer solutions to issues that would crop up in ensuing decades; concepts such as communications and control, scope of command, and staff responsibilities would require years of genuine cooperation, and experience gained through exercises and actual fighting to gain resolution.
THE JAPANESE THREAT
As much as the Japanese defeat of Russia at Tsushima alerted the U.S. to a shift in power in the Pacific, equal the Hawai’ian crisis or the ramp up to war with Spain, U.S.-Japan diplomatic tensions rose precipitously following the San Francisco Department of Education’s segregationist actions against Japanese and Korean immigrants. In May of 1905, and October of 1906, the San Francisco School Board acted on California law to exclude Japanese and Chinese students from attending the same schools as white students. Organizations such as the ‘Japanese and Korean Exclusion League’ protested any accommodation of Asians attending “white” schools; gangs of thugs destroyed Asian businesses, assaulting Japanese, Korean, and Chinese residents of the city.[24] These actions, as well as a negative Japanese perception of the 1905 Treaty of Portsmouth, inflamed Japanese sentiments because they violated agreements made in the 1894 Japanese-American Treaty.[25] Japan had already been wary of the U.S., following Secretary of State John Hay’s declaration of the “Open Door” in China and U.S. intervention in the Boxer Rebellion, alongside the powers of Europe.
The Roosevelt administration fixated on building a fleet capable of defeating the burgeoning Japanese Navy. His overarching interest in completing the Panama Canal rested in the natural increase in naval power it would allow; transferring ships from the Atlantic to the Pacific and back would grant the United States a position unrivalled by any other navy.[26] The canal would also increase the reach of U.S. commerce in the Pacific, Caribbean, and South America. American sea power and naval power hinged on the completion of the canal. Secretary of State John Hay’s “Open Door Policy” threatening Japanese influence in Manchuria, and U.S. naval presence in the Philippines put the Americans on Japan’s doorstep. Roosevelt’s fixation on naval power did little to reduce Japanese apprehension about America.
THE CANAL ZONE
In May of 1906 Major Lejeune, then commanding the barracks at 8th & I in DC, led an expeditionary battalion of 400 Marines aboard USS COLUMBIA at League Island, to provide security for free and fair elections in the new Republic of Panama. When they arrived on May 29, 1906, they combined with the battalion stationed in the canal zone, led by Major Charles G. Long. Lieutenant Colonel James E. Mahoney took command of the combined regiment. In his memoirs, Lejeune identified that mustering battalions ad hoc for overseas service was an inefficient means of mounting an expedition but pled that the Corps had no shore station large enough to garrison and exercise units larger than a company.
The Marines stationed themselves near the largest population centers for the elections, which allowed the incumbents to keep their offices. Lejeune’s battalion reembarked aboard DIXIE shortly afterwards. Unfortunately, malaria had already taken hold of the Marines and they required medical attention on the voyage home. Major Albertus W. Catlin embarked aboard USS DIXIE at League Island with a battalion of Marines in June, for service afloat in the Caribbean. Another battalion, commanded by Captain William McKelvey, USMC, was embarked at the same time aboard USS YANKEE, and made several landings at Culebra and Guantanamo; in August this battalion transferred aboard USS MINNEAPOLIS, showing that the General Board, and Department of the Navy, had bought into the utility of having Marines forward-deployed aboard ship. Their presence provided a fundamental flexibility for fleet commanders reacting to emergencies on foreign shores. Commandant Elliot reported:
“During the past year the marines of the United States Atlantic Fleet, together with the special expeditionary battalion on the YANKEE, have been, on several occasions, landed for brigade drills and encampments under the command of the fleet marine officer, and from the reports received at these headquarters it is inferred that they derived much benefit there from, and it is hoped that frequent opportunities for these maneuvers may be afforded.”
Now that the Navy had expeditionary battalions available aboard ship, the operational need for Marines seemingly never abated. In September 1906 MINNEAPOLIS, and the 2nd Expeditionary Battalion, was joined by the 3rdExpeditionary Battalion aboard USS TACOMA, out of Norfolk, and responded to disturbances in the new Cuban Republic. By the end of October Commandant Elliot mustered five expeditionary battalions total to protect American interests in Cuba, and provide security for the Cuban people. Their mandate was to perform this function until the U.S. Army could land later in the month and occupy the country. Colonel Littleton Waller, known for the infamous counterinsurgency on Samar, commanded nearly 2900 Marines ashore and in Cuban waters for the 1906 emergency. By the end of the year the service had a total of 273 officers, and 8,141 enlisted in uniform; 42 officers and 2,098 were aboard ship at the time, and in September 1,100 Marines from Cavite moved to the new Navy station at Olongopo.
At year’s end, Commandant Elliot testified before the Committee on Naval Affairs on the expansion of the Quartermaster operation in Philadelphia to support Marines stationed in the Pacific, and responding to the various emergencies in the Caribbean. During 1906. a new warehouse was built across the street from League Island, which became the ideal location for units mobilizing out of any of the east coast Navy Yards.[27]
In February of 1907, Nicaragua invaded Honduras and deposed Presidente Manuel Bonilla. Fighting that involved; the Nicaraguan Navy; American filibusters; and Honduran rebels forced Bonilla to seek refuge aboard USS CHICAGO. Typical of U.S. Navy practice for over a century, a dozen American Marines from USS PADUCAH landed to protect U.S. interests ashore. The situation cooled down with their presence.
SUBIC BAY
On the other side of the planet, the advanced base mission transitioned from being an exercise to being a practical operation in the Philippines. In response to heightened tensions with Japan, the U.S. began in earnest the fortification of Subic Bay. Heightened tensions with Japan remained in 1907, President Roosevelt, the General Board of the Navy, and planners schemed out responses to the ongoing crisis. Part of the debate revolved about whether to divide the U.S. fleet; the threat of Japanese moves against the Philippines, and simultaneous German moves in the Caribbean made this question salient. Adding to the intrigue was the ongoing debate over fortifications in the Philippines. Admiral Dewey, President Roosevelt, and Roosevelt’s friend and former governor of Moro Province, Major General Leonard Wood all held strong positions on the defense of the islands.[28]
Since 1903, Roosevelt had been seeking appropriations from Congress for a major naval base at Olongopo, in Subic Bay. He did this upon counsel of the joint Army-Navy Board; Admiral Dewey, the senior Navy member, had pursued and sunk the Spanish Armada at the Board’s other choice, Manila Bay. In 1906, in the wake of the Japanese defeats of Russia at Port Arthur and Tsushima, the Army-Navy Board reversed itself on whether Subic Bay was defendable. The Board, influenced by studies commissioned by Major General Leonard Wood, who was at that time the Governor of Moro Province, found Subic too much like Port Arthur — at risk from an overland attack —and began supporting the Army position. Making Manila the military, naval, and political center of American Philippines policy seemed inevitable as long as the Army was involved. Wood’s argument was reinforced by the Army Corps of Engineers, and the Coastal Defense Artillery. Adding to the friction surrounding the choice of where to situate the main naval center in the Pacific was the confusion surrounding the terminology regarding “expeditionary force”, “advanced base force”, “temporary base”, and “permanent base”. There was at least one Marine voice of dissent over Subic over Manila, Major Charles Doyen, who’d headed up the Nantucket Advanced Base Exercise in 1901. Doyen may have been frustrated by the primitive and undeveloped conditions at Olongopo. The facility had not been improved by the Spanish, and was reportedly a muddy outpost, sixty miles by boat from the bright lights and social life of Manila.[29] Frustrated by the inability of the Army and Navy to work together on the fortification of the Philippines, and embarrassed in front of Congress, Roosevelt chose Hawai’i for the location of the major American naval station.[30]
The Navy’s General Board further solidified its stance on the advanced base mission when the Army turned over all the material it had accumulated to set up its own temporary advanced bases.[31]At the heart of the Navy’s war planning against Japan sat the idea that the Philippines were not defendable with the assets available to the Asiatic and Pacific Fleets. The threat of war with Japan over immigration policy and mob violence in California pointed to the potential of hostilities and the loss of the islands. PLAN ORANGE hypothesized that loss; for the Navy to reestablish itself in Asia, it would have to fight across the breadth of the Pacific, establishing forward bases along the way. The General Board and the Secretary of the Navy informed the Marine Corps that there should be two advanced base brigades established for this eventuality; an Atlantic brigade would be based out of Philadelphia, in case of war with a European power in the Caribbean, and the Olongopo brigade to counter Japanese aggression.[32] The U.S. Navy would still require forward stations to coal and refit ships of the Asiatic squadron, and Subic Bay remained its favored choice. Subic would have to be defended as any advanced base would be, temporary or permanent, without relying on Army coastal fortifications of the sort slated for construction on Manila Bay.
Victor Metcalf, President Theodore Roosevelt’s fourth Secretary of the Navy[33], ordered Colonel William P. Biddle, commanding Marines in the Philippines, to fortify the approaches of Subic Bay; Biddle ordered Major John Lejeune, at the Cavite Navy Yard to load “thirty-five naval guns of 3-, 4.7- and 6-inch caliber” that had been positioned at Cavite for the Advanced Base mission. Lejeune’s Marines loaded these guns aboard ship and transported them to Olongopo. The Navy tasked Major Eli K. Cole to deploy the guns ashore, on Grande Island and Macmany Point at the entrance of Subic Bay, in the process validating the concept of the advanced base force in a real-world demonstration. As a proof of concept of the Marines’ mission, it was also a political move to show Japan U.S. resolve in the western Pacific.[34] Cole led the Olongopo Marines in offloading the guns, fighting the monsoon season, impossible terrain, insects, high temperatures, and Philippine mud. The Olongopo Marines manhandled the guns ashore and up the slopes of Grande Island and Macmany Point.[35] They succeeded in erecting a “temporary defense of a permanent base” in under three months,[36] but it wasn’t a perfect installation.
Cole commented on the extraordinary effort required to move naval guns ashore and up hillsides in the tropics; naval gun emplacements couldn’t cover all fields of fire, leading to blind spots in the defense; the Marines lacked engineering abilities to dig emplacements in coral. Photos taken at Macmany Point and Grande Island show what the Marines were up against. Cole recommended the Marines be provided with better storage facilities for guns, mounts, and platforms; spare rangefinders and better training for the advanced base Marines. Photos from the base of the hill show rails laid up an impossibly steep hillside, over rocky soil, and through arid scrub brush. Shots taken from the top of the hill, looking down on the Marine encampment by the beach show light colored canvas tents set up in dressed columns and rows. The ground they set up on looks like it was just beside a rocky creek bed; duckboards are neatly laid to allow the Marines to walk to chow, or to the wharf without wading through what must be rapid waters in a downpour.
Lieutenant Smedley Butler, who’d already experienced manhandling naval guns atop hilltops at Culebra, was dropped off on Macmany Point with 50 Marines, to emplace 4.7-inch guns. Their position earned the name, “Hell Hill”. Butler’s men emplaced the guns pointing to the southeast, over the western channel that separated Grande Island from Luzon. Unfortunately for the detachment, the guns coming out of storage at Cavite weren’t prepped correctly, and parts of the platform and base were mismatched. Even worse, according to Butler, the command at Olongopo didn’t schedule Grande Island for regular resupply; Butler resorted to taking a canoe across the bay in a storm to secure supplies from the Navy.[37] Lieutenant Holland M. Smith served at McManny Point too, and witnessed the hazards of life in the service; one of the guns mounted on the hillside was a 4.7-inch gun taken from the USS ALBANY, which, when test-fired, exploded, killing a Marine and wounding others. In his memoirs, Smith indicated that many thought Japanese intelligence was surveilling the Marines’ and Navy’s efforts to fortify Subic Bay.[38]
The defeat of the Spanish at the Battle of Manila Bay created a void in the western Pacific that great naval powers sought to occupy. Within days of the Armada’s loss, warships from European navies took up station on Manila Bay. Admiral Dewey’s fractious relationship with the Kriegsmarine had been well documented; Japanese interest in assuming control of portions of the Philippine archipelago is less well covered. In 1949, James K. Eyre, Jr. wrote in Proceedings that Japan had expansionist designs in the western Pacific dating back to the 1500s. In 1898, Japanese diplomats communicated with the United States, making it clear Japan didn’t believe the Filipino people could govern themselves, and that Japan was willing to share control of the islands with the U.S.. General Otis, commanding American forces in the Philippines reported to DC that the Japanese were providing Emiliano Aguinaldo and the Filipino rebels with arms and protection. Reportedly, a shipment of arms purchased by rebel forces in Japan sank on its way to the Philippines. Whether these developments were real or imagined, naval planners regarded Japan as the biggest competitor to the United States in Asia, and that Japanese planners recognized the difficulty the U.S. would have in defending its new territory.[39]
While the selection and construction of advanced bases in the Philippines was significant, the effect the School Board Crisis had in putting the U.S. on an enduring war footing regarding Japan was perhaps longer lasting. Roosevelt repeated his request for war plans concerning Japan, as he had in 1897; U.S. planners came to regard Japan as great a threat as they did Germany. Roosevelt pushed for a deployment of the Atlantic fleet to the Pacific, which resulted in the cruise of “The Great White Fleet”; the Imperial Japanese Navy determined the U.S. Navy their greatest competitor. To maintain parity with the U.S. Navy, the IJN sought to expand their fleet to 70% of the U.S. fleet by building eight battleships and eight armored cruisers.[40] Nativism and racism in San Francisco public policy created long-lived repercussions in the Pacific.
[1] Kuehn. First General Staff. Kindle Edition.
[2] Smedley Butler and Lowell Thomas. Old Gimlet Eye – The Adventures of Smedley D. Butler. Kismet Publishing, Kindle Edition. 1933.
[3] Jonathan M. Hansen. Guantánamo – An American History. Hill and Wang, New York. 2005. Kindle edition. The Cuban Senate ratified the treaty in October 1903, granting the U.S. Navy 45 square miles around the bay in accordance with the Platt Amendment.
[4] J.C. Breckinridge. “Why Quantico”. Proceedings, November 1928. Vol. 54/11/309.
[5] In 1890, Commander Reiter was the CO of the gunboat USS RANGER. While at anchor at San José de Guatemala, authorities attempted to arrest the rebel commander General J. Martin Barrundia aboard the U.S. merchant vessel, SS ACAPULCO. According to international law, Reiter needed no permission in order to offer Barrundia asylum, but as he waited for permission from Guatemalan government officials a gunfight broke out on ACAPULCO, and Barrundia was killed. The Guatemalans lowered the American flag aboard ACAPULCO, and U.S. property was seized. Secretary of the Navy Tracy censured Commander Reiter, and he spent most of the decade assigned to the Lighthouse Service. “The Reiter Case Closed”, New York Times. January 17,1891.
[6] David A. Smith. A New Force at Sea – George Dewey and the Rise of the American Navy. Naval Institute Press, Annapolis. 2023.
[7] Douglas E. Nash. “The ‘Afloat-Ready Battalion” https://www.usmcu.edu/Portals/218/Marine%20Expeditionary%20Unit%2C%201898-1978%20.pdf
[8] Buana Varilla was a French developer and speculator deeply involved in building the canal, Hay was the U.S. Secretary of State. No Panamanians were involved in creating the treaty.
[9] Appendix “Q” of Secretary of the Navy report 1903. p.651.
[10] Robert J. Kane. A Brief History of the 2d Marines. Marine Corps Historical Reference Pamphlet. Historical Division, Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps. Washington DC. 1970. p.1.
[11] Appendix “Q” of Secretary of the Navy report 1903. p.651.
[12] Shulimson. Commandants. p.144.
[13] Henry J. Hendrix II. “TR’s Plan to Invade Columbia”, Naval History. December 2006, Volume 20, Number 6.
[14] Kuehn. First General Staff.
[15] Kuehn. First General Staff.
[16] J.C. Breckinridge. “Why Quantico?”. Proceedings, November 1928. Vol. 54/11/309.
[17] Edward S. Miller. War Plan Orange – The U.S. Strategy to Defeat Japan, 1897-1945. Naval Institute Press, Annapolis. 1991. Kindle edition.
[18] Edward S. Miller. Plan Orange.
[19] J.C. Breckinridge. “Why Quantico?”. Proceedings, November 1928. Vol. 54/11/309.
[20] Robert J. Cressman. Commandants of the Marine Corps. Allan R. Millett and Jack Shulimson, ed. Naval Institute Press, Annapolis. 2004. p.152.
[21] https://archive.org/details/landingforcesmal00unit/page/n3/mode/2up
[22] Shulimson. Commandants. p. 153.
[23] J.C. Breckinridge. “Why Quantico?” Proceedings, November 1928, Vol. 54/11/309.
[24] David Brudnoy. “Race and the San Francisco School Board Incident: Contemporary Evaluations”. California Historical Quarterly, Vol.50. No.3 (September 1971) pp.295-312.
[25] Sadao Asada. From Mahan to Pearl Harbor – The Imperial Japanese Navy and the United States. Naval Institute Press, Annapolis. 2006.
[26] In 1898 USS OREGON made a sixty-six day dash from San Francisco to Jupiter, Florida, to join Sampson’s squadron blockading Cuba. Had there been a Panama Canal at the time, the 14,000-mile voyage would have been cut in half.
[27] Hearings Before the Committee On Naval Affairs of the House of Representatives on Estimates Submitted by the Secretary of the Navy. 1906-1907. Washington: Government Printing Office. 1907.
[28] Daniel J. Costello. “Planning for War: A History of the General Board of the Navy, 1900-1914”. Thesis. Fletcher School of Policy, October 1968.
[29] Daniel J. Costello. “Planning for War: A History of the General Board of the Navy, 1900-1914”. Thesis. Fletcher School of Policy, October 1968.
[30] Matthew Oyos. In Command – Theodore Roosevelt and the American Military. University of Nebraska Press. 2018. pp. 320-321
[31] Millet and Shulimson, Commandants, p. 167.
[32] Millet and Shulimson, Commandants, p. 167.
[33] As Secretary of Commerce in 1906 Metcalf brokered the agreement with Japan over the San Francisco School Board dispute.
[34] Leo J. Daugherty III. Pioneers of Amphibious Warfare, 1898-1945, “Major Eli K. Cole, USMC”. McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers. 2009. Kindle Edition.
[35] John A. Lejeune. The Reminiscences of a Marine, The Greatest of All Leathernecks. Kindle Edition. 1930, 2017. Macmany is the current spelling of the location; it’s been recorded as “MacManny”, “McManny”, in period accounts by Lejeune and Holland Smith.
[36] Clifford. Progress and Purpose. p.12.
[37] Butler and Thomas. Old Gimlet Eye. The conditions of this deployment debilitated Butler, and he wound up in the hospital and convalescing stateside.
[38] Holland M. Smith and Percy Finch. Coral and Brass. Arcadia Press, Kindle Edition. 1949, 2017.
[39] James K. Eyre, Jr. “Japanese Imperialism and the Aguinaldo Insurrection”. Proceedings, August 1949, Vol. 75/8/558.
[40] Asada. Mahan to Pearl Harbor. p. 47.
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