Brett Ashton - Vengeance - Hatred and Honor

The real trick of it is to realize that none of these things are the real enemy.

The moment my hands took the sword from that Japanese officer surrendering his ship to me, I began to realize I was missing something. Some basic consideration hiding just below my level of attention was, for the first time, beginning to show itself.

For years, I could not get my attention off of that man whom, just a few short minutes before, I had wanted to kill in the most brutal fashion I could conceive. And with all of the grace and dignity that could possibly be instilled into an officer, this man, on the deck of my own ship, handed me the sword that you see hung on the wall behind me, thus surrendering his ship and his honor and placing himself at my mercy. This was an officer. This was a captain. This was an equal. This was a human being.

And my life changed.

All I wanted to believe during the war was the Japs were something different. They were animals. They were cruel. They were the aggressors. Killers, every one of them. They were something very separate and different from us and below us. And history shows it’s true in many ways. The Japanese, in every measurable way, were just as brutal over their conquered territories as the Nazis were in Europe. And they bombed Pearl Harbor.

In return we firebombed Tokyo and nuked Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children were incinerated, just like that. Old, young, women, children, sick, well, innocent, or guilty—it didn’t matter who they were. They all died horrible deaths at our hands. That’s the problem in handling things with anger; it doesn’t discriminate. So what does that make us?

Just like Ahab and the great white whale tied together, revenge has a way of taking you down along with the subject of your anger.

Now it’s true that, from time to time, people, for whatever reason, go insane. And for whatever reason, that insanity sometimes seems to spread into a society to the degree that the whole culture or country goes insane. Then you have war. You have to understand when this happens people are going to act very badly.

And occasionally, you have to fight. You do have to put a stop to it, to preserve as much life as possible. Sometimes that does involve lopping off a few heads to save the greater number of people from the insanities of a country that has obviously gone mad. But you don’t have to hate them.

The minute you succumb to the urge to take revenge, to kill just to get even or to hate them, you have given in to the one thing that, left to run unchecked, will keep mankind locked in a state of war, to a greater or lesser degree, for all of time.

It’s the most dangerous enemy mankind will ever face. It isn’t the Japanese or the Germans or anybody else. And it isn’t the bombs or ships or planes. The real enemy is vengeance.

One might consider it would be counterintuitive for a fiction author to destroy his own illusions at the end of his own work. In this case, I think the actions of the real men involved in the actual historic events noted in this book are important enough to justify the risk to my own work and be brought to light. Very often the History Channel will do a “History versus Hollywood” for a movie that covers actual historic events. You could think of it as me just saving them the trouble of research if you like, but that’s not the real point.

This, as I said at the outset, is a work of fiction. But in order to put my character in where I wanted him to be, I had to bump several real people out of the way. This, I assure you, was not intended to be disrespectful but instead to tell a story of how these men lived and fought for all of the free people of the world and at the same time try to avoid “putting words in the mouths” of the real men in those situations. It was a hard line for me to walk between writing a fictional story that would both honor these men for their service and sacrifice, and, at the same time, restrain myself from putting actual people into situations that they never actually faced; or more importantly, taking them out of the events they really did participate in. In the end, I had to do a little bit of both to make my storyline work. So in order to keep from pulling any regret in on myself, as a result of stepping on these men’s toes, I decided to write this to set the record straight.

First off, Jacob Scott Williams is a fictional character; however, there is an officer who escaped from the battleship Oklahoma , pretty much in the manner I described. How I came on this man’s story I can’t disclose here. Part of the problem being I don’t know what his real name was. But I’m sure he existed, I’m sure he has long since passed away, and I’m sure the Pearl Harbor story is basically real. I believe he was transferred to the North Carolina at some point, then subsequently to a light cruiser, most likely the Houston . So if you read this and recognize the story and are a friend or family member of this man’s, I would sincerely be interested in hearing from you so he may be properly identified.

Ensign Francis Flaherty and another man not mentioned in the book, James Richard Ward, were real people and did hold flashlights on the exits to allow other shipmates to escape the flooding waters in one of the turrets of the Oklahoma . They did this in obvious disregard for their own safety and posthumously were awarded the Medal of Honor for it. I don’t particularly know if Ensign Flaherty ever served coffee during meetings. I have, however, observed officers in the squadron I was in during my time in the navy behaving as such, and so added it to my story.

Commander Jesse L. Kenworthy, Jr. and Captain H.D. Bode were the executive and commanding officers of the Oklahoma at the time of the attack. I don’t know if Commander Kenworthy acted or responded in reality the way he did in this book, so I tried my best to portray him as a decent man. Also mentioned, Lieutenant Commander William H. Hobby, Jr. was the damage control officer on the Oklahoma at the time of the attack and was killed later in the war.

Lieutenant Commander John Kirkpatrick was the North Carolina ’s real air defense officer at the time of the Battle of the Eastern Solomons. By all accounts, he did a spectacular job in that battle. As a result, I had to think long and hard before bumping him out of his rightful place in history to replace him by a fictitious character. He is the primary reason for me writing this chapter. I don’t know him personally, but if he should ever read this I have to say, “I’m sorry, sir, for stepping on your toes, and I most sincerely hope this squares us up.” Larry Resen was John Kirkpatrick’s assistant during this attack.

Commander J. A. Crocker was really the Showboat ’s executive officer at the time of the Battle of the Eastern Solomons. I don’t know if he actually had any brass fall on him from Sky Control. Most likely not.

Captain George Fort was the commanding officer of the North Carolina during part of the war. I don’t know if he ever “grilled” any of the officers serving under him the way he did in this book. From what I can find about him, I’m sure he was a decent man and a very thorough and competent officer.

Commander Lyman A. Thackrey was one of the Showboat ’s executive officers. It was all I could do to find his name, let alone anything else about him, so I tried to minimize his part in the story.

Commander Joseph Warren Stryker was the North Carolina ’s navigation officer during the early part of the war, after which he became the executive officer. Sir, if you are out there somewhere, next time I go to see the ship, I’ll look for seagulls and bring fish.