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TI: And so when World War II, after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, we talked about this earlier, rather than being in the midst of the fighting in the Pacific, they brought him back to Washington, D.C. to help plan.

MH: Well, actually, to build on the plans that he had already drawn up. To take the actions that he had already planned on taking.

TI: And so give me a sense, at what level, who was he working with at this planning level? Who was he dealing with?

MH: He's dealing across a whole board -- one of the things that he was supposed to have done was to, to say how many landing craft we needed, what manufacturer are we going to be dealing with, get a hold of that manufacturer and start putting in the orders for the numbers that we're going to need.

TI: So much beyond just the military, he's talking about the industrial side.

MH: Yes, the whole industrial side.

TI: And in some ways, convincing them to convert over to the military manufacturer.

MH: And of course, all the time -- this isn't just out of the blue -- all that time between the wars, he's been looking at these and revising them as things get revised. The whole submarine buildup, the buildup of the naval air force, and taking into account what the Army will be doing, what the Air Force will be doing, where the Marines fit into this, of course, that's part of the Navy. But it's the whole spectrum. What role does the Navy have in this?

TI: And so when your father would have these plans, who would he report to? I mean, how would his ideas and plans get implemented? Who was he going to?

MH: He reports to the person who was head of the Navy who was Admiral King. But then, they would have to take their plans to the White House in order to get the highest approval of what their plans were.

TI: So was your father a frequent guest of the White House, going there for meetings?

MH: Well, I know that they did go over, yes. And of course, you also, you have to mesh in with the other military, with the Army and with the Air Force. Well, the Air Force was part of the Army then, of course. So you had to mesh in with the Army and its part, the Air Force part in it.

LH: And the naval.

MH: And the naval.

TI: And so tell me a little bit about your father's relationship with Admiral King, the head of the Navy. How closely did the two of them work together?

MH: They worked extremely closely together. As a matter of fact, Admiral King consulted him day and night. They actually took quarters on a ship which was docked in Washington, near Washington, in Washington, D.C., and they lived aboard that and continued to plan, night and day.

TI: That's an amazing story. And it's kind of like, sort of these, in some cases, unsung heroes in the war. Certain people historically have gotten the spotlight, but it's sometimes that, just that level below where all that work is doing, and you just, just don't understand how that was done.

MH: Yes, yes.

<End Segment 17> - Copyright © 2008 Densho. All Rights Reserved.