206
Russell C. Coile
staff against being killed by the US Air Force bombing raids
which effectively burned down most of Tokyo, Yokohama,
and lots of Japanese cities with factories manufacturing
airplanes, ships, tanks, rifl es, everything the Japanese Army,
Navy and Air Force needed.
One had to have a secret clearance to be admitted to the
Command Cave which had US Marines guarding the entrance.
I was working with some young intelligence offi cers who had
been assigned to collect intelligence on our big enemy the
Russians.
I was assigned to observe a Naval war game exercise
for two weeks. I boarded an aircraft carrier in Yokosuka
which was to be the fl agship of the Naval task force. There
were some American submarines pretending to be Russian
submarines and the enemy air force consisted of US Air Force
planes fl ying out of the Philippines and Guam pretending to
be long range Russian airplanes. When the exercise was over,
some of the ships went to Hong Kong for three or four days
so that the crews could enjoy a little vacation after working
shifts of 4 hours on, four hours off for ten consecutive days.
However, I couldn't go ashore to do Xmas shopping or eat
delicious meals. I had been in Hong Kong before and being a
peasant, I had counted all of the entrees on the menu at our
small inexpensive restaurant. Guess how many 189 different
choices.
A friend and I had to stay aboard analyzing the exercise and
developing a report for the Admiral on what went well and
what did not go so well. Then we suggested several changes
to their usual procedures which we felt would improve their
performance in detecting the enemy submarines and attaching
bomber aircraft.
We had promised the Admiral that we would fi nish our
report before we left the ship and fl ew back to Japan, hoping
to get home for Christmas.
Of course everything took longer for us to do analyze the
results of the exercise, write the draft of the report, get down
on our knees and beg the Admiral's yeoman (his secretary,