THE NATIONAL MUSEUM OF TI IF PACIFIC WAR (Niinitz fVIuseLIIn)

CENTER FOR PACIFIC WAR STUDIES Fredericksburg, TX 78624

Interview with

JOHN H. HOAG LAND U. S. NAVY ORAL HISTORY INTERVIEW

JOHN H. [IOAG LAND

This is Stanley Jensen. Today is Friday, September 17, 2004, and I am interviewing Dr. John

[loagland. This interview is taking place at the Admiral Nimitz Museum offices in

Fredericksburg. Texas. This interview is in the support of the Center for Pacific War Studies, archives for the National Museum of the Pacific War, Texas Parks and Wildlife, for the preservation of historical information related to this site. Doctor, if you want to start off and tell

US where you were born and something about your parents, your family.

DR. [IOAGLAND: Okay, thank you. I was born in Woodhaven, New York, which is part of

New York City now, I think the Queens. Soon after that, moved to Columbus, Ohio, grew tip

around Columbus, Ohio, until my junior year of high school when I moved to Washington, D.

C.. gradtiated from high school Washington, interesting experience. For example we had free street car passes and in the summer between junior and senior year high school we’d usually go down to the senate two or three times a week because that’s the only air conditioned place we could get to, so we saw a lot in those days. I went to college at Oberlin College, graduated in history and economics in June ‘41 , was active in various campus activities, started working

making machine guns and airplane propellers at Frigidaire Division, General Motors until I

enlisted in the navy. I went in the navy becatise I didn’t want to go in the army. But meanwhile I crammed in an awful lot of engineering at University of Dayton and then Ohio State before being called up to active duty.

[took the navy seriously and had a fairly big voice and gave a good “here, sir” to the first roll of us scared midshipmen. Company commander said that was the way he wanted to hear it and my

neck got stuck out. I didn’t pull it back and ended tip being battalion commander of our midshipman class, second in my class out of, oh, thirteen or sixteen hundred or something like that; had a choice of duty and was going to go to submarines but my fiancée, now wife, talked me out of it, so I ended tip going to something secret at that time, radar school. Navy sent me to

1-larvard and then MIT and then to the radar maintenance school in Pearl Harbor; wanted me to

stay there and teach and I suggested no, send me forward so I can see what this is like in action.

So I went forward in late August of ‘44. 1 had chosen a ship that just happened to have Halsey’s name on it, a destroyer, and turned out I was on special assignment with Admiral Halsey’s staff.

I was a specialist in radar on a three-man team. The other two men were fighter directors.

Basically we were to take over control of aircraft if the carriers weren’t there or had been

knocked otit. We were to control the aircraft, and as long as my equipment was working I couldl usually station myself where I wanted. I seldom stood watch. Our three-man team was never a part of ship’s company, and we may never haven even appeared on Halsey’s staff. We served first on the destroyer LEWIS HANCOCK, then the destroyer NEW JERSEY and then on the

USS BRUSH. We went on that on December 1944, and set up the first picket ship with the advanced fleet to beat the karnikazes. On the LEWIS 1-IANCOCK we escorted Halsey’s NEW

JERSEY from Pearl 1-larborto Mantis. One of the interesting things that happened was that the

NEW JERSEY wanted to test its guns so they sent us out on the horizon and said we’ll shoot at you; we’ll put an offset into our computer. It was a very calm, nice day. We could see them over there on the horizon, the guns fire, we could see the shells coming, and we hoped that offset was there, but I can tell you its guns were very accurate because they landed right in the middle of our wake of the destroyer. That is the only time that I know of that the NEW JERSEY fired its

7 gulls as long as I was associated with it. So anyway we got transferred to the battleship NEW

JERSEY. I usually helped my two olhcers who were fighter directors. We served usually in the combat information center on the NEW JERSEY , we had all the information coming into us with a big plexiglass screen in front of us and radars nearby and communications. I usually worked with them.

MR. JENSEN: What were fighter directors?

DR. HOAGLAND: Fighter directors were ones who control aircraft.

MR. JENSEN: Like an air traffic control man?

DR. HOAGLAND: You could call them that. For example, if we were away from the carriers and we had combat air patrol tip above, we would control them, tell them what we wanted and that sort of thing. A very interesting thing, when we would break port, the three of us (I was an ensign to start with, Ens.j.g. and the other two were jgs, Lt.jgs.), we would have the same orders as Admiral Halsey from what I understand. They would be in blond paper wrappers, sealed.

We’d break port, we’d open them up, they may have been a half inch, three quarters inch thick. fascinating reading. They told us what we expected the Japanese to do and what we were expected to do. Halsey, as far as I’m concerned, has been very much maligned for his actions

that he took in the battle of Leyte Gulf. I never bothered to read much about this because I was

there, but this spring there was a TV program by Oliver North on Leyte Gulf, and I felt it was wrong. There is a recent well-written new book on that last battle of the tin cans or something that involved the battle of Leyte Gulf and Halsey, and I felt it was wrong. I felt it was time I told the navy historians some of the things that I knew. So when I called up, it turned out that this

program here was coming up and they asked me to participate. That’s the reason I’m here — because I think I know a lot of things that have not been made clear about the battle of Leyte

9 2 Gulf, if you want me to get into that...

MR. JENSEN: Yes, I’d like to know.

DR. IIOAGLAND: All right, I think what happened is, I may have mentioned this, the official

military historian appointed by Roosevelt was Samuel Elliott Morrison. I think he was a good writer but in lily estimation a bad historian. I have always tried to teach my graduate students in

business that I taught for many years how to do historical research. You go for the facts and try. if the facts are published by somebody else, what’s the bias of the person publishing them. But look for the basic facts and then add your biases. I think Morrison started with his biases and then distorted the facts because many people — and since accepting this I read a fair amount on what people said about Leyte Gulf — and none of them have it right. I think Morrison’s the one that led them astray, and I’m interested in checking with people.

The Third Fleet was the attack fleet, the advance fleet, and from tile time I knew him, let’s say

September to December ‘44. we were in action a great deal of the time. We attacked Ryukyus,

Formosa, Okinawa, Luzon. We were in battle an unusual amount of time. What people don’t

realize — and then the key battles were battles with the Center Fleet and then when 1-lalsey went north to get the carriers. Incidentally, I happened to be in Halsey’s flag plot, probably October d,23 rechecking on some radar that I had repaired. And I saw a very unique chart, oh, about the size of a desk top, with a black line coming out of Borneo. I asked an adjacent commander if I could look at it and he said, “Oh, sure, we’re on the same team.” I just asked him what is that black line, and he said, “That’s the Japanese coming out of Borneo.” Our submarines gave us that information. Now, whether it’s just the dancer and darters Iprobably means Dace and Darterl or

whatever they were with the submarines or the more — I don’t know. But we had information

4 they were coming. The Third Fleet struck the Central Fleet solid hard on October h•24 We stink

many ships including super battle ships. I listened to the pilots all day long as they attacked. We did turn them around. Now, there is a Japanese program called Sho—Goor something like that in which they planned to come through with a Southern Fleet, Central Fleet and Northern Fleet to attack us. People don’t look at when that plan was devised and what the Japanese conditions

were when they exectited it because they, I think, were all going to try to all hit at the same time and stop the landing on Leyte. The Southern Fleet, as we know, was pretty well decimated by the

Seventh Fleet. Halsey messed tip royally October 24” the Central Fleet and then goes north to catch the carriers. He is highly criticized for that but tinder his orders I think he did absolutely the right thing. If yoti go back and read the original orders and I’ve read only excerpts from the

Seventh Fleet, but the Seventh Fleet was the landing fleet. They were to protect the landing, and that included the Taffys and the small carriers and that sort of thing.

Now there’s a very peculiar thing. Halsey goes north. People thought he formed a battleship group to protect the San Bernadino Straits. He never did. He never was stipposed to; he was stipposed to seek out and attack, never to defend anything. If you read the Seventh Fleet, they were to defend. Now, it’s very interesting the Seventh Fleet apparently sent out a PBY, sent out search planes, and they never picked tip the Japanese fleet coming through and they never picked tip any sign of l-lalsey. They shouldn’t have with Halsey because lie wasn’t there. Somebody noted that the channel lights were on. The only people that could turn those on were the Japanese because they controlled them. Somebody should have said, “Wait a minute, why are those channel lights on?” Another was the Seventh Fleet should have picked them up a lot earlier.

Now what people don’t realize is we in the Third Fleet had been in action so much of the time

5 we were low n food, that I know because our diets changed. Furthermore, 1think we were very low or out of certain types of aircraft ammunition, munitions such as bombs and that sort of thing. Halsey is said not to have split his fleet; that is erroneous. There were four task groups in

Halsey’s fleet; three of them went north, one of them. 38.1,tried to get back to Ulithi. Some said to refuel, that’s nonsense; it was to refurbish because we were trying to get food and munitions.

That’s what McCain was doing, trying to get to Ulithi to do it. When he heard on the 25” of

October of the problems, he turns around and he launches planes at maximum range. My understanding is that his fleet, his carriers, came back as fist as they could possibly go before they made their attack planes — at such a range that they could not get back to the carriers, they had to go and land on Tacloban on land.

Now, furthermore, it was common practice, I believe, to send out messages to confuse tile enemy. Now Halsey had scared the hell out of the Japanese on October 2411.October the 25” when they came in, there were three things: one, they were scared of tile Third Fleet; two, 1-lalsey sent messages of various types; and three, he attacked with one of his groups, 38.1 under

McCain. These are things that helped turn him around. I have read many years ago, right or wrong, that 1-laiseysent an order in their own top-secret code for them to retreat. Somebody

should be able to find out whether that is true or not. I also believe that he sent other messages because I’ve heard they received messages they didn’t know where they came from.

Everybody is damning 1-laisey for going north. I listened to the aircraft circuits as the planes

attacked the Northern Fleet. I heard them, I heard the surprise in their voices that there were not many planes there. There were four carriers but very few planes Ofl the carriers and very few

6 planes in the air. But they also said be careful of planes coming Irom the land. You go back, and

the original plan the Japanese devised, I think, was for them to engage Halsey and attack the

Third Fleet from the land and ships, but between the time they conceived the plan and it went into operation we had killed — knocked out so many of their planes they didn’t have the planes to execute that. I’ve read that a group came out but when they found that we had sunk their main carrier, the Japanese planes turned around and didn’t attack. Halsey, of course, gets final orders

to come back down, which he finally does, trying to intercept the Japanese. I have read that at

2130 they saw them entering San Bernadino Straits. At 2345, the night of October 25hh1,1 took a

message from our scout plane, and I still remember, his call number was 86Victor79, and he said, “Sighting twelve ships, no wait a minute, we count there’s thirteen” ships that had gotten

out of our range. Now, what would have happened if we’d engaged. I don’t know.

Some people make an issue comparing the Japanese fleet to ours. That is all after the war. They

had eighteen-inch guns. I don’t think we knew it; we wondered what they had. Now, 1-lalseyis criticized for forming battleship groups up north. If you’re going to attack with planes, you’re going to go into antiaircraft fire, you’re likely to lose planes and pilots. If you know that they don’t have much there except what we can knock out with planes, excuse me, with our big guns, why not do it that way? As I told you I think that I was on the target practice, I know the NEW

JERSEY guns were very accurate. You’re low on ammunition for aircraft, why not form a battleship group and knock the hell out of them? That is the most economical, safe way to do it, and he is criticized. He shouldn’t have been. He did what he should have. The one who should have protected San Bernadino Straits was the Seventh Fleet. Their job was to protect the landing, and that’s part of the landing operations. There was much confusion between the command of

7 MacArthur and Nimitz and that sort of thing, but if people really want to know what goes on they should [lOW go back and check the original orders that came to Nimitz from the Joint Chiefs of Staff and to MacArthur and then on down. My reading is that MacArthur is the one that made the bad mistakes because he never thought they would even use those channels, and Halsey had no requirements to defend anything.

That was late October; in November the Japanese began to use the karnikazes against the fleet.

They first used the karnikazes against the landing fleet, then they wanted to use them against the attack fleet, that was the Third Fleet. What they began to do is — we would make an attack, let’s say on Clark Field or some place on Luzon, then one or two of the kamikazes would try to follow our returning planes to find out where we were. That would do that and secondly it would defeat what we called our 1FF, Identification Friend or Foe system. Then they’d find the fleet, then they’d attack; thus we set up in December the first picket ship of the advance fleet. We would go between where the fleet was and the targets of land were with two destroyers — our destroyer

USS BRUSH and sister destroyer THE SPENCE, I think it was SPENCER. We’d have a combat air patrol up above us, that is planes, we would control them. As our planes would return from attack, they came a special route, would circle us, and with our combat air patrol to look over.

Thus, we tried to beat the kamikazes before they got to us. It worked some. I got pulled back on 27 December u to Pearl to teach radar maintenance and operation. That’s what I was supposed to do. That type of system was used later at Okinawa, and our picket ships destroyers were devastated eventually at Okinawa. We almost ran out of destroyers at Okinawa, I understand, because the Japanese learned you’ve got to take the picket ships out first.

8 I had an unusual experience all the way through. From the sources that I had. I think I have a better understanding than those who were later writers because they weren’t there. Also a lot of admirals who were quoted criticizing Halsey I think were playing TYA ICYAI.They were

talking after the fact, criticizing Halsey after the fact. They said, “Well, I would have done it differently .“

MR. JENSEN: Monday morning quarterback?

DR. HOAG LAND: That is absolutely right! I think Halsey got a very bad rap, and I hope this

conference begins to correct some of it. I hope people can verify the truth or lack of truth from

what I have to say. I’ll be glad for the conference to ask any questions they can but I was in a

very unusual spot. For example, I would usually listen to our aircraft as they attacked. Well, I got

tired of that after awhile and during November 1stationed myself one day in the cat walk around the smoke stack of the battleship NEW JERSEY so I could see what’s going on. That’s the only

day our group was attacked by kamikazes. I saw aircraft carriers on three sides of me get hit that day including the INTREPID, which was very badly hit. The fourth carrier got put on fire that night by one of its own night fighters landing on it and cracking up. But I had dumb luck all the way through, never got scratched. What can I tell you?

MR. JENSEN: What was the chain of command, MacArthur, Nimitz. Halsey?

DR. HOAGLAND: I didn’t give a damn for it. So I didn’t pay much attention.

You could read it but Halsey was the top admiral of the Third Fleet. He reported to Nimitz,

Seventh Fleet reported to MacArthur and it fouled up things. If you go back, what I’ve been able to do, read the original orders. Some of them were not as clear as they should have been for either the Seventh or Third Fleet, but from a full reading of Halsey’s orders, which we three people had, I think Halsey did absolutely as he was supposed to, and he should have stayed north

9 and knocked the hell out of the Northern Fleet. Now, notice at Midway we sunk four carriers. It was glorious. He goes after four carriers up in the Northern Fleet; he’s criticized for it. It doesn’t make sense to me. Then people don’t realize there’s reason for him to form a battleship group instead of hitting with planes. You might lose planes and pilots and you don’t have the bombs particularly that you really want.

MR. JENSEN: The NEW JERSEY never used their guns anyway basically, you said.

DR. HOAGLAND: They would have and they would have sunk, in my estimation, almost all of the Japanese tip there. If we had gotten in a battle with the center group, who knows what would have happened, but we didn’t get down in time. And again, you can read again, there was much

miscommunication. I don’t think it was Halsey’s fault, and I think Halsey, a) by scaring the

Japanese from their encounter on the h24 and some sinkings on the 23”’,they were terrified of us.

Two, part of Halsey’s did attack from a maximum range — McCains’s 38.1 did attack the

Japanese. I think his sending the messages in plain English and in top code and other ways scared the hell out of them, confused them and made them retreat. I-Icshould be given credit for that, and by now somebody should be able to go into the records and find those messages. I can’t promise you they were sent, but I’ll give a high probability that they were because as I said I was bunked with the chief code officer, and he was bustin’ his fanny that morning. You see where I differ with a lot of people on what really happened on Leyte Gulf but I think I have the evidence, firsthand evidence.

MR. JENSEN: Where’s that exactly?

DR. HOAGLAND: Where’s what?

MR. JENSEN: Leyte Gulf?

DR. HOAGLAND: Leyte Gulf? I don’t think there is one. There’s San Bernadino and there’s 10 Surigao and there’s an island called Leyte. There may be one, I don’t know, but I don’t think

there is. This is Borneo, and I don’t know what that is on that map; there’s a little place there called Brunei, and that’s where the Japanese were getting fuel, and that’s where we picked them up coming out of there. What happened was, back here in Halsey’s first attack on the lower

island, I forget what it’s called — Mindoro or one of them — at the Marianas turkey shoot we killed a couple hundred of Japanese planes. That began the destruction, and throughout

September and October we attacked all along here up to Formosa, up at Okinawa, the Ryukyus, and we knocked out the Japanese air force. We didn’t know that we had done this that successfully, so when they tried to get us from the Northern Fleet, the original plan might have been good if the Japanese had had enough aircraft, but by the time they executed they were out of good aircraft. I encourage those who are really interested in the battle of Leyte Gulf, don’t take somebody else’s opinion, go back and read the original documentation because I think many people, many people have been misled by other peoples inaccuracies. I’m thoroughly adamant in that.

MR. JENSEN: Was it in October you went back to —

DR. HOAGLAND: December 27th, I was on the USS BRUSH including the typhoon from

December lOu1tto ih27 and then was pulled back to Pearl to teach. My two buddies,tghter directors, continued on with somebody else, and I was very happy to go back. To show you our high degree of independence, on the USS BRUSH there was a very peculiar navy captain. FIe’d been a boxer and when we went aboard the BRUSH, the officers told us, “If he ever starts beating you on the top of the head he doesn’t like something you’re doing. He’ll beat you on the top of the head with his fists and said you just pull back your fists on him and he’ll stop.” I-Ic never did that to enlisted men because he would be court-martialed but he wanted us to clear

11 everything we did with him, which we could not do and perform our jobs. So we got transferred at sea one clay, each one of us in a mail sack individually. The sea was so rough we could look back at our destroyer and see underneath the bow, and that was no fun. But we came back with a letter from the top admirals, which basically said, “Leave these men alone.” That was our high degree of independence, the three of us.

MR. JENSEN: When did you leave the service?

DR. HOAGLAND: As soon as I could, December 3 l’, 1945. Then I went on to Harvard

Business School, to graduate school and out in industry and then a PhD in management and taught the whole field of purchasing, industrial purchasing at Michigan State for many years, and we became the leader in the nation in that. We developed business indices that are now called the

ISM indexes, and we know what the business trends are at the end of every month. It’s used very highly by the government, has been for years. It is now used worldwide and very useful.

MR. JENSEN: Where did you work in industry?

DR. HOAGLAND: Oh, I manufactured television tubes before I went back into teaching. My mother had been a teacher, my father was a professor of finance at Ohio State University. I’d

grown up around teaching. I had taught some night school, while I was even manufacturing machine guns, at the Y. I wanted to go into teaching and so it was fairly natural for me. I’ve

enjoyed it. I still do research; I still keep up with business trends. We’ve been very successful forecasting business trends.

MR. JENSEN: You taught for over fifty years at Michigan State.

DR. HOAGLAND: That’s about right, yeh. I’m a professor emeritus now but I still have a research and I still have an office and I still keep up with monthly business trends and do activities such as this, go to professional meetings. We started the first executive seminar for

12 purchasing people FiFtyyears ago. I still work with that.

The field of industrial purchasing, business purchasing, is a fascinating field; very few people have done anything with it. The economist says the consumer is two thirds of all economic activity; that’s not true, the consumer is two—thirdsof gross domestic product, which is final consumption. Economist doesn’t look too often what’s behind it. It’s what industry and businesses do behind final consumption, in times of scarcity, that causes the business recessions.

For example the last one — we predicted ahead of time and recovery — was all associated with the problems of Y2K. People not only buy new equipment and falsely stimulated things but adding to the inventories and having the suppliers add to the inventories in anticipation of problems,

which didn’t occur. Then you readjust the inventories, you’ve got problems. So I still have fun working with this.

MR. JENSEN: What about the recession in the year 2000, no after?

DR. HOAGLAND: Well, you see what happened was, it starts in about April when people realize they got too much and everything and you started to recover from it and then you were hit by 9-1 1-01 ,which shocked everything but people forget — it wasn’t just that, it was anthrax.

People forget that anthrax hit about the same time, and nobody knew why or from where it was coming, who’s going to be hit next. So that slowed it and then we had scandals in the some of the companies — that slowed it. But everybody says, well, we’re finally getting back to what we were in 2000. Hell, we were at an artificial high at the end of ‘99 and that’s what happens. When you got the scarcity you built an artificial high and then you come off it. So we’ve been recovering nicely for quite awhile but people don’t recognize it.

MR. JENSEN: Well, do you have anything else you’d like to talk about? 1, 1-, L)R. FIOAGLAND: Oh, probably lots of things I can’t think of. I’ll be glad to answer any questions I knew about. As I said I was forward only four months, fantastic period of time and ended up going back to Pearl to teach as I anticipated. I think people should go back and look at the original documentation and try to understand the battle of Leyte Gulf.

MR. JENSEN: I want to thank you, doctor, it has been very interesting. It has been our honor to take your oral history, and as soon as they put it down on paper we’ll get you your copy.

DR. HOAGLAND: If you have additional questions that you think I can answer, don’t hesitate to send them along.

MR. JENSEN: Okay. That would be great. I appreciate that. As they go ahead and transcribe this there may be some questions and that sort of thing, so we definitely appreciate it. I want to thank you very much.

DR. HOAGLAND: Thank you.

Transcribed December 3, 2009, by Eunice Gary.

Corrected July 2015 by Anne 1-loagland Magoun (Dr. Hoagland’s daughter)

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