Posted by The Captain on February 16, 2000 at 18:14:22:
In Reply to: Re: New Article on Jake Cutter posted by Robin on February 05, 2000 at 03:35:38:
...is at odds with my own. Jake's talents were used in the WWII by the ONI (Office of Naval Intelligence then under the Bureau of Navigation).
The islands could not be fortified according to the naval treaty between the Great Powers which established the numbers of cruisers and battleships each of the pre-eminent naval powers could put afloat. It also restricted fortifications in the Pacific.
The Philippines, for example, could not have any new fortificatioins (Corregidor precedes the treaty) and the islands Japan took from Germany could not be fortified.
In the late '30's Japan began to cheat and ONI sent American naval officers and marine officers in different disguises to the various islands of the South and Central Pacific. Occasionally they used civilians (according the the records I have uncovered). Jake though a provisional AVG officer under the Chungking regime, would have been viewed as a civilian by USN officers.
I have not been able to learn if he was eventually given a naval reserve commission. I believe ADM Kemp Tolley mentions him in his book on the voyage of the Lanikai.
I would of course be interested in examining the Professor's sources.
It may all be more complicated than I had first thought. Ah, the trials of an historian.
The Captain