[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 31 (Friday, March 9, 2001)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2130-S2131]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

      By Mr. LUGAR:
  S. 508. A bill to authorize the President to promote posthumously the 
late Raymond Ames Spruance to the grade of Fleet Admiral of the United 
States Navy, and for other purposes; to the Committee on Armed 
Services.
  Mr. LUGAR. Mr. President, at 10:25 a.m. on June 4, 1942, a Japanese 
armada including four carriers was steaming east towards Midway Island, 
1150 miles west of Pearl Harbor in the Central Pacific. Its objectives: 
Invade the strategically situated atoll, seize the U.S. base and 
airstrip, and, if possible, destroy what remained of our Pacific fleet 
after the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor the preceding December.
  At 10:30 a.m. three of the four Japanese carriers and their aircraft 
were a flaming shambles. Moments before, Japanese fighter cover had 
swatted down torpedo bomber squadrons from the U.S. carriers 
Enterprise, Hornet, and Yorktown--the final, fatal mission for 35 of 41 
American planes and 68 of 82 pilots and gunners. But their courageous 
attack had drawn the fighters down to deck level, leaving the skies 
nearly empty for the 37 U.S. dive bombers who then appeared and, in 
five fateful minutes, changed the course of history. By nightfall, the 
fourth Japanese carrier, too, was a blazing wreck, a fitting coda to a 
day that reversed forever the military fortunes of Imperial Japan.
  ``So ended,'' wrote Churchill, ``the battle of June 4, rightly 
regarded as the turning point of the war in the Pacific.'' With Sir 
Winston, of course, the question at times was whether the event could 
rise to the level of his prose. Midway measured up. ``The annals of war 
at sea,'' he intoned, ``present no more intense, heart-shaking shock'' 
than Midway and its precursor in the Coral Sea--battles where ``the 
bravery and self-devotion of the American airmen and sailors and the 
nerve and skill of their leaders was the foundation of all.''
  Few today pause to remember Midway, now six decades past. Fewer still 
recall the American leader whose nerve and skill were paramount in what 
historians consider one of the two or three most significant naval 
battles in recorded history. He was an unlikely figure, a little-known, 
soft-spoken, publicity-averse 56-year-old Rear Admiral from Indiana 
named Raymond Ames Spruance. Yet it is doubtful that any other American 
in uniform contributed more than this quiet Hoosier to our World War II 
triumph--a foundation for every blessing of peace and prosperity we now 
enjoy.
  I heard Admiral Spruance speak in February 1946, when I was 13 years 
old and he visited Shortridge High School in Indianapolis, his alma 
mater and soon to be mine. Our teachers were excited as they shepherded 
my junior high classmates and me into the auditorium for a joint 
assembly with the high schoolers. But nothing about the speech was 
particularly vivid or exciting to this member of the youthful audience. 
I recall little more than the talk about our recent victory in the 
Pacific--with little hint from the modest man on stage about his 
personal involvement, at one crucial juncture after another, in making 
that victory possible.
  Only years later did I really understand how large a role Raymond 
Spruance had played on the stage of actual events, starting at Midway. 
His very presence at the battle--replacing the flamboyant William 
``Bull'' Halsey, temporarily shore-bound with a skin ailment--had been 
happenstance. Yet it was Spruance, with no prior carrier combat 
experience, who at the key moment made the crucial command decision to 
launch all available aircraft, which led to the devastation of the 
enemy carriers. It was Spruance who then preserved that turning-point 
victory, instinctively resisting Japanese attempts over the next two 
days to lure the American fleet into a trap--a trap subsequent U.S. 
intelligence would confirm was indeed waiting. It was Spruance, as 
famed Navy historian Samuel Eliot Morison would write, who ``emerged 
from the battle one of the greatest admirals in American naval 
history.''
  It was also Spruance who, when complimented on Midway years after the 
War, would say, ``There were a hundred Spruances in the Navy. They just 
happened to pick me for the job.'' Herman Wouk's masterful ``War And 
Remembrance'' has the best rejoinder, which the author puts in the 
mouth of a fictional wartime adversary: ``In fact, there was only one 
Spruance and luck gave him, at a fateful hour, to America.'' Speaking 
in their own voices, Wouk and other Americans of faith would quarrel 
only with the word ``luck.''

  Midway would prove but the first of many Spruance-led successes. As 
Commander of the newly formed Fifth Fleet, he would lead American 
operations in the Gilberts, then in the Marshalls, and then in the 
Marianas, including the invasion of Saipan. (Among the fighting men 
under Spruance's overall command during this 1943-44 period was a young 
aviator--the war's youngest commissioned Naval pilot--named George 
Bush). Spruance would then command 1945's crucial, hard-fought 
invasions of Iwo Jima and Okinawa, the latter involving some 1,200 
vessels and 548,000 men, an amphibious operation on a scale surpassed 
only by Normandy.
  Throughout, he maintained the unassuming attitude that downplayed his

[[Page S2131]]

own role at Midway. Unlike some of his contemporaries (and in marked 
contrast to the spirit of our own age), Spruance avoided publicity and 
abjured self-promotion, which he saw as a threat to effective command. 
``A man's judgment is best,'' said Spruance, ``when he can forget 
himself and any reputation he may have acquired, and can concentrate 
wholly on making the right decision.'' These are words to live by for 
any leader. Spruance, both during the war and in his later service as 
President of the Naval War College and Ambassador to the Philippines, 
lived them as few other leaders in any age and any field of endeavor 
have managed.
  One consequence was that he forwent levels of recognition and reward 
accorded others who, though fully worthy, were certainly no more worthy 
than he. Serious historians and scholars, however, never doubted the 
merits of the man whose biography is aptly titled ``The Quiet 
Warrior.'' Among all the war's combat admirals ``there was no one to 
equal Spruance,'' wrote Morison. ``He envied no man, regarded no one as 
rival, won the respect of all with whom he came in contact, and went 
ahead in his quiet way winning victories for his country.''
  That was surely enough for Spruance, who passed away in December 
1969. But I do not think it should be enough for us, his countrymen, 
who are the beneficiaries of the victories he won. That is why I have 
introduced legislation authorizing and requesting President Bush to 
promote Raymond Spruance--the ``quiet warrior'' under whom the 
President's father once served--to the five-star rank of Fleet Admiral 
of the United States Navy. I believe this posthumous honor should be 
the fitting, and final, promotion among America's World War II Armed 
Forces, even as we anticipate dedication of a national memorial 
honoring all who served in that conflict.
  It is fitting, first of all, because it corrects an oversight. Near 
the end of the war, Congress authorized four five-star positions each 
in the Army and in the Navy. The new generals of the Army were George 
Marshall, Douglas MacArthur, Dwight Eisenhower and Henry ``Hap'' 
Arnold--later redesignated general of the Air Force. The first three 
five-star admirals were Pacific commander-in-chief Chester Nimitz, 
wartime CNO Ernest King, and William Daniel Leahy, President 
Roosevelt's chief of staff and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. But an 
internal battle raged for months over whether the fourth fleet admiral 
would be the colorful Halsey--who was ultimately selected--or his more 
reticent colleague, the victor at Midway. Later, when Congress 
authorized another five-star post for the ``GI General,'' Omar Bradley, 
it overlooked creating a fifth Navy five-star opening, which 
unquestionably would have gone to Bradley's ocean-going counterpart, 
Raymond Spruance.

  Typically, Spruance stayed away from these controversies. His one 
comment came in 1965, when he wrote a friend:

       So far as my getting five-star rank is concerned, if I 
     could have had it along with Bill Halsey, that would have 
     been fine; but, if I had received it instead of Bill Halsey, 
     I would have been very unhappy over it.

  Well, Raymond Spruance can now have five-star rank ``along with Bill 
Halsey.'' He deserves it, the more so because he did not seek it. It is 
an oversight that he was not given it earlier. But these are reasons 
enough to correct that oversight now.
  And there are other reasons we should pay Raymond Spruance this 
posthumous honor, reasons that have as much to do with us as with him. 
What we choose to honor says a great deal about who we are. Much of 
what our political and popular culture ``honors'' today--with celebrity 
and fortune and swarms of media attention is the foolish and flighty, 
the sensational and self-indulgent. Too often, the pursuits made 
possible by freedom are unworthy of the sacrifices that preserved 
freedom itself.
  Those sacrifices were made by earlier generations inspired by a 
simpler, sturdier set of values, values that included duty to country 
and, when necessary, self-sacrifice on her behalf. If we cherish and 
would preserve the blessings of freedom, we must hold up before our 
children--who daily see too many less worthy models--those who 
willingly made the sacrifices that kept freedom alive.
  No one served the values of freedom more fully or nobly, and with 
less thought of personal praise or fame, than Raymond Spruance. On any 
list of the great Allied military leaders of World War II, his 
character and his contributions to victory stand in the very first 
rank. It is simple justice to him, and fitting and proper for us, now 
to award him actual rank commensurate with such character and 
contributions. My hope is that my colleagues and the President will 
agree--so that history henceforth will honor Fleet Admiral Raymond Ames 
Spruance, the quiet Hoosier warrior whose triumph at Midway opened the 
door to America's triumph in the Pacific.
                                 ______