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before Pearl Harbor

Throughout the nine years of his commandancy Lejeune argued in vain for a system of selection boards to examine officers for promotion at each rank to replace the traditional scheme of seniority. Lejeune did not need to consult Congress to alter the traditional focus of Headquarters Marine Corps (HQMC). Since the founding of the Corps, designated staff officers had guided the day-to-day functioning of HQMC while the commandants mostly tended to political or ceremonial duties.

On 1 December 1920 Lejeune expanded the Planning Section into the Division of Operations and Training to manage all matters relating to operations, training, education, intelligence, and aviation. He also brought in a protege and friend dating from his tour in the Philippines more than a decade before - Lt. Col. Earl H. "Pete" Ellis.

A lanky midwesterner, Ellis had enlisted in the Corps at age twenty in 1900 and obtained his commission a year later. His effulgent intellect and boundless energy impressed everyone with whom he came in contact.

Tragically, Ellis's professional performance caused his superiors to overlook the fact that he was an alcoholic of exceptional instability whose recorded eccentricities included bringing a dinner party to a close by blasting the plates off the table with his .45. By 1920 acute alcoholism had seriously undemined his health. During his sober interludes, however, he became intrigued with the prospect of a conflict in the Central Pacific. At the end of the world war, Japan had been given League of Nations mandates over the formerly German islands in the region - suzerainty, in effect, under the Empire of Japan. Ellis began a monumental study of the potential for amphibious operations should war break out with Japan.

On 23 July 1921 Ellis submitted the result of his labors to Lejeune: a thirty-thousand-word plan for "Advanced Base Operations in Micronesia, 1921." Anticipating the loss of the Philippines, Ellis's plan called for an amphibious advance northward across the Japanese-held islands in the Central Pacific, beginning with the establishment of an advanced base in the Marshall Islands. To an uncanny extent, the tactics and procedures Ellis prescribed - the use of underwater demolition teams, the organization of assault forces, and the role of naval air and gunfire support - foreshadowed the techniques that would actually be employed in World War II. Even in specifics his projections often proved accurate; the four thousand troops who seized Eniwetok Atoll in the Marshalls in February 1944 closely corresponded to the number he allocated to the operation.

Well before completing his study, Ellis approached Lejeune with a request for permission to visit the Central Pacific in the guise of an American businessman. Although the terms of the mandates prohibited the Japanese from fortifying their islands, it was widely - albeit erroneously - assumed that they were doing so. Ellis felt impelled to see for himself. As a bachelor, he would not need to account for his movements to anyone except the commandant. Lejeune approved his proposal, Ellis gave him an undated letter of resignation to be used if needed, and Lejeune assisted him in establishing a fake identity. In the summer of 1921, Ellis set out on his lonely mission, posing as a representative of a New York firm owned by a retired Marine lieutenant colonel.

Traveling to Japan and then on to the Central Pacific, Ellis died at Koror in the Palau Islands on 12 May 1923. The Japanese government notified the American embassy, and arrangements were made for Chief Pharmacist's Mate Lawrence Zembsch to travel in a Japanese ship from Yokohama to Koror to retrieve Ellis's ashes. When the vessel returned in mid-August 1923, Zembsch was found to be in a catatonic state. He was taken to the U.S. naval hospital in Yokohama and by the end of the month had recovered sufficiently to report that the Japanese had known that Ellis was an American agent. Before Zembsch could elaborate on this story, the hospital was leveled by the great Kanto earthquake of September 1923; he died in its ruins.

Here were the ingredients of a first-rate mystery. Friends believed that Ellis had been killed by the Japanese secret police. After World War II, the Marine Corps tried to solve the puzzle. An investigating officer interviewed a number of people who had known Ellis on Koror, including a native woman with whom he had lived. Their testimony indicated that although the Japanese suspected Ellis to be a spy, they did not kill him. In all probability, he simply drank himself into the grave.

Informed of Ellis's death, Lejeune decided not to use his friend's letter of resignation and instead issued a terse statement that Ellis had been absent without leave. His disavowal of official responsibility for Ellis's activities averted the threat of a scandal. The entire bizarre affair could easily have mushroomed into a cause celebre because the Department of the Navy had supported, if not actually concocted, the risky venture; the Office of Naval Intelligence even paid Ellis's travel expenses.

Civil war in China throughout the 1920s demanded the gradual strengthening of the American Diplomatic Mission Guard stationed in Peking. When Chiang Kai-shek's Chinese nationalist party, the Kraonrintang, marched north into the Yangtze River Valley in July 1926, Marines landed to protect American lives and property as well as foreign missionaries who requested protection. In January 1927, President Calvin Coolidge authorized the activation of the 4th Regiment of Marines, and it arrived in China that February. Brigadier General Smedley Butler was given command of the 3rd Marine Brigade, including the 4th Marines, and arrived at Shanghai on May 2, 1927. In addition to the 4th Marines, Butler's Brigade included the 6th Marines, an artillery battalion - the 1st Battalion, 10th Marines, equipped with 75mm field guns - a tank platoon, and an aviation squadron.

The year before, Butler had brought charges against Alexander S. Williams - his second in command at San Diego - for drunken behavior. Recalling that incident and Butler's strident prohibitionist views, Will Rogers provided a pungent observation: "Smedley Butler has arrived in China. The war may continue but the parties will stop."

The 4th Marines remained in Shanghai while the rest of the brigade traveled the familiar railway up to Tientsin. By summer 1928, Chiang Kaishek had control of Peking, but fortunately the American diplomatic mission was not accosted, and the Marines did not see any action. Marine duties under Butler's command in China focused on the demonstration of Marine presence to instill a sense of order. Butler went out of his way to make his Marines look as imposing as possible, putting on a continuous military pageant exhibiting American military strength, including the impressive "Horse Marines."

In January 1929, the 3rd Brigade, with the exception of the 4th Marines, returned to the United States. The 4th Marines remained on duty in Shanghai, a post it would hold until just before the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941.

Even before Pearl Harbor, Marines stood toe to toe with the Japanese. When Japan attacked China in 1937, Brigadier General John Beaumont led the 2nd Marine Brigade and the 6th Marines back to China, where they deployed to Shanghai and Tientsin to reinforce the 4th Marines. Although the 4th Marines resisted Japanese pressures for several years, relations with the Japanese worsened, and the position of the Marines in China became precarious as the Japanese became more belligerent.

This time, the Leathernecks found themselves facing an adversary determined to break the Western hold on the International Settlements in Shanghai. In one memorable confrontation in the summer of 1940, Maj. Chesty Puller, executive officer of the 2nd Battalion, 4th Marines, drew his pistol on a Japanese Army officer who had led a detachment into the American sector to seize some Chinese. The Japanese released their captives and withdrew.

Concluding that U.S. armed forces would not be able to support the distant Marine position and fearing Japanese designs on the Philippines, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt decided to withdraw the Marines from China. The 4th Marines left on November 28, 1941, bound for Corregidor.

A generation of Marines remembered China duty with tears in their eyes. Although a private earned only twenty-one dollars a month, he could live like a king. Chinese room boys shined shoes, washed clothes, and even cleaned rifles and equipment. A steak in town cost only thirty cents, a bottle of Chinese beer to wash it down-two cents a quart! And then there were the girls, White Russian as well as Chinese: beautiful, accommodating, and, like everything else, affordably priced.

But the curtain was coming down. The German invasion of Poland ignited World War II. France fell to Hitler's armies the following summer. In response to the pleas of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, Roosevelt ordered Marines to lonely, frozen Iceland in the North Atlantic. Earlier, Roosevelt had anticipated using the 1st Marine Division to secure the Azores. Instead, the chief executive decided to send the 1st Provisional Brigade - 4,095 Marines - to relieve the British garrison of Iceland. Landing there on 7 July 1941, the Leathernecks ate unfamiliar English chow and adopted the custom of the rum ration while enduring the unenthusiastic hospitality of the population. An Army brigade began to arrive in August 1941, and by 8 March 1942 the last Marine had departed.

When Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, the U.S. Marine Corps had strength of 18,052 men. One week after the invasion, the Corps was authorized to increase its enlisted strength to 25,000 men, recalling retired and volunteer officers if need be. On October 5, 1940, the Marine Corps Reserve - comprised of 232 officers and 5,009 enlisted men - was reactivated, and reservists were used to fill in the ranks of regular Corps units. Defense battalions were dispatched to several Pacific islands, including Johnston, Midway, Samoa, and the Palmyra Islands.

The previous July, Japan had occupied French Indochina. The United States responded to this act of aggression by imposing economic sanctions that set it on a collision course with the island empire. As war clouds gathered over East Asia, American leaders grew increasingly apprehensive about the defense of the Philippines. On 28 November 1941, the last of the 4th Marines, band playing, marched down Bubbling Well and Nanking Roads through Shanghai to the docks. The headquarters of the 2nd Brigade and the 6th Marines had already returned home in February 1938. As the fifes and drums played "China Night" one last time, the Leathernecks filed aboard ship. An era had ended.

Worldwide, the Corps numbered scarcely more than it had two decades earlier. But they were a hard lot. Few Leathernecks made private first class in one enlistment; most stayed because they had nowhere else to turn in the harsh economic climate of the depression. The officers were a mix of Naval Academy alumni, distinguished graduates of college and university ROTC programs, and outstanding NCOs selected for officer training. The Leathernecks of 1941 still wore the dishpan helmets of World War I and carried much of the equipment of an earlier era, but the lean interwar years had spawned an earnest and tough Marine Corps ready to wrestle with any adversary.

Merrill L. Bartlett & Jack Sweetman. Between the Wars. The U.S. Marine Corps: An Illustrated History. Naval Institute Press. 2001. & Walter J. Boyne, USAF (ret.) Series Editor, Clifton G. Ganyard. Send in the Marines: Between the Wars. Alpha Bravo Delta Guide to the U.S. Marine Corps. Alpha. June 3, 2003.

Illustrated Directory of the United States Marine Corps Revered for its tough training regime and 'hit-the-beaches' philosophy, the U.S. Marine Corps has fought in every overseas conflict in which America has been involved since George Washington's first amphibious operations during the Revolution. Paperback, 4-1/2' x 8-1/2', 360 pages, 300+ color, An addition to a highly successful, fact-packed series of Illustrated Directories., Includes dramatic paintings, rare contemporary images, and specially commissioned colour photographs., Special sidebar features, succinct quotes, and diary-style timelines complement highly readable narrative.THE AUTHOR:Chester ('Chet') G. Hearn is a former member of the United States armed forces. He has written more than a dozen books on U.S. military history, including An Illustrated History of the United States Navy and Naval Battles of the Civil War, George Washington's Schooners: The First American Navy, Admiral David Glasgow Farragut, and Admiral David Dixon Porter. Three of his titles have been 'alternate selections' for the History Book Club of America. He graduated from Allegheny College with a B.A. in Economics and a minor in History, and spent much of a civilian career as an executive in industry. He now spends all his time writing and researching.

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