A lawyer by trade, Jim Ellis (1921-2019) was a civic activist who helped transform Seattle and King County with his work to clean up Lake Washington, create Metro, and push for passage of Forward Thrust initiatives in the late 1960s. Emmett Watson, the venerable newspaper columnist, wrote in 1982: "The next time a national magazine, or a book, places Seattle among the top-ranked cities in America, as it surely will do, it is good to remember why that is. It is because of Jim Ellis." In this excerpt from Ellis's memoirs, he writes about Griffin Way, a fellow Seattle lawyer who played a pivotal role in World War II.
Modest and Unassuming
Members of our family occasionally visit Acacia Memorial Park in Lake Forest Park to leave flowers for family members who are resting there. On each Memorial Day visit, I am heartened to see a large number of people show up with flags and flowers to remember those killed in war. Over the years, I became inspired by friends who were shaped in different ways by their World War II experience and devoted part of their post-war lives to making friendships which helped bridge cultural differences. They are unsung heroes. Griffin Way is one such unsung hero.
Griffith and I first met in 1946, when we were working as student assistants in the old Condon Hall Law Library at the University of Washington. Most of our classmates were returning veterans of World War II coming to the university under the GI Bill. Many were married with children and had very little spending money. Griff and his wife Patricia (Pat) had met in 1943 on a train to Boulder, Colorado, where the two were enrolled as students in the Naval Japanese Language School.
Just as modest and unassuming then as now, Griff never recounted his war experiences during our lunch hours in the law library work room, or during our brown bag lunch gatherings in the early years of law practice. However, some years ago at one of Pat’s gourmet dinner parties, a Marine veteran suggested that I ask Griff about Tinian Island. Since that time, I have badgered Griff, checked published accounts, and talked with veterans who were there. This is Griff’s Tinian Island war story.
Hero of Reconciliation
In the early spring of 1944, two graduates of the Naval Japanese Language School, Junior Lieutenants Griffith Way and Herbert Deane, were sent to the Translation Unit of JICPOA (Joint Intelligence Command Pacific Ocean Area) at the headquarters of Admiral Nimitz at Pearl Harbor. In May 1944, they were dispatched for temporary duty on the staff of Admiral Richmond K. Turner to participate in the Saipan and Tinian islands operations. Turner, who was in overall charge of the Saipan/Tinian landings, had the reputation of being the most experienced officer in the Navy on amphibious warfare.
Griff’s translation work while stationed at Pearl Harbor with JICPOA was in the Land Section (he later became Chief upon return from Tinian). This work dealt with amphibious landings and land forces. From the bloody landing on Tarawa, and through several other landings in the Gilbert and Marshall islands leading up to Saipan, a great deal had been painfully learned about amphibious landings and the need for suitable landing beaches and exit areas adjacent to them. In the course of translating documents captured during these operations, Griff had become familiar with the major issues involved in assessing landings and the most desirable characteristics of a good landing beach.
On June 14, 1944, the Second and Fourth Marine Divisions and the Army’s Twenty-Seventh Infantry Division landed on Saipan on Pacific D+2 Day. Way and Deane were on Turner’s command ship offshore from the landing beaches. The fighting became unexpectedly fierce and difficult because the Japanese garrison had received a substantial reinforcement of experienced troops shortly before the landing in a move that had eluded U.S. naval intelligence. After the initial marine landing, Way and Deane were ordered to join the Second Marine Division on shore. They climbed down the side of Turner’s command ship into a small landing craft, armed with duffle bags of Japanese dictionaries. The Saipan beachhead, which the Marines were tenuously holding, was narrow and the Japanese still commanded the steep hills from which they continuously fired upon landing craft coming ashore. Although harrowing for Way and Deane, their craft zigzagged between Japanese artillery shells coming from the hillside and landed them safely ashore.
Once on land, Way and Deane hunkered down on the beachhead in a small blacked out tent dug into the ground. The two lieutenants worked day and night with lanterns and flashlights out of this canvas covered fox hole. They translated hundreds of documents found by the Marines as they captured Japanese command posts.
Although the Japanese military was quite conscious of the need for security of important documents and carefully classified them for secrecy, they seldom destroyed many of these documents on the battlefields in the Pacific. There was a general assumption by the Japanese forces in the field that American soldiers could not read Japanese and there was no need to worry about them. As a consequence, large numbers of secret Japanese documents were left undestroyed at every headquarters unit in all of the Pacific operations. There was no evidence the Japanese appreciated the extent to which the U.S. Navy had trained a small number of officers in the Japanese language and had these officers spread throughout the Navy and Marine forces in the Pacific. While many American Navy and Marine officers instinctively distrusted these documents and at first refused to take them seriously, the record of their reliability was gradually established, and they became extremely useful.
At first, Way and Deane focused on material of value to the immediate battle on Saipan. They identified potential artillery targets, translating and transposing information from the captured Japanese maps to U.S. coordinates. This information was greeted with enthusiasm by Marines on the ground because the translated papers precisely located ammunition and fuel storage dumps of the recently reinforced Japanese garrison. The accuracy of the translated papers was dramatically verified when Marine artillery would hit Japanese ammunition dumps and produce large secondary explosions.
Tinian Translator
A few days after landing on Saipan, major intelligence gold was struck by the two lieutenants when they began translating part of a captured packet of papers containing Japanese evaluations of the beach topography and prepared defenses for nearby Tinian Island. Tinian Island was smaller than Saipan, but a crucial goal for the Marines because it had enough flat land to accommodate the hundreds of B-29 bombers that would be needed for the planned major assault on the main islands of Japan.
As soon as Way and Deane translated the documents dealing with Tinian, they passed the translations on to the Marines and to Admiral Turner’s staff on his command ship offshore. The documents included a complete order of battle of Japanese forces on Tinian with recent reinforcements, as well as documents showing the disposition of the troops, the defensive strategy, the artillery placements, and the location of ammunition supply dumps. One group of documents struck Way as particularly interesting. These were hydrographic charts of Tinian showing the harbors, bays, and beaches in detail with water depths and sea bottom and shoreline conditions. All of these documents were of obvious interest both to the Navy and the Marines for the Tinian landings planned for late July. Considering Admiral Turner’s plan was to land on the Tinian "Town Beaches," the hydrographic charts were of immediate priority.
These captured documents revealed the Town Beaches as the only beaches on Tinian Island the Japanese believed wide enough to be used by a large American amphibious landing force. The advantages of a wide beach landing site were, indeed, the basis for the American plan. Much like Saipan, the garrison on Tinian had been heavily reinforced and the captured documents showed that all Japanese defenses were being concentrated in the Town Beaches area.
This led Way and Deane to pay special attention to captured hydrographic charts of Tinian Island to see whether there was a possible alternative to the heavily defended Town Beaches. These long beaches ran along the south coast in front of Tinian town. Two other areas looked promising, one on the northwestern coast of the island, known as the White Beaches, and the other in Asiga Bay on the northeast side of the island. Both appeared to Way and Deane to have most of the characteristics of good landing beaches. It appeared that the Japanese defenders considered Asiga Bay beach the second most likely landing site after the Tinian Town Beaches, and they gave significant attention to it in planning Tinian defenses. [Note: Much of the Tinian story is taken from Richard Harwood’s account A Close Encounter: The Marine Landing on Tinian.]
The Japanese considered the chances of an American landing on the White Beaches to be remote due to the narrowness of the beaches. This was the characteristic of the White Beaches that also led Admiral Turner to decline considering them. Apart from their narrowness, however, the White Beaches seemed ideal for landing. The seabed and the gradient of the seabed leading up to the beaches appeared suitable for the landing craft used by the American forces. There were relatively few mines to contend with and no heavy artillery was lined up to blast at an incoming force point blank as there were at the Town Beaches and the Asiga Bay beach. This meant that resistance would be minimal on the White Beaches.
In all probability, the Marines could land equipment and establish a beachhead before sizable opposition could be mounted. It was the lack of substantial Japanese defenses revealed in the captured documents that made the White Beaches look so attractive. Had there been substantial defensive forces and artillery protecting those beaches, their narrowness would have made them extremely costly to use. The more Deane and Way studied the documents, the more it seemed to them that consideration should be given to a surprise landing on the White Beaches instead of the heavily defended and mined Tinian Town Beaches.
Surprise Attack
Way and Deane sent their translated Tinian documents and recommendations to the staff on Turner’s flagship pointing out the opportunity for surprise if the plan of attack were to be changed from the Town Beaches to the White Beaches. It was late in the planning process. The entire chain of command had formed an action plan to fit the large Town Beaches landing site. The operation was almost ready to be launched and Turner’s staff quickly dismissed the new information on the White Beaches as having already been considered. When Way and Deane heard this, they went aboard the flagship to argue their case for the White Beaches in person. As very junior officers their opinion didn’t carry much weight. However, all the captured documents that bore on the issue showed a lack of defensive forces protecting the White Beaches. Several of the officers most acquainted with the assessment of landing beaches began to understand why the White Beaches were worth looking into. Deane and Way returned to shore hoping that momentum might build for the White Beaches. Indeed, quite rapidly a new consensus was building by the Navy and Marine planners that the White Beaches should be seriously examined.
To those who expressed distrust with the Japanese documents, and there were many, Way and Deane had pointed out how easy it would be to verify the information. The accuracy of the captured documents could be quickly tested by extending night reconnaissance to include both the White Beaches and Town Beaches sites. After the oral presentation by Way and Deane to their staffs, Admiral Harry Hill and Marine General Holland Smith became intrigued by the possibility of surprising the Japanese. They sent a party of Navy Seals and Marines ashore undercover of night to check out both landing beach locations. Once on land, they wore two-toed Japanese shoes known as "tabi" to avoid leaving American tracks in the sand.
After exploring both the White and Town Beach sites, the seals found the White Beaches were a good location for a surprise landing because they were not heavily mined and had good landing areas with excellent exit points, but most important, no fortified defenses were in place. On the Town Beaches, the Seals were able to confirm that the beach was heavily mined and fortified with heavy shore artillery and a large troop build-up had already dug in, waiting for the American force to reach the shore. Armed with this vital information in early July, Hill, with support from Smith, recommended the White Beaches to his superior, Admiral Turner. Turner turned the recommendation down flatly because he saw the White Beaches as obviously too narrow and the Town Beaches as the only ones wide enough to accommodate a large-scale landing.
Unknown to lieutenants Way and Deane, a clash of wills was developing at the highest level of the task force. Disagreement arose among Turner and Smith and Hill. When General Smith suggested the White Beaches be reconsidered, Turner reportely barked, "You are not going to land on the White Beaches. I won’t land you there!" "Oh, yes you will!" replied Smith. "You’ll land me any goddamned place I tell you to." To which Turner answered with finality, "I’m telling you now, it can’t be done. It’s absolutely impossible."
Admiral Hill felt so strongly about the advantages of the White Beaches that he went over Turner’s head to Admiral Raymond Spruance in Hawaii, saying the dispute between mission commanders was putting the mission at risk. The drama of the confrontation between the senior leaders is recounted by Thomas B. Buell in his biography of Spruance. Buell recounts that upon receiving Hill’s message Admiral Spruance flew to Saipan the following morning and gathered together all the senior officers involved from both the Navy and Marine Corps. As is customary in the Navy, he asked each of those in attendance for his opinion – the White Beaches or the Tinian Town beaches – starting with the most junior officer. To Admiral Turner’s surprise, one by one every officer present expressed a preference for the White Beaches. Spruance turned to Turner, who realized that Spruance was unlikely to support him if he voted for the Tinian Town beaches. He reluctantly muttered "White Beaches."
The attack on Tinian Island that followed caught the Japanese totally by surprise. The White Beaches were, in fact, not defended and the Second and Fourth Marine Divisions quickly landed and funneled into the island interior in position to attack the rear of the Japanese defense forces. At the same time, large naval ships mounted a major barrage in a false attack on the Town Beaches site. Japanese heavy artillery responded and actually inflicted more causalities on the ships offshore at Town Beaches than the two Marine Divisions suffered while landing thousands of men on the White Beaches. The ability of the Marines to attack the main Japanese force from the rear caused a large part of Tinian’s entrenched defenses to become useless.
A Marine officer who took part in the successful attack told me that Tinian was taken with far fewer casualties than would have happened under the original Town Beaches plan. In fact, more than a thousand American lives were saved by the choice of landing on the White Beaches. A check of other sources confirms that the captured Japanese documents contained the information that caused Admiral Hill to ask Spruance to review Turner’s order on the eve of the battle. Spruance, in his biography, called the Tinian operation, "The most brilliantly conceived and executed of all the amphibious landings in the Pacific and one of the few in which total surprise was achieved." A semiofficial history written by Richard Harwood in 1994 and published by the Marine Corps Historical Center quotes Marine General Holland Smith as saying Tinian Island was, "The perfect amphibious operation in the Pacific War."
What made the Tinian campaign so distinctive was the amazingly low number of casualties. According to Harwood’s history of the event, total American casualties in the Tinian battle were 389 killed and 1,816 wounded. This he contrasts with the 14,000 total casualties including 3,200 who were killed at Saipan a few weeks earlier. Harwood goes on to write, "The selection of the northwestern White Beaches was universally regarded as the key to the quick success of the Tinian operation. The source of the recommendation, however, remains a mystery ... The credit for this choice ... has been debated for years." While this much is known, Harwood says that it remains a mystery as to just how the White Beaches came up for consideration by Admiral Hill and General Smith on the very eve of the invasion. He mentions a number of officers who have claimed credit for making the case for the White Beaches, but he says doubts surrounding each claim remain. Now, the mystery has been revealed.
Harwood recounts that the Tinian Island landings were successful because there was so little opposition. Marines were able to land two divisions and their equipment and move rapidly inland before any serious opposition was developed. The Japanese were, indeed, taken completely by surprise.
Back to Pearl Harbor
Before Deane and Way returned to Pearl Harbor, they were called in to meet with a senior officer on Admiral Hill’s staff. He informed the two lieutenants that they were being recommended for the Navy Commendation Medal for their part in the selection of the White Beaches. Way recalls, "We were told to buy the ribbons since confirmation would be coming through soon. When we returned to Pearl Harbor, we bought the ribbons and awaited word. But the confirmation never came through." The recommendation was in fact never approved by Turner and the medals never arrived.
I believe that since Way and Deane were on Turner’s staff, and the work they were being rewarded for was activity that caused Turner to lose face with his superior, it is reasonable to assume that he or someone on his staff would not look with favor on a couple of reserve junior officers getting medals at his expense. While getting a medal would have been just and proper, everyone should be satisfied to know that the work Way and Deane did saved thousands of Marines from becoming casualties.
Tinian became a miracle. There, 6,000 miles from San Francisco, the U.S. armed forces built what was then the largest airport in the world. A great coral ridge was half-leveled to fill a rough plain, and six runways were built, each an excellent 10-lane highway almost two miles long. The great silver airplanes stood in long rows beside these runways, not by the dozen, but by the hundreds. From the air this island, smaller than Manhattan, looked like a giant aircraft carrier, its deck loaded with bombers. Once every 15 seconds another B-29 could become airborne. The large Tinian airfields were later used by B-29s to launch the nuclear air attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Sadly, Herbert Deane, Griff’s Tinian partner, lifelong friend, and professor at Columbia University, died years before their story was published.
Bridging an Ocean
Griffin Way was a man who had saved many American lives during the war against Japan. He then dedicated much of his post-war life to turn his war experience into building bridges of peace between the U.S. and Japan and spurring the post-war recovery of the Japanese peacetime economy.
After the war, Griffin enrolled in the University of Washington Law School on the GI Bill. In 1950, a Washington State International Trade Fair was held in Seattle to give Japan, and subsequently other Asian countries devastated by the war, an opportunity to show their best products in America. Griff was instrumental in bringing a Japanese delegation to participate in the fair. At the time, this was a ground-breaking event for the two countries. During 1954-1955, Griff served as president of the trade fair organization and spent several months in Asia generating interest in new industries that were emerging after the destruction of World War II.
Once law school was over, he went to work for a law firm in downtown Seattle. He renewed his acquaintance with Thomas Blakemore, whom he had met earlier. Professor Marion Gallagher, the librarian of the University of Washington Law School, had introduced the two men. Blakemore was an American lawyer who had been trained in the Japanese language and was admitted to practice in the courts of Japan. It was a fortuitous introduction because Griff later graduated from the University of Washington in the first class of Japanese law, receiving his LLM in 1968. Griffin’s Japanese language skills enabled the development of a special relationship with Blakemore, the only American then admitted to the Japanese Bar. Griff began spending several months each year in Japan, further cementing their association. Eventually the men became partners, setting up the law firm Blakemore & Mitsuki with offices in Tokyo and Seattle. Blakemore had a clientele that read like the Blue Book of American business and Griff shared in developing their U.S. workload.
On several occasions, Griff, Tom Blakemore, and I discussed the possibility of their associating with the Preston law firm. However, for a variety of good reasons, the two men finally decided to associate their law practice with the firm of Perkins Coie, LLP in Seattle.
Griffin’s wife, Patricia, had also graduated from the Navy Japanese language school in Colorado and served as a Lieutenant JG in the Navy stationed in Washington, D.C. Once she married Griff, she took many opportunities to travel to Japan and the two enjoyed using their language skills to explore the islands and learn about Japanese art and customs. For more than 50 years, Griff spent six months of every year in Asia working at Blakemore & Mitsuki’s Tokyo firm. While his family remained in Seattle until the children could complete their schooling, he devoted his spare time in Japan to distance running and art collecting.
In the late 1960s, he took up with a Japanese running group, intent on the benefits of exercise and the friendships that resulted. For the next 30 years, he entered races across different parts of Japan and became an active member of the Japan Alpine Club. He climbed a number of major peaks in Japan. During Griff’s climbing career, he was accompanied by two Japanese mountaineers who became lifelong friends. In 1969, he invited the two men to the Pacific Northwest, where they climbed major peaks of the Northwest and Western Canada over a six-week period.
With the encouragement of Tom and Francis Blakemore, Griff became interested in learning more about Japanese art and discovered a passion for Japanese prints and paintings. He began collecting high-quality works. With his Japanese language skills, he had the opportunity to learn the history and background of each print and painting. Over the years, Griff’s collection of Japanese art became extraordinary. He kept his collection mostly tucked away in his basement to protect it from sunlight. However, from time to time he would bring a few of his prints up to the living room and share them with his friends. He would tell us the story behind each work and share information about the artist. By the time Griff neared retirement, his Japanese art collection had become internationally significant and very valuable. He joined the Seattle Art Museum board of directors and they urged him to exhibit his works at the Asian Art Museum on Capitol Hill as well as at the Seattle Art Museum downtown.
In 1990, together with Thomas and Frances Blakemore, Griff Way helped establish the Blakemore Foundation located in Seattle. This 501(c)(3) charitable trust is dedicated to encouraging young Americans to develop greater fluency in Asian languages. The Foundation makes annual grants to individuals for advanced study of Japanese, Chinese, Korean, and other Asian languages. The second purpose of the Foundation is to support projects that improve the understanding of Asian art in the United States. During his retirement years, Griff undertook the large task of serving as trustee of the estates of Tom and Francis Blakemore. As this is written, the Blakemore Foundation is dispersing over a million dollars a year in grants to achieve its mission.
Order of the Rising Son
In the spring of 2007, Japan awarded its Order of the Rising Sun to Griffith Way in recognition of his work to increase understanding of economic and cultural development between Japan and the United States. The Order was established April 10, 1875, by Emperor Meiji of Japan and is awarded to those who have made distinguished achievements in international relations, the promotion of Japanese culture, advancement in fields of development, social and occupational welfare, or the preservation of the environment. It is the first national decoration awarded by the Japanese government by decree of the Council of State. Its design of gold rays with a rosette symbolizes energy as strong as the rising sun and is drawn from the historic tradition of Japan as the Land of the Rising Sun.
The coveted Order of the Rising Sun award was presented to Griff by Consul General of Japan Kazuo Tanaka on behalf of the Emperor at the Japanese embassy in Seattle. As I sat in the audience watching the formal presentation, I was struck by how fitting it was for Griff to receive this highly esteemed medal. The guests in attendance were genuinely moved by their firsthand knowledge of Griff’s professional and civic work connecting the two countries. Looking back now, I can see that this journey began soon after he completed law school. From the beginning, he devoted his life to building cultural and professional understanding between Asia and America. I am proud of the contribution my distinguished friend has made to heal the wounds of a bitter war.
