Chapter 27

The first MTAC was before the plane even got off the ground. It was a joint MTAC with Admiral Petty and General Mitchell. The Japanese ships had arrived and at first light, the helicopters would start ferrying the healthy to them.

‘‘The Catalina Bay and Mexican Pacific both are nearly full, about five hundred more on each ship will finish them out. Then they will make the run to California. By the way, Rear Admiral Melvin sends his thanks for the respirators and says to keep them coming,’’ he said. Rear Admiral Melvin was the commander of the medical team on the ‘Mercy’.

‘‘We are going to split some of the arriving medical staff and respirators up between the carriers and assault ships to ease the bed problems on the Mercy. We are also transferring about two hundred from the ‘Mercy’ to the Catalina Bay. The docs thought they are well enough to travel,’’ he said.

‘‘According to the notes I have this morning, there are twenty GEMs flights today bringing more hospital equipment and doctors. Also, the supply ship USS Acme is to arrive with food and supplies. The USS Red Lion will arrive tomorrow. They were already at sea,’’ I said.

‘‘Two more supply ships are loading as we speak and will depart before the end of the day. They are loading a lot or respirators and medical equipment on them,’’ I said.

“That’s good - we need them - this many people are depleting our supplies. Supplies was one of the next topics I wanted to talk to you about,’’ he said.

‘‘I understand they are looking at landing a C130 with respirators on one of the carriers,’’ I said.

‘‘Isn’t that plane too large for carrier landing? Can they do that?’’ Admiral Petty asked.

‘‘I asked the same question and was told it had been done before in 1963 on the USS Forrestal off Boston. It was an evaluation to decide what plane was going to be used for a carrier supply plane,’’ I answered.

‘‘Apparently the C130 did touch and goes, full stops and takeoffs. Today’s carriers are bigger than the Forrestal. Today’s 130 has better ABS braking, better props and more powerful engines - the thinking is it will be a piece of cake,’’ I said.

‘‘They are running confirming test this morning - they must verify drop rates and a few other things. If it works, the 130 will carry six times as many respirators as a GEMs flight,’’ I said.

‘‘The Nugget and Silver Spoon will be returning with more medical equipment and doctors on board,’’ I added.

‘‘We have fifty thousand on the ships and another ten thousand in the bunkers waiting to leave. The troops ashore at Hawaii have located about ten thousand more. Health-wise, they are in worse shape. We are transporting food and water to them until we can get them aboard ships,’’ Admiral Petty said.

‘That would be roughly eighty-thousand out of one and a half million. These are not good numbers. If we didn’t find a lot of people soon and that had to be in the next few days, this was shaping up to be the worst disaster in history,’ I thought.

‘‘It appears that there were dozens of structures that were built to withstand sizable earthquakes and cyclone force winds that have stood up to the ash. As soon as all this started, they were used as shelters and they are packed full of people. Some of them had several levels of underground basements.”

“Unfortunately, they are finding a lot of dead - the ash and gasses have taken their toll,’’ he added.

‘‘We had that discussion a day ago about what to do with the bodies. The NCIS forensic team and the NCIS group is still in one of the bunkers. They are going to do the documentation,’’ I said.

‘‘The thought is to place bodies in body bags after identifying them - if possible - or take facial photographs and start a mass grave, for the time being,’’ I said.

‘‘The bodies are decomposing rapidly with the heat from the ash. Something must be done quickly,’’ Admiral Petty said.

‘‘The assault ships have body bags on board - although I do not know how many - but I think it is a considerable number. Other than that, alternatives are few. We certainly can’t bury that many at sea or carry that many to the west coast for burial,’’ I said.

‘‘The two carriers assigned from the Russia base agreement will arrive tomorrow as will four more assault landing ships from Okinawa. The assault landing ships will put ten thousand more men on the ground to search for survivors plus another ten helicopters and one hundred landing craft. Four more cruise ships will also arrive. Time is running out,’’ I said.

I finished with another MTAC to FEMA on the status and progress with the camps. There needed to be a place to put sixty thousand more people and possibly twice that many more. The closest thing I got to a firm answer was, ‘‘We are working on it.’’

I met with my staff to discuss the body problem - and it was going to be a big problem very soon. Then we did another MTAC with the staffed command center of Admiral Petty, General Mitchell and General Emory. It was very early morning in Hawaii; in fact, it was 0200.

The body issue was discussed in depth. Tomorrow morning all the body bags in storage would be sent to Hawaii. The Marines on the assault ships not directly involved in the rescue would be directed to assist NCIS in identifying the dead, placing them in body bags and transporting them to what had once been a 200-acre park for burial and cover them with ash.

The Seabees would use their heavy equipment as needed to push the ash aside, allowing mass graves to be dug and then cover the bodies.

With an unknown number of dead and the difficulty of all this, they were told to stack them several deep. The rescuers would be told to mark the locations where they found bodies so the BRU (body recovery unit) could locate them. I felt sorry for them – it was going to be a gut retching job, but somebody had to do it.