Pete Ellis didn't report back to Marine Corps headquarters after his 90-day vacation, and no one heard of him making an appearance in Europe. When the officer in charge of administrative matters reported to his superiors, he received the reply: "Extended leave." This decision lasted until October of the following year.
Ellis' actual destination is Micronesia. In August 1921, he sailed from San Francisco to Australia, and then visited Samoa and possibly Fiji. Upon his return to Australia, Ellis obtained a visa to enter the Japanese Trusteeship, and then traveled to Japan via the Philippines.
Ellis was not very efficient, and it was not until the end of July 1922 that he arrived in Yokohama from Manila on the passenger ship "Jackson**". Soon after arriving, he was bedridden in a large hotel in Yokohama and was in critical condition. Soon, he was admitted to the U.S. Naval Hospital in Yokohama. The diagnosis was nephritis and alcoholism. In fact, he has been hospitalized in every country he has visited, with the exception of Samoa and Fiji.
More than two months later, Ellis was about to be discharged from the hospital, and the U.S. Navy military attache on the ground asked him to return home and gave him two options: either to take a ** ship or to take a commercial liner. Ellis chose the latter. However, he did not keep his promise, and on October 4, he withdrew $1,000 from a local bank and was discharged from the hospital two days later, after which he disappeared.
On May 21 of the following year, the United States received a telegram from the Embassy in Japan from Tokyo, saying: A representative of Hughes** Company at 2 Rector Street, New York, Earl HEllis, died on May 12 in Palau, Caroline. What to do with his body and belongings, Japan** is waiting for instructions from the American side.
Ellis's sudden death caused a stir in the United States. After repeated questioning from the outside world, John A. Hughes, the manager of Hughes**Hughes) admitted that Ellis was not his employee, but an active-duty lieutenant colonel in the Marine Corps. Under constant interrogation by the press, Major General Le Genne had to say that Ellis had been on vacation in the Orient and that he had been a patient at the Yokohama Military Hospital before he lost contact with him, and that his vacation had been cancelled since then. Official records support Lejeine's claims.
In hindsight, Ellis must have had many questions in mind after submitting his report on Micronesia, including whether the Japanese had built military installations on those trustee islands, and what the climate, sea conditions, topography, vegetation, products, inhabitants, and customs were like. This prompted him to go in person, despite his poor health, unstable mood and alcoholic habits.
This secret mission should have been requested by Ellis on his own initiative. Back in 1912, while studying at the Naval War College, Ellis wanted to travel to Micronesia, where the islands were still under German control. After Japan took over the islands, foreigners were not allowed to enter, which made Ellis feel that the trip was necessary.
In fact, Ellis submitted a formal resignation to General Lejeune before he left, without a date, in order to keep the Marines out of charge if his espionage activities were exposed and the Japanese arrested. He also turned to his old comrade-in-arms Hughes (a retired Marine Corps colonel), nominally on behalf of Hughes, to go to Micronesia to procure dried coconut in order to provide cover for his intelligence work.
General Lejeune allowed him to go on leave, also avoiding the tricky official approval process. In early October 1922, when Ellis was asked to terminate his secret mission and return to China, he could not accept defeat and could not forgive himself for returning without setting foot on the island of Micronesia, and was determined to complete the mission, even if it would cost him his life.
As it turned out, the first espionage mission in the history of the U.S. Marine Corps was not only a public relations disaster, but also a personal tragedy. Ellis, though a genius strategist, is the most amateur of spies. For the last seven months of his stay on the host island, he still couldn't get rid of alcohol, and was in a strange cycle of "gathering intelligence—getting drunk—getting sick—briefly**—gathering intelligence again." He carried with him maps, charts, and a codebook of telegrams; Constantly running around, walking around, sketching, taking notes; Repeatedly drank too much, and often lost his words when he got drunk. His intentions were so clear that he almost put the word "spy" on his face. All this has made the Japanese authorities both surprised and confused, nervous and annoyed.
In January 1923, after Ellis fell ill**, he continued to survey the Marshall Islands and the Caroline Islands on a sailboat that collected dried coconut. He slept on deck, took extensive notes, charted coral reefs, and also recorded local facilities, population numbers, and products. The Japanese assigned Dr. Ishida to spy on Ellis during these voyages. In a storm that nearly capsized the sailboat, Ellis's seafaring knowledge and skills led Ishida to conclude that he was a naval officer.
More than four months later, the U.S. side learned of Ellis's death and dispatched Lawrence Zembsch, the chief pharmacist at Yokohama Military Hospital, to Palau to deal with the aftermath. While Ellis was hospitalized in Yokohama, Zembusch had provided him with **. Zembusch took a Japanese steamer to Palau. After speaking with the Japanese authorities, he witnessed and filmed the exhumation and cremation of Ellis's body and kept his ashes. But he didn't see any of the words Ellis had written during his sojourn. Regrettably, Zembusch fell ill on the way back to Japan, suffered a nervous breakdown, and was admitted to a hospital in Yokohama. The hospital was soon reduced to a pile of rubble in the Kanto Metropolis, and Zembusch was buried inside, taking everything he had seen and heard in Palau to his grave. Later, the urn containing Ellis's ashes was found in the rubble and shipped back to the United States.
1950, Waite WWaite WWorden) Lieutenant Colonel is sent to Palau to try to find the missing piece of the mysterious puzzle about Ellis. Through his efforts, combined with other clues, the world can finally roughly restore the last trajectory of Ellis's life.
After arriving in Palau Coror, Ellis did not want to stay in a Japanese hotel, but wanted to move to Palau, which was more friendly to him. The Palauans also provided him with a wife, a beautiful woman named Metauie, 25 years younger than Ellis.
Lieutenant Colonel Woden met Ngerdako Gibbon. She was the Aboriginal wife of the late Englishman William Gibbon, a 65-year-old woman. She told Worden that Ellis had come to the island on a Japanese ship. Shortly after arriving, Ellis contacted her husband, who was the only English-speaking person in Koror at the time. Ellis stayed at their house for about a week. Later, he asked Gibbon to help him find a house where he could live in seclusion. After some contact by Yoshimoto, the tribal leader of the island provided a thatched house.
Engledarko recalls that during about a month and a half in Koror, Ellis drank spirits, beer, whiskey, whatever he could drink. Because of his weak health, his new wife did not allow him to drink alcohol, nor did he allow the shops that sold alcohol to receive him. Once, after Ellis had run out of wine, he went to Gibbon's house to get something to drink. When Gibbon tells him that there is no alcohol, Ellis smashes the wall open because he suspects that there is whiskey hidden inside. Elliko said Ellis would "walk around" during the day and check in on the situation. But she didn't know what he was looking for. He was constantly stalked by the Japanese. At night, Ellis often finds them peeking in out of the windows of his house. He repeatedly rushed out of the house and chased the Japanese who were wandering nearby. One morning, Ellis was "very drunk" and died at five o'clock in the afternoon. Engeldarko and her husband built a coffin for Ellis and buried him in a local cemetery the next day.
Jose Tellei, a local, provided additional details about Ellis. In 1923, Terai served as the chief of the local police under the Japanese regime. He said Japan's police chief ordered him to keep Ellis under close surveillance. He and three other *** officers in charge of the work told them not to wear police badges and to wear civilian clothes. Ellis's whereabouts covered the entire island of Coror, including Malakal and Arakabesang, but authorities did not allow him to travel to the islands of Babelthuap, Peleliu or Angaur. Ellis recalls that Ellis often searched for the high ground of Koror and climbed up to look out to sea from there.
In the evenings, Ellis would quiet down and in his home in Palau, in a small thatched house, he would start drinking as usual. Not far from his house, there is a shop** beer, whiskey, and Japanese rice wine, and the two male servants hired by Ellis can always get their hands on the liquor through a special arrangement with the owner of the shop. When his condition worsened and the symptoms of delirium tremens became apparent, a Japanese doctor tried to ** for him, but Ellis chased him away several times. Sometimes, when his tremor delirium episodes, Ellis would roar loudly, jump around the thatched house, and even once bang his arm against a wall.
His wife, Metaoi, remembers vividly the day he died. A few days before his death, he was already very ill. Before dying, Ellis left tears in his eyes and rambled about his family in the United States, including his parents and brothers. At one point, he even confessed to the people gathered around his bed, Metaoi, Gibbon, Gibbon's wife, Engeldarko, and two manservants, that he was "an American spy, sent from New York by his superiors." ”
After Ellis's death, the Palauans, led by their patriarch, attended Ellis's funeral. It took more than a week for Japanese authorities to notify the U.S. Embassy of his death. Ellis's personal belongings, including a variety of maps, charts, notes, and classified telegraph codebooks, were confiscated by the Japanese. Japan may have prepared a full report, but no record of it has ever been found. However, they must have been relieved to have all of Ellis's notes and diagrams at the time.
When Ellis went to Micronesia to gather intelligence, Japan-US relations were in a phase similar to a "honeymoon period." Not only is Japan inclined to cooperate with the United States and Britain, but within the Japanese Navy, the treaty faction is also in a clear advantage. Moreover, the Japanese had not yet begun to build fortifications on the host islands, and in their opinion, there was not much to see in these islands, let alone a crappy spy. Probably, it was because of these factors that the Japanese showed rare patience and never arrested Ellis.
Ellis was also present when his body was cremated. He told Lieutenant Colonel Worden that what happened to Ellis's personal belongings was a big mystery and that they were stored in the ** building. When Mr. Lawrence Zembusch's ship arrived, Terlay went to the ** building to receive him. Before leaving Palau, Zembusch searched for a long time, but never found the boxes containing Ellis's personal belongings.
Some people also recall that at that time, the Japanese authorities learned that Ellis was looking for alcohol to drink, so they sent him two bottles of whiskey on the morning of May 12. Ellis quickly drank the two bottles. And that day was the day Ellis died. There are rumors that the Japanese have poisoned the whiskey. But many more said no, because those two bottles of whiskey alone would have killed him without having to do that.
In fact, after 1915, Ellis could no longer get rid of alcohol. He worked with a great sense of duty, and at the same time desperately waged a doomed struggle against his vices. He did everything he could for his country.
When news of Ellis's death was reported back to the United States, Lejeune's staff officers saw that the general had taken out the sealed letters Ellis had left behind from his desk drawer. After a moment of contemplation, Lejeine placed the envelope in the ashtray and, striking a match, burned Ellis's undated letter of resignation. In this way, Ellis remained an active lieutenant colonel in the Marine Corps until his death.
In November 2004, Ellis's remains were exhumed from Greenlawn Cemetery in Pratt and reburied in Arlington National Cemetery with military ceremonies.
After Ellis's death, revisions to the U.S. Navy's Orange War Plan continued to go back and forth. It was not until 1933, through the fourth war games, that the widely supported "The Through Ticket" plan was proved unfeasible, bypassing the Central Pacific and directly rescuing the Philippines The U.S. fleet would fail, after which the U.S. side officially returned to Raymond PRodgers) in 1911 put forward the basic idea up. And that's exactly what Ellis fully supported and waged an amphibious war through the Marines, giving it a feasible plan to operate. As early as 1915, Ellis simulated an amphibious assault on the ** coast, leading the delivery of 3-inch guns from ships to shore. Since then, the various difficulties and risks that the landing force may face in the "ship-to-shore zone" have always been the focus of his theoretical thinking. In his opinion, this issue is undoubtedly one of the core issues of amphibious operations. During the Pacific War, the US military also verified this point by a series of island-grabbing operations in the Central Pacific.
There are many genius insights in Ellis's mind. For example, the first sentence on the first page of the text of Operation Forward Base Micronesia is enough to develop a new theory: "The Marshall, Caroline, and Palau Islands form a 'cloud' of islands that runs east-west between the parallel line between 4° and 12°30 north latitude and the meridian between 134° and 172°30 east longitude." Ellis's idea of amphibious warfare emphasizes a coordinated attack on the enemy's "island cloud", rather than attacking only one isolated target at a certain point in time. In recent years, inspired by Ellis's above-mentioned ideas, the US side has analyzed the important differences between the "island cloud" and the island chain, and believes that after a certain link of the island chain is broken, the blockade of the entire island chain will be invalid; On the other hand, the "island cloud" has the function of interconnection and overall coordination, and is far more solid and reliable than the "island chain" in both attack and defense. Some people have already understood the area around the Micronesian Islands, which Ellis focused on a hundred years ago, as "island clouds on the periphery of the second island chain", and have begun to examine the strategic value of this region from the perspective of great power competition and strategic defense. Perhaps, this can be regarded as an affirmation of Ellis's idea of amphibious warfare.