USS MILWAUKEE AND HONDURAS EXPEDITION
Daddy was transferred from the USS Sunnadin to the USS Milwaukee at Pearl Harbor on 1 August 1923. He was in Honolulu for the Christmas of 1923. He sang Mele Kalikimaka for us every Christmas. According to Google,. “Mele Kalikimaka” is Hawaiian for “Merry Christmas”. Or, more precisely, it’s the English phrase “Merry Christmas” as pronounced in Hawaiian. Bing Crosby could sing it better than Daddy could, but he was not nearly as enthusiastic about it as Daddy was. Here’s Bing’s version: https://youtu.be/hEvGKUXW0iI?t=35
Daddy was a gun pointer, sitting on the left side, next to the barrel of a gun firing 6 inch shells. We always wondered why he was so hard of hearing — now we know — having his ear drums blasted every time the gun was fired. A gun pointer uses hand cranks to adjust the direction of fire horizontally, left and right. The gun trainer, the man on the other side of the gun, uses similar hand cranks to point the gun barrel up and down. Our father served on the USS Milwaukee until his honorable discharge 21 June 1924.
BIG GUNS ON THE USS MILWAUKEE
CREW OF THE USS HOUSTON (His ship from June 1919 to December 1921 ?- Daddy is the tallest sailor in the middle of the back row)
CLOSEUP PICTURE SHOWING DADDY IN THE BACK ROW
HONDURAN EXPEDITION
You may have heard about “gunboat diplomacy” and “banana republic”. Here is a little historical background on what was happening in the United States foreign policy in the early 1900s. I am indebted to Dario Euraque for providing information about the history of the civil war that was raging in Honduras when the USS Milwaukee sent troops on an expedition to help put down an uprising against the government.
Some of those sources include:
Adam Gregory Fenner: THE PATH TO FAVOR: TIBURCIO CARÍAS ANDINO AND THE UNITED STATES, 1923-1941
Tim Merrill, ed. Honduras: A Country Study. Washington: GPO for the Library of Congress, 1995.
TEXT VERSION: /http://countrystudies.us/honduras/ PDF VERSION: https://harrisonfamilyhistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Honduras-Country-Story-by-Tim-Merrill.pdf
[Excerpt from Tim Merrill] From 1920 through 1923, seventeen uprisings or attempted coups in Honduras contributed to growing United States concern over political instability in Central America. In August 1922, the presidents of Honduras, Nicaragua, and El Salvador met on the U.S.S. Tacoma in the Golfo de Fonseca. Under the watchful eye of the United States ambassadors to their nations, the presidents pledged to prevent their territories from being used to promote revolutions against their neighbors and issued a call for a general meeting of Central American states in Washington at the end of the year.
The Washington conference concluded in February with the adoption of the General Treaty of Peace and Amity of 1923, which had eleven supplemental conventions. The treaty in many ways followed the provisions of the 1907 treaty. The Central American court was reorganized, reducing the influence of the various governments over its membership. The clause providing for withholding recognition of revolutionary governments was expanded to preclude recognition of any revolutionary leader, his relatives, or anyone who had been in power six months before or after such an uprising unless the individual’s claim to power had been ratified by free elections. The governments renewed their pledges to refrain from aiding revolutionary movements against their neighbors and to seek peaceful resolutions for all outstanding disputes.
The supplemental conventions covered everything from the promotion of agriculture to the limitation of armaments. One, which remained unratified, provided for free trade among all of the states except Costa Rica. The arms limitation agreement set a ceiling on the size of each nation’s military forces (2,500 men for Honduras) and included a United States-sponsored pledge to seek foreign assistance in establishing more professional armed forces.
The October 1923 Honduran presidential elections and the subsequent political and military conflicts provided the first real tests of these new treaty arrangements. Under heavy pressure from Washington, López Gutiérrez allowed an unusually open campaign and election. The long-fragmented conservatives had reunited in the form of the National Party of Honduras (Partido Nacional de Honduras–PNH), which ran as its candidate General Tiburcio Carías Andino, the governor of the department of Cortés. However, the liberal PLH was unable to unite around a single candidate and split into two dissident groups, one supporting former president Policarpo Bonilla, the other advancing the candidacy of Juan Angel Arias. As a result, each candidate failed to secure a majority. Carías received the greatest number of votes, with Bonilla second, and Arias a distant third. By the terms of the Honduran constitution, this stalemate left the final choice of president up to the legislature, but that body was unable to obtain a quorum and reach a decision.
In January 1924, López Gutiérrez announced his intention to remain in office until new elections could be held, but he repeatedly refused to specify a date for the elections. Carías, reportedly with the support of United Fruit, declared himself president, and an armed conflict broke out. In February the United States, warning that recognition would be withheld from anyone coming to power by revolutionary means, suspended relations with the López Gutiérrez government for its failure to hold elections.
Conditions rapidly deteriorated in the early months of 1924. On February 28, a pitched battle took place in La Ceiba between government troops and rebels. Even the presence of the U.S.S. Denver and the landing of a force of United States Marines were unable to prevent widespread looting and arson resulting in over US$2 million in property damage. Fifty people, including a United States citizen, were killed in the fighting. In the weeks that followed, additional vessels from the United States Navy Special Service Squadron were concentrated in Honduran waters, and landing parties were put ashore at various points to protect United States interests. One force of marines and sailors was even dispatched inland to Tegucigalpa to provide additional protection for the United States legation. [This would have been Daddy’s landing party – he told me he was with a group of marines and sailors that went into Tegucigalpa]. Shortly before the arrival of the force, López Gutiérrez died, and what authority remained with the central government was being exercised by his cabinet. General Carías and a variety of other rebel leaders controlled most of the countryside but failed to coordinate their activities effectively enough to seize the capital.
In an effort to end the fighting, the United States government dispatched Sumner Welles to the port of Amapala; he had instructions to try to produce a settlement that would bring to power a government eligible for recognition under the terms of the 1923 treaty. Negotiations, which were once again held on board a United States cruiser, lasted from April 23 to April 28. An agreement was worked out that provided for an interim presidency headed by General Vicente Tosta, who agreed to appoint a cabinet representing all political factions and to convene a Constituent Assembly within ninety days to restore constitutional order. Presidential elections were to be held as soon as possible, and Tosta promised to refrain from being a candidate. Once in office, the new president showed signs of reneging on some of his pledges, especially those related to the appointment of a bipartisan cabinet. Under heavy pressure from the United States delegation, however, he ultimately complied with the provisions of the peace agreement.
We don’t know much about the maneuvers the USS Milwaukee did while Daddy was onboard. We do know what happened when the ship sailed from Hawaii to Honduras to help put down an uprising near Tegucigalpa.
Here is Daddy’s abbreviated account of the Tegucigalpa expedition:
Some details I remember from the story include the landing party members stripped to the waist and darkened their skin with some blackening compound. Armed with machetes they attacked the leaders of the uprising who were camped outside Tegucigalpa. It was dark, no moonlight. Anybody without a shirt was a member of the U.S. landing party. Anybody with a shirt lost his head. Daddy never actually told me he was a member of that group. Nor did he tell me that he was not. It was left to the listener to his story to decide what the 18 notches represented. As Daddy said in his letter, I played with that machete as a teenager. It was a constant companion on my belt as I explored the woods near our home. in Wildwood, Florida.
Daddy’s Letter to Brian Charles Harrison specifies the machete will pass to Brian after William Burton Harrison, Jr. dies.
Envelope
Page 1
Page 2
Pictures of the landing party leaving and returning to the USS Milwaukee off the shore of Honduras
Personal photos collected by William Burton Harrison, Sr.
Daddy having a second cup of coffee.
Machetes were used by the landing party of sailors and marines to help put down the 1924 uprising
Here is Daddy’s machete – the one I played with in my youth and carried on my adventures in the woods around Wildwood. We will never know what the notches represent. We can only speculate.
Here is a collection of pictures from the expedition
