1913. He held this post until 4 March 1921. His assistant was the young and energetic Franklin Delano Roosevelt, then a rising star in the Democratic Party.
Most of the twelve Navy secretaries who held the position from 1897 to 1939 had no impact on the enlisted force; their annual reports provided only boilerplate comments in praise of sailors. Because of their lack of knowledge of the Navy, the secretaries usually allowed the Navy’s Bureau of Navigation to handle enlisted matters. Two secretaries proved the exception to the rule: George von Lengerke Myer, secretary from 1909 to 1913 under President William Howard Taft, and Daniels.
Daniels, like most Secretaries of the Navy before 1939, had no naval experience. Unlike his predecessors, however, Daniels came from a “modest background.” Despite his background he decided to control the Navy, “and . . . did so to a surprising degree.” Ernest K. Lindley recalled, “Daniels entered the Navy department with the profound suspicion that whatever an admiral told him was wrong, and every corporation with a capitalization of more than $100,000 was inherently evil.” Daniels’ reforms ran the gamut from banning alcohol from ships (1914) to outlawing prostitution within a five-mile radius of naval installations (1917) to making sure enlisted men were issued two pairs of pajamas and wore them.7
One of the most controversial orders Daniels issued was General Order 63, of 16 December 1913, which provided mandatory shipboard instruction for all men. The secretary pronounced “every ship a school,” but as the Navy had already started training programs, including advanced courses, the new secretary’s experiment met with mixed Navy support and stopped altogether during the Great War. After hostilities ceased, Daniels did not try to reinstate the program.
Unlike previous secretaries, Daniels had “an unprecedented and abiding concern for the men,” but he was not above making himself seem the font of all changes in the Navy—so much so that Harrod noted the secretary’s glowing annual reports give the impression that “Daniels must have invented the enlisted man.” Historian Ronald H. Spector wrote, “In fact this [that is, Harrod’s comment] is correct.” Both Daniels and Roosevelt realized the enlisted force had to be reinvented for the new Navy. According to Spector, the Daniels-FDR leadership should not be looked on as a “period of well-intentioned but naive and futile experiment but as the beginning of a modern approach to enlisted policy. . . . [They] laid the foundation for the competence-based, technology-oriented, specialized, and meritocractic navy of the twentieth century.”8
Although Spector is correct in his observation, it is instructive to know how some of the enlisted force felt about Daniels. CTM Harry S. Morris, for example, recalled the secretary was not “a navy man, more of a southern Preacher trying to make men and officers things his [own] way.” Even while Daniels boasted of his improvements, life at the enlisted level changed little, as a number of letters in Daniels’ papers in the Library of Congress attest. One petty officer in 1914 wrote to his hometown newspaper, “If some state would only start a movement to compel naval officers to treat the enlisted men like human beings and not like dogs . . . that state would earn the thanks and gratitude of over 60,000 enlisted men.” Not all comments came from within the naval establishment. One high school principal wrote Daniels that he would not send any student into the Navy, adding, “When will the officers of the Navy abandon the poppycock assumption of social superiority? I will not tolerate the old feudal constitution of the Navy in which officers are lords and the sailors villains.” Daniels brushed aside these letters as “an exceptional case and pointed to the Navy’s reenlistment rate as evidence that most sailors were fairly treated and happy.” Harrod noted Daniels’ significance “lay not in establishing dramatically new programs [for the enlisted force] but in emphasizing and publicizing concern for the enlisted force.” Daniels died in 1948.9
Changes in the Navy—then and now—can move quickly. Richard McKenna’s naval career illustrates, however, that no matter how rapidly the naval establishment reshaped itself, reforms moved at a slower speed at the enlisted level.10
Apprentice Seaman 2nd Class McKenna reported to boot camp on 4 September 1931 to begin learning about the Navy. The testing given McKenna showed he scored in the top 7 percent in almost every category, even clerical. Interestingly, McKenna “hated the water during [boot camp] training” and never learned to swim.11
Upon the successful completion of boot camp, McKenna received orders to Naval Hospital Corps training school on 4 January 1932. He completed the school on 2 April 1932 with an overall mark of 3.92 out of a possible 4.0. With this training McKenna became a hospital technician in the service’s medical field; his career field thus changed to hospital corpsman apprentice 2nd class.12
McKenna’s first assignment after naval school took him to the naval hospital at Bremerton, Washington, on 13 April 1932. A bluejacket receives periodic evaluations from senior petty officers and officers, earning ratings from 0.0 to 4.0, with 4.0 being the highest possible score. During McKenna’s years at Naval Hospital Bremerton, he was evaluated for proficiency in his rating, ability as a leader of men, and conduct. By 13 December Richard’s marks in proficiency in rate stood at a respectable 3.5, his marks in leadership were 3.0—not too surprising for a sailor just beginning in his career—and his marks in conduct were 4.0. For advancement in rate, the Navy required enlisted sailors to take and pass a naval correspondence course that focused largely on the theoretical material needed for advancement in each grade in a rate. By 1 December 1932 McKenna had completed his course for hospital corpsman apprentice 1st class with a mark of 3.61 out of a possible 4.0.13
McKenna’s service record after five months at the naval hospital at Bremerton contains a letter from HA2 Roy Frederick Lindberry. Lindberry, who was stationed at the Mare Island naval hospital, near Vallejo, California, requested a mutual exchange of duty with McKenna. In a mutual exchange of duty, two sailors within the same rating and pay grade seek an exchange of duty stations and pay for their own travel. (The sailors must have the approval of both commanding officers.) Lindberry wanted the exchange of duty because the Bremerton hospital was closer to his home. McKenna probably wished to be nearer to a larger city and, perhaps to expedite the request, said his home was San Francisco. The mutual exchange was approved and McKenna reported to Mare Island on 17 October 1932.14
Throughout his career in the Navy and thereafter, it seems, McKenna did not throw any paper away. At some point he assembled much of the ephemera gathered in his career into two scrapbooks. Included with the material for this first period of McKenna’s service is an unidentified newspaper clipping announcing Richard’s selection to “attend hospital corps training school.” The scrapbook for Richard’s time at Naval Hospital Bremerton, near Seattle, Washington, reveals a card for the Owl Billiards, at 1510 ½ Third Avenue in Seattle, advertising billiards, cards, and lunch. There is also a medical slip showing an examination of McKenna and a diagnosis of “Staff [staph].” The Mare Island hospital duty is represented in his scrapbook by a round-trip ferry ticket from Vallejo, California, to San Francisco. The duty in both naval hospitals provided the thing he most appreciated: the availability of public libraries.15
Hospital Corpsman Apprentice 2nd Class McKenna on 16 May 1933 changed his career field to fireman 3rd class, an entry level for the enlisted engineering branch of the service, and transferred to the Navy receiving ship (station) at San Francisco for further transfer. This was a major move—from the cool, quiet, antiseptic conditions of a hospital to the noisy, hot, oily, greasy, dangerous engine room of a ship.16 Nothing in McKenna’s service record indicates the reasons for this change. In The Sons of Martha, the unfinished autobiographical novel McKenna was writing at the time of his death, however, he hints that he changed his rating because of the Depression. When a shipmate asks the protagonist in the novel, Reed Kinburn, why he switched to engineering, Kinburn says he had no choice in the matter. President Roosevelt had closed the naval hospitals to veterans and thus made a surplus of hospital corpsmen apprentices. The Navy,
