> According to his obituarary which appeared in > the Washington Times of 11/5/00: > > Retired Rear Admiral Kemp Tolley, a "Navy legend" was ordered by President > Roosevelt to sail a wooden schooner into waters patrolled by the > Japanese > in order to drag the United States into World War 2, died Oct. 28 at his > Corbett, Md. home. He was 92. > > Before the Dec. 7, 1941, sneak attack on Pearl harbor, Roosevelt issued > a > top-secret order to minimally equip a civilian schooner as a warship, > commission it as a warship and send it south of the Phillippines, where > the Japanese fleet was believed to be patrolling. > > The Pearl harbor attack occurred before Admiral Tolley's mission could > get under way, and he wound up sailing the Lanikai, a battered 27 > year-old wooden schooner, from Manila through enemy waters to the > western > coast of Australia with a crew of 25 and a gun that hadn't been used > since the Spanish-American War. > > Admiral Tolley said in a 1981 interview with the Baltimore Sun, "But, > meanwhile, he was hoping he could get an incident cheaply by sinking me. > . . . I thought the whole thing was damn peculiar." >
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