Yates Stirling Jr.
Yates Stirling Jr. (April 30, 1872 – January 27, 1948) was a decorated and controversial rear admiral in the United States Navy whose 44-year career spanned from several years before the Spanish–American War to the mid-1930s. He was awarded the Navy Cross and French Legion of Honor for distinguished service during World War One. The elder son of Rear Admiral Yates Stirling, he was an outspoken advocate of American sea power as a strong deterrent to war and to protect and promote international commerce. During Stirling's naval career and following retirement, he was a frequent lecturer, newspaper columnist and author of numerous books and articles, including his memoirs, "Sea Duty: The Memoirs of a Fighting Admiral", published in 1939. Describing himself, Stirling wrote, "All my life I have been called a stormy petrel. I have never hesitated to use the pen to reveal what I considered should be brought to public attention, usually within the Navy, but often to a wider public. I seem to see some benefits that have come through those efforts. I have always believed that a naval man is disloyal to his country if he does not reveal acts that are doing harm to his service and show, if he can, how to remedy the fault. An efficient Navy cannot be run with 'yes men' only."
Yates Stirling Jr.
During the two years at sea then required of a naval cadet that had passed his academic studies before commissioning as an ensign, Stirling was first assigned to the protected cruiser that he and four other cadets joined in the Sandwich Islands, (as the Territory of Hawaii was also known) in July 1892. Seeing these exotic islands that he had heard about in his father's stories, despite the tropical setting Stirling was somewhat disappointed to find no "truly Hawaiian villages" and that "Hawaiian life even then had merged into Western civilization or Oriental." Observing the miscegenation of whites with the indigenous Hawaiians during the few weeks his ship was at Hawaii, he later wrote in his memoirs, "I found them most wholesome companions, although I had the feeling that I must be careful not to fall in love. It seemed strange to see a dignified white official surrounded by children with skins as dark as a mulatto." Stirling's nineteenth century ethnic and cultural beliefs aside, he noted the geopolitical undercurrents of the importance of Hawaii to the United States, Great Britain and Japan as each maintained a naval presence. "All three nations were watching each other to be sure no one would obtain advantage over another and become too powerful in Court circles. Hawaii was known to be an important strategical location with great commercial prospects. The United States would not have permitted any other nation to seize the Islands, yet at that time, the Administration in Washington, under President Cleveland, did not feel itself strong enough to take them for this country. Our method, therefore, was one of watchful waiting and maintaining friendly relations with the Hawaiian Queen (Liliuokalani) and her government." Japan's long-standing ambitions in the Pacific were driving a naval buildup for the First Sino-Japanese War two years later and eventually for war with the U.S., as Stirling would predict in articles and lectures in the 1930s and as others such as Homer Lea, had foretold as early as the first decade of the twentieth century.