Bush Gets His Author for Lunch, War Story

It was one of those Saturday mornings for Hank Searls and his wife, Bunny. He was hanging around their condominium in Newport Beach. She was out shopping.

Then the phone rang, and the couple were invited to have lunch with Vice President George Bush and his wife, Barbara, at the Four Seasons Hotel a few blocks away.

Bush was in town to give a speech to the California Federation of Republican Women as part of a seven-state presidential candidacy swing that ends today in Dallas.

“My car was dirty. My shoes were dirty. I never wear a tie,” said Searls, 65, a novelist.

But within the hour he had shined his shoes and his car and located his wife and the two of them were sitting across the table sharing calimari with the Bushes.

How did that happen?

Searls, the author of 17 books, including “Jaws II” and “Overboard,” had sent his latest book to the Bushes. Titled “Kataki,” it is what his publisher, McGraw Hill, describes as a revenge World War II novel.

The book contains an non-fictionalized account of Bush’s experiences in the war, including being shot down as a Navy pilot 500 miles south of Tokyo near an island called Chichijima. In real life as well as in Searls’ book, Bush survived when he was plucked out of the water by a U.S. submarine.

What Bush has long known is that there were 17,000 Japanese troops on the island led by an alcoholic Japanese commander who was accused of cannibalism of American soldiers. Bush has said in the past that he came close to ending up in a sukiyaki pot, Searls said.

But, according to Searls, Bush did not know that the commander was later hanged. He found that out by reading Searls’ book and was so intrigued by the story, and the author’s research of his own war record 40 years ago, that he wanted to talk to the novelist. (After these factual accounts, the book spins into a fictional account of a white islander on Chichijima who thinks Bush is responsible for his parents’ death and so seeks him out 40 years later in Washington in an attempt to assassinate him and then--well, read the book.)

Hard to Find

Searls said Bush recounted to him and his wife at lunch how he had decided on the spur of the moment to try to contact the novelist but was stymied by the fact that the Searls’s telephone number is unlisted. The vice president had as much trouble as an ordinary private citizen in getting the number. Even the White House operators couldn’t help.

Finally, Bush had his staff start calling the people listed in the back of the novel whom Searls had credited. That led him to a tennis buddy of Searls’, who referred Bush’s staff to the Newport Beach Tennis Club, which reluctantly gave them Searls’ number.

Searls said he and his wife spent about two hours with the Bushes and a friend of theirs, Raymond Siller, comedy writer for the “Tonight Show.” They had a drink in the vice president’s suite on the 20th floor and lunch on the hotel’s poolside patio. Bush had linguini and tasted his wife’s calimari .

At a reception Saturday night, Bush said Searls has “written this interesting book. I think it’s great, because I’m one of the characters in it.”

The author said the Bushes “simply were crazy about this book. I don’t support Bush, particularly. I’m a Democrat. But he’s a genuine World War II hero. And they were very warm people.”