(The real Joe Rochefort (R) and the Movie version (L))
 
It was a strange day. The Nuclear conference wrapped up downtown at the convention center. The First Lady made a dramatic appearance in devastated Port au Prince. The talking heads are speculating on the impact of the retirement of Associate Justice John Paul Stevens, the most liberal member of the Supreme Court. I read the biography of the distinguished jurist, who joined the court in the Ford Administration, and moved over time to a progressive position, much to the horror of the Republicans who had initially supported him.
 
I was surprised to see that he had been a Naval Intelligence Officer in WWII, and resolved to ask the only man I know who has first hand knowledge about it.
 
I surveyed the wreckage strewn on my desk, sweating a deadline, and finally got up and left it behind to keep a social meeting with a remarkable pal.
 

(Mac today)
 
Admiral Mac is approaching his 91th summer in this world, and is still chugging merrily along. He broke his elbow in a fall a month or so ago, which resulted in surgery and a marked diminution of his communications, since he was reduced to one-handed typing.
 
He does not drink any more, though he doesn’t mind watching. He enjoys a Virgin Mary with olives and lime and horseradish. We often talk about the events of his distinguished and highly secret career, since most of the great events may still remain classified but are hardly a threat to anyone left alive.
 
I picked him up at the front door to The Jefferson where he lives, and we drove the short distance to Willow, our local watering hole. We got seats at the bar, being just a bit ahead of the rush. The place is quite fashionable these days, and maybe it is a sign the Recession is fading. It was mild in impact around here, though it is hard to say if the people drinking exotic vintages ever noticed it much.

(Justie Stevens)
 
I asked him about Justice Stevens, and remarkably, it turned out he was a wartime colleague in Hawaii. I asked about his involvement in the shoot-down of Fleet Admiral Isoruku Yamamto, which featured prominently in the published biography.

(Fleet Admiral Yamamoto)
 
“Operation Vengeance,” as it was called, was  long-range intercept of the Admiral’s personal aircraft. The missions was based on intelligence derived from decrypted Japanese communications that outlined the itinerary for the Admiral’s inspection trip to several bases in the Solomon Islands on April 18, 1943. Army Air Corp P-38s operating from Henderson Field on Guadalcanal successfully shot him down.
 
It was a terrible blow to the morale of the Japanese Fleet.
 
Justice Stevens bio notes his contributions to the effort, though Mac doesn’t remember it quite that way, and he is in a position to know. He was a Lieutenant with Stevens, who he remembers as a polished lawyer and gentleman from Chicago. They were in the same unit at Pearl during the war, and often had lunch together at the Makalapa BOQ.
 
Stevens was a good man, though the modern story of his involvement in the Intelligence Business is a little overblown. Mac said he might have been recruited to be an Air Intelligence Officer rather than a cloak-and-dagger Spook like the published biography implies.
 
Mac looked thoughtful. “Admiral Forrest Sherman created the whole air intelligence program,” he said. “Sherman believed that the perfect AI was a lawyer by training, and he was right. They know how to listen, take depositions, and speak succinctly in a briefing. They have logical and ordered minds, which is just what you need in an intelligence officer. That is probably why they approached John Paul. I don’t recall him being around in early 1943, but it is possible.”
 
LT Stevens was a new guy, compared to Mac, who reported to the code-breaking unit at Pearl (Station HYPO) in February of 1942 when the ships were still on the bottom of the harbor. That unit’s unclassified name was the Fleet Radio Unit Pacific (FRUPAC) and was already humming when Mac arrived in February 1942.
 
Mac hadn’t mentioned the dumb luck of it all. I started jotting notes on bar napkins, which surround me now. Long story short, he had never been destined for anything like the illustrious career he had. It was completely by chance that he was selected to go to the six-week investigations course at Seattle after commissioning on 12 September of 1941.
 
The 90-wonder course in Chicago was intended to produce Deck Officers for the growing Fleet, and it was complete chance he did not get orders to a ship, as most did. Some of them had enough time after commissioning to arrive at their first duty stations in Hawaii to die under the Japanese bombs.
 
The December 7th attack happened just after he completed the investigations course; he served briefly in the Public Affairs office in Seattle. His duties included resettling Alaskan families in the Pacific Northwest, due to the threat of war. And then it began in earnest.
 
All the Ensigns immediately were given orders west with all the other Ensigns. Half were assigned to the 16th Naval District, the other half to the 14th. Dumb luck. It could have been alphabetic order.
 
The 16th Naval District is in Manila. The kids who got those orders took the train down the coast to the Sea Port of Embarkation (SPOE) at San Francisco to the Philippines, and arrived just in time to proceed directly from the docks at Manila into Japanese prison camps.
 
Some of them lived. Dumb luck.
 
Mac got orders to the 14th in Honolulu. There was no Waikiki in those days; that was just a swamp west of Downtown. He was billeted in the YMCA near Hotel Street and the Aloha Tower where the Matson Liners landed. The day after arrival, he walked in the soft breeze amid the scent of flowers from the Y to report to the District Intelligence Officer as ordered.
 
The District Intelligence Office was in a hotel the Navy had requisitioned to accommodate wartime needs, and Mac was startled to note that the DIO wore two pearl-handled pistols on his belt due to his perceived threat of domestic Japanese terrorists.
 
“The guy was a regular Cowboy,” said Mac. “He got right to the point, too. He asked me how much field investigation experience I had. I told him I had successfully completed the six-week course in Seattle, but otherwise had none. The Cowboy positively fumed.” Mac chuckled, remembering the interview.
 
“The Cowboy said “I need men with experience, and you are worthless to me.” Mac said he rocked back in his chair and the pearl handles of the pistol poked out. “He said he had a billet out at the Shipyard he had not been able to fill since he needed all the experienced help downtown. Then he said he had just found someone he didn’t need.”
 
Next morning, Mac had orders to the Shipyard, and found Station Hypo in the basement of the Administration Building, near the bustle of the recovery efforts to salvage the stricken ships that leaned crazily at the piers or had capsized at their berths in the harbor.
 
By noon, Mac found himself reporting to a Navy Commander named Joe Rochefort, one of the handful of men who understood radio, codes and the Japanese language. His little unit made critical breakthroughs on the Japanese JN-25 code system, but it came at a cost.
 
Mac was put to work immediately, experience or no. As mid-1942 approached, FRUPAC was literally under the gun. There were periods of round-the-clock work on intercepted messages, and of Commander Rochefort working in his bathrobe. Hal Holbrook played Rochefort in the movie “Midway,” appearing for briefings at the CINCPACFLT HQ up at Makalapa Crater late and disheveled.
 
Mac had been working there about three months when the frantic effort climaxed with the decryption of enough JN-25 traffic to understand the objective of the Japanese attack. Washington thought the Japanese were headed for Alaska, and in fact a diversionary was intended to go that way. Washington had it wrong, and that was going to be the basis of animosity and jealously that would last decades. Washington hates to be wrong.
 
The main body of the Japanese Navy was going to strike and seize Midway Island, and establish a bastion that could threaten the Hawaiian Islands.
 
Rochefort, with Fleet Intelligence Officer Edward Layton, convinced Nimitz that Midway Island was the real objective. In an act of serene confidence, the Admiral gambled on the ambush that resulted in the Battle of Midway, 4-7 June, 1942. In the fight, the Japanese lost four carriers and many of their skilled naval aviators.
 
It is generally agreed to have been the turning point of the Pacific War.
 
Mac eventually transferred from FRUPAC to be Edie Layton’s assistant, and deploy forward to Admiral Nimitz’ forward HQ at Guam. With the help of his Boss, Mac made a visit to Yokosuka Naval Base, from which the Imperial Navy ships had departed to strike Pearl four years before.
 
He was awarded the Bronze Star for his work with the code breakers. It was all just dumb luck that he was not in the half of his class that reported direct to be prisoners of the Japanese.
 
LT John Paul Stevens finished up his time at FRUPAC, which had moved from the basement at the shipyard to the temporary building in back of the PACFLT Headquarters. He demobilized and got on with his life as a lawyer. As it turns out, he did pretty well.
 
Mac stayed in the Navy, and joined the people at Langley after he retired. He still is occasionally in touch with his wartime buddy, and told me when I dropped him off that he would ask him how he was going to enjoy retirement.

Copyright 2010 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
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