OFFICER WHO BROKE JAPANESE WAR CODES GETS BELATED HONOR

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000504060002-8
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 11, 2012
• Sequence Number: 2
• Publication Date: November 17, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/11: CIA-RDP90-00965R000504060002-8
Officer Who Broke
Japanese War Codes
Gets Belated Honor
By EDWIN McDOWELL
Forty-three years after Joseph J.
Rochefort broke the Japanese code
that helped the United States win the
Battle of Midway, the former naval
officer is to be awarded the Distin-
guished Service Medal.
It will be given posthumously, be-
cause Captain Rochefort - who was
denied the medal twice during his life-
time and ousted as an intelligence offi-
cer after he was first nominated for it
- died in 1976.
Military and civilian historians say
the Navy's dehision to award the
medal, one of the highest honors avail-
able to a noncombatant, will help rec-
tify a longstanding wrong.
A World War II Feud
Beyond that, however,'they say the
award has helped bring to light the bit-
ter feuding within the Navy's World
War II intelligence operations.
"Not only was Captain Rochefort re-
moved from his intelligence command
in Pearl Harbor soon after the Battle of
Midway," said Capt. Roger Pineau, the
well-known naval historian, "but the
Washington intelligence community,
which was wrong about the time and
place the Japanese would strike after
Pearl Harbor, tried to take credit for
Rochefort's code breaks and accurate
intelligence evaluation of Japanese ob-
jectives.".
'A spokesman for the Navy said the
award to Captain Rochefort was based
"solely on the merits of the case." But
;several Rochefort supporters said the
award was being given because much
of the information in a new book, which
gives details of Captain Rochefort's
case and the machinations within the
Navy intelligence community, had
found its way into military circles.
The book is "And I Was There" (Wil-
liam Morrow & Company), the posthu-
mous memoirs of Rear Adm. Edwin T.
Layton, the Pacific Fleet's intelligence
officer from 1940 until the surrender of
Japan. Admiral Layton died in April
1984 and the book was completed by
Captain Pineau and John Costello, a
British historian who has written many
books about World War II.
The publication date of the book,
which has an initial press run of 100,000
copies, is Dec. 7, the 44th anniversary
of the Japanese attack on Pearl Har-
bor.
NEW YORK TIMES
17 November 1985
Admiral Layton was one of the few 'He Was Yaoked Out of
people present during both the attack The Navy would not comment on the
on Pearl Harbor and the ceremony of ( earlier decisions not to award the
souri. In 1983, he was persuaded to
write his memoirs after the gradual re-
lease of classified documents in the Na-
tional Archives.
A Linguist and Cryptologist
Among the documents were more
than 300,000 decoded Japanese military
and diplomatic messages, which form
the basis of the book's detailed descrip.
tion of the secret radio surveillance of
Japanese communications beginning
medal. But Arthur Davidson Baker 3d,
an official adviser to the Secretary of
the Navy, said this was the first time
such a proposal had come before John
Lehman Jr., who has been the'Secre-
tary of the Navy since 1981.
However, he added, "Somebody sure
as hell did Rochefort in, because he
was yanked out of there and never did
intelligence again."
Admiral Nimitz's recommendation
of the medal for Captain Rochefort was:
turned down by Adm. Ernest J. King,
chief of naval of operations, who is now,
ente
t the
R
h
f
t
,
was a
oc
o,
e
- - Admiral Layton said two people who
`"aptai`L
dio surveillance.
of that ra
"He was a Japanese linguist, an in- worked to undermine Captain Roche-
telligence analyst and a cryptologist, fort, and strongly advised Admiral
all the skills that enabled him to bring ring against singling him out for the
together the missing bits and pieces, ' award, were two brothers, Capt. John
said Rear Adm. Donald M. Showers, R. Redman stud Comdr. Joseph R. Red-
who worked for Captain Rochefort in', man Captain Rodman had boon offitwr
1942 and who successfully petitioned
for the Distinguished Service Medal on
his behalf.
Installed in June 1941 as officer in
charge of the Combat Intelligence Unit
- Station Hypo - at Pearl Harbor, one
of three stations where intercepted
Japanese radio messages were sent for
deciphering and translating, Captain
Rochefort forged a small, dedicated
team of analysts.
He provided daily intelligence analy-
ses to Admiral Layton, then a lieuten-
ant commander. Admiral Layton, in
turn, conveyed them to Adm. Chester
W. Nimitz, commander of the Pacific
Their efforts paid off in late May 1942
when, in translating the latest Japa-
nese naval code, the Rochefort team
succeeded - despite claims from
Washington intelligence officials that it
in charge of the research desk at naval
intelligence in Washington; Com-
mander Redman was deputy director
of naval communications. Both are
now dead.
A Rival Team
For Captain Rochefort to have re-
ceived the medal, Admiral Layton
writes, would have been a tacit admis-
sion that the principal intelligence
breakthrough had been made by his
team. "Worse, it would not have
squared with the Redmans' claims that
their Negat team was responsible for
the crucial cryptanalytic success."
Capt. Wesley A. Wright, a leading
cryptanalyst of World War II who
served in Pearl Harbor and Washing-
ton, recently said of the Redman broth-
ers, "Their specialty was the Office of
Naval Communications, and they were
very good at It. They felt strongly that
codes revealing the time, date and 'naval intelligence that was derived
place of the planned invasion of Mid- from intercepted enemy messages
U- 1A Les _#-11-A L.e..l.-; _M1
way .a........
Washington, by contrast, had said
the target was likely to be Johnston Is-
land or the West Coast of the United
States, and later than the date of the ac-
tual attack.
Acting on Rochefort's analysis, Ad-
miral Nimitz dispatched three carriers
to positions northeast of Midway, out of
range of Japanese observation planes.
The ensuing three-day battle crippled
the Japanese fleet and, at a time when
the Pacific War still hung in the bal-
ance, turned the tide in favor of the
United States.
Immediately after the Battle of Mid-
way, Admiral Nimitz recommended
the Distinguished Service Medal for
Captain Rochefort but the Navy De-
partment turned it down - ostensibly
because Washington and the Philli-
pines had also had a hand in the intelli-
gence triumph.
"But this was a subterfuge," said
Mr. Costello. "To award Rochefort the
medal would amount to an admission
that Washington had committed an in-
telligence blunder."
AdmiralKing accepted his chief of
staff's recommendation that the medal
be disapproved, in part because the in-
telligence work done by Washington
had been "of as high an order as that
done in Honolulu."
Captain Rochefort was recalled from
Pearl Harbor and eventually reas-
signed to command of a floating dry
dock in San Francisco.
He was "speared like a frog," the au-
thors say, "and hung out to dry for the
rest of the war when he could have done
so much more to help us win it."
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/11: CIA-RDP90-00965R000504060002-8
 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/11: CIA-RDP90-00965R000504060002-8
Nimitz Makes 2d Request
Captain Rochefort eventually re-
turned to intelligence work in Washing-
ton in 1944, but in a position of lesser re-
sponsibility. In 1946 he was awarded
the Legion of Merit. "But that came
with just a general citation that re-
flected his total wartime service," Ad-
miral Showers said. "It said nothing
about his work at Midway."
In 1958, Admiral Nimitz again took
up the Rochefort cause, sending a two-'
page, handwritten letter to the Secre-
tary of the Navy. That request was also
denied, on the ground that awards for
action in World War II had been closed.
Joseph J. Rochefort Jr., an Army
'aotain and a graduate cF wrest Point.
said his father never complained about
not being awarded the medal. "His at-
titude was, you can accomplish almost
anything as long as nobody cares who
gets the credit," he said recently.
But colleagues familiar with the case
continued to lobby on Captain Roche-
fort's behalf. These included J. Wilfred
Holmes, a writer who served in Station
Hypo. His 1979 book about Hypo, "Dou-
ble-Edged Secrets," published by the
Naval Institute Press, is dedicated to
Captain Rochefort.
And in 1983, Admiral Showers, draw-
ing upon formerly classified intelli-
gence materials, again submitted Cap-
tain Rochefort's name.
Secret Agreement Claimed
Admiral Layton's book makes a
number of controversial new claims,
including that president Roosevelt
made a secret agreement with Winston
Churchill that the United States would
go to war if British territory in the Far
East were attacked, and that the Soviet
Union might have known how, when
and where the Japanese would attack
Hawaii.
Not everyone agrees with all the Lay-
ton assertions.
"It's an intriguing hypothesis, but
the book does not prove the existence of
a Churchill-Roosevelt pact, and I never
found any evidence of such a pact in the
Churchill-Roosevelt correspondence,"
said Warren F. Kimball, professor of
international history at Rutgers Uni-
versity and editor of "Churchill &
Roosevelt: The Complete Correspond-
ence."
But Professor Kimball said the Lay-
ton memoirs were "the first really new
evidence on the subject since the open-
ing of the diplomatic archives."
The undated citation, signed last
month by Secretary Lehman and yet to
be awarded, cites Captain Rochefort's
"exceptional meritorious service."
It says the intelligence information
on Japanese naval plans and intentions
that the Rochefort unit provided
"served as the singular basis for the
fleet commander in chief to plan his de-
fenses, deploy his limited forces and
devise strategy to insure U.S. Navy
success in engaging the Japanese
forces at Midway."
Admiral showers said it was all that
he and Captain Rochefort's other ad-
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Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/11: CIA-RDP90-00965R000504060002-8