Chester Nimitz WWII Diary posted on line today (60s, Japanese, historical)
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My dad was in the Navy, Korea. He was a voracious reader and had a lot of books on WWII.
Nimitz was at the launch ceremony (sorry, I might not have the correct terminology for that) for the heavy cruiser my dad was on, the Los Angeles. Years later dad got the ship logs for the year or two he was on her. We always wanted to get the logs from the Enterprise and Hornet for the Doolittle raid, just to see what went on from that perspective, but never did.
Thanks for posting this information. For what it's worth (although anyone in this thread is likely to know this already) the E.B. Potter biography (entitled simply "Nimitz") is excellent, even though it's old, having been published in 1976. As far as I know, it's considered "the" biography of Nimitz.
I've scanned parts of the first 3 volumes, mainly with reference to the Battle of Midway and the various naval engagements in the Guadalcanal campaign. There's really very little description of these battles. I guess it is to be expected in these communiques, but there isn't much mention of them either in Nimitz's monthly summaries. However, his assessments of Japanese intentions and future strategy are fascinating to me, as are the descriptions of what went on at various top-level meetings he attended. There is much ado about the Aleutian situation, much more than I expected. It seems they got far quicker information about what was going on there than about Midway and the naval situation at Guadalcanal. I'm not sure why and I didn't read the papers carefully enough to find out if this was because the Japanese invasion and occupation was, perhaps, a more serious threat to the US than it turned out to be or historians have indicated in hindsight.
I'm not a reader of primary documents regarding WWII, but i'm guessing these papers have been (if they have been read before by historians and biographers) of just passing interest, although there are (were) probably greater insights to be gained from reading between the lines of Nimitz's strategic appraisals. King's personality certainly shows through and Nimitz's contrasting graciousness and conciliatory approach to thorny personnel issues.
I'm not sure how much further I'll get. This is pretty heavy going. I've read the "latest" biographies of both Nimitz and King (and Mitcher and Fletcher), plus a lot of the more popular battle histories and sagas, all of Morrison and a few memoir accounts from Japanese Navy skippers.
I was born in 1943. My dad worked for Little Brown and met Morrison after the war. I met Admiral Morton Deyo, briefly, in the late 60s and my mother knew him from her family Bostonian connections in MA and ME. He was a lady's man and a spiffy dresser. He was a fixture around Kittery Point, ME, where we had a lot of relatives.
Good to see the info. No doub good to be used in research. I've always had admiration for Nimitz and his accomplishments considering the difficulties he had to deal with after Pearl Harbor. He was the the right man at the right time and he had to be an exceptional commander comfortable with his heavy responsibilities. And the responsibilities were not only dealing with the Japanese but also within his own Navy where had to lead others and deal with tough personnel issues. I got a kick when I read that when Layton asked why he kept a picture of MacArthur on his desk he answered, 'That's to remind me not to be a horse's ass and make Jovian pronouncements complete with thunderbolts'. And as we know that sure wasn't the Nimitz 'style'.
Thanks for your help YAC. I love the thoughtfulness with the way Nimitz approached the seemingly impossible task before him. And his fears that the Hawaiian Islands would be occupied by the Japanese I think were very common sense and to me Japan made a huge mistake not doing it. How that would have set back the US plans by years even possibly.
I'm up to about page 15, and great that it saves your spot when you come back!
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