Fleet Admiral Nimitz received Jasper’s letter at his home on Treasure Island in San Francisco Bar, and he took action. He enclosed Jasper’s justification with a two-page hand-written endorsement to the Secretary of the Navy recommending that Joe Rochefort be recognized for his contributions to the dramatic intelligence success that he led after Pearl Harbor and through the Battle of Midway.
Between the two letters, you would think that would be sufficient justification for the award of a bit of gold metal and short length of yellow-striped blue cloth. I mean, the war had been over for nearly a decade and a half, right?
Well, no. What we call “The Radio Wars” were going to last another fifty years, at least, a lingering bit of distrust between the people who did intelligence and the people who did Signals Intelligence, the linear successor to the Radio Communications crowd.
I showed you Jasper’s well-crafted letter yesterday. Here is Chester Nimitz letter, the forwarding note from Secretary Gates, and the considered response from the Navy Bureaucracy:
And that is where the matter rested until the Admiral, Jasper and Joe were all in their graves.
But Mac Showers was not done with the matter. If at first, you know?
Copyright 2015 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303