Koji Suohara is a staff writer for the Asahi Shumbun, a popular Tokyo newspaper. He gave me a jolt this morning when colleagues brought the matter of his most recent article to my attention. I did not need a jolt- I already had one in the darkness when the clock radio kicked on and a […]

It is still colder than crap and the snow stubbornly clings to the parking lot outside my dining room window. I was thinking about what a hoot it was yesterday, over at the Conservative Political Action Conference….well, I am still reeling from the experience. I would never, on my best day, have gone to a […]

Gentle Readers, As you know, of late, I have been taking an extended diversion of into the Pacific and the middle distance of history. It is comforting to go there, since we know the answers to all the looming questions of that titanic conflict. With the remarkable gift of the friendship and memory of a […]

(Lobby poster for the Bob Hope-Dorothy Lamour 1941 comedy about love and conscription. Image Paramount Pictures). I was looking out the window of the apartment at the western end of Big Pink, watching the sky dump another couple inches on the crusty white remains of the last storm. I am getting really tired of this […]

“I have often said that an intelligence officer has one task, one job, one mission. This is to tell his commander, his superior, today, what the [enemies] are going to do tomorrow. This is his job. If he doesn’t do this, then he’s failed.” – Captain Joseph J. Rochefort, USN I was having one of […]

(The former Naval Security Group Campus in Northwest Washington. Mac Showers worked here and lived nearby. Photo Naval Security Group). OK- I am going to beat it to death, but Van Dyke goaded me into it. Sorry in advance. This is about everything that came after the war, and the effort of Chester Nimitz to […]

(On the rim of Makalapa Crater at Pearl Harbor, this semi-permanent wooden structure was built in 1943 to house the Joint Intelligence Center Pacific Ocean Areas (JIC-POA), where intelligence was collected, evaluated, and disseminated throughout World War II.) “The joint intelligence center is responsible for providing and producing the intelligence required to support the joint […]

(Joseph Wenger, shown here as a Rear Admiral, who was one of the conspirators to get rid of Joe Rochefort and centralize control of Radio Intelligence in Washington. He would probably deny it, if he were around). Captain Garth: “Joe! You’re guessing!” Commander Rochefort: “We like to call it ‘analysis.’” – Dialogue from the 1976 […]

(Chart of the organization of the 14th Naval District from Jasper Holmes’ book Double Edged Secrets. Naval Institute Press). OK- this might get a little dry, but I am left with no choice. The Dungeon was where the magic of the cryptologists, linguists and analysts happened. You have seen the diagram that Mac drew on […]

(This is Brian’s Dad Kenneth Kearns, from the only wartime picture he has. Note the one hash stripe, reflecting his pre-wartime USN service (1929-1933) as a radioman (RM, i.e., manual Morse operator) most of it in the USS California (BB-44), later sunk in the Pearl Harbor attack and resurrected. Also note the yeoman rating, as […]