Chester W. Nimitz

American military leader

• Born: February 24, 1885
• Birthplace: Fredericksburg, Texas
• Died: February 20, 1966
• Place of death: Yerba Buena Island, San Francisco, California

Nimitz commanded American forces in the Pacific during World War II and played a crucial role in winning the important and difficult Battle of Midway. After the war, he became chief of Naval Operations.

Early Life

Chester William Nimitz (NIH-mihtz) was the son of Chester B. Nimitz and Anna Henke Nimitz. Although his father had died before he was born and the family was never well-off financially, he enjoyed a happy childhood with his cherished and hardworking mother and his not-so-hardworking but happy-go-lucky stepfather (who was also his uncle), William Nimitz. Perhaps the most important male influence on the boy, however, was that of his grandfather, Charles Henry Nimitz, who filled his mind with tales of nautical adventure. Despite such talk of the sea, Nimitz’s ambition as a teenager was to become a soldier, so impressed was he by officers from the Army post at Fort Sam Houston. There were no vacancies at West Point, however, so he attended the United States Naval Academy instead, and was graduated on January 30, 1905, seventh in a class of 114.

Blond and handsome, kindly and humorous, above all capable of laughing at himself when the need arose, young Nimitz was prime material for a happy marriage; yet nuptials did not occur until April 9, 1913, when he wed Catherine B. Freeman of Wollaston, Massachusetts. They had four children: Catherine, Chester, Anna, and Mary.

Life’s Work

Nimitz’s early interests were in engineering and submarines. During World War I, he served on an oiler and also with the submarines, ending the war as a lieutenant commander. In the postwar period, he had the usual kinds of assignments that rising officers enjoyed: attendance at the Naval War College, teaching in ROTC, service with battleships, and command of a cruiser. He never became an aviator, a fact that might have caused problems for a lesser man during World War II , when he was called on to command an aircraft carrier-oriented fleet. Nimitz became an admiral in 1938 and in 1939 took charge of the Bureau of Navigation, the office that controlled personnel assignments.

This latter post gave him access to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who, along with almost everyone else, took a liking to the new admiral. In early 1941, Roosevelt offered Nimitz command of the Pacific Fleet, but he declined because of lack of seniority a lucky move: Had he accepted the offer, he, instead of Admiral Husband E. Kimmel, might have had to take the blame for the disaster at Pearl Harbor later that same year.

After the invasion at Pearl Harbor, Kimmel was dismissed and Nimitz was named to replace him as Commander in Chief Pacific (CINCPAC), as of December 31, 1941. From his desk in Pearl Harbor, Nimitz would lead all the American forces, Army as well as Navy and Marines, in the North, Central, and South Pacific areas; he also was in direct command of all naval units in those areas by virtue of wearing a different hat. Thus, in a sense, he was his own boss, being both theater commander and theater naval chieftain. This arrangement worked well, but did not eliminate all command problems in the war against Japan.

One of Nimitz’s difficulties was with General Douglas MacArthur, commander of the Southwest Pacific Area (SWPA). MacArthur wanted his theater to be the scene of the principal thrust against Japan, even if that meant reducing Nimitz’s activity to nothing. Probably MacArthur would have been happiest if Nimitz and his theater had been put under SWPA command. The Navy Department would never have allowed either the lesser or the greater of MacArthur’s ambitions to come true, but Nimitz had to operate throughout the war with the knowledge that the Army in general, and MacArthur in particular, wanted a greater share of material and command.

Nimitz also had to contend with his own boss, Admiral Ernest J. King, chief of Naval Operations and commander in chief of all American warships around the world. King was a ferocious man, just as harsh as Nimitz was kindly, and he worried about CINCPAC’s aggressiveness. King thought that Nimitz might not be willing to dismiss those who fell short of perfection; he also wondered at first about Nimitz’s willingness to take enormous risks in fighting the Japanese. Perhaps the real problem was that King could not resist the temptation to become personally involved in running the Pacific war. Another thing that bothered King about Nimitz was the latter’s reluctance to do battle against MacArthur. King was responsible for upholding the Navy’s prerogatives in the face of demands from his equals in the highest councils of war the British, the Army, and the Army Air Forces; therefore, he could not afford to be affable, or so he seems to have reckoned. Nimitz, on the other hand, outranked all the generals and admirals in his own theater and was not in a position to thwart MacArthur’s plans directly; he, therefore, could approach the war in a more genial frame of mind. For all that, King and Nimitz made a good team, each compensating for the other’s rare moments of bad judgment.

Since Nimitz was tied for the most part to his desk, the battles in his theater were conducted either by commanders at sea or on the invaded islands: Admirals Frank Jack Fletcher, William F. Halsey, and Raymond A. Spruance, and Marine generals A. Archer Vandegrift and Holland M. Smith, among others. Nevertheless, as commander in chief, Nimitz bore the ultimate responsibility for their campaigns, except insofar as King himself sometimes determined the overall strategy and except for the times when Halsey’s services were lent to MacArthur.

Undoubtedly, the most important battle in which Nimitz’s role was most personal and crucial was that fought near the island of Midway in 1942. The Pacific Fleet was much inferior to that of Japan, and so it was vital for the Americans, if they were to hold Midway, to know what the Japanese intended to do. Fortunately, Nimitz could tap the resources of a brilliant cryptologist, Lieutenant Commander Joseph J. Rochefort, Jr., who had recently broken the Japanese naval code and thereby was able to predict the enemy’s plan. It was Nimitz himself, however, who had to decide whether to believe Rochefort’s evidence, and it was also Nimitz who next had to convince a headstrong King that Rochefort was right. Even after that, there were plans to be made and risks to be taken. It was Nimitz who decided not to use the United States’ elderly battleships in the coming fight because they would only get in the way; a nonaviator, he nevertheless put his faith in his aircraft carriers. It was Nimitz who decided on the deployment of those carriers, although Fletcher and Spruance were in command afloat. The result of all these plans and decisions, along with the skill and luck of those on the scene, was an overwhelming American victory, one of the great turning points of the war.

Nimitz was farther removed from the controls during the battles on and around Guadalcanal in August and November, 1942. These were King’s pet projects, and conducted on the scene by the South Pacific commanders, who reported to Nimitz. Though close victories, they served to confirm the verdict of Midway: From then on, it was not a question of whether the United States would win the war against Japan but of how soon and at what cost. If Nimitz took too long or spent too much American blood, the public might demand that MacArthur be given the lion’s share of men, material, and tasks. Nimitz was responsible more than any other person for his forces moving ahead rapidly and, for the most part, with no more bloodshed than necessary. His campaigns in the Gilberts, the Marshalls, the Marianas, Iwo Jima (Iwo To), and Okinawa were all successful. During the reconquest of the Philippines, however, Nimitz was in general an onlooker: Halsey still reported to him but was operating according to MacArthur’s plan. Thus, there was no unity of command during the Battle of Leyte Gulf (October 23-26, 1944); the only common commander of all American forces at Leyte was President Roosevelt himself. Nimitz did intervene once to correct an unfortunate move by Halsey.

World War II ended with Nimitz and MacArthur accepting Japan’s surrender, both of them now wearing the five stars of the new American ranks, respectively fleet admiral and general of the Army; this was an honor shared by only five other officers as of V-J Day.

On December 15, 1945, Nimitz succeeded King as chief of Naval Operations. It was a time of demobilization, but the biggest issue facing the new chief was that of unification of the services. Although CINCPAC’s joint command had worked well, and although command disunity had bedeviled the Leyte Gulf campaign, Nimitz nevertheless agreed with most Navy men in objecting to unification on the national level. Sailors feared that the new Air Force might try to take over the Navy’s aerial component, while the Army, having lost its airplanes, might attempt to seize control of the Marine Corps as compensation. However, when Congress “unified” the services in 1947, the Navy Department retained its airplanes and the Marines. Nimitz deserves some of the credit for his department’s victory: He had made himself welcome at the White House of President Harry S. Truman, a man who, unlike Roosevelt, had originally favored the Army.

Although five-star officers do not retire in the usual sense, Nimitz nevertheless went off active duty in December, 1947. In 1949, however, Truman offered to reappoint him as chief of Naval Operations in the wake of the so-called Admirals’ Revolt against the Defense Department, an incident touched off by Navy-Air Force rivalry. What Truman wanted was a conciliator, but Nimitz declined the offer. Instead, he spent his retirement as regent of the University of California, as United Nations plebiscite administrator for Kashmir (1949-1950), and as roving ambassador for the United Nations (1950-1952). In the late 1950’s, he helped E. B. Potter edit an important textbook of naval history, Sea Power: A Naval History (1960).

By 1965, Nimitz was suffering from osteoarthritis and pneumonia; the latter had bothered him off and on for many years despite his generally robust condition. Strokes and heart failure followed, and he died in San Francisco on February 20, 1966.

Significance

Despite King’s occasional misgivings, Nimitz’s career proves that nice guys do not necessarily finish last. He fully deserved his elevation to five-star rank for his all-important role in the Battle of Midway and his more distant but still vital part in subsequent American Pacific victories. His postwar services also justified the honor. Although he disliked controversy, and therefore did not subsequently write his memoirs or even allow a biography in his lifetime, he nevertheless was able to carry out the duties of a great commander without inordinate displays of ego or temper. Whether such a pleasant man could have held off the War Department and the British in Washington during World War II is another question, but perhaps the American Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Anglo-American Combined Chiefs of Staff would have benefited from his reasonable and amiable presence. He was too quiet a man to make good “copy” for the press, as was the case with some other famous World War II commanders, but he achieved as much greatness or more.

Bibliography

Buell, Thomas B. Master of Sea Power: A Biography of Fleet Admiral Ernest J. King. Boston: Little, Brown, 1980. This book does not rank with E. B. Potter’s biography of Nimitz, but it is quite worthwhile and helps the reader to see Nimitz from the point of view of Washington and London.

Dull, Paul S. The Imperial Japanese Navy, 1941-1945. Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 1978. This is a highly successful attempt to see the war in the Pacific from the Japanese navy’s viewpoint.

Hoyt, Edwin P. How They Won the War in the Pacific: Nimitz and His Admirals. New York: Lyons Press, 2000. Examines how the top admirals worked together during World War II, concentrating on Nimitz. Describes Nimitz’s strategy for winning the war in the Pacific and how his wisdom, strength, and ability to remain calm during times of great stress made him a great admiral.

James, Dorris Clayton. The Years of MacArthur: Volume II, 1941-1945. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1975. A gigantic, brilliant biography. James accomplishes the nearly impossible: He provides a balanced, fair treatment of one of America’s most controversial leaders.

Morison, Samuel E. The Two-Ocean War: A Short History of the United States Navy in the Second World War. Boston: Little, Brown, 1963. Admiral Morison, himself a professional historian, oversaw the production of the Navy’s multivolume official history of World War II; this is a one-volume distillation of that effort.

Potter, E. B. Nimitz. Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 1976. This is a long but well-written, authoritative, and masterful biography by an eminent naval historian. It is by far the most important source for any sketch of Nimitz’s life.

Potter, E. B., and Chester W. Nimitz, eds. Sea Power: A Naval History. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1960. A useful textbook covering all the history of naval warfare.

Prange, Gordon W., Donald M. Goldstein, and Katherine V. Dillon. Miracle at Midway. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1982. One of Prange’s posthumous books, perhaps a bit flawed because it was put together after his death; nevertheless, it provides interesting and dramatically told insights concerning Nimitz’s most famous battle.

Spector, Ronald H. Eagle Against the Sun. New York: Free Press, 1985. A well-balanced, well-written, and up-to-date account of the Pacific war by a highly respected, rising young historian.