Nimitz’s Newsman; Waldo Drake and the Navy’s Censored War in the Pacific. By Hamilton Bean. Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, 2024
Reviewed by Tim Coyle
Waldo Drake was the Public Relations Officer and Censor to Admiral Chester Nimitz, Commander-in-Chief Pacific (CINCPAC), from December 1941 until Drake was removed, by order of the Secretary of the Navy, James Forrestal, on 09 October 1944.
In the intervening 33 months, Drake ruled the dissemination of media output with an iron rod of censorship and, although he formed strong supportive relationships, they were outnumbered by powerful detracting forces in both the Navy and the news correspondents and publishers with whom Drake battled. Intensely loyal to Nimitz, Drake had a benign relationship with Navy Secretary Frank Knox until the latter’s death in April 1944; his replacement, James Forrestal, acquiesced to the powerful forces against him and ordered Drakes’s reassignment.
The author, Hamilton Bean, is a professor in the Department of Communications at the University of Colorado. As a specialist in organisational communications, he provides a deep examination of Drake’s relationship with Nimitz and analyses the Pacific theatre war reporting with all the drama and tensions inherent in that critical area of operations in which Drake was a prime mover.
Nimitz’s Newsman has a nostalgic ‘Hollywood’ feel to it. It is a real-life story of the old-school American ‘newshounds’ pounding their beats, seeking ‘scoops’ in constant battles with their editors and publishers and to meet deadlines. This story differed from the classic ‘city beat’ In that it was the high drama of the Pacific War. I read the book ‘in black and white’ as redolent of a vintage monochrome film drama which, in real life, it was.
Waldo Drake was born in 1897 and had a difficult childhood. He served in a combat engineer unit in France in 1918 and joined the Los Angeles Times as a neophyte shipping reporter in 1922. He forged a formidable journalistic reputation in this position, was commissioned into the naval reserve and appointed to the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI). He was selected for a 6-month attachment to ONI in April 1931, likely related to his potential as an intelligence officer located strategically adjacent to the US Pacific Fleet bases at San Pedro and San Diego.
Drake strongly supported the Navy in his civilian reporting role, and he was likely engaged in counterintelligence against the perceived Japanese threat as he operated from such a sensitive maritime location.
The Navy had established a press relations office within ONI in 1922 with the aim of forging a favourable relationship between the austere elite Navy hierarchy and the public. The PRO’s footprint expanded, over the interwar period using individuals, such as Drake, as assets. Following President Franklin Roosevelt’s national emergency proclamation in late 1939 ONI enhanced counterintelligence operations across Southern California. Drake was activated as a lieutenant commander in April 1940. He wrote daily press releases publicising the Navy’s expansion, readiness and recruiting and distributed the articles to regional newspapers as well as undertaking counterintelligence and censorship.
Drake was ordered to report to CINCPAC, Admiral Husband E Kimmel, at Pearl Harbor in May 1941 consequent to a letter to Kimmel from Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Harold Stark, suggesting Kimmel should add a Public Relations Officer to his staff, and suggesting Drake as a suitable candidate. From this point on the book picks up the drama which surrounded Drake in enforcing his authority over the recalcitrant pressmen while supporting his admiral.
The book’s cover shows a sketch of Wado Drake, and images of him in the book depict an imposing and authoritative figure. Tall and physically fit, he had a rasping voice which probably exacerbated his relationships. Admiral Kimmel, and his replacement Nimitz, were traditionally conservative officers who eschewed publicity; however, the 7 December 1941 attack dramatically changed the status quo, requiring skilled PROs and censors to deal with the tsunami of correspondents clamouring for official approval and release of their copy.
Drake was essentially a journalist and regarded public relations as media relations and, according to author Bean, it was unsurprising he lacked a strategic outlook in communications, audience analysis, objective settings and outcomes analysis (possibly an unfair assessment as it would likely have been a rare journalist of the 1930s and 40s to be able to consciously exercise these skills although Bean, in a Note, acknowledges these skills as having been subsequently incorporated into later practice). By charging Drake to be simultaneously PRO and censor, the Navy did not understand the ensuing conflicts. Correspondents complained about the lack of information regarding the defence of Wake Island a week after Pearl Harbor and over subsequent weeks.
In the post-Pearl Harbor maelstrom at the early stages of the Pacific War, Drake was flying ‘on a wing and a prayer’ (to coin a morale-boosting popular song of the era’). Although he was a skilled journalist, he nevertheless needed high level advice from the overarching Office of Public Relations (OPR). According to the author, a general chaos reigned in Washinton DC, hence the failure to issue Drake with guidance for the first three months which caused an inadequate reporting standard in the Pacific leading to a permanent marring of Drake’s reputation.
The essence of Drake’s invidious position was the conflict between security and publicity. Admiral Nimitz was reticent to release information for publication. Drake was aghast when he read in a newspaper that ‘Army fliers, not Navy fliers, were to credit for the Midway victory’. Returning army pilots had claimed non-existent victories in the climactic battle to gullible journalists. Despite Drake’s protestations, Army censors passed the copy. Drake sought Nimitz’s permission to deny the spurious Army claims but the admiral denied his pleas to maintain security.
The author points to the intense rivalry that existed then between the US Navy and Army. The Army Air Corps (later the Army Air Force) began agitating for a separate Air Force, like the British model, based on the concept of strategic bombing. This philosophy, embraced by air power enthusiasts, stemmed in the US by General Billy Michell’s experimental bombing attacks against stationary former German battleships in 1923 (this interservice dispute culminated in the ‘admiral’s revolt’ of 1947 with the clash over the establishment of the Strategi Air Command versus the construction of aircraft carriers to provide America’s strategic strike capability). Drake was in the middle of the furore as correspondents demanded Navy news releases, blaming Drake for withholding critical news.
A more horrific Midway-related media storm broke out on 7 June 1942; the Chicago Tribune published a story: ‘Navy Had Word of Jap Plan to Strike at Sea’ with details of the Japanese fleet composition. Careful newspaper readers might surmise that the Navy had cracked the Japanese naval code. A huge eruption followed, instigated by CNO, Admiral Ernest King, which raised an investigation by the Navy Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The author trails through these horrific incidents as well as Drake’s frantic efforts to stifle reports of the defective torpedo exploders which blighted the Pacific submarine force until it was remedied in 1943.
Drake had many more adventures, including deployments to the South Pacific all the time fighting the news battles which are dramatically recounted in this densely packed narrative.
By now a Captain, Drake’s was reassigned by Secretary Forrestal’s order in October 1944. He left active service at war’s end and was involved in international engagements, initially for the government and then for the Los Angeles Times. He died in 1977 and was buried at sea having reached the rank of rear admiral on the retired list.
Nimita’s Newsman is a fast-paced and exciting story of a difficult and dominating man, totally focussed on his responsibilities and unswerving loyal to his admiral in a dramatic and challenging operational environment. There is a plethora of studies of senior military leaders through history; studies of influential staff officers are much less so. In Nimitz’s Newsman we have a superb narrative of such a staff officer exposing his strengths and weaknesses.
The media of the 1940s comprised syndicated newspapers, radio and newsreel films; a vast difference to media today where everyone has a mobile phone with a camera. We can all be reporters and social media publishers. The powerful newspapers of the old era are floundering in this age of instant communication. Nimitz’s Newsman is therefore a dramatic tale of a past age to which older readers can relate. It should also be instructive for newer generations of journalists as background education as they forge their careers in the contemporary media.
