Two weeks before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, I enlisted in the U.S. Navy. I had completed two years at Harvard, where I had been photographer and editor of the daily Harvard Crimson. For the next four years, I found myself in the catbird’s seat to witness and participate in some of the Navy’s most significant achievements of World War II.
My first assignment was with the Navy’s cryptographic operation in Washington, printing codes for communications in the fleet. During that time, the Navy broke the Japanese code, contributing to several successes— most notably, the Battle of Midway.
Because of my top security clearance, I was asked to make copies of reports from U.S. Pacific submarine commanders, who complained that their Navy-made torpedoes broached when fired at enemy targets. The errant torpedoes not only missed their targets, including capital ships within range, but also revealed the positions of the attacking U.S. subs, subjecting them to severe depth-charge counterattacks. The truth about the faulty torpedoes did not become public until after the war.
In 1945, I volunteered and was accepted for assignment as photographer on board a submarine to obtain combat motion pictures through the periscope for a film about submarine warfare. A wolfpack of nine submarines, each with a rated photographer, was sent on a raid into the Sea of Japan. I brought back combat motion pictures later used in the documentary, “Victory at Sea” and an early commercial television program called “The Silent Service.”
The photo above is of three Japanese prisoners the Skate picked up after sinking their ship in June 1945. The sequence at right is the sinking of an actual Japanese ship, which later appeared in “Victory at Sea.”
