For historians and World War II buffs alike, the phrase “THE WORLD WONDERS”—from one of millions of U.S. Navy radio messages—is a fabled part of the lore of the Pacific war. With perhaps the exception of the electrifying “AIR RAID PEARL HARBOR X THIS IS NO DRILL” dispatch sent by Commander Logan C. Ramsey at the beginning of the Japanese attack on 7 December 1941, “THE WORLD WONDERS” is the best-known message of the entire war, but unlike Ramsey’s radio broadcast, it is embroiled in controversy. No account of the epic Battle of Leyte Gulf can neglect the message and its consequences. But shrouded in this voluminous literature is a tantalizing mystery: Who drafted the fateful “THE WORLD WONDERS” phrase?
Setting the Stage
The essential background of the message can be briefly summarized. The Imperial Japanese Navy mounted a “do or die” effort to inflict a massive defeat on the U.S. fleet covering General Douglas MacArthur’s “return” to the Philippines at Leyte commencing 20 October 1944. Vice Admiral Thomas C. Kinkaid’s Seventh Fleet provided the amphibious lift and direct support for MacArthur’s landing. Admiral William F. Halsey Jr.’s Third Fleet, including the powerful fast carrier force, executed the mission to cover and support the Seventh Fleet and the landings. Kinkaid answered to MacArthur, Commander-in-Chief, Southwest Pacific Area, while Halsey served under Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Commander-in-Chief, Pacific Fleet and Pacific Ocean Areas. Nimitz had added explicit orders to Halsey: “In case opportunity for destruction of major portion of the enemy fleet offer or can be created, such destruction becomes the primary task.”
The Japanese shrewdly crafted their Leyte Gulf plan around Halsey’s well-known aggressiveness. They sent a four-carrier task force with very few planes—Vice Admiral Jisaburo Ozawa’s Northern Force—directly down from Japan to entice Halsey away from covering the Seventh Fleet. Then two surface-force contingents formed around Japan’s still-powerful array of battleships and cruisers would converge on the U.S. amphibious vessels off Leyte, annihilate them, and—the Japanese hoped—change the course of the war.
When aerial reconnaissance detected the major Japanese surface-ship force—Vice Admiral Takeo Kurita’s Center Force—approaching Leyte from the west, Halsey’s carriers struck it on 24 October in what became known as the Battle of the Sibuyan Sea. Kurita’s battered force later was seen retreating back to the west.
Halsey also sent out a preparatory signal to the Third Fleet that he would form a separate force, designated Task Force 34, of fast battleships and supporting vessels. They would seek to destroy Japanese naval units by gunfire and torpedoes. Nimitz received the message about Task Force 34. Although Kinkaid was not a designated addressee, his communicators intercepted the message and provided him a copy. What Kinkaid did not recognize, however, was that Halsey’s message was only a preparatory order. It required a second execute order for the actual formation of Task Force 34.
When the Japanese Northern Force was sighted in the late afternoon of 24 October, Halsey took the entire Third Fleet in pursuit. He informed Kinkaid he was heading north “with three groups.” The Third Fleet operated as four separate carrier task groups, each with escorting vessels, including those Halsey intended to separate out to form Task Force 34. One of these four carrier task groups had been detached to go to refuel and resupply after extended operations. When Kinkaid and his staff saw the reference to “three groups” (and they knew one carrier group had been detached), they presumed this meant Halsey had left behind yet one more “group”—Task Force 34.
During the night of 24–25 October, one of the Japanese surface task forces—Rear Admiral Shoji Nishimura’s Southern Force—was nearly annihilated by Seventh Fleet surface ships when it attempted to approach the Leyte anchorage from the south through Surigao Strait. Meanwhile, the Center Force, though mauled by U.S. air attacks on 24 October, had only temporarily withdrawn before again reversing course and penetrating unguarded San Bernardino Strait. On the morning of 25 October at the Battle off Samar, Kurita’s big-gunned command collided with a humble U.S. unit ever after immortalized by its radio call sign, “Taffy 3.” It comprised six relatively slow escort carriers and their meager screen of three destroyers and four destroyer escorts.
David matched up far better against Goliath than Taffy 3 did to Kurita. Rear Admiral Clifton A. F. Sprague, commander of the beleaguered escort carrier group, wasted no time calling for help. His pleas were magnified by Admiral Kinkaid, including a plain language message beseeching Halsey to send the battleships of Task Force 34.
Nimitz’s Fateful Message
Admiral Nimitz was following these developments by dispatches. Given the fraught situation, Nimitz decided to intervene—something he very seldom did during an ongoing battle. A communications officer translated Nimitz’s words into a message: “WHERE IS [REPEAT] WHERE IS TASK FORCE THIRTY-FOUR?”
Communications procedures dictated that messages, especially short messages, should have “padding” added at the beginning and end of the message. By standard procedure, padding was words or phrases that had no connection to the underlying text. It was designed to eliminate the sort of stereotypical text that an enemy could guess would appear in the beginning or end of a message and use as a crib to break into the actual text of the message and perhaps open the way toward larger penetrations of coded communications.
When the padding was added, the message read “TURKEY TROTS TO WATER GG WHERE IS [REPEAT] WHERE IS TASK FORCE THIRTY-FOUR RR THE WORLD WONDERS.” The double consonants “GG” and then “RR” were also part of communications protocol to signify clearly the padding. But according to historian E. B. Potter, the communications personnel on board Halsey’s flagship, the battleship New Jersey (BB-62), suspected that despite the presence of the “RR,” the last phrase was in fact part of Nimitz’s message. In the radio compartment, the supervising officer elected to send the urgent message up to Halsey with the padding attached. He assumed a liaison officer in “flag country” would explain to the admiral, who was not accustomed to seeing padding in messages handed to him, that the “RR” denoted the last phrase was padding.
But the message was presented to Halsey without explanation of the significance of “RR.” Halsey went into a rage, thinking Nimitz was insulting him. Halsey was in such a funk that he hesitated for more than an hour to detach most of Task Force 34. Then the need to fuel destroyers caused further delay. Finally, just after 1700, Halsey ordered the New Jersey and her sister ship the Iowa (BB-61) with a few consorts to commence a high-speed run to rescue Taffy 3 or deal with the Center Force. But it was too late. Kurita, for reasons still debated, withdrew just as he appeared on the verge of overwhelming Taffy 3. He escaped back through San Bernardino Strait before Halsey arrived.
The Mystery and the Clue
I was conducting research at the Nimitz Education and Research Center, part of the National Museum of the Pacific War in Fredericksburg, Texas, when I stumbled on a clue as to who wrote the Nimitz-Halsey message. A finding aid indicated that a memoir by Elmer R. Oettinger Jr. described some direct contacts with Nimitz. I began reading the memoir anticipating it might contain some color about Nimitz as a commander and person. It did, but it also turned out to contain an amazing revelation.
Lieutenant Oettinger worked in Nimitz’s communication department. His specific job was monitoring U.S. communications for security violations. But Oettinger further provided firsthand information about “THE WORLD WONDERS” message. He disclosed that the communications officer involved had prior enlisted service and had been promoted for valor. Moreover, Oettinger wrote that he had realized the recently commissioned officer never had gone through the formal communications officer training that included instruction in the proper use of message padding. In fact, Oettinger claimed he had written a memorandum before the controversial episode warning that this officer needed to be sent for the formal training. Finally, and most important, Oettinger provided a name: “Don Caster.”
At this point, I enlisted the aid of a very talented archivist at the Nimitz Education and Research Center, Chris McDougal. I asked if he could locate any records concerning communications officers at Nimitz’s headquarters at that time to confirm that Don Caster was the man Oettinger identified.
Chris attacked the problem on multiple fronts. He turned to Ancestry.com and tried the educated guess that “Caster” would have been born between 1915 and 1925, the range of most World War II veterans. This yielded an application to the state of Iowa related to veteran status completed by John Donald Kaster, showing among other things that he served on board the USS Northampton (CA-26). From this original break, Chris carefully assembled 12 documents he forwarded to me. But above all, he believed the collection confirmed that Oettinger’s “Don Caster” was in fact John Donald Kaster.
The Sailor
Don Kaster was born on 16 June 1919 in Moravia, Iowa. He entered service on 27 June 1939, just over a week after his 20th birthday. He joined the Northampton in November 1940. At the time of the Pearl Harbor attack, the heavy cruiser was escorting then–Vice Admiral Halsey’s USS Enterprise (CV-6), which was transporting a squadron of Marine Grumman F4F Wildcat fighters to Wake Island. During the ensuing months, the Northampton remained with the Enterprise through early raids in the Pacific, notably accompanying the carrier Hornet (CV-8) on the Doolittle Raid in April 1942. The Northampton continued to screen the Enterprise through the pivotal Battle of Midway and during the Battle of the Eastern Solomons, when Japanese bombs seriously damaged the “Big E.” Thereafter, the cruiser joined the escorts of the Hornet and was with the carrier until her loss in the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands.
Chris located a muster roll for the Northampton dated 30 September 1942 listing Kaster as a radioman first class. More important, he found a statement from Ensign Byron W. Eaton, a Northampton communications officer. Eaton was at his battle station, Main Radio, during the 30 November–1 December 1942 Battle of Tassafaronga, off Guadalcanal, when two Japanese torpedoes mortally wounded the Northampton. His duties included the secure disposal of secret communications material and other classified information in the event the ship was lost. The cruiser contained five safes with such documents and materials. For each safe there was a container similar to a mail bag that was weighted to ensure it would sink.
Eaton set about his duty to dispose of the classified material with the assistance of a radioman first class he identified as Don Kaster. After they secured and disposed of the material in Main Radio, they went lower in the ship to the other compartments containing classified material. This undoubtedly required courage, as the ship displayed alarming signs of sinking; by then, the Northampton’s marked list rendered standing difficult. There were unsettling lurches from intermittent propulsion surges and flickering lights, repeatedly pitching the two into total darkness. Kaster held a lantern while Eaton manipulated the safe combinations and then Kaster held the bag as it was filled. They proceeded topside to throw the bags overboard and witness that they sank. Both Eaton and Kaster ended up in the water.
Records disclose that Kaster reached San Diego in December 1942. He thereafter was assigned to SC 1269, a small 110-ton subchaser. By April 1944, Kaster was a chief radioman. Records of that month show that he was promoted to ensign under Bureau of Personnel Circular 40–44. This appears to confirm Oettinger’s memory that Kaster’s promotion related to his proven valor. Another record shows Kaster was in the Naval Reserve in 1965 with the rank of chief warrant officer, third class.
Adding to the Story
With this evidence, we can fill out much more of the story behind “THE WORLD WONDERS.” Kaster was a “mustang,” an officer promoted from the enlisted ranks. He had several years of peacetime service before Pearl Harbor and then extensive combat experience. Within a bare half year in 1942, he participated in three carrier battles and one major surface-ship action, with particularly commendable performance during the Northampton’s loss. Even among combat-experienced sailors, this was an exemplary record. As an enlisted radioman of manifest competence, he undoubtedly handled many messages, but it is very unlikely he had any experience drafting high-level coded communications.
According to Oettinger, Kaster never was detailed to formal training before he was tasked as an officer to handle top-tier communications from the Commander-in-Chief, Pacific Fleet. He evidently understood the requirement for padding on Nimitz’s Task Force 34 message, but if Oettinger is correct, Kaster had never received a full tutorial on what padding should and should not be.
It has been speculated that Kaster thought of “The World Wonders” phrase because it was part of Alfred Tennyson’s popular poem “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” commemorating an ill-conceived assault by British light cavalry against Russian heavy batteries during the Crimean War. That event also had occurred on 25 October (1854), as had the Battle of Agincourt (1415). The connection to Tennyson’s poem seems plausible but is not confirmed.
While Kaster correctly followed procedure by inserting the “RR” before “THE WORLD WONDERS” phrase, his misstep was that the phrase might have seemed related to the actual text of the message. The New Jersey communicators then turned what might otherwise have been regarded as a misjudgment into a disaster by failing to ensure that Halsey did not see “THE WORLD WONDERS,” or that he understood the significance of the “RR.” The other element in the story seldom mentioned is that Halsey knew Nimitz well and should have paused to consider whether the Pacific Fleet Commander would transmit a deliberately insulting message to one of his senior officers in the middle of a battle. The likely explanation for Halsey’s reaction was that he was extremely tired and stressed.
According to several accounts, including Halsey’s postwar memoirs, Kaster received a dressing down from Nimitz after it was determined he was responsible for “THE WORLD WONDERS.” None of these accounts, however, explains Kaster’s exemplary combat background or his lack of formal training in padding. Chris located a 10 November 1944 duty roster of communications officers at Admiral Nimitz’s headquarters. One of them was Ensign J. D. Kaster. It is not clear, however, whether this document was prepared before or after Kaster was linked to the notorious message.
Thanks to Elmer Oettinger’s memoir and the exceptionally skilled work by Chris McDougal at the Nimitz Education and Research Center, we now have a name and, more important, a revealing story to go with “THE WORLD WONDERS.”