 The U.S. Naval War College is a Navy's home of thought. Established in 1884, NWC has become the center of naval seapower, both strategically and intellectually. The following issues in national security lecture is specifically designed to offer scholarly lectures to all participants. We hope you enjoy this upcoming discussion and future lectures. Good afternoon and welcome to our 15th and final issues in national security lecture for this academic year. I'm John Jackson, and I'll serve as host for today's event. Roy Admiral Chatfield is on official travel and is unable to join us today, but I'm pleased to welcome you on her behalf. We welcome all of our in-person audience here today, and over a hundred people who are joining us via Zoom. It's probably cooler where they are than where we are, but we'll deal with that. Special welcome goes out to Dean Klein, the Dean of our College of Leadership and Ethics, and to the Honorable William J. Cassidy Jr., former Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Navy. Mr. Secretary, thank you for joining us. We've enjoyed bringing you this series as a way to share a portion of the Naval War College's academic experience with the spouses and significant others of our student body. We may offer additional lectures over the summer, and if so, we'll advise you of the upcoming schedule, and we will return in the fall with a new and expanded lecture series. Our lecture tonight promises to shed light on the personal side of one America's greatest maritime leaders, Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz. In the Admiral's Honor, I'm wearing a replica of his five-star collar device, which my wife said you can't use. This is actually a replica that we had cast from the five-star device that Chetley's family loaned us, so I'm very pleased to wear it. The college is proud of all of its graduates, but none more so than Chester W. Nimitz, who attended with the Class of 1922. In fact, on the 23rd of July of this year, we will pause to reflect on all that has happened to our nation and our Navy over the century that has passed since the convocation of his historic class. I'll leave it to the two distinguished speakers to tell you more about the man behind the five stars, but I would like to note that rear Admiral Chester Nimitz, while serving as chief of the Bureau of Navigation, issued an order in March of 1941 to keep the college in operation during the worldwide crisis that was underway and that would explode into an American war just 10 months later. Okay, on with the main event. During the presentation that follows, please feel free to ask questions using the chat feature of Zoom, and we'll get to as many as we can at the end of the presentation. Our first speaker, Mr. Chester Nimitz-Lay, has had long-term association with the Naval War College and has spoken from this podium on a number of occasions. The Lay family has been generous in donating artifacts to the Naval War College Museum, and I'm pleased to be able to show a five-star flag that once flew from Admiral Nimitz's sedan. It feels like a holy relic. Anyway, we thank the museum. They have a wonderful display of all of the four naval officers who wore five stars, and I encourage you to go to the museum and see this. And when the lecture is over, if you want to come up and take a closer look at this flag, he will allow you to do so. I must admit, it's a thrill to touch it, and when they sent it down here, they said, I will go to Cape Cotton, pick it up, and they said, no, we'll FedEx it down to you. So they had great faith in FedEx, and they came through for us, so that's great. So let me turn now to our first speaker. Chester Nimitz-Lay is one of Fleet Admiral and Mrs. Chester W. Nimitz's six grandchildren. He graduated from Boston University, cum laude with a degree in philosophy in 1970, and retired in 2017 after a 50-year career as a professional land surveyor. He has been on the board of directors of the Cape Cod five-cent saving bank since 1980. He resides with his wife Marion and Brewster on Cape Cod. They have two daughters, Hillary and Gillian. Chet, welcome back to the Naval War College and to the stage of Sopruin's Auditory. Thank you for that, John, and thanks for the War College for having me back down here today. Good afternoon. On Saturday, June 22, 1968, at a luncheon reception, following the Keele laying ceremonies for CVAN 68, the USS Nimitz, at Newport News Shipbuilding and Drive Dock Company, my uncle Chester W. Nimitz made these remarks. Quote, about 1935, when I was still a midshipman, I asked Dad what, if any, were his career plans. More specifically, I wondered whether he was pursuing any coherent plan to wherever he wished to get or that he was just drifting. Dad assured me that his objective was to reach the top of the Navy, but he also made a remarkable, penetrating observation. He said that getting to the top would involve some elements of chance, unquote. I want to explore this afternoon just how large a role, chance, or luck, divine providence, whatever you want to call it, played my grandfather's career. Then later on, I'd like to examine his handling of his superiors, his peers, and his subordinates. What were the qualities within him that made him so effective a leader? So I'll start with luck, chance and most importantly, second chances. My great-grandfather, Chester Bernard Nimitz, was a six-foot-one-inch-tall cowboy, but his physical appearance belied rheumatic heart disease. Just five months after marrying Anna Heink, in March of 1884, he died of a heart attack at age 29. My grandfather was born in February, 1885, never knew his father. And even though Anna married her brother-in-law, William Nimitz in 1890, the family remained relatively poor. There was certainly no money available to send my grandfather off to a college or a university, and he never really thought in those terms. All that changed when, while working at his grandfather's hotel in Fredericksburg, he met two newly-mitted West Point cadets, William Cookshank and William Bestervelt. He was impressed by the uniforms, by their bearing sophistication and apparent worldliness. And they were not that much older than he. Up until that time, he'd wanted to be a land surveyor, which is coincidentally what my brother Richard and I did for 50 years, must be in the DNA. Now he wanted to go to West Point, and it was free. But when he applied to his congressman, James Slaton, to take the West Point examination, Slaton told him, all the lauded appointments to the military academy had been filled. But he told my grandfather, I have it open to the United States Naval Academy. Are you interested? He was. He studied hard and beat out his competition in the Naval Academy examination held in April of 1901. Oh, there we go. This is one of my favorite photographs. This came in from his own collection. On the back of this photograph he had written, Youngster Cruise, USS Massachusetts, summer 1902. The only one working, you know who. And the other thing I love about the photograph is that on the left is my grandfather, future commander of the Pacific Fleet. On the right is his classmate, Royale Ingersoll, who became commanding chief of the Atlantic Fleet. So we have two future commanders-in-chief swapping the decks, so we all have to start somewhere. He was an excellent student and graduated seventh in his class of 114. But he nearly did not make it to graduation. Towards the end of his final year at Annapolis, he and some classmates decided to throw a beer party on his occluded section of the roof of Bancroft Hall that under construction. My grandfather drew the short straw that determined he should be the one to go into town and purchase the beer. While buying the beer, he noticed a dark-carried gentleman next to him in the store but thought nothing about it. That is until the following morning when he went to his navigation class to find the dark-carried gentleman in uniform sitting in the instructor's chair. My grandfather waited with much trepidation until the conclusion of the class, at which time he fully expected to be summoned and possibly expelled from the academy. That never came. Did the instructor not recognize him? Or was he willing to overlook the incident that would certainly have gotten my grandfather bounced? My grandfather would later tell his biographer E. B. Potter, quote, It taught me to look with a lenient and tolerant eye on first offenders when in latter years they appeared before me as commanding officer holding mass, unquote, a bullet dodged. My grandfather was given command of the destroyer Decatur in 1908 at the tender age of 22 and only three years from the academy. On July 7th, 1908, while entering the harbor, a harbor just south of Manila, the Decatur ran aground. A court marshal was held and he was found guilty of neglect of duty and had a letter of reprimand placed in his permanent file. He was relieved of his command and boarded the venereal gunboat ranger top speed nine knots, 10 with their sails up, for a three month one week trip back to Boston accompanied by three of his Annapolis classmates. Lots of time for my grandfather to think about his future in the Navy. He certainly believed that this could be the end of his career and was waiting for the other shoe to fall when he reported back to duty in the States. But it never did fall. Only 18 months after the court marshal and reprimand, he was promoted from ensign to lieutenant, skipping the rank of junior grade, lieutenant junior grade. It was almost as if the grounding and subsequent court marshal had never occurred. Years later, when he was CNO, he held a press conference following the remission of Indianapolis skipper Charles McFay's court marshal sentencing and restoration of duty. A reporter asked him if a court marshal's officer had ever been promoted to flag rank and he grin pointed to himself. He said, here's one right here. In March of 1912, while in command of the submarine Skipjack, at Hampton Roads, he witnessed the sailor lose his footing and fall overboard into the icy waters. My grandfather was a strong swimmer and dove in after him, was able to grab him but the current was taking them both out to sea. If they hadn't been seen by some sailors on the nearby battleship North Dakota and rescued by a boat launch from there, they would have both been lost. 1915 brought two incidents as it should have been career enders. My grandfather was one of the Navy's leading experts on marine diesel engines and one of his assignments then was to help with the building and installation of diesel engines on the new fleet oiler Mami. He was high up on a wooden scaffolding inspecting the engines one afternoon when the scaffolding collapsed and he fell to the floor under a considerable weight of lumber. He was knocked unconscious. Not too long after he was demonstrating the workings of the engines to a group of engineers when the top when the tip of one of his canvas gloves got caught in between rotating gears and his left hand was pulled in. He lost his ring finger down to the first knuckle but his class ring saved his hand and his career in the Navy. Perhaps the biggest intervention of fate in his career came in early 1941. President Roosevelt had offered him the job of sink pack and he had turned him down because he felt his lack of seniority would cause bitterness from the 50 or so other animals over whom he would have been jumped. Upon arriving at Pearl Harbor on Christmas Day 1941, he told his old friend, Admiral Kimmel, this could have happened to anybody. And then there was this thing about my grandfather and airplanes. On June 30th, 1942, he flew into San Francisco to meet with Admiral King. As the sea plane was landing in the bay, it had a floating pile and flipped over. The co-pilot was killed. The following September, my grandfather flew to Guadalcanal to meet with gender vandagrafe. It was pouring rain. In a letter that he wrote the National Geographic Magazine on April 7th, 1947, my grandfather allowed that, quote, the flight crew assigned to the last stage of the trip had not previously covered the route and perhaps was not too well prepared for the overwater navigation involved. In any case, sometime after the landfall should have been made on San Cristobal Island, it was acknowledged by the pilot that his flight track was in air by a sizable margin to the southward and that he was shaping his course to pick up the island chain, unquote. But the pilot was equipped with a wrong map. A marine officer on my grandfather's staff then produced a National Geographic map of the Pacific Ocean, which luckily had an inset showing the Solomon Islands. He saved the day and perhaps still lies to everybody on board. After a visit, after the visit, my grandfather boarded a B-17 to take off from the still rain-soaked Henderson feel. And the plane, unable to lift off, hit the end of the runway, did a ground loop with his tail hanging out over a ravine that plunged down into a river. He experienced several other near-miss landings and takeoffs while touring the forward bases during the war, including one on January 14, 1943, while accompanied by Secretary of the Navy, Frank Knox, one of the two of the four engines on their plane conked out and they had to return to Pearl Harbor. Five months later, in mid-June, when my grandfather and Admiral Halsey were scheduled to review the forward area and invasion forces for the upcoming Solomon's campaign, Halsey suggested that they ride in separate planes, ostensibly to avoid the risk of losing two senior officers in a single crash. In fact, wrote E.B. Potter in his biography of Halsey, Halsey was thinking about himself and Nimitz's jinx experience in planes. To one of the staff members who had found the situation amusing, he retorted, that's not superstition. It's common sense. Chester is bad Joss in the air. We are indeed a family that then believes in second chances and enchants itself. I think my grandfather's greatest asset was in dealing with people, a skill that he was honed when he was head of the Bureau of Navigation, now the Bureau of Naval Personnel. Here's what our uncle had to say about his father. Quote, he was of extremely, extremely even temperament, very difficult to get excited about anything. He had great faith in his fellow man. It was an absolute tenet of his that any man of goodwill and 90% of people are of goodwill will do his best if he understands truly what it is that is wanted of him, and he's allowed to do it. And he could communicate that, he could communicate that to a subordinate so clearly that they just killed themselves, fall over backwards to get the job done, as when he went out to Pearl Harbor and kept on the staff of Admiral Kimmel, all of a sudden daylight broke on that staff and they realized they weren't lepers. My grandfather believed in loyalty up and down, not only that junior officers should be loyal to senior officers, but the reverse should also be true. This loyalty he extended to Admiral Halsey, who found himself in trouble several times during the war, somewhat of Halsey cashiered, but Halsey was there for my grandfather during the bleakest days at the beginning. Halsey was willing to help lead the dangerous raids on the Gilbert and Marshall Islands and was willing to deliver Doolittle's V-25s close to Japan for an attack. My grandfather never forgot it. He was also willing to listen to advice from junior officers, and there are many instances of his kindness. Bill Leverton in anapolis classmate of my father's, James Lay, was my grandfather's personal administrative aide to the Bureau of Navigation for the year 1939-1940. In 2002, he published a little booklet entitled Nimitz, A Good Humor Leader of Men, Leverton recounts the story of a naval officer named Burrell, who had a temporary commission as ensign, but had failed his eye examination. This he retook and passed, but in the meantime his commission had been revoked. He could be issued a new commission, but would lose the seniority dating back to 1938, unless he could be reappointed that same day. It was late Friday afternoon, and my grandfather, all the higher-ups had left Washington for the weekend leaving my grandfather's acting secretary. In response to a hurried phone call asking if he could stay late until the paperwork was done and ready to sign, he replied, certainly if it will save that young man his date of rank. Leverton also relates the story of when my grandfather was serving under his mentor, Admiral Robison, and was waiting for a train in New London to take it back to Washington. My grandfather encountered a young officer he knew, and his wife, what a baby it her arms. They had no reservation, and the train was full. He insisted that they take his Pullman coach. This offer they greatly accepted. To apprise his Washington office of his change of plans, he sent the following telegram, a rival delayed 24 hours having given birth, BERTH, to officer's baby. Many years ago, I had the privilege of speaking with a man named Earl Benton, who was a young sailor on the Sinkpack photo team during the war, and who went on after the war to work for the Charleston, West Virginia Daily Mail for 46 years. He had an incident that took place at a sporting event on Oahu during the war. Benton was above my grandfather in the stand, and the heavy lens of his camera fell off and missed my grandfather's head by just a couple of feet. My grandfather bent over, picked it up, looked up at Benton. When Benton approached him after the event to apologize and to collect the lens, my grandfather never said a word. He just smiled and handed his lens back to him. Benton added, can you imagine if that were MacArthur? I would have been shot. My grandfather used her humor, as did Lincoln before him, to sometimes diffuse a situation or to send an occasional jibe. In April of 1944, doing a lull in the action of Okinawa, Abel Turner sent my grandfather a message reading, I may be crazy, but it looks like the Japs have quit the war, at least in this section. My grandfather replied, delete all after crazy. Abel Kincaid, Commander North Pacific Force, was curious what was in store for his sector after the enemy had escaped from Kiska Island. Bill Leberton was then on his staff, and Kincaid knew that he was friends with my grandfather. He told Leberton, next time you write the limits, just talk in a few words like, Kincaid wonders what the next assignment will be for calm Noropak. Don't get too inquisitive. This Leberton did, and in due time, my grandfather answered his letter and said, tell Kincaid I've put something in the mail that will answer all those questions. Leberton wrote, a few days later a small package came to me from Nimitz. I removed the outside wrapper, but found the inner wrapper on which was pencil for Kincaid. I turned the package over to him and all the staff gathered in his office to learn what was in store for the North Pacific Force. Kincaid opened the package and revealed a cribbage board. This clear to us signal of our upcoming leisure is how Nimitz managed to convey that the main assault would come from the south and not our area. He would also tell stories about himself. He related to my mother, an incident that took place during a visit by Eleanor Roosevelt to Pearl Harbor on August 23, 1943. He sent his staff out to requisition the vets cuss of beef from all the ships and submarines that import. And after a sumptuous dinner, the First Lady said, Admiral, that was delicious, but we don't eat this well at the White House. He was mortified. It was and my grandfather showed benevolence to his former enemies. As soon as he received word from Washington that the Japanese had accepted the peace treaty terms, he broadcast a message to forces under his command ordering that they quote, conduct themselves with dignity and decorum in their treatment of the Japanese and further stating the use of insulting epithets in connection with the Japanese as a race or individuals does not now become officers of the United States Navy. He also placed a marine guard aboard the Makasa, which was Admiral Togo's flagship from the Russo-Japanese War of 1904 and 1905 to prevent her from being looted for souvenirs. He would later help fund her restoration. The Japanese people would remember his kindness years later by building replicas of Admiral Togo's study and adjacent pool at the Nimitz Museum in Fredericksburg, Texas. In late 1957, when my father James Lay was taking command of the heavy cruiser Helena in Long Beach, my mother of my two brothers and I spent several months with my grandparents at their home in Berkeley while dad was lining up the house for us. An entry in their guest book from 10 May 1953 was signed by Mitsu Fushida who had led the first wave of air attacks on Pearl Harbor. In the remarks column, Fushida had written, no more Pearl Harbor. This was just eight years after the end of the war. In Gordon Prang's biography of Fushida, God Samurai, he tells us that after the Sarendasum ceremony, members of the combined fleet staff gave up their swords to their American opposites. My grandfather had received Abel Toyota sword. He told Fushida that he now wished to return it to his original owner and Fushida suggested that it be arranged for the Japanese Embassy in Washington. This was done and the sword was returned to Japan. Fushida told Prang, quote, only a big man would do this humble, would do a humble thing like this, only a gentleman with a good heart, unquote. Shortly after the war, my grandfather was making an address to a certain university. He learned that a large chime bell owned by the university had been liberated from a Japanese church by the GIs. He told the school that the bell should be returned to the village from where it was taken, and it was. He also extended his goodwill to another World War to a theory of operation. In 1946, Admiral Karl Dunitz, Hitler's successor, the head of Germany, was placed on trial at Nuremberg for alleged war crimes. One of the crimes is that he had ordered the German submarine fleet to conduct unrestricted warfare against enemy ships. His defense attorney, Otto Kranzberger, requested and received answers to a set of interrogatories from my grandfather. In these, he stated that Admiral King had ordered unrestricted warfare starting December 7, 1941, to be carried out by our submarine fleet. In his answer to the interrogatories, he did clarify that unrestricted and Admiral King's orders that include, quote, hospital ships, other vessels under safe contact, and voyages for humanitarian purposes. Dunitz was sentenced to 10 years in prison. I believe that the interrogatories probably saved him from the death penalty, and by no means defending Admiral Dunitz, who was every bit a loyal Nazi, but on this one-year issue, he should not have been charged as we ourselves carried out this practice. I was 18 when my grandfather died, so most of my memories of him, or of a kind, devoted grandfather. Strangely, my one lasting takeaway from him are not his insights from the war, but the importance that he placed on physical exercise. He firmly believed in the ancient Greek tradition of exercising the mind and body equally. He not only had in mind his father's early death due to a heart attack, but the fact that exercise gives you a chance to clear your mind and to recharge. And he often practices throughout the war, taking long runs and swims, often joined by his favorite fellow officers, such as Admiral Spruince and Hart. As far as his leadership philosophy, here is how I would sum it up. These words appear in his handwriting on the front page of the first volume of his copy of Douglas Southall Freeman's Lee's Lieutenants. Quote, Douglas Southall Freeman's three maximum fine leaderships for one, know your job, two, do your duty well, and three, look after your men. And I feel that these qualities apply equally well to my grandfather. When I spoke here in February of 2014 in an event launching the release of the Nimitz Gray book in digital form, I mentioned an intriguing fellow who had met out in Pearl Harbor during a ceremony proceeding September. His name was Michael Lilly, and he is a retired naval officer, Vietnam veteran, retired lawyer, and former attorney general of Hawaii. His grandparents, Una and Sandy Walker, were a prominent family in Oahu. They became good friends with my grandfather when he was ordered to Pearl Harbor in 1920 to build a de novo submarine base. My grandfather associated with men of goodwill, Una and Sandy Walker were certainly among them. Their relationship was renewed in 1941 when my grandfather took command of the Pacific Fleet. Michael has written a wonderful book called Nimitzities. It details a previously unpublished story about how their relationship provided my grandfather with a place, space, and time to recuperate from the extreme stresses of command and win the Pacific War. As my brother Richard and I wrote in the forward to Michael's book, the walkers provided our grandfather his own private USO. And here's Michael to tell us all about it. Thank you. I'm so delighted, I'm so delighted to be back. Last time I was here 26 years ago as a naval captain doing war games. So it's great to be back here. I'm going to take you on a journey to, through World War II in the Pacific that's not chronicled anywhere else, except in my book and an article I wrote in the Naval History Magazine this last February. And it's a book about how Nimitz coped with the stresses of command. The day he took over command of the Pacific Fleet was the end of December 1944, 1941. The press asked him a question. And he said, the press asked, what are you going to do with your fleet underwater and the Japanese are rampaging across the Pacific and you don't have a fleet. It's underwater in Pearl Harbor. What are you going to do about that? And he said, you asked several questions about the future, many of them no doubt pressing. I'm a kama aina. That's a Hawaiian word for a long time resident. I'm a kama aina myself and I'd like to reply in a Hawaiian word. This word is ho omanawanui. Ho omanawanui. This word means let time take care of the situation. Where did he get this word ho omanawanui? And my book talks about it and we'll talk about it a little bit later. But the book also reveals this true and untold story about how my grandparents gave Nimitz the time, space, and place as Chet was talking about to relieve himself from the extreme pressures of command that nobody in the military is trained for how to deal with the stresses of command. My book was based on my grandmother Yuna Walker's war diary on hundreds of letters that they kept from Nimitz with Nimitz and with the subordinate commanders. The 4000 page gray book that Chet kindly sent me in digital format that the war college did in 2014 and that was, it gave me the opportunity with my grandmother's war diary to see what Nimitz is doing during the day or in commanding the Pacific fleet and what he's doing when he's resting and he's not in command and he's with my grandparents and others. Unpublished war photos in memorabilia. As Chet said, Nimitz met my grandparents in 1920 when he came when as a lieutenant commander he came to build the first submarine base in Pearl Harbor. By 1941 my grandfather was the head of, then it was called Amfa, American Factors, the largest company in Hawaii is a sugar factoring company and my grandmother Yuna was the chair of the Hawaii Red Cross surgical dressing corps. And right after that Nimitz kindled the friendship and Chet talked about how Nimitz surrounded himself with men of goodwill and I'll give you one thing about my grandfather that can tell you a lot about him being a man of goodwill. He served as the best man in the weddings of 13 of his Harvard classmates, 13 best man. December 6, 1941 my grandmother, Ginger Lily was a Red Cross motor core driver. It's the day before Pearl Harbor and she was detailed to go to Aloha Tower to meet some flyers from Australia and New Zealand to give them a tour. And so she said, well, have you ever heard of Pearl Harbor? And they said, no. And she said, well, maybe someday you will. So she took them above Aia Heights, which is a commanding views over the Pearl Harbor and you could see all the ships and the flyers said, my gosh, your entire fleet is there at anchor tied up. The Japanese could blockade the entrance to Pearl Harbor and they're sitting ducks that could all be destroyed. The entire Pacific Fleet could be destroyed. Oh, they worried about it all day long and my mother dropped them off at Aloha Tower and they went off to fight the war. She went to dinner that night in Kahala and was playing bridge with a Charlie Bryant's Lieutenant who flew PBY search and rescue missions around the islands every day. And it was telling him this story and he said, Ginger, take it from me. The Japanese can't come within a thousand miles of Hawaii without us knowing it. What the problem was, they were searching in the southwest and the Japanese fleet was bearing down from the northwest. Well, the next day, December 7, my grandparents woke and that was their wedding anniversary. And they were having a major dinner in celebration that night. They had a sit down dinner at their home for 50. And the guests of honor were the head of the Navy, Admiral Kimmel, the head of the Army, General Short. And my grandmother said, you know, we had caterers, we had florists, we had musicians and of course, all the guests. No one called, no one canceled, no one showed up, and no one was surprised. My grandmother immediately went into uniform, went down to the Honolulu Academy of Arts, where they operated the surgical dressing corps. She had 5,000 volunteers, over a thousand of them Japanese, Issei and Issei Japanese ladies. And not one Japanese lady showed up. And she called up the first one. She said, Mrs. Asahina, where are you? This is Mrs. Walker, you're not here. Oh, Mrs. Walker, I'm so sorry, I'm so ashamed, I'm so ashamed of the Japanese. The Japanese in Hawaii felt they were Americans and the Japanese had done a terrible thing. And they were shamed. And she said, no, you're my best workers, please come. And Mrs. Asahina said, that's the most wonderful words I ever heard. Thank you. But she came down and my grandmother called every one of her Japanese volunteers. And it was the same story with each one. They were shamed. Imagine the stress of Admiral Nemitz. I can't imagine it. Largest military force in history, 2,000 service members, 64 million square miles of ocean. He was responsible for all the success and failure. Midway could have been the end of his career. He got awful letters, lots of them. You killed my son on Tarawa. He answered everyone. They were painful. He wrote to his wife, Catherine, I'm just as distressed as can be over the casualties, but I don't see how I could have reduced them. And he visited hospitals all over the Pacific and he warded Purple Hearts. And here he is at IEA Hospital in Pearl Harbor. He's awarding Purple Hearts. And the woman with the white handbag there is my grandmother. There's my grandmother right there. And she's holding a Purple Heart box. And how his stress manifested itself. He had chronic insomnia. He would awaken in the middle of the night, can you imagine? The war news were interrupting his sleep every day. He tossed and turned in the muggy waters of Pearl Harbor, hot, humid, no air conditioning. He studied the charts in his war room at night, in the middle of the night. He had serious intestinal distress. My grandparents thought he should have been hospitalized. He wasn't, but it was bad. And it was exacerbated by malaria that he contracted when he went down to Guadalcanal in 1943. My grandparents had built a garden of called Muliwai. And it means the water that flows over the sandbar into the city. And it's about six, seven acres of beautiful land. Here's the beach. Right here is the cottage that Nimitz stayed in every weekend of the war. The main house is here. You can't see it. All of this sugarcane in the back, that's where the Polynesian Culture Center is today. And we own, we still have a portion of Muliwai in our family today. So my grandfather goes to Muliwai right after the war started. And he put on his bathing suit and he went out and he saw there was barbed wire all over this beach and seven rows of it in front of his house. And he starts to thread his way through this nine rows of barbed wire and he gets down to the bottom and a soldier in green with a rifle pops up and he said, halt. So you're off limits. Not allowed down here. This is my beach. No, no, this is off limits. I have my orders. So my grandfather said, well, we'll see about that. So Monday morning he calls Chester Nimitz and he says, Chester, would you like to come out and spend the weekend at my beach house Muliwai on the north shore of Oahu? He'd heard about this hideaway, this wonderful place, this magical place. Yeah, I'd love to. I'd love to. So he shows up Saturday morning at Muliwai and my grandfather says, Chester, would you like to take a swim? And he said, I love it. You know, he was an athlete. Chet talked about that. And he put on his bathing suit and down they went through the barbed wire. They got to the bottom and the soldier jumped up with his rifle. And he said, halt. This is you're off limits. And he saw Nimitz in white hair, blue eyes. I mean, he was, he was the head of all the military forces in Hawaii and in the Pacific. So he knew who this guy was. And Nimitz in his own way, smile. He said, son, this is Mr. Walker's beach. And Mr. Walker and his guests can swim here anytime they want. And they did. And of course, that was the beginning of this becoming Nimitz's weekend retreat all through the war. So here they are at Muliwai, except for that picture that Chet showed earlier. When you see a picture of Nimitz, he's in a uniform. He's in a suit. When do you see him in a bathing suit barefoot? Well, so this is April 3, 1944. I know because of the diary. This young girl is my younger sister older than me, younger sister Sheila. And above Nimitz is my older sister, Miley. And there's Nimitz relaxing at ease at Muliwai. But this gentleman back here you see in the bathing suit and bare feet, that's Admiral Tom Hart. He was the head of the Pacific Asiatic Fleet at the time of Pearl Harbor. He soon retired, but they brought him back to do an investigation into the attack on Pearl Harbor to preserve testimonies. And he was taking testimony that day and adjourned at 12.30. And at 1.30, there he is at ease at Muliwai. And here Preston Mercer was the chief of staff to Nimitz. There's my sister's Admiral Hart, Admiral Nimitz, my mother, Ginger, movie star, beautiful. You know, they acted up, they had fun. He walked around with my sister on her on his back. That's what you did at Muliwai. And what else did you do at Muliwai? You hiked across the hills and the hills, trails going up through the verdant hillsides. Beautiful. I've hiked there my whole life. Paddle tennis, swimming, horseshoes. Nimitz was a great horseshoe pitcher. Hooker, cribbage, archery, symphonies on the pectrola, if you know what a pectrola is. And my grandmother then, and all her life, whenever we were there, she brought out her ukulele and with her haunting voice, much better than mine. With the trade winds blowing and the ocean roaring in the background, she would play songs on her ukulele, such as, she's a knockout in the blackout, but would she be a knockout in the daylight? They couldn't take Niihau know how. Niihau was a private island off of Kawai, and a Japanese pilot crashed. And he tried to create a rebellion of the Japanese residents on Niihau. And Ben Kanahele, if she'd heard her, who had been shot three times by the Japanese pilot, killed the Japanese pilot and got a Purple Heart. He wasn't in the military, but he got a Purple Heart. That was a song about that. Princess Pupuli got plenty papaya. And Muliwai, the song of our family. We never went to Muliwai and didn't sing Muliwai. And my grandfather created Sandy Walker's Horseshoe Role of Double Ringers. And he was mortified that he won the first one. And then his son Henry, who became very close to Nimitz, he won the second one. But thank God, Nimitz, on September 13, 1944, on the eve of Leyte, won the third round of Double Ringers. Nimitz's aide Hal Lamar said this about Muliwai and the walkers. Nimitz enjoyed very much his time at Muliwai. The walkers let him get in a little shirt and a pair of shorts and talk no business at all. It was very relaxing for him. We talked about orchids. We talked about mundane things. The war never came into the picture. And this is his cottage. That's it today. That's the cottage he stayed in throughout the war, right on the bluff over the ocean. Now, my grandparents would have dinner at their house and then they would go to 37 Makalapa, the Nimitz's quarters, back and forth, different nights. And so this was my grandparents' estate. And they had two Japanese nationals that worked for them and lived on the estate. Aliens, they would have been put in camps if they lived in California. So these two aliens worked for my grandfather. Sui Taragoto, on the day of Pearl Harbor, was going to go down and station at the lower gate and greet the invading Japanese army. They feared invasion. And when they got to the Walker State, would be able to tell the Japanese army that the walkers are good people. But Hara was their cook, a Japanese alien. And Hara cooked probably over 100 meals for Nimitz and the entire Pacific command. And no one ever thought that he could have poisoned them all. But my grandfather knew that the Japanese were loyal. And here's a garden party that my grandfather put on in their garden in New Iwanu. And look at the, and there's dozens more people at this party. And this, all this stuff has been put on by Hara. So you have Nimitz on the far left, then my grandfather. This is Sokma Morris, his chief of staff. This is Secretary of the Navy, Frank Knox. This is Admiral Spruance, the victor of Midway and most of the battles of the Pacific. And over here is Hal Lamar. And of course, they weren't poisoned. And they became those three, Nimitz, Spruance, and we're in Spruance Hall. And my grandfather became fast and close friends. And here's 37 Makalapa where Nimitz lived. And he wrote on this, this, my room is, and he puts an hour right there. That's where Nimitz lived. And in order for my grandparents to go to Makalapa, you had to have a nighttime curfew. After 6pm, it was curfew. So they would get the chief of police, here are the assistant chief of police, would sign a pass for that day only from their house in New Iwanu Valley to Makalapa and back. And when you went to dinner at Nimitz, the staff would hand paint name tags. Now, this is Halloween. And my grandmother is greeted with a name tag of a mummy wrapped up with surgical bandages. She was the head of the surgical bandage corps of the Red Cross. And you can see the Red Cross is there. And that's how they honored her for Halloween with a mummy. There's a deserted island with a grass shack and a coconut tree and an outrigger canoe. There's a sailor dancing the hula. There's some kind of a mountain. I don't know about Mount Fuji. We don't have mountains like that in Hawaii, but there's a volcano. Nimitz would often, almost weekly, show up at my grandparents unannounced and ask, will you want to go down to Kailua Beach with me? And he did it unannounced and he never told anybody when he was going to do it for security reasons. But they would all go to Kailua Beach on the other side of the mountain and they would do a five mile swim and walk. And here he is with my sisters. And the interesting thing about this picture, as you can see, is missing ring finger right here. And my sisters told me he always regaled us by pulling off his finger and they were shocked to see this finger. And Chet told me he did the same thing to his grandkids. But there's Nimitz at ease. He would also send pictures. This is a great picture. Right after Quadruple and Fell, Nimitz flew out with Nimitz, with Spruantz and visited and look at the detritus of war. The place was just annihilated and Nimitz signed his name on his body and Spruantz signed his name on his body and Nimitz writes two full admals full of conversation. These guys were just wonderful people. So in March 2744 Nimitz went down to meet with MacArthur. MacArthur can be a difficult man, brilliant, brilliant, but had an ego the size of Spruantz Hall. And it took two days to get there by sea plane. So it was a long flight and he was tired. And his job was, among other things, to inform MacArthur that the Joint Chiefs of Staff want to bypass the Philippines. Bypass the Philippines! I'm going to return. MacArthur blew up. It was a very traumatic experience. And Nimitz flew back two more days. He landed in Pearl Harbor exhausted. He calls my grandparents up and he says, can I come for dinner? Can I come over? I'm not bringing Helm Lamar. I'm coming alone. My grandfather sends Hara off to his quarters. My grandfather cooks the meal in the kitchen. They sit out on our back lawn with the trade winds blowing and the fragrant orchid smells wafting through and he just relaxes, has dinner. They play cribbage. They have drinks. They smoke. And he had a time to relax. He had to. It was one of the most poignant things I think that happened during the war between my grandparents and Chet's grandparents. He had a license of humor. Chet told you some of the funny stories. There are lots of them that Ledger's book is great. In 1943, my cousin, Johnny Walker, was about five or six. And he and all of his friends were invited to go to Easter egg hunt at 37 Makalapa by Nimitz. So they're all up running around getting Easter eggs. And my cousin Johnny had a call of nature. So he goes into 37 Makalapa looking for the Hawaiian we say Lua bathroom. So he finds it. And to his surprise, what is he fine? There are three rolls of toilet paper in this bathroom. One roll, every sheet is a picture of Emperor Hirohito. The second roll, every sheet is Mussolini. And then the third, out off Hitler. Unfortunately, he kept some of them, but it disappeared over the years. But can you imagine? October 6, 1944. This is classic, classic Nimitz. He calls the press in big press conference. The Japanese fleet has been destroyed. Whoa, they know that Halsey's out there all over the western Pacific. They destroyed the Japanese fleet off of the southern coast of Kyushu. The AP is broadcasting it as he is reading his communique, his press release, broadcasting. It's going across the country. It goes all the way to London. Presses are stopped. Front pages are rewritten. Japanese fleet destroyed off Kyushu. They're already putting it out on the street until it gets to the bottom line. That was in 1592 when the Korean Navy destroyed the Japanese fleet off of Kyushu. That's a kind of humor your grandfather did. This is what he saw when he woke up at Muliwai. And he wrote to his wife Catherine. I spent the last night of 1944 at Muliwai, awakening to the sun, refreshed and relaxed. That's the beach you would walk every day when he was out there. And then the next month, he moves to Guam, the next month, he moves to Guam, 4,000 miles to the west. The walkers at his request start loading every flag plane, it was a regular flag plane, with items that he could plant because of so bad the destruction on Guam, seedlings, orchids and coconut husks, monkey pod, lychee seeds, ginger roots, all kinds of plants. And then Nimitz wrote to my grandparents, we took a walk with our pockets filled with monkey pod seeds and a few flowering tree seeds, which we carefully planted at intervals. And in later years, when you two visit Guam and see all of the fruit and flowering trees and nice plants, you can take great satisfaction in your share in this program. He brought my grandfather out, my grandfather was a great big guy. He brought him out for a week in March, and there he is fishing. And I can tell he said he had a long flight and he's tired. And there's Halimar, and there's Nimitz, and it's a cabin cruiser that was named for his wife Catherine. My uncle Henry, thanks to Nimitz, was assigned to the Missouri. And the day of the surrender, he gets a call that his presence is requested in the ward room. He goes to the ward room and there's nobody there, but he assumes that Nimitz wants to see him because Nimitz came aboard. And then one hatch in the ward room comes General MacArthur. And then the next hatch comes Admiral Nimitz and Admiral Halsey. And they come together. And my grandfather, my uncle said, I'm watching history and I'm the only person here. And MacArthur's got this baritone voice and he grabs Chester's hand and he says, Chester. And then he grabs Halsey's hand, puts it over, he says, Bill, this is the day toward which we have strived for so long. Wow, like uncle said, my God, I can't believe I'm witnessing history. They break to go sign the surrender. And Nimitz looks at my uncle and says, oh, Henry, I saw your parents recently and then you're going to have dinner with me when you come through Guam. But Henry, where are your collar bars? We're going to wear washed khakis, but where are your collar bars? He had forgotten to put on his collar bars. He was a Lieutenant JG dressed down by a five-star Admiral. But he said he gave a wintry smile and off he went. This is the famous photograph that he had described to my grandparents on the surrender and thanking him with great appreciation for your contribution to the war effort that made this possible. December, October 27, 1945 was Navy Day and Nimitz was to be accorded a great honor. The Hawaiians were going to make him an honorary chief of Hawaii, the first VIP since Roosevelt in 1933 to have this honor. And here he is with a yellow feather cape draped over him by Hawaiians. And he stood on the steps of Ilani Palace, 10,000 people out in the longs. And he spoke in Hawaiian. He had gone to my grandparents and said, I want to say what I want to say in Hawaiian. And my grandparents made this card and he lifted the card and he said to everyone. To my good friends of Dear Hawai'i, I give my overflowing thanks and my very fullest aloha, aloha, aloha for all of us. They corresponded for the next 20 years. And then the last letter that my grandparents received was 11 months before your grandfather passed. And then he wrote it in hand. Their friendship was so close. So I mentioned when I was troubled growing up, my grandparents and my parents gave me this word. It sounds like long ocean swells. Everything will be fine in time. Everything works out in time. And for Nimitz it did. As Nimitz's grandsons wrote in the forward to Nimitz at ease, the walkers provided Nimitz with a refuge from the stresses of high command where he could walk, swim, dine, and play poker his own private USO. Thank you, Chet. And this was the last picture that he inscribed to my grandparents that same day, maybe day 1945, thanking them for all that they have done. I have one more slide. Okay. Craig Simons. We all know Craig. No stranger to the War College. I was honored to help edit his book Nimitz at War. It's out now. And I view it as a companion book to mine. And he wrote to me, now we'll have both Nimitz at ease and Nimitz at war. Nimitz at ease is Nimitz the man with a war in the background and Nimitz at war is Nimitz the warrior with a man in the background. And that's a great book. I've just started reading it. I just received mine. And I have to say, I thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Okay. That was absolutely fascinating. And I will be available to visit in about six weeks. Clear out Nimitz's shack. I'll be ready. Are there any questions here in the auditorium? And please use the microphone if you can. Yes, ma'am. But yeah, that was sad. But Chet lay's been there. Lovely place. Other questions? Gary, do you have questions from the Zoom audience? I currently have one question. And for those that are out there, if you have any questions, please type them in text. This is for Chet. Did your grandfather ever wonder, allowed what kind of military career he might have had if he had gone to West Point? Not to my knowledge. I don't think he gave much thought, actually. We're certainly better off that he didn't get in. No, I never heard or even read anything that he mentioned about that. Any other questions? Okay. Well, thank you very much, gentlemen. Nice job. Thank you. College Museum Store has made three books available, which I've got down here. If anybody's interested in purchasing them, they're autographed, but Captain Lilly will personalize them for you if you'd like. $35, hopefully you got the right change and whatnot. If they don't sell tonight, we'll take them back over to the museum store. So I thank you very much for coming. I think it was a superb end to the 15 lecture series this year. And we encourage all of you to stay in touch in terms of a summer session or join us back in the fall and get a little bit of a taste of what the Naval War College education is all about. Thank you. Good night.