Double Edged Secrets by W.J. Holmes

Author:W.J. Holmes [Holmes W. J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781612512556
Publisher: Naval Institute Press
Published: 2019-06-01T04:00:00+00:00

Richard W. Emory

In the fall of 1942 very little information was coming into ICPOA, other than the highly classified intelligence originated by Radio Intelligence and passed to a very small number of individuals. There were few captured documents, few prisoners to interrogate, and very few aerial photographs of enemy-held territory to interpret. The Bishop Museum and the library of the University of Hawaii were sources of background information on the small islands near the equator known as the “line islands.” At this time also few demands were being made to ICPOA for information, but the organization was quietly preparing for the future.

Lieutenant Colonel Joseph J. Twitty became the Army liaison officer. He had been a Japanese-language student in Tokyo but, of more immediate importance to ICPOA, he was an experienced topographer and cartographer. Through him, the resources of the U.S. Army’s 64th Topographic Company became available to ICPOA. Captain William B. Goggins, who had been severely wounded while executive officer of the cruiser Marblehead in the Java Sea, was ordered from Washington as executive officer of ICPOA and prospective relief for Captain Hillenkoetter.

In October Rochefort received temporary duty orders to the Office of Naval Operations in Washington. It would be an opportunity for him to gather up some of the loose ends of our relations with Op-20-G. We needed more trained cryptographers, more translators, more kana radio operators, more communication and radio direction-finding equipment, and Washington was our only source of supply. Hard work and the bad air-conditioning in which we all worked had Rochefort down physically. He had a persistent bronchial cough and had lost a lot of weight. At that time, the air trip to the mainland was an ordeal but he might get a few days’ leave to spend with his family as he passed through California. Dyer would be in charge. I could continue doing routine paper work for the organization. Hillenkoetter would fight our battles with ComFourteen and the CinCPac staff while Rochefort was gone. Before he left, Rochefort turned over to me a package of personal papers and the keys to his desk. I somehow got the feeling that he anticipated being away longer than we expected, but I did not even suspect that I would not see him again until long after the war was over.

A couple of weeks after Rochefort’s departure, Hillenkoetter came down into the basement with Captain Goggins, whom I then met for the first time, and who brought into the musty basement a breath of the sea and a sense of the reality of the war. After being wounded in the Marblehead, Goggins had made an almost miraculous escape from Java just before it fell. When Hillenkoetter introduced him as “your new boss,” I thought he was referring to his own expected relief as officer-in-charge of ICPOA. It was not until he handed me the written orders from the Office of Naval Operations that I realized Captain Goggins was relieving Rochefort as officer-in-charge of the Radio Intelligence Section. I immediately took him to the back room and presented him to Dyer, who was as surprised as I had been.

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