In 1964 I had coffee with Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, the man who had commanded all our Navy forces in the Pac Bic during World War II, at his mansion on Treasure Island.

My entree to Nimitz, in effect, was that I had served aboard Midway and specifically my c.o. had been the legendary Captain John T. Blackburn.

At the time I was a staff writer for the San Francisco Examiner, and the interview—if that’s what it was—was “off the record.”  But now that all the principals have passed away, I feel I have been released from that pledge.

The assignment began in my Editor Bill Hall’s office.   “Our esteemed publisher is a Captain in the Navy Reserve, and at a Navy League dinner he met Admiral Nimitz,” Bill detailed.  “He strongly suggested that we do a story and profile of Nimitz.”

A main attraction of the Examiner’s Sunday magazine section was in-depth profiles of various San Francisco newsmakers and celebrities.  “Your name came up as the writer.”

I had recently been nominated for a journalism award for one of my stories, and it was generally known that I had been an officer aboard the Midway.

The Midway was then a big deal in San Francisco.  If you commuted across the Golden Gate Bridge, the Oakland Bay Bridge, or up the Bayshore Freeway, the sight of the giant majestic warship loaded with jet aircraft sailing into port or out to sea across the Bay and under the Golden Gate was as stirring as your morning Irish coffee or afternoon martini.

“Nimitz’ mansion is on Yerba Buena Island,” I noted.  Yerba Buena was the rocky scenic anchor of the Oakland Bridge to which the flat landfill of the Treasure Island Navy base was attached.   When Midway was worked on at the Hunters Point Shipyard, I had been assigned temporary duty on Shore Patrol at T.I.  Each evening, on our way to check out various off-limits dens-of-iniquity in Oakland and San Francisco, I and the burly Marine sergeant who was my partner did  a drive-by of the senior officers’ residences.

 “Terrific” Bill exclaimed.  “We have an inside man.”

I promptly made contact through official Navy PIO channels.  Two days later I was informed, Adm. Nimitz did not give personal interviews.

You’re a reporter,” Bill declared.  “Are you going to take that as an answer?”  In WWII Bill had been an Army captain on Omaha Beach at Normandy.  He honored his service, but had little patience for military protocol.

The next morning I drove up to the gate at Treasure Island, presented my officer’s ID, and was smartly saluted through by the Marine guard.

I drove straight to Nimitz’s home and knocked on the door.  A Filipino attendant in white livery opened it.  I presented my press card and briefly explained that I was there at the request of my publisher who was an acquaintance of Admiral Nimitz.

The attendant took my card and closed the door.  When it opened again after a few minutes, there was Nimitz.

In the recent Hollywood epic “Midway” Woody Harrelson plays Nimitz.  In the 1976 blockbuster Henry Fonda portrayed him. Neither quite captured the gravitas of the man who had taken command of the Pacific Fleet the day after the flaming disaster of Pearl Harbor and orchestrated the Japanese surrender in Tokyo Bay four years later.

The man at the door, dressed in civilian clothes, was white-hair, tall, handsome— more striking than the movie stars that had created his imitations.  “I sent word to your publisher I don’t give personal interviews.  How’d you get on base?”

“I used my officer I.D.  I served aboard the Midway…”  Then I added the magic password…”under Tom Blackburn.”

That definitely caught Nimitz’ interest.  He looked me over, then in a friendly voice, “Come in.  Have some coffee, but this is all off the record.  No interview.”

I was thrilled.  “Yes sir”

“So you served with Tom Blackburn?” 

Blackburn had commanded the Navy’s First Corsair Fighter squadron, the legendary Jolly Rogers with the pirates’ skull and crossbones insignia emblazoned on their planes.  In the battle for the Solomon Islands, they shot down more enemy aircraft than any other squadron in the war.   Blackburn was awarded the Navy Cross, the Distinguished Flying Cross, and the Air Medal with 2 gold stars.  A multi-ace himself, he had trained and commanded a squadron of aces.

After the war he was one of the Navy’s first jet pilots, the Midway’s first air group commander, and the very first pilot to land aboard the newly launched carrier, then the largest ship in the world.

When I served under him in 1958-59, Captain Blackburn was the c .o. of Midway—the Flagship during the brink-of-nuclear-war crisis in the Taiwan Straits.

“Yes sir.  He’s now growing wine grapes and breeding Golden Retrievers up in Napa Valley.”

Nimitz seemed surprised.  “Are you in touch with him?”

 “I had lunch with his son Mark recently.”  Mark had not followed his father and grandfather to Annapolis, but had attended Yale and had writing ambitions, which had brought him to the Examiner, then the Monarch of the Dailies in a literary San Francisco.

Looking back, I had had perhaps more contact with Blackburn than most junior officers aboard.   As an operations officer and air controller who worked around the clock when at sea, my collateral duty in port was Public Information Officer.  On occasion I conferred directly with the c.o.  And I had doubled-dated with his pretty daughter Pattie and been a guest for cocktails at his home.                               

But there were officers aboard whose careers had been terminated by run-ins with him, and others simply terrified of him.

Still, he treated me with a certain tolerance, even humor, perhaps because I was closer to his son’s age, and did not plan to make the Navy my career, yet did my job with a certain diligence.

I briefly sketched this, then noted, “He retired when he was passed over for admiral…They didn’t trust him.”  It was a phrase too much.  But perhaps the brash young reporter was trying to stir Nimitz.

“And you would know that how?”  There was a sharp edge to his voice that even a half century later I still hear.

“A friend of mine’s father was on the selection board.”

Now things really got tense.  Nimitz might have ordered me to reveal who that was.  And I would have respectfully declined.  I was no longer in the Navy and now a reporter.  And I didn’t want Nimitz calling the father to tell him to silence his son, an Annapolis grad and career officer.

But now, as noted, everyone has heard Taps, and for the record my source was George Anderson III.  His father George Anderson Jr. was then the Chief of Naval Operations, and his son—my confidant--was a FJ-4 Fury pilot who had carrier qualified aboard Midway.  His two closest friends had been buddies of mine in flight school, and they had both been killed in mishaps.  In that tragedy, George III and I had bonded.

Blackburn’s being passed over for admiral at the time had been a matter of great curiosity.  And George had discussed it with his own father.  Not only was Blackburn awesomely decorated and experienced, both his father and brother were admirals.  But his intemperate drinking and recklessness were not secret.

One time aboard Midway, Blackburn had insisted on flying an F8 Crusader—then the hottest plane in the fleet—in which he was not qualified.  He essentially lost control, and almost consciousness, but landed, visibly beaten up, black-eyed, and face bloodied by the violent G-forces his heavy hand had unleashed.

And he had angrily and publicly berated another officer on the flight desk and ordered him off the ship for an entirely personal matter.  Senior officers aboard felt compelled to intervene.

In the age of the Cuban Missile Crisis and nuclear MADness—Mutually Assured Destruction— the top gun of Guadalcanal was not trusted.

Years later it was all a matter of record.  In his autobiographical “The Jolly Rogers,” published in 1989, Tom Blackburn admitted, “By mid-1962, the Navy sensibly decided that it didn’t need an Admiral who could not handle his booze.”

In his excellent and authoritative “Midway Magic,” published in 2004, military historian Scott McGaugh, a founding director of the Midway Museum, described Blackburn as a “hard-charging, risk-taking invincible aviator who lived for today and spit on tomorrow, often with a drink in his hand at sunset.”

But in 1964, my comment to Admiral Nimitz was, well, indiscreet.  I attempted to change the subject.   “What do you do to occupy yourself now?”

As a five star Fleet Admiral, Nimitz officially remained on active duty for the rest of his life, with full pay and benefits.  “I have a shooting range out back, and I practice with a .45.”

The .45 had been my sidearm aboard Midway on foreign in-port officer-of-the-desk watches, security, and Shore Party training.  But I had difficulty hitting a barn door.  Historically, the pistol was designed for blunt, brutal stopping power against sword-wielding Moro tribesmen in 1900 in hand-to-hand Philippine jungle combat.

Nimitz was amused by my trivia about the .45, imparted to me by Marine 1st Lt. Jim Sheehan, my Midway small arms trainer.

“Yes, it takes some practice as a target pistol,” Nimitz agreed. 

It struck me as curious that the admiral who had commanded the greatest flotilla of firepower the world had ever seen and no doubt had a direct hand in the atomic attacks on the Japanese ports of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was now practicing to master a .45.

“Here, I don’t want you to go away empty handed.“ He disappeared into another room for a few moments and came back with a large photo.  It was the official photo of his signing the surrender of Japan aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay, September 2, 1945.

inscribed it-- “To  Rick  Setlowe
With  whom  I  had  coffee
Off  the  record.”

“There!  That’ll show your publisher you were at least here and did your job.”

I showed it to my editor Bill Hall.  He took it down to show to the publisher.

“He said, ‘Congratulations.  You’ve got a helluva collector’s item, even if you didn’t get the interview.”

I mounted the photo above my desk with scotch tape.  My fellow ink-stained wretches on the Examiner came by my office, admired the inscribed photo, and speculated what was “off the record.”  It hinted of dark secrets of Pearl Harbor, the epic Battles of the Coral Sea and Midway, the surrender of Japan.

But we hadn’t talked about any of that epic history.  But about a hero who was reckless and drank too much and the kick and inaccuracy of the obsolete .45 pistol.

When I left the Examiner a year later, I cleared out most of my files on a Friday afternoon, and came back on Monday to pick up odds and ends and the inscribed photo.  Someone had swiped it off the wall…and off the record.

(Copyright © 2020 by Richard Setlowe)