PROVIDENCE, R.I. – The U.S. Naval War College has released a trove of World War II information by posting online the operational diary kept by Adm. Chester W. Nimitz during the war against Japan.
The more than 4,000 pages includes a running estimate of the situation for every day of the war in the Pacific compiled by Nimitz’s planning staff members, starting with the day Japan attacked Pearl Harbor.
It is posted at www.usnwc.edu/graybook . The college said the site was working again Monday after heavy traffic made downloads inaccessible for several hours.
War College professor John Hattendorf says it’s the only such document to survive from the war.
Nimitz was commander in chief of the Pacific Fleet. He graduated from the War College in Rhode Island.
The diary was declassified in 1972 and is kept at the Naval History and Heritage Command in Washington, making it accessible only to those who can travel there.
“We’ll really be able to understand in a much better way how Adm. Nimitz thought and the challenges he saw every day of the war,” he said. “It can be searched for particular information, when particular information was known by the commander, how we reacted to a particular change ... what the president was telling him.”
The diary begins Dec. 7, 1941, the day of the attack on Pearl Harbor, with the line: “The war opened with the attack of Japanese aircraft on Oahu.” It goes on to list the locations of the Navy’s forces throughout the Pacific, the damage sustained that day and what is known about the enemy’s position.
Nimitz’s planning staff members prepared a similar summary for him every day of the war. Unlike other commanders during World War II, Nimitz kept them, and the diary was found in his personal papers, Hattendorf said.
It also includes supporting documentation for the summaries, including the orders Nimitz received from Washington and elsewhere, intelligence information from other commanders and exactly what his fleet units were doing.
The entries run through Aug. 31, 1945, as the war in the Pacific came to an end.
Nimitz, who died in 1966, graduated from the War College.
On The Net
www.usnwc.edu/graybook
