CRYPTOLOG - AFTERTHOUGHTS; Smoking Jackets, Felt Slippers and Cryptanalysis

This is another in the series of articles based on Captain Rochefort's oral history interview in 1969 by Commander Etta-Belle Kitchen. Captain Rochefort was assigned in June 1941 as OIC, Combat Intelligence Unit, Pacific Ocean Areas, located at Pearl Harbor.

One of the legendary tales about Rochefort is that of his smoking jacket and slippers. He gave us the 'straight skinny' on this tale while discussing the working conditions at Pearl Harbor. This humorous anecdote was intermingled with the discussion of the technical aspects of the working conditions. It is an entertaining and interesting segment of Captain Rochefort's interviews.

Silly me, I once thought that things were rough at Cape Chiniak (circa 1962). By the time I retired [1980], the state of technology made The Cape look like the stone age. Well, those of us who were mere pups during WW II will find the conditions and technology at Pearl Harbor were truly challenging. It only proves the validity of my two favorite sayings: "Things are relative," and "There ain't nuthin' time or money can't solve."

Let's pick up the dialogue where Kitchen [K] begins to probe Rochefort [R] on how he's been characterized by others. [Please assume quotes throughout the dialogue].

[K] You're described by Lord as "tall, thin and humorously caustic." [Walter Lord, Incredible Victory, New York, Harper & Row, 1967]

[R] I got a big kick out of that. I don't know where he ever dug that up, no more than the smoking jacket or the felt slippers.

[R] Well, what actually happened there was, on December 7th my family was still living on Oahu Avenue, back of the University, and I spent all of my time out at the office. I'd come home every third or fourth or fifth day or something like that and get sort of cleaned up. Then we got our family out at the first opportunity. When that happened, I just moved out to the Navy Yard in one of the houses out there which, by this time most of the families had gone, just leaving the officers there. So I was invited by the planning officer to live in a house where he was and that was my home then for the rest of the period. During this period, of course, I'd spend all of the time in the office, putting in around 20 or 22 hours a day, I would say.

[R] No. Just about six of us, I guess. Six of us would just stay there. I would only leave when I had to leave and that was just about all. The rest of the kids would sit on the watch, 12 on and 12 off, because they wouldn't be accustomed to this thing. Well anyway, we had -- to go back just a little bit -- we had just moved into these new quarters of ours down in the basement. The office was down in the basement of the administration building, and it was being built particularly for us, and it was about completed, say, 1 December. It was just about being completed, so we hastily moved in there before December 7th, and we were down in that place on December 7th. This was just the basement. Actually we only had one door in it. No door out except one door; that was the only way you could get in or out of that place. It was all right. We moved in there, but we didn't have a chance to check a lot of the systems like the air conditioning system. We noticed gradually as we went along about January or February or March of '42, there was an awful lot of colds and sniffles and one thing. So we began to check on this, and the first thing you know, we're all coughing and hacking. And after this went on for about a month or so, I told one fellow that I could least spare at that moment -- that I could spare not for too much time -- to check on this thing for me. He discovered that there wasn't any air conditioning. We were living down there for two months, and it simply wasn't there -- there was no fresh air. When we took care of that, then our problem sort of eased up. The air conditioning when it was installed, all it was doing was churning the same air around. This had been going on and we didn't have time to fiddle around with this thing or even ask why. Instead of that we were all chewing these goof balls.

[R] All that no-doze and junk like that. Dyer had buckets full of pills sitting on his desk, and every so often he would just grab a couple and put them in his mouth. And this went on for about 48 hours at a stretch. So it was a very fantastic operation down there. I started to wear a smoking jacket over the uniform and I wore this darn thing because it had pockets in it and I could get my pipe and my pouch this way. Then my feet got sore. It was from the concrete floor we had down there. That's all we had -- a concrete floor. And my feet kept getting sore. So I started wearing slippers because the shoes hurt my feet. So I started wearing slippers and this is where Lord gets the story.

[R] He must have talked to somebody, and that must have impressed this person, whoever it was.

[K] Well, it is an interesting item. I was going to ask you if it was true. But you, you make account of it, you see, that he doesn't make, which is that you wore it over your uniform.

[R] Oh yes, I wore it over my uniform. It was a sort of reddish smoking jacket that somebody had given me. The main reason for wearing it besides keeping me warm was that it had pockets where I could keep my pouch and pipe.

[K] But he doesn't make the point that you wore it over your uniform which, to a Navy person, is really a different atmosphere. [heh heh] This is like you say the Japanese translations -- it's a tiny thing but to somebody who is aware of the uniform and so on. . .

[R] The reason for it was very simple. It wasn't that I was eccentric or anything.

[R] It was a practical matter, and I was just cold. Of course, we were wearing khaki all the time -- that was all everybody was wearing, khaki. And I was probably just cold, so I developed this idea of wearing this thing. If I had to go outside, of course, I'd put my hat on but very rarely did I go outside except for lunch or rarely for breakfast or something like that. And he [Lord] also comments on the confusion that existed there. [It's not what he meant, of course, but I have fun picturing the mentally preoccupied Captain coming out of the basement access door in his khakis, stunning reddish smoking jacket, slippers and overseas hat.]

[K] I was going to ask you about that. Yes, he said things were just knee-deep practically and that you'd go -- first, before you go on that, can you describe what the office -- how it was furnished, how large it was, and did you have desks, tables -- did you work standing up, did you work sitting down or what?

[R] Most of the people worked sitting down. We just had desks. It was a flat open area and it was the basement of a building -- I'll have to guess now, I'd say maybe 40, 50 or 60 feet in one direction and maybe a couple hundred feet in the other.

[R] Oh yes. And then later we expanded this. We kicked out a wall and expanded this into another area, and I moved in that because there would be less racket in there and there would be no sound from this other place. And I moved in there and that was my place. All I had with me then was Jasper Holmes. [Lieutenant Wilfred J. Holmes, USN -- author of Double-Edged Secrets, Annapolis, Naval Institute Press, 1979] He used to take care of the charts and maps. But just very -- nothing in the place at all except you would probably find a tremendous amount of IBM cards in their little boxes, like so -- oh maybe a couple of million of those. We used two or three million of those in a month. [WOW!]

[R] Our whole operation depended on IBM machines. We were way ahead of anybody else. [Things are relative.] The IBM machines being a step between longhand, or typewritten and the computers. You see, we had no computers at that time. So we used IBM cards. As a matter of fact, Dyer installed the first installation that had ever been made. This was Dyer's idea. Without that, we couldn't have done anything.

[R] We'd just assemble the cards and we would be able at any moment to pick out any group [group = set of characters in a message] or two or three groups, or half-a-dozen groups, you see, in a message. Suppose the message said, A,B,C,D,E. If we wanted to use this for some reason or another, all we'd tell the officer in charge of this operation, this IBM thing, "Give me all the A,B,C,D,E's you have" and he'd run this whole thing through the collators, through the tabulators, and he would then come up with printed forms where the use of this thing had ever been made together with the messages from the groups ahead of it and, of course, after it.

[K] Now who did the key punching to get the material [on] the IBM cards in the first place?

[R] They were punched by ex-Yeoman, people that had been Yeomen or Yeomen trainees or something like that. They did all the typing.

[R] The messages themselves. . . from that one message they'd make 60 or 70 cards.

[R] If that were so, it might have about 200 cards from that. . . Then these go on what we call a collator or tabulator so we can recall these instantly. And they were all made up into books. . . and each one of the translators would have his own book and each one of the cryptanalysts would have his book. I didn't bother with these except that I would get the finished product. They would send me the finished product after they were all through with it. And from this finished product then I would have to make the translation. . .

[R] In Japanese -- not full. They might have "from Commander in Chief Sixth Fleet to Commander in Chief, First Striking Force. You will..." and then maybe a bunch of blanks, "Upon completion of this, you will proceed..." and then some more blanks. And my job was to fill that in. . .

[R] Because I could remember. I could remember, say, an incident in connection with the Sixth Fleet, which was the submarine fleet. I could remember back maybe three or four months. This fellow sent a similar message to some other command. He sends this. So we dig back in there and produce this from the stack of junk that Walter Lord is talking about. In other words, everything was in my head. Eventually, or course, you've got to get away from this. You've got to get organized. But we didn't have time to get organized.

[R] Oh Lord, yes, we could remember a hundred of them. . . There would be no problem there. This is one reason why these people are mostly crazy. We'd have no problem at all. You'd mention something and you'd say, "Now wait a minute. Back here when they were around Halmahera on the way down to a landing at Port something-or-other, there was a message like this. Let's have it." And they'd look in this pile of junk and they were able to locate it.

[R] In my case, it would be laying on the floor. . . It was stacked up there. You haven't time -- you really haven't time to file or cross file or index or cross-index. You just don't have time for this, not when you're using two or three million cards a month. You see, this gets a little bit beyond that.

Please note that this is the second instance that I have found Captain Rochefort stating that craziness is a prerequisite, or a normal and desireable aftereffect, of employment in cryptology. Never have so few given credence to so many.

Copies of this memoir and that of codebreaker Thomas Dyer are available for sale, or readers may rent copies through the lending lilbrary of the United States Naval Institute. The fee for a one-month rental is $12 for Naval Instutute members, $15 for non-members.

For orders or further information please contact Ms. Ann Hassinger, History Division, U.S. Naval Institute, 118 Maryland Avenue, Annapolis, Maryland 21402-5035; telephone 410-268-6110.

AFTERTHOUGHTS

Rochefort on: Smoking Jackets, Felt Slippers and Cryptanalysis

Rochefort on:
Smoking Jackets, Felt Slippers and Cryptanalysis