Chester Nimitz: master of the Pacific

As commander of the Pacific Fleet and of the Pacific Ocean Areas, Nimitz directed from his headquarters the carrier battles of the Coral Sea and Midway in 1942, the long campaign for Guadalcanal, and the 1945 assaults on Iwo Jima and Okinawa.²

Where was Chester Nimitz born?

Chester William Nimitz was born in Fredericksburg, Texas, on 24 February 1885. His father had died before he was born, so his grandfather Charles Nimitz, owner of the Nimitz Hotel in the town, became the father figure of his early years. Nimitz credited his grandfather with shaping his character and values.³

As a teenager he hoped for an appointment to the Military Academy at West Point. When none was available, he applied to the Naval Academy at Annapolis instead, entered it in 1901 and graduated seventh in a class of 114 on 30 January 1905.⁴

A court-martial and the submarine service

After graduation he served with the Asiatic Fleet, where he commanded the gunboat Panay and then the destroyer Decatur. He ran the Decatur aground and was court-martialed and found guilty. He was then sent to submarines, became one of the Navy's experts in undersea warfare, and won the Silver Lifesaving Medal for rescuing a sailor who had gone overboard.⁵

In 1913 he married Catherine Vance Freeman and went to Germany to study diesel engines, knowledge he then put to work installing diesel engines in a US Navy ship. After service that included a tour as executive officer of the battleship South Carolina, he built the submarine base at Pearl Harbor, studied a possible Pacific war at the Naval War College, and set up the Naval Reserve Officers Training Corps unit at the University of California, Berkeley.⁶

In the early 1930s he commanded the heavy cruiser Augusta as flagship of the Asiatic Fleet. Promoted to rear admiral, he commanded a cruiser division and a battleship division, and in 1939 he became chief of the Bureau of Navigation, the post he still held when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941.⁷

When did Nimitz take command of the Pacific Fleet?

After Pearl Harbor, Admiral Husband Kimmel was relieved and Nimitz was chosen to replace him as commander in chief of the Pacific Fleet, with the rank of full admiral. Sources differ on the day he took over: the National Museum of the Pacific War gives 31 December 1941, aboard the submarine Grayling; the Handbook of Texas gives Christmas Day 1941.⁸

The Handbook of Texas describes how he refused to dwell on the mistakes of 7 December and pointed instead to what had survived: the submarine base at Pearl Harbor was intact, and the aircraft carriers had been at sea during the attack. The Pacific War museum credits his thoughtful leadership with restoring the morale of a shattered fleet.⁹

In 1942 the Joint Chiefs of Staff divided the Pacific into two theaters. Nimitz became Commander in Chief, Pacific Ocean Areas, while Douglas MacArthur took the Southwest Pacific Area. The Army historian Louis Morton concludes that the Navy would never have entrusted its fleet to an Army officer, and that Nimitz was then considerably junior to MacArthur.¹⁰

What was Chester Nimitz famous for?

Nimitz is best known for the Battle of Midway in June 1942. American codebreakers uncovered Japan's plan to seize Midway and destroy the US carriers, so Nimitz set an ambush of his own. On 4 June his carrier aircraft struck four Japanese fleet carriers, all of which were lost, while the United States lost one carrier, Yorktown.¹²

The Naval History and Heritage Command calls Midway the strategic high-water mark of Japan's Pacific war: before it Japan held general naval superiority, and afterward the two fleets were essentially equal and the United States soon took the offensive. The National WWII Museum describes it as the first major US victory against Japan and a turning point in the war.¹³

Chester Nimitz's greatest victories

After Midway, the forces under Nimitz went over to the offensive. They landed on Guadalcanal in August 1942, opened the Central Pacific drive at Tarawa in November 1943, took the Marshall Islands and the Marianas in 1944, and in 1945 seized Iwo Jima and Okinawa, bringing American bases ever closer to Japan.¹⁵

The Marianas mattered most: airfields built there put the new B-29 bombers within reach of the Japanese home islands, and by February 1945 Marianas-based B-29s were raiding Japan. Some planned targets were bypassed altogether: in September 1944 Admiral William Halsey proposed dropping the landings on Yap and Mindanao, Nimitz endorsed the idea, and the Joint Chiefs ordered both islands bypassed.¹⁶ › Ira Hayes

In December 1944 Nimitz was promoted to the new five-star rank of Fleet Admiral. On 2 September 1945, aboard the battleship USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay, he signed the Japanese Instrument of Surrender on behalf of the United States.¹⁷

What did Nimitz command in the Pacific?

Nimitz held two posts at once. As commander in chief of the Pacific Fleet he led the fleet itself, and as Commander in Chief, Pacific Ocean Areas, he commanded the forces in the rest of the Pacific outside General MacArthur's Southwest Pacific Area, apart from the quiet waters of the southeast Pacific off Central and South America.¹⁹

What did Nimitz do after the war?

On 15 December 1945 Nimitz succeeded Admiral Ernest King as the Navy's senior officer and served as Chief of Naval Operations until December 1947, overseeing the massive postwar reduction of the fleet. As a Fleet Admiral he never formally retired, and from 1949 he served the United Nations.²⁰

When and where did Chester Nimitz die?

Nimitz died on 20 February 1966 at his home on Yerba Buena Island in San Francisco Bay, four days before his 81st birthday. He and his wife Catherine had moved to naval quarters in the bay from their home in Berkeley. He was buried at Golden Gate National Cemetery in San Bruno, California.²¹

How is Chester Nimitz remembered today?

Above all in his Texas hometown and at sea. In the mid-1960s citizens of Fredericksburg founded a museum to honor him that grew into today's National Museum of the Pacific War, and the Navy named the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz (CVN-68) in his honor.²²

The museum is now a Texas Historical Commission property operated by the Admiral Nimitz Foundation.²³

See his great victory at Midway, or meet the other commanders of the Pacific War.