Hamilton Bean’s Nimitz’s Newsman: Waldo Drake and the Navy’s Censored War in the Pacific is a well-researched and easy-to-read biography of a figure little known outside of academia or hardcore World War II in the Pacific enthusiasts. Nimitz’s Newsman covers the life of retired Rear Adm. Waldo Drake who served as the US Pacific Fleet’s first public relations officer from before the attack on Pearl Harbor until late 1944. Drake was a Los Angeles beat reporter turned Naval Reserve intelligence officer turned special staff officer to the US Pacific Fleet commander in chief. Drake was a loyal and dedicated member of Adm. Chester Nimitz’s staff known to have drafted many of the admiral’s correspondences, communiques, and speeches. Drake shaped the Pacific Fleet’s image (good and bad) with the American public through his often-tumultuous relationship with the press corps covering the war in the Pacific.
Nimitz’s Newsman is an engaging story focusing on Drake’s role in the nascent field of public relations and his relationships with Nimitz, war correspondents, and his fellow officers. The book contains many cultural and personal anecdotes. Bean, who has a familial, but not a personal connection to Drake, acknowledges some of Drake’s failings and failures, but clearly portrays Drake as the protagonist of the story.
Nimitz’s Newsman touches on several interesting topics but does not deliver a great deal of depth on any of them. The author does give the reader a few, very few, examples of speeches and press releases Drake wrote for Nimitz. These examples show the trust between the two men but does little to inform the reader how Drake acquired the insight and ability to deliver in the admiral’s “voice,” or how that mutual voice changed over time. The book does juxtapose the Navy’s and the Army’s apparent views of public relations, while not providing much in the way these views came into being or the effect they had on the services and the American people during and after World War II. The book does not spend time on the process of developing and implementing a strategic communication plan. What the book does have is an extensive bibliography for those interested in deeper understanding of public and press relations, organizational politics, or the Navy during World War II.
While it may not be action packed or contain revealing scholarly insight to the past or present security environment, Nimitz’s Newsman does, as the British say, what it says on the tin. It provides the real-life story of a capable, determined man thrust into extraordinary circumstances beyond his training, education, or experience who navigates these turbulent waters (at times made so by his own failings) ably but ultimately succumbing to the pressures and personalities around him.