Roger Pineau
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Capt. Roger Pineau was a Chicago, Illinois, native, born there on November 17, 1916. In 1942 after graduating from the University of Michigan with a BA, Pineau came to the University of Colorado at Boulder to receive training as a U.S. Naval agent in the Japanese Language School. The Japanese Language School was instituted at the University of Colorado in 1941 to train naval intelligence officers for the Pacific war effort. Shortly after arriving at the university, Pineau was sworn in as Yeoman 2nd class U.S.N.R. on August 5, 1942; commissioned as Ensign U.S.N.R. on June 15, 1943; and graduated from the language school on July 10, 1943.
Pineau married Maxine J. Good in November 1942 and they had four children: Suzanne Pineau of La Jolla, Calif., Julienne (Mrs. Henry Hubbard) of Washington, D.C., Anthony Pineau of Alexandria, Va., and Antoinette Pineau of Oxnard, Calif. During World War II, Pineau served as an intelligence officer in the Naval Communication Annex in Washington, D.C. from July 1943 to September 1945, where he worked in code-breaking operations.
After the war, Capt. Pineau became an interpreter and analyst with the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey in Japan. He was then assigned by the Office of Naval Intelligence to the Washington Document Center until 1947, when he was transferred to the Office of Naval History. In this capacity, he served until 1957 as assistant to Navy Rear Admiral and Harvard University historian, Samuel Eliot Morison, during which time he helped research and write the fifteen volumes History of U.S. Naval Operations in World War II .
In 1950, Pineau retired from active duty but remained in inactive naval reserve. He graduated from George Washington University Law School in 1954. From 1957 to 1961, Pineau served in the State Department as Chief of Far East Current Intelligence. After working a year with the Institute for Defense Analyses in the early 1960s, he returned to the State Department as Social Science Officer for Cultural and Educational Affairs. In 1965, he joined the Smithsonian, and from 1966 to 1972 was managing editor of the Smithsonian Institution Press. He was recalled to active duty as Director of the Navy Memorial Museum in the Washington Navy Yard until his retirement in 1978.
During the 1950s and 1960s, he held a variety of assignments as a Navy reserve officer, including tours as a naval aide to Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Nixon. His Navy decorations included the Meritorious Service Medal. During his career, Pineau wrote, translated and edited numerous books and articles dealing with the Pacific campaigns and personalities of World War II. Of special interest was the book he wrote with retired Navy Rear Admiral Edwin T. Layton (Pacific Fleet Intelligence Officer) and British writer John Costello titled And I Was There, Pearl Harbor and Midway - Breaking the Secrets . This 1985 book told of the intelligence work that figured in the tragedy and later, the triumph of the war.
During the 1980s and 1990s Pineau began gathering information to write a history of the teaching of Japanese in the U.S. Navy during the period 1921 to 1945. A significant part of this work was to recount the development of the Japanese Language School at the University of Colorado between the years 1941 to 1945. The historical project, however, remained unfinished by the time of his death on November 22, 1993.
From the guide to the Roger Pineau Papers, 1921-1993, (University of Colorado at Boulder Libraries. Archives Dept.)
Role | Title | Holding Repository | |
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creatorOf | Roger Pineau Papers, 1921-1993 | University of Colorado at Boulder Libraries. Archives Dept. |
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