Joseph Rochefort
| Joseph John Rochefort | |
|---|---|
Joseph Rochefort
|
|
| Born | May 12, 1900 Dayton, Ohio, USA |
| Died | July 20, 1976 (aged 76) Torrance, California, USA |
| Place of burial | Inglewood Park Cemetery, Inglewood, California, USA |
| Allegiance |
 United States of America
|
| Service/branch |
 United States Navy
|
| Years of service | 1918-47, 1950-53 |
| Rank |
 Captain
|
| Commands held | Station Hypo |
| Battles/wars |
World War II Korean War |
| Awards |
Navy Distinguished Service Medal Presidential Medal of Freedom |
Joseph John Rochefort (May 12, 1900 – July 20, 1976) was an American Naval officer and cryptanalyst. His contributions and those of his team were pivotal to victory in the Pacific War.
Rochefort was a major figure in the United States Navy's cryptographic and intelligence operations from 1925 to 1946, particularly in the Battle of Midway.
Rochefort was born in Dayton, Ohio. In 1917, he joined the Navy while still in high school in Los Angeles. He enlisted in the Navy in 1918. He was commissioned as an ensign after graduation from the Stevens Institute of Technology, and in 1919 became engineering officer of the tanker USS Cuyama.
A fellow officer observed that Rochefort had a penchant for solving crossword puzzles and adept skills at playing the advanced card game auction bridge and recommended him for a Navy cryptanalysis class in Washington, D.C.
Rochefort's tours ashore included cryptanalytic training under Captain Laurance Safford as his assistant, and worked with the master codebreaker Agnes Meyer Driscoll in 1924.
He then served a stint as second chief of the Division of Naval Communications' newly created cryptanalytic organization, OP-20-G, from 1926 to 1929; training in the Japanese language from 1929 to 1932; and a two-year intelligence assignment in the Eleventh Naval District, San Diego, from 1936 to 1938. Until 1941, Rochefort spent nine years in cryptologic or intelligence-related assignments and fourteen years at sea with the U.S. Fleet in positions of increasing responsibility.
In early 1941, Laurance Safford, again chief of OP-20-G in Washington, sent Rochefort to Hawaii to become Officer in Charge of Station Hypo ("H" for Hawaii in the Navy's phonetic alphabet at the time) in Pearl Harbor as Rochefort was an expert Japanese linguist and trained cryptanalyst.
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