‘Seen and Unseen’ Ties to 1942

Review by Bill Doughty

This award-winning book about the federal government’s incarceration of people of Japanese ancestry during World War II has remarkable ties to what is happening today in the United States:

“Seen and Unseen: What Dorothea Lange, Toyo Miyatake, and Ansel Adams’s Photographs Reveal About the Japanese American Incarceration” by Elizabeth Partridge and Lauren Tamaki (Chronicle Books, 2022).

After Imperial Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and other military sites in Hawaii, FDR called for the incarceration of Japanese immigrants and Japanese American citizens, including children.

The government’s Western Defense Command and Fourth Army Wartime Civil Control Administration ordered evacuation of whole areas and required disposal of property, including family farms. Families were assigned a number and were no longer known by their proper name. 

Author Elizabeth Partridge shows how prisoners were shamed and ostracized.

When first arrested, detained, and forced on trains and buses to the camps, families, including American citizens, had been treated like prisoners of war, allowed to keep only what they could carry.

Upon first reporting to at least one of the camps, they had been forced to fill bags with hay and sleep in horse stables that smelled of horse manure and urine.

“Seen and Unseen” is filled with distinctive art by Lauren Tamaki augmenting the photos.

Partridge is the goddaughter of Dorothea Lange. Her dad was a Navy veteran who served in World War II and later became a photographer and assistant to Lange after the war.

With the help of Lauren Tamaki’s distinctive and provocative art, Partridge introduces readers to the work of three photographers. Most of the photography is from within the Manzanar concentration camp in eastern California near the border of Nevada.

The first photographer featured is Lange (above), who became famous for her iconic photography during the Great Depression. The U.S. government hired her to take propaganda photos of what they called “internment” of Americans of Japanese ancestry and Japanese immigrants.

Lange tried to show everyday life of her subjects who were forced to leave their homes and travel in secrecy to faraway camps under armed guard.

Many of Lange’s photographs were impounded because they were deemed to show captivity in a negative light. She was forbidden from taking photos of barbed wire, machine guns, searchlight towers, or crowded conditions with little or no privacy.

“Dorothea wanted to show how hard the Japanese and Japanese Americans wanted to make their situation bearable,” Partridge writes. Resilient captives created furniture from scraps of wood. They cleared sagebrush to start vegetable gardens. And they continued to conduct school studies despite no desks and limited supplies.

One of her most powerful photos was of farmer Torazo Sakawye with grandson Walter (below).

Ten months after the photo was taken, Torazo died in the camp.

“All Dorothea could do was hope her photographs carried a strong message. ‘This is what we did,’ she said. ‘ How did it happen? How could we?’”

Next, Partridge introduces readers to Toyo Miyatake, a professional photographer whose family was incarcerated at Manzanar through the entire war.

At first, Miyatake surreptitiously took photos using an ingenious box camera disguised as a lunchbox. Eventually he was allowed to take photos but at first was told only caucasian helpers were allowed to push the shutter button.

The third photographer whose work Partridge showcases is Ansel Adams, who was attracted to the stark beauty of the desert and mountain terrain surrounding Manzanar. Adams focused on the “hardworking, cheerful, and resilient people.”

According to Partridge, “Ansel believed the faces of earnest, young Japanese Americans would convince other Americans how trustworthy and patriotic they were.”

Most of Adams's photos show smiling faces of young people.

"Everything in a picture is not necessarily true."

– Taira Fukushima, Manzanar, Block 5

Adams was on hand to capture some departures from Manzanar in 1945. Prisoners were given a change ticket and $25. A generation later those who had been incarcerated –– and were still alive –– were awarded reparations of $20,000 each under the Civil Liberties Act.

“The money was a small fraction of what they had lost,” Partridge observes.

“At least the federal government acknowledged that the incarceration had been a profound injustice, but it could not erase the heavy emotional and physical cost to the prisoners of what had been done.”

Readers might wish for more of the photographers’ work. Fortunately many of their photos are easily found online. And the National Archives has many incarceration photographs available –– at least for now –– including previously “impounded” images.

Those who are inspired to learn more won’t be disappointed if they read this book cover to cover. Among the treasures are the back pages of essays, commentary, notes, footnotes, photo credits, and biographies of each photographer, and more. This book is rich with primary sources, critical thinking, and documentation of censorship and history.

One of the essays in the back is titled “Civil Liberties and the Constitution.” The essay addresses one of the four cases brought by Japanese Americans that went before the Supreme Court: Korematsu v United States. In 1944 the Court ruled in favor of the government, but a generation later a federal court overturned that ruling when new evidence was uncovered that the military had lied about the need for incarceration,

“However, In 2018, several Supreme Court justices wrote about the Korematsu case in what are called ‘dicta’ –– statements made in written court opinions that do not affect the outcome of the case being heard. In a ruling restricting travel and immigration to the United States, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote, ‘The forcible relocation of US citizens to concentration camps, solely and explicitly on the basis of race, is objectively unlawful. ... Korematsu was gravely wrong the day it was decided, has been overruled in the court of history, and to be clear has no place in law under the Constitution. (He referred back to Justice Robert H. Jackson's dissent in the 1944 Korematsu Supreme Court case and quoted Jackson's words.)

Justice Sonia Sotomayor went one step further than Justice Roberts. ‘Today, the Court takes the important step of finally overruling Korematsu,’ she wrote, denouncing it as 'gravely wrong the day it was decided.’

Despite the dicta, Korematsu v. United States still stands, a painful symbol of our country's racial prejudice. And how can we be sure it will never be looked upon favorably in the future and used to violate the rights of another group of American citizens?”

Another essay/commentary is “Keeping Our Democracy Strong.” The keyword is “our.”

“As important as our leaders and our institutions are in our democracy, it depends on all of us to keep it safe. Even in the United States, built on strong democratic ideals, deliberate violations of people's civil rights can and do occur. No matter what kinds of inaccurate words are used to hide these violations, we can name them for what they are, and speak out against them, loud and clear. We can bear witness to old injustices, learn from them, and do our best to ensure they never happen again.

In the 194os, taking photographs was complicated.

Cameras could be cumbersome, film expensive, and developing and printing photographs a complex process. Today, we can use our cell phone cameras to capture injustice when we see it, and quickly let others know. These images cannot be marked

‘impounded’ and left hidden in a filing cabinet.

We each have in our pocket a tool for social justice that earlier generations never could have dreamed of.”

Photo by Toyo Mayatake

Cameras –– bulky and rare then, handy and pervasive now –– are one of the remarkable ties to history. Images, and now video, are compelling evidence of the crimes of violence against people who are targets or who practice their First Amendment rights to protest. Witness the shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti this month in Minneapolis.

Among other ties to history:

• Then (and now), migrants and immigrant families were targeted by race.
• U.S. citizens were also arrested, detained, or worse.
• Officials used (and use) propaganda to lie about processes, procedures, and outcomes of a massive operation.
• People were required to show their “papers.”
• Uniformed law enforcement used chemical agents against protesters.
• Fear was a weapon.
• Those who protested often faced beatings, arrests, and even shootings.
• Families were often separated and given no information about the whereabouts of their loved ones.
• Fort Sill, used for past incarcerations of Native Americans and then Japanese Americans is now used again by the Trump Administration to incarcerate immigrants from Central America.
• Other sites, such as Fort Bliss and Terminal Center, once used as concentration camps for  Japanese immigrants and Japanese Americans, are now used to incarcerate hispanic immigrants.
• White supremacists and Christian nationalists supported “law and order” despite violations of the rule of law, Constitution, morality, and civil liberties.
• Some military service members and law enforcement personnel followed illegal orders.
• There was no accountability or justice for victims for decades.
• The negative impact on families lasted for generations.
• Then as now, officials covered up facts and prevented investigations.

"My question is always, why was I, a child, put into a

concentration camp? I was a citizen. 

That's against the Constitution."

– Joyce Yuki Nakamura Okazaki

This book and others came onto Navy Reads reading list after listening to Rachel Maddow’s podcast production “Burn Order,” a story about how some leaders in the military justified racist persecution of people of Japanese ancestry in the United States during World War II, while others, including a Navy intelligence officer told the truth. Maddow documents heroic efforts by a woman and a lawyer to uncover the true reason for the illegal incarceration.

A key takeaway from then and now: Each person has the opportunity to make a difference.

Justice: Battle of Midway and the Constitution

Review by Bill Doughty

The Navy recruited one-day Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens when he was a senior at the University of Chicago. The well-read and academic Stevens agreed to learn codes and ciphers and become qualified to do cryptographic work for the Navy. That was in the summer of 1941.

Stevens on Oahu, his second duty location.

In early December the Navy notified him of his eligibility for a commission as an ensign. He reported to Great Lakes Naval Station for a physical on the eve of Imperial Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor, Oahu, Dec. 7.

Stevens recounts his time in the Navy briefly in his wonderful memoir, "The Making of a Justice: Reflections on My First 94 Years" (Little, Brown and Company, 2019). His first assignment was at the Navy Department in the Munitions building on Constitution Avenue in Washington, D.C.

"My first two chores as an officer in the Navy assigned to 'Op-20-G' – the communications intelligence section of the service – required skills unrelated to my training. Encrypted messages that were exchanged between one communications intelligence unit and another – between station 'Hypo' at Pearl Harbor and station 'Negat' in Washington, for example – were classified 'ultra' rather than merely 'secret,' 'confidential,' or 'restricted.' The originator of such a message typed the plain text into a cypher machine that created five-letter blocks of scrambled letters. The addressee, using a comparable machine, typed out the scrambled text to convert it back into plain language. When I arrived in Washington, the navy allowed only commissioned officers to decrypt 'ultra' messages. Though I had become a pretty good typist while working at the (student newspaper, Chicago Daily) Maroon, neither I nor any of the other commissioned officers doing that work could type as well as most of the enlisted men. The navy eventually permitted qualified typists to decrypt 'ultra' messages."

As a junior ensign, Stevens was assigned duties as typist and burn bag guard, armed with a .45-caliber handgun, before being assigned to the communications section to begin work in the traffic analysis section.

As a traffic analyst trainee, Stevens became familiar with kana in the Japanese language and was able to understand the transmission of messages from kana to Morse code.

His description, though brief, of how Japanese naval messages, sent in "JN-25" code, were studied and deciphered will be interesting to today's Navy cyber warriors. Stevens describes how cryptoanalysts hunted the identity ("call signs") of the senders and recipients of Japanese radio transmissions.



'Decisive" BOM & Duty in Hawaii

"In late May 1942, the cryptographers, language officers, and traffic analysts in the Fleet Radio Unit at Pearl Harbor (FRUPAC) had learned enough about Japanese naval communications to predict that a major assault on one of our Pacific outposts designated as 'AZ' was about to occur. They suspected, but were not certain, that AZ was Midway Island. Knowing that the Japanese were monitoring our naval communications, they arranged for an exchange of plain-language messages commenting on a supposed accident that had produced a serious water shortage on Midway Island; those messages produced a comment in the enemy's communications that confirmed our suspicions. As a result of that ruse, combined with the earlier intelligence obtained from decrypted JN-25 messages, Admiral Chester Nimitz's forces were prepared for the Japanese attack on June 6 and ultimately prevailed in what many experts have concluded was the decisive battle in our war with Japan."

Stevens is quick to say he had no direct role in "that historic triumph," however his next assignment – to Oahu – would take him to the heart of where the Battle of Midway was planned and launched.

"When I arrived in Pearl Harbor, FRUPAC was located in an unmarked area in the basement of a building near the headquarters of the Fourteenth Naval District. I was first assigned space in a house a short distance from the end of one of the runways at Hickam Field, and shortly thereafter I moved into the BOQ (bachelor officers' quarters) located near the main gate of the naval yard ... A few weeks after my arrival at Pearl, the name of the combat intelligence unit was changed from 'FRUPAC' to 'JICPOA' (Joint Intelligence Communications Pacific Ocean Area) and its location was moved from the navy yard to Makalapa, near Admiral Nimitz's headquarters."

Stevens served for 30 months in Hawaii and became one of a handful of watch officers who had the responsibility for reviewing all intercepted enemy radio traffic and writing a summary for Adm. Edward Layton, Chief Intelligence Officer of the Pacific Fleet once every 24 hours.

He remembers receiving "startling advice" to be on the lookout for one of the Imperial Japanese Navy's battleships – "I think it was the Musashi" – possibly headed to Truk, then a key naval base. The warning turned out to be a false alarm due to a garbled version of a call sign – a mistake due to operator error.

"In my later career as a judge," Stevens writes, "I have recalled that incident over and over again when confronted with the question whether a legislature actually intended a statute to have the meaning that its plain language seemed to convey. Legislatures, like radio operators, occasionally make mistakes."

Throughout this book we read the carefully considered words and meanings chosen by Justice Stevens throughout his career. We see the importance of definitions, meanings, intent and the need for precision when interpreting and applying the wisdom of the founders as outlined in the Constitution – balancing original intent with "evolving standards of decency." He reminds us of groundbreaking changes in society since the birth of the nation, back when the federal government sanctioned institutionalized slavery, disenfranchisement of Native Americans and anti-suffrage for women.

Stevens was on one of his 24-hour duty watches in Hawaii when he received the message confirming the success of an operation to target, intercept and kill Admiral Yamamoto, who was flying from Rabaul to an airfield on Bougainville. Yamamoto was the architect of the attack on Oahu that started the war in the Pacific and brought the United States into World War II.

Nimitz and Yamamoto

"I remember being somewhat troubled by the punitive motivation for the operation, but I also recognized that it had achieved a significant strategic benefit by terminating the most competent officer in the Japanese navy," Stevens writes.

After Yamamoto's death, the Japanese began to encode call signs. But, Stevens and "an exceptionally talented enlisted man" named Stanley Moe worked to decipher familiar call signs and figure out the "quite simple" pattern of kana that were changed each day. "The new system required more paperwork for us ... but otherwise did not impair our traffic analysis."

Read "The Making of a Justice" to see:

• how he inadvertently interrupted Admiral Nimitz's target practice, almost becoming the target himself; 
• how he met another future Supreme Court Justice (and NFL star) Byron White, a fellow Sailor who "saved the lives of sailors buried under debris" after a kamikaze attack on USS Bunker Hill in May 1945; and
• how he experienced and appreciated his time in Hawaii, including bodysurfing at Makapu'u and visits to Kauai, Maui and the Big Island of Hawaii.

Rare and endangered Silverswords in bloom on Haleakula.

"On Maui we drove to the parking area near the Kilauea (Haleakula?) volcano. We walked to a spot where we had an excellent view of the crater. The view was memorable, but less so than our decision not to investigate the area identified by a sign pointing to an uphill path containing the words 'silver' and 'swords.' Not until after we had returned to Oahu and Walt (Hopkins) satisfied his curiosity by a visit to the Honolulu public library did we learn that silverswords are beautiful flowers that grow only on that volcano and, more importantly, although they rarely bloom, they probably were in full bloom when we decided to terminate our sightseeing that afternoon. Over the years that incident has been a frequent reminder of the importance of deliberation before refusing to take advantage of once-in-a-lifetime opportunities."

After learning that an Army plane dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima and another on Nagasaki a few days later, resulting in Imperial Japan's surrender soon after, Stevens was pragmatic in his assessment.

"Tragic as those events were for the residents of those two cities, I was then convinced (and have remained convinced ever since) that that method of bringing the war to its inevitable end saved many, many more lives – of American soldiers as well as Japanese soldiers and civilians – than the number of victims of those two bombings. An invasion of Japan would have caused hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of casualties."

Monumental Meaning of Patriotism

"The Making of a Justice" includes the text of a speech Stevens gave in 2010 on the tenth anniversary of the establishment of the National Japanese American Memorial Foundation. The speech starts on page 522 of the hardbound edition, and it deserves to be read for what it says about tolerance, patriotism and core values.

Stevens, front and center, with Veterans and hosts to commemorate the NJAM Foundation.

In his speech he recounts his visit to Pearl Harbor in 1994, his first visit there since the war.

"Admiral Retz took me on a tour of the harbor on his barge, pointing out changes that had occurred in the past 50 years. The most memorable and moving event during that tour was our approach to the Arizona Memorial – which spans the USS Arizona and the over a thousand American Sailors [and Marines] still entombed in the sunken battleship. As we approached the Arizona I could plainly see that the dozens of visitors on board that day were Japanese tourists. My first reaction to that sight was more emotional than you might expect from a senior citizen. Several thoughts flashed through my mind: 'Those people don't really belong here. We won the war, they lost it. We shouldn't allow them to celebrate their attack on Pearl Harbor even it if was one of their greatest victories.' But then I realized that those visitors must also have been experiencing a number of mixed and conflicting emotions. Perhaps a few did remember Pearl Harbor with pride. Some of them may even have been descendants of pilots who participated in the attack. Others may have remembered relatives that died or were wounded during the war. Still others may merely have reflected about how horrible all wars are to all who participate in them and the costs that they impose on civilians as well as soldiers. Most significantly, I realized that I was drawing inferences about every member of that tourist group that did not necessarily apply to any single one of them..."

Stevens said a central message conveyed by both the National Japanese American Memorial and the USS Arizona Memorial is to "beware of stereotypical conclusions about groups of people we don't know very well."

The view of the USS Arizona Memorial from below. (NPS)

"The Japanese tourists were not responsible for what some of their countrymen did decades ago..." Stevens ties his initial reaction to seeing Japanese visitors aboard the USS Arizona Memorial to some Americans' reaction to the building of an Islamic Center in New York City near the location of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. He notes, "terrorists like those who killed over 3,000 Americans – including Catholics, Jews, Protestants, atheists and some of the 600,000 Muslims who live in New York – have also killed many more Muslims who disagree with their radical views in other parts of the world."

He notes that many Muslims who escape groups like the Taliban come to America to try to avoid religious persecution and intolerance.

In his speech Stevens salutes the Americans of Japanese Ancestry who fought in World War II, including the "military bravery and unselfish service. "The predominantly Japanese-American 442nd Infantry Combat Team, for instance, became the most decorated regiment, for its size and length of service, in the history of the United States Armed Forces. Its members earned over 9,000 Purple Hearts."

Finally, Stevens noted another message of the Japanese American Memorial, one he called "a monument to stupidity": the "unnecessary internment of literally thousands of loyal American citizens for the duration of the war." He notes that 40 years after FDR's regretted decision, President Ronald Reagan and the U.S. Congress offered a formal apology to those Americans who were "deprived of their liberty without due process."

"Our Constitution protects every one of us from being found guilty of wrongdoing based on the conduct of our associates. Guilt by association is unfair. The monument teaches us that it is also profoundly unwise to draw inferences based on a person's membership in any association or group without first learning something about the group. Its message is a powerful reminder of the fact that ignorance – that is to say, fear of the unknown – is the source of most invidious prejudice."

Stevens meets Pat Summitt and Bob Dylan, also recipients of the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

President Barack Obama awarded Stevens the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012. Among the recipients were singer-songwriter Bob Dylan and basketball coach Pat Summitt as well as several other renowned Americans.

At the same ceremony, Obama awarded the medal to Gordon Hirabayashi, one of several Americans of Japanese Ancestry to defy the executive order for involuntary incarceration. He, as well as Fred Korematsu and Minoru Yasui, took his case all the way to the Supreme Court where he was defeated.

Hirabayashi

(Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson wrote in his dissent in Korematsu v. United States: "If the people ever let command of the war power fall into irresponsible and unscrupulous hands, the courts wield no power equal to its restraint. The chief restraint upon those who command the physical forces of the country, in the future as in the past, must be their responsibility to the political judgments of their contemporaries and to the moral judgments of history.")

Obama repeated Hirabayashi's quote in his commendation: "It takes a crisis to tell us that unless citizens are willing to stand up for the [Constitution], it's not worth the paper it's written on." (Stevens says in error that there were no internment camps in Hawaii, but the Honouliuli Internment Camp near Pearl Harbor imprisoned as many as 4,000 people.)

Another distinguished recipient of the medal at the same ceremony was Senator John Glenn, a former Marine and Naval Aviator/Astronaut and the first American to orbit the Earth (in 1962).

Stevens said he appreciated Obama's kind remarks about him at the medal presentation ceremony, but even more than those words, he treasures the words of President Gerald Ford, a fellow World War II Navy Veteran, who nominated Stevens to the Supreme Court in 1975.

President Ford and Chief Justice Warren Burger pose with John Paul Stevens, who was sworn in as Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, Dec. 19, 1975. Ford nominated Stevens, of the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, Chicago, to fill the vacancy created by the retirement of Justice William O. Douglas. 

Ford wrote in 2005 about Stevens: "I am prepared to allow history's judgment of my term in office to rest (if necessary, exclusively) on my nomination thirty years ago of Justice John Paul Stevens to the U.S. Supreme Court. I endorse his constitutional views on the secular character of the Establishment Clause and the Free Exercise Clause, on securing procedural safeguards in criminal cases and on the Constitution's broad grant of regulatory authority to Congress."

This review barely scratches the surface of "The Making of a Justice," which could easily be called, "The Making of Justice." Although I've focused on the Navy-oriented biography covered in this review, most of this book is devoted to Stevens's perspective on cases, laws, decisions and dissents in the pursuit of an ethical democracy with roots deep in the Constitution. This is a study of critical thinking and core values at their best.

A White House Insider's Advice

Review by Bill Doughty

Ted Sorensen, Special Counsel to the President, at work in the White House Jan. 25, 1961.
Photo by Abbie Rowe. John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston.

The man who wrote some of the most famous speeches in modern history had plans to join the Navy when he was in high school during the Second World War. But after some soul-searching, he found his calling in a different kind of government service.

As one of the closest advisers to President John F. Kennedy, Ted Sorensen wrote several books that give an insight about leadership at the highest level.

Sorensen analyzed advantages of a "team of rivals" approach in his short book, "Decision Making in the White House: The Olive Branch or the Arrows" (Columbia University Press, 1963).

Some highlights for Navy readers and other critical thinkers:

• An inside look at how the Kennedy administration handled the Cuba Missile Crisis, deciding: "An air strike on military installations in Cuba, without any advance warning, was rejected as a 'Pearl Harbor in reverse.'"
• How, during the Cold War, Kennedy wished to name a nuclear submarine after a famous Indian Chief – Red Cloud – but "the Navy protested that this name had undesirable foreign-policy implications."
• Why the president must understand how his words and expressions can tip the balance in strategy discussions. "... a President must carefully weigh his own words" or risk shutting off "productive debate."
• The hazardous "whirlpools" created by resignations and trouble that can be caused by "the violent resignation of almost any Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense," etc.
• This quote from Alexander Hamilton about a president consulting with advisers: "the Constitution presumes he will consult them ... It must be his own fault if he be not surrounded by men who, for ability and integrity, deserve his confidence."

President John F. Kennedy meets with members of his administration November 24, 1961 regarding the budget for the Department of Defense at the Joseph P. Kennedy residence in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts. Clockwise, from top: President Kennedy; David E. Bell, Director, Bureau of the Budget; Roswell Gilpatric, Deputy Secretary of Defense; Jerome B. Wiesner, Special Assistant to the President for Science and Technology; Theodore C. "Ted" Sorensen, Special Counsel to the President; McGeorge Bundy, National Security Advisor; unidentified man; General Lyman Lemnitzer, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; General Maxwell D. Taylor, Military Representative of the President; and Robert S. McNamara, Secretary of Defense. (JFK Library)

Sorensen advised openness to new ideas, diverse perspectives and responsible decision-making as intended under the Constitution:

"Unlike the leaders of autocracy, the President of our democracy must contend with powerful pressures of public opinion, with co-equal branches of the government, and with a free and critical press. He cannot allocate resources, or ignore traditions, or override departments in whatever manner he wishes. His allies cannot be treated as satellites, his mistakes cannot be concealed, his critics cannot be silenced."...Great and lasting decisions in human affairs can only be made by those exposed to human value judgments. Consistently wise decisions can only be made by those whose wisdom is constantly challenged. The voluntary unity of free men [and women] and nations is ultimately more solid than the forced uniformity of repression. In the long run, there can be no wisdom without dissent, no progress without diversity, no greatness without responsibility."

In the book's foreword, President Kennedy wrote: "A President must choose among men [and women], among measures, among methods. His choice helps determine the issues of his Presidency, their priority in the national life, and the mode and success of their execution. The heart of the Presidency is therefore informed, prudent, and resolute choice – and the secret of the presidential enterprise is to be found in an examination of the way presidential choices are made."

JFK offered high praise for his speechwriter and special counsel: "Mr. Sorensen, more than any recent American writer, has helped illuminate the scene with skill and judgment," Kennedy writes. "His careful observations have been made with skill and judgment and I am sure his work will become a permanent addition to the small shelf of indispensable books on the American Presidency."

Kennedy and Sorensen

There's a Navy tie linking Ted Sorensen with Navy veteran U.S. presidents Kennedy, Johnson and Carter. 

Jack Rosenthal wrote this about Sorensen in a New York Times review in 2008: "At the age of 17, Sorensen had intended to enlist in the Navy — but he changed his mind the day after World War II ended. He wound up registering as a conscientious objector, a fact later denounced by critics when President Jimmy Carter nominated him, unsuccessfully, to be the director of central intelligence."

Sorensen, a key adviser in Kennedy's inner circle, chose not to continue as part of LBJ's administration as Johnson stepped up the war in Vietnam.

Sorensen receives the National Humanities Medal from President Obama.

According to a profile at the Sorensen Center for International Peace and Justice at the City University of New York School of Law:  "From his pivotal work in crafting President Kennedy’s letter that helped avert nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis to his efforts to shape Kennedy’s civil rights speeches and legislation, Sorensen had a devotion to world peace and justice for all."

This Sorensen quote is featured on the CUNY Sorensen Center website: "We shall listen, not lecture; learn, not threaten. We will enhance our safety by earning the respect of others and showing respect for them."

President Obama presented Ted Sorensen with the National Humanities Medal in a ceremony at the White House on Feb. 25, 2010, eight months before Sorensen's death in New York City.

Sorensen's advice to the Presidency in "Decision-Making" deserves repeating: "In the long run, there can be no wisdom without dissent, no progress without diversity, no greatness without responsibility."

Sorensen is part of a pantheon of scholars-in-service who provided a window to the world and the possibilities – visionaries including Elliot Richardson, Richard Goodwin, Rachel Carson, Grace Hopper, Admiral Elmo Zumwalt and Robert H. Jackson.

President John F. Kennedy and others watch television coverage of astronaut Lieutenant Colonel John H. Glenn, Jr.'s lift-off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, Feb. 20, 1962, aboard Mercury-Atlas 6 (also known as Friendship 7) on the first U.S. manned orbital flight. (L-R) Special Counsel to the President Ted Sorensen (with pencil), Congressman Hale Boggs of Louisiana, Speaker of the House of Representatives John W. McCormack (mostly hidden, with his hand on Congressman Albert's shoulder), Congressman Carl Albert of Oklahoma, Senator Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota, Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson, President Kennedy, and Senator Mike Mansfield of Montana (with arms crossed at far right). Family Dining Room, White House, Washington, D.C. (JFK Library)