Background

Zacharias was born on January 1, 1890 in Jacksonville, Florida, the son of Alron Zacharias, a tobacco grower, and of Theresa Budwig.

Education

Zacharias graduated from the U. S. Naval Academy in 1912. At the academy he began a lifelong study of Japanese language and culture.

Career

After sea duty during World War I, Zacharias returned to Annapolis for a year's tour as instructor. In 1920 he was assigned to Tokyo as naval attaché, a turning point in his career. During his three years in Japan, he became fluent in the language and met many of the men who later directed Japan's war effort against the United States.

Zacharias spent 1924-1926 in the Panama Canal Zone. In 1928, Zacharias served a short tour in Tokyo as naval attaché, and from 1928 to 1931 he headed the Far East Division of the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) in Washington. In 1938-1940 he was intelligence officer of the Eleventh Naval District. When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, Zacharias was at sea commanding the cruiser Salt Lake City. His ship returned to Pearl Harbor only hours after the raid ended. During 1942 he participated in the first offensive actions against the Japanese in the Marshalls and at Wake Island. Later that year Zacharias was appointed deputy director of the ONI, and in 1943-1944 he commanded the battleship New Mexico in campaigns in the Gilberts, Marshalls, and Marianas.

In October 1944 he became chief of staff of the Eleventh Naval District. The culmination of Zacharias' career was his key role in psychological warfare operations against Japan during the closing months of the war. In August 1942 he had been instrumental in establishing a psychological warfare branch in the ONI. Later he brought his views on Japanese war-weariness and vulnerability to propaganda to the attention of Elmer Davis, head of the Office of War Information; Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal; and Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Ernest J. King. Assigned to Washington in April 1945, he prepared a plan of psychological operations aimed at inducing Japan to surrender unconditionally before the full-scale invasion scheduled for late that year. Zacharias' views ran counter to the prevailing belief among American leaders that the Japanese were fanatically determined to fight to the finish. He nevertheless won official approval of his plan. On May 8, hours after President Harry S. Truman's announcement of the end of the war in Europe, Zacharias, as the "official spokesman of the U. S. Government, " addressed the first of a series of fourteen broadcasts to the Japanese people. Zacharias was soon caught up in the controversy over the application to Japan of the unconditional surrender formula originally proclaimed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in January 1943.

Truman's announcement on May 8 had stated that there was no intent to exterminate or enslave the Japanese people. Zacharias urged that Japan also be given convincing assurance that the emperor would be spared and the imperial system preserved in some form. Unconditional surrender, he explained in his broadcasts, applied only to the capitulation of the armed forces, not to the peace settlement. His views were shared by some American leaders, including Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson, who recommended that Japan be offered the possibility of a constitutional monarchy under the reigning dynasty. This formula was rejected, though, and Zacharias was not permitted to make any allusion in his broadcasts to the postwar status of the emperor.

On July 26, however, the Allied Potsdam Declaration threatened Japan with "prompt and utter destruction" unless its armed forces surrendered at once and unconditionally. The influence of Zacharias' operations on Japan's surrender is difficult to assess, in light of the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9 and the Soviet declaration of war against Japan on August 8. Japan's civilian leaders, distrusting the Allies and fearing a military coup, vainly staked their last desperate hopes for acceptable peace terms on Soviet good offices, secretly solicited in June. Zacharias later asserted in his autobiographical Secret Missions (1946) that on July 24, before Potsdam, the Japanese government had clearly signaled in an official broadcast its readiness to surrender unconditionally on the basis of the Atlantic Charter. A broadcast from Tokyo on August 10, the day of Japan's first formal surrender offer, cited that broadcast and mentioned Zacharias by name. Zacharias was awarded the Legion of Merit for his performance (one of three he received during the war) and retired in 1946 as a rear admiral. Soon after retiring, Zacharias attracted national attention when, testifying before a congressional committee, he recalled that in March 1941 he had warned Admiral Husband E. Kimmel, then commanding the Pacific Fleet, of the probability that Japan's first war move would be a surprise air attack, on a Sunday morning, against the fleet and its shore installations on Hawaii. Kimmel denied that the incident had occurred. In later years Zacharias advocated an expanded psychological warfare program to combat Communism. During the Korean War he charged that the Soviet Union was conducting germ warfare against United States troops. He died in West Springfield, New Hampshire on June 28, 1961.

Achievements

• Zacharias was a Rear admiral and naval attaché, who is known as the person, who waged phycological war against Japan during World War II.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Secret Missions: The Story of an Intelligence Officer (Bluejacket Books)

    (An instant bestseller when it was first published in 1946...)

  • behind closed doors

    (A history of the cold war)

  • Behind Closed Doors the Secret History
  • Secret Missions

Connections

Zacharias married Clara Evans Miller in June 1925. They had two sons.

Father:

Alron Zacharias

Mother:

Theresa Budwig

Spouse:

Clara Evans Miller

Son:

Jerrold M. Zacharias

Son:

Ellis M. Zacharias, Jr.

References

• Journey To The Missouri
• The Man Who Watched The Rising Sun The Story Of Admiral Ellis M. Zacharias