Roger Pineau (1916–1993)

Roger Pineau (1916 or 1917-1993) was an American naval officer and historian, with an expertise in Japanese language and military affairs. Pineau attended the Japanese Language School at the University of Colorado and worked in Naval Intelligence during World War II. After the war he served as an interpreter and analyst with the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey in Japan, and in 1947 was assigned to the Office of Naval History. During his ten years there he assisted in the research and writing of the 15-volume History of U.S. Naval Operations in World War II. In 1957 he joined the State Department where he held several posts, including Chief of Far East Current Intelligence and Social Science Officer for Cultural and Educational Affairs, and from 1965 to 1972, he worked at the Smithsonian as managing editor of the Smithsonian Institution Press. Pineau was recalled to active duty in 1972 as Director of the Navy Memorial Museum in the Washington Navy Yard. Upon his retirement in 1978, Pineau embarked on an ambitious research and writing project to document the important contributions of the US Navy Japanese Language School. Although he did not live to publish his intended work, his substantial collection of research files formed the core of the the core of the US Navy Japanese/Oriental Language School Archival Project at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Pineau wrote, co-authored or edited a number of books on Japanese military history, including Picture History of the Pacific War (1952), Midway, the Battle that Doomed Japan (1955), The Divine Wind: Japan's Kamikaze Force in World War II (1960), The End of the Imperial Japanese Navy (1962) and The Japan Expedition 1852-1855: The Personal Journal of Commodore Matthew C. Perry (1969).