This Military Service Page was created/owned by
Bill Mullins (Moon), CT3
to remember
Biard, Forrest (Tex), CAPT USN(Ret).
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Contact Info
Home Town Born in Bonham, Texas
Last Address Dallas, Texas
Date of Passing Nov 02, 2009
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Biard, USN (Ret), Capt. Forrest R. Died November 2, 2009, at age 96. He was the last surviving pre-war trained Japanese cryptolinguist member of the U.S. Naval codebreaking organization during World War II. Capt. Biard served in all three Navy codebreaking units during the war.
There is one rather remarkable item in this morning's Metro section: Among the paid-for obituaries is a notice that retired U.S. Navy Captain Forrest R. Biard died Tuesday at the age of 96. A Bonham native and North Dallas High School grad in 1930 (he is, in fact, a recipient of its Distinguished Alumni Award), Biard left the U.S. Naval Academy in 1934, graduating 11th in his class, and landed at the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo -- where, according to his family, he studied "Japanese language, history, and culture from September 1939 to September 1941," at which point, says the obit, "then-Lt. Cdr. Biard secured p.assage out of Japan for ten expert Navy linguists weeks before the attack on Pearl Harbor." He then sent to Station HYPO, the unit charged with breaking Japanese code. Biard, known as "Tex," was working in the basement of the Old Administration Building at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.
I saw the Captain's obituary in the Dallas Morning News. We graduated from North Dallas High School (he in 1930, I in 1963) and he was involved in radio intelligence (I was a CT), so I have created this profile to remember him. I will add more details as I acquire them.
Best Moment In February 1944, Biard and Lt. Cdr. Tom Mackie were dispatched to Gen. Douglas MacArthur's intelligence center in Brisbane to decrypt messages encoded in Japanese Army code books found in New Guinea. Biard and Mackie decrypted communications identifying the detailed immediate Japanese defensive plans in the New Guinea area, a key strategic Japanese stronghold. The information developed at Brisbane enabled Gen. MacArthur to anticipate the enemy's movements, and thereby to execute his successful island-hopping strategy to reclaim New Guinea in just a few weeks, which consequently accelerated the end of the war in the Pacific.