Nimitz retired from office as CNO on December 15, 1947 and received a third Gold Star in lieu of a fourth Navy Distinguished Service Medal.
However, since the rank of fleet admiral is a lifetime appointment, he remained on active duty for the rest of his life, with full pay and benefits. He and his wife, Catherine, moved to Berkeley, California . After he suffered a serious fall in 1964, he and Catherine moved to US Naval quarters on Yerba Buena Island in the San Francisco Bay .
In San Francisco, Nimitz served in the mostly ceremonial post as a special assistant to the Secretary of the Navy in the Western Sea Frontier. He worked to help restore goodwill with Japan after World War II by helping to raise funds for the restoration of the Japanese Imperial Navy battleship Mikasa , Admiral
Heihachiro Togo 's flagship at the Battle of Tsushima in 1905.
Nimitz was also appointed as the United Nations Plebiscite Administrator for
Kashmir on 31 December 1948. The terms of the plebiscite were that Pakistan would vacate regions of Kashmir under its control, and that India would remove additional military from kashmir. But due to disagreements between the two regarding demilitarisation, the plebiscite is still pending. [16]
Nimitz became a member of the
Bohemian Club of San Francisco. In 1948, he sponsored a Bohemian dinner in honor of U.S. Army General Mark Clark , known for his campaigns in North Africa and Italy. [17]
Nimitz served as a regent of the
University of California during 1948–1956, where he had formerly been a faculty member as a professor of naval science for the Naval Reserve Officer Training Corps program. Nimitz was honored on October 17, 1964, by the University of California on Nimitz Day.
It’s a man looking over his family during the British Raj in India. There were many cases of cannibalism and he feared someone would try to kill and eat his children or wife. I acknowledge this is a difficult picture to look at— but I included it for a reason. Many people in the US/West aren’t even aware of the terrible famines that swept through India and which are comparable to the holocaust in deaths (an estimated ~30 million people have died in famines in India). This was taken from the Great Famine of 1876–1878, which was far worse than the infamous Bengal Famine. It was caused by a crop failure/drought and was exacerbated by the crown’s export of wheat abroad. In total, 5.6 - 9 million people died (it’s hard to get exact figures). And within huge statistics like these, are forgotten stories. These are individuals and families, who slowly faced the despair of knowing they had no food and would have no food in the near future. They faced the horror of knowing there was
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