Nash took time off ranching to study geology at the University of Colorado in Boulder and was in his sophomore year in December 1941 when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. “He was the guy who really rode the horse and gathered the cattle, and he did it better than anyone.” “He lived what the John Wayne movies only show,” daughter Julie Nash says. Young Franklin was virtually raised in the saddle. The lanky, laconic 6-foot-2-inch Coloradan was a third-generation cattle rancher, a member of a family that raised registered Hereford cattle on a 40,000-acre spread his father and grandfather had started as a homestead in the late 1800s. If that weren’t dangerous enough work, the Coastwatchers also took responsibility for rescuing downed airmen and shipwrecked sailors.Īt first glance Nash seemed an unlikely candidate for such a group. Based on their information, planners would create lists of viable targets for Allied ships, fighter planes and dive-bombers. It required daring men willing to set up observation posts on occupied islands teeming with enemy troops to observe their sea, land and air buildup and dispositions, then transmit coded intelligence in the open. The role of the Coastwatchers was fraught with imminent danger. Its position radioed in by Coastwatchers, a Japanese tanker falls prey to Allied aircraft. “When I heard what he wanted to get into, I thought he must be out of his mind.…My hat is off to him.” “He was a real hero,” replied the other veteran, a retired colonel.

It was bad enough at, but to consider operating a radio from Japanese territory seemed suicidal.” “I remember Frank Nash expressing a desire to get into coast watching,” wrote one, “and I figured the guy must be stark raving mad. Three decades after war’s end a pair of veterans who had served with Nash in the South Pacific exchanged letters in which they reminisced about their friend and fellow soldier. The story of how Benjamin Franklin Nash-Franklin, to family and friends-came to spend more than two years observing and reporting on Japanese activities from behind their lines would doubtless make for a thrill-a-minute film. Among their number was a lone American GI.

Known as Coastwatchers, they were arguably the most vital yet unsung heroes of the Pacific War. But that was precisely the duty for which some 800 Australians volunteered. Capture was an all-too-real possibility and would spell certain torture and death. There were far safer assignments during World War II than hiding amid tropical rainforests on Japanese-occupied islands to spy on the enemy and radio information to Allied intelligence.

(Australian War Memorial) During World War II, young American cattle rancher Franklin Nash served as a member of Australia’s covert Coastwatchers Working in teams behind enemy lines, Coastwatchers reported on Japanese movements in the Pacific.

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