Bento Leal, from WWII Code Breaker to Labor Leader and Master Negotiator
As early as World War I, submarines were vital components of Germany’s navy. After her defeat, which included an interdiction against submarine construction, Germany nevertheless covertly embarked on a steady buildup of a technologically more advanced sub , the U-boat.
As World War II moved into high gear and France collapsed in 1940, the wide-open Atlantic, including the Mediterranean, the Caribbean and the coasts of Europe, America, and North Africa, became free for roaming flotillas of U-boats. The Atlantic became a cemetery for hundreds of cargo and war supply ships. Even the Azores Islands, far from the war zone, were subjected to the cat and mouse games of the German, American, and British navies. After the war, ship smokestacks, mostly from sunken cargo ships, abounded on the coastline of the island of São Miguel.
Increased American engagement in the war and improved U.S. Navy combat know-how diminished German superiority. Crucial in the effort were American radiomen, who mastered the Enigma, a sophisticated German code that contained at least thirteen essential code letters uniquely German. This enabled the navy to decode communications from the German fleet and pinpoint their locations and movements.
One of the first navy men to learn the Enigma and thereby help accelerate American superiority over and under the sea was First Class Radioman Ben Leal. Ben recalls Winston Churchill’s declaration that if the Allies had not mastered the liquidation of the German navy’s superiority, they would have had no choice but to surrender to them.
Bento Cardoso Leal was ninety-three years old when he passed away in 2018 at his home in Castro Valley, California. He was born in Newark, California, graduated from Washington High School a few days shy of his seventeenth birthday. After high school, too young for military service, Leal decided to learn Morse code at Oakland Central Trade School, now Laney College, while working at Kaiser Shipyard in Richmond.
After thirteen weeks in boot Camp in San Diego, he was ready for the next stages of advanced Morse code learning at the University of Idaho, in Moscow, which lead to his graduation to third-class radioman. Then, it was just pick up his duffel bag and be sent to a secret radio base at Great Diamond Island in Portland, Maine.
After again mastering the Enigma, the sophisticated and uniquely German code of at least thirteen critical code letters, Leal left Maine aboard USS Douglas A. Munro, the flagship of a six-destroyer escort division. Their task, in addition to escorting military cargo ships, was to prowl the Atlantic and the Caribbean to detect, intercept, and destroy German submarines.
They lived up to their mission code name of Hunter-Killer so well that the war ended earlier than it might have otherwise, though not before the largest amount of war death on the ground. After Germany’s defeat and upon Hitler’s death, Fleet Admiral Karl Doentz, the master of the U-boat era, signed Germany’s surrender.
Following two years in the Pacific, Leal enlisted in the Navy Reserves, Sub Radio station Reservists, 13th Naval District, in Seattle. Still not finished, and when the Korean conflict began in 1950, and everyone was conscripted, Leal’s four-year commitment was extended to five. It included two years of combat duty aboard a submarine. Bento Leal was honorably discharged in 1952.
Now, with a long and honorable Navy curriculum to his name, Leal, a real precocious kid, used his GI bill, to complete his degree in industrial relations at the Jesuit Seattle University in three years, while claiming five sources of income (GI bill, Navy Reserve pay, wholesale hardware store-pay and part-time jobs with the Teamsters.
Patricia Devine became his wife in 1958. Ben and Patricia were married for the next fifty-one years until she passed away in 2009 at the age of 81. Seven children blessed their household.
In his eighties, Leal married Jeannette Avery Gancos, a widow and a longtime friend of the family. They shared a curious secret: when Jeannette had converted to Catholicism forty years earlier, Leal became her godfather. Not a bad arrangement. All in the Catholic family.
Through some family connections and his earlier part time jobs with the Teamsters, Leal’s vocation became totally connected with everything Teamsters and related. Initially assigned to Lodge 117, and later on to Local 12, Bay Area, in four years he climbed to the ranks of president of Teamster Union Local 241, representing auto parts employees.
His interpersonal skills combined with excellent organizational abilities propelled him to even higher patamars. He was invariably successful in representing employees but also garnering attention from the business leaders he negotiated contracts with. His goal was to ensure the employees had a fair deal, and the employers had the opportunities to prosper and compete in the market place.
Ben’s classic and calm approach drew attention of others, for he was chosen, together with other labor leaders like his friend Frank Sousa, a West Coast Machinist Union leader, to facilitate and achieve very productive cultural and labor relations missions from U.S. to China. Meeting Chinese leaders in a still secretive political climate became an easy staple for these hands-on labor representatives.
They charmed and they succeeded. Fame begot fame as other missions to Brazil and Portugal followed with identical success. Within this goodwill activity, Leal progressed to other areas of the Teamsters universe.
As chairman of the $45 billion West Coast Pension Fund, now managed by Prudential Insurance, his reputation continued to expand to areas non labor or business related. Leal would be invited to lead short term fund raisers and community groups. A fund raiser appealed by the Diocese of Oakland to benefit St. Rose’s hospital saw his community leadership attain valuable results.
He was always on demand to share his wits and experience to other local community activities regardless of their size and position in society. It was not unusual to see him on boards of various business and non-profit organizations, such as Blue Cross of California and the Bay Area Boy Scouts.
Affable, easy going and not afraid of mingling with any personality, his business and leadership acumen, were attributes that catapulted him to meet folks of the political mainstream and high levels of government. He was friends with the likes of Barbara Boxer, Diane Feinstein, Anna Eshoo, Nancy Pelosi. Trading favors of the simple kind would also lead to favors of higher value on behalf of others. On the personal side, being gregarious and fun loving would entice him to the arts movies and TV.
Being an extra on the weekly TV show Streets of San Francisco brought him in contact with its main characters Karl Malden and Michael Douglas. Another extra role on What’s Up, Doc?, featuring Ryan O’Neil and Barbara Streisand gave him sufficient excitement to want to continue on his new found skill. Yet, he would never settle for anything other than his leadership roles with the Teamsters organizations. His exposure to all of these endeavors would come to build acquaintances with Nelson Mandela, President Jimmy Carter, Joe DiMaggio, and Willie Mays.
On the good Samaritan side, Leal, without any discernible fanfare, was always on the giving hand of dozens of new jobs to anyone seeking honest employment opportunities. When I interviewed him sometime in 2016, he would narrate with kind emotion the joy of helping others. This was a remarkable trademark of his character, his family upbringing and old country style of helping new immigrants.
He loved his ancestry to the point that when we saw each other at informal monthly friendly luncheons he would make a point of saying with pleasure, my grandfather was an immigrant from Vila Nova, island of Terceira, in the Azores. Got it? Of course, I did. And I loved him. Certainly, his funny bone did put me at ease. Indeed, his grandfather, João Ferreira Faria, was the founder of the Newark IDES, at the Newark Pavilion.
His family had a special place in his heart and was displayed at Christmas and Easter dinners at his house. Big enough to entertain his seven children and spouses, ten grandchildren, and six great grandchildren. His patriarchal guidance was always nearby.
A revealing example example of Leal’s humor brings us back to the U-Boat. Many years after the war ended, Leal was at a meeting at the Saint Francis Hotel in San Francisco. At the fruitful conclusion, he casually asked his counterpart where he was headed next. The stranger said he was going to New Orleans.
When Leal asked why, the stranger said if he wanted to know a secret. He then proceeded to tell Leal that he was going to New Orleans to reconnect with the days when, after prowling the Atlantic and the Caribbean in their submarines all day, he and his mates would surface at dusk near the mouth of the Mississippi and row ashore to buy fruits and vegetables: he was a former German U-boat officer.
Responding to a question that Leal, the Enigma code breaker, might have asked, he concluded, “We did not need to exchange words; just U.S. money for goods.”
