Foot Notes

  1. See for example, Pearl Harbor on Roosevelt editorial published in the Bergen Evening Record, De Leon, Texas, Monday, 25 September 1944; The Truth of Pearl Harbor by Basil Brewer, Publisher, The New Bedford (MA) Standard-Times, Thursday, 28 September 1944; The Truth About Pearl Harbor by John T. Flynn, article published in the Chicago Tribune, 22 October 1944; and The Final Secret of Pearl Harbor by John T. Flynn, self-published, September 1945. Copies of these documents and correspondence related thereto located in Official File (OF) 400, Pearl Harbor Inquiry, Hawaii 1942 to 1945, Box 7, Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library (FDRL), Hyde Park, NY. John T. Flynn’s pamphlet, The Final Secret of Pearl Harbor, second revised edition, September 1945, is also published in Cover-Up: The Politics of Pearl Harbor, 1941-1946, by Bruce R. Bartlett, see pp. 138-154.
  1. Many authors on Pearl Harbor history claimed that neither the Army nor the Navy had the ability to decrypt Japanese diplomatic and consular message traffic on Oahu in 1941. A few writers even gave the impression that neither service was intercepting Japanese diplomatic or consular message traffic on Oahu. (Exhibits 1 & 2 of the JCC on Pearl Harbor, see PHA12, pp. 1-316, contain many Japanese “dips” that were intercepted by HYPO or MS-5 on Oahu in 1941. Author has a list of all such intercepts published in Exhibits 1 & 2.)

According to the 28 August 1945 Clausen Investigation’s affidavit of General of the Army George C. Marshall (see PHA35, pp. 104-105): “Concerning intercepts of the character mentioned it was my understanding in the period preceding 7 December 1941 that the Commanding General of the Hawaiian Department was aware of and was receiving some of this information from facilities available in his command.”

Major General Charles D. Herron was Commanding General of the Hawaiian Department prior to being relieved by Lieutenant General Walter C. Short on 7 February 1941. According to Herron’s 9 August 1944 Army Pearl Harbor Board testimony (see PHA27, p. 123): “….by the time I left them [the Hawaiian Department] there was complete reciprocity on information the two services obtained.”

The 1986 Naval Institute’s oral history of Captain Thomas H. Dyer, in referring to the sharing of ComInt between the Navy’s three communications intelligence units (CAST, HYPO and NEGAT), states the following (see p. 280): “There was a rather free exchange of translation. And there was a complete exchange of recoveries. If we identified a code group, we told them. If they identified one, they told us. That part went back way before the war. There was always a complete exchange of results.” (Dyer established the Navy’s ComInt unit at Pearl Harbor in July 1936. He remained as chief cryptanalyst at HYPO until December 1945.) In Rochefort’s oral history (see p. 143), he states: “…there was a free exchange of information between the people at Cavite [Station CAST] and Pearl Harbor [HYPO] and Washington [NEGAT]. There was always a free exchange of information at the technical side.”

  1. The Purple Machine was the American codename for the Japanese foreign ministry’s ECM. The Japanese Navy’s version, known as the 97-shiki O-bun in-ji-ki dates to 1937. The U.S. Army’s Signal Intelligence Service had a working copy of the foreign ministry’s code machine which produced its first two translations on 27 September 1940. “And I Was There” (see p. 81) states that the Americans had built only five Purple machines prior to U.S. entry into World War II. In The Broken Seal (see p. 102n) Ladislas Farago wrote that 8 Purple and 5 Red machines had been built by the U.S. prior to 7 Dec. 1941. Gordon W. Prange’s At Dawn We Slept: The Untold Story of Pearl Harbor (see pp. 81-82) states that the United States had built 8 Purple machines and notes 2 of the 8 had been sent to the British at Bletchley Park in January 1941. Combined Fleet Decoded, by John Prados (see p. 165), states that each of the American Purple machines cost $684.15 to build.

In his Hewitt Inquiry testimony (see PHA36, p. 64), Captain Laurance F. Safford states that both the U.S.

Army and the Navy were building Purple machines. The Navy’s Purple machines were built by the Naval Code and Signal Laboratory at the Washington Navy Yard (see Prados, p. 165).

The Clausen Investigation’s 22 March 1945 affidavit of Colonel Joseph K. Evans states, in part: “The Army and Navy each had facilities for intercepting, decrypting and translating Japanese radio messages. Each Service had a machine for decryption of Japanese messages which were encoded in the classification known as Purple.” Evans served as Assistant G-2, Philippine Department from 1939 to about September 1941 when he assumed duty as G-2, Philippine Department. He departed the Philippines on 27 November 1941.

While discussing Japanese diplomatic messages in his oral history (see p. 161), Rochefort said: “I think this matter has been unduly stressed by historians. Even if we had had these messages, all we could have done was to have warned Admiral Kimmel. Whatever action he would have taken would have been based on instructions from Washington (underlined in original).” And again, on p. 164, Rochefort states: “whether or not we had the Purple machine physically present in Pearl Harbor would not have materially altered any decisions or actions that were made at Pearl Harbor.”

  1. In his Roberts Commission testimony of 2 January 1942, Commander Joseph J. Rochefort said (see PHA23, pp. 673, 674): “The document [intercept] in question, as far as we are concerned, up to the 7th of December, did not exist.” When Justice Roberts asked Rochefort what he meant by that, Rochefort replied: “Well, there used to be a federal law, sir, about that, but that does not exist now. There is no record of it at all.”

Near the end of his Roberts Commission testimony, Rochefort said (see PHA23, pp. 687-688): “…the foreign office has always collected a vast amount of useless information. Our records over there indicated—we have hundreds of messages over there that are just trash collected by the foreign office, of which this report of departures and arrivals [ships in and out of Pearl Harbor]….and burning of lights and that sort of thing have been a part. However, any action indicated by the military of Japan, Army or Navy, would have been much more significant than anything started by the Foreign Office.”

  1. On page 251 of Captain T.H. Dyer’s oral history he states: “But with the exception of the ill-fated flag officers’ code we dealt with before the war, I don’t remember a single problem that I came up against in actual Japanese that I wasn’t able to cope with.” (This remark followed a statement by Captain Dyer that “without any false modesty that in cryptanalysis only, I was number one.”)
  1. The incident that allegedly took place in the wardroom of South Dakota on the evening of 2 September 1945 is from Chapter 1, “I Was There,” from “And I Was There”: Pearl Harbor and Midway – Breaking the Secrets, by Rear Admiral Edwin T. Layton, USN (Ret.), Captain Roger Pineau, USNR (Ret.), and John Costello, William Morrow and Company, Inc., New York, 1985, pp. 19-21.

Fleet Admiral William D. Leahy’s autobiography, I Was There: The Personal Story of the Chief of Staff to Presidents Roosevelt and Truman Based on his Notes and Diaries Made at the Time, Whittlesey House, McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc., 1950, obviously served as the basis for the title to “And I Was There.”

Much of this story from “And I Was There” is repeated in a long footnote to the biographical sketch of Rear Admiral Layton in U.S. Navy Codebreakers, Linguists, and Intelligence Officers against Japan, 1910-1941: A Biographical Dictionary, by Captain Steven E. Maffeo, USNR (Ret.), Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham, MD, 2016, see p. 299 n2. Maffeo begins this footnote by stating, “Layton never learned to like Terrible Turner due to what Layton believed was Turner’s withholding of information before the Pearl Harbor attack….”

“And I Was There” (see p. 21) claims that Admiral Turner “played a leading part in the campaign to pillory a fellow officer and fine commander of the fleet.” This account goes on, “`Who are you?’ demanded the four-star admiral, with the fury of a bull stopped in mid-charge. I identified myself as Kimmel’s intelligence officer at the time, saying that I knew what had happened and why….”

This incident in which “And I Was There” alleges to take its title from is almost certainly false. In his 20 December 1945 testimony to the Joint Congressional Committee (JCC), Admiral Turner said (see PHA04, p. 1967): “After reading these splendid plans that had been sent in by the Commander in Chief, and by the Fourteenth Naval District, why, my feeling was that these people knew their business. They knew what to do about it, probably a lot more than I did, or the rest of us here [in the Navy Department], because they were the ones that were on the firing line.”

On 21 December 1945, Admiral Turner had this to say about Admiral Kimmel (see PHA04, p. 1988): “I personally had the utmost confidence in him and respect for his ability, and I believe that that was a generally shared opinion in the Navy.”

When questioned about Captain Layton on 21 December 1945, Admiral Turner said, “I know him very well. He is at the present time, or was, Admiral Nimitz’s intelligence officer, and during the time that I was out there, why, he was the adviser for Admiral Nimitz.”

  1. Pearl Harbor Attack: Hearings Before the Joint Committee on the Investigation of the Pearl Harbor Attack, Congress of the United States, Seventy-Ninth Congress, Second Session. The testimony and exhibits of all eight investigations are published in the 39-volumes of the Pearl Harbor Attack Hearings (cited hereafter as PHA plus the part number testimony or documents are quoted from).
  1. Investigation of the Pearl Harbor Attack: Report of the Joint Committee on the Investigation of the Pearl Harbor Attack, Congress of the United States, 20 July 1946. In May 1994, the Aegean Park Press of Laguna Hills, California reprinted this document. Be advised, however, that although the Aegean Park Presses reprint claims to be “a copy without changes of the Report of the Joint Committee on the Investigation of the Pearl Harbor Attack,” (see p. ii), the reprint totally omits the JCC’s minority report found of pp. 493-580 of the original document.
  1. For Part V, the “Conclusions and Recommendations” of the JCC’s majority report, see pp. 249-266 in the Report of the Joint Committee on the Investigation of the Pearl Harbor Attack.
  1. Quoted from Conclusion 10, JCC’s majority report, Report of the Joint Committee on the Investigation of the Pearl Harbor Attack, p. 259.
  1. Ibid, Conclusion 10, p. 259.
  1. Jeffery M. Dorwart in Conflict of Duty: The U.S. Navy’s Intelligence Dilemma, 1919-1945, Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, Maryland, 1983, quoted from Chapter 18, The Man Who Wanted to Be DNI, p. 194. See also the biographical sketch on Zacharias, pp. 371-394 in U.S. Navy Codebreakers, Linguists, and Intelligence Officers against Japan, 1910-1941: A Biographical Dictionary, by Captain Steven E. Maffeo, USNR (Ret.), Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham, MD, 2016.
  1. Annual Report of the Commander-in-Chief, U.S. Pacific Fleet, for the period 1 July 1940 to 30 June 1941, published as Exhibit 44 of the Navy Court of Inquiry, PHA33, pp. 1243-1278, refer specifically to Tactical Publications by Commander Battleships Battle Force, p. 1263 of this exhibit.
  1. Admiral Harold R. Stark letter to then Rear Admiral Husband E. Kimmel, 13 January 1941. Letter published in JCC Exhibit 106, PHA16, pp. 2144-2145. Several items stand out in this letter. The first paragraph suggests that Kimmel “destroy this letter after reading.” The second paragraph advises that “the Navy more than any other branch of the Government is likely to have to bear the brunt.” “[W]e may become involved in the Pacific and in the Atlantic at the same time.” “In all cases [of flag officer assignments], the White House finally decides.” Admiral Charles P. Snyder has requested his relief as Commander Battle Force “and would play the game in the last analysis as it had to be played and as you and I have to do.” Commander Vincent R. Murphy of Admiral Richardson’s CinCUS staff “has been with us [in OPNAV] on three different occasions….and is likewise pretty familiar with our thoughts back here.” The postscript to this letter states, in part: “You know how I believe in conferences—keeping your key people informed—taking them into your confidence….”

Also in JCC Exhibit 106 is a 31 July 1941 letter from Admiral Stark addressed “Dear Savvy” (with copies sent to Admirals Kimmel and Hart), see PHA16, pp. 2175-2178. Paragraph 2 states: “This is going to be short and general. I think you should burn it after showing it to Kimmel.” The first paragraph of the second page of the letter reads in part: “As you probably know from our despatches, and from my letters, we have felt that the Maritime Provinces [Kamchatka Peninsula] are now definitely Japanese objectives. Turner thinks Japan will go up there in August. He may be right. He usually is….” This letter and one of 2 August 1941 addressed “Dear Kimmel” both form Exhibit 72 of the Navy Court of Inquiry, see PHA33, pp. 1353-1357. A statement on p. 1357 of this exhibit notes that this letter contains “State secrets” together with a statement by Admiral Stark that he refused to read the letter into his testimony to the Navy Court of Inquiry. The third to last paragraph of this letter begins: “Before you destroy this letter….”

On 12 February 1940, shortly before the United States Fleet was transferred to Pearl Harbor from its bases on the west coast, Admiral Stark wrote to Admiral James O. Richardson. The subject of the CNO’s letter was: Defense of the Fleet against attack by aircraft. This letter is referred to in a letter from Admiral Richardson to Admiral Stark of 11 March 1940. Only page one of Richardson’s multiple page letter was published in JCC Exhibit 9, see PHA14, p. 931. The JCC investigating Pearl Harbor put a typewritten note at the bottom of page one of Richardson’s letter. This note reads: “Subsequent pages of this letter, upon investigation, appear not to be in existence.” Admiral Stark’s letter to Admiral Richardson of 12 February 1940 is not published in the Pearl Harbor Attack Hearings, and has not been found in the National Archives at College Park, Maryland.

  1. The mistaken assumption of writers began in testimony given to the Navy’s Hewitt Inquiry and later to the JCC on Pearl Harbor. It was then given new life in some of the 25 conclusions of the JCC’s majority report. All such claims have no basis in fact. According to Rear Admiral Julius Augustus Furer’s Administration of the Navy Department in World War II, Naval History Division, Washington, D.C., 1959, see p. 120: “The Naval authorities held, however, that the responsibility for developing enemy intentions from information gathered and analyzed by the intelligence service, and its dissemination, must be left to the individual in the organization of the CNO responsible for war planning. It was in general held by the Navy Department that even the War Plans Officer could not be the final arbiter in some cases. The Chief of Naval Operations, the Secretary of the Navy, and even the President might have to make the final decision.”

Furthermore, a 10 February 1941 letter from the CNO to CinCPac drafted in OP-12 under date of 6 Feb.

1941, states at the top of its second page: “As in the past, the Chief of Naval Operations will from time to time provide the Commanders-in-Chief of the Fleets with his appreciation of the situation. This will not be included in the intelligence reports, which will doubtless be compromised sooner or later” (emphasis added). This five page letter was not made an exhibit of any of the eight investigations into Pearl Harbor.

  1. U.S. Navy Codebreakers, Linguists, and Intelligence Officers against Japan, 1910-1941, A Biographical

Dictionary, by Captain Steven E. Maffeo, USNR (Ret.), Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham, MD, for the biographical sketch of Rear Admiral Cecil H. Coggins, MC, USN, pp. 222-235.

Most of the 240-300 Japanese living in Hawaii whose names were on the list of suspects were probably

obtained from intercepts sent between Japan’s Honolulu consulate and the foreign ministry in Tokyo. An excellent source of this type of intelligence is David D. Lowman’s MAGIC: The Untold Story of U.S. Intelligence and the Evacuation of Japanese Residents from the West Coast during WWII, Athena Press, Inc., 2001.

  1. 15 April 1944 Hart Inquiry testimony of Lieutenant William B. Stephenson, USNR, PHA26, p. 350. It is

this writer’s deduction that the “most reliable informant” were intercepts of the Honolulu consulate’s message traffic. The consular agent living in Lahaina, Maui and other Japanese consular agents who were not registered as such (as required by Act of Congress of 8 June 1938, as amended 7 August 1939), but “there was no prosecution of these consular agents instituted prior to the war.” Stephenson to Hart Inquiry, PHA26, pp. 351-352.

  1. Ibid, PHA26, p. 352.

 

  1. U.S. Navy Codebreakers, Linguists, and Intelligence Officers against Japan, 1910-1941, A Biographical

Dictionary, by Captain Steven E. Maffeo, USNR (Ret.), Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham, MD, for the biographical sketch of Rear Admiral Edwin Thomas Layton, pp. 294-305.

  1. “And I Was There”: Pearl Harbor and Midway – Breaking the Secrets, by Rear Admiral Edwin T. Layton, Captain Roger Pineau, USNR (Ret.), and John Costello, William Morrow and Company, New York, 1985.

Pearl Harbor: Final Judgement, by Henry C. Clausen and Bruce Lee, Crown Publishers, New York, 1992, “Layton did not tell the truth in his book,” see p. 238. On page 4 of this book reference is made to books by Walter Lord, John Toland, Gordon W. Prange, “and the late Rear Adm. Edwing [sic] T. Layton. All these books were bestsellers. Yet all of them contain errors, or omissions, or improper theories, or, in one book, outright lies” (emphasis added).

Interestingly, the Authors’ Notes in “And I Was There,” see p. 509 explains the background to the writing of Admiral Layton’s memoirs: “…Accordingly, Lee went to the National Archives with Costello and wrote to Pineau to enlist his help in persuading Layton that the time was now ripe to write this book. `I am not interested in looking for scapegoats, nor in protecting the good name of various services,’ Lee declared. `I want a book that tells the facts within the limits of national security.’”

  1. The Reminiscences of Captain Joseph J. Rochefort, U.S. Navy (Ret.), U.S. Naval Institute, Annapolis, MD, 1983. On page 98 of his oral history, Rochefort states that OP-20-G in the Navy Department “decided to build up Hypo if necessary at the expense of the home station in Washington and transfer many of the activities they were then doing in Washington to Station Hypo….it was the result of a policy decision to upgrade Hypo and give them additional responsibility (emphasis added). Most of this was done in personal letters between [then Commander Laurance F.] Safford and myself.”
  1. Chart B, Distribution of Navy ComInt Personnel, December 1941, p. 30, Pearl Harbor Revisited: United States Navy Communications Intelligence, 1924-1941, Frederick D. Parker, National Security Agency, Fort George G. Meade, MD, 1994.
  1. Rochefort oral history, p. 103.
  1. JCC testimony of Captain Laurance F. Safford, 1 February 1946, PHA08, p. 3560.
  1. In Paragraph 3402 of the U.S. Pacific Fleet Operating Plan—Rainbow Five (Navy Plan O-1, Rainbow

Five), is stated the following: “In the event of an overt act of war by a foreign power against the United States prior to the existence of a state of war, it is the duty of the senior commander on the spot to take such action in the defense of his command and the national interests as the situation may require, and report the action taken to superior authority at once.” (WPPac-46 published as JCC exhibit 114, PHA17, pp. 2568-2600, quoted from p. 2585.)

  1. 12 September 1944 Army Pearl Harbor Board testimony of Captain Edwin T. Layton, PHA28, p. 1586.
  1. Ibid.
  1. Both the “waiting attitude” and reference to an “overt act” being committed against the United States by Japan are referred to in paragraph 3 on page 1 of the Commander-in-Chief, U.S. Fleet (Admiral James O. Richardson’s) letter to the Chief of Naval Operations dated January 25, 1941. Under Richardson’s signature is stated: “Copy to: Rear Admiral H.E. Kimmel.”

Under Item 10 on the last page of the 7 October 1940 memo for the Director (Office of Naval Intelligence) by then Lieutenant Commander Arthur H. McCollum reads: “If by these means Japan could be led to commit an overt act of war-so much the better. At all events we must be fully prepared to accept the threat of war.”

  1. Secretary of War Stimson mentions in his diary a noon meeting at the White House on 25 November 1941. This meeting was attended by President Roosevelt, Secretaries Hull, Stimson and Knox, Admiral Stark, and General Marshall. According to Mr. Stimson’s prepared statement for the JCC (see PHA11, p. 5421): “One problem troubled us very much. If you know that your enemy is going to strike you, it is not usually wise to wait until he gets the jump on you by taking the initiative. In spite of the risk involved, however, in letting the Japanese fire the first shot, we realized that in order to have the full support of the American people it was desirable to make sure that the Japanese be the ones to do this so that there should remain no doubt in anyone’s mind as to who were the aggressors” (emphasis added).”

Another reference to the Stimson diary in Mr. Stimson’s statement to the JCC throws more light on the White House discussion at noon on 25 November (see PHA11, p. 5433): “He [President Roosevelt] brought up the event that we were likely to be attacked perhaps (as soon as) next Monday, for the Japanese are notorious for making an attack without warning, and the question was what we should do. The question was how we should maneuver them into the position of firing the first shot without allowing too much danger to ourselves. It was a difficult proposition” (emphasis added).

A Stimson diary entry of 7 December 1941 is quoted in On Active Service in Peace and War, by Henry L. Stimson and McGeorge Bundy, Harper & Brothers, New York, 1947 (see p. 393): “Stimson never doubted that the central importance of the Pearl Harbor attack lay not in the tactical victory carried off by the Japanese but in the simple fact that the months of hesitation and relative inaction were ended at a stroke. No single blow could have been better calculated to put an end to American indecision. `When the news first came that Japan had attacked us, my first feeling was of relief that the indecision was over and that a crisis had come in a way which would unite all our people….For I feel that this country united has practically nothing to fear, while the apathy and divisions stirred up by unpatriotic men have been hitherto very discouraging.’”

The honesty of the Stimson diary brings to mind a statement published in April 1941, reprinted in September 1941 in Porter Sargent’s Getting US into War, Porter Sargent, Boston, MA, 1941 (see p. 83): “`So great are the psychological resistances to war in modern nations that every war must appear to be a war of defense against a menacing, murderous aggressor. There must be no ambiguity about whom the public is to hate.’” Sargent quoted Harold D. Lasswell’s Propaganda Technique in the World War, first published in 1927, reprinted in 1938 by Peter Smith, New York (see Chapter III, War Guilt and War Aims, p. 47).

The author of this essay does not know if H.D. Lasswell is related to Major Alva B. (“Red”) Lasswell, USMC, one of “the most productive of the cryptographer-translators” at CIU, Pearl Harbor during World War II.

  1. War Department dispatch #472, 27 November 1941, published in JCC exhibit 32, PHA14, 1328. Quoted is one sentence—but the most important sentence—from this dispatch. The Army Pearl Harbor Board referred to this message (and a similar dispatch to General MacArthur in the Philippines) as a “Do-Don’t Message.”
  1. CNO dispatch 290110 (of November 1941) with CinCPac as an information addressee. Published as part of JCC exhibit 37, PHA14, p. 1407. (0110 GMT on 29 November was 1440 on 28 November on Oahu.)
  1. Reminiscences, by General of the Army Douglas MacArthur, McGraw-Hill Book Company, New York,

1964, p. 113. The overt act against the Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor would not have the same effect on the people of the Philippines.

See also Reports of General MacArthur: The Campaigns of MacArthur in the Pacific, Volume 1, Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C., 1966 (p. 6): “The Japanese strike against the Philippines on 8 December [Philippine date] was anticipated by General MacArthur several days in advance….(emphasis added).”

The Commander in Chief of the Asiatic Fleet in Manila, Admiral Thomas C. Hart, noted in his diary on the night of 7 December 1941 [Philippine date]: “`Guess there is a war just around the corner, but I think I’ll go to a movie.’” Diary entry of Admiral Thomas C. Hart, quoted in A Different Kind of Victory: A Biography of Admiral Thomas C. Hart, by James Leutze, Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, MD, 1981, pp. 228-229. (This is the same Admiral Hart who, in 1944, conducted the Hart Inquiry into Pearl Harbor for the Secretary of the Navy.)

  1. At 0342, 7 December 1941, USS Condor (AMc 14) nearly collided with a midget submarine “traveling at periscope depth not far from the Pearl Harbor entrance buoys.” The two-man sub was about 100 feet dead ahead of Condor at the time of initial sighting. Two other Navy vessels had submarine sightings of their own early that morning. These were the USS Antares (AG-10), and the USS Ward (DD-139). A Navy PBY flying boat also assisted in tracking down one or more of the midgets that had been spotted that morning. Source for the above is United States Submarine Operations in World War II, by Theodore Roscoe, Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, MD, 1949, pp. 5-6.

At 0358, 7 December, USS Condor notified USS Ward of the sighting of the midget sub. At 0651 that same morning, Ward radioed the following report: “We have dropped depth charges on sub operating in defensive sea area.” Ward’s skipper, Lieutenant Commander William W. Outerbridge, followed with a second radio dispatch two minutes later, “We have attacked, fired upon and dropped depth charges upon submarine operating in defensive sea area.” Source for the above is Battle Report: Pearl Harbor to Coral Sea – Prepared from Official Sources, by Commander Walter Karig, USNR, and Lieutenant Welbourn Kelley, USNR, Rinehart and Company, New York, 1944, pp. 6-8, 12-18.

While on the subject of submarines, the Pacific Fleet war plan, WPPac-46 of 25 July 1941, assigned initial tasks to Pacific Fleet submarines. Under Para 2202, item h (PHA17, p. 2578) is stated: “Establish defensive submarine patrols at Wake and Midway.” Para 3242, item 3 (PHA17, p. 2582): “Our submarines will assist in the defense of Midway and Wake, and will habitually operate offensively in enemy waters.” Para 3252 under tasks (see PHA17, p. 2583, and again on p. 2590): “1. Continue patrol of two submarines each at Wake and Midway.” Toward the end of the plan, under Item e, Task Force Seven (undersea Force) (PHA17, p. 2593): (1) Maintain two submarines on patrol at Wake and two at Midway for gaining information and for attack on enemy units approaching those places.”

On the early morning of 7 Dec. 1941 (Hawaiian time), USS Argonaut (SS-166) and USS Trout (SS-202) “were already conducting defensive patrols near Midway Island.,” while USS Tambor (SS-198) and USS Triton (SS-201) were “patrolling off Wake.” (Source: United States Submarine Operations in World War II, p. 8, and JCC exhibit 180, Location of Ships [of the Pacific Fleet] on 7 Dec. 1941, PHA21, pp. 4564, 4565.)

In fairness to Admiral Kimmel and his war plans staff, we should not overlook two additional instructions from the Pacific Fleet war plan WPPac-46, (see PHA17, p. 2597): “(1) Seize every opportunity to damage the enemy, but avoid engaging at a disadvantage. (2) Be alert to detect and destroy enemy mobile forces, particularly raids or expeditions which may be directed at our outlying islands.”

  1. Commandant Fourteenth Naval District’s Operation Plan No. 1-41, 5 December 1941 as published in JCC Exhibit 44, PHA15, pp. 1470-1471, quoted from p. 1470. As published in PHA, this document has been sanitized (see also the following endnote).
  1. Local Base Defense Force Order No. 1, 2 December 1941, signed C.C. Bloch (on this document asCommander, Naval Base Defense Force), see PHA24, pp. 1552-1553. This is published as the final document in the Roberts Commission’s Exhibit No. 33 (Navy Packet No. 2), PHA24, pp. 1471-1553. For the special military map of Oahu and for the “figures explaining the unified grid system for location of positions,” see the pull-out sheets of the Roberts Commission’s Exhibits Illustrations, Items 48 & 49 in PHA25. (Aside from reference to the item numbers the pages in PHA25 are not numbered.)
  1. H.E. Kimmel’s Pacific Fleet Confidential Letter No. 16CL-41, 4 December 1941, PHA24, pp. 1476-1477. Both Com14’s and CinCPac’s “unified grid system” used U.S. Army Position Grids for the Hawaiian Area. This was to assist in radio communications between Army and Navy units involved in air and ground defense of Oahu and the immediate off-shore areas. (Published in Exhibit No. 33 (Navy Packet No. 2), Roberts Commission.
  1. LtCol. George W. Bicknell’s Seizure and Detention Plan (Japanese), 21 November 1941, provided to the Clausen Investigation, PHA35, pp. 287-288. Bicknell, head of the Hawaiian Department’s contact office in Honolulu, was a cryptanalyst in World War I.
  1. This so-called “Wilkinson telegram” was sent by Gerald H. Wilkinson, a British intelligence agent working in Manila. As furnished to the Clausen Investigation, see PHA35, pp. 42, 203. This shows that it was “received from Manila night of Dec. 3, 1943.” Both copies of this telegram show they were “Received from Manila Night of Dec. 3, 1941.” See also the Clausen Investigation’s confidential memos to LtCol. Henry C. Clausen from John E. Russell, of 10 April 1945, President, Theo. H. Davies & Co., and Harry L. Dawson and J.E. Russell of 16 April 1945, PHA35, p. 42. Copies of this telegram were furnished to Mayfield, Bicknell, and Shivers.

Lieutenant Colonel Clausen testified before the JCC in February 1946. Here is part of what he said about this particular message: “To me the most suspicious circumstance of a winds code intercept coming in about the time that Captain Safford said was a document that I saw in Hawaii, which was dated 3 December, and which gave a highly reliable source. If you knew a winds code set-up, this would flag your mind. It said, `War with Britain; war with America,’ and `Peace with Russia.’ Now, when I saw that I thought, `There is the winds code.’” (Former LtCol. Henry C. Clausen, JCC testimony, 12 February 1946, PHA09, p. 4335.) In 1944, then Major Clausen served as assistant recorder of the Army Pearl Harbor Board.

A safe assumption can be made as to the time, date and frequency the winds execute message was initially broadcast. Com16 dispatch 011422 (of Dec. 1941) provides the following information: In closing its news broadcast at 1700, 1 December (Tokyo time) Radio station JVJ stated the following: “All listeners be sure and listen at zero seven zero zero [0700] and zero seven thirty [0730] tomorrow morning since there may be important news. Suggest frequencies seven three two seven [7327], nine four three zero [9430], and one two two seven five [12275].” Tokyo times used in this plain language Japanese news broadcast. (See JCC Exhibit 142, PHA18, p. 3304.)

Transmission of the winds execute message was based on the Emperor’s decision for war with the U.S., Britain and the NEI made at 1400, 2 December 1941, Tokyo time. The information given so brilliantly by Captain Safford to various investigations was intended to lead the investigations away from understanding the basis of the winds execute message.

  1. Climb Mount Niitaka intercept initially broadcast by CinC Combined Fleet at 1500, 2 December 1941

(Tokyo time). Broadcast on frequency 4155. Intercepted by Station HYPO at 2100, GMT, 2 Dec. 1941. A sanitized version of this intercept was declassified per EO 12065 on 1 June 1979. See SRN-115376.

In his JCC testimony of 17 & 19 November 1945, the then Director of Naval Intelligence, Rear Admiral Thomas B. Inglis stated that Climb Mount Niitaka was broadcast on 6 Dec. 1941 (Tokyo time), see PHA01, pp. 185, 190, 221. Admiral Inglis said that he did not know what time of day this message was broadcast,

In his JCC testimony of 18 February 1946, Captain Layton said (see PHA10, p. 4906): “I am of the opinion that `Climb Mount Niitaka’ or any other such code phrase, was never transmitted.” Layton claimed that radio silence had been used “both ways” between the Kido Butai and the Combined Fleet (in its communications with the Nagumo force). On p. 4908 of PHA10, Layton said, “…it is my understanding that in that code, or hidden word message `Climb Mount Niitaka,’ they used plain language….”

OPNAV 031855, 3 Dec. 1941, to CinCAF, Com16, CinCPac, Com14 (see JCC Exhibit 37, p. 1408): “Circular twenty four forty four [2444] from Tokyo [of] 1 December ordered London; Hongkong; Singapore and Manila to destroy Purple machine. Batavia machine already sent to Tokyo. December second Washington also directed [to] destroy Purple. All but one copy of other systems. And all secret documents (emphasis added)….” (1855 GMT on 3 Dec. 1941 was 1355 in Washington, D.C., and 0825, Hawaiian time, 3 Dec. 1941.)

A CinCPac routing slip dated 5 Dec. 1941, Subject: CSP 1230, 1 copy, Reg. No. 3; ECM Key List No. 49, notes the arrival on Oahu of a new cryptographic system. The handwritten note on this document by Lieutenant Walter J. East of the CinCPac staff reads: “11 [CinCPac Operations Officer, Capt. W.S. DeLany]. This is a highly secure system held only by the Navy Department and CinCPac, thereby insuring absolute administrative privacy (underlined in original). Respectfully, E.” National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, MD, declassification authority NND 745002.

A HYPO intercept operator, Lieutenant Commander Elliott E. Okins, wrote after the war: “Forewarned as above, I, for one, was not surprised to see the neat little planes with the red circles about 0750 on 7 December 1941.” From Okins “A Personal Account of ComInt, Part V,” page 3 of 11, RG38, Series 370, R33 C13 S2-3, papers of the Naval Security Group, Crane, Indiana, Box 10, National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), College Park, MD. (As with other oral histories from NSG or NSA, this document is stamped “Handle via ComInt Channels Only.” Declassification authority: 003002.

  1. A few examples from Magic diplomatic intercepts: Tokyo to Washington #844, 28 Nov. 1941 (PHA12, p. 195): “…The United States has gone ahead and presented his humiliating proposal….Therefore, with a report of the views of the Imperial Government on this American proposal which I will send you in two or three days, the negotiations will be de facto ruptured. This is inevitable” (emphasis added). Decoded & translated in the War Department, 28 Nov. 1941. Hsinking to Tokyo #781, 28 Nov. 1941 (PHA12, p. 198): “I Policy. On the outbreak of war with England and the United States, after you have at the appropriate time gathered all these nationals together, they are to be returned each to his own homeland at as early a date as possible….until this return can be arranged, they are to be interned in places of concentration in Manchukuo….” Decoded & translated in the War Department, 2 December 1941. (This long intercept concerns high government policy. As published in Part 12 of PHA, it shows it was sent from Hsinking to Tokyo. It’s more likely it was sent from Tokyo to Hsinking.)

(Ambassador Oshima’s) Berlin to Tokyo #1393, 29 Nov. 1941 (PHA, 200-202, quoted from Part 3, p. 202): Foreign Minister Ribbentrop to Ambassador Oshima: “`Should Japan become engaged in a war against the United States Germany, of course, would join the war immediately. There is absolutely no possibility of Germany’s entering into a separate peace with the United States under such circumstances. The Fuhrer is determined on that point….`” Decoded & translated in the Navy Department, 1 December 1941.

Tokyo to Berlin #985, 30 Nov. 1941 (Part 1 of 3) (PHA12, p. 204): “…Say very secretly to them that there is extreme danger that war may suddenly break out between the Anglo-Saxon nations and Japan through some clash of arms and add that the time of the breaking out of this war may come quicker than anyone dreams” (emphasis added). Decoded & translated in the War Department, 1 December 1941.

Tokyo to Washington, Circular #2436, 1 Dec. 1941 (PHA12, pp. 208-209): “When you are faced with the necessity of destroying codes, get in touch with the Naval Attache’s office there and make use of chemicals they have on hand for this purpose. The Attache should have been advised by the Navy Minister regarding this” (emphasis added). Decoded & translated in the Navy Department, 1 December 1941.

Tokyo to Washington #896, 5 Dec. 1941 (PHA12, p. 234): “Will you please have Terasaki, Takagi, Ando, Yamamoto and others leave by plane within the next couple of days.” Decoded & translated in the Navy Department, 6 December 1941.

  1. The diary of Secretary of War Stimson quotes a conversation he had with Secretary Hull on 27 November. According to the Stimson diary: “The first thing in the morning I called up Hull to find out what his finale had been with the Japanese—whether he had handed them the new proposal which we passed on 2 or 3 days ago or whether, as he suggested yesterday he would, he broke the whole matter off. He told me now that he had broken the whole matter off. As he put it, `I have washed my hands of it and it is now in the hands of you and Knox—the Army and the Navy.’” Stimson diary entry of 27 November 1941, published with Secretary Stimson’s prepared statement to the JCC on Pearl Harbor, PHA11, pp. 5434-5435. (Stimson’s entire statement covers PHA11, pp. 5416-5463.)

A memorandum Admiral Stark wrote to Secretary Hull on 8 October 1941 reads, in part: “It has long been my opinion that Germany cannot be defeated unless the United States is wholeheartedly in the war and makes a strong military and naval effort wherever strategy dictates. It would be very desirable to enter the war under circumstances in which Germany were the aggressor and in which case Japan might then be able to remain neutral. However, on the whole, it is my opinion that the United States should enter the war against Germany as soon as possible, even if hostilities with Japan must be accepted.” Memo published in JCC Exhibit 106, PHA16, pp. 2216-2218, quoted from p. 2217. On 27 October 1941 a copy of the CNO’s memo to Secretary Hull was forwarded to Admiral Kimmel, see Commander Charles Wellborn, Jr.’s note to Admiral Kimmel of 27 Oct, PHA16, p. 2216.

Admiral Stark’s Memorandum for the Secretary [of the Navy] of 12 November 1940, better known as the Plan Dog Memo, supports Admiral Stark’s opinion to Secretary Hull eleven months later. President Roosevelt was furnished with both the draft copy of the Plan Dog Memo of 4 Nov. 1940, and the final 26-page version of Plan Dog eight days later. 12 November 1940 was the CNO’s 60th birthday.

  1. In addition to being publisher of the Honolulu Advertiser, Lorrin Thurston also managed Honolulu radio station KGU. Secret Missions: The Story of an Intelligence Officer, by Rear Admiral Ellis M. Zacharias, USN (Ret.), G.P. Putnam’s Sons, New York, 1946, p. 235.
  1. These two headlines were published on the front page of the Sunday, 30 November 1941 edition of the Honolulu Advertiser.

The Advertiser’s Sunday Magazine section of 7 December 1941’s lead article is titled Aircraft Carrier: Hard hitting weapon for Uncle Sam in the Pacific. Prophetically, this article reads in part: “By sea and by air, the navy is in fighting trim. Carrier-based aviation, which has undergone wide development in tactical scope and strategic conception, is destined to play a major role when the signal comes. Here is the story of the mighty carrier, with photographs of operations taken in Hawaiian waters.”

In the fall of 1941, Lorrin Thurston’s Honolulu Advertiser published a series of articles written by one of their staff members who had been taken aboard Captain Zacharias’s USS Salt Lake City.

  1. Roberts Commission testimony of Captain Ellis M. Zacharias, Thursday, 8 January 1942, PHA23, p. 1019.
  1. Humanity was very well served because of Pearl Harbor. Less than ten years after America’s entry into the Second World War, Winston Churchill wrote that as a result of Pearl Harbor “we had won after all!”

The study of Pearl Harbor has done for this writer what it did for Mr. Churchill: “Being saturated and satiated with emotion and sensation, I went to bed and slept the sleep of the saved and thankful.”

Humanity was saved because of Pearl Harbor and the unification of the American people.

Winston S. Churchill, The Second World War: The Grand Alliance, Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, MA, 1951, Chapter 12, “Pearl Harbour!, see pp. 604-624, quoted from pp. 606, 607, 608.

  1. In a 4 August 1995 letter from Rear Admiral William C. Mott to this writer, Admiral Mott stated the following: “That is why none of the books about Pearl Harbor can qualify as history, most especially the latest one by Ned Beach. He is wrong on his facts and shades events to make his case to relieve Kimmel and Short of responsibility” (underlined in original). (In 1941 then Lieutenant Mott was assigned to the Office of Naval Intelligence, Navy Department. He frequently delivered Japanese intercepts to high officials in the Navy Department and to President Roosevelt. In 1942 Mott was assigned duty in the White House “map room.”)

In response to a question from Representative Bertrand W. Gearhart during his testimony before the JCC on 14 February 1946, former Lieutenant Colonel Henry C. Clausen stated, in part, the following (PHA09, pp. 4478-4479): “…I don’t agree; in other words, I don’t think that is the big mystery of Pearl Harbor at all. The big mystery—there are some big highlights. Query: What information did Washington have? Query: What did Washington do about it? Another question: What information did Hawaii have? Another question: What did Hawaii do about it? I mean, those are basic big questions. Those are the things I had in mind.” Army and Navy witnesses, especially those involved in the handling of Magic and Ultra, had all taken oaths of secrecy related to the handling of this material. As assistant recorder of the Army Pearl Harbor Board in 1944, and as officer tasked with conducting the Clausen Investigation into Pearl Harbor by Secretary of War Stimson, Clausen himself was sworn under oath.

As Clausen remarked to Representative Frank B. Keefe near the end of his testimony, he stated (see PHA09, p. 4494): “You said something very true there. There were a lot of inconsistencies and conflictions in this thing.” This conclusion is further supported in one of the volumes of the Army’s official history of the period, see United States Army in World War II: The Technical Services: The Signal Corps: The Emergency (to December 1941), by Dulany Terrett, Office of the Chief of Military History, Department of the Army, Washington, D.C., 1956 (see p. 301, n 67): “Up to within ten years of the events of December 7-8, 1941, no historian had undertaken the major analysis of the Pearl Harbor Attack [Hearings] which that enthrallingly inconsistent record invited. However, almost universal interest had produced a multitude of studies on a more restricted scale.”

What may be the finest explanation of what the serious researcher into Pearl Harbor is dealing with, is, once again, stated in the 13 February 1946 JCC testimony of Henry C. Clausen (see PHA09, p. 4431): “….it is very unfair to take the testimony of a man who has not been authorized to reveal Magic information and say that he testified so and so before so and so. Now, as I understand it, the then Colonel Fielder [G-2, Hawaiian epartment] was not authorized when he testified before the Grunert [Army Pearl Harbor] Board to testify concerning Magic, nor when he testified before Justice Roberts. Now, therefore, you have to be considerate and appreciate that fact….with respect to certain subjects that you may cover, that if those subjects are such that they could not testify fully before the Boards, that you must make allowance for the fact that they were bound by oath not to reveal it to a soul….I never said that anybody did not tell the truth. I think every single person that testified anywhere concerning Pearl Harbor told the truth as he then saw it. Now, you cannot say that when he is under oath not to reveal things like [Major] General [Sherman] Miles [G-2 of the Army in 1941], that he did not tell the truth. You cannot gag him with one hand and say, `Oh, you did not say that to the Board.’”

One will find some major inconsistencies between Henry C. Clausen’s 1946 testimony to the JCC and what is stated in Pearl Harbor: Final Judgement, by Henry C. Clausen and Bruce Lee, published in 1992. Clausen’s coauthor with Pearl Harbor: Final Judgement, Bruce Lee, is the same Bruce Lee who edited Gordon W. Prange’s At Dawn We Slept: The Untold Story of Pearl Harbor (1981), and Rear Admiral Layton’s “And I Was There”: Pearl Harbor and Midway – Breaking the Secrets (1985). In Mr. Lee’s last book, Marching Orders: The Untold Story of World War II, which he himself wrote, published in 1995, Lee states in the foreword (see pp. ix-x): “This means there may be future additions or corrections to the material presented in this book, especially in reference to Pearl Harbor….”

Page 230 of Marching Orders hints at what was known to U.S. intelligence personnel in November 1940: “The [War Department] analysts refer back to November 1940, when a Col. Kenryo Sato, who was then in Indochina handling negotiations with the French, sent a message to Tokyo arguing vigorously for the strategy that Japan later adopted: i.e., the occupation of Indochina, followed by measures to neutralize the U.S. fleet, and finally an invasion of the whole South Seas area.” (Lee found the reference to Sato’s message in the Magic Diplomatic Summary of 5 July 1944 (see SRS-1354).)

A memorandum from General George C. Marshall for President Roosevelt of 15 July 1941 relates to a similar matter involving an intercept from the Chief of the Naval General Staff in Tokyo to the Naval Attache in Japan’s Washington embassy. General Marshall’s memo reads in part: “A long `magic’ has just been decoded but has not yet been put in shape for distribution. It covers the following: Japan, through Vichy, is issuing an ultimatum to Indo-China for the occupation of eight air bases and two naval ports (Camranh and Saigon) for the avowed reason of preventing further encirclement by Britain and the United States….The Chief of Naval Operations [sic] in Japan to the Naval Attache in Washington states that on account of the shortage of ship tonnage in the Sea of Japan, the requirements by the Army, the inability to charter ships at the present time, and the fact that many foreign ships no longer make Japan a port of call, the following re-scheduling of shipping will be effected. Japanese ships will be removed from the run between the Philippines and the east United States coast….” (A photostatic copy of General Marshall’s memo for President Roosevelt of 15 July 1941 is published as one of the items in JCC exhibit 179, see PHA20, p. 4363.)

Nowhere in the Pearl Harbor Attack Hearings, or, for that matter, in any book or article known to this writer is it claimed that Admiral Kimmel and General Short had the same intelligence and the same war plans that were available to high-level officials in Washington, D.C.

The Report of the Joint Committee on the Investigation of the Pearl Harbor Attack contains the following statement in its minority report (see Report, p. 515): “No person has any intellectual or moral right to pass judgment on the question of responsibility for Pearl Harbor who has not read, compared, studied, and interpreted all of these documents.”

The Japanese raid of 7 December 1941 was not a surprise to high-ranking members of the Army and Navy.

By Mr. Andy McKane