PEARL HARBOR
MOTHER OF ALL CONSPIRACIES
"...everything that the Japanese were planning to do was
known to the United States..." ARMY BOARD, 1944
President FDR enticed the attack, knew about it in advance and
covered up his failure to warn the Hawaiian commanders. FDR
needed the attack to get US involved with the war in Europe,
since the public and Congress were overwhelmingly against
entering the war.
BACKGROUND
- 1904 - The Japanese destroyed the Russian navy in a
surprise attack in undeclared war.
- 1932 - In The Grand Joint Army Navy Exercises the
attacker, Admiral Yarnell, attacked with 152 planes a
half-hour before dawn 40 miles NE of Kahuku Point and
caught the defenders of Pearl Harbor completely by
surprise. It was a Sunday.
- 1938 - Admiral Ernst King led a carrier-born airstrike
from the USS Saratoga successfully against Pearl Harbor
in another exercise.
- October 1939 - Tyler Kent, an American code clerk in
London exposed coded messages concerning FDR's attempts
to oust Prime Minister Chamberlain so FDR could involve
the US in an all-out war with Hitler.
- 1940 - FDR ordered the fleet transferred from the West
Coast to its exposed position in Hawaii and ordered the
fleet remain stationed at Pearl Harbor over complaints by
its commander Admiral Richardson that there was
inadequate protection from air attack and no protection
from torpedo attack. Richardson felt so strongly that he
twice disobeyed orders to berth his fleet there and he
raised the issue personally with FDR in October and he
was soon after replaced. His successor, Admiral Kimmel,
also brought up the same issues with FDR in June 1941.
- 11 November 1940 - 21 aged British planes destroyed the
Italian fleet, including 3 battleships, at their homeport
in the harbor of Taranto in Southern Italy by using
technically innovative shallow-draft torpedoes.
- 11 February 1941 - FDR proposed sacrificing a large fleet
at Manila to get into war. Navy Chief Stark objected to
FDR: "Particularly do I recall your remark in a
previous conference when Mr. Hull suggested (more forces
to Manila) and the question arose as to getting them out
and your 100% reply, from my standpoint, was that you
might not mind losing one or two cruisers..." Now
FDR was proposing to sac 6 cruisers and 2 carriers.
(Beard THE COMING OF WAR, p 424)
- March 1941 - FDR sold munitions and convoyed them to
belligerents in Europe -- both acts of war and both
violations of international law -- the Lend-Lease Act.
- 23 Jun 1941 - Advisor Harold Ickes wrote to FDR a memo
the day after Germany invaded the Soviet Union,
"There might develop from the embargoing of oil to
Japan such a situation as would make it not only possible
but easy to get into this war in an effective way. And if
we should thus indirectly be brought in, we would avoid
the criticism that we had gone in as an ally of
communistic Russia." FDR was pleased with Admiral
Richmond Turner's report read July 22: "It is
generally believed that shutting off the American supply
of petroleum will lead promptly to the invasion of
Netherland East Indies...it seems certain she would also
include military action against the Philippine Islands,
which would immediately involve us in a Pacific
war." On July 24 FDR told the Volunteer
Participation Committee, "If we had cut off the
oil off, they probably would have gone down to the Dutch
East Indies a year ago, and you would have had war."
The next day FDR froze all Japanese assets in US cutting
off their main supply of oil and forcing them into war
with the US. Intelligence information was withheld from
Hawaii from this point forward.
- 14 August - After the Atlantic Conference, Churchill
noted the "astonishing depth of Roosevelt's intense
desire for war." Churchill cabled his cabinet
"(FDR) obviously was very determined that they
should come in.".
- 18 October - diary entry by Secretary of Interior Harold
Ickes: "For a long time I have believed that our
best entrance into the war would be by way of
Japan."
CODES
- Purple Code - the top diplomatic code of the
Japanese, encoded by a machine that used automatic
telephone switches to separately and differently encypher
each character sent. It was cracked by the Army Signal
Intelligence Service (331 men).
- J-19 was the Japanese diplomatic code. It was a
high-grade columnar code, but it was cracked.
- PA-K2 was a simpler Japanese diplomatic
checkerboard code which they switched to after they
destroyed their J-19 code manuals on December 2, 1941. It
was cracked.
- Red Machine code was a relatively old Japanese
diplomatic code which used Japan's first rotor machine,
based on the German Enigma machine. Also
cracked.
- JN-25 - The Japanese Fleet's Cryptographic System,
a.k.a. 5 number code (Sample).
JN stands for Japanese Navy, introduced 1 June 1939. This
was a very simple old-type code book system used by the
American Army and Navy in 1898 and abandoned in 1917
because it was insecure. It has a dictionary of 33,333
words and phrases, each given as a five figure number.
These were added to random numbers contained in a second
code book. The dictionary was only changed once before PH
on Dec 1, 1940, to version B but the random book was
changed every 3 to 6 months. The Japanese blundered away
the code when they introduced JN25-B by continuing to
use, for 2 months, random table books that had been
solved by the Allies. That was the equivalent of handing
over the JN-25B codebook. It was child's play for the
Navy group OP-20-G (738 men whose primary responsibility
was Japanese naval codes) to reconstruct the exposed
dictionary. We recovered the whole thing immediately - in
1994 the NSA published that JN-25B was completely cracked
in December 1940. In January 1941 the US gave Britain two
JN-25B code books with keys and techniques for
deciphering. The entire Pearl Harbor scheme was laid out
in this code. Australia, Great Britain, and the
Netherlands also had completely cracked and monitored
this code. The official US Navy statement on JN-25B is
the NAVAL SECURITY GROUP HISTORY TO WORLD WAR II prepared
by Captain J. Holtwick in June 1971 who quotes Captain
Safford, the chief of OP-20-G, on page 398: "By 1
December 1941 we had the code solved to a readable
extent." Churchill wrote "From the end of 1940
the Americans had pierced the vital Japanese ciphers, and
were decoding large numbers of their military and
diplomatic telegrams."(GRAND ALLIANCE p 598) Safford
reported that during 1941 "The Navy COMINT team did
a thorough job on the Japanese Navy with no help from the
Army." "A large (JN-25) code might contain as
many as 55,000 values. But in actual practice, such was
the stereotyped nature of the text, 7,000 recoveries
permitted almost complete decryption, and many pattern
messages could be read practically entire with as few as
1500 meanings." (HISTORY OF OP-20-GYP-1, NSA).
In
1979 the NSA released 2,413 JN-25 orders translated in
1945-46 of the 26,581 intercepted by US between Sept 1
and Dec 4, 1941. A secret 1946 Navy report concluded that
188 of these orders
had clearly indicated Pearl Harbor was the target of
the Japanese attack. Of the over thousand radio messages
sent by Tokyo to the attack fleet, only 20 are in the
National Archives. All messages to the attack fleet were
sent several times, at least one message was sent every
odd hour of the day and each had a special serial number.
Starting in early November 1941 when the attack fleet
assembled in the Kurile Islands and started receiving
radio messages, OP-20-G stayed open 24 hours a day and
the "First Team" of codebreakers worked on
JN-25. In November and early December 1941, OP-20-G spent
85 percent of its effort reading Japanese Navy traffic,
12 percent on Japanese diplomatic traffic and 3 percent
on German naval codes. FDR was personally briefed twice a
day on JN-25 traffic by his aide, Captain John Beardell,
and demanded to see the original raw messages in English.
The US Government refuses to identify or declassify any
pre-Dec 7, 1941 decrypts of JN-25 on the basis of
national security, a half-century after the war.
- AD or Administrative Code wrongly called Admiralty
Code was a four character code super-enciphered by
transposition. No important messages were sent in this
code. A secret memo reported on page 547 of Layton's AND
I WAS THERE says that it was partially readable. Recall
Safford's quote: "We found we could always trust the
Japanese themselves to do something that would assist us
in the solutions of their systems. They never failed
us!"
- Magic - the security designation given to all
decoded Japanese diplomatic messages. It's hard not to
conclude with historians like Charles Bateson that
"Magic standing alone points so irresistibly to the
Pearl Harbor attack that it is inconceivable anybody
could have failed to forecast the Japanese move."
The NSA reached the same conclusion in 1955.
- Ultra - the security designation for military
codes. No Pearl Harbor investigation discussed Ultra even
though on June 7, 1942 the Chicago Tribune and six other
newspapers betrayed the fact we were reading JN-25.
WARNINGS
Warnings do no harm and might do inexpressible good
- 27 January 1941, Dr. Ricardo Shreiber, the Peruvian envoy
in Tokyo told Max Bishop, third secretary of the US
embassy that he had just learned from his intelligence
sources that there was a war plan involving a surprise
attack on Pearl Harbor. This information was sent to the
State Department and Naval Intelligence and to Admiral
Kimmel at Hawaii.
- 31 March 1941 - A Navy report by Bellinger and Martin
predicted that if Japan made war on the US, they would
strike Pearl Harbor without warning at dawn with aircraft
from a maximum of 6 carriers. For years Navy planners had
assumed that Japan, on the outbreak of war, would strike
the American fleet wherever it was. Logically, Japan
couldn't engage in any major operation with the American
fleet on its flank. The strategic options for the
Japanese were not unlimited.
- 10 August 1941, the top British agent, code named
"Tricycle", Dusko Popov, told the FBI of the
planned attack on Pearl Harbor and that it would be soon.
The FBI told him that his information was "too
precise, too complete to be believed. The questionnaire
plus the other information you brought spell out in
detail exactly where, when, how, and by whom we are to be
attacked. If anything, it sounds like a trap." He
also reported that a senior Japanese naval person had
gone to Taranto to collect all secret data on the attack
there and that it was of utmost importance to them. The
information was given to Naval IQ.
- Early in the Fall, Kilsoo Haan, an agent for the
Sino-Korean People's League, told Eric Severeid of CBS
that the Korean underground in Korea and Japan had
positive proof that the Japanese were going to attack
Pearl Harbor before Christmas. Among other things, one
Korean had actually seen the plans. In late October, Haan
finally convinced US Senator Guy Gillette that the
Japanese were planning to attack in December or January.
Gillette alerted the State Department, Army and Navy
Intelligence and FDR personally.
- 24 September 1941, the " bomb plot" message in
J-19 code from Japan Naval Intelligence to Japan' s
consul general in Honolulu requesting grid of exact
locations of ships pinpointed for the benefit of
bombardiers and torpedo pilots was deciphered. There was
no reason to know the EXACT location of ships in harbor,
unless to attack them - it was a dead giveaway. Chief of
War Plans Turner and Chief of Naval Operations Stark
repeatedly kept it and warnings based on it prepared by
Safford and others from being passed to Hawaii. The chief
of Naval Intelligence Captain Kirk was replaced because
he insisted on warning HI. It was lack of information
like this that lead to the exoneration of the Hawaii
commanders and the blaming of Washington for
unpreparedness for the attack by the Army Board and Navy
Court. At no time did the Japanese ever ask for a similar
bomb plot for any other American military installation.
Why the Roosevelt administration allowed flagrant
Japanese spying on PH has never been explained, but they
blocked 2 Congressional investigations in the fall of
1941 to allow it to continue. The bomb plots were
addressed to "Chief of 3rd Bureau, Naval General
Staff", marked Secret Intelligence message,
and given special serial numbers, so their significance
couldn't be missed. There were about 95 ships in port.
The text was:
"Strictly secret.
"Henceforth, we would like to have you make reports concerning vessels
along the following lines insofar as possible:
"1. The waters (of Pearl Harbor) are to be divided roughly into five
subareas (We have no objections to your abbreviating as much as you
like.)
"Area A. Waters between Ford Island and the Arsenal.
"Area B. Waters adjacent to the Island south and west of Ford Island.
(This area is on the opposite side of the Island from Area A.)
"Area C. East Loch.
"Area D. Middle Loch.
"Area E. West Loch and the communication water routes.
"2. With regard to warships and aircraft carriers, we would like to have
you report on those at anchor (these are not so important) tied up at
wharves, buoys and in docks. (Designate types and classes briefly. If
possible we would like to have you make mention of the fact when
there are two or more vessels along side the same wharf.)"
- Simple traffic analysis of the accelerated frequency of
messages from various Japanese consuls gave a another
identification of war preparations, from Aug-Dec there
were 6 messages from Seattle, 18 from Panama, 55 from
Manila and 68 from Hawaii.
- Oct. - Soviet top spy Richard Sorge, the greatest spy in
history, informed Kremlin that Pearl Harbor would be
attacked within 60 days. Moscow informed him that this
was passed to the US. The most interesting part of the
story is that all references to Pearl Harbor in the War
Department's copy of Sorge's 32,000 word confession to
the Japanese were deleted. NY Daily News, 17 May 1951.
- 16 Oct. - FDR grossly humiliated Japan's Ambassador and
refused to meet with Premier Konoye to engineer the war
party, lead by General Tojo, into power in Japan.
- 1 Nov. - Order to continue drills against anchored
capital ships to prepare to "ambush and completely
destroy the US enemy." The message included
references to armor-piercing bombs and 'near surface
torpedoes.'
- 13 Nov. - The German Ambassador to US, Dr. Thomsen an
anti-Nazi, told OSS that Pearl Harbor would be attacked.
- 14 Nov. - Japanese Merchant Marine was alerted that
wartime recognition signals would be in effect Dec 1.
- 22 Nov. - Tokyo said to Ambassador Nomura in Washington
about extending the deadline for negotiations to November
29: "...this time we mean it, that the deadline
absolutely cannot be changed. After that things are
automatically going to happen."
- CIA Director Allen Dulles told people that US was warned
in mid-November that the Japanese Fleet had sailed east
past Tokyo Bay and was going to attack Pearl Harbor. FOIA
#F-1998-00977.
- 25 Nov. - British decrypted the Winds setup message sent
Nov. 19. The US decoded it Nov. 28. It was a J-19 Code
message that there would be an attack and that the signal
would come over Radio Tokyo as a weather report - rain
meaning war, east (Higashi) meaning US.
- 25 Nov. - Secretary of War Stimson noted in his diary
"FDR stated that we were likely to be attacked
perhaps as soon as next Monday." FDR asked:
"the question was how we should maneuver them into
the position of firing the first shot without too much
danger to ourselves. 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."
- 25 Nov. - Navy Department ordered all US trans-Pacific
shipping to take the southern route.
- 25 Nov. - Yamamoto gave this order in JN-25: " (a)
The task force, keeping its movements strictly secret and
maintaining close guard against submarines and aircraft,
shall advance into Hawaiian waters and upon the very
opening of hostilities, shall attack the main force of
the United States Fleet in Hawaii and deal it a mortal
blow. The raid is planned for dawn on X-day -- exact date
to be given by later order. (b) Should the negotiations
with the US prove successful, the task force shall hold
itself in readiness forthwith to return and reassemble.
(c) The task force will move out of Hitokappu Wan on the
morning of 26 November and advance to the standing-by
position on the afternoon of 4 December and speedily
complete refueling." ( Order
to sail - scan from the PHA Congressional Hearings
Report, vol 1 p 180, transcript p 437-8) This was decoded
by the British on November 25 and the Dutch on November
27. When it was decoded by the US is a national secret,
however, War Department G-2 advised the Chief of Staff on
November 26 that the Office of Naval Intelligence
reported the concentration of units of the Japanese fleet
at an unknown port ready for offensive action.
- 26 Nov. 3 A.M. - Churchill sent an urgent secret message
to FDR, probably containing above message. This message
caused the greatest agitation in DC. Of Churchill's
voluminous correspondence with FDR, this is the only
message that has not been released (on the grounds that
it would damage national security). Stark testified that
"On November 26 there was received specific evidence
of the Japanese intention to wage offensive war against
Great Britain and the United States." C.I.A.
Director William Casey, who was in the OSS in 1941, in
his book THE SECRET WAR AGAINST HITLER, p 7, wrote
"The British had sent word that a Japanese fleet was
steaming east toward Hawaii." Washington, in an
order of Nov 26, ordered both US aircraft carriers, the
Enterprise and the Lexington out of Pearl Harbor "as
soon as possible". This order included stripping
Pearl of 50 planes or 40 percent of its already
inadequate fighter protection. In response to Churchill's
message, FDR secretly cabled him that afternoon:
"Negotiations off. Services expect action within two
weeks." Note that the only way FDR could have linked
negotiations with service action, let alone have known
the timing of the action, was if he had the message to
sail. In other words, the only service action contingent
on negotiations was Pearl Harbor.
- 26 Nov. - the "most fateful document " was Hull's
ultimatum that Japan must withdraw from Indochina and
all China. FDR's Ambassador to Japan called this
"The document that touched the button that started
the war."
- 27 Nov. - Secretary of War Stimson sent a confused and
confusing hostile
action possible or DO-DON'T warning. The Navy Court
found this message directed attention away from Pearl
Harbor, rather than toward it. A companion message was
sent to Hawaii not to excite suspicions of the population
by taking unusual precautions which indicated lowest
level of alert (this level was then approved by
Washington). It repeated, no less than three times as a
direct instruction of the President, "The US desires
that Japan commit the first overt act Period." It
was unusual that FDR directed this warning, a routine
matter, to Hawaii which is proof positive that he knew
that IQ was denied Hawaii and he expected denial to
continue unless he ordered otherwise. If FDR were in the
dark, he would have expected the warning to be
automatically sent. A simple question--why was FDR
expecting a Japanese overt act at Pearl Harbor?
- 29 Nov.- Hull sat in Layfayette Park across from the
White House with ace United Press reporter Joe Leib and
showed him a message stating that Pearl Harbor would be
attacked on December 7. This could well have been the
Nov. 26 message from Churchill.
- 29 Nov. - U.S. made a telephone intercept of an uncoded
conversation in which
"an Embassy functionary asked 'Tell me, what
zero hour is. Otherwise, I won't be able to carry on
diplomacy.' The voice from Tokyo said softly, 'Well
then, I will tell you. Zero hour is December 8 (Tokyo
time, that is, December 7 Washington time) at Pearl
Harbor'."
- 30 Nov. US Time (or 1 Dec. Tokyo time) - The Japanese
fleet was radioed this Imperial Naval Order (JN-25):
"JAPAN, UNDER THE NECESSITY OF HER SELF-PRESERVATION
AND SELF-DEFENSE, HAS REACHED A POSITION TO DECLARE WAR ON THE UNITED STATES OF
AMERICA." (
Congress Appendix D, p 415). US ally China also
recovered it in plain text from a shot-down Japanese Army
plane near Canton that evening. This caused an emergency
Imperial Conference because they knew the Chinese would
give the information to GB and US. In a related J-19
message the next day, the US translated elaborate
instructions from Japan dealing in precise detail with
the method of interment of American and British nationals
in Asia "on the outbreak of war with England and the
United States"
- 1 Dec. - Office of Naval Intelligence, ONI, Twelfth Naval
District in San Francisco found the missing Japanese
fleet by correlating reports from the four wireless news
services and several shipping companies that they were
getting strange signals west of Hawaii. The Soviet Union
also knew the exact location of the Japanese fleet
because they asked the Japanese in advance to let one of
their ships pass (Layton p 261). This info was most
likely given to them by US because Sorge's spy ring was
rolled up November 14. All long range PBY patrols from
the Aleutians were ordered stopped on Dec 6 to prevent
contact.
- 1 Dec. - Foreign Minister Togo cabled Washington
Ambassador Nomura to continue negotiations "to
prevent the U.S. from becoming unduly suspicious."
- 1 Dec. - The tanker Shiriya, which had been
added to the strike force in an order intercepted Nov 14,
radioed "proceeding to a position 30.00 N, 154.20 E.
Expect to arrive at that point on 3 December." (near
HI) The fact that this message is in the National
Archives destroys the myth that the attack fleet
maintained radio silence. They were not ordered to (Order
820). Serial numbers prove that the Striking Force sent
over 663 radio messages between Nov 16 and Dec 7. On Nov
29 the Hiyei sent one message to the Commander of the 3rd
fleet; on Nov 30 the Akagi sent several messages to its
tankers (Hewitt
Report page 474). From traffic analysis, HI reported
that the carrier force was at sea and in the North. THE
MOST AMAZING FACT is that in reply to that report,
MacArthur's command sent a series of three messages, Nov
26, 29, Dec 2, to HI lying about the location of the
carrier fleet - saying it was in the South China Sea.
This false information, which the NSA calls inexplicable,
was the true reason that HI was caught unawares.
-
- There were a large number of other messages that gave the
location of the Striking Force by alluding to the
Aleutions, the North Pacific and various weather systems
near HI.
- 1 Dec. - FDR cut short his scheduled ten day vacation
after 1 day to meet with Hull and Stark. The result of
this meeting was reported on 2 Dec. by the Washington
Post: "President Roosevelt yesterday assumed direct
command of diplomatic and military moves relating to
Japan." This politically damaging move was necessary
to prevent the mutiny of conspirators.
- 1 Dec. 3:30 P.M. FDR read Foreign Minister Togo's message
to his ambassador to Germany: "Say very secretly to
them that there is extreme danger between Japan &
Anglo-Saxon nations through some clash of arms, add that
the time of this war may come quicker than anyone
dreams." This was in response to extreme German
pressure on November 29 for Japan to strike the US and
promises to join with Japan in war against the US. The
second of its three parts has never been released. The
message says it contains the plan of campaign. This is 1
of only 2 known DIPLOMATIC intercepts that specified PH
as target. It was so interesting, FDR kept a copy.
- 2 Dec. 2200 Tokyo time- Here is a typical JN-25 ships in
harbor report sent to attack fleet, words in parenthesis
were in the original: "Striking Force telegram No.
994. Two battleships (Oklahoma, Nevada), 1 aircraft
carrier (Enterprise) 2 heavy cruisers, 12 destroyers
sailed. The force that sailed on 22 November returned to
port. Ships at anchor Pearl Harbor p.m. 28 November were
6 battleships (2 Maryland class, 2 California class, 2
Pennsylvania class), 1 aircraft carrier (Lexington), 9
heavy cruisers (5 San Fransisco class, 3 Chicago class, 1
Salt Lake class), 5 light cruisers (4 Honolulu class, 1
Omaha class)"
- 2 Dec. - Commander of the Combined Imperial Fleet
Yamamoto signaled the attack fleet Climb
Niitakayama and gave date of attack. Mount Niitaka
was the highest mountain in the Japanese Empire - 13,113
feet.
- 2 Dec. - US translated Togo's "boomerang"
message to all Japanese consulates and embassies to
destroy all codes. The fact that their embassy in
Washington was to keep one code machine was interpreted
to mean that they were going to war with US.
- 2 Dec. - General Hein Ter Poorten, the commander of the
Netherlands East Indies Army gave the Winds setup message
to the US War Department. The Dutch intercept station was
Kamer 14 on Java. The Dutch, British and Americans all
had liaison officers at each others' Far Eastern code
centers and secret radio contact with each other (Dutch
at Kamer 14, Java; British FECB at Hong Kong and
Singapore; and US at Station Cast, Philippines)
throughout 1941. These centers helped each other. The
Australians had a center in Melbourne. A Dutch sub had
visually tracked the attack fleet to the Kurile Islands
in early November and this info was passed to DC, but DC
did not give it to HI.
- 2 Dec - Japanese order No. 902 specified that old JN-25
additive tables version 7 would continue to be used
alongside version 8 when the latter was introduced on
December 4. This means the US read all messages to the
Striking Force through the attack.
- 4 Dec. - In the early hours, Ralph Briggs at the Navy's
East Coast Intercept station, received the "East
Winds, Rain" message, the Winds Execute, which meant
war. He put it on the TWX circuit immediately and called
his commander. This message was deleted from the files.
One of the main coverups of Pearl Harbor was to make this
message disappear. Japanese Dispatch # 7001. In response
to the Winds Execute, the Office of US Naval IQ had all
Far Eastern stations (Hawaii not informed) destroy their
codes and classified documents including the Tokyo
Embassy.
- 4 Dec. - Kilsoo Haan called Maxwell Hamilton at the State
Department and told him that the Korean underground had
information that the Japanese would attack Pearl Harbor
the coming weekend.
- 4 Dec. - The Dutch invoked the ADB agreement when the
Japanese crossed the magic line of 100 East and 10 North.
The US was at war with Japan from this moment but HI (and
public) was not informed.
- 4 Dec. - General Ter Poorten sent all the details of the
Winds Execute command to Colonel Weijerman, the Dutch
military attache' in Washington to pass on to the highest
military circles. Weijerman personally gave it to
Marshall, Chief of Staff of the War Department.
- 4 Dec - US General Thorpe at Java sent four messages
warning of the PH attack. DC ordered him to stop sending
warnings.
- 5 Dec. - All Japanese international shipping had returned
to home port.
- 5 December - In the morning FDR dictated a letter to
Wendell Wilkie for the Australian Prime Minister,
"There is always the Japanese to consider. The
situation is definately serious and there might be an
armed clash at any moment...Perhaps the next four or five
days will decide the matters."
- 5 Dec. - At a Cabinet meeting, Secretary of the Navy Knox
said, "Well, you know Mr. President, we know where
the Japanese fleet is?" "Yes, I know" said
FDR. " I think we ought to tell everybody just how
ticklish the situation is. We have information as Knox
just mentioned...Well, you tell them what it is,
Frank." Knox became very excited and said,
"Well, we have very secret information that the
Japanese fleet is out at sea. Our information is..."
and then a scowling FDR cut him off. (Infamy,
Toland, 1982, ch 14 sec 5)
- 5 Dec. - Washington Star reporter Constantine Brown
quotes a friend in his book The Coming of the
Whirlwind p 291, "This is it! The Japs are
ready to attack. We've broken their code, and we've read
their ORDERS."
- 5 Dec. - Lt. Howard Brown of Station Cast in the
Philippines received urgent request from Washington to
listen for a short message from Tokyo which ended with
the English word "stop". He heard the message
at 11:30 PM Hawaiian time Dec 6. This is the Hidden Word
Code set up in a message of November 27 (e.g. in code,
Roosevelt=Miss Kimiko). The message was: "Relations
between Japan and the following countries are on the
brink of catastrophe: Britain and the United
States."
- 6 December - This 18 November J19 message was translated
by the Army:
"1. The warships at anchor in the Harbor on the 15th
were as I told you in my No.219 on that day. Area A -- A
battleship of the Oklahoma class entered and one tanker
left port. Area C -- 3 warships of the heavy cruiser
class were at anchor.
2. On the 17th the Saratoga was not in harbor. The
carrier Enterprise, or some other vessel was in Area C.
Two heavy cruisers of the Chicago class, one of the
Pensacola class were tied up at docks 'KS'. 4 merchant
vessels were at anchor in area D.
3. At 10:00 A.M. on the morning of the 17th, 8 destroyers
were observed entering the Harbor..." Of course this
information was not passed to HI.
- 6 Dec. - A Dec 2 request from Tokyo to HI for information
about the absence of barrage balloons, anti-torpedo nets
and air recon was translated by the Army.
- 6 Dec. - at 9:30 P.M FDR read the first 13 parts of the
decoded Japanese diplomatic declaration of war and said
"This means war." (Infamy ch 14 sec 7)
What kind of President would do nothing? When he returned
to his 34 dinner guests he said, "The war starts
tomorrow."
- 6 Dec. - the war cabinet: FDR, top advisor Hopkins,
Stimson, Marshall, Secretary of the Navy Knox, with aides
John McCrea and Frank Beatty "deliberately sat
through the night of 6 December 1941 waiting for the Japs
to strike." (Infamy ch 16 sec 2)
- 7 December - A message from the Japanese Consul in
Budapest to Tokyo:
"On the 6th, the American Minister presented to the
Government of this country a British Government
communique to the effect that a state of war would break
out on the 7th." The communique was the Dec 5th war
alert from the British Admiralty. It has been called
"premature" and has disappeared. This triple
priority alert was delivered to FDR personally. The
Mid-East British Air Marshall told Col. Bonner Fellers on
Saturday that he had received a secret signal that
America was coming into the war in 24 hours. Churchill
summarized the message in GRAND ALLIANCE page 601 as
listing the two fleets attacking British targets and
"Other Japanese fleets...also at sea on other
tasks." There only were three other fleets: for
Guam, the Philippines and HI. 2 paragraphs of the alert,
British targets only, are printed in AT DAWN WE SLEPT,
Prange, p 464. There is no innocent purpose for our
government to hide this document.
- 7 December 1941 very early Washington time, there were
two Marines, an emergency special detail, stationed
outside the Japanese Naval Attache's door. 9:30 AM Aides
begged Stark to send a warning to Hawaii. He did not. 10
AM FDR read the 14th part, 11 A.M. FDR read the 15th part
setting the time for the declaration of war to be
delivered to the State Department at 1 PM, about dawn
Pearl Harbor time, and did nothing. Navy Secretary Knox
was given the 15th part at 11:15 A.M. with this note from
the Office of Naval IQ: "This means a sunrise attack
on Pearl Harbor today." Naval IQ also transmitted
this prediction to Hull and about 8 others, including the
White House (PHH pt 36 p.532). At 10:30 AM Bratton
informed Marshall that he had a most important message
(the 15th part) and would bring it to Marshall's quarters
but Marshall said he would take it at his office. At
11:25 Marshall reached his office according to Bratton.
Marshall testified that he had been riding horses that
morning but he was contradicted by Harrison, McCollum,
and Deane. Marshall who had read the first 13 parts by 10
PM the prior night, perjured himself by denying that he
had even received them. Marshall, in the face of his
aides' urgent supplications that he warn Hawaii, made
strange delays including reading and re-reading all of
the 14
Part Message
- (and some parts several times) which took an hour and
refused to use the scrambler phone on his desk, refused
to send a warning by the fast, more secure Navy system
but when informed it would take 30 or 40 minutes by Army
radio to send his watered-down warning, he was satisfied
(that meant the warning wouldn't reach Pearl Harbor until
after the 1 PM Washington time deadline). The warning was
in fact sent commercial without priority identification
and arrived 6 hours late. This message reached all other
addressees, like the Philippines and Canal Zone, in a
timely manner.
- 7 December - 7:55 A.M. Hawaii time AIR RAID PEARL HARBOR.
THIS IS NOT DRILL.
- 7 December - 1:50 P.M. Washington time. Harry Hopkins,
who was the only person with FDR when he received the
news of the attack by telephone from Knox, wrote that FDR
was unsurprised and expressed "great relief."
Eleanor Roosevelt wrote about December 7th in This I
Remember p 233, that FDR became "in a way more
serene." In the NY Times Magazine of October 8, 1944
she wrote: "Dec. 7 was...far from the shock it
proved to the country in general. We had expected
something of the sort for a long time."
- 7 December - 3:00 PM "The (war cabinet) conference
met in not too tense an atmosphere because I think that
all of us believed that in the last analysis the enemy
was Hitler...and that Japan had given us an
opportunity." Harry Hopkins, Dec. 7 Memo (Roosevelt
and Hopkins R Sherwood, p. 431)
- 7 December - 9 hours later, MacArthur's entire air force
was caught by surprise and wiped out in the Philippines
(16 of 17 B-17s destroyed at Clark, 55 fighters out of
141 P-40s lost, 30 other planes lost), making the loss of
the Philippines inevitable. MacArthur had previously
refused a request to recon Japanese activities in Camranh
Bay and Formosa because he claimed he had higher
orders from Washington. He had Magic and JN-25 code
breaking equipment. His reaction to the news of Pearl
Harbor was quite unusual - he read scripture for ten
minutes, refused to meet with his air commander General
Brereton and made other delays. He refused to attack
Japanese forces on Formosa, even under direct orders from
the War Department, or allow the bombers to be moved to
the South islands out of harm's way. MacArthur gave three
conflicting orders that ensured the planes were on the
ground most of the morning. MacArthur used radar tracking
of the Japanese planes at 140, 100, 80, 60, down to 20
miles to time his final order and ensure his planes were
on the ground. Strategically, the destruction of half of
all US heavy bombers in the world was more important than
naval damage in Pearl Harbor. Either MacArthur had
committed the greatest blunder in military history or he
was under orders to allow his forces to be destroyed. If
it were the greatest blunder in history, it is remarkable
how he escaped any reprimand, kept his command and got
his fourth star and Congressional Medal of Honor shortly
later. Prange argued, "How could the President
ensure a successful Japanese attack unless he confided in
the commanders and persuaded them to allow the enemy to
proceed unhindered?"
- 7 December - 8:30 PM, FDR said to his cabinet, "We
have reason to believe that the Germans have told the
Japanese that if Japan declares war, they will too. In
other words, a declaration of war by Japan automatically
brings..." at which point he was interrupted, but
his expectation and focus is clear. Mrs. Frances Perkins,
Secretary of Labor, observed later about FDR: "I had
a deep emotional feeling that something was wrong, that
this situation was not all it appeared to be." Mrs.
Perkins was obsessed by Roosevelt's strange reactions
that night and remarked particularly on the expression he
had:" In other words, there have been times when I
associated that expression with a kind of
evasiveness."
- FDR met with CBS newsman Edward R. Murrow at midnight.
Murrow, who had seen many statesmen in crises, was
surprised at FDR's calm reaction. After chatting about
London, they reviewed the latest news from PH and then
FDR tested Murrow's news instincts with these 2 bizarre
giveaway questions: "Did this surprise you?"
Murrow said yes. FDR: "Maybe you think it didn't
surprise us?" FDR gave the impression that the
attack itself was not unwelcome. This is the same
high-strung FDR that got polio when convicted of perjury;
the same FDR that was bedridden for a month when he
learned Russia was to be attacked; the same FDR who
couldn't eat or drink when he got the Japanese order to
sail.
- 8 December - In a conversation with his speechwriter
Rosenman, FDR "emphasized that Hitler was still the
first target, but he feared that a great many Americans
would insist that we make the war in the Pacific at least
equally important with the war against Hitler."
- Later, Jonathan Daniels, administrative assistant and
press secretary to FDR said, "The blow was heavier
than he had hoped it would necessarily be...But the risks
paid off; even the loss was worth the price..."
- FDR reminisced with Stalin at Tehran on November 30,
1943, saying "if the Japanese had not attacked the
US he doubted very much if it would have been possible to
send any American forces to Europe." Compare this
statement with what FDR said at the Atlantic Conference 4
months before Pearl: "Everything was to be done to
force an 'incident' to justify hostitlities." Given
that a Japanese attack was the only possible incident,
then FDR had said he would do it.
COMMISSIONS AND COVERUP
The issue of whether FDR and Washington were responsible for
Pearl Harbor was decided in two courts of law in 1944. Both the
Navy Court and the Army Board found Washington guilty.
- NAVY
Court of Inquiry
- Top
Secret ARMY Board Report (30K)!!!!, Oct, 1944, must
read: "Now let us turn to the fateful period between
November 27 and December 6, 1941. In this period numerous
pieces of information came to our State, War, and Navy
Departments in all of their Top ranks indicating
precisely the intentions of the Japanese including the
probable exact hour and date of the attack. " In
response to this report, Marshall offered his resignation
- the sign of a guilty conscience. Marshall testified at
the MacArthur hearings that he considered loyalty to his
chief superior to loyalty to his country.
- JOINT
CONGRESSIONAL COMMITTEE on the Investigation of the
Pearl Harbor Attack, Nov 15, 1945 to May 31, 1946,
although limited, put a considerable amount of material
on the record and proved that there had been so much
reversion of testimony, coverup and outright lies that
the truth would have to wait until all Pearl Harbor
records were declassified. The minority report censured
Roosevelt and charged that Secretary of War Stimson,
Secretary of the Navy Knox, Army Chief of Staff Marshall
and his underling Gerow (G-3 Signals Intelligence
Operations) and Chief of Naval Operations Stark as well
as the Hawaiian Commanders Army General Short and Admiral
Kimmel did not discharge their duties. Arnold, Bloch and
Turner should be added to this list.
Notice that the
suppression of intelligence and warnings to Hawaii
extended over more than one department, which means it
could have been only directed from the top. The
thoroughness of the suppression over a period of months
also proves design rather than mistake. Suppression of a
declaration of war, for example, is more than a mistake -
it's treason that will be immediately discovered - so it
is not possible without the highest orders. These were
military men, all men of FDR's own choice, men who only
followed orders and FDR never delegated authority. Stark,
in answer to charges that he denied IQ to Hawaii, said
publicly in August 1945 that everything he did pre-Dec 7,
1941 was on FDR's orders. The handfull of military men in
DC responsible for the disaster at Pearl Harbor were
directly under the control of FDR and were later promoted
and protected from investigation; promoted with FDR's
full knowledge that they were responsible for not warning
Hawaii. All decrypted messages were distributed in a
timely manner to the White House, State Department, Army
General Staff, and Naval Operations. On the record,
Intelligence tried to warn HI scores of times but were
prevented by FDR's men.
STATISTICS - ROOSEVELT WAS DIRECTLY RESPONSIBLE FOR THE
FOLLOWING:
American
Deaths: 2403; Wounded 1,178. In memorium, here is the list of
names of all fatal
US casualties.
Eighteen ships were sunk or seriously damaged including 5
battleships (USS Arizona (photo).
188 planes were destroyed and 162 were damaged.
JAPANESE
Out of an attack force of 31 ships and 353 raiding planes the
Japanese lost:
64 deaths,
29 planes,
5 midget submarines.
CONCLUSION - ROOSEVELT WAS A TRAITOR
The US was warned by, at least, the governments of Britain,
Netherlands, Australia, Peru, Korea and the Soviet Union that a
surprise attack on Pearl Harbor was coming. Most, if not all,
Japanese codes were broken. FDR and Marshall and others knew the
attack was coming, allowed it and covered up their knowledge.
It's significant that both the the chief of OP-20-G Safford and
chief of Army Signal Intelligence Friedman, the two people in the
world that would know what we decoded, said that FDR knew Pearl
Harbor was going to be attacked. Their testimony alone would be
enough to convict FDR in any court of law.
Pearl Harbor was not about war with Japan -
It was about war with GERMANY
HITLER WOULD NOT DECLARE WAR IF U.S. UNBEATABLE
- OBJECTIVE: War with Germany. How do you get Hitler to
declare war on you? You don't get it by looking
unbeatable!
- Direct efforts in Atlantic had failed.
- FDR knew from magic that if Japan attacked,
Germany would declare war.
- Therefore: the problem was how to maneuver Japan into
firing the first shot or make the first overt act.
- Japan must succeed or Hitler would renege.
War with Japan was a given because they had to attack the
Philippines. If Japan's fleet were destroyed, it would defeat the
purpose. It would have been obvious suicide for Hitler to declare
war if Japan were crippled - it would allow the US to attack him
without even the possibility of a two-front war. That was what he
had just been avoiding for months. The plan could only work if
Japan's attack succeeded. The carrot of a weakened US in a
two-front war was the only way to get Hitler to bite. He expected
the US to focus on Japan, anyway, making a declaration cost-free.
CHURCHILL--FDR KNEW. Did FDR know that Pearl Harbor
was a Japanese target? Answer: FDR planned Pearl Harbor
to be their target. He ordered the ships in and the carriers out.
It is of supreme significance that on 25 July 1941, when FDR cut
off oil to Japan, forcing them into war with US, that he also cut
off military intelligence to Hawaii (they had already been
ordered in May not to decode JN-25 or J-19 traffic). Churchill
wrote about Pearl Harbor that FDR and his top advisors "knew the full and immediate purpose of
their enemy." Churchill's entire discussion of
Pearl Harbor was a justification of treason, e.g.: "A
Japanese attack upon the U.S. was a vast simplification of (FDR's
and advisors') problems and their duty. How can we wonder that
they regarded the actual form of the attack, or even its scale,
as incomparably less important than the fact that the whole
American nation would be united...?" (See GRAND
ALLIANCE p 603, 602)
J. Edgar Hoover told his friends in early 1942 that FDR had
known about the Pearl Harbor plan since the early Fall. It was
totally in character for FDR to concoct such a plan. Not only had
the US Senate already censured FDR for utterly lacking moral
perspective, but as Walter Lippmann wrote: "his purposes are
not simple and his methods are not direct." To get into
the war, FDR used the Atlantic Fleet as bait to be shot up; Pearl
Harbor was the same thing in the Pacific. US Admiral Bloch
testified "The Japanese only destroyed a lot of old
hardware. In a sense they did us a favor." This was
obviously FDR's view as well, because on 7 December at 2:15,
minutes after hearing of the attack and before any damage reports
were in, FDR called Lord Halifax at the British Embassy and told
him "Most of the fleet was at sea...none of their newer
ships were in harbour."
COVERUP BY SECRECY. Why does the government refuse to release
all the messages to the attack fleet, or any JN-25 messages
decoded before Dec 7? There is absolutely nothing about national
security to hide in JN-25. It is a trivial and worthless 19th
century code. The techniques for cracking it had been published
world-wide in 1931. The US government has proudly showed how they
used JN-25 decrypts after December 8 to win the Battle of Midway
which occurred 7 months after Pearl Harbor. Therefore, there is
nothing intrinsic about the code itself, the means of cracking
it, or the fact that we cracked it, that has any national
security implications of any nature. What is the difference
between decrypts from the Purple machine and decrypts from JN-25?
The answer is simply that the JN-25 messages contained the final
operational details of the Pearl Harbor attack, whereas the
Purple did not.
WHAT ARE THEY HIDING? Why won't they let the truth out? Such
secrecy breeds mistrust in government. The only thing that is
left to hide are JN-25 decrypts and worksheets showing that the
US and Britain monitored the Japanese attack fleet all the way to
Pearl Harbor. That is the scandal. That is the big secret. It
raises the issue of whether the NSA is accessory after the fact
to treason. However, the secrecy and misdirection by the NSA
about our capabilities with JN-25B and pre-war messages proves
there is something very wrong. The NSA is an evil Gestapo that is
committed neither to truth nor open government nor the rule of
law. We live an Orwellian history in which treason is honored, in
which FDR's murder of thousands of young innocent men is good. In
a word, we are no different from the tyranny we decry. A
self-governing people must have truth to make proper decisions.
By subverting the truth, the National Security Agency is
subverting our Democracy.
He who controls the past, controls the future. He who
controls the present, controls the past.Orwell
Tokyo had to send the daily bomb-plots, cabled from its
Honolulu consulate, to the attack fleet by JN-25 radio messages.
The pilots had to get their target information. "The news of
the position of enemy ships in Pearl Harbor comes again and
again." - Lt. Cmdr. Chigusa, executive officer of the attack
fleet's Akigumo in his diary, December 4, 1941 (At
Dawn We Slept, G. Prange, NY 1981, page 453). FDR got it,
too. FDR knew the Japanese pilots' targets as well as they did,
because he got their bomb-plots when they did. He had their
specific targets, ship by ship, in his hands at the Whitehouse.
These messages would prove absolutely that FDR knew that the
attack fleet's target was Pearl Harbor and therefore are not
released. The unnecessary and illogical secrecy about
pre-December 7, 1941, JN-25 decoding is conclusive evidence that
there was wrongdoing at the highest levels.
WARS BEGIN IN THE MINDS OF MEN. The evidence is overwhelming
that FDR planned for the Japanese to attack Pearl Harbor and that
he meant for Pearl to be caught by surprise - FDR actively sought
this. He set it up. It couldn't have happened without him. FDR
was a traitor for maneuvering Japan into war with US - and that
is known and admitted - FDR was a traitor for sacrificing
American lives, for putting America in danger, for usurping the
Constitutional power of Congress to make war. Day of infamy,
indeed; he chose his words precisely with a hidden
double-meaning. Four days before the attack, FDR could have sent
telegrams of condolence to the families of the sailors he was
going to allow to be killed. Even today there is a coverup, based
on a transparently bogus excuse of national security, that shows
that our government cannot face the truth about what happened a
half-century ago. Truth we owe the men of Pearl Harbor. Until we
tell the full truth, we dishonor them and every soldier and
sailor who gave their life for their country. Should their lives
have been sacrificed for treason and no one know, they had died
in vain. If their honor cover treason - we are not a nation of
law. The Air Corps in the Philippines and the Navy at Pearl were
FDR's bait, the oil embargo was his stick, the end of
negotiations was the tripwire in FDR's game of shame - a game of
death for so many.
Thanks Mark Willey