Chapter 23: 23. The Navy Court of Inquiry (July 24–October 19, 1944)

On July 13, 1944,^[1] the new Navy Secretary, James V. Forrestal, ordered the convening of a Navy Court of Inquiry (NCI) “for the purpose of inquiring into all circumstances connected with the attack made by Japanese armed forces on Pearl Harbor, Territory of Hawaii, on 7 December 1941.”^[2] Three retired admirals were appointed to the court: Orin G. Murfin, president; Edward C. Kalbfus; and Adolphus Andrews. Commander Harold Biesemeier was named judge advocate.^[3] The court opened its doors on July 24, and took testimony over 32 days. Admirals Harold R. Stark, chief of naval operations at the time of the attack, Claude C. Bloch commandant of the 14th Naval District (Hawaii), and Husband E. Kimmel, who had been commander-in-chief of the Pacific Fleet,^[4] were named “interested parties,” entitled to attend the hearings, have counsel, and cross-examine witnesses. The court began by exploring the situation at the time of the attack and thus covered much of the same territory as had the Roberts and Hart investigations.

The jurisdiction of the NCI was not limited to investigating Navy personnel only; it was to inquire “into all circumstances connected with the attack made by Japanese armed forces on Pearl Harbor” (italics added). Moreover, as Captain L.F. Safford had located the Japanese intercepts and had had copies replaced in the files by the summer of 1944, these intercepts were available to be introduced to the NCI. Kimmel was determined that they be made a part of the record. But obtaining NCI access to them would not be easy.

Japanese Intercepts Located

Kimmel brought the subject of the intercepts up at his first opportunity. He said he had been “branded throughout this country as the one responsible for the Pearl Harbor disaster.” He was anxious that “this investigation should go far enough to disclose all the facts in connection with the matter;” it should call “witnesses from the Army, from the State Department, or from any other federal department” in order to establish “the facts that are necessary . . . to refute the utterly false and misleading statements made throughout the Roberts Commission.”^[5] Unless the intercepts were introduced, Kimmel maintained, it would be impossible to properly assign responsibility for the disaster.

Judge Advocate Biesemeier asked Forrestal on August 1 for access to the Japanese intercepts. No answer. On August 4 Biesemeier was told that the letter had been “misplaced.” Then apparently it was found and returned to Biesemeier with a request for “a change in its classification—from SECRET to TOP SECRET.”^[6] Finally on the morning of August 8, due to “the purely fortuitous circumstance” that Admiral Ernest J. King was acting secretary of the Navy that day,^[7] Biesemeier received Forrestal’s permission for one of Kimmel’s attorneys to examine the secret files.^[8] “Mr. Knox promised you access to all the files,” King said, “so I can see no reason to refuse.”^[9] Thus Navy Captain Robert A. Lavender of Kimmel’s legal staff was given the chance to inspect the secret files. He made his inspection that very afternoon.^[10]

When Lavender was ushered into the room where he was to examine the intercepts, he was “astounded” to see a stack “two and a half feet high of intercepted messages.” He had only a limited time to look through them. But Safford had given him the numbers of the most important intercepts, so he was able to make his examination rather quickly. Lavender became physically “nauseated,” he said, “when [he] realized what the information in [his] hands would have meant to Kimmel and the men of the Fleet who died.” He selected some 43 messages that he thought should have been sent to Kimmel in Pearl Harbor and had them copied and authenticated.^[11] That evening, attorneys Rugg and Hanify dined with Lavender. Lavender “was still so sickened by what he had uncovered that he could not eat.”^[12]

The next day, General Joseph McNarney, then deputy chief of staff of the Army and an FDR appointee to the Roberts Commission which had heaped opprobrium on Kimmel and Short, protested to Naval Communications that Lavender’s access to the secret files violated orders. When the director of naval communications said he had received no such orders, McNarney backed down. However, Admiral King, who had agreed to Lavender’s examination, told Kimmel later that he would not recommend making the information available. And then Naval Communications refused to turn over to Lavender the copies of the intercepts he had selected.^[13] But Kimmel did not let the matter rest. He asked the judge advocate to pursue the matter with Navy secretary Forrestal,^[14] who replied on August 10 that it was “not in the public interest to introduce this type of material in evidence. . . .”^[15] However, Kimmel’s man had seen the intercepts. So Kimmel persisted.

During the court’s first 19 days, Kimmel made requests almost daily to have the secret Japanese intercepts introduced in evidence. Finally on the 20th day, August 28, Kimmel’s efforts bore fruit. The file copies of the selected documents, “duly authenticated under official seal,” were placed in the NCI’s record “at the request of the judge advocate of this court.”^[16] The remaining days of the Inquiry, therefore, dealt with this new material. . However, before getting to that, we should first review briefly the situation before the intercepts were introduced.

CNO Harold R. Stark Doesn’t Recall Pre-attack Details

The court’s first witness, Chief of Naval Operations Stark^[17] offered no startling revelations. Stark held that he had sought to keep Kimmel informed “so far as we thought he could have a vital interest.”^[18] Did he know of any “important development” preceding the attack of which Kimmel had not been advised, as Kimmel had requested, “by the quickest secure means” then available? Stark replied:

I have searched my brain, my conscience, my heart, and everything I have got, since Pearl Harbor started, to see wherein I was derelict or wherein I might have omitted something. There is only one thought . . . that I regretted . . . . [T]hat was the dispatch which was sent by the Army on the morning of December 7, that I had not paralleled it with my own system, or that I had not telephoned it. . . . [T]hat is the one conscious realization I remember and regret.^[19]

The Japanese intercepts had not been actually introduced into the record, but Kimmel used what he had learned about them from Captain Lavender in questioning Stark. Kimmel asked Stark if he had received “information that the Japanese Government regarded November 25 as an absolute immovable deadline for the negotiations then being conducted between Japan and America.”

Stark: No; I don’t remember that.

When Kimmel tried to refresh Stark’s memory by referring to Safford’s testimony before Admiral Hart, Biesemeier objected: “It was an attempt to show in the form of a question that there was certain evidence before the Hart examination, what the evidence was, and the fact that the evidence was given under oath.”^[20]

Kimmel tried another tack. “Between December 1 and December 4 [had Stark received] information that Japan was going to attack Britain and the United States and maintain peace with Russia?”

Stark: Not that I recall.

Kimmel: Do you recall the phrase “Winds Message”?

Stark: I don’t recall such a message. . . . Not the slightest recollection of a discussion of the so-called “Winds Message.”

And more in the same vein.^[21]

Biesemeier objected.^[22]

Kimmel then asked Stark if he recalled receiving any important intelligence on December 6, the evening before the attack.

Stark: I couldn’t say what I was doing that evening. My remembrance is—I think I was home but I couldn’t say. I don’t recall clearly. . . . I haven’t the slightest recollection of any message bearing on this, or any other subject, being given to me between the time I left the office and the . . . next morning.^[23]

Stark did remember a discussion with Marshall Sunday morning, December 7 about the message asking the Japanese ambassador to call on Hull that day at 1:00 p.m. But otherwise he recalled nothing of significance about that message.^[24]

Admiral Schuirmann, Navy Liaison with State Department, Evasive

Rear Admiral R.E. Schuirmann, who had been director of Central Division, Office of Chief of Naval Operations, and liaison with the State Department, was not much more responsive. In answer to Kimmel’s repeated questioning, Schuirmann hesitated and replied only that it “would involve the disclosure of information detrimental to the public interest. . . . [H]e claimed his privilege against revealing state secrets.”^[25] Finally after being recalled to testify after the court rescinded its earlier ruling restricting questions on subjects not previously in evidence before the court,^[26] Schuirmann admitted having known about the Japanese deadlines—November 25 and 29.^[27] He also said the dispatch directing the Japanese ambassadors to deliver their reply to Hull on Sunday, December 7, at precisely 1:00 p.m. Washington time, had been available by 9:30 a.m. when Stark reached his office. And Schuirmann also recalled the Marshall-Stark telephone conversation concerning the last minute message to the field commanders.^[28]

Washington’s Advice to Pearl Harbor Commanders Confusing, Conflicting

General Short, the Army’s commander at Pearl Harbor at the time of the attack, was NCI’s next witness. Like Kimmel, Short had been under a cloud of suspicion ever since the publication of the Roberts Commission report. One of Short’s most telling points was that the planes which had been en route to the Philippines via Hawaii, the planes that had arrived over Hawaii during the attack, had been sent out from California unarmed.“As late as 1:30 a.m. in the War Department on December 7,” when the planes were dispatched from California, Short said,

they did not believe there was any danger of air attack at Honolulu, or they never would have been so rash as to send planes out in those conditions. . . . Whoever sent them out felt that the hazard of carrying the ammunition was greater than the hazard of a Japanese attack. In other words, he [the dispatcher] considered that there was no probability of an air attack at Pearl Harbor on the morning of December 7 or the planes would not have been started from Hamilton Field in that condition, as late as they were.^[29]

Then Kimmel himself spent three days on the witness stand, August 15–17. He spoke about the Army’s responsibility for the defense of the fleet when in port, his training procedures, the possibility of a submarine attack, and so on. Before the attack, he had made frequent requests to Washington for information and had received repeated assurances “that [he] would be kept informed.” However, Kimmel felt sure that “there must be details [known in Washington] about which [he] was not informed,” details about which he “could only guess.”^[30]

Kimmel had known that both Marshall and Stark had recommended against our issuing an ultimatum to the Japanese. However, he did not know that when he received the November 27 “war warning,” the State Department had issued Japan an ultimatum the day before. He had simply assumed that “one of the primary causes for the [war warning] dispatch was, as stated, that negotiations had ceased” and that U.S.-Japanese relations were reaching a breaking point. Kimmel received no later message from the CNO canceling or modifying the November 27 “war warning.” As a result, when later press reports indicated that “further conversations were continuing between the Japanese ambassadors and the State Department, the warning lost much of its force.”^[31]

Kimmel was asked about the last-minute December 7 Marshall-Stark dispatch stating that the Japanese ambassadors “were presenting at 1:00 p.m. Eastern Standard time today what amounts to an ultimatum.” Marshall had closed this dispatch by saying, “Just what significance the hour set may have we do not know but be on alert accordingly.”^[32] This message did not reach Short and Kimmel until well after the attack. Devastated by the disaster, Kimmel had told the courier then that “it wasn’t of the slightest interest to me at that time, and I threw the thing in the waste basket.”^[33]

Asked what difference it would have made had he received the warning before the attack, Kimmel said two other factors were more significant. “One was that an ultimatum was being delivered. The other was that . . . the Japanese Ambassador had instructions from his government to deliver it at a specific time.”^[34]

Kimmel had been under orders “to permit Japan to commit the first overt act.” Technically, Kimmel said,

I could not fire a shot at a Japanese Fleet until after they had first shot at us, and also, technically, had I sent out patrol planes armed, I would have had to wait until the enemy fired at these patrol planes or committed some other overt act before I could do anything more than protest.^[35]

The war-warning dispatch had given Kimmel “an excuse to do something that I had wanted to do for several months . . . to bomb submarine contacts.”^[36]

Kimmel considered his orders confusing. Just the day before the “war warning,” Stark had advised him that the Army had “agreed to station 25 Army pursuit planes at Midway and a similar number at Wake.”^[37] Short had received a War Department message along the same line, asking him “to relieve the marine infantry units on the outlying islands with Army personnel.”^[38] The “proximity of these two messages in point of time to the war warning message . . . lessened the force of the war warning message.” Apparently, Kimmel said, CNO Stark was “willing to temporarily upset, to a considerable degree, the defenses of Pearl Harbor as well as of the outlying bases” to reinforce Wake and Midway, especially as the Navy was being asked to transport the planes, ground crews, essential spare parts, tools, and ammunition. Now, Kimmel said, “the difficulties of reinforcing the outlying stations were undoubtedly well-known to the Chief of Naval Operations,” so that the War Department’s message “indicated a conflict betwixt the ideas of the War Department and the Navy Department at that time.”

Pearl Harbor, U.S. Fleet’s Base, Vulnerable to Attack

The NCI questioned Admiral James O. Richardson, Kimmel’s predecessor as commander-in-chief of the U.S. Fleet at Pearl Harbor. Richardson’s testimony revealed that he had also encountered difficulties in obtaining men and materiel, in conducting reconnaissance, and in acquiring reliable information to guide him in planning, training, and preparing for defense.^[39] Richardson had also objected to basing the fleet at Pearl Harbor and had recommended that it be headquartered on the West Coast, “except a detachment to remain in Pearl Harbor that could be adequately cared for by the facilities there.”^[40] He said

the operating areas were not adequate, either for surface ships or air; there were no air fields adequate to care for the planes that were on carriers, and could not be trained from the carriers because of the shortage of fuel. The only safe anchorage was Pearl Harbor, and it was entirely inadequate to handle the Fleet; the distance from the West Coast increased the cost and the delay and the difficulty of maintaining and supplying the Fleet; that there were no recreational facilities; that in time of peace the men and officers could not see any reason for remaining for such a long time away from home; that they were two thousand miles nearer a possible enemy; that we were unprepared to undertake offensive operations from Pearl Harbor, and that if we were involved in war, it would be necessary for us to return to the West Coast for stripping and mobilization and preparation for war; and that our presence in the Hawaiian area, when we were absolutely not trained, couldn’t make any military people believe that we were planning offensive operations.^[41]

In spite of Richardson’s objections, Stark had directed him in May 1940 “to announce to the press that the Fleet would remain in Hawaiian waters” at Richardson’s request “to carry out exercises that [he] had in mind.”^[42] Asked if he knew why Stark had ordered the Fleet held in Hawaii, Richardson replied “For the restraining influence it might exercise on the action of the Japanese nation.”^[43]

When Richardson was still commander of the U.S. Fleet, he had been warned several times that war was possible. He had received

an increasing number of warnings. . . . They were not clear-cut. . . . They were in personal letters, the general tenor being—“I hope you will keep ever present in your mind the possibility that we may be at war tomorrow.”

The first warning had not come from the Navy Department, but rather from the War Department to the Commanding General of the Hawaiian Department, probably on June 19, 1940. When Richardson “asked the Chief of Naval Operations for information regarding it [this warning]” he received no reply.^[44]

Kimmel “agreed . . . in general” with Richardson as to the inadvisability of basing the fleet at Pearl Harbor and he had discussed Richardson’s objections with Stark. However, when he took command, he had not made “any formal protest;” he had “accepted the situation.” Later he had “pointed out the dangers that existed so long as the fleet was in Pearl Harbor.” The single entrance might be blocked; it took a long time for the Fleet to sortie, and the oil stocks were vulnerable. In view of these dangers, Kimmel had requested “repeatedly, in correspondence” that he “be kept informed of developments.”^[45]

In order to reach their own conclusions, the NCI went over much of the same material covered by the Roberts and Hart investigations. And it inquired about the radar facilities in Hawaii at the time of the attack. Commander William E.G. Taylor, U.S. Navy Reserve, radar expert on temporary duty with the Pacific Fleet, testified that the Army “radar operators themselves were well-trained,” although given the technology available at the time, it was

impossible to decide whether the plots picked up by the radar station were a Japanese raid, an air group from one of our own carriers, or some planes being ferried in from the United States.^[46]

The two men who had actually manned the radar station on Oahu on December 7, Joseph L. Lockard, radar operator, and George E. Elliott, told of having picked up a cluster of blips on the radar screen indicating “an unusually large flight . . . coming in from almost due north at 130 some miles.” When they reported this to the information center, it was assumed these blips were from B-17 bombers being ferried to Hawaii from California. So their radar report was not passed along to higher authority.^[47]

Admiral P.N.L. Bellinger, who on December 7 had been commander of Hawaiian Based Patrol Wing Two and liaison with the commandant of the 14th Naval District, testified:

I was surprised to find that there in the Hawaiian Islands, an important naval advance outpost, we were operating on a shoestring, and the more I looked the thinner the shoestring appeared to be.

Moreover, according to a letter from NCO Stark, it appeared that

there was no intention to replace the present obsolescent type of patrol planes in Patrol Wing Two prior to one year, and that Patrol Wing Two would practically be the last wing to be furnished new planes.

This, “together with the many existing deficiencies,” led Bellinger to conclude “that the Navy Department as a whole did not view the situation in the Pacific with alarm, or else is not taking steps in keeping with their views.”^[48] There were by no means enough men and equipment to carry out the kind of continual long-range surveillance that would have been required to guard against a surprise attack.

Naval Court of Inquiry Gains Access to Japanese Intercepts

Finally on August 28, the 20th day of the inquiry, Kimmel’s efforts to have the Japanese intercepts introduced bore fruit. Biesemeier introduced 40 or 50 items selected from among the secret Japanese “Purple” intercepts known as MAGIC received from November 26 to December 7, 1941.^[49] The intercepts were not actually entered into the text of the hearings, but would be available to the court for reference. They were “extracted from the record and deposited with the Secretary of the Navy . . . in the interest of national security and the successful prosecution of the war.”^[50]

Stark objected strenuously:

Should the secret classification of the proceedings of this court be removed, or should a copy of those proceedings or information gained therefrom come into the possession of persons unfriendly to this country while the present war with Japan is still in progress, these certain questions . . . might suggest enough to the enemy to be definitely injurious to our present and continuing war effort. . . . [I]n due time,

he said, “proceedings of this court and all of the evidence it might have secured will be a matter of open record available to the public.” Therefore, “as a responsible naval officer and as a former Chief of Naval Operations with knowledge of many of the intelligence activities of my subordinates,” Stark urged that

that part of the record which would in any way identify material now held so secret that it has been denied this court be taken out of the record and placed in a top secret status which will absolutely preclude any leak and reference thereto.

Judge Advocate Biesemeier concurred. As a result, substantial blocks of NCI testimony referring to secret intelligence were “deleted from the record and filed in a secure place with due reference to them so that they may be seen by proper authorities on demand.”^[51]

Schuirmann was called back again to testify. Now that the MAGIC intercepts had been introduced, he was somewhat more, although not much more, responsive.^[52] He did not remember some documents. His recollection of the message setting up the Winds Code was “quite hazy” or “extremely hazy.”^[53] When asked about the December 6 13-part Japanese reply to our November 26 proposal, he asserted without hesitation that he “was not acquainted with the contents on the 6th of December, 1941.”^[54]

Schuirmann did admit discussing some of the November 26 to December 7 messages with Admiral Stark.

Schuirmann: Yes, sir. I did discuss the situation but when it came down to pointing out certain messages, you ask if I made a particular point of discussing that particular message with the Admiral and I just don’t remember.^[55]

There was a “general feeling,” Schuirmann said,

that everybody recognized that there was a very tense situation; that diplomatic relations were in danger of being severed, but that a severance of diplomatic relations did not necessarily mean that war was going to result.

He could not speak for others, “but my own opinion . . . was that Japan would go her own way in East Asia and would put up to the United States the onus of using force to oppose her.”^[56]

Captain Safford Relates Many Warnings Contained in Japanese Intercepts

At the time of the attack, Captain L.F. Safford had been in charge of the security section of Naval Communications, which was concerned with “security proper, that is, codes and ciphers, and surveillance over their use . . . also . . . Communications Intelligence [C.I.]. The name was used in peace-time,” Safford explained, “purely to mask the major mission of the section . . . collecting information from enemy or prospective enemy nations through their communications” (italics added). Most of the section’s effort at that time had been concentrated on Japan. Safford had been “in charge of the intercept stations, direction finder exchanges, and decrypting units.”^[57]

Safford’s testimony was forthright and factual. He identified the selected Japanese intercepts that had been made available to the NCI. Asked what information, if any, had been “received in the C.I. Unit in Washington prior to the evening of December 6th that indicated a break in relations between the United States and Japan,”^[58] Safford discussed several intercepts other than those available to the NCI, with which he was familiar because of his duties in communications intelligence. He pointed out that on November 5 the Japanese set a November 25 deadline for the signing of the agreement the United States and Japanese ambassadors were working on.^[59] On November 14 the Japanese advised their Washington ambassador, “Should negotiations collapse . . . we will completely destroy British and American power in China.”^[60]

On November 16, Tokyo wired that “The fate of our empire hangs by the slender thread of a few days.”^[61] On November 22 Tokyo postponed the deadline to November 29, advising Nomura,

There are reasons beyond your ability to guess why we wanted to settle Japanese-American relations by the 25th, but if within the next three or four days you can finish your conversations with the Americans; if the signing can be completed by the 29th . . . and in short if everything can be finished, we have decided to wait until that date.^[62]

Safford testified about other Japanese intercepts that gave still further indications of impending war. On December 1 we translated and read a November 30 dispatch from Tokyo to the Japanese ambassador in Berlin advising him:

The conversations . . . between Tokyo and Washington . . . now stand ruptured. . . . [T]here is extreme danger that war may suddenly break out between the Anglo-Saxon nations and Japan through some clash of arms, and . . . this war may come quicker than anyone dreams.^[63]

Also on December 1, we read a long intercepted message from the Japanese ambassador in Berlin to Tokyo reporting that German Foreign Minister Ribbentrop had said, “Should Japan become engaged in a war against the United States, Germany, of course, would join the war immediately.”^[64]

Tokyo also advised its Washington ambassadors on December 1 that London, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Manila had been “instructed to abandon the use of code machines and to dispose of them.”^[65] Tokyo advised Hsinking (Changchun, Manchuria) on December 1,

in view of various circumstances it is our policy to cause Manchuria to participate in the war in which event Manchuria will take the same steps toward England and America that this country will take in case war breaks out.^[66]

On December 2, we translated and read a November 28 dispatch to Tokyo from Hsinking:

[I]n the event that war breaks out with England and the United States . . . [p]ersons to be interned: a. British nationals—339. b American citizens—81 . . . d. Nationals of the Soviet or other third powers observed to be obnoxious characters with pro-British and American leanings are to be suitably taken care of.^[67]

We had intercepted several messages to and from Tokyo and the Japanese consul in Honolulu concerning surveillance of the ships at Pearl Harbor. On December 3 we read a Tokyo message to Honolulu dated November 15, asking them to “make your ‘ships in harbor report’ irregular, but at a rate of twice a week.”^[68] On December 4, we learned that on November 20, Tokyo had told the consul general in Honolulu to “investigate comprehensively the fleet _______[sic] bases in the neighborhood of the Hawaiian military reservation.”^[69] Safford testified: “On December 5 we learned that Tokyo had instructed [the consul] in Honolulu on November 29: ‘In the future, report even when there are no ship movements’.”^[70]

During the Hart inquiry, Safford had testified about the “Winds Code,” but the Japanese intercepts had not then been available. Safford brought the subject up again. The Japanese message setting up the “Winds Code” had been sent from Tokyo, Safford said, on November 19.^[71] It provided for inserting false weather reports, each containing a secret meaning, in the middle and at the end of daily Japanese language shortwave news broadcasts, permitting the Japanese government to reach her representatives around the world in the event it could no longer communicate in normal code.^[72] Safford testified that his first indication the code setup had been implemented and that a “Winds Codes Execute” had actually been picked up came on December 4, around 8:00 a.m. He had not seen a copy of the translation since “about the 15th of December, 1941,” but to the best of his recollection, the translation had said, “War with America; war with England; and peace with Russia.”^[73] This “Winds Code Execute,” the Navy Department communications intelligence unit had then “regarded . . . as definitely committing the Japanese Government to war with the United States and Britain.”^[74]

Safford was asked:

Captain, in a previous answer you stated that the copy of the intercept using the winds code which you saw on the morning of 4 December 1941 indicated a break in diplomatic relations between the United States and Japan and Japan and Great Britain, and war between these nations. Was there anything in the establishment of the code originally which would indicate . . . war as contrasted with a mere break in diplomatic relations?”

Safford said,

The Dutch translation said “war.” The Japanese language is very vague and you can put a number of constructions or interpretations or translations on the same message. In very important documents it was customary for the Army and Navy to make independent translations. . . . The general facts would be alike. However, the people in Communications Intelligence and the people in Signal Intelligence Service and the people in the Far Eastern Section of Naval Intelligence, as well as the Director of Naval Intelligence, considered that meant war, that it was “a signal of execute for the Japanese war plans.”^[75]

Safford continued, “[I]mmediate distribution [of the “Winds Code Execute”] was made to the regular people before 9:00 a.m., that morning.” It went to the director of naval intelligence (Wilkinson), the director of war plans (Turner), the director of naval communications (Noyes), the assistant chief of naval operations (Ingersoll), and the chief of naval operations (Stark). Copies were also sent to the State Department, the White House, and the War Department. And, Safford said, this message was included “in the routine distribution, which was made around noon each day.”^[76]

Safford’s dogged search for the pre-attack intercepts located most of them, including the November 19 “Winds Code” setup message.^[77] However, in spite of repeated searches since mid-November 1943, he said he could find no trace of its implementation.^[78] Thus doubt was cast on whether the Japanese had ever actually used a “Winds Code Execute” to communicate with their overseas officials. “A great many messages and other material were misplaced during frequent moves consequent to the growth of the Naval Intelligence organization,” Safford said, although he thought all the Japanese messages intercepted had been located or accounted for except this “Winds Code Execute.” Even the Army’s Signal Intelligence Service had failed to locate a single copy. “[T]his Winds Message,” Safford said, “is very conspicuous by its absence.”^[79]

He continued with his testimony about intercepts not given to the court. On November 26, 1941, the United States had rejected the Japanese proposal for a modus vivendi. Tension and uncertainty prevailed among top Washington officials; the State Department was on the qui vive. On November 28, when our State Department officials read the intercept saying that Tokyo would reply “in two or three days” to what they called our “humiliating proposal,” the Department realized the Japanese government was not going to agree to our terms. Japan’s ambassadors were told by their government that “negotiations will be de facto ruptured” but not to “give the impression that the negotiations [were] broken off. Merely say to them [the U.S. officials] that you are awaiting instructions.”^[80] Thus those privy to the intercepts knew that, in the words Stanley K. Hornbeck, special assistant to Secretary of State Hull, “[T]here would be no further negotiations” between Japan and the United States.^[81]

Safford testified that “Tokyo serial No. 901 [the “Pilot Message” announcing the impending arrival of Tokyo’s #902, the 14-part reply] in English to the American note of November 26, 1941.^[82] Safford continued:

On this week-end [December 6–7] we handled about three times the normal messages for a busy day. The most important was a very long, 14-part message which contained the Japanese declaration of war. . . . Up to this time, the language implied had been very courteous. Because of the harsh and abusive language used throughout this [the Japanese reply], there was no doubt in the minds of the men who were on watch at the time that the Japanese meant war and that this was their declaration.^[83]

Safford was asked if he knew whether any information concerning the messages which you have outlined was sent to Kimmel or Bloch in Hawaii.

Safford: The only information sent him [sic], was with reference to the Japanese destroying their code machines.^[84]

Safford was then asked specifically about the message translated and read in Washington on December 1, in which Tokyo notified Berlin that “war may suddenly break out between the Anglo-Saxon nations and Japan. . . . [T]he time of the breaking out of this war may come quicker than anyone dreams.”

Safford: That was not sent . . . neither to [Kimmel] nor [Hart in Manila].^[85]

Safford knew of one attempt to disseminate intercept information to Kimmel and Bloch. Commander McCollum, chief of the Far Eastern section of naval intelligence, “wrote up a long message about 4 or 5 or 6 pages long, approximately 500 words, giving a complete and brief and very forceful summary of developments up to that time, up to 4 December, 1941.” On the afternoon of December 4, Safford had been in the office of Admiral Leigh Noyes, director of naval communications, when Captain Theodore S. Wilkinson, director of the office of naval intelligence, came in with McCollum’s message for Kimmel and gave it to Noyes to read. As Noyes finished a page, he handed it to Safford to read. According to his testimony,

It was a very complete summary of what had happened. It began with the withdrawal of Japanese merchant ships from the Atlantic and Indian Oceans in July. It mentioned the evacuation of Japanese Nationals from Malaya and the Netherlands East Indies. It included the fact that diplomatic relations were at an impasse; that neither party would yield, and it had a direct reference to the winds message . . . and said that we considered that this was . . . the signal of execute of the Japanese war plans; that we expected that war was imminent.

According to Safford, McCollum had done a very thorough job. When Noyes finished reading, Wilkinson asked what he thought of it. Noyes responded, “I think it’s an insult to the intelligence of the Commander-in-Chief.”

According to Safford’s testimony, Wilkinson disagreed, saying

Admiral Kimmel is a very busy man and may not see the picture as clearly as you and I do. I think it only fair to the Commander-in-Chief that he be given this information and I am going to send it if I can get it released by the front office.

Wilkinson then left, Safford presumed, to see Admiral Royal E. Ingersoll, assistant CNO, and to have the message released. Until November 1943, Safford had assumed that it had been sent. But it hadn’t!^[86]

CNO Admiral Stark’s Memory is Poor

Admiral Stark was then called back to the witness stand and asked about specific messages. His November 24 message to the field commanders “may well have been based upon or certainly had taken into consideration” the Japanese intercepts. It had warned that a “favorable outcome of negotiations with Japan very doubtful. . . . [A] surprise aggressive movement in any direction including attack on Philippines or Guam is a possibility.”^[87] Moreover, the November 27 “war warning” message announced, “Negotiations with Japan . . . have ceased and an aggressive move by Japan is expected within the next few days . . . against either the Philippines Thai or Kra peninsula or possibly Borneo.”^[88]

In his messages to the field commanders Stark had not mentioned any of the Japanese-announced deadlines in his dispatches; he “had become leery of dates.” “If I had set a date of the 25th, for example,” he said,

and nothing happened on the 25th, it would have, in my opinion, been bad ball. Again, if I had sent a date of the 29th . . . and nothing had happened, again it would probably have weakened the dispatch which we did send, and which, in my opinion, covered the situation. Judging by what is now perhaps hindsight, I am glad that I did not include the dates.^[89]

Stark’s memory appeared poor. He did not recall seeing the document mentioning the “Winds Code.” According to him, the setup intercept, translated November 28, “added nothing to what I had already sent in the [war warning] dispatch of the 27th.”^[90] He did not recall the Japanese ambassadors’ two-part dispatch of November 26, summarizing for their government’s benefit the U.S. proposal of that day.^[91] Nor did Stark remember seeing—in the form in which it was presented to the NCI—the Tokyo message of December 1 reporting that the “situation continues to be increasingly critical” but that “to prevent the United States from becoming unduly suspicious we [the Japanese government] have been advising the press . . . the negotiations are continuing.” It “may very well have been discussed at that time.” But in any event, he said, it “added nothing . . . to what had been sent” out formerly.^[92] Stark did not remember “specifically” the Tokyo requests for “reports relative to ships in Pearl Harbor.” Nor did he recall Tokyo’s request about ships by specific areas there. When asked if he remembered the message translated December 6, “relative to the movements of American warships in Pearl Harbor, the courses taken and speeds maintained,” he answered, “No, I do not.”

Was any information concerning [the ships-in-harbor messages] sent by you to the Commander-in-Chief, Pacific Fleet?

Stark: “No I think not.”^[93]

And Stark did not recall seeing the “Pilot Message” intercept.^[94] Asked if he had seen or “been made acquainted with” the contents of Japan’s 14-part reply before the attack, Stark said he “had not seen” it and didn’t have “the slightest recollection of having seen its contents.”^[95] When asked later if he knew on December 6 that 13 parts were at the Navy Department, he replied, “I did not know it.”^[96]

Many messages were received in Washington during the weeks before the attack on Pearl Harbor. “It was physically impossible,” Stark said, for him to have read, or even to have seen, all the intercepts. He explained the Navy Department procedure for delivering classified information to him as CNO:

Some I saw directly. Some came to me with evaluations. Sometimes some came to me with a general picture—sometimes orally, sometimes on a written memorandum. To take a single dispatch with a specific question, we may read into it now, in the light of hindsight, what we couldn’t see then.

Stark said, however, that he “was in complete touch—at least that I assumed I was in complete touch—with the broad general trend.” We were “unquestionably continually talking things over.” And, he said, he always “aimed to keep the commanders in the field advised” of their conclusions; “we did not send them every specific document.”^[97] The general tenor of Stark’s remarks throughout his testimony was that he believed he had conveyed to Kimmel all the information he needed.

Army Chief of Staff General Marshall’s Memory is Poor

General Marshall appeared before the NCI. Since “that tragedy occurred,” he said, his whole attention had been “turned to other things from that instant, and I didn’t see a record or look at a thing until, as a matter of fact, the last day or two, trying to get something for this board.” He had considered the pre-attack events simply “water over the dam.”^[98]

Marshall testified at length about the problems of supplying men and materiel to the outlying military posts—Hawaii, the Philippines, Panama, and the Pacific Islands—while at the same time supporting Great Britain in the Atlantic and Africa, and continuing the training of men here at home.^[99] “[O]ur relations with the Japanese appeared to degenerate progressively throughout 1941,” he said. In February the Army and Navy departments decided “to take all the women and children out of the Philippines.” According to Marshall, “in July and August the situation became conspicuously critical. That was the time of the enforcement of the economic sanctions against Japan.” He had “thought for some time that war was imminent.” He and Stark were trying

to do all in our power here at home, with the State Department or otherwise, to try to delay this break to the last moment, because of our state of unpreparedness and because of our involvement in other parts of the world.^[100]

Marshall continued:

The information that we obtained from the Japanese actions in China, and particularly as they approached Indo-China, as well as from our most secret sources, pointed to an evident intention to move into Thailand. . . . It seemed to us that they were definitely going to take some action to cut the Burma Road, possibly closing the port of Rangoon. It seemed evident to us that Malaysia—the Malay-Kra Peninsula—was very definitely threatened. It was plainly evident to us that they were accumulating supplies to go into Indo-China, and apparently were going into Thailand. We had no specific indications . . . of their intentions regarding the Philippines other than those which automatically suggested themselves to us geographically. . . . [W]e had reports of movements of convoys down the coast of Indo-China.

Marshall recalled “no indication of any Japanese plans in preparation for an assault on Hawaii.”^[101]

With respect to the intercepts, Marshall did not recall the Tokyo message setting November 29, 1941, as the deadline by which the Japanese ambassadors should complete their negotiations with the United States, although he was “reasonably certain” that he had seen or been informed about it.^[102] He had a “very dim recollection” of the “Winds Code” setup intercept, but didn’t recall any information about any part of the “Winds Code” having been put into effect.^[103]

Marshall had “no definite recollection” of being on the alert, expecting a Japanese reply to Hull’s November 26 note to the Japanese.^[104] Asked whether, on Saturday, December 6, he had been “acquainted with the fact that Japan had sent to her ambassadors 13 of 14 parts of a message or note to be delivered or transmitted at some later date to our Secretary of State?” he replied: “I do not recall that I was aware of such information.”

Was his failure to receive this information Saturday due “to some failure in the echelons of command in transmitting the information to [him]?”

Marshall: I couldn’t say offhand. It would depend on where I was which I do not recall on that particular Saturday. I might have been quite a number of places. I don’t know now where I actually was. . . .

Q: And you have no recollection of where you were on Saturday night?

Marshall: No, I haven’t.^[105]

Marshall stated flatly that until Sunday morning, December 7, he had received none of the 14-part Japanese reply.^[106]

Marshall was willing to talk about Sunday morning, December 7. He had been horseback riding and had come in to the War Department immediately after the ride. There he had found the long reply from the Japanese government. “This was a most unusual message,” he said.^[107] He “read it through, naturally carefully, and some parts of it several times to get the full significance of it. As I finished it I found another page which was the message referring to 1:00 p.m.” as the specified delivery time.^[108] Marshall then told about the last-minute message he had drafted, which he and Stark sent to the field commanders, advising them that the Japanese had been instructed to deliver their reply to Hull that day at precisely 1:00 p.m., Washington time.^[109] This message, coded and sent as a radiogram, left Washington about noon on December 7. It apparently went through without delay to the Philippines, Panama, San Francisco. But for some reason, possibly unusual air turbulence, Hawaii couldn’t be raised by radio. So the dispatch to Hawaii was delayed. It was sent from San Francisco via Western Union.^[110]

After 24 days of hearings, the NCI transferred its operations to Hawaii. Kimmel’s pre-attack decisions and actions were generally defended by his fellow officers. It was recognized, however, that because of the shortages of men and materiel there was inevitably a need for compromises between preparing for war and conducting surveillance.

Navy Courier Commander Kramer’s Memory Sharp and Clear

By far the most significant testimony taken by the NCI at Pearl Harbor was that of Commander A.D. Kramer. Kramer, a Japanese-language scholar, had been stationed in Washington at the time of the attack. He had been “attached to the Office of Naval Intelligence, Navy Department, Washington, on loan to OP-20-G, Office of Naval Communications.” He became “head of the translation section of the communications security group” and was responsible for “translating all decrypted traffic obtained from intercepts.” Kramer’s translation section had a staff of civilian civil-service translators. He normally looked over the important messages and edited the translations before they were typed up; he translated “only an occasional message” himself. As a Navy courier also, Kramer had delivered many of the crucial decrypted and translated intercepts to Navy officials and others authorized to see them.^[111]

Soon after Kimmel’s counsels, Lavender and Hanify, arrived in Pearl Harbor, they encountered Kramer in the corridor as he was getting off an elevator. Kramer had only just arrived from duty in the southwest Pacific. The two lawyers introduced themselves and said: “There is probably one question, Commander Kramer, that you will be asked. ‘Do you recall the Winds Code?’” He said he did.

Then, “Do you recall whether or not there was ever an Execute of the Winds Message?”

Kramer’s answer was immediate: “Yes. Higashi No Kazeame. East Wind Rain.”

“Right like that,” Hanify reported later. “Without any hesitation. Here was a man, just in from the Pacific, and he was that definitive about that formulation.”^[112]

When Kramer testified before the NCI, he was just as open and forthright in his testimony before the court as he had been in responding to Hanify and Lavender’s informal questions. He described the procedure for processing and delivering the large volume of Japanese intercepts picked up in the weeks preceding the attack. He discussed specific dispatches—the Japanese instructions to their overseas diplomatic offices to destroy their codes, the ships-in-harbor messages, the “Winds Code Execute,” and the December 6–7 delivery of the Japanese reply to the United States’ November 26 “ultimatum.”^[113]

“The greatest percentage of the traffic in the fall of ’41,” Kramer said, “had to do with two main types of material: One was the Japanese-U.S. negotiations, and the other was the circuit from Berlin to Tokyo.” These two categories of traffic “were being followed with considerable interest and detail by all the senior addressees. . . . They therefore wanted to see those things as promptly as possible.” The skill of the U.S. cryptographers was such that, in spite of the daily adjustments made by the Japanese to their “Purple” code machine, the U.S. cryptographers were often able to decrypt a Japanese intercept and have it translated an hour or two before the Japanese ambassador was to meet Secretary of State Hull to discuss it.^[114] To speed up the delivery of this material to Hull and our other top officials, Kramer said he didn’t take time to write summaries during the final weeks, as he had done earlier, but would only indicate subject matter “by attaching clips to the messages in the folders . . . of most immediate interest.”^[115]

Although the intelligence gleaned from the intercepts was necessarily incomplete, Kramer noted many clues to Japan’s intentions. The Japanese were negotiating for Thailand to enter the conflict on their side; on November 30; they reported to their German allies on the status of their negotiations with the United States; they asked their specially trained espionage man in the United States, Terasaki, mistakenly called “Takahashi” by Kramer, to leave the country. On December 6 Japanese ships had been sighted moving down the coast of French Indochina and rounding its southern tip “approximately a day’s run from Kota Bharu,”^[116] north of Singapore on the Malayan peninsula near the border of Thailand; and the Japanese “were very concerned about what action we were taking, where our Fleet might be, what action we might take in case the Japs did make a move against the British.”^[117] Kramer testified that the Japanese had wired their ambassador in Berlin

there is extreme danger that war may suddenly break out between the Anglo-Saxon nations and Japan through some clash of arms and . . . the time of the breaking out of this war may come quicker than anyone dreams.^[118]

Kramer said he

prepared a special paraphrased version of that for Mr. Roosevelt which he retained; otherwise, neither the State Department nor the White House were ever permitted . . . to retain any of these dispatches.^[119]

Kramer remembered the “Winds Code” set-up clearly. “On receipt of this particular message, on the instructions of the Director of Naval Communications, Admiral Noyes,” Kramer prepared some cards with “the expressions contained in this exhibit, and the meaning:”^[120] HIGASHI NO KAZEAME (East wind rain, Japan-United States relations in danger); KITANOKAZE KUMORI (Japan-U.S.S.R. relations in danger); NISHI NO KAZE HARE (West wind clear, Japan-British relations in danger).^[121] Noyes indicated that he intended to leave these cards with certain senior officers of the Navy Department. According to Kramer, Noyes “arranged with Captain Safford, the head of Op-20-G, the section of Communications that handled this material, to have any message in this phraseology handled promptly by watch officers, not only in OP-20-G but through the regular watch officers of the Communications section of the Navy Department.”^[122] “[A]ll that Op-20-G organization were very much on the qui vive looking for that . . . warning,” Kramer testified.^[123] Kramer also remembered the “Winds Code Execute.” He said he “was shown such a message by the GY watch officer, recognized it as being of this nature, walked with him to Captain Safford’s office.”^[124]

When this “Winds Code Execute” came through on December 3 or 4, “Captain Safford took the ball.” Kramer did not handle its distribution himself “because of the fact that this was a plain language message, and because of the fact that special arrangements had been made to handle” it.^[125] Kramer believed Safford took the message directly to Admiral Noyes’ office; he

knew that Admiral Noyes was highly interested in that particular plain language code because of his previous instructions to me [Kramer] to make out these cards so that he could leave it with certain high officers and the Secretary, all with the view of getting the word to those people promptly, whether it was any time of the day or night.^[126]

Kramer recalled the Japanese language words, HIGASHI NO KAZEAME. Their “literal meaning,” he said, “is East Wind, Rain. That is plain Japanese language. The sense of that, however, meant strained relations or a break in relations, possibly even implying war with a nation to the eastward, the United States.”^[127] It “could be inferred to imply as including an actual rupture of relations, or possibly even war.”^[128]

Kramer continued:

[W]e knew they were planning something against Britain. . . . We knew, too, that the Japs were very much aware of the fact we were doing a great deal for the British in their war and working closely with them. In fact, it was almost a joint front as regards negotiations with the Japs. That note that we had handed the Japanese on 26 November had only been given to them after consultation, with Japanese knowledge, with the Dutch and Chinese as well as the British. Consequently . . . the Japs were very concerned about what action we were taking, where our Fleet might be, what action we might take in case the Japs did make a move against the British.^[129]

Kramer testified about relaying information to Stark and occasionally even discussing it with him. “The majority of times,” Kramer said, “the folder [of Japanese intercepts] was left with his aide.” Just how much Stark read, Kramer didn’t know, but Kramer said he

made a point of pointing out to his aide, his flag secretary, which were the things of most immediate importance or interest to the Admiral. Occasionally I would indicate that the Admiral should see them at once, or as soon as possible. At other times when a particular hot item . . . came in, I would request permission to see the Admiral directly and would take it in. That happened quite frequently during the fall of ‘41.

By “frequently,” Kramer meant, “two or three or four times a week.”^[130]

When asked whether Stark had seen one of the intercepted Tokyo-Honolulu ships-in-harbor messages, Kramer couldn’t be “positive whether the Chief of Naval Operations actually saw it, but . . . it would have been in a folder that was left in his office.”^[131]

Had Stark received the November 28 intercept stating that, with the Japanese government’s reply “in two or three days” to the State Department’s note of November 26,^[132] “the negotiations will be de facto ruptured”? This message “was delivered,” Kramer said, “as all the negotiation messages were delivered, to the Chief of Naval Operations.” Kramer was as certain as he could be that “all these important messages were delivered to the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations.”^[133]

Among the most important messages Kramer handled was this Japanese reply to our November 26^[134] “humiliating,” according to the Japanese, proposal. On December 6 we intercepted the “Pilot Message”^[135] announcing to the Japanese ambassadors that Tokyo would soon be sending their government’s reply to the United States November 26 proposal. This reply would be in English and would be “very long,” fourteen parts.^[136] In the middle of the afternoon, Kramer became aware that this message was coming in.^[137] “[I]n guarded language” he explained to Admiral Wilkinson the nature of the message. Then he proceeded to the White House. From there he went to Knox’s apartment and Wilkinson’s home. Kramer was unable to reach Stark that evening, although he believed Wilkinson was in touch with him or his aides.^[138]

The next morning at the Navy Department, Kramer said he found the final part of Japan’s reply as well as one or two other messages.^[139] He put part 14 plus the other 13 parts and other new messages in a folder that he left in Stark’s office at about 9:00 a.m.^[140]

When Kramer “returned to the Navy Department at approximately 1020, a message directing [the Japanese ambassadors] in rather emphatic language that delivery [of the Japanese 14-part reply] be made to the Secretary of State at 1300 (1:00 p.m.) had been received.” Also received was “a series of other messages,” addressed to the Japanese ambassadors. One directed

final destruction of Japanese codes still on hand. . . . There was another message thanking the ambassador for his services, another addressed to the embassy staff, and one or two others of like nature. That material was delivered within ten to fifteen minutes to Admiral Stark’s office.^[141]

Kramer delivered the new intercepts to the State Department, where Hull, Stimson, and Knox were meeting. In giving them to Hull’s secretary, Kramer emphasized the 1:00 p.m. delivery time (7:30 a.m. in Hawaii), fearing that Knox, a civilian would miss its significance.^[142]

Admiral Turner (War Plans) Had Anticipated the Attack; Admiral Noyes (Communications) Equivocates

The NCI stopped in San Francisco on their return trip from Hawaii to Washington, to question Director of War Plans Admiral Richmond K. Turner and Director of Naval Communications Leigh Noyes, both of whom had been stationed in Washington before the attack.

Turner was asked what he knew about Stark’s knowledge of the Japanese intercepts. He said he had “discussed” the super-secret decrypted messages with Stark “frequently,” although they hadn’t talked about the importance of transmitting their contents to Kimmel.^[143] As a matter of fact, Turner got the impression from

what Stark said that Hawaii had facilities for decoding these messages and that “they were actually doing more of the decrypting in Pearl Harbor than we were in Washington.”^[144]

According to Turner, a War Plan (Rainbow Three) was issued in January 1941 that

envisaged a major attack, a major line of effort of Japan against the Philippines and either Borneo or Malaya; ultimately both, depending on the direction of the strength that they had available. . . . [W]e considered that any attack of that nature would almost surely be accompanied by an attack on the Hawaiian Islands and the Fleet of one or more forms of attack—air, submarine, Fleet, or a combination of any of those.^[145]

Turner testified that he had anticipated a Japanese-United States war even before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. He realized that “British and United States relationships had become very close.” Although he knew

nothing about what assurances were given by the president to Great Britain . . . [he] was convinced then that if Japan attacked Britain in the Far East that the United States would immediately enter the war against Japan.

Turner believed

a certain section of the Japanese hierarchy were very anxious to keep the United States out of the war, that is, keep the United States from assisting Great Britain, but many of the moves that had been made against Japan during 1940 and ’41 were made by the United States.^[146]

When the Japanese assets in the United States were frozen by executive order in July 1941, Turner said he

had expressed the opinion previously, and I again expressed it, that that would very definitely bring on war with Japan. There was no possibility of composing matters after that unless Japan made a complete backdown, which it was very apparent she was not going to do.^[147]

Turner had helped draft the Navy’s November 24 message warning the field commanders that “a surprise aggressive movement [by the Japanese] in any direction including attack on Philippines or Guam is a possibility.”^[148] By that time, he “was personally convinced that they were going to go into Siam and also into the Malay Peninsula as the initial move and also attack the Philippines.”^[149]

Turner recalled discussing with Stark the “substance” of the U.S. note, the so-called “ultimatum” of November 26. According to Turner, Stark said at the time that “there wasn’t any possibility that Japan would accept it.”^[150] Turner said, “Mr. Hull kept Admiral Stark very well informed at all times. . . . Their relations,” Turner testified, “were very close and cordial.” So Stark’s November 27 “war warning” message to Kimmel had been based, on Hull’s advice “over the inter-office phone . . . that to all intents and purposes the thing was all over as far as negotiations were concerned.”^[151]

Turner wrote the November 27 “war warning,” discussed it with Stark, and it went out with Turner’s recommendation. Turner was asked: “Why was it [that] the Hawaiian Islands were not included [in that message] as a possible objective for Japan?”

Turner: The objectives which were put in there were the strategic objectives. We did not believe that Japan would launch an amphibious attack against the Hawaiian Islands.^[152]

However, Turner had felt

an attack was coming, and I was not at all surprised at the air attack. I knew our carriers were out, and with the warnings which had been given, I felt we would give them a pretty bad beating before they got home. . . . We had done what we could to take precautions against the attack carrying through. The order was issued to deploy the Fleet in a defensive deployment.^[153]

According to Turner, that order meant

To send scouting forces out of different kinds, to deploy submarines in threatened directions, to put the Fleet to sea and in a covering position for the Hawaiian Islands and a supporting position for Midway.^[154]

Turner said he believed that the December 7, 1:00 p.m., delivery time indicated an attack by the Japanese against the United States or Great Britain. “[O]n certainly the Kra Peninsula,” Turner said, “a landing in Siam and attacks of one nature or another, air probably, on the Philippines, because we had scouting planes out there, and some form of attack in Hawaii.” Turner considered that an air attack against the Hawaiian Islands “was one of the possibilities,” even “a probability.”

Q.: Were you surprised on the morning of the 7th when Japan made an air attack on the Hawaiian Islands?

Turner: Not in the least.^[155]

At the time of the attack, Admiral Noyes had been serving in Washington as director of naval communications. According to him, “The handling of communication intelligence was a joint affair between Office of Naval Communications and the Office of Naval Intelligence,” then headed by Wilkinson. Naval Communications “was responsible for the mechanics of crypto-analysis, including interception which could be done by naval means.” As intelligence was developed it “was turned over to the Office of Naval Intelligence to handle according to their usual procedure.” However, Noyes pointed out, the intercepts were not handled by the usual procedure as they were considered

most secret—a much higher degree of secrecy than the ordinary designation, “Secret,” due to the fact that it is useless if any inkling reaches the enemy of the fact that we are able in any way to read his communications.^[156]

Noyes proved a reluctant witness. He avoided issues, or limited his responses to the obvious or irrelevant. When asked, “Were you acquainted with the contents of this [“war warning”] dispatch on or before 7 December 1941?” he replied, “These are my initials on this draft; those are my initials.”^[157]

Q. Were you present at any conference or discussion regarding this dispatch prior to its having been released?

Noyes: Admiral Turner showed me that dispatch before he took it in for release. These are his initials. (Indicating.) These are mine. (Indicating.) It was prepared by Op12, which was War Plans.^[158]

Noyes couldn’t remember what had sparked the November 27 “war warning” that “Negotiations with Japan . . . have ceased.”

[I]t wasn’t based on any information that came through me. Whatever the statement was, I assumed at the time it was correct. I hadn’t any doubt it was correct. I will be glad to express an opinion. It is purely my recollection—a general recollection; it may not be correct. I think that at that time Nomura and Kurusu stated that they were through. The United States hadn’t accepted what they had proposed, and negotiations were supposed to be over. Afterwards, they were reopened, like all diplomatic situations; it was a case of bluff at the time—a diplomatic bluff in regard to the ceasing of negotiations, but that is purely my memory, and that wasn’t anything that I had any official knowledge of.^[159]

The judge advocate tried to determine if there was some special reason for sending, on December 4, the dispatch directing the Naval Station, Guam, to destroy all secret and confidential publications.^[160] That was when Safford said the “Winds Code Execute” had been received,

Noyes: This was one of a series of dispatches sent, directing the destruction of all secret publications in the Pacific that could be spared in view of the imminence of war. I prepared it. It was sent on the 4th of December. This is my handwriting (indicating); and I prepared this dispatch, which is one of some others.^[161]

Judge Advocate Biesemeier pursued the matter: “Imminence of war with what country, Admiral?”

Noyes: Japan.

Biesemeier pressed on. Why did Noyes believe a war with Japan was “imminent”?

Noyes: The seriousness of the situation in the Pacific. I couldn’t give you the exact items as they came up between the 27th [the date of the “war warning”] and the 4th. Things had gotten progressively worse. . . .^[162]

Judge Advocate: But you have not yet told us the developments [between 27 November and 4 December 1941] . . . which made you think this dispatch was necessary?

Noyes: No, I don’t think I could give you the exact sequence of events between those two dates. Ambassador Nomura, and I expect, Ambassador Kurusu, were in Washington, and the negotiations were apparently not proceeding well. There was no specific event that occurred on the morning of the 4th that caused me to send this dispatch.^[163]

When Biesemeier asked Noyes whether he had seen the “Winds Code” setup intercept on or after November 28, Noyes said he had and that he “took steps to get immediate notice from our intercept stations to cover this point.”^[164] This response was consistent with Kramer’s testimony that Noyes had had cards made up with the Winds code words on them.^[165] However, when asked later about the cards, Noyes “couldn’t say.”^[166]

Had Noyes known before the attack of the secretary of state’s November 26 proposal to the Japanese?

Noyes: I couldn’t say whether I was familiar with this particular paper or not. . . . That is three years ago. I can’t say on what day. This traffic which has my initials, and things that I prepared, I am glad to testify to, but I cannot say exactly when I saw or if I did see many of these hundreds of dispatches.^[167]

Q. We have testimony before this court, Admiral, from subordinates who were in your office as of this period immediately preceding 7 December 1941, that all personnel were on the alert for the receipt of some very important—or a very important answer from the Japanese government. Do you have any knowledge of this situation?

Noyes: From the time of the 27 of November, gradually getting more acute, we were making every effort to obtain any information possible. I couldn’t say that we expected any particular message. . . .

Q. But were you expecting any information of importance immediately preceding 7 December 1941, from the Japanese government?

Noyes: I might say we were hoping. I couldn’t say we were expecting.^[168]

Had Noyes seen or been informed about parts 1 to 13 of the Japanese reply, intercepted, decoded, and delivered to top Washington officials during the evening of December 6? He said he had not seen or been informed of the subject matter before December 7. He did not know where he was after working hours on the night of December 6. Nor did he know whether he went back to the office or stayed home.

Q. But your present recollection is that you have no knowledge of having seen that document, Parts 1 to 13, on the night of 6 December 1941?

Noyes: That is my recollection.

Asked about part 14, he replied, “This message wasn’t translated until the 7th of December.”

Q. Had you ever been informed of it at any time, and if so, when?

Noyes: I will have to say I don’t remember.

Noyes said he did not see the “One p.m. Message” instructing the Japanese ambassadors to deliver their government’s reply to the secretary of state at that time until after 7 December.^[169]

Asked if the Navy had facilities in Pearl Harbor for intercepting information in the Purple code, which was usually sent by cable, Noyes replied, “At the time there were no legal facilities [in Pearl Harbor] for intercepting cable. . . .”

Q. Do I understand your answer to mean that they were not receiving these cable dispatches transmitted in the purple code?

Noyes: I should say they probably were not.^[170]

Q. Did you ever inform the Chief of the War Plans Division, Captain Turner, that the Commander-in-Chief of the Pacific Fleet was decrypting intelligence information of a character similar to that which you were receiving in the Navy Department?

Noyes: No.^[171]

When Noyes was asked “whether any of the code words as set out in document 15 [the “Winds Code” set-up message] were received in the Navy Department, either in Japanese or in plain English?” that is whether there had been a “Winds Code Execute,” he replied, “They were not.”^[172]

Testimony had been presented “before this court to the effect that the execution of the winds code system was received and that a thorough search in the Navy Department files had failed to reveal a copy of the execution signal.” Noyes was asked about that: “Would the Director of Naval Communications files be the normal placed in which that record would be kept?”

Noyes: If it was received by naval means, yes. . . . Otherwise, the Office of Naval Intelligence.

Q. The testimony before this court was that it had been received by naval intercepting means and therefore the record of this message would naturally be kept in the files of the Director of Naval Communications, would it not?

Noyes: Yes.

Q. Can you explain why this document is missing from the files of the Director of Naval Communications?

Noyes: I don’t think . . . that any such message was received by naval means.

Q. Then at no time did you learn from anyone of the execution of the winds message in any form, and at no time did you tell anyone of the execution in any form of the winds message? Is that the way you want to leave your testimony on that subject?

Noyes: That is right; yes.^[173]. . . [T]o the best of my remembrance no execution of the so-called “Winds Message” was finally received.^[174]

At the conclusion of Noyes’s questioning, he apologized for “not hav[ing] been able to answer the questions more specifically.” But, he reminded the Court, it had been three years since he had handled any of these messages, and there had been thousands of them.

September 21, 1944, found the NCI back in Washington, with only a few more witnesses to be heard.

Information on Ship Movements

At the request of Stark, 16 messages between Tokyo and Manila, Tokyo and Seattle, Tokyo and Singapore, and Tokyo and San Francisco concerning the movements of U.S. ships into and out of those harbors were introduced into the record.^[175] Admiral Joseph R. Redman, Assistant Director of Communications, was asked if there were other similar reports to Tokyo.

Redman: Why, the general tenor of the Japanese traffic was in a searching expedition all over the world as to the movements not only in United States ports but also in those of foreign countries. [It had been going on for some time.] During the several months preceding December, 1941, it was intensified.^[176]

Redman admitted that the November 16 Honolulu to Tokyo message concerning the location of ships in Pearl Harbor had been “more specific” than the other Japanese messages he had seen reporting on ship movements,^[177] even more specific than any answer from Manila, “because this apparently referred to some particular chart upon which he was reporting.”^[178]

Redman was asked, “Can you give the court any reasons why that [diplomatic traffic] should not have been transmitted to all commanders in the Pacific, including the coastal frontier commanders on the Pacific Coast?”^[179] After some discussion of the difficulty of retaining security if messages were recorded word-for-word, or if they were sent by airmail, Redman finally admitted that the information could have been sent by courier. But a courier wasn’t used.^[180] Or it could have been briefed, encoded, and then sent, with little threat to security.^[181] But that hadn’t been done either.

Kimmel Reviews Pre-attack Pearl Harbor Situation

Admiral Kimmel said he had received none of the secret Japanese intercepts introduced to the NCI that had been received in Washington between November 1 and December 7, 1941.^[182] He had, of course, received the November 27 “war warning” dispatch. In response to that, on November 30 he set forth in a memorandum “the action which we would take in case hostilities should suddenly break out.” He thought that “it was well to be prepared and ready to take action immediately.” These plans were revised as necessary from time to time and on December 5, a new memorandum was “prepared and approved and put in the hands of the Staff Duty Officer . . . so that he would know exactly what to do . . . in case of an emergency.”^[183]

Kimmel reviewed again the situation at Pearl Harbor in the months preceding the attack.^[184] During the months preceding the attack, Stark sent Kimmel a number of rather general warnings concerning the Japanese threat in the Pacific. In Washington, tension was building toward the end of November; many Japanese messages were being intercepted, decrypted, and translated every day offered clues to the thinking of the Tokyo government. Those privy to this ultra secret MAGIC were well aware that the Japanese were planning some kind of aggressive action. Yet in spite of Kimmel’s frequent requests to Stark for information, the actual warnings sent to Kimmel revealed little of this growing sense of emergency.^[185]

In Hawaii, Kimmel “put into effect all the security measures that I thought we could put into effect, and still continue the training at anywhere near a satisfactory condition.” The “war warning” of November 27 as well as the warnings he had received earlier, Kimmel said, “followed a pattern that had continued for some time.” He “felt that before hostilities came that there would be additional information, that we would get something more definite.” When the attack actually came without his having heard anything more specific, he

was inclined to blame myself for not having been much smarter than I was. But when I found, some time later, that the information was, in fact, available in the Navy Department; that the information which, if it had been given me, would have changed my attitude and would have changed the dispositions, I ceased to blame myself so much.^[186]

Hindsight is always better than foresight. Yet Kimmel believed that, if he had known what was in the November 26 State Department note to the Japanese government and that the Navy Department thought this note “would prove entirely unacceptable to the Japanese government,” his outlook would have been affected “very considerably.”^[187] Moreover, the ships-in-harbor “messages inquiring as to the disposition of ships inside Pearl Harbor itself, wanting to know which ones were in areas, the report of the Japanese Consul giving in detail the courses taken by those in the harbor, would have indicated to me that they [the Japanese] were not only interested in the ships that were in the Pearl Harbor area but that they were interested in exactly where they were in Pearl Harbor proper.”^[188]

There were only two “effective” forms of attack against ships in Pearl Harbor itself. One would be for submarines actually to enter the harbor. At that time Kimmel would have “discounted largely” that possibility because he didn’t know they had midget submarines. He would also have discounted the possibility of an aircraft torpedo attack. He “would have considered that about the only thing that could get in would be a bombing attack.” Therefore, if he had known about the Japanese messages asking about the specific locations of ships in the harbor, he would have concluded, “Well, they probably are going to make an air bombing raid here.” Kimmel could not see “any other conclusion you can draw from it, unless you put it down to Japanese stupidity in wanting all this information.” And Kimmel did not “think they were so stupid.”^[189]

With respect to the “Winds Code Message,” Kimmel said he did not want to appear “to be so wise now that everything has happened.” But still, he said, he had

a right to an opinion. . . . The definite fact that Japan, at least, was going to break off diplomatic relations and, at most, was going to war with us would have had a very great effect on me and all my advisors. That would have been something definite.^[190]

What would Kimmel have done if he had been privy to the intelligence available in the secret intercepts that had been introduced to the NCI? He said that was “a very difficult question to answer . . . after the fact.” However, he was sure he would at least have alerted all shore-going activities in the Hawaiian Islands, including the Army. He would have

in all probability, had the Fleet put to sea . . . probably 300 miles west of Oahu in an intercepting position for any attacking force that would have come either to the northward or to the southward.

He couldn’t put them too far away, for he had to consider their fueling. But he would have put them “just far enough so they couldn’t be readily located.” He was “torn betwixt a desire for the security of the Fleet and for preparations to make the initial moves in case of war with Japan. . . . Any Fleet which sits and waits to be attacked,” Kimmel added, “labors under an enormous handicap.” However, he thought it “fair” to say that he “would have alerted everything on shore to its maximum that could be maintained over a long period.” He would have “instituted the reconnaissance to the best of our ability and I would have had the Fleet put to sea.”^[191]

Kimmel added, however, that it was “well within the realm of possibility that had I taken the Fleet to sea, the losses could have been greater than they actually were from submarine and air attack [in the harbor]. However, you must also realize,” he said,

that you presuppose then that they would have found our Fleet and that they would have been able to deliver an attack. It is not impossible that, had the Fleet gone to sea, the Japanese would not have attacked at that time at all. They might have deferred the attack. We all know how difficult it is to locate a Fleet at sea, particularly if they do not want to be located. All this is in the realm of conjecture, but I think it is fair to say that there are some things to be said for keeping the Fleet in port, and the only change we would make would be to go to a little higher state of alert than we had at the time.^[192]

“[T]he efficiency of the Japanese Air Force” was, Kimmel thought, “a surprise to the Navy Department as well as to the people in Hawaii. We had on the ships no adequate antiaircraft defense.”^[193] Nor did we have sufficient patrol planes “to maintain an adequate patrol over a long period of time. . . . [A] patrol out to 300 miles or less is of very doubtful value,” Kimmel said, “particularly against air raid.” It was “almost useless,” he added. Kimmel wanted it “clearly understood” that giving the orders to the planes was his responsibility; he had used them to protect operating areas and in training in preparation for war. He believed that

by my doing so we were employing them to the very best advantage. . . . Of course, had the patrol planes, plus all the Army bombers, been out on search, we would not have had any striking force left.^[194]

To detect a carrier force, it was necessary to know that it was on the way and also its approximate time of arrival at a certain place. To confirm the difficulty of locating an incoming force, Kimmel mentioned several attacks, just within the previous three or four weeks, when “our own Navy has gone in and made attacks on Japanese-held positions at Saipan, Palau, and Manila.” In each case our planes “effected what amounts to a tactical surprise.” And this in spite of the fact that the Japanese should have been on the alert for we had been at war for nearly three years.

[W]hat is so often overlooked in connection with this Pearl Harbor affair is that we were still at peace and still conducting conversations. . . . We were still in the peace psychology, and I myself, was affected by it just like everybody else.^[195]

Navy Court of Inquiry Report

The court completed taking testimony on September 27 and issued its report on October 19, 1944. In the course of 19 “Findings of Facts,” it reviewed the information revealed in the NCI’s nine and a half weeks of hearings (July 24 to September 27).^[196]

The NCI concluded that

Admiral Kimmel’s decision, made after receiving the dispatch of 24 November, to continue preparations of the Pacific Fleet for war, was sound in the light of the information then available to him. . . . [A]lthough the attack of 7 December came as a surprise, there were good grounds for the belief on the part of high officials in the State, War, and Navy Departments, and on the part of the Army and Navy in the Hawaiian area, that hostilities would begin in the Far East rather than elsewhere, and that the same considerations which influenced the sentiment of the authorities in Washington in this respect, support the interpretation which Admiral Kimmel placed upon the “war warning message” of 27 November, to the effect that this message directed attention away from Pearl Harbor rather than toward it. . . .

[T]he Court is of the opinion that Admiral Harold R. Stark. . . . failed to display the sound judgment expected of him in that he did not transmit to Admiral Kimmel, Commander-in-Chief, Pacific Fleet, during the very critical period 26 November to 7 December, important information which he had regarding the Japanese situation and, especially, in that, on the morning of 7 December, 1941, he did not transmit immediately the fact that a message had been received which appeared to indicate that a break in diplomatic relations was imminent, and that an attack in the Hawaiian area might be expected soon. . . .

Finally, based upon the facts established, the Court is of the opinion that no offenses have been committed nor serious blame incurred on the part of any person or persons in the naval service.^[197]

The report was promptly presented to Secretary of the Navy Forrestal.^[198] The presidential election was less than three weeks off. Roosevelt was running against Republican candidate Thomas E. Dewey for an unprecedented fourth term. The war was still going on. The report dealt with an extremely sensitive topic, the reading of the Japanese codes that were still helping the United States in its struggle against Japan. Moreover, it had exonerated Kimmel, who had been blamed for the extent of the catastrophe and hastened into retirement on the basis of the findings of the presidentially blessed Roberts Commission. Then, too, the NCI’s criticism of Stark, a close friend and adviser of FDR’s, could prove dangerous in the political campaign. Forrestal faced a difficult question: What should he do?