It was predicted long before it happened. Chiba Prefecture today north wind clear, may become slightly cloudy. Breaking this code had eluded the best efforts of SIS cryptographers until August 1940, when SIS was finally able to read Purple message traffic between the Japanese government and its official representatives in the United States.The process of decoding and translating Purple messages and disseminating the resulting intelligence (known as Magic) was long and tedious due to the volume of traffic, the difficulty of the code, the limited number of cryptographers and Japanese linguists, and the security surrounding Purple. Thomas Jefferson said, “The price of freedom is Obviously, the only alternate, conceivable purpose for Pearl Harbor was to absorb the first blow which would unite the people and ultimately deliver the total power of the nation upon the enemy. During the summer of 1940, the United States began sharing intelligence with the British who had their own secret communications vis a vis Germany called “Enigma.” In a move that would later prove disastrous in the pre-Pearl Harbor scenario, one of the Purple machines that went to the British was originally supposed to be given to the U.S. Navy at Pearl Harbor.Another U.S. military organization doing cryptographic work that involved both Magic and the Winds communication was the Navy’s code-breaking group called OP-20G, led by Commander Laurance Safford.The Magic information collected by the Navy was sent to various top military and civilian leaders in the American government. Yet, it was not the only contributing factor. He did not reach Fort Shafter until 11:45 a.m. and, by the time the message was decoded and delivered to the Adjutant General's Office, the time was 2:58 p.m. and the attack was over. For years, the coded Japanese “Winds” messages hinted at controversy and official cover up. Many on the island were still sleeping—after all, it was Sunday. Warnings of an inevitable Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor were ignored for almost 30 years. He’d spent almost 10 years as America’s envoy to the Empire of the Rising Sun. Warned to listen for any unusual weather broadcasts attached to messages from Japan, Briggs heard the words he’d been alerted to. Both the Army and Navy intelligence organizations had been undermanned since World War I, and growth in 1941 came too late to reap the advantages that would have been available from a long established intelligence collection effort. On the Navy’s part, they alerted all their stations to be on the lookout for the next phase of the Winds code––the so called “Execute” stage of the plan.Subsequently, a full-court press inside the United States was ordered to listen for the “Execute” phase. On January 27, 1941, Dr. Ricardo Shreiber, the Peruvian envoy in Tokyo, told a secretary at the U.S. embassy that he had learned from intelligence sources of a war plan involving a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor.
(Image source: WikiMedia Commons)IT WAS, Franklin D. Roosevelt told Congress, “a date which will live in infamy” – Dec. 7, 1941. An attack which caught the “defenders” of Pearl Harbor completely by surprise. For weeks, one American diplomat tried to alert Washington that Tokyo meant war. It is not a matter of birthplace.” We have ignored President Calvin Coolidge’s warning: “Character is the only secure foundation of the state.”When a nation, rampant with gross immorality and self-indulgence, continues in the habit of ignoring warnings, future disasters will completely overshadow the losses of Pearl Harbor.To escape destruction in a world dead-set on annihilation, we must heed the warnings—not ignore them! When Japan restricted accessibility to foreign military observers in 1941, the U.S. ambassador warned the State Department of its limited "ability to give substantial warning…
Featured image: A destroyed Vindicator at Ewa field, the victim of one of the smaller attacks on the approach to Pearl Harbor (Source: Wikimedia Commons). The reality may now be known.The Japanese strike on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941—a “Day of Infamy,” as President Franklin D. Roosevelt described it—left the American Pacific Fleet in almost total ruin, plunged the United States into World War II, and set off a controversy regarding the events that led up to the attack that is still being hotly debated.One of the most troublesome incidents in the pre-Pearl Harbor planning by the Japanese is the so-called “Winds Code” incident and what significance, if any, it had for the American code breakers who were monitoring Japanese diplomatic and military communications in the months leading up to the surprise attack.Did the Navy cover up by not allowing the people who handled the Winds communication to testify before congressional committees after the war?