After sending off the final draft of this book to my publisher, I felt sure its revelations would bring forth further disclosures. Here are several pieces of new information which should be useful to historians and researchers of the tangled Pearl Harbor case.
1. A report from a man serving in the Aleutians regarding movements of Kido Butai, the Pearl Harbor carrier striking force, in the north Pacific. Robert E. Israel, company commander of an infantry unit stationed in Dutch Harbor, sent me a xerox of an original message (in his possession) from Alaska Defense Command to Headquarters 37th Infantry received at 1:05 A.M., December 6, 1941. It reads:
RADIO REPORT:
NAVY REPORTS
JAP SHIPS 270 MILES
SOUTHEAST OF DUTCH
HARBOR.
I had previously learned from Seaman Z that there was a direction-finder station in Dutch Harbor, and that in 1944 one of its officers informed him that they too had tracked Kido Butai in the North Pacific. Seaman Z could not remember the man’s name but was sure if I presented him with a list of those serving in Dutch Harbor he would recall it. I requested from the U.S. Navy a roster of all intelligence and communications officers in Dutch Harbor. None could be found. Since reading Infamy, one researcher, Gordon Heyd Evans, has been attempting in vain to locate at both the U.S. Naval Historical Center and the National Archives the logs and records of the Mid-Pacific Strategic Direction-Finder Net which, in 1941, stretched from Cavite in the Philippines, through Midway and Hawaii to Dutch Harbor. There seems to be no valid reason why these records, if they have not been destroyed, should not now be declassified.
2. Letters from Colonel Carlton G. Ketchum, a well-known resident of Pittsburgh, revealing that J. Edgar Hoover had information the Japanese carrier force was approaching Pearl Harbor. Ketchum had been selected by General H. H. Arnold to obtain commissioned personnel over draft age for the Air Force with specific qualifications and experience. This was a nationwide effort on a mammoth scale, ending in the fall of 1942. He related that early in 1942 he had been invited by Congressman George Bender of Ohio to attend a special meeting of a select group of congressmen and government officials at the Army-Navy Club in Washington. According to Ketchum, this was an informal group that met bi-weekly throughout congressional sessions to dine, talk freely on matters otherwise held confidential and play poker. Bender told Ketchum that Hoover, who was a member of the permanent group, was going to tell them how well known to the President and a few of his intimate advisers the Japanese plan to attack us had been. Hoover, again according to Ketchum, spoke informally and without notes to a group of men with whom (except for Ketchum) he was intimately acquainted. Before he spoke, the members were reminded of the group’s usual pledge of secrecy.
“For an obvious reason I regarded all that was said there as privileged, and repeated it to no one,” wrote Ketchum. But now, after reading parallel information in Infamy, he felt freed from that requirement of secrecy. “I of course cannot provide any verbatim quotations, but I was so impressed by what was said that I am sure I am accurate in principle in the material I am sending you herewith. Mr. Hoover said that he had had warnings from repeated sources from early fall, 1941, to within just a few days before the Pearl Harbor attack, that it was coming, and that these warnings became more specific from one time to another. He said that much more important, the President had had warnings during all of that time, in addition to those he received from Mr. Hoover, from a number of sources. He referred to a Dutch Embassy and the Dutch Secret Service in the Far East as having given such warnings. He referred to a British businessman and later to British Secret Service in Hong Kong. He said that Mr. Roosevelt had had a warning from some governmental agency in Japan, but I cannot recall who that was. He mentioned at least one other source that I am now unable to recall.
“Mr. Hoover said that in addition to President Roosevelt, these warnings were known to Harry Hopkins, the President’s personal adviser, to Secretary Knox, and I think Secretary Stimson, but I am not sure about him. He was very sure, he said, that they were not passed on to General Marshall, nor to General Short, nor Admiral Kimmel, commanders in the Pacific. Hoover was told by the President not to mention to anyone any of this information, but leave it to be handled in the judgment of the President, and not to pass it on within the F.B.I., even to their men stationed in the Pacific at that time. Hoover said that the last warning or warnings came from some radio operator in Hawaii who said that they showed that a Japanese Fleet was approaching and that these came a few days before the [Pearl Harbor] attack. My recollection is that there was some discussion of the fact that this radio silence began about three days before the attack. There was discussion in that group at this point, that the Army and Navy commanders could have been warned well in advance, and could have made such arrangements as would have dispersed the fleet and scattered soldiers in camps so that the casualties would have been minimized. There were some rather bitter things said about the President’s conduct which I shall not attempt at this late date to quote.”
Colonel Ketchum wrote about this meeting in his autobiography, The Recollections of Colonel Retread, 1942–1945, published by Hart Books, Pittsburgh, in 1976. “The dinner conversation,” he wrote, “was of the utmost interest principally because it dealt with the knowledge in Washington prior to the Pearl Harbor attack of the extreme likelihood of that occurrence and the parallel bombing of Clark Field in the Philippines. I suppose their rule of no quotation expired long since and that was some thirty-some years ago, but I will still observe it.”
3. Further evidence of the tracking of the Japanese Carrier Task Force during its historic voyage towards Hawaii. It is an historical fact that Admiral Nagumo ordered strict radio silence to be observed by all ships of Kido Butai upon embarking from home waters in mid-November 1941. In a two-hour Japanese TV special, “Search for the Solution of the Pearl Harbor Puzzle” (shown by Nippon TV on the forty-first anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack), the director and producer, Tsutomu Konno, interviews Robert Haslach, who is writing a history of Netherlands East Indies cryptology and intelligence during 1932–1942. Haslach, an employee of the Netherlands Embassy in Washington, D.C., displays a postwar affidavit from a Dutch naval captain named Henning, who is described as a careful officer who reported no hearsay evidence, only those things he knew to be absolutely true. The Henning document, addressed to the Netherlands Royal Navy General Staff, stated that from the analysis of Japanese radio traffic it had been possible to determine that during the last week of November 1941, there was a large Japanese fleet concentration near the Kuriles. In other words, intercepted Japanese radio messages had enabled the Dutch in November 1941 to track Kido Butai all the way north to Hitokappu Bay in the Kuriles, where the carrier force was assembling for the Pearl Harbor strike. How else could this tracking have been accomplished unless some ship or ships of the task force had not broken radio silence?
In his research for the Japanese TV special, Konno also discovered in an official history compiled by the War History Office of the Japanese Defense Force (Operation Hawaii, published by Senshi Sosho) that one of the two submarines accompanying Kido Butai, the 1–23, reported it was having engine trouble on November 30, 1941 (Tokyo time), and maximum speed was reduced to 80 percent efficiency. The submarine fell behind, soon dropping out of range of flag or light signals. There is no further record of 1–23 in Operation Hawaii until December 6 (Tokyo time), when it was noted that “1–23 has finally rejoined the main body after emergency repairs.” There is no record of how this submarine, which was not equipped with a direction finder, managed to relocate the carrier force.
Further research in the case of 1–23 and related matters dealing with radio silence could be fruitful. The new evidence that the Dutch tracked Kido Butai in late November 1941, gives credence to the tracking reported by Admiral Wilkinson to Captain Ranneft and by Seaman First Class Z. Both of these American trackings came on December 2, during the extremely rough weather which prevented Kido Butai from refueling for two days. Commanders of the smaller vessels, faced with emergency conditions, could have resorted to low-power transmission, Talk Between Ships, which in those days was believed to have a range of no more than fifty miles. Today it is known that under certain weather conditions such low-power transmissions can jump very long distances. During his research Konno interviewed radiomen serving on ships in Kido Butai. All swore they had never broken radio silence even with low-power transmissions. But several did admit they had been sorely tempted to do so because of the dense fog and heavy seas.
Konno has brought to light other important information. In Honolulu he found two subordinates of Police Lieutenant Burns. One, William Kaina, stated that the future governor of Hawaii had discussed with him F.B.I. agent Shivers’ warning of a Pearl Harbor attack several days before it came. The other, Richard Miller, declared that Shivers himself had warned him of the attack. Konno also adds new information regarding the Yugoslav double agent, Popov, and raises intriguing questions on other incidents that should be further explored. All this material, according to Konno, will be made available to researchers.
4. Confirmation from two prominent Japanese naval officers that the “winds” execute message had been received on the east coast of the United States on or about December 4, J941, as Captain Laurance Safford had so persistently testified. In an autobiography, The 365 Days Before Pearl Harbor (published by Kojin-sha, Tokyo), Captain Yuzuru Sanematsu, a leading Japanese naval historian, describes his personal knowledge of the controversial message. In 1941 he was a commander, one of two assistant naval attachés in the Washington Embassy. The attaché office was located on the second floor of the two-story Embassy administration building. On November 19, 1941, over a receiver located in the next room, their radio operator had picked up the message from Tokyo setting up the famous “winds” code. By the morning of December 4 the attaché staff was in a state of constant alert in expectation of receiving the “winds” execute. That afternoon the radio operator, Chief Petty Officer Kenichi Ogimoto, who was posing as a civilian clerk and had been “all ears” the past two weeks, rushed into the attaché office, shouting, “The wind blew!” Sanematsu ran into the radio room in time to hear the announcer repeat several times, “Higashi no kaze ame [East wind, rain].” No one tried to hide his emotions. What was to come had at last come! They began preparing for the destruction of the code machine, secret papers and code books, retaining only materials necessary to carry on last-minute business.
In an interview on August 18, 1982, the other assistant attaché, Lieutenant Commander Yoshimori Terai, confirmed the story, relating how he had returned on the afternoon of December 4 to find the office in commotion over reception of the “winds” execute. In another interview the previous day I informed Captain Sanematsu that Commissioned Warrant Officer Ralph Briggs had testified he had received the “winds” execute during an early morning shift, not in the afternoon. Sanematsu said it was probable that Tokyo had sent such an important message several times and that Briggs must have heard one of the early broadcasts of December 4. Why hadn’t Ogimoto heard this early broadcast? Sanematsu explained that Ogimoto was the only radio operator and could not monitor broadcasts around the clock. Ogimoto, who shared living quarters with Sanematsu in a nearby apartment, was scheduled to report for duty at 9 A.M. Terai, presently a retired vice admiral, agreed that Briggs could have heard an earlier broadcast while Ogimoto slept.
Safford had first testified that he believed the “winds” execute had come on the morning of December 3. Later he changed the date to December 4. In his official taped interview Briggs testified he also believed the date was December 4. When he examined the secret files after the war for the “winds” execute, all he could find was one log, dated December 2, 1941, which appears in the picture section. He thought this might possibly be the “winds” execute. It was not and that answers the question of why it had not been destroyed.
Also of interest to researchers should be comments and suggestions by readers of Infamy who had been connected with the Pearl Harbor controversy. Lieutenant Commander Richard E. Cragg, in charge of Research and Development at the Naval Code and Signal Laboratory in Washington during World War II, was an associate of Captain Laurance Safford and contributed more details concerning the Naval Cipher No. 3 imbroglio.
Joe F. Richardson, son of Admiral J. O. Richardson, while regarding Infamy as “the most comprehensive, the most judicious and the most enlightening” of books on the subject, pointed out that I had been remiss in one instance. “Today, knowing the full extent of the tragedy, a great many people find it impossible to believe that Roosevelt deliberately withheld information that could have saved so many lives, ships and planes. Hindsight makes it too monstrously evil to be credible.
“For this reason, I regret that in your summing up on this page you did not place more emphasis on the failure of all hands to realize the significance of the British success at Taranto. I think this most vital link in the whole chain of disaster has never been sufficiently stressed.
“If Roosevelt believed, as did the Navy, that Pearl Harbor was immune from aerial torpedo attack and knew, of course, that bombs would be largely ineffective against the fleet, then his decision not to alert the Hawaiian command becomes more understandable.…”
What the Americans did not know was that the Japanese had modified their torpedoes with wooden fins so they would be more buoyant in the shallow waters of Pearl Harbor.
Henry Clausen, presently a leading Masonic executive and formerly assistant recorder for the Army Pearl Harbor Board as well as the officer selected by Secretary of War Stimson to conduct a special investigation of Pearl Harbor, wrote, “Your assiduity in developing the facts of the Pearl Harbor disaster for your Infamy is greatly admired.… Good luck in your follow-up on any leads.” One lead came from a reader who wrote of a letter purportedly written to Admiral Kimmel by one of Roosevelt’s sons-in-law concerning prior knowledge of Pearl Harbor. This matter was pursued by Captain Thomas Kimmel, who recalled reading such a letter to his father from John Boettiger. In response to a query to one of the admiral’s secretaries, Mrs. Geraldine A. Weeks, Thomas Kimmel received this letter:
“My association with your father was a brief one in 1967 from January to March for the purpose of helping him respond to mail he received on the occasion of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor. He would dictate to me at his home and I would then take the letters and my dictation to my home to type.
“There was a letter from Mr. Boettiger (Anna Roosevelt’s ex-husband) to your father stating that on the night of December 6, 1941, the ‘family’ was having dinner together at the White House. The President was called away during dinner and when he returned he stated, in effect, that war would start the next day. The letter from Mr. Boettiger simply said that he wanted to ‘set the record straight’ after all those years. It had always troubled him that the truth had never been aired but he had felt compelled to remain silent because of his ties, at the time, to the Roosevelt family. Your father’s response was an expression of gratitude.
“At the time I had that letter in my possession, both my husband (then the commanding officer of the SSBN Henry L. Stimson—that caused some words from your father) and I debated about the prudence of making a copy of it. We decided, since it was not our property, we had no right. We have wished through the years our decision had been otherwise.
“There were carbons of all the responses to letters handled by me during that period in 1967 and the incoming letter was attached to the reply. They were all returned to your father to dispose of as he pleased.”
Colonel Walter Dean Short, son of the general, wrote that he had once asked his father why he had not fought the case as hard as Admiral Kimmel. “His answer was substantially to the effect that he wanted to do what he could for the war effort. Therefore, he had gone to work for Ford and was acting as their traffic manager for the Jeep assembly plant in Dallas expediting the shipment of this critical vehicle to our units. He could not really do that job and marshal his own case, and the needs of the U.S. came first with him, then as always. He knew then that G. Marshall was no longer his friend but had placed his position in the FDR administration above his honor. However, Dad was sure that the Army Board would completely exonerate him. He simply could not believe that the honor of so many senior officers could have been subverted.
“After the congressional Pearl Harbor hearings he was saddened but seemed to think that history would ultimately, as you have done, exonerate him. I particularly remember him saying after the congressional hearings on Pearl Harbor, ‘Poor George Marshall, he will be the only high ranking officer who will never be able to write his own memoirs.’ ”
Additional information on the Kilsoo Haan case has come from Thomas W. Gillette, nephew of Senator Guy Gillette. He discussed the matter at length with his uncle in Bath, Maine, sometime in 1967. “It was then he told me about the contacts from Kilsoo Haan. He also said that Haan had contacted him in late November [1941], telling him that the Japanese Fleet had sailed, under battle orders, east, not south, to attack Pearl Harbor or the Panama Canal.
“Uncle Guy then said he had personally called on President Roosevelt and given him the information. The President’s response was Thank you, the matter will be looked into.’ The conversation was, I gather, quite brief.
“Several days later, in early December [1941], Uncle Guy called the President, telling the aide that it [the call] concerned the matter discussed with the President a few days earlier. The aide came back to the phone saying the President was busy, but the President said the matter had been taken care of.
“I asked Uncle Guy (who was in his late eighties and suffered a stroke a few months later) why he had not written memoirs to this effect. His response was that at the time he was a loyal Democrat who during the war was not about to second-guess President Roosevelt. He was certain Roosevelt used the Japanese attack to achieve a degree of national effort that would otherwise have been impossible, and felt Roosevelt had simply misjudged the damage which the Japanese would be able to inflict. When I suggested it wasn’t too late to set the matter straight, he rather wearily said, ‘The matter’s over, nothing would be accomplished now.’ ”
Thomas Gillette checked the above information with his mother. “She says Uncle Guy requested [to see] and saw Roosevelt personally, due to the nature of the message. Also, [she said] Haan came to Uncle Guy because sometime earlier Uncle Guy had intervened to prevent deportation of anti-Japanese Korean students back to Korea, where they would surely have been imprisoned or killed.”
Source material of the above information as well as other material, taped interviews and correspondence dealing with Infamy can be found after June 1983 among my papers at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, N.Y.
Many more secrets of Pearl Harbor remain to be disclosed by those who long ago pledged silence in the name of national security and loyalty to the armed forces and President Roosevelt. There are some who believe that such volatile matters should not be raked up after forty years. But the best way to prevent present or future leaders from making similar mistakes is to bring all available information into the open. The time for secrecy has passed and it is hoped that those with privileged information will come forward like Colonel Ketchum has before it is too late. Much more can also be learned when—and if—our Allies at last open all their Pearl Harbor files to researchers.
August 21, 1982
Tokyo