by James Johns
New York Governor Thomas Dewey was running as the Republican candidate for the presidency. Being an attorney, he was attuned to the legal circles in Washington and knew Rugg was defending Kimmel. About a month before the election, a rumor spread through Washington that Dewey would make an announcement about Pearl Harbor that would all but guarantee him the presidency.
Shortly before the intended revelation, and while Dewey was on the campaign trail in Tulsa, Oklahoma, a private meeting was arranged with Colonel Carter Clarke, an army intelligence officer, who introduced himself as a most trusted confidante of General Marshall. (Clarke, at the behest of Secretary Stimson, would conduct his own intelligence investigation of the events surrounding the Pearl Harbor attack.) Obviously, the president, as the opposing candidate, could not have personally arranged this meeting himself, but Dewey was still skeptical. Colonel Clarke produced a letter and handed it to Dewey. The introduction asked him not to read beyond it to the sealed portion unless he swore himself to secrecy to Clarke. After reading this, Dewey replied that he wasn’t willing to swear himself to secrecy concerning any information that he might already be privy to. So he returned the letter and sent Clarke on his way.
A couple of nights later, Colonel Clarke reappeared with a new letter. This letter did not ask for a secrecy commitment, and General Marshall reassured Dewey that he had conferred with Admiral King only, who was in total concurrence, and that neither Roosevelt nor Stimson had any knowledge of it. The letter implied that, concerning the revelation Dewey planned to make about what the administration knew before Pearl Harbor, from the factory worker to the GI in the frontline foxhole, Americans could lose faith in their wartime leadership. This was exactly why Dewey wanted to make this unveiling. But to go against the advice of Marshall and King, could he be accused of treason, a presidential candidate?
The letter included rather sensitive details on the contributions of code decryptions relating to both the Pacific and European theaters, ending with Marshall’s request that Dewey avoid revealing any information that could change the course of the war. That hit below the belt. Dewey certainly didn’t want to change the course of the war. After what must have been hours or days of deep contemplation and reflection, he finally chose to say nothing. Whether it was due to patriotism or partisanship, to right a wrong involved a risk he was not willing to take. Dewey remained silent. And that, in essence, ended his assurance of the White House, and FDR went on to win his fourth term.
A couple of months after the election, Secretary of War Stimson opened yet another investigation, led by Major Henry Clausen, who attempted to turn the Army Pearl Harbor Board’s findings upside down. During this investigation, and in an effort to bury the facts of the Pearl Harbor disaster once and for all, Senator Elbert Thomas (D–UT) introduced his bill on March 30, 1945, which would prohibit any “disclosure of any coded matter.”35 Thanks to quick thinking on Kimmel’s part, he reached out to Eugene Mayer of the Washington Post, who published on April 12, the same day that President Roosevelt died, “a stinging indictment of the Democratic attempt to hide the facts of Pearl Harbor,”36 making it clear that Americans could no longer count on the Senate to protect the people’s liberties from “executive deprivation.”37 With all the publicity, Senator Thomas’s bill died.
The Clausen Investigation would continue until September of 1945, and would provide some relief for Stimson. During this investigation, both Colonel Bedell Smith and General Leonard Gerow would deny Colonel Bratton’s delivery of the Japanese thirteen-part message on Saturday, December 6. Along with other denials by these two, Colonel Rufus Bratton and Colonel Otis Sadtler suddenly developed recollection issues, and each changed his previous testimony.
And then, just weeks after Roosevelt’s death, there was the Hewitt Inquiry. Navy Secretary James Forrestal met with President Truman to let him know that he would be conducting another Pearl Harbor investigation. He, too, had not been satisfied with the Navy Court of Inquiry’s conclusions, and Admiral H. Kent Hewitt was assigned the task of heading up this investigation.
The Hewitt Inquiry focused on the existence of the Japanese “winds execute” intercepted at the navy’s Station M on December 3. While this team of investigators was able to persuade Commander Alvin Kramer to back down on the testimony he had given at the Navy Court of Inquiry, Captain Laurence Safford stood fast. In spite of Safford’s testimony, Hewitt ultimately concluded that the winds execute had never been sent, and while Stark had been somewhat blamed for not raising the alarm to Kimmel in the week prior to the attack, he also concluded that Kimmel had received sufficient warning.
While the Hewitt Inquiry was in process, rumors were circulating that the winds execute, on the orders of General Marshall, had actually been destroyed. To refute this allegation, Marshall enlisted the services of Colonel Clarke, which would lead to the Clarke Investigation. Brought under fire in this inquiry was Colonel John Bissell, who, with or without Marshall’s knowledge, had supposedly destroyed the message himself. Not surprisingly, Bissell denied the allegation, and the War Department considered the matter closed.
When the actual army and navy reports were released to the public in August 1945, Stimson and Forrestal openly condemned Kimmel and Short, which only added more fuel to the fire. The press wasn’t buying it, and when President Truman was questioned at a press conference shortly thereafter, he responded that he had come to the conclusion the Pearl Harbor disaster had been “the result of the policy which the country itself pursued. The country was not ready for preparedness…. I think the country is as much to blame as any individual in this final situation that developed in Pearl Harbor.”38 Now the entire country was to blame, a viewpoint that was not well accepted.
After President Roosevelt’s death in April 1945, and at public demand to settle the issue once and for all, the Seventy-Ninth Congress opened its own Pearl Harbor investigation, entered into Senate records as the “Joint Committee on the Investigation of the Pearl Harbor Attack,” commencing on November 15, 1945, and running through May 31, 1946. (For those who believe in the stars, the Hitler-Roosevelt coincidences prove most interesting. Hitler became chancellor on Roosevelt’s birthday, January 30, 1933. Then the following March 5, he assumed his legislative powers within twenty-five days of FDR’s taking office. Their power lasted twelve years, and they died only weeks apart in April 1945.)
Leading the congressional hearings at the onset would be William D. Mitchell, who had served as President Hoover’s attorney general from 1929 to 1933. Being assured that no obstacles would be put in his way to get to the truth, he would later have misgivings about taking on the assignment.
By the middle of December, Mitchell had become so irritated with all the political rants and the crossfire of missing files and allegedly destroyed documents that he resigned. He would continue to lead the hearings only until January of 1946, when Seth Richardson took over. Richardson had also served under President Hoover (1929 to 1933), but as assistant attorney general. And although a Republican, he did not add the influence to the hearings that the minority party may have hoped for. It was believed by some that all the dealings his current law firm had with the government may have curtailed his enthusiasm. Richardson took over as general counsel to the congressional committee on January 15, 1946.
The hearings would ultimately generate over fifteen thousand pages of testimony in seventeen volumes that embodied evidence of the earlier investigations. The joint congressional committee consisted of ten members, five from the House of Representatives and five from the Senate. Because the Democrats controlled both Houses, it was decided that they should control the membership within the committee, representing three of the five from each body, resulting in a Democratic majority of six of the ten members. Similar to the Roberts Commission, it appeared that the verdict was in before the hearings even convened.
Interestingly, pursuant to “Senate Resolution 27, Section 3,” it is specifically stated that no one testifying could have his evidenc
e used against him in his military status. This section alone would be the subject of repeated abuse to suit the direction of the committee majority. Testimony that had been precisely recalled in detail in earlier investigations now was changed completely or too vague to be accurately recalled in the interest of the witness protecting himself.
There had only been one man in complete charge, President Roosevelt. And if he were in any way discovered to have ordered the manipulation of intelligence, White House minutes, or records of activities, any such revelation could conceivably put his party in big trouble at the polls. The committee’s majority saw that such evidence was never introduced.
As previously mentioned, potential witnesses such as Ralph Briggs and Daryl Wigle, who had actually intercepted the winds code alert and who could provide evidence to counter the aims of the committee, were either not called or ordered not to appear. Because denial of the winds execute “higashi no kazeame” was key to the issue of the lack of advance warning for Pearl Harbor, any reference to it would have to be repudiated.
In the week prior to the Pearl Harbor attack, Captain Laurence Safford, head of OP-20-G, had advised the naval monitoring stations on November 28, 1941, to be on the watch for a winds code alert, broadcast on Japanese radio. It was Ralph Briggs, the radioman on duty at Station M, who had monitored and forwarded the winds execute on December 3 to Safford in Washington, who, in turn, forwarded it up the chain of command. But now in the waning days of 1945, the existence of such a message would prove a liability to the committee. Safford had testified at the 1944 Navy Court of Inquiry, which had accepted and acknowledged how his deposition had fit the known facts. In the absence of any Briggs or Wigle testimony during the congressional hearings, Safford and Kramer, who had actually received the winds execute from Briggs, testified again to seeing it. And they were accused of imagining it all. (While Kramer did not deny the existence of the winds execute, he suffered a lapse in memory, testifying that he thought that it could have been Great Britain rather than the United States that was singled out in the message.)
Anyone with knowledge of the winds execute suddenly came under great pressure to change his story. Secretly, Briggs and Safford had collaborated prior to Safford’s statement to the committee. Now Briggs was called before his commander, Captain John Harper, and questioned about his meetings with Safford. Harper then ordered Briggs to have no further contact. Safford had even asked the congressional committee to have Briggs appear because it was Briggs who had actually logged in the winds code alert. This was denied by the majority.
Kramer was even threatened with permanent residency in a mental institution if his testimony did not fit the sequence of events that had been decided upon. It had played heavily on his conscience to give false testimony under oath. Within the committee, one faction was trying to suppress the truth while the other was searching for it. The destruction of the files at Cheltenham containing the Japanese intercepts, including the winds code message, which could now be denied as ever being received, was justified with the logic of avoiding a large accumulation of paper. The question of who actually authorized or ordered the destruction of intelligence was never determined.
Of all those who testified throughout the hearings, and in addition to Kimmel and Short, of course, it was Captain Safford who did not suffer from any memory issues. And if the interrogations of others were grueling, the Democrats were relentless with Safford, trying their best to intimidate him. And yet Safford, fragile but determined, held his ground that the winds execute had been received in Washington; that he was aware that the navy had instructed certain messages to be destroyed after the attack; and that he had previously been encouraged during the Clausen Investigation to change his testimony. He was so committed to telling the truth that on several occasions, his answers brought a round of applause from the audience.
In the search for the answer to the question of whether Kimmel and Short had enough information to have been sufficiently warned by top intelligence officers in Washington, the variety of responses should have raised red flags. Both General Marshall and Admiral Stark testified that intelligence was not sent to Kimmel and Short because the variety of information would have only served to confuse them. Apparently they had never considered forwarding only that which was necessary to properly alert the Hawaiian commanders. General Miles, as the army’s intelligence director, stated that Magic was not forwarded for fear of the Japanese breaking the American codes. Admiral Turner, Director of War Plans, who had also been making intelligence decisions, testified that he was under the impression that the Hawaiian commanders were getting Magic. Yet, as the man making the decisions on who received what, he knew, or it was his business to know, who received what. Admiral Leigh Noyes, Naval Communications Director, stated that the Hawaiian commanders did not have the capability to receive and decode messages themselves. Although it had actually been decrypted in early October, they all assured the committee in unison that the bomb plot message requesting ship positions in Pearl Harbor was not decoded until after the fact, thus covering themselves for not passing it on in time.
Admiral Kimmel, in trying to convince the committee that the war warning didn’t give him the information mandatory to conduct a defense, testified:
The statement in the Navy Department dispatch to me to the effect that the negotiations had ceased on November 27 was a pale reflection of actual events; so partial a statement as to be misleading. The parties had not merely stopped talking, they were at sword points. So far as Japan was concerned, the talking that went on after November 26 was play-acting. It was a stratagem to conceal a blow which Japan was preparing to deliver. The stratagem did not fool the Navy Department. The Navy Department knew the scene. The Pacific Fleet was exposed to this Japanese stratagem because the Navy Department did not pass on its knowledge of the Japanese trick.39
At first, Kimmel had supported the idea of an independent committee to examine Pearl Harbor, but soon he came to realize he was still not going to get a fair shot. The administration was really running the show. But at the close of his testimony, it was Representative Bertrand Gearhart (R–CA) who summed it all up: “How could Kimmel be condemned for being caught by surprise when everybody above him, the Commander in Chief … the Chief of Naval Operations, the Chief of Staff of the Army, all insisted that they were surprised?”40
The issue of the December 6, Saturday night deliveries of the first thirteen parts, Japan’s response to the Ten Point Note, represented a total turnaround from the army and navy inquiries. While both Marshall and Stark still insisted that they could not recall their whereabouts to cover their not acting, coordinating, nor at least conferring, the weight of it all fell to Colonel Bratton. Bratton’s routine during this period was like clockwork in his deliveries of intelligence. To the Army Board, he had testified concerning the importance of deliveries of the thirteen parts to head off a certain surprise Japanese move in the Pacific. But now to the congressional committee (as with the Clausen Investigation) and as if to save himself like Kramer, Bratton completely reversed his testimony, stating that the reason he did not make deliveries to Marshall and Gerow, the two army officers authorized to alert overseas commands, was that it was just routine intelligence.
Bratton’s known, keen interpretation of such critical material must have played heavily on making him appear like an idiot by not delivering to officers who did not want to be found. Likewise, it is inconceivable that on the most important day of their lives, the two highest ranking officers of the U.S. military should both have a lapse of memory as to their whereabouts unless they, too, were under higher orders. Adding to the mystery, this deception was passed on to their aides, whose job it was to know the exact locations of their bosses at all times. But, knowing the answerability and the responsibility of their appointments to the nation, what alternative answers could they have offered?
Admiral Turner had seen the first thirteen parts before leaving his office on Saturday, and although he was authoriz
ed to alert overseas commands, he stated that he had not been approached to do so by Admiral Ingersoll, Stark’s assistant, or by Admiral Wilkinson, Director of Naval Intelligence. He knew that both Ingersoll and Wilkinson had also received deliveries from Kramer, and without hearing from either of them, he took no action.
It was December 20, 1945, during the congressional hearings that William Mitchell asked Turner to explain the purpose of the Vacant Sea Order dated November 25, 1941, which had been sent to Hawaii under the order of Rear Admiral Ingersoll. (After the Pearl Harbor attack, Ingersoll would be promoted to vice admiral and appointed commander in chief of the U.S. Atlantic Fleet.)
Turner’s response was, “We were prepared to divert traffic when we believed that war was imminent. We sent the traffic down via Torres Strait, so that the track of the Japanese task force would be clear of any traffic.”41 Of Japan’s direct or northerly route choices, Washington knew which one to clear, sending all commercial and Allied military traffic thousands of miles out of their way. Directly, the American government cleared the way for them with the premise that if they thought that they had been observed, they might be tempted to cancel the attack, which in fact had been the order. Strangely, few authors have even touched on the Vacant Sea Order, which adds further evidence that the attack on Pearl Harbor was no surprise.
The committee’s Republican minority fought back on every issue possible, but on each one, they were overruled. Referring to the Magic intercepts provided Roosevelt on Saturday night, and concerning his ultimate responsibility as commander in chief to see that Hawaiian commanders were informed, they charged the president with “failure to take this action Saturday night, December 6, or early Sunday morning, December 7.”42 This was hard to refute, given the testimony of Lieutenant Lester Schulz, who had personally carried the thirteen-part message in to Roosevelt on Saturday night. Having been away from Washington, he was not aware of all the controversy surrounding the joint congressional hearings. So when he testified, he told the truth, including the response from Roosevelt, “This means war.”43 The committee’s minority pointed the finger at, besides the president, Secretaries Stimson and Knox, Admiral Stark, and Generals Marshall and Gerow. But again, their demands were only noted.