Please someone decipher this? Mk III

Layton, who served at Pearl Harbor, summed it up in his book And I Was There :  �There was never any hint in any intelligence received by the local command of any Japanese threat to Hawaii. Our air defenses were stripped on orders from the army chief himself. Of the twelve B-17s on the island, only six could be kept in the air by cannibalizing the others for spare parts.�

The Navy has traditionally followed the rule that, when international relations are critical, the fleet puts to sea. That is exactly what Admiral Kimmel did. Aware that U.S.-Japanese relations were deteriorating, he sent 46 warships safely into the North Pacific in late November 1941 � without notifying Washington. He even ordered the fleet to conduct a mock air raid on Pearl Harbor, clairvoyantly selecting the same launch site Admiral Yamamoto chose two weeks later.

When the White House learned of Kimmel�s move it countermanded his orders and ordered all ships returned to dock, using the dubious excuse that Kimmel�s action might provoke the Japanese. Washington knew that if the two fleets met at sea, and engaged each other, there might be questions about who fired the first shot.

Kimmel did not give up, however. With the exercise canceled, his carrier chief, Vice Admiral William �Bull� Halsey, issued plans for a 25-ship task force to guard against an �enemy air and submarine attack� on Pearl Harbor. The plan never went into effect.

On November 26th, Admiral Stark, Washington�s Chief of Naval Operations, ordered Halsey to use his carriers to transport fighter planes to Wake and Midway islands � further depleting Pearl Harbor�s air defenses.

It was clear, of course, that once disaster struck Pearl Harbor, there would be demands for accountability. Washington seemed to artfully take this into account by sending an ambiguous �war warning� to Kimmel, and a similar one to Short, on November 27th. This has been used for years by Washington apologists to allege that the commanders should have been ready for the Japanese.

Indeed, the message began conspicuously: �This dispatch is to be considered a war warning.� But it went on to state: �The number and equipment of Japanese troops and the organizations of naval task forces indicates an amphibious expedition against the Philippines, Thai or Kra Peninsula, or possibly Borneo.� None of these areas were closer than 5,000 miles to Hawaii!

No threat to Pearl Harbor was hinted at.

It ended with the words: �Continental districts, Guam, Samoa take measures against sabotage.� The message further stated that �measures should be carried out so as not repeat not to alarm civil population.� Both commanders reported the actions taken to Washington. Short followed through with sabotage precautions, bunching his planes together (which hinders saboteurs but makes ideal targets for bombers), and Kimmel stepped up air surveillance and sub searches. If their response to the �war warning� was insufficient, Washington said nothing. The next day, a follow-up message from Marshall�s adjutant general to Short warned only �Initiate forthwith all additional measures necessary to provide for protection of your establishments, property, and equipment against sabotage, protection of your personnel against subversive propaganda and protection of all activities against espionage.�

Thus things stood as Japan prepared to strike.

Using the Purple code, Tokyo sent a formal statement to its Washington ambassadors. It was to be conveyed to the American Secretary of State on Sunday, December 7th. The statement terminated relations and was tantamount to a declaration of war. On December 6th, in Washington, the War and Navy departments had already decrypted the first 13 parts of this 14-part message. Although the final passage officially severing ties had not yet come through, the fiery wording made its meaning obvious. Later that day, when Lieutenant Lester Schulz delivered to President Roosevelt his copy of the intercept, Schulz heard FDR say to his advisor, Harry Hopkins, �This means war.�

During subsequent Pearl Harbor investigations, both General Marshall, Army Chief of Staff, and Admiral Stark, Chief of Naval Operations, denied any recollection of where they had been on the evening of December 6th � despite Marshall�s reputation for a photographic memory. But James G. Stahlman, a close friend of Navy Secretary Frank Knox, said Knox told him FDR convened a high-level meeting at the White House that evening. Knox, Marshall, Stark, and War Secretary Stimson attended. Indeed, with the nation on war�s threshold, such a conference only made sense. That same evening, the Navy Department received a request from Stimson for a list of the whereabouts of all ships in the Pacific.

On the morning of December 7th, the final portion of Japan�s lengthy message to the U.S. government was decoded. Tokyo added two special directives to its ambassadors. The first directive, which the message called �very important� was to deliver the statement at 1 p.m. The second directive ordered that the last copy of code, and the machine that went with it, be destroyed. The gravity of this was immediately recognized in the Navy Department: Japan had a long history of synchronizing attacks with breaks in relations; Sunday was an abnormal day to deliver diplomatic messages � but the best for trying to catch U.S. armed forces at low vigilance; and 1 p.m. in Washington was shortly after dawn in Hawaii!

Admiral Stark arrived at his office at 9:25 a.m.

He was shown the message and the important delivery time. One junior officer pointed out the possibility of an attack on Hawaii; another urged that Kimmel be notified. But Stark refused; he did nothing all morning. Years later, he told the press that his conscience was clear concerning Pearl Harbor because all his actions had been dictated by a �higher authority.� As Chief of Naval

Operations, Stark had only one higher authority: Roosevelt.

In the War Department, where the 14-part statement had also been decoded, Colonel Rufus Bratton, head of the Army�s Far Eastern section, discerned the message�s significance. But the chief of intelligence told him nothing could be done until Marshall arrived. Bratton tried reaching Marshall at home, but was repeatedly told the general was out horseback riding. The horseback ride turned out to be a long one. When Bratton finally reached Marshall by phone and told him of the emergency, Marshall said he would come to the War Department. Marshall took 75 minutes to make the 10-minute drive. He didn�t come to his office until 11:25 a.m. � an extremely late hour with the nation on the brink of war. He perused the Japanese message and was shown the delivery time. Every officer in Marshall�s office agreed these indicated an attack in the Pacific at about 1 p.m. EST. The general finally agreed that Hawaii should be alerted, but time was running out.

Marshall had only to pick up his desk phone to reach Pearl Harbor on the transpacific line. Doing so would not have averted the attack, but at least our men would have been at their battle stations. Instead, the general wrote a dispatch. After it was encoded it went to the Washington office of Western Union. From there it was relayed to San Francisco. From San Francisco it was transmitted via RCA commercial radio to Honolulu. General Short received it six hours after the attack. Two hours later it reached Kimmel. One can imagine their exasperation on reading it.

Despite all the evidence accrued through Magic and other sources during the previous months, Marshall had never warned Hawaii. To historians � ignorant of that classified evidence � it would appear the general had tried to save Pearl Harbor, �but alas, too late.�

Similarly, FDR sent a last-minute plea for peace to Emperor Hirohito. Although written a week earlier, he did not send it until the evening of December 6th. It was to be delivered by Ambassador Grew, who would be unable to receive an audience with the emperor before December 8th. Thus the message could not conceivably have forestalled the attack � but posterity would think that FDR, too, had made �a valiant, last effort.�

The Japanese strike sank or heavily damaged 18 naval vessels (including eight battleships), destroyed 188 planes, and left over 2,000 dead. The Roberts Commission, assigned to investigate the attack, consisted of personal cronies of Roosevelt and Marshall. The Commission fully absolved Washington and declared that America was caught off guard due to �dereliction of duty� by Kimmel and Short. The wrath of America for these two was exceeded only by its wrath for Tokyo. To this day, many believe it was negligence by the Hawaii commanders that made the Pearl Harbor disaster possible. (See �Scapegoating Kimmel and Short� page 20.)

Though a major exposer of the Pearl Harbor conspiracy, Robert Stinnett is sympathetic regarding FDR�s motives. He writes in his book: �As a veteran of the Pacific War, I felt a sense of outrage as I uncovered secrets that had been hidden from Americans for more than fifty years. But I understood the agonizing dilemma faced by President Roosevelt. He was forced to find circuitous means to persuade an isolationist America to join in a fight for freedom.� In our view, a government that is allowed to operate in such fashion is a government that has embarked on a dangerous, slippery slope toward dictatorship. Nonetheless, Stinnett�s position on FDR�s  motives makes his expos� of FDR�s actions all the more compelling.