The entire Pearl Harbor scheme was laid out in this code. The official US Navy statement on JN-25B is the NAVAL SECURITY GROUP HISTORY TO WORLD WAR II prepared by Captain J. Holtwick in June 1971, page 398: "By 1 December 1941 we had the code solved to a readable extent." Churchill wrote "From the end of 1940 the Americans had pierced the vital Japanese ciphers, and were decoding large numbers of their military and diplomatic telegrams."(GRAND ALLIANCE p 598)
In 1979 the NSA released 2,413 JN-25 orders of the 26,581 intercepted by US between Sept 1 and Dec 4, 1941. The NSA says "We know now that they contained important details concerning the existence, organization, objective, and even the whereabouts of the Pearl Harbor Strike Force." (Parker p 21) Of the over thousand radio messages sent by Tokyo to the attack fleet, only 20 are in the National Archives
FDR was personally briefed twice a day on JN-25 traffic by his aide, Captain John Beardell, and demanded to see the original raw messages in English.
The US Government refuses to identify or declassify any pre-Dec 7, 1941 decrypts of JN-25 on the basis of national security, a half-century after the war.
Charles Bateson and other historians concluded that
"Magic standing alone points so irresistibly to the Pearl Harbor attack that it is inconceivable anybody could have failed to forecast the Japanese move." The NSA reached the same conclusion in 1955.
Roosevelt's betrayal at the end of the war exceeded his betrayal at the beginning.
Warnings do no harm and might do inexpressible good.
(just a few of the multitude
* 31 March 1941 - A Navy report by Bellinger and Martin predicted that if Japan made war on the US, they would strike Pearl Harbor without warning at dawn with aircraft from a maximum of 6 carriers.
* 10 July - US Military Attache Smith-Hutton at Tokyo reported Japanese Navy secretly practicing aircraft torpedo attacks against capital ships in Ariake Bay. The bay closely resembles Pearl Harbor.
* 10 August 1941, the top British agent, code named "Tricycle", Dusko Popov, told the FBI of the planned attack on Pearl Harbor and that it would be soon.
* Early in the Fall, Kilsoo Haan, an agent for the Sino-Korean People's League, told Eric Severeid of CBS that the Korean underground in Korea and Japan had positive proof that the Japanese were going to attack Pearl Harbor before Christmas. Among other things, one Korean had actually seen the plans. In late October, Haan finally convinced US Senator Guy Gillette that the Japanese were planning to attack in December or January. Gillette alerted the State Department, Army and Navy Intelligence and FDR personally.
* 24 September 1941, the " bomb plot" message in J-19 code from Japan Naval Intelligence to Japan' s consul general in Honolulu requesting grid of exact locations of ships pinpointed for the benefit of bombardiers and torpedo pilots was deciphered. There was no reason to know the EXACT location of ships in harbor, unless to attack them - it was a dead giveaway.
Chief of War Plans Turner and Chief of Naval Operations Stark repeatedly kept it and warnings based on it prepared by Safford and others from being passed to Hawaii. The chief of Naval Intelligence Captain Kirk was replaced because he insisted on warning HI. It was lack of information like this that lead to the exoneration of the Hawaii commanders and the blaming of Washington for unpreparedness for the attack by the Army Board and Navy Court.
* Simple traffic analysis of the accelerated frequency of messages from various Japanese consuls gave a another identification of war preparations, from Aug-Dec there were 6 messages from Seattle, 18 from Panama, 55 from Manila and 68 from Hawaii.
* Oct. - Soviet top spy Richard Sorge, the greatest spy in history, informed Kremlin that Pearl Harbor would be attacked within 60 days. Moscow informed him that this was passed to the US. Interestingly, all references to Pearl Harbor in the War Department's copy of Sorge's 32,000 word confession to the Japanese were deleted. NY Daily News, 17 May 1951.
* 16 Oct. - FDR grossly humiliated Japan's Ambassador and refused to meet with Premier Konoye to engineer the war party, lead by General Tojo, into power in Japan.
* 1 Nov. - JN-25 Order to continue drills against anchored capital ships to prepare to "ambush and completely destroy the US enemy." The message included references to armor-piercing bombs and 'near surface torpedoes.'
* 13 Nov. - The German Ambassador to US, Dr. Thomsen an anti-Nazi, told US IQ that Pearl Harbor would be attacked.
* 14 Nov. - Japanese Merchant Marine was alerted that wartime recognition signals would be in effect Dec 1.
* 22 Nov. - Tokyo said to Ambassador Nomura in Washington about extending the deadline for negotiations to November 29: "...this time we mean it, that the deadline absolutely cannot be changed. After that things are automatically going to happen."
* CIA Director Allen Dulles told people that US was warned in mid-November that the Japanese Fleet had sailed east past Tokyo Bay and was going to attack Pearl Harbor. CIA FOIA
* 23 Nov. - JN25 order - "The first air attack has been set for 0330 hours on X-day." (Tokyo time or 8 A.M. Honolulu time)
* 25 Nov. - British decrypted the Winds setup message sent Nov. 19. The US decoded it Nov. 28. It was a J-19 Code message that there would be an attack and that the signal would come over Radio Tokyo as a weather report - rain meaning war, east (Higashi) meaning US.
* 25 Nov. - Secretary of War Stimson noted in his diary "FDR stated that we were likely to be attacked perhaps as soon as next Monday." FDR asked: "the question was how we should maneuver them into the position of firing the first shot without too much danger to ourselves. In spite of the risk involved, however, in letting the Japanese fire the first shot, we realized that in order to have the full support of the American people it was desirable to make sure that the Japanese be the ones to do this so that there should remain no doubt in anyone's mind as to who were the aggressors."
* 25 Nov. - Navy Department ordered all US trans-Pacific shipping to take the southern route. PHH 12:317 (PHH = 1946 Congressional Report, vol. 12, page 317) ADM Turner testified "We sent the traffic down to the Torres Straight, so that the track of the Japanese task force would be clear of any traffic." PHH 4:1942
* 25 Nov. - Yamamoto radioed this order in JN-25: " (a) The task force, keeping its movements strictly secret and maintaining close guard against submarines and aircraft, shall advance into Hawaiian waters and upon the very opening of hostilities, shall attack the main force of the United States Fleet in Hawaii and deal it a mortal blow. The raid is planned for dawn on X-day -- exact date to be given by later order.
(b) Should the negotiations with the US prove successful, the task force shall hold itself in readiness forthwith to return and reassemble.
(c) The task force will move out of Hitokappu Wan on the morning of 26 November and advance to the standing-by position on the afternoon of 4 December and speedily complete refueling." ( Order to sail - scan from the PHA Congressional Hearings Report, vol 1 p 180, transcript p 437-8)
This was decoded by the British on November 25 and the Dutch on November 27. When it was decoded by the US is a national secret, however, on November 26 Naval Intelligence reported the concentration of units of the Japanese fleet at an unknown port ready for offensive action.
* 26 Nov. 3 A.M. - Churchill sent an urgent secret message to FDR, probably containing above message. This message caused the greatest agitation in DC. Of Churchill's voluminous correspondence with FDR,
this is the only message that has not been released (on the grounds that it would damage national security).
Stark testified that "On November 26 there was received specific evidence of the Japanese intention to wage offensive war against Great Britain and the United States." C.I.A. Director William Casey, who was in the OSS in 1941, in his book THE SECRET WAR AGAINST HITLER, p 7, wrote
"The British had sent word that a Japanese fleet was steaming east toward Hawaii."
Washington, in an order of Nov 26 as a result of the "first shot" meeting the day before, ordered both US aircraft carriers, the Enterprise and the Lexington out of Pearl Harbor "as soon as practicable."
continued............