I'm starting a new thread to address the Pearl Harbor issues Turbonium has brought up in the Canadian take on 9-11 thread. This regards the presence of decrypts of Japanese message traffic presumably being held by the National Archives and not available for release to the public. The last post on that subject by Turbonium was as follows.

First off, there is no secret left to the method used to decode JN-25. It was a superenciphered code. While not sophisticated, such a code is difficult to break, sometimes harder than a mechanical cipher such as Purple or Enigma. So, nothing is being held back for reasons of "National Security." More than likely any unreleased messages were either never decoded, possibly lost, or maybe no-one ever asked for them. Even if we did have them I doubt that they would reveal anything about the Pearl Harbor attack we don't already know.

Turbonium is implying that there is some great secret hidden in these messages. Frankly, I'm doubtful. What proof do we have that they are being witheld so far besides his assertion?

Anyway, the issue of the messages is irrelevant to the history of the Pearl Harbor attack. Even though these 25,000+ messages had been intercepted and sent to Hawaii and Washington there was no way to read them as JN-25 had not been broken before the attack (and Hawaii was the more important site. CDR Rochefort's group at Pearl, called Hypo, was responsible for attack that system and was the team that ultimately broke JN-25.) So there was no way that they could have provided any warning that the attack was on the way. Unless, of course, turbonium is subscribing the the CT that the nefarious folks in DC had actually already broken JN-25 and were witholding the info so the attack would succeed. Is that your thesis? If so, it's most definitely not one any historian of the subject would take seriously. Again, let me refer you, and others, to Kahn's book "The Codebreakers" for a history of the breaking of JN-25, and other codes and ciphers of the WWII era.

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"I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind." - William Thompson, 1st Baron Lord Kelvin

"If it was so, it might be, and if it were so, it would be, but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic!" - Tweedledee

This isn't right. This isn't even wrong. - Wolfgang Pauli

Or put simply, Turbonium, "Intercepting" a message just means that the Army used radio antennas to capture the transmissions (when encoded, a secret message appears to be a random string of numbers) and wrote down the coded message. That doesn't mean that the Army codebreakers were able to understand JN-25 messages.

There are good reasons to write down every coded transmission you can catch. Codebreakers can't break a code without having a sample of an encrypted message. The more messages they can lay their slide-rules on, the more likely they can break the code by identifying patterns in the apparant randomness.

So "intercepted" means they heard it. I could intercept a Japanese conversation today. Doesn't mean I would understand it because I don't speak Japanese.

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My son is my universe.

First off, there is no secret left to the method used to decode JN-25.

Yes, that is what I said previously.

So, nothing is being held back for reasons of "National Security."

Not true. The archives themselves are "security classified", as the link below states....

Records of the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations

Historical World War II and prior records from Naval Security Group Central Depository Crane Indiana 1919 - 78. Materials security classified. Contact the Archives II Military Records Staff, 301-837-3510.

http://www.archives.gov/research/acc...quarter-1.html

So do these classified records actually include JN-25 related documents?

More than likely any unreleased messages were either never decoded, possibly lost, or maybe no-one ever asked for them.

Again untrue. Researchers, whether they support a conspiracy or not, admit these messages both exist and have been requested for release.

In his book "Too Late for Pearl Harbor", author Stephen Budiansky (an anti-conspiracist) writes...

"What has not been well established, because of continuing security classification of key documents, is just how much of JN-25 was readable in the critical months before the Pearl Harbor attack."

Even if we did have them I doubt that they would reveal anything about the Pearl Harbor attack we don't already know.

Well, it should be clear by now that we do have them. That you doubt they would reveal anything new is an entirely reasonable argument. But personal opinions, whether yours or mine, are certainly not valid reasons to withhold their release.

Turbonium is implying that there is some great secret hidden in these messages. Frankly, I'm doubtful. What proof do we have that they are being witheld so far besides his assertion?

Again, it should now be evident that we have them, beyond my "assertion".

As for my "implying..some great secret", I don't have proof that they do contain anything significant, but the continued refusal to release them leaves me with some doubt that they are completely without significance. In contrast, you doubt they would reveal important information unknown to the public. But as I said, our opinions are irrelevant to the release of the documents.

Anyway, the issue of the messages is irrelevant to the history of the Pearl Harbor attack. Even though these 25,000+ messages had been intercepted and sent to Hawaii and Washington there was no way to read them as JN-25 had not been broken before the attack

If it's irrelevant, then they should be released, and the whole issue of whether or not JN-25 was decoded by the US Government before Dec.7 will be resolved. And your position will be found correct.

Unless, of course, turbonium is subscribing the the CT that the nefarious folks in DC had actually already broken JN-25 and were witholding the info so the attack would succeed. Is that your thesis?

I'm skeptical about what was known prior to the attack. I don't "subscribe" to that view, if you mean I see it as being the irrefutable truth. I do "subscribe" to letting the truth be known - we can start with the release of these messages. You obviously would have no objections to that.

If so, it's most definitely not one any historian of the subject would take seriously.

I couldn't care in the least who does or doesn't take the issue seriously. The whole thing may end up being nothing more than a crazy, nonsensical theory. I would prefer that it did, in fact. Unless one is mentally unstable, nobody would actually prefer or be happier if the truth revealed their government was "nefarious" in it's actions.

With regard to the storage of the documents, could part of the reason they have not been released (or rather declassified I suppose) have to do with the sheer volume of WW II documents kept at the National Archives? I recall JayUtah talking about the problems this agency faces in catagorizing the documents they have.

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All civilizations become either spacefaring or extinct.~ Carl Sagan ~

Humanity must rise above the Earth, to the top of the atmosphere and beyond, for only then will we fully understand the world in which we live.~Socrates, 500 B.C. ~

Let every man judge according to his own standards, by what he has himself read, not by what others tell him. ~Albert Einstein~

Sure. If they went and hired a few hundred extra people, trained them, put them through all of the security clearance background checks, just to catagorize and declassify thousands of (vastly meaningless) 60 year old Japanese decrypts, can you imagine the bill to American taxpayers?

This thought only occured to me because I'm doing my taxes right now. Or, at least, I SHOULD be doing my taxes right now.

And I know the expense, though great compared to what taxes I paid in last year, are small compared to NASA's annual budget, but declassifying useless old decrypts is not a high-priority activity in my book. Not compared to fixing social security, keeping America safe, etc....

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My son is my universe.

The mills of government grind slow and exceedingly fine. Lots of documents are classified for no good reason that the layperson can see. (Documents, as I recall, about food transport for troops during WWI are the oldest still-classified documents.) Possibly it's because they aren't properly catalogued. (Though librarians would spell that "catalog" in honour of Mellville Dewey, who'd be horrified at my superfluous "u" and wanted to spell his name "Dui.") Possibly it's government inertia, which may be one of the greatest forces in human history. However, speculation that they wouldn't still be classified unless there was something to them is, frankly, meritless. There are lots of reasons documents are classified, and they're seldom good.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

A useful source for some information and discussion regarding Pearl Harbor can be found at the web site Pear Harbor Attacked. Like many sites, there is a message board attached although not quite as lively as this one is. Anyway, one of the topics relates to the intelligence status before the attack. This post is a review of a book by one Robert Stinnet who would appear to be the person who made some of the original claims regarding JN-25b intercepts that turbonium is mentioning here. The review is long, but toward the end the reviewer gives an accounting of the 25k intercepts being discussed. In short:
So it would appear that the messages of import regarding Pearl Harbor were decoded after the war and are available to researchers. The remainder are probably the usual detritus of naval message traffic that have little indication of pending operations (materiel casualty reports, personnel reporting, etc.). It's doubtful that they were even kept.

Again, one thing to remember, none of these messages were decoded before the Pearl Harbor attack, so any speculation about their contents is irrelevant. No one in the US knew what information they contained and they could not be used as any form of warning. Given the staffing levels of the code breaking teams at the time, it's doubtful they could have decoded and translated that volume of messages in time anyway.

edit to add: if the direct link to the post doesn't work, go to the site's message board, go to the category labelled "Intelligence" and look for the thread entitled 'A Cryptologic Veteran’s Analysis of “Day of Deceit."

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"I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind." - William Thompson, 1st Baron Lord Kelvin

"If it was so, it might be, and if it were so, it would be, but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic!" - Tweedledee

This isn't right. This isn't even wrong. - Wolfgang Pauli

This statement does not mean what you think it means. What Budiansky is referring to here is the statement such as "we could read about 10% of JN-25b." This does not mean we could read 10% of the messages. What is means that in any given message we'd be lucky to decode 10% of it. What Budianksy is saying is that the absolute level of comprehension is uncertain. I'm sure he is not claiming that we understood enough pre-war to allow for a warning.

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"I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind." - William Thompson, 1st Baron Lord Kelvin

"If it was so, it might be, and if it were so, it would be, but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic!" - Tweedledee

This isn't right. This isn't even wrong. - Wolfgang Pauli

We are missing the point, the attack warning was in the clear, on Japanese short wave, and the Military knew about it, that is,what the meaning was, but no action was taken....."Higashi no Kaze Ame"...

This do not even get into the bomb in the Arizona's forward magazine theory, why some MD was set up at 4 in the Morning with a Color 16 mm camera, waiting for the attack, the Arizona was chosen by the FDR conspirators because of the movie "Follow the Fleet" etc...there are pleanty of CT theories about Pearl Harbor!!! Take your choice....

The Lincoln Assassination is the Great-Grand Father of all this I think, just by time period alone....

Dale in Ala

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"Ad astra per aspera"

What the heck does that mean?

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My son is my universe.

It is the name of the book that covered this in the 70's...The whole thing, according to the book, was the so-called "winds execute message" In this case, if you do not understand Nippon Go, it is "East Wind, Rain" meaning war with the US, "North Wind Snow" was a signal for war with Russia, etc...The same guys who made the plot map of the base and harbor, were waiting for the message in the clear on short wave, so was "HYPO"...at Pearl. After the attack, there followed the usual cover-up and this is the basis of the CT about Pearl Harbor....In any case the book was called "East Wind Rain" and I saw a copy for sale in Hawaii at Ft De Russy on Wakiki beach in 2003....

Dale in Ala

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"Ad astra per aspera"

I'm afraid you have me at a disadvantage. I think I've heard of this story, but I don't have anything to add (or subtract).

If you'd like to discuss it, let me know and give me a chance to find some resources.

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My son is my universe.

"What has not been well established, because of continuing security classification of key documents, is just how much of JN-25 was readable in the critical months before the Pearl Harbor attack." - Budiansky

Certainly, Budiansky makes no claim that we knew enough to allow for a warning before the attack. Indeed, his statement does not need personal interpretations whatsoever. He clearly makes the points that it "has not been well established...just how much of JN-25 was readable" beforehand, due to "continuing security classification of key documents". Those are the points I was making, and they still stand. The documents exist, and they are still classified. I was not implying anything about his intentions beyond this.

There is one huge flaw in the Pearl Harbour conspiracy theories, the choice of target.

In 1941 the Battleship was still considered, excepting a few mavericks, by everyone, including the Japanese, as queen of the oceans, invulnerable to anything except another BB or a submarine. As of late 1941 no operational BB had been sunk by air power alone whilst at sea, and although Taranto had shown the way for a Pearl Harbour attack, the shallow water & heavy defenses at Pearl were thought to be more than enough deterrent.

Although the importance of carriers was acknowledged, they were still seen by most as supporting elements, able to track and perhaps damage or slow the enemy, but not capable of inflicting a killer blow. It took the battle of Midway, in June 1942 to finally show the power of the carriers. As of December 1941 BBs were not considered obsolete or expendable, if anything the opposite. Thus there was no way the USN would allow its prime assets to be staked out as sacrificial lambs, even to drag (a supposedly reluctant US population) into war, late as usual It's like Bush lining up all the USAF B2's so that Iran can bomb them, just because some nutters in uniform think that UCAV's are the future - it just wont happen.

The other point is that a successful defence of an empty Pearl by the USAF, followed by the ambush of the retreating Japanese fleet by the absent & still intact BBs would achieve the same aims for the supposed conspirators (US in the war with popular support) as the historical events.

And a further point to consider. Had she not been delayed by weather, USS Enterprise would have been in Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, leaving only one carrier battler group available in the Pacific. (Lexington's)

IMO, the biggest thing that CTs miss is that the Pacific was the wrong theater of war. Roosevelt wanted to get concentrate on helping Britain against Germany & Italy. War against Japan would have both drawn combat resources away from Europe, and threatened British supply sources in the Far East. Churchill & Roosevelt were engaged in continuous negotiations to stave-off Japan's expansionist plans.

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"Transport of the mails, transport of the human voice, transport of flickering pictures - in this century, as in others, our highest accomplishments still have the single aim of bringing men together." St. Exupery

How 'bout the fact that, if you're planning to get into a war, it's a really good idea to actually have ships above the surface of the water, nto sunk on the bottom of Pearl Harbor?

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

I think wargames had shown that an attack on Pearl could be successful, however the US Military (as well as the British in the Far East) completely underestimated their opponent. It was thought, when Yamamoto's fleet set off, that they were heading south, since the Japanese would be incapable of launching an attack across the Pacific against Hawaii. This was one of the reasons Hawaii was not on alert, even though they should have been.

For the Japanese, the attack was nowhere near as successful as they thought (or as had first seemed)...2 of the battleships were on their way to the West Coast USA to be repaired before the year was out, and only the Arizona didn't get back into service. And, of course, most of the trained crew were still around. Admittedly, that is hardly a case for consipracy since it still left the US short of BBs for the best part of a year.

For the importance of Battleships even up to the end of the war, look at the resources thrown agains the german Captial ships by the RN, and they Germans only had a handful of the things. Germany was building carriers but they too thought them to be secondary to the BB.

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[nitpick]The Oklahoma was a total loss also.[/nitpick]

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"Transport of the mails, transport of the human voice, transport of flickering pictures - in this century, as in others, our highest accomplishments still have the single aim of bringing men together." St. Exupery

Well, it was raised...and then decommissioned because it wasn't worth repairing, so I suppose it doesn't really class as "in service"...except as a nitpick of a nitpick...

The "Winds" message was intended to be a warning to the consulates and embassies in the affected countries. We knew of it since the original message was sent in the "Purple" diplomatic cipher which (as opposed to the Naval operational code JN-25) we were reading before the attack. An intercept of a "winds execute" message would not have done much for us, however. We already knew war was coming, and the winds message says nothing about the intended target.

Oddly enough, many historians now believe that the "winds execute" message was never sent. We certainly never intercepted it. Here is a set of the exhibits from the Congressional inquiry. It incluides the original message as well as the efforts put in place to intercept it. The British and Dutch never heard their respective alerts, and Japan went to war with them in early December as well.

(spelling)

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"I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind." - William Thompson, 1st Baron Lord Kelvin

"If it was so, it might be, and if it were so, it would be, but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic!" - Tweedledee

This isn't right. This isn't even wrong. - Wolfgang Pauli

Yet you seem to be implying that the government is "hiding" something under the security classification. Frankly, bureacratic bumbling and institutional inertia are probably the main reason for any continuing classification. In any case, the messages pertaining to Pearl Harbor were decrypted and are available. The remainder are most likely of little interest.

As to the archive, it may now be available. Institutional inertia and lack of space seem to be the main reasons for the retention of classification. In another post on the Pearl Harbor Attacked site Jacobsen had this to say in 2002.

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"I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind." - William Thompson, 1st Baron Lord Kelvin

"If it was so, it might be, and if it were so, it would be, but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic!" - Tweedledee

This isn't right. This isn't even wrong. - Wolfgang Pauli

Sorry not answer right away, I was very busy at work, the Book was called "East Wind Rain" and it was promoted in th 70's or 80's as a smoking gun type expose', I am not promoting the belief, just the various therories that I have encountered on this fascinating subject. According to the book, a retired Navy Warrant Officer was an intercept operator at Hypo, and when he looked at his log in the National Archives, someone had razored out the entry reporting the winds execute message. (He was fluent in Japanese and was at the time-Dec 7 41- a low ranking seaman).....I heard all this on the godfather of CT shows, Barry Farber in New York on WOR radio, now I think that Barry did not endorse this, he just let them on to sell air time...

My opinion is, that there might have been some "cya" activity going on, but so far none of the CT'er have presented any real "Smoking Gun"...

Dale in Ala

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"Ad astra per aspera"

Oh, I thought you were of the opinion that it meant we knew of the attacks beforehand.

I can't see how intercepting the words "East Wind Rain" meant that they knew an airstrike was coming towards Hawaii.

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My son is my universe.

According to the book, the US Navy was waiting for the "winds execute" message, and they knew what it meant. Much of this was covered in the book, "Broken Seal" by Ladislas Farago in the late 60's. My favorite CT was the one dealing with the bomb in the Arizona's forward magazine, and the connection to the movie "Follow the Fleet", which was popular in 1937...(Jimmy Cagney, Ginger Rodgers et alii...) I have to admit that it took the Government some years to say who exactly made the movie of the Arizona exploding, but given the situation in WW 2, I can see how the name of the Army Doctor who made the film was lost.

When I pointed out to one of the CT'ers some years ago, that there was one million pounds of explosives in the Arizona's Magazines, and that there was a sizeable quantity of Black Powder stored there, I was answered with: "They didn't use black powder in WW 2, you must be nuts..." Unfortunately, this person did not know diddley squat about 16 inch Naval Rifles. All of the seperable charge type guns on these ships were using black powder in the smokeless powder charge to ensure ignition, even in the Gulf War...

Dale in Ala

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"Ad astra per aspera"

Yet you seem to be implying that the government is "hiding" something under the security classification. Frankly, bureacratic bumbling and institutional inertia are probably the main reason for any continuing classification. In any case, the messages pertaining to Pearl Harbor were decrypted and are available. The remainder are most likely of little interest.

Again, I am not implying they are "hiding" something. Some review of how the issue actually came up seems to be necessary. First, Jay said....

However a significant percentage of the Archives' holding is not catalogued, simply because they are understaffed and underfunded. And so cataloguing is done by priority. Important things are catalogued first, while less important things like the minutiae of Apollo have to wait. The Archives strictly does not allow research in uncatalogued material, whatever its origin. It's nothing sinister or personal; they just wouldn't be able to tell if something were missing.

My exact reply to this post was...

Yes, this is entirely correct. In fact, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) has long been an advocate of releasing information to the public, including decades-old documents that remain classified for no valid reason. One example that comes to mind is the refusal of the US Government to declassify any pre-Dec 7, 1941 decrypts of Japan's JN-25 code on the basis of "national security". This is an utterly ridiculous claim - a long since obsolete code, over 60 years after the war it was used in, being deemed a "threat to security"!

Where do you get the idea from the above that I am "implying" a secret Government cover-up of documents that would prove they knew about the attack before it occurred? I clearly said the security classification for long-obsolete documents was ridiculous, and also agreed with Jay's assessment that it's the sheer volume of uncatalogued documents that has hindered their release to the public.

I can only imagine how massive that pile 'O junk really is. I wonder what mysteries of the universe might be found there

Though there have been a number of books written about Pearl Harbor, I think one that anyone seriously getting into the discussion ought to read is "And I Was There" by Rear Admiral Edwin Layton, who was in 1941 the Pacific Fleet's intelligence officer under Admiral Kimmel (and later under Nimitz). It was published in 1985 I think, so it has the benefit of being able to refer to more declassified information unavailable to some of the earlier books, and of course all the personal experiences of Layton himself.

It's been a while since I read it, and it will take some time to find the relevant details now, but it did mention the whole "east winds rain" thing specifically. As I recall reading, there are some indications that the message might really have been received and then covered up after Pearl Harbor was attacked. This doesn't necessarily mean a sinister "they let Pearl Harbor be attacked" type conspiracy. It could just well (or more likely) be a cover-up by a couple people to hide their own failings in reacting to the intelligence during the months before the war, so as to not go down along with (or instead of) Kimmel and Short. And reading the book, it's clear there certainly were a lot of problems with how naval intelligence was handled before and even during the war.

And exactly what do you have in mind, hmmm? No doubt you intend to claim you are the author of these documents, or otherwise profit from them! As you once said after the "Flaming Moe" was proven to be not your creation, but actually Homer's.."He may have come up with the recipe, but I came up with the idea of charging $6.95 for it."