Fighting to Lose (41 page)

December 2–7, 1941

Anyone in official Washington receiving the full file of MAGIC decrypts would have been on tenterhooks after reading on December 2 that Tokyo had ordered its diplomatic posts in Washington, London, Hong Kong, Singapore, Batavia, and Manila to destroy their cipher machines and principal codes. In the sign language of international diplomacy, such an order is semaphore for war. The cities named indicated which countries the Japanese were expecting to fight: Britain, the United States, and Holland.

A Tokyo–Berlin message circulated just the day before revealed that Japan considered that relations with Britain and the United States stood “ruptured” and that “war may come quicker than anyone dreams.” Japan’s intention, it said, was to refrain from any “direct moves” against Russia. This spelled a surprise attack against the United States and Britain, for sure. Roosevelt and Churchill both definitely saw this message.1

This was Tuesday. As Japan’s enemies all observed the Sabbath, it would have been a safe bet that the Japanese would launch an attack that Sunday. Before that happened, however, Japan could be expected to reply to Secretary of State Cordell Hull’s demand of November 26 that it get out of China and Indochina or suffer the embargo indefinitely.

By Saturday, still no reply. By then, there had been evidence enough that the war would begin with Pearl Harbor, but so far none of the reports of the Honolulu consulate to Tokyo indicating a Taranto-style attack had been passed on. There had been another such intercept that very morning, obviously from one of the consulate’s spies. “In my opinion the battleships have no torpedo nets,” it said. “I imagine in all probability there is considerable opportunity … for a surprise attack….”2

Nothing could be more definite, and the reason for it not being translated and acted upon is bizarre. Normally, Op-20-G and the Signals Intelligence Service in Washington took turns processing the incoming intercepts, the navy taking the odd days and the army the even. Yet, with war clouds leaden on the horizon, the army gave the staff of its entire code-breaking operation the normal civil-service weekend off — in those days, Saturday afternoon and all day Sunday. This left everything to the navy from noon on, plus all day Sunday. Regardless, the navy’s chief translator, Lieutenant Commander Alwin Kramer, gave his own translators the weekend off as well. Anything not translated by noon was going to have to be translated by him or wait until Monday.

Kramer did not work for the navy’s communications division. He was actually from the Office of Naval Intelligence and had been assigned to Op-20-G the previous October, his superb command of the Japanese language being seen as helpful to the codebreakers. His job was to evaluate the messages as soon as deciphered, translate the most important himself, and hand-deliver them to the government department heads on the navy’s list of MAGIC recipients, with copies going also to the Signals Intelligence Service for distribution to those on the army’s list. The three translators under him looked after the rest. He remained under ONI orders throughout the crucial months, weeks, and days leading up to December 7.

This arrangement gave Kramer on-the-spot responsibility that weekend for choosing which decrypts should be seen by the military and political leaders. Since Naval Intelligence was the client department for Op-20-G’s code- and cipher-breaking, the handy presence of Kramer explains why Captain Safford could tell the congressional committee that he comfortably went home the afternoon of December 6, even though he was sure from the messages already decrypted that the Japanese would attack the next day. Safford’s staff was to watch for the vital messages and decipher them; Kramer was to take it from there.

Kramer’s immediate superior was Commander Arthur H. McCollum, chief of ONI’s Far East section, which specialized in preparing intelligence appreciations to do with China, Korea, and Japan. The handful of officers on his staff were fluent in the pertinent languages, with McCollum and at least one other speaking and reading Japanese. Kramer reported to McCollum, and McCollum reported to the then director of Naval Intelligence, Captain Theodore Wilkinson. This was a normal chain of command, except that Kramer and his team worked in a room apart from the Far Eastern staff, although in the same building.

When he did his daily rounds, however, Kramer came in direct contact with the White House and the navy’s top man, Admiral Stark, chief of naval operations. McCollum was under the impression that Kramer was always showing him what was in his deliveries. He may not have been. This would explain how McCollum could tell the congressional inquiry that he could not remember seeing the bomb-plot messages (Chapter 15) and Wilkinson’s hazy recollection of them. They should have been something hard to forget. If they were not lying, perhaps neither man actually saw them.3

The fact was, Kramer controlled what his immediate superiors saw, and could do so without them being the wiser. If ordered to withhold translated messages by Admiral Stark, it was his duty to obey, and Stark or the White House could be telephoned before Kramer set out with the day’s decrypts. Other than him, only Captain Safford was in a position to see the full file of Japanese diplomatic intercepts handled in the navy building that autumn of 1941.

This could certainly account for the surprising amnesia shown by some of the senior officer recipients of MAGIC when questioned before the various Pearl Harbor inquiries. The messages they could not remember they may not have received.

Because Kramer was to be without translators on December 6 from noon on, he simply ignored the decrypts left over by the army, leaving those dealing with Pearl Harbor unheeded and unread. He still had the December 3rd lights message to contend with, however. It had been intercepted at the army listening post at Fort Hunt on the outskirts of Washington, so it had arrived at the navy building downtown on Wednesday. Being in PA-K2 (which we now know would have been recognized as high priority, not low, and easy to break), it was likely deciphered and delivered to Kramer that same day. He must have read it then, for that was his job.

By Saturday, Kramer had been holding on to the message for a dangerously long time. He had portrayed himself to his staff as being terribly disorganized and a chronic perfectionist, so they were used to decrypts being stalled on his desk. Since the lights message foretold a Japanese air attack the next day, however, it was too hot to keep any longer. That morning he put it into the in-tray of Mrs. Dorothy Edgers, a former schoolteacher who had joined his staff only the week before and whom he knew would be working only until noon. The header, “Secret Military Message … By Chief of Consulate’s Code,” had been removed.4

Mrs. Edgers, as it happened, was an exceptional Japanese linguist, having lived in Japan and taught Japanese to high-school-level children for two decades before returning to the United States. She saw immediately that the message appeared important and drew it to Kramer’s attention. He gave it only a glance and shrugged it off. She went back to her desk, but instead of leaving at 12:30, worked up a rough translation, which she left for Kramer before going home around 3:00 p.m.5

Kramer was an intelligence officer of long experience and he had handled MAGIC for months. He was fluent in Japanese. It was his specific task to see to it that the most important decrypts were recognized, translated, and passed on as quickly as possible. With the navy code- and cipher-breakers in a room down the hall, and having read all the previously decrypted Japanese messages leading up to the verge of war, it is just not plausible for him not to have read the lights message as soon as decrypted, or not to have read it before passing it on to Mrs. Edgers. He gave the message no more than a glance when she showed it to him because he already knew what it said.

The lights message sat on his desk the rest of the weekend.6

Meanwhile, before it closed up shop, the army sent over a Tokyo–Washington decrypt that told the ambassador that Japan’s formal reply to Secretary of State Hull would be coming shortly. It was to be long, with thirteen parts sent first and the fourteenth to follow later. The embassy was to hold on to the completed statement until given a specific time to present it to the United States government, preferably to Hull himself. With his staff translators gone, Kramer could expect to be working on the thirteen parts well into the next day. Then, unexpectedly, when the first part began arriving in mid-afternoon, it was found that the text was in English.7

It caused considerable excitement. Op-20-G’s cryptographers were not accustomed to unravelling a Japanese encipherment into readable English. Both Captain Safford, head of Op-20-G, and Commander McCollum came in to have a look. The Foreign Office in Tokyo was so determined that nothing in the message be misunderstood that it had translated it itself. The list of grievances it contained and the rejection of Hull’s conditions made it obvious to everyone that it amounted to a declaration of war.

McCollum now found out that Kramer had no translators on hand. It seems not to have worried him unduly. Kramer could translate any further decrypts that came in while he waited for the first thirteen parts to be processed. Once these were typed up, he was to deliver them to his usual MAGIC clients immediately, returning to the office to await the promised fourteenth part and the time-of-delivery message. McCollum undertook to come in early the next morning. An off-duty army translator was called in to fill in as needed.

As most government offices in Washington are grouped together within a half mile of the White House, and the army was in a building nearby, it normally took Kramer less than an hour to do his round. At midnight, he telephoned McCollum at home to say that he had made the deliveries, including to the army and the White House, but was unable to find Admiral Stark. He then returned to his office on finding the expected remaining messages had not yet arrived, but instead of camping down to await them, he went home to bed.

Roosevelt read the thirteen parts in his study, along with Harry Hopkins, his trusted aide and confidant. “This means war,” he is said to have muttered.8

Kramer arrived back at the navy building shortly after 7:30 a.m. on Sunday. Although he was later to claim otherwise, he had been phoned by the officer of the watch during the night and told that two important messages were now available. One was the fourteenth part in English, and the other, a single sentence in Japanese instructing the ambassador to deliver the full fourteen parts to Hull precisely at 1:00 p.m. Kramer, however, instead of going directly to his office, stopped at McCollum’s on his way in.9

The two chatted about the ramifications of the thirteen parts that Kramer had delivered on his rounds the night before. When the director of Naval Intelligence, Captain Wilkinson, arrived and was told that Admiral Stark had been skipped on the thirteen-part delivery, he said they should make up for it immediately. They put a call in to Stark’s office and learned he was on his way in — a surprise, since it was Sunday. Wilkinson and McCollum headed for his office with the thirteen-part message. It was now about 9:00 a.m.10

Meanwhile, Kramer went on to his own office, there to find the fourteenth part and the one o’clock messages. Taken together, they indicated unmistakeably that a state of war would exist between Japan and the United States the moment the whole fourteen parts were delivered to Hull.

Kramer put duplicate copies of the fourteenth part of the message into his dispatch pouch and set out for the White House, the State Department, the army building, and Stark’s office. He did not take the one o’clock message, apparently because it was still in Japanese. Consisting of only one sentence, he could have scribbled it into English in seconds.

When he got back to Stark’s office, McCollum and Wilkinson were still talking with the admiral. Instead of interrupting, he left the fourteenth part of the message with an aide. At 10:20 he was back at his own office. The formal translation of the one o’clock message, done by the army, was on his desk. This, along with some other decrypts, he took on another delivery round that included the White House and the State Department. He retraced his earlier route. McCollum was still in Stark’s outer office when he arrived there. Wilkinson had gone. Kramer mentioned the one o’clock message.

There was a time-zone map of the world on the wall. McCollum glanced at it: 1:00 p.m. Washington time would be 7:30 a.m. Hawaii time — dawn.

Captain McCollum became very, very excited. He called Wilkinson back in, and he, too, saw the significance of the time. The Japanese were likely to attack Pearl Harbor in less than three hours. They all but forced their way back into Stark’s office. The Pacific Fleet must be warned!

Admiral Stark was unperturbed. The Pacific Fleet was on the alert, he assured them. Wilkinson urged him to pick up the telephone anyway and call Admiral Kimmel direct. He could be on the line in minutes. Stark demurred. He had a call put in to the White House. The president was unavailable. There was further toing and froing as senior naval staff came in and out of the room. At last Admiral Stark reached General Marshall. The general also nixed using the telephone. The hands of the clock stood toward 11:00.

General Marshall agreed to send the warning on behalf of both of them. It would go to General Short only, and only by commercial radio-telegraph, the slowest means. He should also have sent it over the army and navy radio nets, duplication being the standard practice for an urgent message. He chose not to. His message said:

Japanese are presenting at one p.m. Eastern Standard Time today what amounts to an ultimatum also they are under orders to destroy their code machine immediately STOP Just what significance the hour set may have we do not know but be on alert accordingly STOP Inform naval authorities of this communication.11

When the “flimsy” bearing this warning reached Hawaii’s General Short, he crumpled it into a ball and threw it aside.

The bombs and torpedoes had already exploded.