Pearl Harbor: The Seeds and Fruits of Infamy - Ludwig von Mises ...

xii Pearl Harbor: The Seeds and Fruits of Infamy
Th e fi rst hint I had that there was more to the Pearl Harbor
story came in 1944. Th e then Republican candidate for President,
Th omas E. Dewey, was trying to unseat President Franklin D.
Roosevelt. Several service personnel came to the Republican
National Committee—of which I was then Research Director
—with reports that U.S. cryptographers had deciphered some of
the Japanese codes and that Washington offi cials had been reading,
even before the attack, many of the Japanese government’s
confi dential communications.
Dewey proposed to make a speech on the subject, but was
requested in great secrecy by Army Chief of Staff General George
C. Marshall, not to do so. Our ability to decipher and read Japanese
messages, he said, was still playing an important role in helping us
to win the war in the Pacifi c and thus to save the lives of U.S. soldiers
and sailors. Dewey honored that request. When Republican
Senator Homer Ferguson of Michigan, unaware of the reason for
Dewey’s silence, also scheduled a speech on the subject, Dewey
asked him not to. Th us the public was prevented from learning
any of the true Pearl Harbor story at that time. And the voters
gave Roosevelt a comfortable victory over his Republican rival.
After the election, I resigned from the Party and turned to
freelancing as researcher and economic columnist.
1945 was an eventful year. On January 20, Roosevelt was inaugurated
for an unprecedented fourth term. He died a few months
later, on April 12. Th e war was not yet over. Vice President Harry
Truman took offi ce. Th e fi ghting fi nally ended in Europe when
Germany surrendered on May 7. And the war in the Pacifi c came
to an end with the surrender of Japan on August 14.
. . . . . . . .
Rumors had surfaced from time to time, in spite of eff orts
to maintain secrecy, to the eff ect that the attack on Pearl Harbor
might not have been such a complete surprise to the offi cials in