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

xvi Pearl Harbor: The Seeds and Fruits of Infamy
code, and Dewey did not want to run the chance of alerting the
Japanese to change their code and thus destroy an extremely valuable
source of U.S. intelligence.
It would have been a real scoop to report this news on the
pages of Life, my employer at the time. But should I? I lost no
time in sending a memorandum to Henry Luce, publisher of Life,
about the colonel’s disclosure. He reacted as Dewey had. He told
me to fi le the information away; it would be useful after the war.
Right after the Japanese surrender on August 14, 1945, Luce
sent me to upstate New York to interview Dewey. After an allnight
train ride, I caught up with him at the Elmira Reformatory,
where he was on an inspection tour. He asked me to join him
in his limousine for the ride to Geneva, his next stop. We drove
along scenic Lake Seneca. But I didn’t glance at the beautiful
Finger Lake scenery; I was enthralled with Dewey’s story.
In September 1944, a tall, dark, and handsome colonel, Carter
Clarke, had delivered to Dewey a letter from Army Chief of Staff
General Marshall. Th e letter told Dewey that we had cracked the
Japanese diplomatic code. We were still deriving enormous military
advantages from reading and decrypting coded intercepts.
American lives would be lost if the Japanese changed their code.
Th erefore, it was of the utmost importance that no word about
that should leak out that might reach the Japanese. As a result,
Dewey was persuaded to keep the issues of Pearl Harbor and the
Japanese code out of the campaign. Dewey told me I could use
the story of his “gagging,” but he warned that I must not reveal
my source. My article appeared in the September 24, 1945, issue
of Life.
Luce then gave me the assignment of attending the hearings
of the Joint Congressional Committee on the Investigation of
the Pearl Harbor Attack, just then preparing to get under way.
Th e Congressional hearings ran from November 15, 1945, until
May 31, 1946, when the last witness appeared. Th ose hearings