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

xx Pearl Harbor: The Seeds and Fruits of Infamy
careful detail the Navy’s pre-war system for keeping secret the
very existence of the Japanese MAGIC intercepts and the information
they revealed. When Barnes’s funds ran out, Percy’s serious
study of Pearl Harbor was sidetracked as he returned to the
more urgent demands of earning a living. However, he continued
reading and lecturing on the subject. Only in semi-retirement,
did he again have time to actually start putting the results of his
research on paper.
As I have written, Percy died in 1984. His manuscript was
practically fi nished. After his death, however, I took over the
task of editing it and readying it for publication. I physically
chopped up the typed manuscript and reorganized chronologically
his accounts of pre-war events and post-war revelations. I
also put the entire manuscript on the computer. I interviewed
several persons: radioman Ralph T. Briggs, the Navy code clerk
who had intercepted the elusive “East Wind Rain” message,
Admiral Kemp Tolley, commander of the Lanakai, one of the
three small ships ordered by Roosevelt to be commissioned just
before the attack and to take up positions in the South China Sea
in the path of the south-bound Japanese convoys, and Admiral
Kimmel’s son, Captain Th omas Kimmel, whom my husband had
also interviewed.
As a result of my editing, the manuscript plus its footnotes
became much too long for any publisher to consider. Sheldon
Richman, editor of Th e Freeman, helped cut it down. Daniel
Bazikian spent many hours with me proofreading the manuscript.
Two Japanese friends—Toshio Murata and Kentaro
Nakano—translated for me the passage in a book by Japan’s
chief intelligence offi cer in Washington, indicating that a Winds
Execute (“East Wind Rain”) had actually been received before
the attack by the Japanese embassy in Washington; this Japanese
account was in contradiction of the position of U.S. Intelligence
offi cers who refused to admit during the Congressional hearings
that such a message had been sent by Tokyo which could have