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

218 Pearl Harbor: The Seeds and Fruits of Infamy
naval district, Philippines), and ALUSNA, Chungking, China.
No copy was sent to Kimmel in Pearl Harbor, 14th naval district,
Hawaii. 39 A similar message was sent a few minutes later
to the naval attaché in Peiping and to the marine commander in
Tientsin, China.
Some 17 hours later a message (042017) was sent to the
naval station on Guam, the mid-Pacifi c island more than 3,000
miles west of Hawaii, which lay practically in the midst of the
Japanese mandated islands. Guam was told to “destroy all secret
and confi dential publications and other classifi ed matter,” except
that necessary “for current purposes and special intelligence” and
to be “prepared to destroy instantly” any other classifi ed matter
retained. 40 Information copies were sent to Hart and the 16th
naval district in the Philippines, and to Kimmel and the 14th
naval district in Hawaii.
On December 4, just two minutes after the one to Guam,
a cable (042019) was dispatched from OPNAV in Washington
to the naval attachés at Tokyo and Bangkok and to the assistant
naval attachés in Peiping and Shanghai. Th ey were told to “destroy
all secret and confi dential fi les with the exception of those which
are essential for current purposes.” Also “all other papers which
in the hands of an enemy would be of disadvantage to the United
States” were to be destroyed. 41
Th ese code-destruct messages meant Japanese action was
imminent—in the west Pacifi c and southeast Asia, probably in
Indochina and Th ailand. Hawaii was an ACTION addressee in
only one of these urgent cables—McCollum’s #031850. (Manila
was a second addressee). However, the information reported in
that message, gleaned from a Japanese intercept, had concerned
primarily southeast Asia, ordering the destruction of codes and
39 Ibid., part 14, p. 1408. OPNAV #040339.
40 Ibid., OPNAV #042017.
41 Ibid., part 29, p. 2397, Saff ord before the APHB.