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

270 Pearl Harbor: The Seeds and Fruits of Infamy
Saturday afternoon, December 6. 1 After Commander Kramer
delivered it to the Navy personnel on his list—by then it was
mid-afternoon—he stopped by the Navy Department to make
a fi nal check with the Teletype Watch to see whether there was
anything apparently hot coming in. . . . In view of other developments
that we [the United States] had seen taking place in
the diplomatic traffi c and otherwise it was apparent things
were shaping up to some sort of a crisis. 2
Japan’s 14-part English-language reply to the U.S. “ultimatum”
began to come in at Bainbridge intercept station on the west coast
very early Saturday morning, December 6. Th e fi rst part reached
there at 5:03 a.m. (8:03 a.m. Washington, D.C. time). From then
until 8:52 a.m. (11:52 a.m. Washington, D.C. time), when the
13th part came in, Bainbridge was busy intercepting and relaying
the messages, by teletype, still in code, to Washington, D.C. 3 Th e
fi rst 13 parts had all been received in Washington, D.C., by 2:51
p.m. on December 6. Part 14 did not come in until more than 12
hours later.
In 1941, before the attack on Pearl Harbor, most government
offi ces closed down at noon on Saturdays. “Th e War Department
[cryptographic] unit at that time was observing normal offi ce
hours and secured from work at noon on Saturday, December 6,
1941, with the intention of doing no work until 8:00 on Monday,
December 8, 1941.” 4 Th erefore, just past noon, after decoding the
“Pilot Message,” the Army closed up shop for the weekend.
179th Cong., 1st sess. Joint (Congressional) Committee on the Investigation
of the Pearl Harbor Attack. Pearl Harbor Attack, 39 vols. (Washington, D.C.:
U.S. Government Printing Offi ce, 1946), part 12, pp. 238–39, Tokyo “Purple”
message #901.
2Ibid., part 33, p. 857, Kramer testimony before the NCI, September 13,
1944.
3Ibid., part 14, pp. 1413–15, exhibit No. 41.
4Ibid., part 36, p. 66, Saff ord testimony at Hewitt Inquiry, May 21, 1945.