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

522 Pearl Harbor: The Seeds and Fruits of Infamy
reply to Hull that day at precisely 1:00 p.m., Washington time. 109
Th is message, coded and sent as a radiogram, left Washington
about noon on December 7. It apparently went through without
delay to the Philippines, Panama, San Francisco. But for some
reason, possibly unusual air turbulence, Hawaii couldn’t be raised
by radio. So the dispatch to Hawaii was delayed. It was sent from
San Francisco via Western Union. 110
After 24 days of hearings, the NCI transferred its operations
to Hawaii. Kimmel’s pre-attack decisions and actions were generally
defended by his fellow offi cers. It was recognized, however,
that because of the shortages of men and materiel there was
inevitably a need for compromises between preparing for war and
conducting surveillance.
Navy Courier Commander Kramer’s
Memory Sharp and Clear
By far the most signifi cant testimony taken by the NCI at
Pearl Harbor was that of Commander A.D. Kramer. Kramer, a
Japanese-language scholar, had been stationed in Washington at
the time of the attack. He had been “attached to the Offi ce of
Naval Intelligence, Navy Department, Washington, on loan to
OP-20-G, Offi ce of Naval Communications.” He became “head
of the translation section of the communications security group”
and was responsible for “translating all decrypted traffi c obtained
from intercepts.” Kramer’s translation section had a staff of civilian
civil-service translators. He normally looked over the important
messages and edited the translations before they were typed
up; he translated “only an occasional message” himself. As a Navy
courier also, Kramer had delivered many of the crucial decrypted
109Ibid. For text of Marshall/Stark message, see ibid., p. 1282.
110Ibid., p. 823.