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

The Navy Court of Inquiry (July 24–October 19, 1944) 523
and translated intercepts to Navy offi cials and others authorized
to see them. 111
Soon after Kimmel’s counsels, Lavender and Hanify, arrived
in Pearl Harbor, they encountered Kramer in the corridor as he
was getting off an elevator. Kramer had only just arrived from
duty in the southwest Pacifi c. Th e two lawyers introduced themselves
and said: “Th ere is probably one question, Commander
Kramer, that you will be asked. ‘Do you recall the Winds Code?’”
He said he did.
Th en, “Do you recall whether or not there was ever an Execute
of the Winds Message?”
Kramer’s answer was immediate: “Yes. Higashi No Kazeame.
East Wind Rain.”
“Right like that,” Hanify reported later. “Without any hesitation.
Here was a man, just in from the Pacifi c, and he was that
defi nitive about that formulation.” 112
When Kramer testifi ed before the NCI, he was just as open
and forthright in his testimony before the court as he had been
in responding to Hanify and Lavender’s informal questions. He
described the procedure for processing and delivering the large
volume of Japanese intercepts picked up in the weeks preceding
the attack. He discussed specifi c dispatches—the Japanese
instructions to their overseas diplomatic offi ces to destroy their
codes, the ships-in-harbor messages, the “Winds Code Execute,”
and the December 6–7 delivery of the Japanese reply to the
United States’ November 26 “ultimatum.” 113
“Th e greatest percentage of the traffi c in the fall of ’41,”
Kramer said, “had to do with two main types of material: One
was the Japanese-U.S. negotiations, and the other was the circuit
111Ibid., pp. 848, 849.
112John Toland interview of Hanify, August 29, 1979, on fi le with Toland
papers, Franklin Delano Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, N.Y.
113Joint Committee, Pearl Harbor Attack, part 33, pp. 847–76.