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

Administration Directed Supplementary Investigations 589
At the time, the possible signifi cance of the time of delivery
was pointed out to all hands. . . . [W]e didn’t know what this
signifi ed, but that if an attack were coming, it looked like the
timing was such that it was timed for operations in the Far
East and possibly on Hawaii. 68
Kramer told Hewitt a similar story. While the folders for the
recipients of MAGIC intercepts were being made up that morning,
he recalled “drawing a navigator’s time circle to see if this
1:00 p.m. Washington time tied up at all with the developments
in the Malay area, which we had been following in considerable
detail the previous week.” He was
impressed with the fact that 1:00 p.m. here was several hours
before sunrise in the Kra Peninsula area, where we knew the
Japanese had been contemplating an attack on Kota Bharu
with the connivance of the Th aiian Chief of Staff . Th at further
tied up with the movement of a large Japanese convoy down
the coast of China the previous three or four days.
When delivering the folder for Knox, who was then at a
meeting in the State Department, Kramer also pointed out the
time at various points in the Pacifi c when it was 1:00 p.m. in
Washington. He may have mentioned the time diff erence to eight
or ten others, including McCollum, Bratton, several people in the
State Department, possibly Wilkinson, Stark, and, he thought,
Saff ord. 69
All those questioned by Hewitt who had been stationed in
Hawaii at the time of the attack were well aware that Japan was
on the verge of going to war with someone somewhere. Captain
Rochefort, who had been in charge of communication intelligence
in Hawaii, noted that “[o]n December 1 all service radio
calls were changed, and that this indicated an additional progres-
68Ibid., pp. 25–26.
69Ibid., p. 84.