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

732 Pearl Harbor: The Seeds and Fruits of Infamy
Top Washington Officials Confer Daily
on Impending Crisis
When testifying before the Hart and Navy Court Inquiries,
Assistant Chief of Naval Operations Ingersoll had admitted having
seen the “Winds Execute” before December 7, 1941. 1 However, in
his JCC testimony he belittled its importance as a war warning:
[T]he wording in that winds message did not say that we are
going to be in a state of war or that hostilities now exist. It
referred to a rupture of diplomatic negotiations or that the situation
between the countries was becoming critical. . . . If you
rupture diplomatic negotiations you do not necessarily have to
burn your codes. Th e diplomats go home and they can pack up
their codes . . . and take them home.
Ingersoll considered the destruction of the code dispatches much
more important.
[T]hey not only told their diplomats in Washington and
London to burn their codes but they told their consuls in
Manila, in Hong Kong, Singapore, and Batavia to burn their
codes. And that did not mean a rupture of diplomatic negotiations,
it meant war, and that information was sent out to the
fl eets as soon as we got it. 2
[W]hen we received the original message which set up the
winds code that became important then because that would
be the fi rst indication that we would get of when the Japanese
thought they would rupture negotiations or be at war if a
broader interpretation were placed on it. . . . [B]ut once we had
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 9, pp. 4223–24, portions of Hart
and NCI testimony reproduced.
2Ibid., p. 4226.