Pearl Harbor Treachery? [Archive] - Straight Dope Message Board

RealityChuck

08-16-1999, 08:52 AM

Papabear is right. Though the U.S. knew that something was up, there were questions of interpretation.

Most analysts of the events forget the fact that, at the time, no one knew the future. Even granted an unabiguous message, people have to decide if this is the real thing (maybe they misread the code, for instance) and often hesitate before taking action. This is just the normal way people react. Since no one knows the future, what seems a matter of urgency to us does not necessarily seem that way at the time.

And, no matter what the motivation for the hesitation of the people reading the message, there is no evidence Roosevelt knew anything about it prior to the attack.

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Nickrz

08-16-1999, 09:08 AM

Regarding the possibility U.S. (or other armed forces) intercepted coded Japanese messages from the task force on its way to Pearl - The U.S. and Great Britain had broken the Japanese "Red" diplomatic code way back in the early 1930's and were reading their messages with impunity.

The U.S. and G.B. were also well on the way to breaking the Japanese "Purple" wartime military code, thanks to the Japanese' idiotic habit of beginning many messages with the same string of salutations, and their unfortunate blunder of transmitting a few messages in Red followed by the same message in Purple. (Both codes were produced on a variation of the old "Enigma" machine which was also used by the Germans, that's a whole 'nother story).

However, the Japanese task force on its way to Pearl Harbor maintained strict radio silence, period. There were no intercepts because there was no radio traffic.

warinner

08-16-1999, 11:02 AM

Conspiracy theories have never been hindered by a lack of evidence and the Pearl Harbor theories are no exception.

There is an excellent archive of documents on the Pearl Harbor attack and the subsequent Congressional investigation here:
http://metalab.unc.edu/pha/

[[The U.S. and G.B. were also well on the way to breaking the Japanese "Purple" wartime military code, thanks to the Japanese' idiotic habit of beginning many messages with the same string of salutations, and their unfortunate blunder of transmitting a few messages in Red followed by the same message in Purple. (Both codes were produced on a variation of the old "Enigma" machine which was also used by the Germans, that's a whole 'nother story).]]

A couple of quibbles here: while the Japanese diplomatic codes provided a lot of useful intelligence, it was the Japanese Naval codes, specifically JN-25 A and B, that yielded the best intelligence before and during the war.

The U.S. and Britain did arrange to share signal intercepts and decryptions and did divide responsibilities with Britain concentrating on German codes and the U.S. focusing on Japanese codes. I recall that these arrangements were made prior to December 7, 1941. About the only thing Britain contributed to American efforts was a listening station in Hong Kong.

The Japanese code machines were of entirely Japanese design and owe nothing to German Enigma technology. In many ways, the Japanese encryption devices were more sophisticated than Enigma, being entirely electrical devices rather electro-mechanical devices as Enigma was. Had the Japanese been more prudent in their communication discipline, the Japanese codes would have been much more difficult to crack than the German codes.

John Prados's "Combined Fleet Decoded" is an excellent study of U.S. intelligence efforts against Japan and their effect on the war.

Andrew Warinner

08-16-1999, 11:50 AM

While the subject has wandered a bit, here's another piece of WWII cryptographic trivia. I've read that the one Axis nation that theoretical cryptographic security was Italy; the allies never were able to systematically break any Italian codes. But this didn't really help the Italians. Most Italian military operations were conducted jointly with Germany and Germany always insisted on using all German codes because they believed they were more secure. As others have posted, the German Enigma codes were in fact routinely broken by Britain.

John W. Kennedy

08-16-1999, 02:10 PM

...not to mention that by contemporary naval thinking, we should have lost the war at Pearl Harbor. Who knew that submarines and aircraft carriers (which weren't in port that day) would be the key?

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John W. Kennedy
"Compact is becoming contract; man only earns and pays."
-- Charles Williams

Greg Charles

08-16-1999, 02:21 PM

Another point against the conspiracy theory is that the Japanese meant to declare war against the U.S. in the hours before the attack, and only a logistic problem prevented that from happening. If FDR had known the location of the attack, surely they would have known about the war declaration. Wouldn't he have been able to convince America to go to war against a declared enemy even if we had been able to repulse their attack?

UncaStuart

08-16-1999, 05:21 PM

And even if FDR wanted into a war, a war with Japan was not the one he would have wanted, but rather a war with Germany to help Britain. Germany was not compelled by treaty to come to the aid of Japan if Japan was the agressor, so FDR suppressing knowledge of a Japanese attack would not have guaranteed a war with Germany. The fact that Hitler declared war on the US a few days later, without having first consulted with anybody in his government, is more a testament to Hitler's idiocy than any imagined conspiracy on FDR's part.

astorian

08-17-1999, 12:54 AM

Roosevelt-haters and conspiract theorists have long insisted that FDR "knew" an attack at Pearl Harbor was imminent, and clammed up, because he WANTED a provocation that would lead us into war.

Never mind how absurdly X-filish the theory sounds. Assume for a minute that FDR was really sinister enough to do that.

The attack at Pearl Harbor was a DISASTER for America, and could have been far worse! Our ability to wage war against the Japanese was seriously hampered, and if the planned second wave of attacks had come, we might have been rendered utterly unable top fight the Japanese at all, for YEARS!

It's quite likely that FDR was hoping for SOME kind of provocation or skirmish (a "Tonkin Gulf Incident" of sorts) to give him an excuse top enter the war. But there is NO WAY he'd have sat tight and done nothing if he'd known that an attack on Pearl Harbor (especially an attack of that magnitude) was coming.

Sorry right-wing loonies and X-file freaks: you'll have to find some OTHER reason to hate FDR and the US Government.

Hazel

08-17-1999, 10:51 PM

Racism could have been a factor. Assume (as someone suggested) that FDR et al knew that the Japanese were planning some sort of attack, but did not know where or when it would occur. I remember reading that one theory is that it was simply assumed that whatever attack was mounted just naturally wouldn't amount to much. They just didn't belive that this non-white nation could be any real threat.

CFQWEST

08-18-1999, 04:20 PM

Found RealityChuck's comments on human nature somewhat amusing, in the context of a wartime situation. He writes as if a decoding an "unamibuous message" would be an isolated incident, which could prompt one of only two actions: 1) we act on it; 2) we ignore it. and human nature being what it is, we of course ignore it.

Yes, people at the time could not see the future, but that does not mean they would have had no sense of urgency. There was a war going on, and there was an increasinlyg tense situation between the U.S. and Japan that was leading to war. Under these circumstances, there should have been ample cause for an urgent response to any indication that the expected war with Japan was, in fact, about to commence.

By the way,none of this is meant to endorse the conspiracy theories about Roosevelt. The info might have been there for military intelligence to predict/guess the attack, and we might blame the people responsible for not coming to this conclusion fast enough, but I don't think anyone knew the specific facts and chose to ignore them for political reasons that are at best dubious. (An attempted Japanese sneak attack was enough to prompt U.S. entry into the war; a successful Japanese sneak attack was hardly necessary.)

pricciar

08-18-1999, 04:36 PM

My History Professor in college dismissed the theories of a conspiracy whole heartedly. He said that Pearl Harbor had been on red alert for weeks prior to the attack, so they realized something might happen. But, as things go, when you are on red alert for such a long period of time red alert isn't quite as urgent.
I don't have a cite for this story, it was part of a lecture. SO, if you need to know where he got his info you will have to ask Professor Leo Ribuffo.. Great professor, by the by.

pat

John Bredin

08-18-1999, 04:52 PM

"Racism could have been a factor. Assume (as someone suggested) that FDR et al knew that the Japanese were planning some sort of attack, but did not know where or when it
would occur. I remember reading that one theory is that it was simply assumed that
whatever attack was mounted just naturally wouldn't amount to much. They just didn't believe that this non-white nation could be any real threat."

To quote from one of the various official reports on the Pearl Harbor attack:

"General Billy Mitchell forecast an assault by carrier launched aircraft on Pearl Harbor after his 1924 Asian tour.[50] The US Navy had fleet exercises and war games involving air strikes on Pearl Harbor in the 1930s.[51]

[50] See generally, Russell F. Weigley, 'History of the United States Army', New York, 1967, pp. 412-414.
[51] See generally, Hawaiian Department, 'Joint Army and Navy Maneuvers, Raid Phase, Jan. 29-31, 1933'"

From various and sundry sources:
*6/4/40: U.S. embargo on export of machine tools to Japan.
*10/27/40: U.S. embargo on export of scrap iron to Japan.
*3/27/41: Congress passed the Pacific Bases Reinforcement Bill, appropriating $1.5 billion. (That's 1941 money!)
*4/25/41: FDR announces the adoption of a coastal patrol system covering the entire coast line of the United States.
*7/26/41: Japanese assets frozen by United States and Britain.
*8/1/41: U.S. embargo on aviation gasoline export to Japan.

And the whole reason the Pacific Fleet was at Pearl Harbor in the first place was to be forward-deployed for rapid response to a Japanese attack, which was expected to fall upon the Phillipines and other U.S. possessions in the Pacific as well as upon British, French, and Dutch colonies.

None of the above sound like the majority of the U.S. government or military officials weren't taking Japan seriously because it is a "non-white nation." About the only "basis" for such a conclusion is the presumption many people make that anyone who is of an earlier generation than their own is, ipso facto, racist.

gene

08-19-1999, 01:15 PM

My question is a bit different: why was the US Army Air Force cought completely by surprise in the Philippines-most of the planes were caught on the ground by the Japanese. If anyone should have been on alert, it should have been US forces in the Philippines (close to Japan, logical first target).
I think the theory (that Roosevelt allowed the Pearl harbor Disaster) grew up because of the strange subsequent behavior of Admiral Kimmel and General Short-both men were relegated to desk jobs, and never commented publicly on any of this thereafter.

RealityChuck

08-19-1999, 01:23 PM

Yes, people at the time could not see the future, but that does not mean they would have had no sense of urgency. There was a war going on, and there was an increasinlyg tense situation between the U.S. and Japan that was leading to war. Under these circumstances, there should have been ample cause for an urgent response to any indication that the expected war with Japan was, in fact, about to commence.

But even under those circumstances, there are always questions if you don't know the outcome. Was the message genuine? Was it accurately translated? Was it some sort of test by the Japanese? Were they trying to get us to attack their ships and claim the U.S. was the aggressor?

And the person decoding the message can't just call up the president. He goes to his superior, who has to make a determination, using all the factors of the first guy plus considering whether the person who came to him tends to overreact to or misinterpret data. In turn, that officer probably doesn't have a direct line to the president and has to send it along to someone else, (who may be out of the office at the time) and who has to make all the same determinations and a few more.

There are plenty of ways that you can drop the ball on this sort of thing, especially early on a Sunday morning when your top people aren't working. Since the people involved have no knowledge of how events will transpire, their actions, even in a tense situation (which can make people more cautious -- what if the message were fake and the U.S. was drawn into firing the first shot?*), may not be what we in hindsight can see was the obvious things to do.

*Yes, I know that the U.S. fired the first shot at Pearl Harbor, sinking a Japanese sub a few hours before the main attack. Of course, that was overshadowed by the intensity of the Japanese attack.

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According to Pliny

08-19-1999, 01:43 PM

To answer gene's question about the Phillipines:

Gen. MacArthur was a retard!

If ever there was an example of erratic military judgement in the history of warfare, Douglas MacArthur is it. On Dec. 7 the Gen. had all the planes bunched together to protect them from sabotuers, hence making them a nice big juicy target for Japanese bombers.

warinner

08-19-1999, 04:08 PM

"If ever there was an example of erratic military judgement in the history of warfare, Douglas MacArthur is it. On Dec. 7 the Gen. had all the planes bunched together to protect them from sabotuers, hence making them a nice big juicy target for Japanese bombers."

I think you are confusing it with General Short and the defensive posture of the airfields in Pearl Harbor.

The facts of the matter are this: some nine hours after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Japanese air raids on the Philippines destroyed most of the American planes there on the ground. An official U.S. Army mongraph says:

The Japanese success in the Philippines hours after the attack on Pearl Harbor has sparked controversy with much finger-pointing that has endured to this day. General Brereton later wrote that he repeatedly sought permission before the attack to launch his B-17s against the Japanese aircraft in Formosa, but General Sutherland denied his requests and also denied him access to MacArthur. MacArthur later insisted that he was unaware of Brereton's request, adding that such a move would have been ill conceived anyway because USAFFE lacked intelligence concerning likely targets. For his part Sutherland claimed that he had ordered Brereton to transfer his bombers away from Clark Field to the relative safety of Mindanao to the south; Brereton countered that he could not have fully complied with the order because of the impending arrival of a new bombardment group from Hawaii. Officers stationed at Clark Field later disagreed about whether their installation had even received warning of the approaching aircraft as the attack was about to start.
http://metalab.unc.edu/hyperwar/USA/USA-C-Philippines.html

While there is controversy why the bombers on the ground, why the fighters were on the ground is mostly due to Japanese luck. The Japanese had planned to attack the Philippines earlier but weather over Formosa delayed their planes from taking off. American fighters were scrambled when word was received of Pearl Harbor but had to return to their bases to be refueled, when, as luck would have it, the delayed Japanese attacks arrived.

Of course this does not explain why MacArthur was able to survive the numerous military disasters in the Philippines and was not unceremoniously booted as was Kimmel and Short were.

Andrew Warinner

warinner

08-20-1999, 12:06 AM

"My History Professor in college dismissed the theories of a conspiracy whole heartedly. He said that Pearl Harbor had been on red alert for weeks prior to the attack, so they realized something might happen. But, as things go, when you are on red alert for such a long period of time red alert isn't quite as urgent."

There is some truth to this but there was no formalized system of alerts, that is a Cold War invention.

Admiral Kimmel and General Short were well informed of the deteriorating political situation as well as Japanese military moves in the South Pacific. In particular, Kimmel received the following message on November 27, 1941:

*THIS DESPATCH IS TO BE CONSIDERED A WAR WARNING*. NEGOTIATIONS WITH JAPAN LOOKING TOWARD STABILIZATION OF CONDITIONS IN THE PACIFIC *HAVE CEASED* AND AN AGGRESSIVE MOVE BY JAPAN IS EXPECTED WITHIN THE NEXT FEW
DAYS. THE NUMBER AND EQUIPMENT OF JAPANESE TROOPS AND THE ORGANIZATION OF NAVAL TASK FORCES INDICATES AN AMPHIBIOUS EXPEDITION AGAINST EITHER THE PHILIPPINES THAI OR KRA PENINSULA OR POSSIBLY BORNEO. *EXECUTE AN
APPROPRIATE DEFENSIVE DEPLOYMENT PREPARATORY TO CARRYING OUT THE TASKS ASSIGNED IN WPL46*. INFORM DISTRICT AND ARMY AUTHORITIES. A SIMILAR WARNING IS BEING SENT BY WAR DEPARTMENT. SPENAVO [99] INFORM BRITISH.
CONTINENTAL DISTRICTS GUAM SAMOA DIRECTED TAKE APPROPRIATE MEASURES AGAINST SABOTAGE.

So Pearl Harbor did have warning that war was imminent shortly before December 7 but the message also names the Philippines and the Southeast Asia as being under the immediate threat of attack. The message also warns against sabotage.

On November 28, the War Department sent Kimmel the following message:

ARMY HAS SENT FOLLOWING TO COMMANDER WESTERN DEFENSE COMMAND "NEGOTIATIONS WITH JAPAN APPEAR TO BE TERMINATED TO ALL PRACTICAL
PURPOSES WITH ONLY THE BAREST POSSIBILITIES THAT THE JAPANESE GOVERNMENT MIGHT COME BACK AND OFFER TO CONTINUE. JAPANESE FUTURE ACTION
UNPREDICTABLE BUT HOSTILE ACTION POSSIBLE AT ANY MOMENT. IF HOSTILITIES CANNOT REPEAT NOT BE AVOIDED THE UNITED STATES DESIRES THAT JAPAN COMMIT THE FIRST OVERT ACT. THIS POLICY SHOULD NOT REPEAT NOT BE CONSTRUED AS RESTRICTING YOU TO A COURSE OF ACTION THAT MIGHT JEOPARDIZE YOUR DEFENSE. PRIOR TO HOSTILE JAPANESE ACTION YOU ARE DIRECTED TO UNDERTAKE St-CH RECONNAISSANCE AND OTHER MEASURES AS YOU DEEM NECESSARY BUT THESE MEASURES SHOULD BE CARRIED OUT SO AS NOT REPEAT NOT TO ALARM CIVIL POPULATION- OR DISCLOSE INTENT.

So the Pearl Harbor commanders had another warning, though not without ambiguity and certainly not one that directed them to take specific precautions.

At this point I could speculate about 'what-ifs,' but given the course of the war over the next few months it is hard to see how a more alert defense of Pearl Harbor would have made much of a difference.

Andrew Warinner

V. Emilio

08-21-1999, 07:58 PM

To al who wer kind enough to respond/comment on my original posting, I refer you all to look at site: http://www.clinton.net/~mewilley/peral.html
and in particular to the handwritten notes of Secy of War Stimson"
25 Nov. - Secretary of War Stimson noted in his diary "FDR stated that we were likely to be attacked perhaps as soon as next Monday." FDR asked: "the question was how we should maneuver them into the position of firing the first shot without too much danger to ourselves. In spite of the risk involved, however, in letting the Japanese fire the first shot, we realized that in order to have the full support of the American people it was desirable to make sure that the Japanese be the ones to do this so that there should remain no doubt in anyone's mind as to who were the aggressors."

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V. Emilio

08-21-1999, 08:02 PM

Sorry! correct site address is: http://www.clinton.net/~mewilley/pearl.html
A very interesting study going back to the Battle of Taranto (which the Japanese emulated when they attacked Pearl) on to a day by day examination of who knew what and when they knew it.

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Ringo

08-21-1999, 09:21 PM

FDR most assuredly did want to maneuver the Japanese into firing the first shot. While hardly a big fan of FDR, I must say the requirements of leadership seem to me to include, if in your perception war is inevitable, motivating the public to rise to the occasion. Vietnam is the obvious example of a what can happen if you try to wage war w/o the public's resolve.

Despite a successful war game attack on Pearl a few years before, that was a double for the real thing, Washington was not expecting the strike at Pearl. The Orange war plan anticipated the first encounter in the Philippines. FDR and crew were arranging their provocation trip wire in the USS Lanikai, a schooner equipped w/a cannon and some machine guns that was ordered to sail to Indochina in early December 1941. The idea was basically to draw fire on a "bona fide" but quite expendable United States naval vessel. The idea was predicated on the intense public reaction, during the buildup in December of 1937 to the Japanese' rape of Nanking, to the sinking of the USS Panay. Anyway, the Lanikai was putting to sea out of Manila on the morning of Dec. 7, and the mission became moot.

tomndebb

08-21-1999, 10:44 PM

V. Emilio25 Nov. - Secretary of War Stimson noted in his diary "FDR stated that we were likely to be attacked perhaps as soon as next Monday." FDR asked: "the question was how we should maneuver them into the position of firing the first shot without too much danger to ourselves.(Italics mine.)

Had FDR known the time and the place, he could easily have ordered the fleet (or the more modern ships in the fleet) to sail after dark on the night of Dec. 6-7. The Japanese were in no position to not attack, so the battle would have occurred anyway (and we would still have probably lost), but it would have been a battle intead of a slaughter. It makes no sense for FDR to have simply sacrificed the whole fleet just to accept a first strike.

(I realize that V. Emilio made no such charge; I am just using his post as a starting point for an observation.)

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Tom~

Sam Stone

08-22-1999, 05:11 AM

RealityChuck

08-22-1999, 07:09 AM

25 Nov. - Secretary of War Stimson noted in his diary "FDR stated that we were likely to be attacked perhaps as soon as next Monday." FDR asked: "the question was how we should maneuver them into the position of firing the first shot without too much danger to ourselves. In spite of the risk involved, however, in letting the Japanese fire the first shot, we realized that in order to have the full support of the American people it was desirable to make sure that the Japanese be the ones to do this so that there should remain no doubt in anyone's mind as to who were the aggressors."

It would be really useful if you took the time to look up the word "evidence."

Nowhere in this quote does it indicated that Roosevelt expected a mass attack, or that he knew it would happen at Pearl Harbor.

In order to prove your assertion, you need to show both. You have shown neither.

Only the incredibly naive believe in conspiracies.

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www.sff.net/people/rothman (http://www.sff.net/people/rothman)

Ringo

08-22-1999, 11:59 AM

Anyway, the Lanikai was putting to sea out of Manila on the morning of Dec. 7, and the mission became moot.

Screwed up the date, it was Dec. 8 in Manila.

astorian

08-22-1999, 02:11 PM

Though I defended FDR against charges that he "knew" of an impending attack on Pearl Harbor, I never denied that he WANTED to enter the Second World War, and was hoping the Japanese or (preferably) the Germans would give him some excuse to do so. That's NOT controversial. Even FDR's greatest admirers would admit that, and it wouldn't trouble me to see a document in which FDR stated clearly that he was hoping for some kind of Japanese attack.

BUT... there is NO WAY Roosevelt wanted a disaster like PEarl Harbor. FDR wanted to BEAT the Japanese, remember? The attack on PEarl Harbor put a serious crimp in our ability to fight the Japanese at all, and with a few more bad breaks (if ALL the ships/subs that were supposed to be at PEarl were really there... if the Japanese had followed up the first strike with the planned second strike), out fleet would have been almost completely wiped out.

Do you REALLY think Roosevelt would have let THAT happen, just to get us into a war?

tomndebb

08-22-1999, 04:14 PM

Actually, I've seen several analyses of MacArthur (none of which I can recall) that rated him quite highly. The main problem with viewing him objectively is that he was a glory hog.

Name Ike's generals: Bradley, Clark, Patton, Hodges, Taylor, even Brigadiers such as McAuliffe.

Now get even historically literate people to name MacArthur's. The only one most people can name is Wainwright who had to stay behind in the Phillipines.

MacArthur always made sure that he controlled the press releases. On the other hand, many of his decisions were good ones. (And it has been speculated that much of his glory-grabbing was a personal reaction to treatment he had received during WW I when he was denied several medals for personal bravery--that he truly deserved--because of personal feuds with Pershing's staff.)

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Tom~

08-23-1999, 12:16 AM

I've read that MacArthur was a brilliant general who was very good at sidestepping non-important enclaves of the enemy to take more ground with little loss of life. I read one biography of him where various military people were asked what they thought of him, and most gushed about his skill.
Anyone have the straight dope on MacArthur?

In my opinion, MacArthur was highly overrated. He was very skilled at self-promotion which was why he had such a high reputation (he was one of the few military men with a public image at the start of WWII). Most of his reputation however was derived from his ability to slide the blame for his bad decisions onto others while collecting the credit for other peole's good decisions onto himself. The policy of side-stepping Japanese bases was an example of this. It was created on an ad-hoc basis by field commanders under MacArthur's command. But once it became apparent that it was working, MacArthur declared it had been his strategy all along.

I believe there was an anecdote from WWII, that said you could tell how well MacArthur's forces were doing by reading the names in his reports. If you only saw MacArthur's name, you knew his forces were making progress. But if you started to see other people's names being mentioned, you knew there was some hold-up.

gene

08-23-1999, 08:53 AM

More on Gen. MacArthur's military prowness:
he was ceratinly capable of brilliant strategic thinking and had the ability to plan and execute very complex maneuvers. I refer to the Korean War , specifically the Inchon landings. Here he managed to place an army group behind N. Korean lines, leading to a panicked withdrawal of the N. Korean forces.
But there was also a bad side-his advance into N. Korea was a disaster-the famous Battle of Choisin Resovoir (where the US Marines covered MacArthur's retreat) was one of the worst defeats for the US in history.
So I guess the man's record is mixed-as it is for most generals who make it to theatre commands.

BurnMeUp

08-23-1999, 01:05 PM

actually a very small percentage of the generals were punished by hanging. The emperoro, who knew full well what was happening was above reproach, as was his cousin who was a high ranking general who gave the orders in the first place. Both weren't required to stand trial at all.

Very few of the soldiers involved "offed" themselves, as they saw the directive coming from the emperor negated and admission of wrongdoing, after all, he was a direct decendant of the gods.

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To deal with men by force is as impractical as to deal with nature by persuasion.

Nickrz

08-23-1999, 09:56 PM

The Japanese code machines were of entirely Japanese design and owe nothing to German Enigma technology. In many ways, the Japanese encryption devices were more sophisticated than Enigma, being entirely electrical devices rather electro-mechanical devices as Enigma was The Japanese had obtained an Enigma machine from Germany, and decided to use the same principle to encode their messages. Rather than using rotors operated by keypresses from the keyboard, they employed electro-mechanical "stepping switches". An electromagnet, acting through a pawl and ratchet mechanism, caused rotating contacts to pass over banks of electrical contacts. The overall machine, although constructed differently, was equivalent to a four-rotor Enigma with electric typewriters on each side. A message was entered on one typewriter, and printed out, encoded, on the second. Although this eliminated some errors in copying an encode from illuminated light bulbs, the weight of the stepping switches and typewriters made it far less portable than the German field Enigma. The Japanese machine was called "97-shiki o-bun in-ji-ki," or informally "J."

The Japanese, more helpful than the Germans, frequently started their messages with "I have the honor to inform your excellency ...". This known correspondence between letters in the coded message and the corresponding plaintext afforded a toehold into breaking the code. We had broken the previous code "Red," and many Japanese mistakes helped them solve "Purple". Operator errors, transmission of exactly the same message in both Red and Purple codes, using stylized names and addresses, and the use of the same keys for a month, shuffled every 10 days, allowed the Americans to discover the "rotor" wiring and build an analog of the Japanese machine.

William Friedman, mainly responsible for the effort, suffered a nervous breakdown. He had followed the same route as the Poles used to break the original Enigma, but independently. Incredibly, he had decided to build his "Purple analog" from stepping switches also, which were readily available as stock telephone exchange equipment. The first successful Purple decode was sent to Washington in August, 1940.

BurnMeUp

08-24-1999, 12:03 AM

Actually a bigger problem during WW2 other than the US's ineffective prepping for a japanese attack would be the total disreguard of the facts and failure to intervene during the rape of Nanking in 1937. The US govt had facts and proof of this holocaust going on at the hands of the japanese and did not intervene. I do realize we weren't at war at this time, but still, how can you turn away from such things?

Worst of all, once the war was over, the Germans were tried for war crimes for their concentration camps and treatment of POW's but the US and other countries failed to impose such sweeping justice on Japan. Mainly because of their interest in uniting with them against the communists immediately following the war. Manay Japanese class A war criminals lived free with no consequence until their natural deaths, some of them taking positions in politics.

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To deal with men by force is as impractical as to deal with nature by persuasion.

According to Pliny

08-24-1999, 12:29 AM

I don't know if I agree with you on that one, Burn. The Tokyo trials may not have gotten the same press that the Nuremberg trials did, but I do think they were quite extensive. A great many bios of Japanese generals end with "convicted and hanged in 1946"!

In fact, IIRC, the only Axis head of government to be executed by the Allies was Japanese (Tojo). Also, keep in mind that many more Japanese war criminals were inclined to "off" themselves at war's end than their German conterparts.

gene

08-24-1999, 07:59 AM

Thanks for the info on the "Enigma" code machine!
Is it true that a complete Enigma machine was brought to England by a Polish intelligence officer in 1940? Also, why didn't the Polish intelligence service receive more of the credit for cracking the German codes-it seems that the British had considerable help from them (the Poles).
I understand that the Russians had complete understanding of all of the German Army codes by 1943-which is why the Germans suffered some shocking defeats later in the war (like the battle of Kursk).

According to Pliny

08-24-1999, 10:46 AM

BurnMeUp- Outside of the Royal Family, I'm curious about the Japanese war criminals that got off for political reasons. I found a great site on the Tokyo Trials:

http://www.cnd.org/mirror/nanjing/NMTT.html

It's very objective as regards the proceedings, so I wasn't able to infer any political motivations for the sentences. I was perturbed to find that almost all those sentenced to "Life" were parolled after just ten years, though.

According to Pliny

08-24-1999, 10:52 AM

Actually, having read that link a little more closely, it confirms a lot of what BurnMeUp said, esp. concerning biological warfare and narcotics.

Thanks for spurring me to learn more about the subject, Burn.

Nickrz

08-24-1999, 11:16 AM

Here's a link to a good article on how the Poles broke the German enigma code(s) in the 1930's:

http://members.aol.com/nbrass/1enigma.htm

BurnMeUp

08-25-1999, 12:41 AM

There is a fabulous book about the failure of the golbal community to correctly punish the japanese war criminals for their atrocities it's called "The Rape of Nanking" bu Iris Chang. A real eye opener to what we will do in the name of politics.

For exapmle, the us ignored much of the war ciminals behavior so Japan would side with us in the cold war since Russia, china and korea were all in the same politcal arena, we anted an ally in the asiatic community.

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To deal with men by force is as impractical as to deal with nature by persuasion.