15. “Imprison’d in the Viewless Winds”

Chapter Fifteen

“IMPRISON’D IN THE VIEWLESS WINDS”

THE CHIEF corroborating witness as to the existence of the “winds” message was, until the congressional investigation, Lieut. Comdr. (later Capt.) Alwin D. Kramer, senior language officer for Navy communication intelligence. Excerpts from Kramer’s testimony before the Navy Pearl Harbor Board, which were not made public until February 5, 1946, showed that he had testified before the board in 1944 that he saw a plain language Japanese message in Capt. Safford’s office December 3 or 4, 1941, containing the Japanese for “east wind rain.” He told the Naval Court he recognized the phrase as the code signal the Navy had been looking for, but that Safford “carried the ball” from there.¹

On the same day that Kramer’s previous testimony was released, the congressional committee received evidence that Adm. Ingersoll had told Adm. Thomas C. Hart, who conducted a Pearl Harbor inquiry for the Navy in 1944, that he recalled seeing, on or about December 4, 1941, a copy of a “winds execute” broadcast indicating that Japan was about to attack the United States and Britain.²

That day the congressional committee also was given other suppressed testimony before the Naval Court of Inquiry that Adm. Turner remembered getting a telephone call “about December 6, 1941,” from Adm. Noyes about the “winds” signal. Turner said Noyes told him that “the ‘winds’ message came in or something like that.” Asked what he thought at the time that this meant, Turner told the court he interpreted it as meaning a break in relations with Japan and “probably war.”³

The committee further learned of an affidavit that Col. Moses Pettigrew, of Army intelligence, had given on February 13, 1945, to Maj. Clausen. Pettigrew stated that about December 5, 1941, he was shown a file of records containing an intercepted message which showed that “United States-Japanese relations were in danger.” He said he thought that this was an implementation of Japan’s prearranged “winds” code.⁴

By the time these four officers testified before the congressional committee, they were by no means as certain as they had once been that there was a “winds” message, or that, if it existed, it had the meaning they had previously assigned to it.

Kramer’s story to the congressional committee was that he saw a “winds” message on December 5 when a naval communications officer had asked him to verify the interpretation of the coded words. He said that he verified that the words coincided with the previously arranged signal of “east wind rain,” but he said that he would not have translated the message to mean “war,” but “strained relations.”

“However,” Kramer said, “the fact that the code was to be used only in the event of failure in regular communications might have resulted in a deduction that war was indicated.”

Kramer then said he was “not positive” that he had written anything on the message, but that he had certainly translated it in his own mind, and to the best of his recollection only one country was involved.

“What country?” he was asked by committee counsel.

“To the best of my belief,” Kramer replied, “the country was England.”⁵

In his testimony the following day Kramer denied that he was badgered or otherwise subjected to pressure to change his original story given the Naval Court, which agreed in all principal points with that of Capt. Safford. He said that he was not positive whether the message he saw referred to the United States. Asked by a committee member, Representative Clark, whether the message was not of such importance as to have made an indelible impression upon his mind, he replied, “I can’t make a positive statement on reconstruction.” He said that, although he had told the Naval Court in 1944 that the United States was named, he now believed the message referred to Great Britain.⁶

On the third day of his testimony, Kramer indicated that his change of mind as to what country Japan had designated as its enemy in the coming war dated from 1945, when he was interviewed concerning his previous testimony to the naval board by Lieut. Comdr. Sonnett. He told also of being summoned in September, 1945, to a luncheon conference at the home of Adm. Stark to discuss Pearl Harbor.⁷Stark had just been censured by Forrestal in the Secretary’s indorsement of the Naval Court’s report, directing that Stark was not in future to hold any position in the Navy “which requires the exercise of superior judgment.”⁸ Also present at the luncheon were Rear Adm. Roscoe E. Schuirmann and Capt. A. H. McCollum.

On the fourth day of his testimony Kramer admitted that he modified his recollections concerning the “winds” message as a result of this luncheon conference. He said that while Stark did not suggest that he change his story, the meeting had “refreshed” his memory on certain details.⁹

He acknowledged once more that he had seen a “winds” message during the week preceding the Pearl Harbor attack, and that he had considered it authentic at the time, but said that his recollection was that the message was received December 5, and not on December 4, as testified by Safford. He said that the disappearance of the message from Navy files could be accounted for on the theory that the Navy may never have made any official recording of the receipt of the signal. He said that a special system had been devised for handing the warning if it were received, under which all regular recording and filing procedure normally used for Japanese intercepts was bypassed by the Navy. Under this plan, Kramer said, the message was to be taken to Adm. Noyes immediately upon its receipt, without going through the regular filing channels.

Kramer made one other significant statement. He said that it was “obvious” on the morning of December 7 that the Japanese were going to attack the British in the Far East and that simultaneous attacks on the United States could be expected. He explained that intercepted messages for weeks had indicated a Japanese move toward British possessions and that “it was believed the United States would be involved.” The tipoff, he said, was the December 7 message instructing Ambassador Nomura that the Japanese final reply be submitted to Secretary Hull at 1:00 P.M.¹⁰

On the final day of his testimony, Kramer changed his story yet again by saying that he now considered the “winds” message a “phony.”¹¹ While he was busy delivering this dictum, the Navy was awarding the Legion of Merit, one of its highest decorations, to the unpopular Capt. Safford, who had upset the applecart by insisting that there was a “winds” message, the existence of which everybody else in Washington wanted to forget. The citation was peculiar in that, although Safford was intercepting all of the Japanese code messages throughout 1941, the medal was given for his services during the period from March, 1942, to September, 1945. The citation said that the officer, whose testimony his own superiors and colleagues had done their utmost to discredit, “was the driving force behind the development of the perfected machines which today give the United States Navy the finest system of encipherment in the world.”¹²

Meanwhile, Adm. Ingersoll took the stand before the congressional committee and said there was a “winds” message in December, 1941, but that he did not recall whether he had been told of it before or after the Pearl Harbor attack. He said he recalled that some officers came to his office with “a piece of paper” which was a message putting the Japanese weather code into effect.

“However,” said Ingersoll, “inasmuch as it came in after we had sent messages to our commanders telling them the Japanese had ordered destruction of their codes, it was of no importance. It merely confirmed what we already were aware of.”

Ingersoll said that the code destruction orders pointed more to war than any message announcing a break in relations, which was the interpretation he placed on the “winds” code.¹³

The next witness to testify to the interception of the “winds” message was Col. Sadtler, who was in charge of codes and ciphers for the Army Signal Corps in 1941. Sadtler’s story was that on the morning of December 5 he was notified by telephone by Adm. Noyes that the “winds” message had been intercepted and that it announced a break in Japanese-British relations.

“I knew it was very easy to get only a part of a message,” Sadtler said. “I thought probably the intercepting station had missed a reference to the United States and that the message must certainly mean a break with the United States as well.”

Sadtler said he went directly to Gen. Miles who asked for verification of the message. Sadtler then called Noyes, but the admiral was leaving his office for an appointment and asked if Sadtler would call back later.

“In view of previous messages indicating a break was imminent and because the ‘winds’ message was the most important I ever received,” he related, “I went to Gen. Gerow. Gerow said the overseas commands had been adequately warned.

“I then went to Col. Smith [now Lieut. Gen. Walter Bedell Smith], secretary to the general staff. When he heard that I had already talked with Gen. Miles and Gen. Gerow, he said he did not want to discuss the matter further.”

Sadtler told committee members that there was Army gossip that key Pearl Harbor records had been destroyed or lost. “At Fort Bragg in 1943,” he said, “Gen. Isaac Spaulding told me nothing could be done about Pearl Harbor because the records had been destroyed. He said he got his information from Col. J. T. Bissell.”¹⁴ (Spaulding in 1941 was in the Army personnel section and Bissell in intelligence.)

The next witness, Rear Adm. Noyes, contended that he had no positive recollection that a true “winds” message was delivered to him, as previous witnesses had testified, but remembered only that several “false ‘winds’ messages” were brought to his attention during the first week in December. He said that these messages did not conform to the prearranged code because they did not use all the specified words or, in other cases, did not use them in the prescribed pattern. When challenged on his statement that he did not receive the message in the face of positive testimony from three other witnesses that it went to him, Noyes said, “I would have remembered it, and there would have been at least thirty copies made for distribution. There are no copies of it in the files.”

Noyes was reminded of testimony by Safford that Army and Navy files for December, 1941, which would contain the key document had been destroyed. He asserted he never ordered any official files destroyed but explained that he left his Washington post in February, 1942. Nor did he dispute the fact that the files had been destroyed.¹⁵

Safford had testified that in 1943, when the Navy inquiry into the Pearl Harbor disaster was planned, he went to the Navy files in search of the “winds” note. “We searched the files of intercepts,” he said. “There was not only no ‘winds’ message, but there were no copies of any intercepts from East Coast monitoring stations for December, 1941. The men in charge of the files didn’t know these records had been destroyed, had no record of the destruction, and had been given no orders to destroy them.”

Safford said that Capt. E. E. Stone, then in charge of naval communications, sought to locate the missing files, but found they had “vanished from the face of the earth.” Safford then sought information on the “winds” document from Army files, but found records there on the subject were “completely gone.”¹⁶

Safford was questioned before the congressional committee about his statement during Adm. Hewitt’s inquiry that he had “third-hand” reports that all copies of the “winds” message had been destroyed by Col. Bissell on direct orders from Chief of Staff Marshall. Safford had told Hewitt that he had been told this by W. F. Friedman, chief Army cryptanalyst. Safford explained that he had given this testimony reluctantly, only because Hewitt pressed him for a lead as to what had happened to the missing messages.

Asked by Seth W. Richardson, committee counsel, whether he now believed it true that Gen. Marshall ordered the records destroyed, Safford said, “That is a question I prefer not to answer.” Neither Bissell nor Friedman was ever called as a witness by the New Deal majority of the congressional committee.¹⁷

Safford also said that several days after the attack in 1941, orders came from Adm. Stark to section heads in the Navy Department to destroy all personal memoranda about events leading up to the attack and to make no statements about the attack until called as witnesses at formal inquiries. Safford said that this was a verbal order which was passed on to communications section heads by Adm. Noyes at a meeting in his office the morning of December 11 or 12, 1941. Noyes was quoted as saying:

There are altogether too many rumors in the Navy Department. People are running to the papers and to radio commentators saying wrong things about Admirals Kimmel and Bloch. We’ve got to stop this. Above all, start no rumors. If any one wants to talk, wait to be called as a witness at a formal inquiry. Furthermore, if any one has any written memos, destroy them or they may fall into the wrong hands.

Safford said that no order was given to destroy any official files or documents.¹⁸

Commenting on these orders, Noyes said he did not recall any direction to communications officers to destroy their personal memoranda. “I may have issued such instructions,” he said. “After the war started, it was standard procedure to have all officers in secret work destroy unofficial notes and memoranda in the interest of security.”

Noyes said he agreed with Adm. Ingersoll that information more vital than the “winds” tipoff had been received on December 3, when Jap intercepts showed Tokyo had ordered its envoys abroad to destroy their codes. He said:

That made the “winds” message less important, even if we got it, because a code destruction order was a positive indication of a trend toward war, but we were still interested in any execution of the “winds” code as a further indication of the trend, and I am certain no true “execute” came to me before December 7.¹⁹

Two other versions of the “winds” message were given by Adm. Turner and Capt. McCollum. Turner said he never saw the “winds” message, but that Noyes called him on December 5 and said, “The message is in—‘north wind clear,’” which would have meant war with Russia.²⁰ McCollum said that he, too, had not seen a message indicating that Japan had intended to attack the United States, but he said that such a message might have gone “direct to higher-ups” without passing through his hands. This would not have been unusual, he said, because, although he was charged with the duty of evaluating Japanese intentions, much relevant information was not supplied him. For instance, he said, he was never informed by the State Department about the progress of its negotiations with Japan or told what notes it was communicating to the Japanese representatives. He said that he got most of his information on American diplomacy by intercepting and decoding outgoing Japanese messages from Washington to Tokyo.

McCollum said that on December 4 or 5 a Jap weather broadcast was intercepted indicating that the “winds” code was being used by Tokyo to predict war with Russia, but that he and Capt. Kramer decided upon further study that the broadcast was actually a regular weather report.²¹

Thus, a number of witnesses agreed that there had been a “winds” message, but no two of them agreed when it was received or what meaning it had. Some who were willing to admit that the message had been intercepted were unwilling to concede that it was directed against the United States, contending that it meant war by Japan upon Britain. Others suggested that it had the meaning of war with Russia—a meaning that Tokyo could never have conveyed because Japan had no intention of fighting Russia, while it did intend to fight the United States, the British, and the Dutch.

Although at various times and before various investigating groups, Capt. Safford and Capt. Kramer, the two witnesses best qualified to testify concerning the existence of the signal and its meaning, had been in agreement that it meant war with the United States, Safford at the last was the only witness who stuck to his original story. He said that the “winds” signal had the meaning it necessarily must have possessed if it were received—that Japan intended to go to war with the three powers with which in fact it did go to war. Kramer and Adm. Ingersoll agreed with him that the message had been received, but after originally stating that the message meant war with the United States and Great Britain, both finally took the position that it applied only to war with the British.

By any rule of evidence, Safford was the most competent witness. He was the man best qualified to know the facts. Safford was the commanding officer of the division which was charged with monitoring the message, translating it, and of conveying it to Adm. Noyes. He would have handled the message directly, and he says that he did handle it. He would have had it translated, and he says that he did have it translated. He would have seen that it reached his responsible superior, and he says that he saw to that. It was not his duty to draft orders to the field once the message was received, but many of his superiors who testified concerning the “winds” message and professed to be unable to recall whether it was received, when it was received, or what it meant, did have that responsibility, and they did not discharge it. No warning based upon the “winds” intercept went to Pearl Harbor. If these men admitted the existence of the “winds” message, they knew they would be confessing their own dereliction and guilt.

Capt. Safford said that when he was unable to find the “winds” message in the Navy files of 1943, he became “suspicious of a conspiracy.” Asked by committee counsel why he thought anybody would want to destroy the message, he responded, “Because it was the unheeded warning of war.” Asked why anyone should fail to make use of the message the moment it came in, if it meant war, he replied, “That question has puzzled me for four years. I don’t know the answer.”

But, Safford observed, it is clear that no use was, in fact, made of the message, and the only logical explanation for its subsequent destruction and the administration’s persistent endeavors to muddy waters that were originally clear is that these actions were intended “to cover up a mistake.” That mistake, according to Safford, was “that no war warning was sent—that an attempt to send a warning was suppressed in the Navy Department December 4,” when McCollum’s draft was killed.²² Whether higher authority than Admirals Turner and Wilkinson was responsible for killing this vital message which could have averted the disaster three days later—and how high that authority might have been—are questions so far unanswered. Enough has been uncovered to provide the shadowy outline of a monstrous, unbelievable conspiracy.

The only other theory advanced, except the untenable administration argument that there never was any “winds” message, is that of Capt. Kramer and Adm Ingersoll: that the message meant war with Great Britain, but not with the United States. But, from America’s commitments to the ABCD powers under the Washington and Singapore staff agreements, from Roosevelt’s warning of August 17, and from the warnings addressed to Japanese officials by Turner and Counselor Dooman of the Tokyo embassy that a Jap attack upon British possessions would bring America into the war, it will be seen that a “winds” signal forecasting a Japanese war with Britain would also have meant that Japan inevitably must fight the United States. Thus, all efforts of the Roosevelt administration to get out of the draft from the “winds” collapse.

The application of the “winds” message to Roosevelt’s engagements under the ABCD alliance had been convincingly emphasized in the memorandum of Maj. Gen. Cramer, giving Maj. Clausen instructions as to what he was to investigate on the world-tour he was undertaking for Stimson.

Cramer directed that Clausen, in seeking to determine the validity of the “winds” message, explore “whether Gen. Miles, Adm. Noyes, Col. Bratton, or Capt. Safford knew about the Anglo-Dutch-U.S. Joint Action Agreement, in which case they would have known that a ‘war with Britain’ message would necessarily have involved the United States in war.”

In further study of the “winds” message, Cramer suggested that Clausen look into “whether the partial implementation ‘war with Britain’ was brought to Adm. Stark’s or Gen. Marshall’s attention, it being clear that the chief of naval operations and the chief of staff did know of the Joint Action Policy.”²³

The leads which Gen. Cramer listed indicated the belief of the Army’s chief legal officer that there was a Joint Action Agreement among the United States, Britain, and Holland, that it was known to Gen. Marshall and Adm. Stark, the chief officers of the Army and Navy, and that Roosevelt was clearly aware of the provision of this agreement that the United States was bound to attack Japan if Japan attacked British or Dutch territory when, at the urging of Churchill, he delivered his ultimatum to Adm. Nomura on August 17 warning Japan against further encroachments in the Pacific.

It was on the basis of Roosevelt’s commitments to Britain and Holland under the Joint Action Agreement that Gen. Cramer made the point that a “winds” signal in which Japan warned of hostilities against Britain, even if it conveyed no similar declaration of intention as regards the United States, would have obliged America to enter the war on Britain’s side.

Another lead suggested by Cramer to Clausen was whether Gen. (then Col.) Kendall J. Fielder, chief of intelligence to Gen. Short in Hawaii, “actually received the message directing him to contact Comdr. Rochefort, whether he did so, and whether there is substance to the hypothesis that he and Short were relying upon the warning they would expect to receive when the second or implementing ‘winds’ message would be intercepted, thus giving advance notice of hostilities.”²⁴

Gen. Short, during his testimony before the congressional committee, said he could shed no light on this particular question.

“I never heard of the ‘winds’ code until I read the Roberts report here some time in August, 1944,” the general said. “That was the first time I knew there was such a thing.”

“You never knew, then, that Comdr. Rochefort had known that there was intercepted a ‘winds’ or implementing message?” asked Senator Ferguson.

“No, sir, I never heard of it.”

“So, then, you were not waiting, as a matter of fact, on an implementing ‘winds’ message in order that you might be given advance notice of hostilities?”

“I was not.”²⁵

Adm. Kimmel was also kept in the dark concerning the “winds” message. In his testimony before the congressional committee, however, he expressed his conviction that it had been intercepted, citing in proof statements in the still-secret findings of the Naval Court of Inquiry in 1944. He said:

The interception of the false weather broadcast was considered by the Navy Department to be of supreme importance. Every facility of the Navy was invoked to learn as speedily as possible when the false weather broadcast from Japan was heard and which of the significant code words were used. Extraordinary measures were established in the Navy Department to transmit the words used in the broadcast to key officers as soon as they were known. The Naval Court of Inquiry heard substantial evidence from various witnesses on the question of whether or not Japan gave the signal prescribed by the winds code. The Naval Court of Inquiry found the facts on this matter to be as follows:

“On December 4 an intercepted Japanese broadcast employing this code was received in the Navy Department. Although this notification was subject to two interpretations, either a breaking off of diplomatic relations between Japan and the United States, or war, this information was not transmitted to the commander-in-chief, Pacific fleet, or to other commanders afloat.

“It was known in the Navy Department that the commanders-in-chief, Pacific and Asiatic fleets, were monitoring Japanese broadcasts for this code, and apparently there was a mistaken impression in the Navy Department that the execute message had also been intercepted at Pearl Harbor. No attempt was made by the Navy Department to ascertain whether this information had been obtained by the commander-in-chief, Pacific, and by other commanders afloat.

“Adm. Stark stated that he knew nothing about it, although Adm. Turner stated that he himself was familiar with it and presumed that Adm. Kimmel had it. This message cannot now be located in the Navy Department.”²⁶

Thus, the Army Pearl Harbor Board and the Naval Court of Inquiry both agreed that the “winds” message was intercepted, as Capt. Safford maintained and the Army judge advocate general implied, and that in 1944 there was substantial agreement among witnesses as to this fact, as well as to the plain meaning of the signal.²⁷ The witnesses began to develop loss of memory only after the Secretary of War and the Secretary of the Navy started bringing pressure upon them. This campaign of intimidation, especially effective against Army and Navy officers sensitive to prospects of promotion and status, was launched only after tangible evidence of nonfeasance in the highest circles of the services and of the civilian government had been adduced.

To this scandalous conduct must be added the disappearance of the relevant intercepts from the Army and Navy secret files, the destruction of the logs of the Navy monitoring stations for the whole first week of December, 1941, ostensibly to “make filing room,”²⁸ and the attempt to jam through Congress legislation which would forever have suppressed the code-cracking evidence under penalties so severe as to prohibit publication or even discussion.