Elliptical observations Public service announcement
Oct 11

Independent Institute article:

Newly released naval records prove that from November 17 to 25 the United States Navy intercepted eighty-three messages that Yamamoto sent to his carriers. Part of the November 25 message read: “…the task force, keeping its movements strictly secret and maintaining close guard against submarines and aircraft, shall advance into Hawaiian waters, and upon the very opening of hostilities shall attack the main force of the United States fleet in Hawaii and deal it a mortal blow…”

So the US knew the Japanese were going to attack Pearl Harbor. Another conspiracy theory proven thanks to the FOIA. Am I the only person who missed this news?

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One Response to “In case you missed it: Pearl Harbor”

  1. http://gareth-rees.livejournal.com/ Says:

    It’s one thing to intercept a wireless message, quite another to decrypt it. The article you’ve quoted is highly misleading by omitting to explain the state of their decryption in December 1941.

    As the Wikipedia article on the controversy points out,

    Detailed month by month progress reports have shown no reason to believe any JN-25B messages were fully decrypted before the start of the war. Tallied results for September, October, and November [1941] reveal roughly 3,800 code groups (out of 55,000, about 7%) had been recovered by the time of the attack on Pearl Harbor.

    The Japanese naval codes were book codes, so it makes sense that some groups could be known while others not. Don’t make the mistake of confusing the naval JN-25B cde with the electromechanical diplomatic cipher PURPLE, which was broken before Pearl Harbor.