Never forget

[Freak Out]

Ceremony Commemorates 67th Anniversary of Attack on Pearl Harbor

By N.C. Aizenman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, December 7, 2008; 6:14 PM

Signalman 1st Class Bert Falardeau had just taken a sip of coffee in the radio hut of the USS Castor when the first wave of Japanese bombers screeched across Pearl Harbor.

"I remember the fellow standing next to me saying, 'They're not kidding around -- you'd better go wake up the captain,'" said Falardeau, now 85. As he raced through the ship, the bombers unleashed a torrent of fire that still reverberates through Falardeau's memory "like it happened yesterday. It's always seemed that way."

It was a sentiment echoed by the two other Pearl Harbor survivors who joined Falardeau today at a wreath-laying ceremony at the U.S. Navy Memorial in the District to commemorate the 67th anniversary of the attack, which claimed more than 2,300 American lives and prompted the United States to enter World War II.

Rear Admiral Ted Walker, who was only 9 years old at the time, said he was more excited than frightened when explosions shook his Honolulu neighborhood. While his father, who was a naval officer, drove off toward the harbor, Walker climbed onto the roof of his house to get a better view.

"We lived in such a benign world until then," Walker said. "We didn't even have violent movies. It just didn't occur to me what danger we were facing."

By contrast, the ramifications were immediately clear to retired Commander John Budzik, then a 25-year-old ensign. Budzik, now 91, said that at the first news of the attack, he and his bunkmates hailed a taxi to get from their on-shore quarters to the harbor. They arrived just in time to witness the second wave of bombings.

"It was terrible. We saw the planes dive-bombing, we saw the ships going up in flames. More than anything it was just horribly frightening."

All three men said that as survivors, they felt a special responsibility to keep alive the memory of those who perished.

"I feel very strongly that I represent them," said Budzik, who was chosen to stand a wreath of red and white flowers before the memorial's statue of the lone seaman as a Navy bugler played Taps. "It's the greatest honor anyone can receive."

Falardeau, who left the Navy after the war and worked as a supervisor in a photographic film plant before retiring to his hometown of Rochester, N.Y., recently completed a first novel based on his naval service.

"I wanted to let people know what we went through down there," he said. "Most books are about the officers. This is about the enlisted men. We're the guys that won the war."

Walker, who gave a short speech as part of the ceremony, said he also hoped to honor of the sense of solidarity with which Americans responded to the attack.

"For those of you who are in the audience and don't remember Pearl Harbor but do remember 9/11, just remember the unity of the American people after that terrible event," he told the crowd of several dozen onlookers. "Double it or triple it and you will see what the impact of Pearl Harbor was on this nation."

Many of those in attendance were also Navy veterans--including a contingent who came from the Vinson Hall retirement community in McLean, Virginia, where Budzik lives.

"I watched a movie about Pearl Harbor and I've been interested ever since," said a boy in the audience, 10-year-old Oscar Amaya.

His mother, Sally Amaya, smiled proudly. But Amaya, who was raised by a grandfather who fought in World War II, said she was also hoping that seeing survivors of Pearl Harbor would help her son comprehend the reality of war.

"It's hard for kids now to understand the sacrifices people made," she said. "He's seen movies and he's read books, but I don't know if he really gets that this happened to real people."

[Freak Out]

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/07/us/07pearl.html?_r=1&ref=us

December 7, 2008
Report Debunks Theory That the U.S. Heard a Coded Warning About Pearl Harbor
By SAM ROBERTS

It has remained one of World War II’s most enduring mysteries, one that resonated decades later after Sept. 11: Who in Washington knew what and when before the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941?

Specifically, who heard or saw a transcript of a Tokyo shortwave radio news broadcast that was interrupted by a prearranged coded weather report? The weather bulletin signaled Japanese diplomats around the world to destroy confidential documents and codes because war with the United States, the Soviet Union or Britain was beginning.

In testimony for government inquiries, witnesses said that the “winds execute” message was intercepted as early as Dec. 4, three days before the attack.

But after analyzing American and foreign intelligence sources and decrypted cables, historians for the National Security Agency concluded in a documentary history released last week that whatever other warnings reached Washington about the attack, the “winds execute” message was not one of them.

A Japanese message intercepted and decoded on Nov. 19, 1941, at an American monitoring station on Bainbridge Island, in Washington State, appeared to lay out the “winds execute” situation. If diplomatic relations were “in danger” with one of three countries, a coded phrase would be repeated as a special weather bulletin twice in the middle and twice at the end of the daily Japanese-language news broadcast.

“East wind rain” would mean the United States; “north wind cloudy,” the Soviet Union; and “west wind clear,” Britain.

In the history, “West Wind Clear,” published by the agency’s Center for Cryptologic History, the authors, Robert J. Hanyok and the late David Mowry, attribute accounts of the message being broadcast to the flawed or fabricated memory of some witnesses, perhaps to deflect culpability from other officials for the United States’ insufficient readiness for war.

A Congressional committee grappled with competing accounts of the “winds execute” message in 1946, by which time the question of whether it had been broadcast had blown into a controversy. The New York Times described it as a “bitter microcosm” of the investigation into American preparedness.

“If there was such a message,” The Times wrote, “the Washington military establishment would have been gravely at fault in not having passed it along” to military commanders in Hawaii. If there was not, then the supporters of those commanders “would have lost an important prop to their case.”

In an interview, Mr. Hanyok said there were several lessons from the controversy that reverberate today. He said that some adherents of the theory that the message was sent and seen were motivated by an unshakable faith in the efficacy of radio intelligence, and that when a copy of the message could not be found they blamed a cover-up — a reminder that no intelligence-gathering is completely foolproof.

Washington also missed potential warning signs because intelligence resources had been diverted to the Atlantic theater, he said, and the Japanese deftly practiced deception to mislead Americans about the whereabouts of Tokyo’s naval strike force.

“The problem with the conspiracy theory,” Mr. Hanyok said, “is that it diverted attention from the real substantive problems, the major issue being the intelligence system was so bureaucratized.”

Beginning about Dec. 1, Washington became aware that the Japanese were ordering diplomats overseas to selectively destroy confidential documents. But, the N.S.A. study found, “because of the sometimes tardy exploitation of these messages, intelligence officers in the Army and Navy knew only parts of the complete program.”

“It is possible,” the study went on, “that they viewed the Japanese actions as ominous, but also contradictory and perhaps even confusing. More importantly, though, the binge of code destruction was occurring without the transmittal of the winds execute message.”

The authors concluded that the weight of the evidence “indicates that one coded phrase, ‘west wind clear,’ was broadcast according to previous instructions some six or seven hours after the attack on Pearl Harbor.”

“In the end, the winds code never was the intelligence indicator or warning that it first appeared to the Americans, as well as to the British and Dutch,” they wrote. “In the political realm, it added nothing to then current view in Washington (and London) that relations with Tokyo had deteriorated to a dangerous point. From a military standpoint, the winds coded message contained no actionable intelligence either about the Japanese operations in Southeast Asia and absolutely nothing about Pearl Harbor.

“In reality,” they concluded, “the Japanese broadcast the coded phrase(s) long after hostilities began — useless, in fact, to all who might have heard it.”

That war with Japan was anticipated is apparent from a separate memorandum to President Franklin D. Roosevelt dated Nov. 13, 1941, from William J. Donovan, director of the Office of Strategic Services, the precursor to the Central Intelligence Agency. The memorandum was found in the National Archives last year by the Nazi War Crimes and Japanese Imperial Government Records Interagency Working Group.

Reporting on a conversation the week before between Hans Thoman, the German chargé d’affaires to the United States, and Malcolm R. Lovell, a Quaker leader, Mr. Donovan quoted Mr. Thoman as saying that Japan was trying to buy time.

“In the last analysis, Japan knows that unless the United States agrees to some reasonable terms in the Far East, Japan must face the threat of strangulation, now or later. Should Japan wait until later to prevent this strangulation by the United States, she will be less able to free herself than now, for Germany is now occupying the major attention of both the British empire and the United States.

“If Japan waits, it will be comparatively easy for the United States to strangle Japan,” Mr. Donovan’s memorandum quoting Mr. Thoman continued. “Japan is therefore forced to strike now, whether she wishes to or not.”

[Kiwon]

Good thread, Freaky.

NEVER FORGET is right.

It's a shame that Japanese kids still are not taught about Pearl Harbor in their schools.

Most don't know anything about it.

[sheepshead]

I watched some of the history channel Sunday morning. It's always an eerie day for me, especially when it falls on a Sunday.

[texaspackerbacker]

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/07/us/07pearl.html?_r=1&ref=us

December 7, 2008
Report Debunks Theory That the U.S. Heard a Coded Warning About Pearl Harbor
By SAM ROBERTS

It has remained one of World War II’s most enduring mysteries, one that resonated decades later after Sept. 11: Who in Washington knew what and when before the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941?

Specifically, who heard or saw a transcript of a Tokyo shortwave radio news broadcast that was interrupted by a prearranged coded weather report? The weather bulletin signaled Japanese diplomats around the world to destroy confidential documents and codes because war with the United States, the Soviet Union or Britain was beginning.

In testimony for government inquiries, witnesses said that the “winds execute” message was intercepted as early as Dec. 4, three days before the attack.

But after analyzing American and foreign intelligence sources and decrypted cables, historians for the National Security Agency concluded in a documentary history released last week that whatever other warnings reached Washington about the attack, the “winds execute” message was not one of them.

A Japanese message intercepted and decoded on Nov. 19, 1941, at an American monitoring station on Bainbridge Island, in Washington State, appeared to lay out the “winds execute” situation. If diplomatic relations were “in danger” with one of three countries, a coded phrase would be repeated as a special weather bulletin twice in the middle and twice at the end of the daily Japanese-language news broadcast.

“East wind rain” would mean the United States; “north wind cloudy,” the Soviet Union; and “west wind clear,” Britain.

In the history, “West Wind Clear,” published by the agency’s Center for Cryptologic History, the authors, Robert J. Hanyok and the late David Mowry, attribute accounts of the message being broadcast to the flawed or fabricated memory of some witnesses, perhaps to deflect culpability from other officials for the United States’ insufficient readiness for war.

A Congressional committee grappled with competing accounts of the “winds execute” message in 1946, by which time the question of whether it had been broadcast had blown into a controversy. The New York Times described it as a “bitter microcosm” of the investigation into American preparedness.

“If there was such a message,” The Times wrote, “the Washington military establishment would have been gravely at fault in not having passed it along” to military commanders in Hawaii. If there was not, then the supporters of those commanders “would have lost an important prop to their case.”

In an interview, Mr. Hanyok said there were several lessons from the controversy that reverberate today. He said that some adherents of the theory that the message was sent and seen were motivated by an unshakable faith in the efficacy of radio intelligence, and that when a copy of the message could not be found they blamed a cover-up — a reminder that no intelligence-gathering is completely foolproof.

Washington also missed potential warning signs because intelligence resources had been diverted to the Atlantic theater, he said, and the Japanese deftly practiced deception to mislead Americans about the whereabouts of Tokyo’s naval strike force.

“The problem with the conspiracy theory,” Mr. Hanyok said, “is that it diverted attention from the real substantive problems, the major issue being the intelligence system was so bureaucratized.”

Beginning about Dec. 1, Washington became aware that the Japanese were ordering diplomats overseas to selectively destroy confidential documents. But, the N.S.A. study found, “because of the sometimes tardy exploitation of these messages, intelligence officers in the Army and Navy knew only parts of the complete program.”

“It is possible,” the study went on, “that they viewed the Japanese actions as ominous, but also contradictory and perhaps even confusing. More importantly, though, the binge of code destruction was occurring without the transmittal of the winds execute message.”

The authors concluded that the weight of the evidence “indicates that one coded phrase, ‘west wind clear,’ was broadcast according to previous instructions some six or seven hours after the attack on Pearl Harbor.”

“In the end, the winds code never was the intelligence indicator or warning that it first appeared to the Americans, as well as to the British and Dutch,” they wrote. “In the political realm, it added nothing to then current view in Washington (and London) that relations with Tokyo had deteriorated to a dangerous point. From a military standpoint, the winds coded message contained no actionable intelligence either about the Japanese operations in Southeast Asia and absolutely nothing about Pearl Harbor.

“In reality,” they concluded, “the Japanese broadcast the coded phrase(s) long after hostilities began — useless, in fact, to all who might have heard it.”

That war with Japan was anticipated is apparent from a separate memorandum to President Franklin D. Roosevelt dated Nov. 13, 1941, from William J. Donovan, director of the Office of Strategic Services, the precursor to the Central Intelligence Agency. The memorandum was found in the National Archives last year by the Nazi War Crimes and Japanese Imperial Government Records Interagency Working Group.

Reporting on a conversation the week before between Hans Thoman, the German chargé d’affaires to the United States, and Malcolm R. Lovell, a Quaker leader, Mr. Donovan quoted Mr. Thoman as saying that Japan was trying to buy time.

“In the last analysis, Japan knows that unless the United States agrees to some reasonable terms in the Far East, Japan must face the threat of strangulation, now or later. Should Japan wait until later to prevent this strangulation by the United States, she will be less able to free herself than now, for Germany is now occupying the major attention of both the British empire and the United States.

“If Japan waits, it will be comparatively easy for the United States to strangle Japan,” Mr. Donovan’s memorandum quoting Mr. Thoman continued. “Japan is therefore forced to strike now, whether she wishes to or not.”

The guy uses the farcical NY Times as his source to mitigate the scandal of a horrible liberal president with a probable agenda to instigate a war against forces destroying his beloved Soviet Communism.

A big "yeah right" to that.

Never forget Pearl Harbor, just the same. America was attacked directly, no getting around that. Even if the proper disbursing of intel and preparing had been done, and the Jap attack had been much less successful, it still would have been a clear act of war which would have drawn us into WWII. All things considered--specifically, Nazi weapons development, it's probably a good thing it happened when it did.

[Tarlam!]

It's a shame that Japanese kids still are not taught about Pearl Harbor in their schools.

Most don't know anything about it.

Wow, is this true??

German schoolkids get absolutely brainwashed with the concentration camps and WWII. They take their guilt very seriously over here.

[Kiwon]

It's a shame that Japanese kids still are not taught about Pearl Harbor in their schools.

Most don't know anything about it.

Wow, is this true??

German schoolkids get absolutely brainwashed with the concentration camps and WWII. They take their guilt very seriously over here.

The 20th century atrocities committed by the Japanese in China, Korea, the Philippines and at Pearl Harbor are not mentioned in the school history books (at least not the accurate versions of what took place).

In Asian cultures (shame cultures) acknowledging a wrongdoing is accepting responsibility for it and therefore obligating yourself to make things right. The Japanese were frankly terrible throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, pre-1946.

The Koreans are building a military not to fight the North Koreans but to fight the Japanese at a later date down the road. They essentially despise them.

I have met several Germans and they do acknowledge what the Nazis did. Some are overly apologetic for the past, IMHO. However, the Japanese government has practically admitted to none of it. I have to believe that such consistent denial leads to a serious pathology. There is an official Japanese version of history that obviously doesn't square with the truth but this is what is taught in school. The other East Asian countries are always complaining about it.

These Asian cultures are ancient and unbelievably complicated. Change comes very slowly. As long as shame is so powerful, things are not likely to change anytime soon.

[texaspackerbacker]

I'll criticize the damn Japs for a lot of things, but not on this one.

This sick practice of self-criticism which some in this country are so adept at--kind of negative ethnocentricity--is a weird and abnormal phenomenon--IMO, inflicted on us by our damn liberals.

If modern Japs are allowed to conveniently ignore the horrors and atrocities of an earlier generation, I'll give that a big "whatever". That kind of an attitude is a helluva lot more NORMAL than going back and picking at scabs and stirring up trouble like the America-hating leftists do in this country.

Cheer up, libs, at least you've got the Krauts sold on your sick abnormal psychology. One out of two ain't bad.

[swede]

I'll criticize the damn Japs for a lot of things, but not on this one.

This sick practice of self-criticism which some in this country are so adept at--kind of negative ethnocentricity--is a weird and abnormal phenomenon--IMO, inflicted on us by our damn liberals.

If modern Japs are allowed to conveniently ignore the horrors and atrocities of an earlier generation, I'll give that a big "whatever". That kind of an attitude is a helluva lot more NORMAL than going back and picking at scabs and stirring up trouble like the America-hating leftists do in this country.

Cheer up, libs, at least you've got the Krauts sold on your sick abnormal psychology. One out of two ain't bad.

With a little less foaming at the mouth vis a vis liberals I agree with some of that, Tex.

Some thoughts about those naughty little Nippers:

I could not give a flying flip about what Japan teaches their kids about their own history. At some point you can't conceal why we dropped a couple of atom bombs on them. (They were preparing for U.S. invasion by teaching women and children to fight to the death with sharp sticks after all the men were dead. I guarantee you fewer people died in the Nagasaki and Hiroshima explosions then would have died in the unavoidable invasion that would have had to have happened without the big booms.)

The Japanese citizens I have met are polite and excellent company, and I respect their country and its unique culture.

Two events in world history that still amaze me involve the repairing of the union following the Civil War and the rapid development of a positive relationship between Japan and the United States following WWII. In the case of Japan I believe that there are cultural reasons that compelled them to accept defeat with an honorable kind of humility.

[texaspackerbacker]

Excellent post, swede.

i don't disagree with a word of it.

[Freak Out]

POV

http://www.pbs.org/pov/pov2008/inheritance/index.html