Customer Reviews

Deceit at Pearl Harbor: From Pearl Harbor to Midway

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Ken Landis, being the lone survivor of Adm. Kimmel's staff is in a position to know what Kimmel knew and what Kimmel did not know. Ken was Kimmel's communication officer and encoded/decoded all messages to Kimmel. More than that, extensive research by Landis has recently revealed some incredible facts about what Roosevelt and Churchill knew well ahead of the attack.

This book goes beyond Pearl Harbor and delves into Naval Intelligence and how various Admirals did and did not respond to this information. Battles were won or lost on intelligence.

This book is a powerful piece of history and a must read for anyone interested in World War II and the Pacific Theater of Operations.

Clearly an interesting text and well worthwhile the time for any one keen on Pearl Harbor lore. While the writing shows the need for some more editing, overall, an excellent addition to those many Pearl Harbor bookshelfs out there.

A "firsthand" account of two survivors of the Pearl Harbor attack provides some topical perspectives not brought to the fore previously. While much of what is related is "old news" for many, there are some new tidbits. Of course, the text does, yet again, highlight that many known documents and other WWII materials are still classified even today.

The revelation of the "tapping" of the Churchill-Roosevelt trans-oceanic telephone conversations is one such new item for some, as apparently this was not very well-known to some Pearl Harbor buffs. This is based on the release, by the United States in the mid-1990s, of some of the transcripts the German "wire-tapping" which indeed supports the "We knew." sentence which is how Stinnett's ends his highly-regarded earlier "Day of Deceit".

There are several other things of importance in this text, but two in particular are notable and even not mentioned: (a) these conversations and other correspondence began before Churchill became Prime Minister; these relate directly to Tyler Kent's imprisonment in Britain. And (b) all of Churchill's conversations were transcribed (yes, copies were made and are extant today; and very importantly they are not subject to any of the UK-USA crypto agreements); all of those Churchill-Roosevelt transcripts remain classified, but perhaps not much longer.

As "reader" from earlier seems unclear, or ignorant of well-known facts, a primer here may help:

As to the vulnerability of the A-3 scrambler; a scan of Marshall's Joint Congressional testimony will show that he ordered "induction" testing to be done by the US Army Signal Corps (HQ: Fort Monmouth, NJ). This was done off Gardiners Island (eastern end of Long Island, NY). The A-3 relied on random voltage inverters ... not very complex and not very hard to deal with. Now, the later SIGSALY was an altogether different beast ... synch those 78 rpm LPs.

As to the German capabilites, consider just two examples: (a) See Kahn's "The Codebreakers" (1967 - yes, a text from now almost 40 years ago, and well prior to Prange's publications), Chapter 16 "Censors, Scramblers, and Spies" on page 557 is shown a "Transcript of a German descrambling of an intercepted Churchill transatlanitc conversation." and (b) See Irving's (2001) "Churchill's War" Volume Two "Triumph in Adversity" Appendix II "Telephone Jobs" beginning on page 841 - " ... this 'Forschungsstelle'(research unit) at Wetterlin was capable of intercepting both ends of the transatlantic radiotelephone traffic. They were scrambled, but the scrambling technique employed was one originally devised by Siemens, a German firm; the Nazi readily created a device for unscrambling the conversations. ..." Many of the Wetterlin Transcripts remain to be reviewed by historians.

Finally, as some might know, Truman (via an Executive Order signed on September 28, 1945) had sealed in perpetuity certain "conversations." For those interested - RG 216 (Record Group 216) at the National Archives is a good place to start. The PRIME-POTUS telephone conversations ...

Who knew?

1996 marked the 50th Anniversary of the end of WWII and also marked the date that most WWII era documents became declassified. Among those that remain classified are the American and British official documents. However, when they declassified all German documents in 1996, the US Government inadvertently released proof that FDR and Churchill knew about and discussed the attack on Pearl Harbor on November 26, 1941.

Churchill and Roosevely, against the advice of their security staffs, liked to use a telephone scrambler to talk and often they discussed highly classified material. The Germans had a listening station in line with the Washington-London radio-telephone line in Denmark and had installed an A-3 scrambler so they could eavesdrop on the routine conversations done over this line.

In the early morning hours of November 26, 1941 Churchill called Roosevelt with urgent information about the Japanese intentions in the Pacific. Churchill said that they had a high level source that informed them the Japanese intended to attack the US. FDR said he knew about the fleet headed south to the Philippine Islands. But Churchill interrupted him and said, no it was headed for Pearl.

After discussing the trustworthiness of this information, and Churchill assuring FDR that it came from the same individual who helped them with the naval codes, they then discussed how much damage could be inflicted and what to do. Churchill suggested they "do nothing" and if it came to light that they knew, they could always claim to have "misinterpreted intelligence". They even discussed the day of the impending attack, December 8, 1941, which they puzzled over, it being a Monday. Of course, their intelligence people would have instantly known that the Japanese were using their own date/time system, not that of the locality of their attack and in Japan the attack did occur on December 8.

Anyways, buy the book and read the entire transcript of the conversation for yourself. And while this is only one source, remember that the official sources remain classified, indicating that they contain information that has not yet been divulged. And the only reason to retain classification over this information is that it contains information the government is ashamed of.

Such an important piece of our nation's history. A "must read" for all who want to understand our legacy of freedom.

Ken's book is a fascinating narrative from an actual eye witness to history. His book is easy to read and understand and gives a true gut feeling of what Pearl Harbor was really all about. How Ken and his staff cracked the Japanese codes to the great photos taken by the author during WW2, this is a great read.

Authors Landis and Gunn were on Oahu on 7 December 1941 and were thus witnesses to the Japanese attack, Landis at the Pearl Harbor Sub Base as a junior member of Admiral Kimmel's staff and Gunn at the Signal Corps Radar Filter Center at Fort Shafter. Unfortunately, their small roles in these events do not provide them any special insights and these shortcomings are all too obvious in this book. Lt. Cmdr. Landis uses two events as the centerpieces of his thesis that President Roosevelt knew the exact details of the Japanese attack and chose to ignore them so that America could use the attack as our excuse to enter the war-he goes on to suggest it was really Hitler and Germany that Roosevelt wanted to defeat, and he used Japan's attack to bring Germany into the war because of their treaty obligation to Japan. He cites "the President's" direction that three picket vessels be prepared and sailed to the Far East in hopes the Japanese will sink them as one example of Roosevelt's determination to precipitate congressional outrage and a declaration of war. Only one of these vessels actually sailed and the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor negated this supposed ploy. The other example of Roosevelt's alleged conspiracy is a "transcript," supposedly taken from German espionage files after the war, of a 26 November 1941 scrambler phone conservation between Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill in which Churchill relates exact details of the December 7 attack. Neither of these two supposed acts of complicity and deceit are supported by citations or research in a manner that even remotely validates their authenticity. In fact, the Japanese decision to attack and the exact date were not decided until 1 December 1941. Virtually everything that follows is ground already plowed many times. While Landis cites several books about the attack and rehashes the theory that Roosevelt allowed over 2,000 American to die rather that meet the attack he knew was coming, his research is virtually nonexistent. From the very outset author Landis makes clear he is fatally biased; he can find absolutely no fault with Admirals Nimitz or Kimmel, and can find nothing good in Admiral King or Generals MacArthur or Marshall. He asserts that, despite a number of Congressional and military investigations over the past 50 years, a clever and massive conspiracy led by "The Democratic Party" and facilitated by King, Marshall, MacArthur and literally thousands of others, has covered for Roosevelt's duplicity. The text suffers significantly from poor editing, with grammatical, format and contextual errors detracting from both credibility and readability. While there is some interesting anecdotal reading here, the total lack of scholarship and definitive research, coupled with the many editorial lapses, completely cancels any objectivity the book might otherwise have contained. This book cannot be taken seriously by those interested in the Pearl Harbor attack.

Well-written and an easy read.........
But just another book attempting to prove what others have tried to do before....show that the nations leaders knew about the Pearl Harbor attack and just let it happen so the US was forced to join WWII. Anyone well read on the subject will see that without a list of sources with footnotes all of the "facts" given here can't easily be traced to their source. So you have to believe what you read. I've seen all this info before elsewhere.

Ain't history great...you can write whatever you want if everyone you drag down with your "proof" is dead and gone.....well thats show-biz.

Most would agree that Kimmel and Short, especially Kimmel, got a raw deal by taking the brunt of the blame for the attack, when the leaders in Washington should have shouldered as much or more of the blame. But why can't people just accept that the Japanese completely fooled everyone and carried out a bold and successful attack??
But I guess that won't sell many books.