Piercing the Fog - Air Force Historical Studies Office

Piercing the Fog
gave the benefit of their experience to the military. For Europe, the information
was extensive, but not so for Japan where few Americans had lived or worked.
While German emigrees held important positions in the United States, most
who had immigrated from Japan were working-class people. As a general rule,
the Japanese-Americans were not trusted, and whatever information they may
have had was not so well e~ploited.3~
The A-2 staff had built good working relationships with the other services
in Washington, and despite the nagging annoyance of the Air Forces’ senior
officers on the question of service independence, the objective folder and target
production effort moved ahead toward the November 1944 goal. The growing
interagency effort that represented the Japanese intelligence project led the
JCS’s Ad Hoc Committee, originally created to settle the problems associated
with dividing the Japanese intelligence effort among the services, to propose
more closely integrated work on aviation target material and target damage
assessment. By mid-May 1944, the Ad Hoc Committee had recommended that
these two functions be done within the A-2 office rather than by a new
committee or agency, with the consequent bureaucratic tangles and delays. A-2
was the logical location since the AAF’s long-range and very long-range
bombers would consume the target documentation. In mid-May 1944, Van
Slyck and an associate, Maj. Philip G. Bower, met with representatives of the
Director of Naval Intelligence to lay the groundwork for cooperation. The Navy
intended to prepare target charts of Japan for use by its carrier aircraft, using
AAF information. The Navy’s plan included employing the target numbering
system of A-2, and the naval officers at the meeting suggested the need for a
common map-grid numbering system. The common grid would not only
simplify joint intelligence preparation and map and chart production, it would
allow specific instructions to be sent in short form to all users by cable or radio,
thus increasing the services’ ability to coordinate attack plans.36
The work of the Ad Hoc Committee on Joint Service Intelligence led the
JCS to study the worth of a more formal organization for air intelligence of
Japan. In September 1944, several recommendations aimed at expediting and
streamlining target information led to the creation of the Joint Target Analysis
Group (shortened to “Joint Target Group” the following month). The JTG had
the mission of integrating and coordinating preattack and postattack intelligence
analyses of air targets in the war against Japan. It was also part of the A-2’s
office, thus keeping central analysis within an existing organization. An AAF
brigadier general, John A. Samford, in a new position of Deputy AC/AS for
Intelligence for Targets, headed the JTG; all of the group’s personnel came from
existing offices of the services and agencies whose work it performed. For
example, the A-2’s Analysis Division handed over to the JTG a substantial
portion of its Far East and Tactical and Technical Branches, including the air
target material and air target damage assessment work previously addressed by
the Ad Hoc Committee. The Navy added a number of similar functions. The
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