US Marine Corps - The Black Vault

P[anning for War, 1940-1941 183
for the part ‘Enemy Intentions’ naturally would have to be based on data and
information gathered by ‘Naval Intel ligence.’ w
Or to state the case as Admiral Turner saw it while testifying at the Congressional
Pearl Harbor Hearings:
VICECHAIRMAN:Now, would it be fair to assume that from the standpoint
of the real effect on operations that the War Plans Division had the highest
responsibility for the advice given to the Chief of Naval Operations?
ADMIRALTURNER: That is correct.
VICECHA[RMAN:The Office of Naval Intelligence was largely charged with
the responsibility of disseminating information?
ADMIRALTURNER: That is correct.eo
Following the Pearl Harbor Attack, there were those who felt that this
“system” had let the Navy down. The critics claimed a prescient ability for
the Office of Naval Intelligence. There were also some who remembered
various unsuccessful bouts with Rear Admiral Turner, and claimed that
his mid-1941 belief that Japan would attack the Soviets in Siberia had
diverted his attention away from alerting the Fleet in regard to an attack on
Pearl Harbor.
It is worth a brief look to see if the administrative arrangements had not
been as they were, whether ONI would have alerted CINCUS late on
6 December when the decoded version of 13 parts of the 14-part final
Japanese diplomatic communication before committing the pearl Harbor
Attack became available.
It is well to remember that this long-winded final statement of Japanese
diplomatic position created a communication problem for the Japanese, as
well as a decoding problem for the cryptographers in Washington.
The extensive Japanese point of view of the deteriorating Japanese-United
States relations was crammed into 13 dispatches. The 14th despatch stated
what the United States must do to meet Japanese conditions and ended up
by breaking off the current negotiations. The 15th despatch directed that
the contents of the prior 14 dispatches should be delivered to the United
States State Department at exactly 1 p.m. on Sunday, 7 December 1941.
The 15th despatch acquired public identification as the “One o’clock des-
patch” during the Congressional investigation into the Pearl Harbor attack.
In Washington, the first 13 parts of the Japanese despatch were crypto-
rnIbid.
WIbid., part 4, p. 1983.