US Marine Corps - The Black Vault

184 Amphibians Came To Conqtier
graphically decoded, and their translations circulated all together, during the
evening of 6 December.
The 14th Japanese despatch was decoded and circulated routinely during
the forenoon of 7 December, the limited list of viewers seeing it at various
times. Many, including Rear Admiral Turner, saw it subsequent to the 15th
despatch.
The 15th despatch received special expeditious delivery service, when it
had been cryptographically decoded and translated. It was available to
Admiral Stark around 9:30 a.m. the morning of 7 December 1941.
FIRST, THE DIRECTOR OF NAVAL INTELLIGENCE
Actually, the Director of Naval Intelligence, Rear Admiral Wilkinson,
was not uneasy or agitated by the first 13 parts of the decoded Japanese
despatch. He testified that he
did not consider it a military paper . . . and there was nothing particularly
alarming in those [13] parts. . . . The fact that [in the 15th part] there was
a certain time for the delivery was not significant to me. . . . I thought that
the message was primarily of concern to the State Department rather than the
Navy and the Army.”
There is nothing, absolutely nothing in these statements or available elsewhere
from testimony of the DNI (Director of Naval Intelligence) that he
had any desire to send this Japanese summation of position, a Japanese
white paper, on to Pearl Harbor to Admiral Kimmel.
When Rear Admiral Wilkinson saw the 14th part of the Japanese diplo-
matic message on Sunday morning, his reaction, as he remembered it, was:
They were fighting words, so to speak, and I was more impressed by
that language than by the breaking off of negotiations, which of itself
might be only temporary.8z
The DNI, being physically present in the Ofice of the CNO, on the
morning of 7 December 194 I said:
I believe that I advised that the Fleet should be notified, not with any question
of attack on Hawaii in mind, but with the question of imminence of hostilities
in the South China Sea.es
At this hour, the Japanese message (the 15th part) telling the Japanese
mIbid., pp. 1874-75.
= Ibid., p. 1766.
m Ibid., p. 1766.