CRYPTOLOG - AFTERTHOUGHTS; Pearl Harbor

Here is another in the series of articles based on Captain Rochefort's oral history interview in 1969 by Commander Etta-Belle Kitchen.

There have been many books critical of just about every key personality and organization in Pearl Harbor, either specifically or collectively. Not surprisingly, there are many contradictory assessments among them. Rochefort has, to my memory, remained totally free of blame or negative assessment. This is fairly amazing, since he failed in his primary mission -- to give advance warning of the fateful attack. But the term 'failed' seems to beg for redefinition in this instance and is no doubt the reason he specifically -- and Signal Iintelligence in general -- has been absolved of culpability. Apollo XIII failed in it's primary mission, but there too, 'failed' was inappropriate. I'm not sure if Astronaut Jim Lovell coined the term, but he's proud to admit to a 'successful failure.' I find that to be an elegant description for the circumstances.

As you read Rochefort's comments on Pearl Harbor, you'll find yourself thinking "but for the grace of God, go I." You will feel his embarrassment, anguish, sorrow and disappointment.

The dialogue picks up at the first point in the interviews where Kitchen [K] and Rochefort [R] begin to discuss his -- and his unit's -- role in the Pearl Harbor attack ¹. [Please assume quotes throughout the interview].

[R]. . .during the period out here in Hypo, [Rochefort's unit at Pearl Harbor] which is what we were talking about, before the war we had what I choose to believe the best organization this world has ever seen. There was a lot of luck attached to this. Also there was the fact that we had all worked together at some time or another and we were all reasonably competent. Dyer and Wright and Jack Williams, the rest of them were all reasonably competent and they were all determined to build an organization which would save American lives.

[R] I personally felt very responsible for that. Nobody has ever blamed us for lack of effort or failure to come up with the right answer. Nobody has ever done this. They have been very kind. But I felt very responsible for this for a long time and I still do. I still feel that we failed in our job. As for excuses, I can offer a lot of excuses. We had only been there for five or six months.

[K] In what way did you mean you failed? Was there traffic that you didn't decode or --

[R] No. I have often said that an intelligence officer has one task, one job, one mission. This is to tell his commander, his superior, today, what the Japanese are going to do tomorrow. This is his job. If he doesn't do this, then he's failed. This is his number one job and only job, and as I've often said there isn't any sense at all in telling General MacArthur, for instance, in late June or July that North Korea has invaded South Korea. He knows this. He can read newspapers. But you've got to tell General MacArthur before June 25, 1950, for this to have any effect, which is where intelligence failed MacArthur during the Korean War and also failed the Navy. On December the 7th, we did not inform Admiral Kimmel [Commander in Chief, Pacific Fleet] prior to December 7th that the Japanese were going to make an attack.

[R] Well, as I say, I can offer a lot of excuses which would all be alibis. One, we did not have more than about five months to get ourselves reorganized. Secondly, all the material that we asked for was being withheld, because it was being sent to Europe.

[R] Radio equipment. Come December 7th, we're still running the intercept things from the intercept station which was six or eight miles away and running that down by jeep. We should have numerous teletypes. We could have saved ourselves an hour each time, you see. Instead of that, we still had to run them down in jeeps or bicycles or motorcycles, which was ridiculous. We had a very lousy wire system -- I mean by wire system, telephones and that sort of thing. This was just lousy. It's like having a million-dollar organization with a ten-cent stamp communications system. We lost communications with our direction finders right off the bat on December the 7th. This was a major standby thing. We should have been in instant communication with our direction finders so we could communicate the them back and forth. Well, what with the Army yanking out all the wires and every conduit they could get their hands on, there was just general confusion all over. The only way in which we could communicate with our big station, a thing called the CXK out in Lualualei [transmitter site], up near the ammunition dump, was by sending a jeep out there. This would take a couple of hours to get out there and back.

[K] Were there messages, do you think, if you had interpreted them that would have told you about Pearl Harbor?

[R] At this particular moment, up to and including December 7th, we were not reading the Japanese system, because the cryptanalysts had failed. We were not reading. They had changed a major part of the system on December 1 and we were just in the black. We were not translating anything from their language. But this doesn't alter the facts, you see. According to my definition of the duties and responsibilities of an intelligence officer, we should have kept Admiral Kimmel informed as to what the Japanese were up to. We did not do this. Therefore we failed.

[K] I understand your words. But on the other hand, you have to have material. If there were no messages-- there were messages, but you couldn't read them?

[K] But they had not been able to interpret it. Was this what Farago means when he said that efforts were being made in Washington to crack the new code, by Safford? [Ladislas Farago, "The Story of 'Operation Magic' and the Pearl Harbor Disaster"] [Lieutenant Commander Laurance F. Safford, who many years later became a key figure in the "winds" messages associated with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor -- a story unto itself.]

[R] Yes, you see, originally -- without getting into too much of the details of it, some of it is still classified I would imagine -- we were assigned responsibility when I took over over there for one system which was not the system that Washington was working on. Washington and Cavite were working on what the Navy called [censored]. This was the system.

[R] Well, no, I don't think we ever called it that. I don't think we ever called it a name at all. I don't believe so.

[R] Yes, but [censored] we were having no luck. The expression that we use in the thing, I believe, you read it or you don't read it. We were not reading this [censored], which is what the Japanese fleet was using. We weren't able to read that up to December 7th. We could extract information from it in connection with radio intelligence or direction finding. We could do this or we could make guesses, which we called estimates about what the message contained. But this would be a pure guess. We were not reading it. By reading, I mean we were just not making English of it and then pass it on.

[R] Oh yes, but not the major system. We were passing on a lot of junk which turned out later on to be public works information like the sewers and roads and airports and that sort of thing. We were able to do some of the small stuff and minor stuff but the big stuff, as of December 7th.

[K] Did you recognize by the size or volume or mass of material that there was something important?

[R] Oh, certainly. We knew that. But they apparently didn't believe it because the cryptanalysts had not been able to solve it.

[R] Sure. Actually up to December 7th, this was not our job. This was not one of the tasks which had been assigned to us. So anything we did on this, we did it on our own.

[R] We were assigned another system or systems to read, and this had been our main assignment from June until December. Then on December 10th or thereabouts, then we scrapped this other thing we were working on -- we forgot this whole business and turned to on the one that was in use in which 50% or 75% of the traffic was being sent. We concentrated on that, and that is the thing that gave us our successes later on. But we always kept reading this thing.

[K] You say you had only been there five months. That seems like a long time to me. But this is not long--

[R] Oh, in cryptographic work, heavens, you can fiddle with something for a number of years. . .If you solve the system, this solution is only good until the enemy changes. And this could just be overnight. . .

Rochefort indicated success when they shifted their focus of cryptanalytic attack on/about December 10th. This success allowed Rochefort to be in the position of being able to do on 3 March 1942 what he couldn't do on 7 December -- warn his 'consumers' of an imminent second attack on Pearl Harbor. Having those consumers take no apparent action whatsoever on those warnings certainly must have dulled the feeling of accomplishment. I just can't find an elegant term to describe that situation. Terms yes -- elegant no. The shining hour was approaching, however -- The Battle of Midway. [The Midway article is planned for publication in the summer 1996 issue.]

1. Photo Credit: The link in paragraph four (Pearl Harbor) is to a photo taken by a Japanese gun camera on the first wave of the attack. This picture is made available by kind permission of Greg Peterman, who found the photo amongst his grandfather's mementos. The NCVA thanks Mr. Peterman for this unique piece of history.

Copies of this memoir and that of codebreaker Thomas Dyer are available for sale, or readers may rent copies through the lending lilbrary of the United States Naval Institute. The fee for a one-month rental is $12 for Naval Instutute members, $15 for non-members.

For orders or further information please contact Ms. Ann Hassinger, History Division, U.S. Naval Institute, 118 Maryland Avenue, Annapolis, Maryland 21402-5035; telephone 410-268-6110.

AFTERTHOUGHTS

Rochefort on: A Successful Failure; Communications Intelligence and Pearl Harbor

Rochefort on:
A Successful Failure;
Communications Intelligence
and
Pearl Harbor