Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!decwrl!shelby!rutgers!att!cbnews!military
From: welty@lewis.crd.ge.com (richard welty)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re: Ultra -vs- Magic
Message-ID: <1990Oct11.051027.29744@cbnews.att.com>
Date: 11 Oct 90 05:10:27 GMT
References: <1990Oct5.034331.1036@cbnews.att.com>
Sender: military-request@att.att.com
Followup-To: soc.history
Organization: New York State Institute for Sebastian Cabot Studies
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From: welty@lewis.crd.ge.com (richard welty)

[mod.note: Followups to soc.history.  - Bill ]


In article <1990Oct5.034331.1036@cbnews.att.com>, Aaron Kulkis writes: 
*Magic:  Interception of the Japanese 'purple' code.
*	Purple was broken in the late 30's by US Crypto teams.
*	We had the Japanese Declaration of War on the US 
*	typed up and ready to go before the Japanese embassy staff
*	did.  Only problem was that we had no idea what they 
*	were going to do exactly.  Hence Pearl Harbor was
*still somewhat

er, not quite.  the document that was decoded was the 14 point
message which effectively broke off negotiations between Japan
and the US; there was no formal declaration of war by Japan
before the Pearl Harbor attack.  but war was expected, as evidenced
by the message that was sent out to US forces in the Pacific
a week earlier, saying `this is a war warning'.  Roosevelt's
reaction upon reading the 14 point message was `this means war'.
the essential problem was that this valuble intelligence was
mishandled, just as the war warning message of one week earlier
was interpreted differently in the various commands in the
Pacific.

the best place to go to start learning about this episode
is probably

_At Dawn We Slept_, by Gordon Prange

the `roosevelt-did-it' camp would probably prefer you read

_Infamy_, by John Toland

but i have very little respect for the book.

cheers,
  richard
-- 
richard welty         518-387-6346, GE R&D, K1-5C39, Niskayuna, New York
welty@lewis.crd.ge.com                 ...!crdgw1!lewis.crd.ge.com!welty            
``We're in a road movie to Berlin, can't drive out the way we drove in''
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