Dutch General Ter Poorten, commander of Dutch forces in the East Indies, spent much of World War II in Japanese captivity (above). Prior to Pearl Harbor, he alerted the US to Dutch decryptions of Japanese coded messages about upcoming Japanese attacks on Pearl Harbor and elsewhere.
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Probably the most important lesson of American Betrayal is that practically everything Americans are taught about the "American Century" is a myth or a lie. This extremely destabilizing lesson calls almost everything we "know" into question, a state of uncertainty that demands much more of the re-investigation embarked on in American Betrayal, also M. Stanton Evans' Blacklisted by History & Stalin's Secret Agents, John Dietrich's The Morgenthau Plan, John Koster's Operation Snow, and others. In this light, the lies and smears against my own book and person may be seen as tactics to preserve the old "court history," particularly circa 1930-1960, from urgently needed revision. Short of embarking on such a revision, however, we will continue to remain blind to the formation of the cultural revolutions of the 1960s and beyond, which contain the seeds of our ongoing destruction.
The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor is one such milestone of mythology and lies. Years of painstaking covert plotting by Soviet intelligence agents active in Tokyo and Washington (and elsewhere) came to fruition on December 7, 1941, for example, but none of it enters the "court history" we are taught about the incident, which is eternally presented as a clear-blue blindside "surprise" attack.
I do not think this presentation holds up -- and certainly not on coming across the kind of memoir excerpted below.
From East Wind, Rain: The Intimate Account of an Intelligence Officer in the Pacific 1939-49 by Elliott R. Thorpe, Brigadier General U.S.A (Ret.), pp. 51-54.
I suppose the most important thing I ever did as an army intelligence officer was to notify Washington of the forthcoming attack on Pearl Harbor.
Prior to my hasty departure from Java, I burned my codes and records as well as several thousand dollars in American currency that had been sent to me for the Philippine relief project. Without my records, I must write the following with such assistance as I have been able to get from the records of the Congressional Pearl Harbor Investigation. Of the four messages I sent relating to the forthcoming Japanese attack, I find only one in detail in the record and that as I recall was the one sent December 5 (December 4, U.S. time). After the fourth message, I was directed by the War Department to send no more on the subject. This may have been because the War Department felt my dispatches might reach the wrong hands or for some other reason they considered adequate. In any event I sent no more of the Japanese intercepts being given me by the Dutch.
The Dutch army had in Java some of the world's best cryptanalysts. They had broken the official Japanese code and were sitting day after day recording the Japanese messages going in all directions over the Pacific as the preparations for the war in that area went on. Some of these dispatches merely moved Japanese units from one place to another, others gave directions to embassies and consulates as to their roles in the forthcoming struggle. Put together they gave a definite picture of what was about to happen.
Very early in December about two o'clock one afternoon, General Ter Poorten, commander in chief of the Dutch army, came to my office in a building ajacent to the D.V.O. This was most unusual, for it was customary that when the army chief wanted to talk with any of the foreign attaches he would send a request that they come to his office. Ter Poorten, whose wife had been captured by the Germans in Holland, lived alone and I was without my family, so we saw a good deal of each other at the club where we frequently ate or other such places. But during duty hours protocol was carfully observed.
As the general came into my office, after greeting me, he turned to my secretary and asked her to leave the room. When she had gone he locked the door, sat down, and said to me, "I have something here I believe of great importance to your government." He then unfolded a paper he was carrying and handed it to me. It was an intercept of a message from Tokyo to the Japanese Ambassador in Bangkok who was to direct the military action in that area.
The intercepted dispatch was a lengthy one and told of the upcoming attack on Hawaii, the Philippines, Malaya and Thailand. As these attacks were to take place simultaneously it would be necessary to have all fleets in the proper position when the attack signal was given. Weather at sea could not be completely predicted so it would be necessary to give the "go" signal from Tokyo. This would be given in the form of a weather broadcast over Radio Tokyo that would reach all involved in the vast effort at the same time. Hence this became known as the "Winds" message in the discussions that have followed the Pearl Harbor disaster.
The go signal for attack on the United States was "East Wind, Rain."
(After we took over in Japan following the surrender, I had an investigation made of the "Winds" message in an attempt to find out if was really used as the go signal. At that time the Japanese were eager to please and would say anything they thought you wanted said. One Radio Tokyo broadcaster definitely stated he gave out the "Winds" message, but the truth of the matter will probably never be known.)
After I had read the contents of the message I realized its importance. I said to him, "Sir, this is so important that with your permission I will go at once to Batavia and inform our senior State Department representative of it and then send it directly to Washington tonight." He agreed to this and I left at once. I found the afternoon plane to Batavia had already gone, so I took the three o'clock train arriving in Batavia about six thirty in the evening. Our consulate general had closed for the night, and I proceeded to Hotel Des Indes where both our consul general and senior naval attache lived.
I showed these two the information given me by General Ter Pooten. Commander Paul Slausson (later killed at Bougainville) agreed I had something of great importance. Our consul general, Dr. Walter Foote, belittled the matter and suggested I take no immediate action. However, I felt it was a matter of urgency and said I was sending it on to Washington at once.
As I had left my code books locked in the my safe in Bandung, I asked Slausson if I might use his code which was at hand to transmit my message. He agreed and we went to the consulate where his code was kept. It took two or three hours to encode the message and it was nearly midnight when we had completed the job. The main post office in Batavia handled the transmission of overseas messages. I found the doors locked, but by pounding on a back door got a member of the night staff to open up. I explained I had a message of great urgency and he agreed to put it on the cable at once. I wanted it to go by cable rather than wireless for at that time we knew the cable had not been tapped by the Japs who were probably monitoring all wireless messages just as the Dutch were doing.
As I was using a naval code my message had to go to the War Department through navy communications center in Washington so that both the navy and the army became aware of the message as it was transmitted. Its receipt was acknowledged.
I have already mentioned that the consul general took a jaundiced view of my belief I had something of genuine importance. The next morning after I had dispatched the intercepted Jap message, I called on the consul general before returning to my station in Bandung. We talked over the matter of the dispatch I had sent and he volunteered to show me a message he had sent the State Department that morning. In it he had told the State Department I had shown him my information the previous evening and that he viewed it as being of uncertain origina and little value and added in effect that I was a new boy at school and when I was older I'd be wiser. Later the old boy was to send a few dispatches of his own that were unique, to say the least. This kindly old man was to cause real concern later in Australia.
As the days went by the Dutch crytanalysts came up with more intercepts bearing out the first one given me. I continued to read these revealing messages and watched the picture develop, but sent no more to our War Department as ordered.
About this time an American undercover gent showed up in Bandung with all the details of the Japanese fortifications and garrisons on Saipan and Tinian. I thought he had something of real importance, but advised him to take it in person to the U.S. army headquarters in Manila where he would probably get a better reception than I was getting from the Munitions Building [War Department] in Washington....