Posted on 02/16/2005 7:55:15 AM PST by WayneLusvardi
Edited on 04/10/2005 1:31:17 PM PDT by Sidebar Moderator. [history]
They sent Nomura and Kurusu to stall in "negotiations". When they decided to break off negotiations on Dec 6th, they sent what's known as the "Fourteen-Part message", which listed all the fraudulent grievances they had with us and was tantamount to an ultimatum.
Of course we had long cracked the Japanese codes and read it before they did at the Japanese embassy in Washington. This ultimatum was to be delivered to the Sec'y of State at precisely 1pm EST, 12/7/41. (7am Hawaii time...the first bombs fell at 7:22am.) But the Japs couldn't find a typist on a Sunday morning and did it themselves, not arriving at Hull's office until close to 2pm.
When Cordell Hull read the ultimatum he delivered the second-best line of the whole Pearl Harbor attack.
"In all my fifty years of public service I have never seen a document more crowded with infamous falsehoods and distortions. Falsehoods and distortions on a scale so huge that I never imagined until today that any government on this planet was capable of uttering them."
Here's a great page for some background on their deception leading up to Pearl Harbor. You should also read Ladislas Farago's "The Broken Seal".
http://www.army.mil/cmh-pg/books/70-7_04.htm
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