Center for Labor Education & Research, University of Hawaii - West Oahu: Honolulu Record Digitization Project
Honolulu Record, Volume 9 No. 21, Thursday, December 20, 1956 p. 3
Japanese Spying Here Was No Secret But Navy Surprised
By Junius B. Allen
Carl L. Biemiller evidently isn't a modest man. He came to Hawaii Nei a few months ago and heralded the fact that he was going to write the story to end all stories re the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, circa 1941. In other words, he was on a publishing stunt.
He Is Executive editor of Holiday, the slick 50 cent per copy monthly which is published as just another investment by the Curtis Publishing Co. of Philadelphia which also operates The Saturday Evening Post, etc.
Once upon a time, before publishing became BIG BUSINESS in the United: States, a good reporter would have slipped into town unannounced and dug out the unpublished. Pearl Harbor facts (they are here), beaten it back to Philadelphia and kept his trap shut until his story hit the news stands. But this is 1956 — 1957 almost— and it is the heyday of slick (in its worst sense) publishing. Atop the heap, Mr. Biemiller sits pretty, pro tem. His story — "The Long Day of Pearl Harbor" in the November issue of Holiday, now on local news stands — reads like a cross of something by Cobey Black, Ray Coll Jr., Sarah Park and Hugh Lytle.
As This story shows, Biemiller hobnobbed with local self-glamorized sources on war in the Pacific like Webley Edwards and Joe James Custer. The result is just another slick, gutless story — a typical Curtis Publishing Co. yarn.
There is no law against a slick writer trying to be profound. Editorializing about the attack, Biemiller (page 152) says: ". . . Even HOW it happened doesn't matter much today except as a warning for the future.
The How is a combination of human skill on the part of the attacking forces and of neglect, ineptitude and misfortune on the part of the defense. The WHY of both combinations lies in the realm of metaphysics . . ." When Biemiller gets down to handling actual facts, he leaves a wrong impression on page 164 when he states:
". . . THE DAY was filled with fantasy. At 12:20 P.M. police broke into the Japanese consulate and found its staff burning papers. By 12:30 Nagao Kita, the consul; was in protective custody. In his sworn statement he said: 'I knew nothing about the attack. It was as much a surprise to me as to you.
"Kita did me act the part of a man at war. He gave an interview to the press earlier that morning, warning all Jap residents to be sober and law-abiding. When the police and FBI broke into the consulate Kita was leaving, golf sticks over, his shoulder, to play his normal Sunday eighteen holes! " In view of what was available, Hawaii for Biemiller, his superficial treatment of Kita is worth examining because, as will be shown, at least the American counter-espionagist meager in number as they were, knew much more about Kita but they were neglectful and inept, to use Biemiller's words.
According to Biemiller police and FBI agents did not break into the Japanese conciliate at Honolulu until 12:20 p.m. or more than four hours after the Japanese attack. FBI records show that on. Nov. 28, 1941, FBI Chief J. Edgar Hoover radioed Robert L. Shivers, FBI agent in charge at Honolulu, that because peace negotiations between America and Japan were breaking down, the Honolulu office should be on the alert at all times as any-thing was liable to happen.
On December 3 FBI agent Shivers Informed Hoover and the army and navy in Hawaii that his men had intercepted a telephone conversation between the cook at Kita's consulate and another Japanese in Honolulu in which the cook said that Kita was burning and destroying all his important papers (In other Japanese spy places in the Pacific they destroyed their files with special smokeless acids)
This critical information didn't register with the local defense command Kita and his boss Hirohito were sitting pretty All the breaks were with the Japanese attack armada then due north of Oahu.
Question
Why did the FBI and the Honolulu police wait until noon (according to Biemiller) before pouncing on Kita-sans nest?
Kita and all the Japanese spies throughout the Pacific used a secret code (they still do) which was decoded by a special machine Japanese consulates were equipped with these machines and they were ordered on the eve of the Pearl Harbor attack to destroy them.
At Least A Year Before
Pearl Harbor American counterespionage experts had broken the Japanese code by constructing the complicated machine to do so. So whenever Kita (for example), Emperor Hirohito's number one man in Hawaii, sent or received a coded message American agents intercepted and decoded every word.
At this point—especially in view of cold official facts— a good question is With the American counter-espionage system intercepting the secret Japanese messages right along, why wasn't something done to meet the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor head on?
One answer is the opinion of the Judge Advocate General, Myron C. Cramer, United States Army, who, after meticulously investigating the Pearl Harbor mess from the Army's point of view, suggested in a memorandum to the Secretary of War on Nov 25, 1944 that " a public statement be made by you giving a brief review of the Board's (Army) proceedings and pointing out that General short (Army commander at Pearl Harbor) was guilty of errors of judgment.
During that "long day of Pearl Harbor" of which Biemiller writes at a nice fat salary, Kita, Hirohito's humble spy, must have been laughing like hell inwardly because, in actual fact as his coded reports testify, he had played a vital role in the vast spy network which set the stage for the Pearl Harbor attack.
Kita served Hirohito well right down to the minor yet important detail of donning golf togs and meeting the FBI and local police at the consulate door all set for golf —four long, long hours after the attack! Even in protective custody he must have purred with pride of a job well done!
What A Pity that Mr. Biemiller did not explore these aspects of the Pearl Harbor attack and report upon them, instead of upon the same hackneyed details He could have talked with George C Bicknell who today runs the Veterans Administration office in Honolulu In 1941, Bicknell was a colonel and assistant G-2 (intelligence) to Lt General Walter C Short, hapless commander or army forces in Hawaii.
Next Week Read all about the battle of wits between Kita and Bicknell on the eve of the Pearl Harbor attack.
It is only common humanity to feed the hungry. If our hospitals are too big, too complex, too impersonal to do these small kindnesses for the sick, something is very wrong.