The Pearl Harbor Problem

Ottawa, Canada’s capital, a hot summer day in July, 1961. Along with my parents and two siblings, I had just returned from Zweibrücken Germany, where my RCAF officer father had completed a four-year posting at the Canadian fighter base there. We had recently returned to the family home on Cunningham Avenue, in the tranqil suburb of Alta Vista, in Ottawa, Canada.

Young boy as I was, I had no warning that I was about to be brushed by what could only be said to be a black-winged creature from the past, the Japanese attack of Pearl Harbor of the 7th of December, 1941. For the United States, the beginning of the War in the Pacific and entrance to the War in Europe. Wars that would take twenty, thirty, perhaps as many as fourty million lives.  The worst war in human history.

Of course,  I that day in Ottawa, innocent boy that I was, I had no idea that I was about to be introduced to the true story of Pearl Harbor, and  its beginning,  a mystery of which even now, decades later, the world has no knowledge.

Gordon W. Prange’s “At Dawn We Slept” is the first and for a time the be most serious study of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. A product of thirty-seven years of research and by a historian who spent several years, from 1945 to 1951, with the US General Headquarters, Far East Command General Command, in Tokyo, and from October 1946 to June 1951 chief of General Macarther’s G-2 Historical Section, and from June through July 1951 he was acting director of the Military History Section. Said to know more “about the attack on Pearl Harbor than any other person. He interviewed virtually every surviving Japanese officer who took part in the Pearl Harbor operation, as well as every U.S. source. The scope of his research is without equal.” The original over 3,500-page manuscript was edited for publication by two of Prange’s students, Dr. Donald M. Goldstein and CWO Katherine V. Dillon, USAF (Ret.) With the claim, in their words, that “Gordon Prange approached this study with as nearly an open mind as any American could bring to the subject of Peal Harbor…  he began this project with ‘no ax to grind, no preconceived thesis to prove, no one to defend.’ He tried at all times to be as objective as humanly possible.’ ” And adds, “the primary source of the American side of the problem was and probably always will remain the forty volumes comprising the report and testimony of the joint congressional committee which investigated the disaster. These volumes include the committee’s own record plus those of the preceding investigations, as well as a host of supporting documents.” There are, however, “some limitations and idiosyncrasies… We list not necessarily in order of importance. 1. Space did not allow treatment of the revisionist thesis that President Roosevelt wanted and either permitted the attack or deliberately engineered it to bring the United States into WWII by ‘the back door.’ For the record, Prange dealt with this exhaustively in his original manuscript and reached the conclusion that neither the evidence nor common sense justified this view of the matter.’

The Appendix, “Revisionists Revisited”, the Editors Goldstein and Dillon add ex-post-facto comments on the ‘Revisionist School’ of the Pearl Harbor history. Comments identified by “would have”, “could not be certain that”. As for “Would have”, “Could have”, who cares. It is what actually happened that is important. Anything else is either specious reasoning, false, or irrelevant, meant to mislead.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mystery is the Heart of the Problem

It is one of the many curious aspects of the Pearl Harbor Problem is that its solution was by a small, virtually unknown to the Canadian public, military intelligence unit, with headquaters in Ottawa: Military Intelligence 2, or MI2.  a Canadian-British unit Army, unit closely integrated with the British Army’s MI2, also a signals intelligence unit in the guise of a radio signals unit. And with Britain’s Governmant Code and Cypher School, or GC&CS, now Government Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ). unknown to Canadian, British, and American publics. Curious, given that it played one of the most important and central events of the Second War. In fact, the attack on Pearl Harbor, and the Second War that it largely produced, were responsible for much of the political world as we know it.

The Pearl Harbor mystery, itself, is easy enough to state: What  did Winston Churchill and FD Roosevelt know of attack on Pearl Harbor?, and, When did they know it? There are, of course, additional questions, including  one that is troubling and of particular importance. How has the truth been so effectively obscured? Sy the mystery produces are also easy to state, at are, at least in,Harbor the attack on Pearl  principle, solvable. Just take the trouble to find the correct witness, uncover the documentation, and figure it out. Simply said, the fact that the true story of what happened that day 7 December 1941 remains unknown, hidden by a cloud of disinformation and falsifications, is one of the great unsolved stories of the Second World War. A war that cost some sixty-million lives, and configured the political, economic, social and cultural world as we know.

So, what, exactly, is the Pearl Harbor problem? To keep it simple: What did Winston Churchill and FDR Roosevelt know, and when did they know it? Of course, there are a host of related problems, and questions, without answers. One might ask what Canadian Prime Minister Mackenzie-King know, and when did he know it, and what he and Colonel Drake discussed when the met, in the weeks before Pearl Harbor? And what about the vast secret intelligence apparatus surrounding that event, even years before that event, not to speak of the vast apparatus, including British Security Coordination, BSC, under the Canadian William Stephenson, whose primary purpose was to construct, or conceal, whatever truth we are meant to know, or not, to persuade the public to take the right attitude. As one might say, one of the great mysteries of the Second War.

Long before he knew of the Pearl Harbor problem, this author, in a manner of speaking, met the Canadian Army officer who led the unit responsible for its solution. And, later still, met the man who led the team of that unit that found the solution. And learned of a Cambridge astronomer, and astrophysicist, and member of Britain’s GC&CS, the Government Code and Cypher School, very much involved in solving the problem. A man who began studying it several years before even the Japanese military, in particular the Imperial Japanese Navy, had even conceived it. A clairvoyance forming compelling argument for the importance of secret intelligence. At times, the very fate of nations, even civilizations, can be at stake.

It is just a matter of What, and When?

At 6:00 o’clock on the Sunday, the 26th of November 1941, thirty-four vessels of Kido Butai, the Strike Force of the Japan Imperial Navy, raised anchors with a clatter of chains that disappeared into the desolate, wild beauty of Iturup, the largest and northernmost of the Kurile Islands. Two hours later, after forming-up into a convoy, in line, one-by-one they slipped into the vast, dark waters of the Pacific.

Aboard the vessels, the sailors and airmen, apart from a few indoctrinated officers, did not know their destination. However, after a year of training to drop torpedoes and bombs, and use cannons, they knew that war was their purpose. Singapore? Manila? Philippines? “Surely, not Hawaii!” they would say, knowing instinctively what their ultimately fate would be.
Twelve days and 2,000 nautical miles later, at a carefully chosen location, they again refueled from the accompanying tankers to eight-hundred kilometers North of the Hawaiian island Aloha, where they launched first one, then an hour later a second, flights of fighter aircraft, torpedo bombers and Zeros. The aircraft lifted off the six carriers of the fleet and flew 300 kilometers to the US naval base at Pearl Harbor and attacked the vessels of the US Pacific Fleet at anchor. Several capital Ships were destroyed, over 2, 500 American navy personnel and over eight hundred civilians, were killed, in the most serious military defeat in US history. The attack enraged the American public and brought the US war with Japan. Germany, foolishly allied with Japan, declared war against the US three days later.
The US entered the Second World War, allied with Great Britain, Canada and her other allies.

But questions about the attack on Pearl Harbor immediately arose. The majority of the American population had opposed the prospected war with Japan, many thinking it was a device to assist Britain, which was very much at peril from Germany. Had the US truly been surprised by the attack on Pearl Harbor? they asked. Or did President Roosevelt have foreknowledge, and had let the attack take place, to bring the US into the war, against the sentiment of many of her citizens, in support of Britain? Did Churchill know but not inform Roosevelt? Did Britain conspire to bring the US into the war, to protect her from a lethal threat? The questions immediately became moot with the attack on Pearl Harbor, which immediately sealed the fate of Japan.
Nonetheless, five US congressional inquiries, and many investigations by historians and other, that have produced a vast literature, have provided few answers. We shall, of course, address those questions and provide the best answers.
No answer because no attention has been given to a Canadian signals intelligence (SIGINT) team, that had recently set up in a modest building in downtown Ottawa, under a cloak of secrecy. Its objective? – to uncover Japanese intentions, which were thought to be menacing.
The author’s investigation began with an interview of a man who had a member of the unit in question. A man who became a major figure in Canadian signals intelligence, known by colleagues for his role in the Pearl Harbor project. An interview confirmed by further interviews and documentation.
Into Dark Waters: Pearl Harbor and Canadian most secret intelligence, describes leading personalities, the activities of the intelligence unit, revelations of Prime Minister Winston Churchill and President Roosevelt; astrophysicist who helped in the search for Kido Butai; details of a most secret intelligence operation in Japan, three years before the attack on Pearl Harbor; an appreciation of the psychic interest and study of that astrophysicist.
The implications with regard to Winston Churchill, Roosevelt and Canadian Prime Minister Mackenzie King.
And an appreciation of a most, perhaps the most brilliant and successful, Canadian secret intelligence operation of all time.

(more…)

Pearl Harbor , the Spies

Two decades or so ago,  after release of a story I had brought to the Fifth Estate, an investigative program of Canada’s television network,  the CBC,  about  a civilian of the RCMP Security Service who was falsely accused of being a Soviet spy, (Leslie James Bennett story, 1993), I was asked if I had anything else in mind. What came to mind was  a story about Canadian signals intelligence, paricularly of the Second War, a topic virtually  unknown to the  Canadian public. “Go ahead”, they said. “If you find anything interesting, let us know.” Which brought me to  interviewing  persons involved in Canadian  signals intelligence, some in the early years of the War, 1939 – 1942. And to two decades of inquiry, to a story that might well change the history of the Second World War.

There were two Canadian signals intelligence organizations in the Second War, both with headquarters in Ottawa. The “Examination Unit”, directed mainly to civilian targets,  and a unit of the Canadian Army, responsible for military signals intelligence, closely associated with an equivalent British organization.

It was from Somerset House, in downtown Ottawa, from where Canadian military intelligence tracked Kido Butai, of the Imperial Japanese Navy, to its attack, on 7 December 1941, on Pearl Harbor. Which brought the US into the war in the Pacific, and the war in Europe. An event that made Somerset House one of the most important historical buildings sites in Canada. Of which the Canadian public, and the world, has no knowledge.

A state of mind of which Canadian, and several other authorities, very much wish to maintain.

The success of the Canadian team that tracked Kido Butai, and determined that Pearl Harbor would be the target, and its story, solves one of the great remaining mysteries of the Second World War.

Which takes us back to my interview of a man, at Somerset House, who lead a team set up to watch the Imperial Japanes Navy. In particular, at a time when it thought that Japan might attack British, French, Dutch or US  colonies or assets in the Pacific, that  did just that. And to the spies who have made every effort to try to ensure that the story not be told.

The Interview
Of the several interviews I made in Ottawa was with one Thomas (TGS) Colls, of British origin, who came to Canada in th 1930’s. During the First World War, he had joined the Coldstream Regiment, but the war ended just as he finished his training. A disapointment, he said, “But, at least, I would live.” Having been with the oldest, and one of the most storied, British guards regiments, upon his arrival in Canada he was quickly accepted into the Canadian Army at the beginning of the Second War. He chose, and was chosen, by the Royal Canadian Corps of Signals, the RCCS, responsible for Canadian Army communication. and quickly was made a lieutenant.

For a signals regiment, of any military, communications security is a primary concerns. So, too, is signalsd intelligence, which of course becomes much more prominent in time of  war.

Lieutenant was with MI2 during the Second World War, including at Somerset House, as intelligence analyst. More specifically, involved in traffic analysis, or TA, the primary task of MI2, which involved analyzing the external characteristics of targeted communications traffic, such as call signs, frequency, location, visual form of the signal on screens, distinctive tempo of sending operators, and much more. Everything apart from the message itself, which was the concern of decryption and communications intelligence in regard to meaning.

Colls became an important figure in Canadian postwar signals intelligence organization, Communications Branch National Research Council (CBNRC). Several years as Head of Group “O”, responsible for Communications Intelligence (COMINT); advisor to CBNRC Directors; Liaison Officer to the leading members of the world’s most exclusive association, the ‘Five Eyes’,  Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), and USA’s National Security Agency (NSA).

In sum, an important figure in Canada’s most secret intelligence activity. And of its most significant success. Which became the topic of discussion for our interview: the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the 7th of December 1941.
More specifically, the answers to the two questions that remain: What did Winston Churchill, and Franklin Delano  Roosevelt, know about the attack on Pearl Harbor?, and, most important, When did they know it?

Questions that five special Congressional inquiries, numerous investigations by historians and other specialists, learned academics and observers, knowledgeable and curious about the true meaning of the Second World War, have been unable to answer. At the cost of much disputation and risk to reputation. Answers that he, the MI2 team that in 1941 he led, and MI2, under the brilliant leadership of Director Colonel Edward Michael Drake, discovered, in one of the most brilliant achievements of Canadian most secret intelligence. Of which of  Canada and the world has precisely no knowledge.

The interview began abruptly with the statement “I solved the problem of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. He went on to say that he discovered that Kido Butai, the Japanese attack fleet, “was in movement”, after leaving Hitokappu-Wan, where it had ‘staged’ after the vessels arrived from ports in the Home Islands. “We did not know where it was headed, but not long after concluded that the three most likely targets were Singapore, Philippines, and Pearl Harbor.

Days before the attack, he determined, and reported, that the target was Pearl Harbor.

An extraordinary discovery, one that provided much of the answer to the great mystery of the attack on Pearl Harbor. But not quite. That would come much later.

An answer that would be given by a document, which I discovered in Canada’s National Archives, a dozen blocks from Somerset House, where Colls and the MI2 team he headed made their discovery. A document that not only tells us What Churchill and Roosevelt knew, and When they knew it, but provides the undeniable, concrete, evidence that over eighty years of inquiry has failed to produce.

Which brings us to a further drama in the great mystery of the attack on Pearl Harbor, and insight as to its origin, and why it has existed as long as it has.

The Theft

It had been over a decade that I had refrained from writing about my discovery with regard to the true story of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, for a quite simple reason. There had been such an orchestrated denial of the truth, I reasoned, that the public would be incapable of escaping that denial. Unless, I reasoned, I could discover documentary evidence. Which I recently discovered,  two documents in Canada’s National Archives. One, a single page in an unbound file of draft entries to a diary, one page with a brief penciled note by Colonel Ed Drake, Commanding Officer of MI2, on duty December 6, 1941, about the “grave matter of the emergency meeting to be held that evening. And about his travels to the Pacific Coast, both Canada’s British Columbia and Washington State of the US. A day that ended with a visit to Washington DC, home of OP-20-G, the headquarters of the US Navy’s signals intelligence organization, close to the White House, closely allied and interoperative with Canada’s MI2. A precious access to the truth of Pearl Harbor. The second document, a bound volume, entitled  “Diary 1940”, for which the draft entries in the loose sheets were meant to be added

It so happened that on 30 January 2024 mentioned my discovery of the two precious documents to an acquaintance, who had spent several years in Canada’s signals intelligence CBNRC, later renamed CSE, Communications Security Establishment. He left CSE and joined Canadian Security Intelligence Service. On the 29^th of February, I visited Canada’s National Library and Archives, with the intention of again studying the two previous documents, and discovered they were missing from the LAC volumes where they had been. I made inquiries, and learned that two CSIS agents had visited LAC, obtained accessed records assigned to me. More recently, I have learned that a group of CSIS agents were filmed going through the records, and removing several. From LAC witnesses to whom I spoke, it seems they had a festive time going through the records.

Certainly, for CSIS to access the records assigned to me by Library and Archives Canada required them to request and receive the assistance of LAC, and to have a judicial warrant. Also, the warrant must be presented to the LAC officials effecting the access. Otherwise, the search is in conflict with the Canadian Charter of Rights, within the Canadian Constitution, in particular, to Section 8, Search and Seizure.

At a Justice Canada site, I consulted the file that that lists all judicial warrants, listed by the name, and quickly confirmed that now judicia warrant had every been issued against me. That meant that CSIS had both was able to consult the

For CSIS to commit such an act, without a judicial

Which has brought to mind the possibility of an action against both Library and Archives Canada, and CISIS, for a denial of Charter Rights, specifically contrary to Section 8, Search and Seizure, without Judicial Warrant. Others could be added.

As mentioned in an earlier post, the truth of the attack on Pearl Harbor was revealed to this author in an interview with an intelligence officer from the Canadian Army’s signals intelligence unit MI2, particularly from its headquarters in Ottawa. A unit that worked in close association with Britain’s MI2, which at the time, during the Second World War, of which performed the same function – managing military signals intelligence. Part of the responsibilities of MI2, British and Canadian, was directing and managing the “Y” network of intercept stations. Britain’s MI2 was much larger than the Canadian, for the simply because Britain’s “Y” network was worldwide, covering the British empire, which was truly global. The Canadian “Y” network was much smaller, but nonetheless extended over a very large country, with intercept sites from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Major sites in the Atlantic Provinces focused on German submarine threat to trans-Atlantic traffic, especially important for movement of vital supply to Britain from Canada. Sites in British Columbia and Alberta were focused on the threat posed by the Imperial Japanese Navy to Britain’s Empire in the Pacific. The major Pacific  intercept site was Esquimalt, which managed the Canadian Pacific stations, reporting to MI2 and Roya Canadian Navy intelligence in Ottawa.

During 1940 to the December1941, the major concern for Canadian intelligence on the Pacific was the increasing threat from Japan to the British colonies, particularly  Hong Kong, Malaysia/Singapore, as well as the threat to allied Australia and New Zealand.

A mentioned in an earlier post, at the behest of the CBC investigative program Fifth Estate, I undertook research into the possibility of a history of Canadian signals intelligence.  A largely unknown subject, given the recent wartime experience, when secrecy on the on the subject was existential. In security, the default to maintain secrecy. It was in the 1960’s and 1970’s that some of the barriers were somewhat reduced in Britain and in the US. My interest was the Canadian and British experience in the early phase, of the war, prior to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor of 7 December, 1941, which brought  the war to the Pacific, and US into the war that extended to both Europe and the vast Pacific.  Why?,  one might ask? An interesting question. For one, there was such a complex play of conflicting and intersecting interests that made it a fascinating puzzle.  Especially since several of the main actors Britain, the US, German and Russia in particular, obviously played a hidden game. Particularly Britain and the US, a game in which Canada played a supporting, and much hidden, role. Partly because I found it curious that those who speak of or question the possibility of foreknowledge, do not study or write about the detail. Often they wave statements claiming inability  to decypher Japanese radio messages, and To a large extent, I was curious that British and American SIGINT were more open that Canadian, which raised the question, “Why?”

A simple question, it appeared.  I soon learned that finding the answer was not simple at all.

I thought of locating persons who been involved in signals intelligence during the war came to mind. I found reference to an unclassified periodical of CBNCC, for her employees, that mentioned all the names of employees. I requested all copies under the Access to Information Act, and several weeks later received copies in which the names of current employees had been removed, but not the names of past employees.  With the aid of public directories available at Canada’s National Archives, I was able to locate several, and their telephone numbers. I was able to speak with several,

 

Several years ago, after CBC Fifth Estate produced a story I had brought to them, with success, (McLoughlin, 1993) they asked if I had anything else in mind. I suggested a history of Canadian signals intelligence, an important topic which was unknown to the  Canadian public. “Go ahead”, they said. “If you find anything interesting, let us know.” Which brought me to interviewing persons who had been in that activity in Canada, by two organizations, the civilian “Examination Unit”, the EU, and the Canadian Army’s Military Intelligence 2″, MI2, the headquarters for Canadian military signals intelligence, headquartered in Ottawa. From 1939 to 1942, at the south-east corner  of the intersection of Bank and Somerset, Somerset House, which, abandoned and neglected, remains to this day.

What took place there, during several days and weeks of November 1940 – December 1941, makes Somerset House is one of the most important historical sites in Canada. Of which, given the secrecy of that history, the Canadian public has no knowledge.
A state of affairs that that Canadian, and several other, public authorities would very much like to maintain.

The Interview
Of the several interviews I made in Ottawa was with one Tom (TGS) Colls, who as Lieutenant was with MI2 during the Second World War, including at Somerset House, as intelligence analyst. More specifically, involved in traffic analysis, or TA, the primary task of MI2, which involved analyzing the external characteristics of targeted communications traffic, such as call signs, frequency, location, visual form of the signal on screens, distinctive tempo of sending operators, and much more. Everything apart from the message itself, which was the concern of decryption and communications intelligence in regard to meaning.

Colls became an important figure in Canadian postwar signals intelligence organization, Communications Branch National Research Council (CBNRC). Several years as Head of Group “O”, responsible for Communications Intelligence (COMINT); advisor to CBNRC Directors; Liaison Officer to the leading members of the world’s most exclusive association, the ‘Five Eyes’,  Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), and USA’s National Security Agency (NSA).

In sum, an important figure in Canada’s most secret intelligence activity. And of its most significant success. Which became the topic of discussion for our interview: the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the 7th of December 1941.
More specifically, the answers to the two questions that remain: What did Winston Churchill, and Franklin Delano  Roosevelt, know about the attack on Pearl Harbor?, and, most important, When did they know it?

Questions that five special Congressional inquiries, numerous investigations by historians and other specialists, learned academics and observers, knowledgeable and curious about the true meaning of the Second World War, have been unable to answer. At the cost of much disputation and risk to reputation. Answers that he, the MI2 team that in 1941 he led, and MI2, under the brilliant leadership of Director Colonel Edward Michael Drake, discovered, in one of the most brilliant achievements of Canadian most secret intelligence. Of which of  Canada and the world has precisely no knowledge.

The interview began abruptly with the statement “I solved the problem of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. He went on to say that he discovered that Kido Butai, the Japanese attack fleet, “was in movement”, after leaving Hitokappu-Wan, where it had ‘staged’ after the vessels arrived from ports in the Home Islands. “We did not know where it was headed, but not long after concluded that the three most likely targets were Singapore, Philippines, and Pearl Harbor.

Days before the attack, he determined, and reported, that the target was Pearl Harbor.

An extraordinary discovery, one that provided much of the answer to the great mystery of the attack on Pearl Harbor. But not quite. That would come much later.

An answer that would be given by a document, which I discovered in Canada’s National Archives, a dozen blocks from Somerset House, where Colls and the MI2 team he headed made their discovery. A document that not only tells us What Churchill and Roosevelt knew, and When they knew it, but provides the undeniable, concrete, evidence that over eighty years of inquiry has failed to produce.

Which brings us to a further drama in the great mystery of the attack on Pearl Harbor, and insight as to its origin, and why it has existed as long as it has.

The Theft

It had been over a decade that I had refrained from writing about my discovery with regard to the true story of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, for a quite simple reason. There had been such an orchestrated denial of the truth, I reasoned, that the public would be incapable of escaping that denial. Unless, I reasoned, I could discover documentary evidence. Which I recently discovered,  two documents in Canada’s National Archives. One, a single page in an unbound file of draft entries to a diary, one page with a brief penciled note by Colonel Ed Drake, Commanding Officer of MI2, on duty December 6, 1941, about the “grave matter of the emergency meeting to be held that evening. And about his travels to the Pacific Coast, both Canada’s British Columbia and Washington State of the US. A day that ended with a visit to Washington DC, home of OP-20-G, the headquarters of the US Navy’s signals intelligence organization, close to the White House, closely allied and interoperative with Canada’s MI2. A precious access to the truth of Pearl Harbor. The second document, a bound volume, entitled  “Diary 1940”, for which the draft entries in the loose sheets were ment.

It so happened that on 30 January 2024 mentioned my discovery of the two precious documents to an acquaintance, who had spent several years in Canada’s signals intelligence CBNRC, later renamed CSE, Communications Security Establishment. He left CSE and joined Canadian Security Intelligence Service. On the 29^th of February, I visited Canada’s National Library and Archives, with the intention of again studying the two predious documents, and discovered they were missing from the LAC volumes where they had been. I made inquiries, and learned that two CSIS agents had visited LAC, obtained accessed records assigned to me. More recently, I have learned that a group of CSIS agents were filmed goinan g through the records, and removing several.

Which has brought the wish to bring an action against both Library and Archives Canada, and CISIS, for a denial of Charter Rights, specifically contrary to Section 8, Search and Seizure, without Judicial Warrant.

Text Method, Inc. speaks to several subjects and topics. A principle subject being Mysteries, of which, to begin, are two:

1. The Japanese Attack, on 7 December 1941 on Pearl Harbor
2. Death in Ice Valley, also known as Death of the Isdal Woman, whose body was found in the valley of the Norwegian  mountain was  found.

In a world of mysteries, why these? For one, because this author happened upon them, in the same manner, by interview, of two officers once of  Canada’s most secret foreign intelligence service, responsible for signals intelligence, SIGINT, in  Canada’s Capital, Ottawa.

The attack on Pearl Harbor brought the Second World War to the Pacific, and to its being the most destructive in history.

Almost one-hundred years have passed since the vessels of the Imperial Japanese Navy  the attack fleet of the Imperial Japanese Navy, Kido Butai, secretly left Hitokappu-Wan, the bay on the island of Iterup, then in the Japanese Kirules, and entered the Pacific, to make its three-and-a-half nautical mile journey to the Hawaii island of Oahu,  and its target, Pearl Harbor.

From that event, it has been a mystery how the vessels of Kido Butai succeeded in

The second, in 1970, the body of a woman was found in a mountain valley near Bergin, Norway. By the evidence, she had been murdered by persons unknown, and the body showed that if had been partially burned. There were no identification documents. Police investigation did not uncover identification,  but did discover evidence of recent extensive travel, to several European countries, including Italy, Switzerland, France, Belgium, Austria and Germany, and finally, several days in Bergen, Norway.

For both, ignorance has been the rule. As we shall see, powerful, sophisticated, and obscure forces have, and continue, to be at work to ensure that  state of ignorance.

There are two other reasons for focusing on them. One that a serious mystery – challenging, difficult to resolve,  deeply important – are simply irresistible. Another that, in the troubled world with perils in abundance, it is necessary for us to ‘tighten up’ so we can successfully deal with them. Quite simply, we cannot allow our children, and humanity, to be so at risk.

And as for Canada’s lovely, seemingly quiet, capital city, those who believe that little of importance takes place are quite wrong.

 

The Mystery

Of the countless deaths of the Second War, the most destructive of history, each a profound mystery to those who lost a child, or mother or father, of many millions, there remain two major questions which, curiously, are rarely asked, perhaps to ensure we never come to know the answers.

Which takes us to Ottawa, and an early summer day, in 1961. When I happened to brush into the Pearl Harbor Problem

Along with my parents and two siblings, I had recently returned from Germany, and the Canadian RCAF fighter base where my father had been posted for four years. We had just returned to our home in Ottawa, at 363 Cunningham Avenue.

That day, I left home, , to see how the neighborhood, in the tranquil residential area of Alta Vista, had changed during our absence. Three blocks further, I stopped and reached to tie a loose shoelace. There was a sudden, joyful, shriek from across the street. I looked up to see two young girls, flower in hand, racing toward a car that had just entered the driveway. By the evidence, driven by the father of the girls. One girl was perhaps my age, 15 years. The other perhaps 18 years.

I had witnessed the scene, apparently a daily ritual, from a distance, a week earlier. Today, I saw the girls climb the front stairs and disappear and through the front door. I found myself in a state of confusion. The thought crossed my mind that I might not get the chance to see the young girl again. year before I would have thought, “Girls, girls, “Who cares about girls?” That day, driven by a new, mysterious animus, I cared. “Then came the thought, “Two times lucky, don’t count on a third.” I made a decision: “Just knock on the door. When doing so, I turned and glanced at the man by the car in the driveway, who looked on with an intense, penetrating, gaze.

The door opened and I was admitted me by the young girl. I saw your father”, I said to the young girl. “He works for NASA”, she said. Which made no sense at all, given it was an American government enterprise, quite far long way, of which I had no knowledge. Strangely, that did not concern me, distracted as I was by face, the lilt of her voice and her smile, and an intoxicating scent that wafted through the air. She obviously wished to conceal whatever her father did. Having been raised by an RCAF officer, and having just returned from four years in Germany, where the Germans had shown no desire to discuss their recent Second War enthusiasms and activities, it was immediately apparent to me that she had no wish to discuss her father. At that moment, her elder sister walked down the stairs from the upper floor and paused to look at me questiongly. Evidently, father had called and asked her to see what I was up to. It was all a bit odd, although I did not know why. I said my farewell to the girls and walked out the door.

Much later, I learned I had, in a manner of speaking, met the most important figure in the history of Canadian secret intelligence. A man of whom, appropriately, Canadians knew and even now know, nothing at all.

I later learned that Edward Michael Drake, as colonel in the Canadian Army, had been, successively, Director of two signals intelligence units, snaring from the ether the messages of the German and Japanese enemy. One was the Examination Unit, largely concerned with civilian targets. The other MI2, Military Intelligence 2, the Canadian Army’s signals intelligence unit, focused on Japanese military targets, particularly of the Japanese Imperial Navy, which became of particular importance during 1940 to 1941, from it headquarters at the south-east of the intersection of Bank Street and Somerset Street, in downtown Ottawa, a now abandoned and neglected building, ten blocks from Parliament Hill.

That day, when in a manner of speaking Drake and I met, he was Director of CBNRC, Communications Branch National Research Council, Canada’s postwar signals intelligence service, since 1975 known a CSEC, Communications Service Establishment. At the time, I had no knowledge of these services, what they did, and how they did it. They were, and now are, the most secret, and secretive, organizations in Canada, almost totally absent from public discourse. In particular, absent from any discussion of the Second War, the war in the Pacific, certainly from any discussion of Pearl Harbor, and what had happend there on that special  7 of December 1941, your would have known the deepest secret of the Second World War. And very much 

I you wish to about the true story of Pearl Harbor, and what had in fact happened there on that day, you might become acquainted with that building, which still stands.

It was only much later, and much research and effort, that this author learned the true story of Pearl Harbor, and the answer to the principal question.

Edward  Michael Drake

Edward Michael Drake