The Bomb Plot Message Summary

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Recommended: Espionage in WW 2

“The Bomb Plot message” was a dispatch from Tokyo to its Consulate in Honolulu that the United States intercepted on September 24, 1941. This “strictly secret” message issued instructions to report gridded locations and detailed information on all ships in the waters of Pearl Harbor. The message was translated in Washington on October 9 by Colonel Rufus C. Bratton who found it significant as no previous Japanese intercepts requested or reported gridded positions of ships in the harbor. Bratton shared the message with his chief, General Miles, who interpreted the evidence through the confirmation bias lens and failed to analyze it as anything other than routine Japanese traffic regarding U.S. Naval movements. Still, Bratton routed the message to high levels of the War Department where it garnered very little …show more content…

Prior to the dispatch of September 24, the information which the Japanese sought and obtained about Pearl Harbor followed the general pattern of their interest in American Fleet movements in other localities. One might suspect this type of conventional espionage. With the dispatch of September 24, 1941, and those which followed, there was a significant and ominous change in the character of the information which the Japanese Government sought and obtained. The espionage then directed was of an unusual character outside the realm of reasonable suspicion. It was no longer merely directed to ascertaining the general whereabouts of ships of the fleet. It was directed to the presence of particular ships in particular areas; to such minute detail as what ships were double-docked at the same wharf….These Japanese instructions and reports pointed to an attack by Japan upon the ships in Pearl Harbor. The information sought and obtained, with such painstaking detail had no other conceivable usefulness from a military

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