Winds Code

The "Winds Code" is a confused military intelligence episode relating to the Attack on Pearl Harbor, especially the advance-knowledge debate.

The Winds Code was an instruction from Tokyo to the Japanese embassy in Washington on November 19, 1941. In case of an emergency leading to the interruption of regular communication channels, a coded message would be inserted into the daily Japanese international news broadcast. Concealed within the meteorological reports would be either "East wind rain" ("Higashi no kaze ame"), "West wind clear" ("Nishi no kaze hare") or "North wind cloudy" ("Kitano kaze kumori"), the first indicating an imminent major breach with the United States, the second a break with the British (including the invasion of Thailand), the third a break with the Soviet Union.

This signal was intercepted and broken by US Intelligence and, naturally, a close monitoring of the Japanese daily shortwave broadcast was instituted for the codes, dubbed the Winds Code by the Americans.

That much is clear; the problem is whether the code was ever transmitted or not. Amid all the other indicators of approaching conflict, it seems that the message was never sent, or at least never recorded at any higher level in the US command structure.

Ralph Briggs, a USN radioman, stated he logged "Higashi no kaze ame" (East wind rain) on the morning of December 4; this was transmitted to the Fleet Intelligence Office at Pearl through the secure TWX line. Briggs was subsequently given a four day pass as a reward (and was away in Cleveland on the 7th). At the FIO, Commander Laurance Safford states he reported this message to his superiors in Washington. At this point there is no further record of the message.

None of the official inquiries took Safford's statement as fact, the most generous reporting that he was "misled" and that his memory was faulty.

It has been claimed that in the week after the attack there was significant document 'loss' at the Office of Naval Intelligence in Washington, an attempt at CYA.Fact|date=July 2008