the pearl essay kcse

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The Pearl Study Guide (5)

This category contains notes on The Pearl set book for KCSE. It has the full guide to the set book.

Synopsis and Summary of Chapters - The Pearl Study Guide

Themes - the pearl study guide, characters and characterisation - the pearl study guide, language and style - stylistic devices - the pearl study guide, the pearl essay questions with answers - the pearl study guide.

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PEARL ESSAYS &ANSWERS SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS AND UNIVERSITY STUDENTS

THIS IS PEARL ESSAYS &ANSWERS FOR SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS AND UNIVERSITY STUDENTS

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KCSE SET BOOKS ESSAY QUESTIONS and ANSWERS

Enjoy free KCSE revision materials on imaginative compositions, essay questions and answers and comprehensive analysis (episodic approach) of the set books including Fathers of Nations by Paul B. Vitta, The Samaritan by John Lara, A Silent Song by Godwin Siundu, An Artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro and Parliament of Owls by Adipo Sidang'. This blog is useful to Kenyan students preparing for KCSE; and their teachers.

Monday 9 May 2022

The pearl analysis kcse 2021, kcse past papers revision – review of kcse 2021: the pearl - john steinbeck follow @wafulawekati.

How to answer KCSE essay questions based on The Pearl .

• Read the question carefully for comprehension/in order to understand the demands
• Identify the keywords in the question with a view of interpreting the question correctly
• Identify the FAKE FRIENDSHIPS and the OPPORTUNISM
• Come up with points of interpretation. Who is the fake friend? How do they stand to gain?
• Answer the question. Keep glancing at the question and the keywords in the course of your writing to avoid digressions and narration

Some of the KEYWORDS in this question include TRUE FRIENDSHIP, HARD TO FIND and GAIN.

Show how characters like the DOCTOR and the PRIEST get involved with KINO with a view of profiting from his priceless fortune, the pearl of the world. 

Show the distinct change in behaviour of the character based on how they behave before Kino gets the pearl and how they PRETEND to be his friends after he gets the pearl.

In each point, link the insincere association to how the character hopes to gain.

Why students lost marks in this question

Some students' essays lacked textual illustrations and background information. The examiner demanded illustration on how Kino's insincere friends associated with him BEFORE he got the pearl.

Students who had read and mastered the episodes garnered full marks per point. Always try to point out relevant specific details (characters’ actions, reactions, words, feelings) when reading the text.

For example how the doctor remarks that he has better things to do other than cure insect bites for “little Indians”. He is a doctor, not a veterinary. He asks his servant to see if Kino has any money. “No, they never have any money. I, I alone in the world am supposed to work for nothing" (P28)

Show his change of heart when the news comes to him. Where is he and what is he doing? What does he say when he is told who Kino is?

When he is told who Kino is, the doctor grows “stern and judicious at the same time” and says, “He is a client of mine. I am treating his child for a scorpion sting"(P42)

How does he stand to gain? He wants the pearl. The things he says betray his avarice.

“When do you think you can pay this bill?”

“You have a pearl? A good pearl?”

“Perhaps, you would like me to put it in my safe?” (P56)

Use episodic approach.

Students who cited adequate specific textual details scored full marks.

• Identify the insincere/hypocritical friend
• Give the BACKGROUND INFORMATION on how the character associated with Kino before he got the pearl. (Give sufficient textual backup)
• Show how the character pretends to be Kino’s dependable/trustworthy friend AFTER he finds the pearl.
• What does he stand to gain? (Textual evidence)
• Show how the doctor, priest, pearl buyers, neighbours and beggars associate with Kino before and after he gets the pearl.

The Pearl Essay Analysis: How to write the introduction

• What is your interpretation of the question? Show how true friends are hard to find. Who associates with Kino for selfish reasons?
• Paraphrase: use your own words to demonstrate your understanding of the question. Avoid repeating the question word for word.
• Include the keywords in your introduction. Link the “hypocritical friendship” to “what they stand to gain”
• Contextualize: mention the disloyal friends e.g. doctor, priest, pearl buyers, neighbours or beggars.

Developing the body: The Pearl essay question KCSE 2021

• Give at least four well illustrated points
• Each point falls on a separate paragraph. Do not split one point into two paragraphs.
• Give adequate textual illustrations on the insincere friendship. Show how the character behaved or treated Kino before he got the pearl. Then show how he pretends to be Kino's friend later on. Demonstrate that Kino gets many friends after he gets the pearl but the friendship is not in good faith. His new “friends” are dishonest. They plan to gain from his newly found fortune. Point out how each of them hopes to gain.

The first line of each (body) paragraph must answer the question.

• Who is the selfish friend?

• What do they stand to gain?

Points of interpretation

• The pearl buyers

Paragraph Development

• Using their knowledge or comprehension of the text, the student was required to fetch evidence from relevant episodes in order to answer the question.
• [Topic sentence] Fake friend: The PRIEST associates with Kino only because he hopes to profit from the pearl.
• Illustration: (P41, 47, 48, 68)
• The news comes to him when he is walking in his garden. It puts a thoughtful look in his eyes and a memory of certain repairs necessary to the church.
• He wonders what the pearl would be worth
• He wonders whether he had baptized Kino’s baby or married him (P41)
• The priest considered these people children and treated them like children
• He tells Kino, “Kino, thou art named after a great man and a great Father of the Church.” He makes it sound like a benediction.
• He adds: “Thy namesake tamed the desert and sweetened the minds of thy people, didst thou know that? It is in the books.” (P47)
• He asks about the pearl, his sole purpose of visiting Kino: “It has cone to me that you have a great fortune, a great pearl.”
• The priest gasps a little at the size and the beauty of the pearl.
• He says, “I hope thou wilt remember to give thanks, my son, to Him who has given thee this treasure, and to pray for guidance in the future.”
• Juana replies softly “We will, Father. And we will be married now.”
• The priest is delighted. “It is pleasant to see that your first thoughts are good thoughts. God bless you, my children.”
• Kino's hand had closed tightly on the pearl again, and he was glancing about suspiciously (P48)
• Selling the pearls away from La Paz was a good idea but it was against religion.
• According to the priest, the loss of the pearls was a punishment
• Each man and woman is like a soldier sent by God to guard some part of the castle of the Universe.
• Each one must remain faithful to his post.
• The priest makes this sermon every year to discourage the fishermen from selling the pearls away from La Paz.

Sample set book essay question based on The Pearl by John Steinbeck

True friendship is hard to find. Many people associate with us for what they stand to gain. With reference to John Steinbeck’s The Pearl, write an essay to support this statement.

It is good to have friends. They are sources of inspiration, emotional and material support. Good friends would stick with you in the face of adversity while bad ones would forge relationships with the intention of exploiting us. In The Pearl, Kino is a victim of fake friendship. People who interact with him harbour malicious intentions. They are selfish and opportunistic.

First, the doctor is a pretentious friend who develops perfunctory concern for Kino only because he hopes to gain from his pearl. He is obviously not a genuine friend because at first he refuses to treat Kino's baby. He says he is a doctor, not a veterinary to treat insect bites for “little Indians”. He asks if Kino has any money and concludes that they never have any money. He is not willing to work for nothing. Kino has eight small misshapen ugly pearls, that are flattened and almost valueless. The doctor refuses to treat the baby. His servant claims he has gone out because he was called to a serious case. The doctor treats Kino with contempt and indifference before he gets the pearl. When he gets wind of Kino's pearl, the doctor grows stern and judicious at the same time. About Kino he says, “ He is a client of mine. I am treating his child for a scorpion sting.” He imagines himself in a restaurant in Paris enjoying some wine, probably using proceeds from the sale of the pearl. He visits Kino and pretends to show concern for his child. Lying that he was not in when Kino came in the morning, he says he has come at first chance. “I know the sting of a scorpion, my friend and I can cure it.” (P50) Kino reluctantly allows him to treat the child after he scares him about the curious effects of the sting. The doctor makes the baby’s condition worse in order to rip off Kino. He gives him some white powder enclosed in a capsule of gelatine. He gives him pulque to drink. This makes the baby very sick. The doctor is back after an hour and “treats” him using three drops of ammonia in a cup of water. He later inquires about the bill. Kino will pay after he sells his pearl. The doctor pretends to be oblivious about the pearl but offers to put it in his safe for him. He warns Kino that it may be stolen. He even stares at Kino’s eyes for a hint as to where it was hidden. Clearly, the doctor only associates with Kino to profit from the pearl. Surely, true friends are hard to find and most people only pursue selfish interests.

Secondly, the priest pretends to be Kino’s sincere friend only after he gets the pearl. He is walking in his garden when the news comes to him. It puts a thoughtful look in his eye and memory of certain repairs necessary to the church. He wonders about the worth of the pearl. He also develops dishonest concern for Kino’s family. He wonders whether he baptized Kino’s baby or married him for that matter. He then visits Kino’s family only because he hopes to benefit from his fortune. The priests tells Kino, “Thou art named after a great man and a great Father of the Church.” He makes it sound like a benediction. He adds that Kino’s namesake calmed the desert and sweetened the minds of his people. Kino is illiterate so the cunning priest slyly says, “It is in the books.” The priest considers Kino and his people children and treats them like children (P47). The priest inquires about the great fortune. He gasps a little at it's size and beauty. He tells Kino, his son, to remember to give thanks to God and to pray for guidance. He is pleased about their “good thoughts” when Juana says they will and they will now get married. The same priests makes a sermon every year to deter the poor fishermen from pooling their pearls and selling them at the capital, with a view of gaining from their hard work. The priest is a hypocritical friend who harbours an ulterior motive of profiting from Kino’s pearl. Indeed, it is hard to find genuine friends.

The pearl buyers are fake friends who appear genuinely friendly when they offer Kino the “best” prices but their hidden agenda is to cheat him out of his great pearl. In their little offices, they cackle and shout until they reach the lowest prices. When they hear about Kino’s pearl, their eyes squint and their fingers burn a little. They care less about the fisherman’s welfare. They are avaricious and selfish. There is only one buyer who keeps many agents to create a semblance of competition. The agents plan to replace their patron and each one hopes to raise the capital once he sells Kino’s pearl (P42-43). There is one buyer with many hands because the happiest pearl buyer is one who buys for the lowest prices (Pg64). The buyers become stiffened and alert when Kino and the procession approach their little dark offices. Kino is greeted by a stout slow man, “Good morning, my friend.” His face is fatherly and benign, and his eyes twinkle with friendship. He is a caller of good-mornings, a ceremonious shaker of hands, a jolly man who knew all jokes but whose eyes would wet with sorrow at the memory of your aunt’s demise. He gives Kino a steady cruel gaze, eyes unwinking as a hawk, but the rest of his face smiling in greeting. As much as he appears amiable, his true colours show when he tells Kino his pearl is fool's gold – a large clumsy curiosity that no one would buy and only good for a museum. For a pearl Kino thinks is 50,000 pesos, the dealer offers a measly 1000 pesos. He pretends there is no collusion with his fellow conniving conspirators. The first dealer, a dry stringy man, tosses the pearl contemptuously back into the tray. Refusing to make an offer, he calls it a monstrosity. The second one, a little man with a shy voice, claims better pearls are made of paste. Kino’s pearl is soft and chalky and will die soon. He examines it under a microscope. The third dealer says he could sell it at 600 pesos to a client who likes such things. He offers 500 pesos. The friendly dealer raises his offer to 1500 pesos. Kino refuses to sell his pearl there after seeing through their lies. He realizes they are not genuine friends. The dealers know they played too hard. They pretend to give Kino the best prices yet they had conspired to buy his pearl at the lowest price. Truly, it is not easy to find true friendship.

Also, the four beggars follow Kino around only because of the hope they harbour in Kino's pearl. They seem interested in Kino yet before they saw him and Juana as poor people. The great experts in financial analysis look at Juana's old blue skirt, green ribbon, torn shawl, Kino’s aged blanket and the thousand washings of his blanket and dismiss them as poor people. The only reason they follow him to the doctor’s place is to witness the drama that would ensue. After that, they go back to the steps of the church, indifferent to his plight (Pg28). However, when they hear about Kino’s pearl, they know they would benefit from it. They giggle with pleasure for they know that there is no alms giver in the world like a poor man who is suddenly lucky (Pg42). Since they sit in front of the church, the beggars hope to gain from the pearl by taking the tithe of the first fruit of the luck (Pg63). The beggars join the procession to the buyers not as Kino’s friends, but as vultures hoping to gain from the sale of the pearl. Without doubt, many people only associate with us for what they stand to gain.

Kino's neighbours are not honest friends but casual opportunists hoping to profit from his fortune. They follow Kino and Juana to the doctor's house. The thing had become a neighbourhood affair (Pg24). They follow him only to witness if Kino would do the remarkable by getting the doctor. They are not here to help him. They hang around Kino’s home till dusk and are reluctant to leave. The neighbours watch Kino through the crevices of their houses and dress up to accompany him - if they don’t go it would be a sign of “unfriendship”. They accompany Kino to sell the pearl, together with their little boys, peering around the doorway, window bars and around Kino’s legs (Pg71). The neighbours pretend to be Kino’s friends but they are only spying on him with the aim of getting the pearl. Kino is attacked at the beach by someone from the neighbourhood (Pg84-86). His bought is also destroyed causing him searing rage. This is evil beyond thinking (Pg 87). As if that is not enough, someone burns Kino’s house. The seemingly friendly neighbours are out to get Kino’s pearl by any means. As Kino’s house goes up in flames, all they do is save their own houses (Pg88). Juan Tomas warns Kino not to use the shore since there was a search party there looking for him. The neighbours that were initially uninterested in Kino’s affairs before now try to wrestle the pearl out of Kino’s grasp. This goes to prove that true friendship is indeed hard to find.

In conclusion, many people display questionable closeness with Kino’s family which can only be explained in the light of selfishness and opportunism. This friendship is aimed at benefitting them and not Kino and Juana. Not all our friends have benevolent reasons.

Read more on The Pearl KCSE Essays here 

Did you find this article helpful? Comment below.

9 comments:

A very nice input. Well expounded.

Awesome work Mr Wekati

This will make students pass the exam thank you

Anonymous Mr wekati,keep up your notes are helpful,thank you.

Well illustrated. Thank you for the inputs

Thank you very much mr wekati

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The Winds Message Controversy: The Intelligence That Predicted Pearl Harbor?

For years, the coded Japanese “Winds” messages hinted at controversy and official cover up. The reality may now be known.

By Peter Kross

The Japanese strike on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941—a “Day of Infamy,” as President Franklin D. Roosevelt described it—left the American Pacific Fleet in almost total ruin, plunged the United States into World War II, and set off a controversy regarding the events that led up to the attack that is still being hotly debated. [text_ad]

One of the most troublesome incidents in the pre-Pearl Harbor planning by the Japanese is the so-called “Winds Code” incident and what significance, if any, it had for the American code breakers who were monitoring Japanese diplomatic and military communications in the months leading up to the surprise attack.

Did the Navy cover up by not allowing the people who handled the Winds communication to testify before congressional committees after the war? And what happened to the Winds communications itself that was supposed to have been seen by different naval intelligence personnel in the days prior to the Pearl Harbor attack?

To understand the significance of the Winds message, we must trace the role of the U.S. military’s efforts in breaking the Japanese codes before Pearl Harbor.

Decrypting Magic

The Japanese used what they called a “Purple” machine to encode top-secret intelligence sent to their embassies around the world. The code word for American intercepts of Japanese diplomatic and military messages coming into the United States was “Magic.” The United States designated all the information collected from Purple as “Magic”—the highest-classified intelligence collected by the United States during the war.

The success of Magic allowed the United States to follow Japan’s route to war, keeping a detailed record of their every move. During the summer of 1940, the United States began sharing intelligence with the British who had their own secret communications vis a vis Germany called “Enigma.” In a move that would later prove disastrous in the pre-Pearl Harbor scenario, one of the Purple machines that went to the British was originally supposed to be given to the U.S. Navy at Pearl Harbor.

Another U.S. military organization doing cryptographic work that involved both Magic and the Winds communication was the Navy’s code-breaking group called OP-20G, led by Commander Laurance Safford.

The Magic information collected by the Navy was sent to various top military and civilian leaders in the American government. Unfortunately, Magic was not shared with all of the top military commanders including, most importantly, Navy Admiral Husband Kimmel and Army General Walter Short, the two commanding officers at Pearl Harbor.

Another unfortunate side of Magic was that the men who were apprised of its content could not agree among themselves as to which information was relevant or not. It was this lack of communication that led to the controversy over what the Winds message really meant.

Uncovering Japan’s Intentions

By the fall of 1941, U.S. code breakers had a pretty good idea as to what the Japanese government was thinking and planning regarding a potential conflict with the United States. Japan was still committed to its participation in the Tripartite Pact with Italy and Germany and refused to remove its troops from China. From the intercepts of Japanese communications that were picked up by U.S. code breakers, it was obvious that Japan was disinclined to tone down its harsh rhetoric regarding a possible war with either the United States or Great Britain.

More importantly, as far as the United States was concerned, a November 5, 1941, message from Tokyo to Washington setting a date of November 25, 1941, as a deadline for the completion of diplomatic negotiations with the United States, should have been a warning sign that trouble lay ahead.

Other intercepted communications from Tokyo gave instructions for the destruction of its code machines; a November 20 message from Tokyo stated that the current conditions would not “permit any further conciliation by us [Japan];” a November 22 note said if a diplomatic agreement was not reached by November 29 “that things are automatically going to happen.” Also important to the prewar scenario was a November 27 war warning message broadcast from Tokyo, along with a November 19 message from Tokyo giving details of the “Winds Execute” message that would be added to the end of the Japanese news broadcasts in case war between the United States, England, and Russia was imminent, and a November 19 note giving further instructions for Japanese diplomats in Washington to listen for Winds messages that would be read five times at the beginning and end of each transmission.

Uncovering the Winds Code Words

On December 4, 1941, American listening posts in various parts of the world decoded two communications sent from Tokyo to its Washington embassy on November 19 that carried information on the so-called Winds message to which naval intelligence officials had been alerted.

The first message, Circular No. 2353, said: “Regarding the broadcast of a special message in an emergency. In case of emergency (danger of cutting off our diplomatic relations), and the cutting off of international communications, the following will be added in the middle of the daily Japanese language short wave news broadcast:

In case of a Japan-US relations in danger HIGASHI NO KAZEAME––East Wind Rain.

Japan-USSR relations: KITANOKAZE KUMORI––North Wind Cloudy.

Japan-British relations: NISHI NO KAZE HARE––West Wind Clear.”

The second circular, No. 2354, came later:

“If it is Japan-US relations: HIGASHI.

Japan-Russia relations: KITA.

Japanese-British relations (including Thai, Malaya, and Netherlands East Indies): NISHI.

The above will be repeated five times and included at beginning and end. Relay to Rio de Janeiro, Mexico City, San Francisco.”

The Winds message was also picked up by a variety of Allied listening posts across the globe. The British Singapore station seized the message on November 28 and transmitted it to the U.S. Asiatic Fleet headquarters where Admiral Thomas Hart, the commander in chief, Asiatic Fleet, sent it to the headquarters commanders of both the 14th Naval District and the 16th Naval District. On December 4, the message was sent by Consul General Walter Foote at Batavia to the State Department in Washington. In his message regarding the broadcast, Consul General Foote said, “I attach little or no importance and view it with some suspicion. Such have been common since 1936.”

The same low-key reaction to the Winds message came on December 3, when a top U.S. Army officer stationed in Java cabled the message to Brig. Gen. Sherman Miles, the acting ACS/Intelligence head, War Department. It was broadcast in a low-grade designation called “deferred,” and was subsequently not decoded until 1:45 am on December 5.

These two messages were sent from Tokyo on their J-19 diplomatic code, not the more significant Purple code that U.S. naval intelligence had been privy to for months. On the Navy’s part, they alerted all their stations to be on the lookout for the next phase of the Winds code––the so called “Execute” stage of the plan.

Station “M” Finds the Smoking Gun

Subsequently, a full-court press inside the United States was ordered to listen for the “Execute” phase. Naval code-breaking stations in San Francisco and Fort Hunt in Virginia had Japanese-language translators sent in on an emergency basis. The Federal Communications Commission, one of whose jobs was the monitoring of Japanese weather broadcasts, was put on alert. If they picked up an “Execute” broadcast, they were to call Colonel Rufus Bratton, commander of the G-2 (Army Intelligence) Far Eastern Section.

In Hawaii, the Navy’s top intelligence code breaker, Joseph Rochefort—head of the Combat Intelligence Unit of the 14th Naval District in Pearl Harbor and Station Hypo, a U.S. monitoring unit that watched Japanese naval movements—was alerted to the Winds message.

During this tense time, the FCC picked up a false message from Japan at 10 pm on December 4 which said, “Tokyo today north wind slightly stronger may become cloudy tonight. Tomorrow slightly cloudy and fine weather. Kanagawa Prefecture today north wind cloudy from afternoon more clouds. Chiba Prefecture today north wind clear, may become slightly cloudy. Ocean surface calm.”

One of the U.S. listening posts that played a huge role in the Winds Affair was Station “M,” located at Cheltenham, Maryland. Early on December 4, 1941, 27-year-old senior radio operator Ralph Briggs picked up a cryptic message in a weather forecast being broadcast from Japan. Warned to listen for any unusual weather broadcasts attached to messages from Japan, Briggs heard the words he’d been alerted to. It was “East Wind Rain––HIGASHI NO KAZEAME [a possible disruption of Japan-U.S. relations].” It now seemed that the “smoking gun” from Tokyo had just been received.

Briggs began the process of transmitting his find to the other intelligence agencies and government officials. He sent one copy to the Army Signals Intelligence Unit and another to the White House. The Navy’s OP-20G got their own copy by 9 am on December 4.

The Winds message was then translated by Lt. Cmdr. Alvin Kramer, who was in command of the Translation Section of the Navy Department Communications Unit. According to extemporaneous accounts, Kramer, upon seeing the Winds message, said, “This is it.” By noon on December 4, multiple copies of the Winds message had been circulated among the Army and Navy’s intelligence divisions, their senior officers, the State Department, and the White House. As some conspiracy theorists believe regarding the significance of the Winds message, the Roosevelt administration had three days to read and digest its contents and prepare the country for war with Japan. Yet, nothing was done to alert the fleet at Pearl Harbor or any other branch of the military.

Debate Over the Winds Message

It is at this point in the debate where differences of opinion regarding the significance of the Winds message among its many participants come into play. In his extensive testimony before the Joint Congressional Committee on the Investigation of the Pearl Harbor attack, Navy Captain Laurance Safford, who was head of the Navy’s OP-20G Code and Signal Section, told the attentive congressmen that in his opinion, the Winds message was a genuine “signal of execute” that war between the United States and Japan was imminent.

Safford pointed out that on December 4, 1941, the Imperial Japanese Navy changed its “Operations Code,” which was picked up by Allied listening stations on Corregidor Island in Manila Bay and reported up the chain of command nine hours after it was decoded. Safford said that this change in Japan’s code, as well as the “Execute” message, was the final step in Japan’s preparations for war with the United States.

Safford testified that it was his belief that the Navy had a three-day advance warning about an impending Japanese attack and did nothing to stop it. It is worth noting that despite Captain Safford’s validation of the Winds message, there was no definite proof to back up his assertion that the intercepted message, “East Wind Rain,” was anything more than part of the regular communications traffic that was intercepted on December 4, 1941.

Army chief of staff George Marshall discredited Captain Stafford’s testimony regarding the Winds message, saying that he did not see the message in question. Also, Joseph Rochefort was adamant that he had seen no “Execute” message, despite assertions by others that he had. Another person who had a differing view of the Winds traffic was George Linn, a naval officer attached to OP-20G in 1941. In material provided by Linn, and released by the National Security Agency in November 1980, Linn, who was a good friend of Captain Safford, said that, “Safford’s obsession with the idea that an ‘Execute’ had been received and suppressed had caused him [Safford], to go ‘out on a limb, for there had been no “Execute.” Linn summed up his testimony by saying, “I found nothing, and therefore concluded that an execute had not been received prior to 2400 hours on December 6.”

The Disappearing Winds Message

Adding to the seemingly never-ending debate over the veracity of the Winds message is the fact that the original message had somehow disappeared from all official Navy files just when the Roberts Commission was conducting hearings into the whole Pearl Harbor matter shortly after the attack. What happened to the official Winds message paperwork is still a mystery and its loss has only deepened the skepticism of those who believe that an official cover-up by the Navy or other government agencies took place.

After the war ended, various congressional committees were established to debate the Pearl Harbor attack and try to attach blame where possible. The testimony took on a national scope and many of the top newspapers of the day covered it, sending their best reporters to the hearings. The Winds Execute phase of the hearings took on a circus-like atmosphere with debate and counterdebate swirling like a prairie fire. In 1946, the New York Times said that the Winds message was a “bitter microcosm” of the investigation into American preparations leading up to the attack on December 7, 1941. The Times further noted that, “If there was such a message, the Washington military establishment would have been gravely at fault in not having passed it along to military commanders in Hawaii. If there was not, then the supporters of those commanders would have lost an important prop to their case.”

In later testimony before the Army board regarding the missing Winds message, a number of people who were intimately involved in the affair gave their insights into what might have happened. Captain Safford said that the last time he saw the Winds message it was in the hands of OP-20G. He tasked a Captain Stone to see if he could locate the message but to no avail. When questioned by Maj. Gen. Henry Russell, Stafford said that the Winds message was filed in the Navy’s 7001 file. The following exchange took place between Safford and General Russell:

General Russell: “Well, is JD 7000 in that file now?”

Captain Safford: “JD 7000 is there, and 7002.”

Russell: “But 7001 just isn’t there?”

Safford: “The whole file for the month of December 1941 is present or accounted for except 7001.”

Safford further said that when a thorough check of the 7000 series was made, “That is the only one that is missing or unaccounted for.”

Years later, Ralph Briggs, the radioman at Station M who picked up the Winds message, broke his silence. In 1960, when Briggs was in charge of a unit that contained naval archives from World War II, he stated that, “All transmissions intercepted by me between 0500 thru 1300 on the above date [December 5, 1960] are missing from these files and these intercepts contained the Winds message warning code.”

However, Briggs contradicted himself as to the date he intercepted the Winds execute message. He said that he intercepted it on the evening of December 4, while Safford said it came in at night on December 3. Nevertheless, to make matters more complicated, Briggs’s log relating to the Winds Execute message is dated December 2.

Lieutenant Commander Alvin Kramer gave yet another version of events relating to the Winds affair. He said that the “Execute” message was dated December 5, and that the message only had three lines of text. He testified that, in his estimation, the Winds message concerned a possible war between England and Japan. He further said that he thought the message was “a false alarm of this Winds system. It was, nevertheless, definitely my conception at the time that it was an authentic broadcast of that nature.”

Reviving the Controversy

As the events of the Pearl Harbor attack faded into memory, it seemed that the controversy would finally end; however, that was not the case. The event had so many divergent players, each offering up their own different scenarios, that it would not melt away.

In 2009, two historians, Robert J. Hanyok and the late David P. Mowry of the National Security’s Center for Cryptologic History, wrote a 327-page book called West Wind Clear: Cryptology and the Winds Message Controversy. This little-known book seemed to debunk the view that a clear warning was being monitored before the Pearl Harbor attack.

The institution that wrote the report, the super-secret National Security Agency (NSA) is an interesting place from which to issue such a narrative. Until a few years ago, the NSA’s very existence was shrouded in secrecy. It was dubbed in the media as “No Such Agency” or “Never Say Anything,” even though a public sign on the highway alerted visitors and employees that it, indeed, was there for all to see.

The NSA: Evolution of the Signals Intelligence Service

The NSA evolved out of the World War II Signals Intelligence Service and the Armed Forces Security Agency. The NSA was formally charted in October 1952 via a memorandum that was issued by President Harry Truman.

The main job of the NSA is to collect and analyze all signal intelligence (SIGINT), such as radio intercepts, telephone calls, electronic communications, and faxes coming in from around the world. The other job the agency performs is the cracking of other nation’s secret codes that may contain information that might harm the security of the United States. The headquarters of the NSA is located at Fort George Mead, Maryland, halfway between Washington and Baltimore. From its headquarters, the analysts of the NSA use a number of high-tech platforms such as ships at sea and satellites hovering in space to monitor communications on a global basis.

The NSA has a checkered past, with its veil of secrecy paramount in all its work. The work of the NSA came crashing down in September 1960 when two of its cryptographers, William Martin and Bernon Mitchell, defected to Russia and held a press conference detailing their NSA affiliation. In later years, the agency was caught up in the Bush administration’s war on terror. Some of its tactics—like the reading of American citizens e-mails and the tapping of phone calls, which the agency said it was searching for any links to foreign terrorists—brought a new call for the overhaul of the NSA.

No Actionable Intelligence From Winds

The paper written by Hanyok and Mowry was given little publicity outside of the intelligence community and it has only recently been declassified. In their writing, both Hanyok and Mowry lay to rest any cry of conspiracy in the Winds message as it related to the Pearl Harbor attack. One of the authors told an interviewer, “Some conspiracy buffs might change their minds if they read my book.”

Using previously classified documents relating to the Pearl Harbor attack, the two scholars note, “A Winds Execute message was sent on 7 December, 1941 [and] the weight of the evidence indicates that one coded phrase, ‘West Wind Clear,’ was broadcast according to previous instructions some six to seven hours after the attack on Pearl Harbor.” They write that it is possible that a British listening post might have picked up the broadcast one to two hours after the attack, “but this only substantiates the anticlimactic nature of the broadcast.”

Hanyok and Mowry note, “From a military standpoint, the Winds coded message contained no actionable intelligence either about the Japanese operations in Southeast Asia and absolutely nothing about Pearl Harbor. In reality, the Japanese broadcast the coded phrases long after hostilities began––useless, in fact, to all who might have heard it.”

The authors cite the failures of the memories of so many people who were in the loop at the time for the possible misinterpretations of what they believed happened during that hectic time prior to December 7, 1941.

Hanyok and Mowry are adamant when they assert, “There simply was not one shred of actionable intelligence in any of the messages or transmissions that pointed to the attack on Pearl Harbor.”

Was Captain Laurance Safford to Blame?

They pin most of the blame on Captain Laurance Safford for the 50-plus-year misunderstanding of the Winds message. “Put to the test, though, Safford’s narrative about the Execute message simply failed to stand up to cross-examination. The Joint Congressional Committee shredded Safford’s story. The committee reduced it to the collection of unsubstantiated charges that all along had been its foundation. The documentary evidence [Safford] said was available simply did not, nor did it ever, exist. In truth, Safford produced nothing upon which any further investigation could proceed.”

The two historians also take a shot at the various conspiracy writers and bloggers who believe in Safford and his faith that the Winds Execute message was a genuine war warning. Talking about the various conspiracy writers, they say that “the writers inverted the normal rules of evidentiary argument,” stating that Safford’s testimony has not been officially rebuffed by the government all these many years later.

“The scholars and researchers who championed Safford’s version of the controversy abandoned the rigorous evidentiary requirements of the historical profession in order to advance their own thesis,” they say. “Safford’s case was built on mistaken deductions, reconstructed, nonexistent documents, a mutable version of events, as well as a cast of witnesses that Safford conjured up in his imagination.”

Why the authors have put most of the blame on the shoulders of Laurance Safford, a distinguished Naval officer, a 1916 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, the officer who established the Navy’s communications intelligence unit, is not known, but they must have their reasons.

In an interview with the New York Times, both Hanyok and Mowry say that when the naval officers who had a stake in the use of radio intelligence could not find a copy of the Winds message, they immediately charged a cover up by some people in the naval hierarchy. They also pointed out that when it was learned that the Japanese government began ordering their diplomats to begin destroying their code machines in early December 1941, they did so because it “was possible that they viewed the Japanese actions as ominous, but also contradictory and perhaps even confusing. More importantly, though, the binge of code destructions was occurring without the transmittal of the Winds execute message.”

A Controversy Without Answers

After reading both sides of the historical argument, it is nearly impossible, 65-plus years after the events that took place, to say who was right or wrong. It seems that the Winds Execute message will be debated as long as people have an interest in what took place before America was drawn into World War II. Neither the historical community nor the conspiracy buffs will be happy with the outcome, even with all the new information that has come into the public domain since the original investigations began in 1946.

What the historical record can attest to is that the Winds Execute message was so fraught with differing opinions, false leads, calls of a cover up on the part of the Navy for failing to locate the original documents (which might, or might not settle the matter once and for all), that any logical assumptions as to its authenticity is still in doubt, despite the passage of time.

Join The Conversation

3 thoughts on “ the winds message controversy: the intelligence that predicted pearl harbor ”.

The National Cryptologic Museum has all the records on the Pearl Harbor attack of December 7. They have all the lead up to the Japanese prior to the attack as we as many other records.

If we look at Roosevelts Record going back to 1940 he provided aid to Great Britain and Russia to keep them in the was against Hitler. He had 160 tons of gold retrieved from war purchase from South Africa to keep the UK in payments prior to Lend Lease being enacted by the US. He financed Russia for over a Billion dollars to pay for war materials until he could he could work with Lend Lease. Another factor is that the Battleships in Pearl Harbor were basically obsolete well over 20 years old. There were two classes of battleships just completed, and another 4 ships of the South Dakota in construction. These were all modern and capable meeting the Japanese.

So is the insinuation the President wasn’t concerned about obsolete ships the correct interpetation of events leading up to the attack. The naval personnel were not obsolete, so was the decision basically to sacrafice the military personnel up to a certain point. Prior to the attack; on the morning of the 7th, Admiral Stark had ample oppotunity to alert Pearl Harbor but did not; the congressional hearings after the war made this very clear.

John, It is a myth that the battleships at Pearl Harbor were obsolete. Yes, they were 20-25 years old. However if you look at their upgrades & refits history before & after the attack, then you will see that the US Navy spent alot of money to keep them from becoming obsolete. Their slow speed was intentional, to maximize armor protection & reduce target size. They were fairly maneuverable and had good endurance, although they were fuel hogs. They were kept much more up to date than their peers in the Royal Navy.

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Battle of Moscow

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• Warfare History Network - The Battle of Moscow: WWII's First Critical Turning Point
• Imperial War Museums - Operation Barbarossa And Germany's Failure In The Soviet Union

Battle of Moscow , battle fought between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union from September 30, 1941 to January 7, 1942, during World War II . It was the climax of Nazi Germany’s Operation Barbarossa , and it ended the Germans’ intention to capture Moscow , which ultimately doomed the Third Reich .

The German advance on Moscow in September 1941 was soon in trouble because of atrocious weather conditions. The Germans were also shocked by the Soviet Union’s ability to keep bringing forward more reserves: over the course of the battle 75 fresh Soviet divisions arrived, with no reinforcements to the German attacking force. Although some Nazi officers thought Moscow was unattainable, they had no choice but to press forward, because they had to end the war before the fierce winter set in.

German troops managed to encircle large Soviet forces at Viazma in October, but the Soviets still fought on, delaying the Nazi advance. German soldiers pierced the improvised defense lines on the approaches to Moscow and reached within 15 miles (24 km) of the city—they could see the cupolas of St. Basil’s Cathedral in Red Square in the distance. However, resistance kept stiffening. Joseph Stalin chose to stay in Moscow and appeared at the annual celebrations in Red Square, offering a morale boost to his people. Soon after, however, an SS tank division captured Borodino, close enough to Moscow that save for Stalin, who remained in Moscow until mid-November, the Soviet leadership evacuated to Kuybyshev (modern Samara ) on the Volga River .

The Germans expanded the battlefront by bringing in a large Luftwaffe , or air force , contingent commanded by Wolfram von Richthofen, a cousin of the famed World War I ace Manfred von Richthofen . Opposing them was the elite Sixth Air Defense Corps, commanded by Ivan Klimov. Although the Soviets suffered heavy losses, which Klimov underreported to his superiors and Stalin, the intense aerial duels proved costly to the Germans as well, and with the arrival of inclement winter weather the air campaign abated.

In the late fall rainy season, German armored columns and supply trains were bogged down in mud, slowing the Wehrmacht’s advance. By early November, the German army, lacking winter clothing, suffered its first cases of frostbite, and soon Nazi soldiers had difficulty firing frozen guns. Although the armor could finally move forward on the icy ground, the German advance on Moscow halted on December 4. On December 5, Siberian troops newly transferred from the Chinese frontier attacked, many wearing the snow camouflage that the Germans would learn to fear. The Red Army had high hopes of this offensive, intending to encircle and destroy their attackers. They did not manage this, but they did drive back the Germans up to 155 miles (250 km) at some points. Nazi Germany had lost its chance for a quick victory. German losses during the Battle of Moscow totaled 250,000–400,000 dead or wounded, and the Red Army suffered 600,000–1,300,000 dead, wounded, or captured—that is, in a single battle the Russians suffered the number of deaths incurred during the entirety of World War II by the United States and the United Kingdom.

Regrouping, many elements of the German forces at Moscow joined other Wehrmacht units and turned to what Adolf Hitler and his generals hoped would be a less formidable target, Stalingrad .