"East Wind, Rain"

The biggest undercover fight now going on in Washington is over what should be brought out in the Pearl Harbor hearings. Last week the fight boiled over in Congress.

The hottest unconfirmed story about Pearl Harbor is that some time before Dec. 4, 1941, the U.S. intercepted an important coded message from the Japanese.

The message alerted Jap forces to be ready to go to war when they received a weather report with the words "East Wind, Rain ; East Wind, Rain." Then that very weather report, so the story goes, was intercepted by the U.S. on Dec. 4. But, as best as can now be learned, all the files which would show such intercepted messages are missing.

Trying to get at all Pearl Harbor data, Republican members of the Congressional investigating committee proposed that individual committee members be permitted to get any information they wanted from any Government department. Democrats steamrollered them down. Promptly, Maine's Senator Brewster charged that somebody was trying to suppress information. Committee Chairman Alben Barkley replied that he did not think individual members should be permitted to "cruise" around as "private detectives," and the argument ended on that inconclusive note.

But some progress toward the investigation was made:

P: It will now start on Nov. 15. P: The committee will not waste time junketing to Pearl Harbor. P: All Army & Navy personnel will be free to testify without any fear of subsequent court-martial or detriment to their future promotion. P: The question of whether or not Cordell Hull's blast of Nov. 26, 1941 actually set off the war (as the Army Pearl Harbor Board had charged) was apparently settled; it did not. Navy Secretary Forrestal reported the finding of documents in a sunken Jap vessel which showed that the Pearl Harbor attack had been approved by the Jap High Command early in November 1941 and that the Imperial General Headquarters had set the date at Dec. 7, 1941.

Whether or not the investigation will unearth many new facts about the U.S.'s greatest military debacle was open to question. But one thing was sure: it will be shot through with politics--on both sides.

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