Fred Parker donated a box of his personal papers to the Foundation for transfer to the NCM Library. Included in the donation were slides and text for Fred’s superb lectures on the role of communications intelligence (COMINT) in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, and the battles of Midway and the Coral Sea.
Other items of note included NSA’s response to a Freedom of Information request for 188 Japanese naval messages intercepted prior to the 7 December 1941 attack. These messages were not decrypted at the time of intercept because the U.S. was not able to read the Japanese JN-25 naval cipher at that time (the first break-through came in March, 1942). Post war analysis of these 188 messages, in the aggregate, would clearly have indicated Japanese intentions.
Other items included multiple copies of Fred’s superb papers on "The Unsolved Messages of Pearl Harbor" (Cryptologia, October 1991), and "How OP20G Got Rid of Joe Rochefort" (Cryptologia, July 2000). Numerous files of correspondence between Fred and various historians, authors and Pearl Harbor conspiracy theorists were also included. Of particular note was a poignant exchange between Fred and Admiral Husband Kimmel’s family. Admiral Kimmel was the Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet at the time of the Japanese attack. Kimmel and Army LtGen Walter Short (military commander responsible for the defense of Hawaii) were relieved of command and reduced in rank shortly after the attack. Admiral Kimmel’s family attempted in vain to clear his name and have his four-star rank re-instated. They achieved some measure of success when in May 1995 the Senate passed a non-binding resolution exonerating Kimmel and Short from blame. However, successive Presidents and administrations declined to reinstate both to their former ranks.
Originally posted 12/15/11
