Saturday, October 16

Pearl Harbour Attack Shown In Advance In Advertisements

Pearl Harbor advertisementI'm back to World War 2 again for a coincidence today and to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. A question raised at the time was about how the attack details may have been sent in advance to agents via advertisements in The New Yorker. Or there again the ads may just have been a pure coincidence.

There were two advertisements in question, both for a new dice game called The Deadly Double. Each ad had a headline of Achtung, Warning, Alerte! and were placed in the newspaper sixteen days prior to the attack.

The smaller of these advertisements - see top right of this post - showed two dice, one black and one white. On the white dice were the numbers 12 and 24 and also XX, which would be 20 in Roman numerals. The black dice showed the numbers of 0, 5 and 7.

Pearl Harbor Deadly Double advertIt was claimed at the time that the 12 and 7 could have referred to the date of the attack (December 7); 5 and 0 may have indicated the time of the attack and the XX (20) might have stood for an approximate latitude of the target.

As for the other advert (see left) at the bottom were the words THE DEADLY DOUBLE and underneath this was a double headed heraldic eagle with a shield bearing a double cross (XX). This was all very similar to the armorial device of Germany.

These suspicions were taken seriously enough to be investigated by FBI agents and they made visits to the people who had placed the advertisements. These were a Mr and Mrs Roger Craig.

The game turned out to be legitimate and was sold in several New York stores.

The fact that the US government had looked into the matter was kept under wraps until 1967 when a U.S naval intelligence officer, Ladislas Farago, broke the story in a press release for a book he had written called The Broken Seal.

At the time Roger Craig's widow was emphatic that any connection between the advertisements and Pearl Harbor 'was just one big coincidence.'

In some ways this is a similar coincidence story to WW2 Code Names Found In Crosswords. Though both episodes were completely unproven there still remains opinion in some quarters that these were more than just coincidence.

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9 comments:

  1. interesting story but dont you think its possible to read things into all sorts of other things if you look for them

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  2. One big coincidence?! This one resonates as a trickster synchro!

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  3. Anonymous17:50

    This post is part of a synchronicity for me today. :)

    WWII is rarely a topic in my life, except what you post and usually it is just an interesting story to me. But earlier this week I was reviewing a project for a friend and there were a lot of WWII references that I had to point out had no connection with the core story. Eventually, (it's hard to let some things go) he agreed to pull out the war references and we brainstormed the core story.

    Now, this morning before I read your post, here's what happened.

    A friend, has her 1st book coming out in March. It's a WWII love story based on her grandparents letters during the war. Today she posted on our writer loop that her UK editor wants her to request WWII letters to add to her website. And I have one, and only one, sent from my dad to his mom when his discharge after the war was delayed, again.

    My mind was busy with all the connections between the project in process and the book; letters, references to "Band of Brothers", and that I only mention this letter in my memoir because it didn't relate to the core story, which is a love story. :)

    Then I imagined all kinds of future marketing connections too! Yet neither the book, my memoir, or this future project relate in any way, or are even available to promote because they are still in process!

    So that made me feel it was a synchronicity, a coincidence of merit, an important message. I need 3 really obvious (to me) connections to go past "interesting" to "pay attention!" Which I figured I already had, until I saw this post and the WWII topic.

    So I'm laughing that, though I was already considering the importance of these connections of letters, WWII, and future books/projects that will have a networked connection, this post sealed the deal in my mind. Especially because it was UK editor that initiated it all, and you, Mike are in the UK.

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  4. Anonymous18:01

    One more point: my dad was stationed in Pearl Harbor. :)

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  5. Terri: Very interesting comment, especially the Pearl Harbor connection.

    It's strange about the WW2 stories I publish as I don't go looking for them - they seem to appear from various sources.

    I just feel that I can't ignore them as I have also come across old photos from relatives from the war plus other items. It's almost like I'm being pushed in that direction and - at the moment - I'm not sure why.

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  6. Anonymous11:19

    Strange nobody seems to have posted about this. It really shocked me!
    It says MONARCH publishing. I don't know about your knowledge about Project Monarch and MK ULtra, but this is no coincidence. Especially with the double headed eagle and his occult meaning. Try looking into that if you will Mike. Would like to know what you make of it. Interesting post; thanks!

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  7. here were numerous warnings prior to the attack. There was also a steady build up of hostilities from the Japanese side. However, no officer or commander expected the Japanese to attack Pearl Harbour without prior declaration of war. Cryptography and cryptanalysis were in their nascent stage during the attack on pearl Harbour. Cryptanalysts on duty during the attack lacked proper equipment and funds. In addition, they were under-manned. Instead of concentrating on naval messages, their focus lay on diplomatic traffic of Japan.

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  8. Although WW2 was obviously of complex origins, whether it could have been avoided or not is an unanswerable question. History was what it was, not what it might have been. What seems inescapable is that for Germany, Japan, Gt. Britain and the USA, WW2 was a war for empire. Gt. Britain certainly did not fight to liberate the subject peoples of Asia. Ironically it was Russia who gained empire, albeit temporarily. Germany and Japan failed in their imperialist ambitions; Britain lost an empire, already in terminal decline. The USA expanded its empire, maintaining, as it does to this day, that it was no such thing; but that depends what you mean by empire of course.

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  9. Anonymous22:28

    I have an original "Deadly Double" game set. I have been curious if there might be a place for it in a museum or archive of some sort. The game was given to me by a family friend who was a cryptanalyst during WWII. He made numerous references to its relavence but would never actually say if the story behind it was true. He ha since passed away...

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