Rev. Frank Hughes, Jr.
 
Jim and Joe at Old Dominion University
After completing studies at Bluefield College, which was then only a two-year Junior College, he transferred to finish at Old Dominion University (which was then called Old Dominion College).  His brother Jim completed some of his studies at Virginia Tech, then transferred to Old Dominion. He finished his degree at American University.
Bill Mitchell, pictured, was Chief Justice, Honor Court
Jim Hughes named as Student Government Attorney General:
Joe was elected to Sigma Beta Tau honorary leadership fraternity:
Joe also studied Planetarium operation under Professor Sherwood.  Here are some scenes from the Pretlow Planetarium, which was located beside the Chemistry Building:
The Chemistry Building, with the Pretlow Planetarium seen on the left side toward the back:
Professor Sherwood adjusts the Spitz A-3 instrument:
Next 2 photos are of the Astronomy lab instructors lecturing in the Planetarium.  In the second photo, you can see part of the control panel in the foreground:
This was the Spitz A-3 instrument we trained on:
Advanced course Astronomy students who were proficient in that area of Geophysical Science, and, having the permission of the professor, would be allowed to enroll in the Planetarium Operation course.  The students were required to produce several programs to be graded by Professor Sherwood.  Some I developed with classical music as background to the stars, planets, etc., being projected on the dome.  Here are some examples:
Some music I used was from Gustav Holst's "The Planets" Suite. One piece was used for a Sunrise, another for a Sunset, and other music for transitions.  In the following examples, I use here the music played by The Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Sir Charles Mackerras.

In the first example, I used Jupiter for a Sunrise sequence:
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GUSTAV HOLST: "THE PLANETS". JUPITER
I also used "Thus Spoke Zarathustra" for a Sunrise sequence.  Written by Richard Strauss, it was used in the film, "2001: A Space Odyssey." In this sequence, the London Philharmonic Orchestra performs:
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THUS SPOKE ZARATHUSTRA. SUNRISE
For transitions between various parts of a planetarium program, I used "Mars":
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GUSTAV HOLST "THE PLANETS". MARS
A good piece of music from "The Planets" was Venus for a Sunset sequence:
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GUSTAV HOLST "THE PLANETS". VENUS
"Sorcerer's Apprentice" was another good classical piece of music used to set the mood for several planet and star sequences:
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"SORCERER'S APPRENTICE" by Paul Dukas (Houston Youth Symphony)
Joe would later use his Astronomy and Planetarium skills in his first teaching position at Fork Union Military Academy as Assistant Planetarium Director. Here Joe stands in front of the science building with the planetarium which housed a Spitz A-4 Instrument:
More information about Dr. Jones:
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DR. FRANKLIN ROSS JONES
(Jim was so exceptional in the field of science and mathematics, that he took an entire year of Organic Chemistry in one summer at Old Dominion University and made an "A").

While at ODU, Jim and Joe both received "bids" to join Pi Kappa Phi; Joe also received one to Delta Sigma Phi.  Jim decided on Pi Kappa Phi, and Joe, Delta Sigma Phi.  My Big Brother was Jeff Hurwitz. Initiated: Feb 4, 1970.
Joe played on the Delta Sig volleyball team.
Jim attended VPI, transferred to ODU, then finished at American University while serving in the Virginia State Police in Northern Virginia. 

At ODU, Jim headed a committee to write an updated Honor Council booklet for student-wide distribution.

While at ODU, Jim collaborated with Joe to write "The Fraternities at ODU."  Here is a copy of the 1969 supplement:
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THE FRATERNITIES OF ODU. 1969 Supplement

Joe attended Bluefield College when it was a Junior College (2-year school), then transferred to Old Dominion College (which later became Old Dominion University) for his undergraduate degree.

He was later admitted to the Old Dominion University Graduate School (History),

Virginia Commonwealth University, University of Richmond Continuing Education, the University of Richmond Graduate School (Education),

and University of North Carolina (Professional and Continuing Education).
While at the University of Richmond Graduate School, Joe worked on a thesis dealing with Pre-Pearl Harbor Intelligence. 

His mentor professor told him that he was only one of five graduate students that, at that time, had read the most primary/secondary sources dealing with Pearl Harbor.  He was able to pinpoint and identify evidence that F.D.R. and his senior military officers, and Churchill, had prior knowledge of the pending attack on Pearl Harbor.  In research at the F.D.R. library, he found that F.D.R. had been bugging his own oval office with a wire-tap; a microphone hidden in his desk lamp (pre-Nixon) before it was discovered by other historians.

He corresponded with the late John Toland, who was one of the first historians to uncover evidence of prior knowledge of the attack.  He was able to see through much "fluff" generated in books thru the late 1980s, and still going on today, to some extent, by those who wish to ignore what is known in primary sources about the hard evidence of what F.D.R. and his senior military staff knew before the bombs started dropping, even as early as late November 1941.

While in the Army on active duty, Joe had the opportunity to meet and visit with Admiral Kimmel's grandson Thomas.
On December 3 and 6, 1941, a Dutch intelligence naval attache officer was shown a map of the Pacific area by U.S. Naval personnel in Washington, which pin-pointed the Japanese carrier force moving toward Hawaii. 
Admiral Johan Ranneft:

Dutch admiral recalled being shown location of Japanese fleet before it attacked Pearl Harbor

From UPI News, by Bruce Nichols


HOUSTON -- Adm. Johan Ranneft sometimes told of visiting the Navy Department in Washington the day before the Dec. 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor and being shown the location of a Japanese fleet near Hawaii.


Ranneft, who died Jan. 20 at the age of 95, was a captain in the Netherlands Navy at the time and was serving as the Dutch naval attache in Washington.


'Apparently he was standing around with some naval officers and they had the position of the Japanese fleet located on a map north of Pearl Harbor,' Ranneft's son, Theodore, said in an interview.


'He said, 'What's the purpose of these ships being there?' And the people made non-committal comments. Obviously at the time they hadn't really considered that these ships might attack Pearl Harbor. This is more or less the story I recall. I just don't know how significant it is.'


Admiral Ranneft's story is one of the main pieces of evidence cited by historian John Toland in his forthcoming book 'Infamy: Pearl Harbor and its Aftermath,' a account of interlocking events designed to show that Washington knew of the impending attack but did nothing about it.


In the book, to be published by Doubleday April 23, Toland says the presence of the Japanese fleet was never reported to U.S. commanders in Hawaii. He theorizes that President Franklin Roosevelt withheld the information to assure a surprise attack and thereby generate popular support for U.S. entry into World War II.


Toland interviewed Ranneft before his death and recovered in Holland the admiral's official diary, in which he noted that U.S. naval intelligence officers showed him the map location of the Japanese fleet on Dec. 2 and again on Dec. 6, the eve of the attack when the ships were reported to be 300 miles northwest of Hawaii.


In his official diary, Ranneft wrote on Dec. 2:

'Conference at Navy Department. ONI (Office of Naval Intelligence). They show me on map the position of two Japanese carriers (actually, there were six, plus supporting ships). They left Japan on easterly course.'


On Dec. 6, he wrote:

'I myself do not think about it because I believe that everyone in Honolulu is 100 percent on the alert, just as everyone here at ONI is.'


The younger Ranneft said that, the way his father told the story, neither he nor the American intelligence officers attached great significance to the nearness of the Japanese fleet to Hawaii.

'I don't think he at the time thought they were going to bomb Pearl Harbor,' Ranneft said. 'That seemed such a wild sort of thought, although there was tension, of course.


Ranneft said he does not think his father told him the story until some time after the war. 'It was just a story he sometimes told later on,' Ranneft said. 'I don't remember really when I first heard it. I couldn't give you a date.'


Ranneft does not know why it took historians so long to take an interest in his father. He said his father did not particularly keep the story to himself.


'I wouldn't say that he was all that garrulous,' Ranneft said. 'He didn't make any effort to go to the newspapers and say look here, I've got something that really might interest you.'


However, Ranneft said his father had an interesting life and had a lot of stories to tell his friends. The possibility that Pearl Harbor was not really a surprise to American officials was only one.


Johan Ranneft was born in Indonesia, raised in Holland, served in the Dutch Navy and then retired on a rear admiral's pension in 1947 to traveling and the hobby of archeology. He died in Houston of heart failure following surgery to repair a broken hip.


The son, a consulting geologist, said his father may have had access to such confidential information at the Navy Department because the Dutch were supplying intelligence from Indonesia, then the Netherlands East Indies.


Ranneft said his father and the Americans were quite friendly and his father received a special citation from the Navy in 1946 for helping obtain from the Swedish government the design of the 40mm Bofors automatic anticraft gun, which was used extensively by the Navy and Army during World War II.

 
British and Australian intelligence broke the Japanese Naval code (known to them as "Code D" and to the British and Americans, as the "5 Number Code" or "JN-25") as early as 1939.  Warnings to the U.S. were ignored in Washington.
Elliott R. Thorpe, a retired Army brigadier general who was chief of counterintelligence under Gen. Douglas A. MacArthur and who delivered an unheeded warning about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.  Thorpe was a military attaché in Dutch-controlled Java in December, 1941, when the Dutch broke a Japanese diplomatic code. One of the intercepted messages referred to planned Japanese attacks on Hawaii, the Philippines and Thailand.  Informed of the message by a Dutch general, Thorpe immediately cabled the information to Washington. But he found that his warning was not taken seriously. A week later, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.

From East Wind, Rain: The Intimate Account of an Intelligence Officer in the Pacific 1939-49 by Elliott R. Thorpe, Brigadier General U.S.A (Ret.), pp. 51-54.

I suppose the most important thing I ever did as an army intelligence officer was to notify Washington of the forthcoming attack on Pearl Harbor.

Prior to my hasty departure from Java, I burned my codes and records as well as several thousand dollars in American currency that had been sent to me for the Philippine relief project. Without my records, I must write the following with such assistance as I have been able to get from the records of the Congressional Pearl Harbor Investigation. Of the four messages I sent relating to the forthcoming Japanese attack, I find only one in detail in the record and that as I recall was the one sent December 5 (December 4, U.S. time). After the fourth message, I was directed by the War Department to send no more on the subject. This may have been because the War Department felt my dispatches might reach the wrong hands or for some other reason they considered adequate. In any event I sent no more of the Japanese intercepts being given me by the Dutch.


The Dutch army had in Java some of the world's best cryptanalysts. They had broken the official Japanese code and were sitting day after day recording the Japanese messages going in all directions over the Pacific as the preparations for the war in that area went on. Some of these dispatches merely moved Japanese units from one place to another, others gave directions to embassies and consulates as to their roles in the forthcoming struggle. Put together they gave a definite picture of what was about to happen.


Very early in December about two o'clock one afternoon, General Ter Poorten, commander in chief of the Dutch army, came to my office in a building ajacent to the D.V.O. This was most unusual, for it was customary that when the army chief wanted to talk with any of the foreign attaches he would send a request that they come to his office. Ter Poorten, whose wife had been captured by the Germans in Holland, lived alone and I was without my family, so we saw a good deal of each other at the club where we frequently ate or other such places. But during duty hours protocol was carfully observed.


As the general came into my office, after greeting me, he turned to my secretary and asked her to leave the room. When she had gone he locked the door, sat down, and said to me, "I have something here I believe of great importance to your government." He then unfolded a paper he was carrying and handed it to me. It was an intercept of a message from Tokyo to the Japanese Ambassador in Bangkok who was to direct the military action in that area.


The intercepted dispatch was a lengthy one and told of the upcoming attack on Hawaii, the Philippines, Malaya and Thailand. As these attacks were to take place simultaneously it would be necessary to have all fleets in the proper position when the attack signal was given. Weather at sea could not be completely predicted so it would be necessary to give the "go" signal from Tokyo. This would be given in the form of a weather broadcast over Radio Tokyo that would reach all involved in the vast effort at the same time. Hence this became known as the "Winds" message in the discussions that have followed the Pearl Harbor disaster.


The go signal for attack on the United States was "East Wind, Rain."

(After we took over in Japan following the surrender, I had an investigation made of the "Winds" message in an attempt to find out if was really used as the go signal. At that time the Japanese were eager to please and would say anything they thought you wanted said. One Radio Tokyo broadcaster definitely stated he gave out the "Winds" message, but the truth of the matter will probably never be known.)


After I had read the contents of the message I realized its importance. I said to him, "Sir, this is so important that with your permission I will go at once to Batavia and inform our senior State Department representative of it and then send it directly to Washington tonight." He agreed to this and I left at once. I found the afternoon plane to Batavia had already gone, so I took the three o'clock train arriving in Batavia about six thirty in the evening. Our consulate general had closed for the night, and I proceeded to Hotel Des Indes where both our consul general and senior naval attache lived.


I showed these two the information given me by General Ter Pooten. Commander Paul Slausson (later killed at Bougainville) agreed I had something of great importance. Our consul general, Dr. Walter Foote, belittled the matter and suggested I take no immediate action. However, I felt it was a matter of urgency and said I was sending it on to Washington at once.


As I had left my code books locked in the my safe in Bandung, I asked Slausson if I might use his code which was at hand to transmit my message. He agreed and we went to the consulate where his code was kept. It took two or three hours to encode the message and it was nearly midnight when we had completed the job. The main post office in Batavia handled the transmission of overseas messages. I found the doors locked, but by pounding on a back door got a member of the night staff to open up. I explained I had a message of great urgency and he agreed to put it on the cable at once.  I wanted it to go by cable rather than wireless for at that time we knew the cable had not been tapped by the Japs who were probably monitoring all wireless messages just as the Dutch were doing.


As I was using a naval code my message had to go to the War Department through navy communications center in Washington so that both the navy and the army became aware of the message as it was transmitted. Its receipt was acknowledged.


I have already mentioned that the consul general took a jaundiced view of my belief I had something of genuine importance. The next morning after I had dispatched the intercepted Jap message, I called on the consul general before returning to my station in Bandung. We talked over the matter of the dispatch I had sent and he volunteered to show me a message he had sent the State Department that morning. In it he had told the State Department I had shown him my information the previous evening and that he viewed it as being of uncertain origina and little value and added in effect that I was a new boy at school and when I was older I'd be wiser. Later the old boy was to send a few dispatches of his own that were unique, to say the least. This kindly old man was to cause real concern later in Australia.


As the days went by the Dutch crytanalysts came up with more intercepts bearing out the first one given me. I continued to read these revealing messages and watched the picture develop, but sent no more to our War Department as ordered.


About this time an American undercover gent showed up in Bandung with all the details of the Japanese fortifications and garrisons on Saipan and Tinian. I thought he had something of real importance, but advised him to take it in person to the U.S. army headquarters in Manila where he would probably get a better reception than I was getting from the Munitions Building [War Department] in Washington....






Don C. Smith, Director of War Service for the American Red Cross.

On November 29th, Secretary of State Cordell Hull secretly met with freelance newspaper writer Joseph Leib (seen in photo below). Leib had formerly held several posts in the Roosevelt administration. Hull knew him and felt he was one newsman he could trust. The secretary of state handed him copies of some of the Tokyo intercepts concerning Pearl Harbor. He said the Japanese were planning to strike the base and that FDR planned to let it happen…

The following two films will give you up-to-date information, much of which Joe dealt with during his studies at UR:
From the BBC, a film now in public domain:  "Sacrifice at Pearl Harbor":
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BBC: SACRIFICE AT PEARL HARBOR
"Pearl Harbor:  The New Evidence":
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PEARL HARBOR: THE NEW EVIDENCE
Doug Horne has contributed some of the newest information concerning Pearl Harbor.  He has written a two volume set which details the run up to the attack on Hawaii.

Horne was interviewed on the Midnight Writer's radio program and summarized his research.  The second half is especially insightful, as Horne reveals hard evidence that was in plain sight for years after the war that proved that F.D.R. knew ahead of time about the coming attack on Pearl Harbor:
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DOUGLAS HORNE INTERVIEW. PART 1
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DOUGLAS HORNE INTERVIEW. PART 2
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SLIDE NOTES BY DOUGLAS HORNE

Document Further Validates Horne’s Back-Door-To-War Thesis Regarding FDR and Pearl Harbor:
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Document Further Validates Horne’s Back-Door-To-War Thesis Regarding FDR and Pearl Harbor

It is a known fact that the U.S. Army and Navy both had code breaking units at work on the Japanese messages, and that neither branch got along with the other.  In fact, they did not share their information and were suspicious of the information being produced by the British and Australians.  This will become evident in the next two films.


Commander Alastair Cooper & his expert panel of Craig Collie, Vice Admiral Peter Jones, Dr Ian Pfennigwerth & Dr Joe Straczek analyse the code breaking efforts of the RAN during World War II.

Code Breaking & the RAN in World War II - Part 1:

Code Breaking & the RAN in World War II - Part 2:
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