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The Broken Seal: The Dramatic Story of 'Operation Magic' and the Pearl Harbour Disaster
Was there a conspiracy in the White House to maneuver the Japanese into war? Were the commanders in Hawaii derelict in their duty? Exactly how much did the United States know about Japanese intentions on the eve of Pearl Harbor? Here for the first time is the whole secret history of Japanese and American code-breaking operations between 1921 and 1941--a fascinating progression of clandestine events that culminated at Pearl Harbor.
For much of his life, Ladislas Farago was involved with intelligence. During WW II he served as Chief, Research and Planning, U.S. Naval Intelligence, Special Warfare Branch.
- GenresHistoryWorld War II
415 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1967
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143 people want to read
About the author
Ladislas Farago
45 books23 followersLadislas Farago was a military historian and journalist who published a number of best-selling books on history and espionage, especially concerning the World War II era.
He was the author of Patton: Ordeal and Triumph, the biography of General George Patton that formed the basis for the film "Patton" and wrote The Broken Seal, one of the books that formed the basis for the movie ''Tora! Tora! Tora!''.
One of his more controversial books was Aftermath: Martin Bormann and the Fourth Reich .
He was the author of Patton: Ordeal and Triumph, the biography of General George Patton that formed the basis for the film "Patton" and wrote The Broken Seal, one of the books that formed the basis for the movie ''Tora! Tora! Tora!''.
One of his more controversial books was Aftermath: Martin Bormann and the Fourth Reich .
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
June 16, 2025
The breaking of others’ codes, and the protection of one’s own codes, are fundamental to the work of any nation’s intelligence service. From the old times of code wheels to this modern age of supercomputers, it has always been so. And that top-secret "game of codes" takes on additional importance when two nations move from peace toward war, as Ladislas Farago demonstrates in The Broken Seal, his 1967 history of "Operation Magic" and the Secret Road to Pearl Harbor (the book's subtitle).
The Hungarian-born Farago made a name for himself as an historian of the United States’ involvement in the Second World War; and the year 1970 was a banner year for him, as The Broken Seal became part of the basis for a major motion picture – Tora! Tora! Tora!, a critically praised Academy Award winner that told the story of the Pearl Harbor attack from both the U.S. and Japanese perspectives. The filmmakers drew upon the writings of historian Gordon W. Prange for strategic and tactical details of the attack itself; but the first half of the film, which shows American codebreakers racing against time in a frantic attempt to gain advance knowledge of Japanese war plans, comes straight out of The Broken Seal.
The early chapters of The Broken Seal look back to the beginnings of a cryptological intelligence system for the United States’ government and military. From there, Farago moves rather quickly to the pre-World War II tensions between Imperial Japan and the United States of America. The Japanese government, controlled by militarists, was looking to launch a pre-emptive war that would enable it to seize much-needed resources in Southeast Asia and continue its campaign in China; meanwhile, the U.S. administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt was hoping that a combination of diplomacy with economic sanctions might forestall war while keeping Japanese imperial ambitions in check.
It is against that background that U.S. intelligence’s “Operation Magic” took shape. Farago explains well the strategic and tactical dimensions of Operation Magic:
At the suggestion of Admiral Anderson of ONI [the Office of Naval Intelligence], the word “Magic” was chosen as a generic cover name for the entire operation involving all of Japan’s diplomatic systems….“Magic,” when used with a capital M, denoted the whole operation in all its various phases; “magic,” with a lower-case m, stood for the decrypted intercept which it produced. The term was also designed as a security classification, higher than “top secret.” In the quaint vernacular of the project, the handful of people cleared for “Magic” were called Ultras. (p. 100)
As The Broken Seal progresses, one of the historical figures in the book who emerges as most sympathetic is Colonel Rufus S. Bratton. As chief of the Far Eastern Section for the War Department’s Military Intelligence Division, Colonel Bratton was privy to all of the intercepted Japanese transmissions making their way into American G-2 files. Colonel Bratton became convinced that a Japanese attack against U.S. forces was imminent. He even predicted a specific date – Sunday, November 30, 1941. He was only off by a week!
The first part of the film Tora! Tora! Tora! shows Bratton (well-played by E.G. Marshall) trying desperately to get someone, anyone, in higher authority to listen to him regarding the dangers of a Japanese attack. What the film does not show, and what Farago takes pains to point out, is that when a November 30th attack failed to materialize, Bratton suffered significant loss of credibility within the War Department, and came to be seen as an alarmist.
His ongoing and unsuccessful attempts, in the days before December 7th, to get his colleagues in the War Department to share his sense of the immediacy of the Japanese threat cause Colonel Bratton to emerge from the pages of The Broken Seal as something of a Cassandra figure. Like the Trojan princess from classical Greek mythology, he is blessed with the ability to see the future clearly, but cursed with the inability to persuade others to see what he sees.
Another of the strengths of The Broken Seal is the way Farago makes clear the potential consequences of the decisions regarding who can, and cannot, be trusted with secrets of national security. Farago asks, at the beginning of the book, why President Roosevelt, having seen a Japanese intercept and told his advisor Harry Hopkins “This means war,” did so little while the Japanese strike force was making its way toward Pearl Harbor. The answer, Farago suggests, is that F.D.R. was being kept – as a later U.S. President might have put it – “out of the loop.”
By every instrument of authority, the president of the United States sits at the apex of the American governmental pyramid. He is Chief Executive, Chief Magistrate, Commander-in-Chief….Under the Constitution, he may make treaties, reprieve doomed criminals, nominate the diplomatic corps, call men and women into the armed forces, name judges, commission officers, convene or adjourn Congress. Yet from May to November in 1941 the President was not allowed to see the “magics.” (p. 199)
The reason why F.D.R. was thus being kept in the dark was that one of Bratton’s top-secret memos was found in a White House trash basket. And Farago suggests that “It is impossible to say whether the course of history would have been different had the President been granted the privilege of seeing the ‘magics’ personally and regularly…if he could have obtained a wider perspective of the Japanese maneuvers from all of the pertinent ‘magics’ instead of getting his information second and third hand, and piecemeal” (p. 202).
Farago sets forth, in painstaking detail, the intelligence work and planning on both sides during the run-up to Pearl Harbor. One of the features of the book that I found most interesting related to the internal politics of the Japanese Empire on the eve of war. We all know that militarists held power in the empire, with a shrinking peace party decidedly in eclipse. Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, charged with charting a Japanese path forward toward victory, had designed a bold “Plan Z” for an attack against the U.S. Pacific Fleet, even though he felt that Japan’s prospects for winning a war against the United States were distant at best.
Against that backdrop, Farago focuses on “the Emperor’s demand that war be declared formally before the commencement of hostilities, as was mandatory under Article 1 of the Third Hague Convention, of which Japan was one of the signatories. ‘See to it,’ Hirohito had told General Tojo after the imperial conference, ‘that hostilities will not be started before the note is delivered” (p. 300).
The Emperor’s insistence on this point of national honour caused quite a stir. Would the note be a saigo no tsukoku (a “final notification”) or a saigo no tsucho (an “ultimatum”)? And then there was the opposition of the man who had developed the entire Pearl Harbor attack plan: “Admiral Yamamoto, who needed total surprise for the success of his ‘Plan Z,’ protested vigorously the very idea of such a note. He threatened to call off the Pearl Harbor operation if the Emperor and the Foreign Minister insisted on going through with the delivery of even the vaguest notification to the United States before the raid” (pp. 303-04).
The Broken Seal ends as the bombs begin falling on the battleships moored along Ford Island. Farago knows that the task of chronicling what happened afterward falls outside the scope of this book. I would suspect that this book is required reading for many people in the National Security Agency and other codebreaking agencies of the U.S. government, as it sets forth so well the high stakes that are involved in the making and breaking of codes.
The Hungarian-born Farago made a name for himself as an historian of the United States’ involvement in the Second World War; and the year 1970 was a banner year for him, as The Broken Seal became part of the basis for a major motion picture – Tora! Tora! Tora!, a critically praised Academy Award winner that told the story of the Pearl Harbor attack from both the U.S. and Japanese perspectives. The filmmakers drew upon the writings of historian Gordon W. Prange for strategic and tactical details of the attack itself; but the first half of the film, which shows American codebreakers racing against time in a frantic attempt to gain advance knowledge of Japanese war plans, comes straight out of The Broken Seal.
The early chapters of The Broken Seal look back to the beginnings of a cryptological intelligence system for the United States’ government and military. From there, Farago moves rather quickly to the pre-World War II tensions between Imperial Japan and the United States of America. The Japanese government, controlled by militarists, was looking to launch a pre-emptive war that would enable it to seize much-needed resources in Southeast Asia and continue its campaign in China; meanwhile, the U.S. administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt was hoping that a combination of diplomacy with economic sanctions might forestall war while keeping Japanese imperial ambitions in check.
It is against that background that U.S. intelligence’s “Operation Magic” took shape. Farago explains well the strategic and tactical dimensions of Operation Magic:
At the suggestion of Admiral Anderson of ONI [the Office of Naval Intelligence], the word “Magic” was chosen as a generic cover name for the entire operation involving all of Japan’s diplomatic systems….“Magic,” when used with a capital M, denoted the whole operation in all its various phases; “magic,” with a lower-case m, stood for the decrypted intercept which it produced. The term was also designed as a security classification, higher than “top secret.” In the quaint vernacular of the project, the handful of people cleared for “Magic” were called Ultras. (p. 100)
As The Broken Seal progresses, one of the historical figures in the book who emerges as most sympathetic is Colonel Rufus S. Bratton. As chief of the Far Eastern Section for the War Department’s Military Intelligence Division, Colonel Bratton was privy to all of the intercepted Japanese transmissions making their way into American G-2 files. Colonel Bratton became convinced that a Japanese attack against U.S. forces was imminent. He even predicted a specific date – Sunday, November 30, 1941. He was only off by a week!
The first part of the film Tora! Tora! Tora! shows Bratton (well-played by E.G. Marshall) trying desperately to get someone, anyone, in higher authority to listen to him regarding the dangers of a Japanese attack. What the film does not show, and what Farago takes pains to point out, is that when a November 30th attack failed to materialize, Bratton suffered significant loss of credibility within the War Department, and came to be seen as an alarmist.
His ongoing and unsuccessful attempts, in the days before December 7th, to get his colleagues in the War Department to share his sense of the immediacy of the Japanese threat cause Colonel Bratton to emerge from the pages of The Broken Seal as something of a Cassandra figure. Like the Trojan princess from classical Greek mythology, he is blessed with the ability to see the future clearly, but cursed with the inability to persuade others to see what he sees.
Another of the strengths of The Broken Seal is the way Farago makes clear the potential consequences of the decisions regarding who can, and cannot, be trusted with secrets of national security. Farago asks, at the beginning of the book, why President Roosevelt, having seen a Japanese intercept and told his advisor Harry Hopkins “This means war,” did so little while the Japanese strike force was making its way toward Pearl Harbor. The answer, Farago suggests, is that F.D.R. was being kept – as a later U.S. President might have put it – “out of the loop.”
By every instrument of authority, the president of the United States sits at the apex of the American governmental pyramid. He is Chief Executive, Chief Magistrate, Commander-in-Chief….Under the Constitution, he may make treaties, reprieve doomed criminals, nominate the diplomatic corps, call men and women into the armed forces, name judges, commission officers, convene or adjourn Congress. Yet from May to November in 1941 the President was not allowed to see the “magics.” (p. 199)
The reason why F.D.R. was thus being kept in the dark was that one of Bratton’s top-secret memos was found in a White House trash basket. And Farago suggests that “It is impossible to say whether the course of history would have been different had the President been granted the privilege of seeing the ‘magics’ personally and regularly…if he could have obtained a wider perspective of the Japanese maneuvers from all of the pertinent ‘magics’ instead of getting his information second and third hand, and piecemeal” (p. 202).
Farago sets forth, in painstaking detail, the intelligence work and planning on both sides during the run-up to Pearl Harbor. One of the features of the book that I found most interesting related to the internal politics of the Japanese Empire on the eve of war. We all know that militarists held power in the empire, with a shrinking peace party decidedly in eclipse. Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, charged with charting a Japanese path forward toward victory, had designed a bold “Plan Z” for an attack against the U.S. Pacific Fleet, even though he felt that Japan’s prospects for winning a war against the United States were distant at best.
Against that backdrop, Farago focuses on “the Emperor’s demand that war be declared formally before the commencement of hostilities, as was mandatory under Article 1 of the Third Hague Convention, of which Japan was one of the signatories. ‘See to it,’ Hirohito had told General Tojo after the imperial conference, ‘that hostilities will not be started before the note is delivered” (p. 300).
The Emperor’s insistence on this point of national honour caused quite a stir. Would the note be a saigo no tsukoku (a “final notification”) or a saigo no tsucho (an “ultimatum”)? And then there was the opposition of the man who had developed the entire Pearl Harbor attack plan: “Admiral Yamamoto, who needed total surprise for the success of his ‘Plan Z,’ protested vigorously the very idea of such a note. He threatened to call off the Pearl Harbor operation if the Emperor and the Foreign Minister insisted on going through with the delivery of even the vaguest notification to the United States before the raid” (pp. 303-04).
The Broken Seal ends as the bombs begin falling on the battleships moored along Ford Island. Farago knows that the task of chronicling what happened afterward falls outside the scope of this book. I would suspect that this book is required reading for many people in the National Security Agency and other codebreaking agencies of the U.S. government, as it sets forth so well the high stakes that are involved in the making and breaking of codes.
April 13, 2020
Dad was an army cryptanalyst during WWII, serving on shipboard during the actions in N. Africa, Sicily and the Philippines, all instances involving army troops transported from navy ships. At the same time author Farago was with Naval Intelligence as chief of research and planning. Dad's involvement in this aspect of the war has led me to read many books on the topic, several of them by Farago.
This particular, rather well written book details the decipherment of Japanese cyphers and codes from 1919 until December 1941's attack on Pearl Harbor. As regards this topic there has long been a dispute about why the U.S.A. was so unprepared in both Hawaii and the Philippines despite many indications that Japan intended to attack. One is, of course, reminded of a similar controversy as regards 9/11. In this case, Farago sees no nefarious scheme on the part of the Roosevelt administration, just the all-too-usual failings of communication within large organizations faced with novel circumstances.
This particular, rather well written book details the decipherment of Japanese cyphers and codes from 1919 until December 1941's attack on Pearl Harbor. As regards this topic there has long been a dispute about why the U.S.A. was so unprepared in both Hawaii and the Philippines despite many indications that Japan intended to attack. One is, of course, reminded of a similar controversy as regards 9/11. In this case, Farago sees no nefarious scheme on the part of the Roosevelt administration, just the all-too-usual failings of communication within large organizations faced with novel circumstances.
March 10, 2018
Flawless, detailed research and solid, near-narrative writing. Farago brings this story alive. After WW I, by chance and by curiosity, some clever people broke some Japanese codes, enabling them to keep track of Japanese intentions. Fast forward to the late 1930s. Teams of code breakers have beaten the unbreakable Japanese diplomatic codes and are able to read all the communications between the Tokyo government and its embassies, including the consulate in Hawaii.
Late 1941. Will the Japanese back down? Withdraw from China? Or escalate, perhaps attack the U.S., the Philippines, the Dutch East Indies, Singapore. It turns out the Japs are running a spy ring through their Hawaii consulate. The U.S. is reading the messages, except when they're not. In November, 1941, Tokyo to spymaster: please report daily on which ships are in Pearl Harbor and whether there are anti-torpedo nets in place along the battleships and whether there are barrage balloons in use or available for use. Does that suggest anything? Sadly, the signs were missed.
Late 1941. Will the Japanese back down? Withdraw from China? Or escalate, perhaps attack the U.S., the Philippines, the Dutch East Indies, Singapore. It turns out the Japs are running a spy ring through their Hawaii consulate. The U.S. is reading the messages, except when they're not. In November, 1941, Tokyo to spymaster: please report daily on which ships are in Pearl Harbor and whether there are anti-torpedo nets in place along the battleships and whether there are barrage balloons in use or available for use. Does that suggest anything? Sadly, the signs were missed.
June 8, 2017
This was an interesting read. It explores the events leading up to Pearl Harbor. I found this compilation to be interesting and pretty disturbing. I was shocked to learn that warnings could have been given prior to the events on that fateful day, but because of bureaucratic ineptitude, warnings were not issued. I thought it was a great opportunity to learn more about the day that went down in infamy. A very worthy read. I learned a lot.
April 23, 2023
Fills in all the blanks about Pearl Harbor
I wish I had read this book years ago. The description of the Japanese and American deliberations leading up to Pearl Harbor are critical to understanding what the principals were thinking and how they acted. One question that always stood out in my mind was why Japan never attacked the Soviets and why they did not simply attack the Dutch for the oil they needed. This book came to my attention because it was one of the primary sources for Tora Tora Tora.
I wish I had read this book years ago. The description of the Japanese and American deliberations leading up to Pearl Harbor are critical to understanding what the principals were thinking and how they acted. One question that always stood out in my mind was why Japan never attacked the Soviets and why they did not simply attack the Dutch for the oil they needed. This book came to my attention because it was one of the primary sources for Tora Tora Tora.
wohnung
February 1, 2023Deutsch: Codebrecher am Werk
December 8, 2024
Before you read any book about what happenend to Pearl Harbor in December 1941, read this book!
The US was warned by several countries and even its own Intel service that an attack was imminent. Where was not yet known. But it is unbelievable that many of these warnings were lost in the slow "chain of command" and the unbelief that the US would be involved in WW2. The US Navy could have been ready at high alert and if all measures had been taken after the first warnings an attack could even have been prevented!
Also worth reading from Farago is "The games of the foxes" about the intel war before and during WW2.
The US was warned by several countries and even its own Intel service that an attack was imminent. Where was not yet known. But it is unbelievable that many of these warnings were lost in the slow "chain of command" and the unbelief that the US would be involved in WW2. The US Navy could have been ready at high alert and if all measures had been taken after the first warnings an attack could even have been prevented!
Also worth reading from Farago is "The games of the foxes" about the intel war before and during WW2.
April 25, 2015
I read this book in a Reader's Digest Condensed Books version from 1967, and I have not read many of their condensed books. I do not ordinarily read books about war, but I thought a book about code-breaking would be interesting.
I found it difficult to keep track of all the people mentioned in the book. One paragraph mentioned a president of another country, and in a later sentence mentioned The President, and I wasn't sure whether the reference was to the president of the United States or the president of the other country. Also at times I wasn't sure whether the action was taking place in Washington D.C. or in Hawaii since the version I was reading jumped from place to place.
I really don't know whether my problems reading this book were due to changes made to condense the book or due to the fact that I don't usually read this type of story. I read many sentences and paragraphs a second or third time in an attempt to understand what I was reading.
I found it difficult to keep track of all the people mentioned in the book. One paragraph mentioned a president of another country, and in a later sentence mentioned The President, and I wasn't sure whether the reference was to the president of the United States or the president of the other country. Also at times I wasn't sure whether the action was taking place in Washington D.C. or in Hawaii since the version I was reading jumped from place to place.
I really don't know whether my problems reading this book were due to changes made to condense the book or due to the fact that I don't usually read this type of story. I read many sentences and paragraphs a second or third time in an attempt to understand what I was reading.
November 11, 2014
I had a special interest in this book that has been on our bookshelf for some time. William Friedman, who broke the Japanese code PURPLE, was my wife's great uncle, and my father-in-law, Evans R. (Sam) Thomas, was aboard the U.S.S. Utah when it was torpedoed and sunk at the attack on Pearl Harbor. I never had the privilege to meet either as both were deceased before I met Lynne, my wife. It was very fascinating to read this book on the various events that led up to Pearl Harbor. The book was necessarily very detailed, but very informative and intriguing. The events were well-documented. It was well put together as I can imagine the effort that had to go in to digging up and reconstructing the information and putting it together to make sense to the reader from the chaos that was World War II. I recommend it.
January 9, 2013
In 1941 there were two code names in American Naval Intelligence for the Japanese diplomatic and Naval codes. They were Purple and Magic, this book takes you into the days leading up to December 7, 1941 and the rush to break the codes. It also brought up some interesting insights about moving the Pacific Fleet from San Francisco to Pearl Harbor in 1940 which was a direct threat to Imperial Japan. Much of the movie "Tora Tora Tora" is based on this book, if you know very little about the Pearl Harbor attack this is an excellent book to read.
May 24, 2016
Very frustrating to read all the chances we had to either
stop Pearl Harbor or to at least save many lives. The lack of communication between branches of the military foiled many of the chances of getting decoded messages that made it clear the Japanese were heading towards Pearl Harbor. I wish I could say all this red tape, bureaucracy, and lack of coordination has been remedied, but with our warring Congress, it probably has not been repaired. It is a book that all military people and politicians should read...and cringe.
stop Pearl Harbor or to at least save many lives. The lack of communication between branches of the military foiled many of the chances of getting decoded messages that made it clear the Japanese were heading towards Pearl Harbor. I wish I could say all this red tape, bureaucracy, and lack of coordination has been remedied, but with our warring Congress, it probably has not been repaired. It is a book that all military people and politicians should read...and cringe.
May 4, 2013
Read how the ASA, the Army Security Agency, known as the SIS, Signal Intelligence Service, in World War II, solved the Japanese diplomatic code and designed a machine to decipher it.
" 'the basic trouble was,' Admiral Ernest J. King, Stark's successor as CNO, told Admiral Zacharias, 'that the Navy failed to appreciate what the Japanese could and did do.' " (page 368)
" 'the basic trouble was,' Admiral Ernest J. King, Stark's successor as CNO, told Admiral Zacharias, 'that the Navy failed to appreciate what the Japanese could and did do.' " (page 368)
June 21, 2010
Dated in places, and a little too inclined toward the point of view that the Roosevelt administration let the attack on Pearl Harbor happen for my taste. But overall, a good read and made some valuable contributions to the chronology especially.
March 1, 2016
The Broken Seal: The Story of Peration Macig and the Pearl Harbor Disaster. RDC-B, @ 1967, 9/70. Was there a conspiracy in the White House to maneuver the Japanese into war? Interesting book.
September 3, 2018
loved the detail.
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews