Mystery Advertisements!

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31318, 14 March 1967, Page 10

Mystery Advertisements!

(N.Z. Preu Aun.—Copyright; NEW YORK, Mar. 12. Two mysterious advertisements which appeared in the “New Yorker” magazine 26 years ago could have been a code to inform Japanese agents of the coming attack on Pearl Harbour, according to a leading military historian.

In a book to be published on Monday, Ladislas Farago,

chief of research and planning in the Special Warfare Branch of the Office of Naval Intelligence during the Second World War, wrote that the advertisements appeared 16 days before the Japanese attack. The advertisements were for a dice game, and the numbers on the dice could have given agents the date, time and place of the attack, Mr Farago said. The book is called "The Broken Seal.** The publisher, Random House, said it details exhaustively for the first time the entire secret history of Japanese and American code-breaking operations between 1921 and the United States entry into the Second World Wir. No Company Mr Farago wrote that he discovered the advertisements while doing research for the book. The advertisements were bought by a man for the "Monarch Publishing Company” of New York. A later check disclosed that no company by that name existed at that time. The first advertisement was one column wide and two inches deep and appeared on page 32 of the "New Yorker." The headline was "Achtung,

warning, alerte,” and it then referred readers to page 86 On page 86 another full column advertisement ran the same headline. An illustration under the headline depicted people in an underground air raid shelter gathered around a dice table while overhead, searchlight beams probed the sky and bombs or ack-ack shells exploded. The advertisement said: “We hope you’ll never have to spend a long winter-night in an air raid shelter, but we were just thinking it’s only common sense to be prepared." The advertisement then listed canned goods, candles, water, cigarettes, blankets, vitamin pills, books and other items a person should have on hand. Dice Game It concluded with a suggestion to include “those intriguing dice and chips which make Chicago's favourite game—the “deadly double."

The people in the illustration appeared to be playing

“the deadly double.” The dice in the illustration showed the numbers 12 and 7, presumably indicating December 7, the date of the attack, 0 and 5, for 5 a.m., the departure time for the Japanese air strike against Hawaii, and the Roman numerals XX, or 20, the approximate latitude of Pearl Harbour. “It’s amazing how simple this code was,” wrote Mr Farago. “All that is known is that the advertisement was bought and paid for by a man who apparently remains unknown to the public to this day.”