Out of the Pearl Harbor investigation last week came a decoded telephone conversation made on November 27, 1941, two weeks before the Japanese attacked, that had all the elements of a penny-dreadful spy thriller… On the Washington end of the trans-pacific phone call was Saburo Kurusu, Japanese special envoy to the United States; on the Tokyo end, Admiral Yeisuke Yamamoto, Chief of the American Division of the Japanese Foreign Office.
The conversation guaranteed Yamamoto that the negotiations between the two sides were proceeding smoothly and that the attack on Pearl Harbor would be a surprise.