Hi Dan, Don, Vicki and all of the researchers of the family tree! Wow! This is an impressive step. I wonder if other families can match this effort? You have put together for all of the family the dream that was totally beyond my ken before I was already 50 years old. I am happy that I was able to contribute the work of Wes Tryon that could easily have been lost on his death, as I don't think anyone in his family would have kept it all. To think that I had forgotten that he gave it to me finally because he realized that his family was not interested,and then Dan and Don encouraged me to look for and find it! Now that we have a living data base, it can be encouraging to many others to update it. I have one such to add now! Our youngest daughter Amy Colwell Tryon Thornbury delivered our seventh grandchild on Nov. 18, 1997 in Boulder, Colorado and she is named Catherine Anne Thornbury. You may add it to the data base on this tiny branch of a great family! Coincidentally with this message and on this historic date, I share with all a letter just sent to the local paper that printed a story on Pearl Harbor 1941. I came down stairs from my guest room here in Colorado where we are enjoying the new born, whistling "Just remember Pearl Harbor" and "Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition". Some of you will remember those songs. Few of you will know about the letter that I sent back to the paper for the author of the story. Here it is for your diversion and information: Dick Tryon Boulder Colorado Daily Camera Dear J Marshall: Dec.7,1997 Please forward another letter for me, if possible, to Neal Thompson of the Baltimore Sun, whose piece ran today under the heading of "Nation" as I may have a little extra knowledge for him on the history of Pearl Harbor from a book I am publishing by former Ambassador William D. Pawley. Pawley died in 1978, but left an unpublished manuscript entitled "Why the Communists are Winning". In this manuscript Pawley details how he was able to visit Pearl Harbor in 1940 on the way back to the U.S. from his aviation business in China. He was on the way to obtaining permission from FDR to 'look the other way' so Pawley could recruit Navy and Army Air Corps pilots to come to China in violation of the neutrality act. He also represented Curtiss-Wright and that let him export aircraft parts that got to China by way of Rangoon, Burma where they were assembled in the P-40's of the Flying Tigers! Yes, Claire Chennault was the famous leader,but Pawley made it possible. For Neil Thompson, if he has not already read "And I was there" by Rear Admiral Leyton, he should get it and read it. It answered for me a question that burned in my mind for almost 45 years! I was just nine when the radio in my friend's house told of a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor one week before it happened! I ran home to mom and asked what this meant? She turned on the radio and shortly found out that the report was just another rumor. I found it hard to believe a week later than men could be caught napping and 'asleep at the switch', as we said in the days of railroad parlance, after such a warning. I didn't think they would have caught me! I read everything I could find for years to prove my father's theory that Roosevelt set us up. He was wrong! Until Leyton's facts were declassified forty years later, he could not tell the full story of his work in Naval intelligence in Washington, where one of his female specialists broke the Japanese diplomatic code; or of his time with Admiral Kimmel that led to his book title when he uttered it in front of a room full of Naval officers aboard the U.S.S. Missouri in Tokyo Bay, that included the famous 'Bulldog' Turner. This was the same Turner, who led the Marine and Naval actions all the way to Tokyo, and Leyton had the temerity to say publicly that the admiral was wrong in blaming Kimmel! The Admiral asked Leyton, in very clear naval parlance as he spoke to a very junior officer who spoke out in front of such an audience, just after the signing of the unconditional surrender, words to the effect- "How dare you contradict me?" Leyton replied that he had to because as Admiral Kimmel's intelligence officer, he knew what the Admiral knew "and I was there". The book shows that it was the same Turner, who had been the Director of Naval Planning, that got Admiral Stark to allow him to also control Naval Intelligence because he claimed he could not do good planning without controlling the intelligence section too. I suspect that Admiral Turner may have wondered what he could do to avoid becoming the goat? In mid 1941 Turner was afraid that the Japanese would learn of our code breaking if he continued the intelligence practice of sharing this information with commanders at places like Manila and Pear Harbor, so he cut off the distribution of it. He also was convinced that the Japanese Foreign Minister was going to succeed in getting the military high-command to attack Russia from the East when Hitler invaded from the West in July of 1941. He failed to realize that the oil embargo gave Japan a greater will to attack the East Indies to get the oil and to expand its Asian sphere of control, which it did. To guard its left flank against the U.S. Navy, the secret plan to attack Pearl Harbor was the solution. If they had skipped the obsolete battleships and attacked the oil tank farm on the other side of the bay,as Leyton pointed out to his Japanese counterparts in Japanese intelligence, they would have disabled the entire Pacific fleet and forced it to steam with remaining fuel to California! That was their mistake! Pawley,as noted, stopped in Pearl Harbor with knowledge of the secret plan learned in China where Russian, German and other spies were at work. He informed the commanders before Kimmel and Stark of this knowledge and they took action to avoid such an attack. But, Turner sent orders and new commanders to concentrate on the fear of sabotage, not air attack! He didn't expect the terrible consequence and neither did anyone else except people like Pawley. We were at peace and arrogant of our power and could not conceive of a surprise attack. Gentlemen fought wars, but they were honorable and declared their intent before the attack. I hope that Neal Thompson will share this information with Edward Kimmel. I believe that Pawley's words include other evidences to prove that his father was innocent of wrong-doing. For that matter so is FDR! He knew on Saturday night, Dec. 6 of the plan to attack in the early 7 a.m. raid on Sunday. He was not informed in time because his navy friends - he was a former naval person of significance- could not get the message delivered in time. They found the naval communications radio system to be out of order until the technicians could fix it on Monday - it was peacetime. They considered asking the Army to send the news, but didn't want to admit to the Army that they could not do the job, so they sent the message via Western Union. It was on the bike at 7a.m. that was being pedaled toward Pearl Harbor when the bombs delivered the message first! If the President and Secretary of Defense were able to know this information, they could exonerate Kimmel and Stark without doing violence to FDR, who may have wanted such an incident to wake up the isolationist American people to the danger of the Axis, but the truth is he didn't cause it. Of course, to exonerate now would be to admit governmental failure in 'pinning the tail' on the wrong donkey and then sticking to the story. But, there is no reason to hide the truth from the citizens! They can know that the Pearl Harbor surprise was the result of human error in depending upon an intelligence system that was corrupted and partially disabled by Turner, and a radio communication system that failed when it was most needed on the night of Dec. 6, 1941. Regards, Richard R. Tryon about to be off from Niwot to Humacao, P.R. for the winter.I would love to hear from Edward Turner and Neal Thompson either via e-mail to mobydicki@aol.com or fax to 787-850-2586 after Dec. 16 if my communication phone line is working! Yes, you may also print this story.