Musician Cryptologists: The Band of the USS California at Pearl Harbor and Beyond

Abstract

Working from the basement of US Pacific Fleet Headquarters in Pearl Harbor from 1941, a small team of navy cryptanalysts and linguists known as the Combat Intelligence Unit (CIU) provided the US Pacific Fleet Command with timely details of the capabilities and intentions of the Japanese Imperial Navy (IJN) in the Pacific. A substantial portion of the CIU was comprised of 20 enlisted musicians of US Navy Unit Band 16, the band of the USS California (BB-44), who survived the sinking of their ship in the attack of December 7, 1941. The musicians were recruited to Combat Intelligence, retrained to perform tasks related to the deciphering of Japanese Naval Code JN-25b, and contributed to that unit’s celebrated intelligence successes of 1942. As the war waged on, several musicians from Band 16 transferred to the Naval Communications Complex at Nebraska Avenue in Washington DC, and three eventually joined the National Security Agency (NSA) and served through the height of the Cold War.