For three months, the man who authorized the attack on Pearl Harbor unknowingly carried a secret message in his mouth: “Remember Pearl Harbor.” The astonishing act of subtle revenge was orchestrated by a 22-year-old Navy dentist, Lt. j.g. Jack Mallory, while Tojo awaited trial as a war criminal.
A Dentist’s Quiet Retribution
The story of a hidden message etched into the dentures of a wartime enemy.
- In 1946-47, Lt. j.g. Jack Mallory crafted dentures for former Japanese Prime Minister Hideki Tojo.
- Mallory secretly engraved “Remember Pearl Harbor” in Morse code on the inside of the dentures.
- The prank remained undiscovered until years later, becoming a remarkable footnote in WWII history.
On September 11, 1945, American soldiers surrounded the Tokyo home of Hideki Tojo in the Setagaya district, intent on arresting him. Rather than surrender, the former prime minister attempted suicide, shooting himself in the chest with a .32-caliber Colt revolver. A doctor marked the location of the wound with charcoal, but the bullet missed a vital organ. In a striking turn of events, American medics transfused Tojo with American blood, saving his life.
Following his recovery, Tojo was transferred to Sugamo Prison to await trial. He had served as Japan’s prime minister from October 1941 through July 1944, becoming, through wartime propaganda, the face of the enemy alongside Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. For millions of Americans, Tojo was directly responsible for the surprise attack on December 7, 1941, which claimed 2,403 lives and propelled the United States into the deadliest conflict in human history.
By the time Tojo arrived at Sugamo, his dental health was in dire condition. All of his upper teeth had been extracted or decayed, leaving only seven remaining in his lower jaw. He required dentures to effectively speak during his upcoming war crimes trial, and the task fell to the dental team at the nearby 361st Station Hospital in Tokyo.
Jack Mallory: A Dental Officer’s Opportunity
E.J. “Jack” Mallory graduated from the College of Physicians and Surgeons in San Francisco in 1945 and soon after married his wife, Thelma. He volunteered for an overseas assignment in August 1946. The Navy, with a surplus of dentists, was assigning approximately 800 to the Army. Mallory ended up at the 361st Station Hospital, where he fabricated dentures and bridges for both staff and inmates at nearby Sugamo Prison.
His roommate, Lt. j.g. George Foster, an oral surgeon, was initially called to examine Tojo. Foster assessed the damage and enlisted Mallory’s expertise for the prosthetics. Mallory recommended a full set of upper and lower dentures, but Tojo declined, stating through a Japanese interpreter that he anticipated execution and didn’t want to waste anyone’s time. They ultimately agreed on an upper plate only.
Mallory, having seen countless wartime caricatures of Tojo, confessed he expected to encounter a monstrous figure. “I knew I was going to meet an evil man. It was a shock to see him,” Mallory told the Chico News & Review in 2002. “He was very humble and just a meek, little guy.”
Word of Mallory’s assignment quickly spread throughout the hospital.
A Secret Message in Morse Code
Standard military protocol dictated engraving a patient’s name, rank, and serial number onto dental appliances. As soon as his colleagues learned Mallory was crafting dentures for Tojo, they urged him to replace the standard inscription with a different message. Several suggestions were offered.
Mallory, tempted by the opportunity, knew a plainly written message would be immediately detected and could jeopardize his career. However, Mallory was a skilled amateur ham radio operator, fluent in Morse code. He meticulously drilled a unique phrase into the upper denture as a series of dots and dashes along the inner border where the acrylic met the roof of Tojo’s mouth. The Morse code message read:
Remember Pearl Harbor
“You could see it clearly when it was dried, but 99 percent of the time you couldn’t tell,” Mallory explained. Only Foster was aware of Mallory’s clandestine act. As Foster later wrote in 1988, “I figured it was my duty to carry out the assignment. But that didn’t mean I couldn’t have fun with it.”
Tojo accepted his new upper plate without suspicion. For the next three months, the architect of the Pearl Harbor attack continued to speak and prepare for his trial with an American message concealed within his mouth, completely unaware of its existence.
The Secret Unravels
Mallory initially kept the prank confidential. However, in February 1947, two new dental recruits arrived at the hospital, and he couldn’t resist boasting about his handiwork. He took them to Sugamo Prison, asked Tojo for permission to examine the dentures, and revealed his secret to the newcomers.
“We took them on an excursion to the prison to show them our masterpiece,” Mallory told the Associated Press in 1995. “The only ones in on this were my dentist, roommates and myself, all sworn to secrecy.”
Secrecy didn’t last long. One of the new recruits wrote a letter to his parents in Texas, who passed it on to a relative who broadcast it on a local radio station. The story was picked up by wire services, and the tale of Tojo’s teeth quickly made headlines worldwide.
When the Armed Forces radio station in Tokyo, WVTR, aired the story, Mallory feared for his career and rushed to confess to his commanding officer, Army Maj. William Hill.
“That’s funny as hell,” Hill reportedly said, “but we could get our asses kicked for doing it.”
Hill ordered Mallory to eliminate the evidence.
The Cover-Up and Aftermath
On the evening of February 14, 1947, Mallory and Foster slipped away from a Valentine’s Day party and drove a Jeep to Sugamo Prison. Foster, knowing one of the guards starting his shift at 11 p.m., arranged for Tojo to be awakened and his dentures borrowed for “emergency dental work.”
Behind closed curtains, Mallory used a grinding stone to erase every dot and dash of the Morse code message. They returned the dentures, and Tojo remained oblivious. The erasure occurred just in time. The next morning, Stars and Stripes published the story. A furious colonel at Sugamo summoned both men.
“Is there any truth in this report that ‘Remember Pearl Harbor’ is inscribed in the dentures?” the colonel demanded.
“No, sir!” both men replied. Reporters and military investigators arrived to inspect the dentures. With the evidence removed, there was no proof. Neither man faced formal reprimand, though Mallory was stripped of a recent commendation.
Tojo eventually noticed his dentures felt looser, but never connected it to the news reports. A subsequent dentist in Japan later told him the dentures had felt different after that February night.
“It wasn’t anything done in anger,” Mallory said in a 1995 interview with the Associated Press. “It’s just that not many people had the chance to get those words into his mouth.”
Tojo was found guilty of waging aggressive war and ordering atrocities by the International Military Tribunal and was hanged at Sugamo Prison on December 23, 1948. He wouldn’t need his dentures for much longer.
Mallory returned to the United States in June 1947 and established a dental practice in Paradise, California, later relocating to Chico in 1955, where he practiced until the mid-1980s. Foster died in December 1989.
“He’s probably rolling around on his cloud right now, laughing his fool head off,” Beverly Foster, George’s widow, told reporters in 1991 when the Navy collected mementos of the prank for the Navy Dental Corps Historical Museum in Bethesda, Maryland. “He’s thinking this is great.”
The original plaster molds of Tojo’s teeth and a gold bridge mold remain on display at the museum today. The story remained largely unknown for decades until 1995, when Mallory’s son encouraged him to write a memoir.
In 1969, Mallory revisited Japan and shared the story with Japanese dentists over dinner. “They thought it was the funniest thing,” Mallory recalled. “They all said, ‘Why didn’t you tell us this?’ I said, ‘Well, the timing just didn’t seem right.’”
E.J. “Jack” Mallory died in 2013. His obituary briefly mentioned a “dental prank” performed on the mastermind behind the attack on Pearl Harbor. His act of subtly embedding a message of remembrance into the dentures of a wartime enemy remains a remarkable and unforgettable story.
