by James Johns
By the summer of 1941, it was known that there were over two hundred consular agents suspected of carrying on espionage activities, but they were operating under the protection of the Japanese Consul.
The Naval District Intelligence Office raised this concern with the FBI and with army intelligence, asking why these agents weren’t being arrested for failing to register with the U.S. government as foreign agents. In response, General Short of the Hawaiian Department indicated that prior to the arrest of any of the agents, they had to be given notice, allowing them time to register. Short did not want to undermine the army’s attempts at creating goodwill among the Japanese aliens residing in Hawaii. Consequently, no actions were taken against the agents.
The Roberts Commission recognized that had American agencies intercepted the Japanese agents, Japan’s total picture of military activities in Hawaii, including the lack of inshore air patrols and long-range navy reconnaissance, along with the berthing positions of every ship at Pearl Harbor, would have been revealed.
The commission’s report also detailed pass and liberty information for military personnel, indicating that it was normal for peacetime. And due to the emphasis placed on sabotage in the war warnings, army guard had been ramped up by nearly 100 percent. Antiaircraft gun crews were ordered to remain on their ships, and all other navy personnel were ordered to return to quarters by midnight. The report also noted that by midnight in Honolulu, all places of amusement and entertainment were closed.
The report also detailed the whereabouts of the military officers. While most of them had attended social functions on the night of December 6, all returned to their quarters at a reasonable hour.
The percentages of military personnel available for duty were also cited in the report: 90 percent of the Twenty-Fourth Infantry Division was available, as well as 85.6 percent of the Twenty-Fifth Infantry Division, 87.5 percent of the Coast Artillery, and 88.9 percent of the Air Force. Other departments, including ordnance, quartermaster, and medical personnel, were reported at 92 percent. So, overall, nearly 90 percent of military personnel were available for duty.16
Battleships and destroyers reported that 60 percent of the officers and 96 percent of the men were on board at the time of the attack. Of the seventy-five vessels in port, forty-nine of the commanders were actually aboard, and another twenty-two commanders were en route to their ships at the time of the attack.17
At 0630, the Antares sighted a suspicious object in the prohibited area off Pearl Harbor. The object was identified, fired upon, and sunk by the Ward. The naval base watch officer received the report of this action at 0712, and in turn, notified his chief of staff. Although a destroyer was dispatched to confirm the report, no alerts were sent out.
Another small submarine was sighted inside the harbor and sunk at approximately 0835. Still another sub was grounded at Bellows.
Although the entrance to Pearl Harbor was equipped with an anti-torpedo net which would have blocked torpedoes or submarines from entering the harbor, the net had been opened at 0458 to allow two mine sweepers to enter the harbor. Orders to close the net were given at 0840. Generally, the net was closed during hours of darkness, and it is estimated that the first enemy two-man submarine may have entered the harbor around 0700.
As soon as the attack started, the commanding general of the Hawaiian Department ordered Alert No. 3, which was promptly executed.
“Summary of More Important Facts” focused on the army and navy’s respective functions in the event of attack; the perceived inadequate adaptability of the Hawaiian commanders; and the perceived lack of consultation and coordination between them that would have provided a more effective defense. Although the Roberts Commission recognized the shortages of personnel, weapons, and equipment, the commission determined that these shortages should not have affected the commanders as to the state of readiness required.
“Conclusions,” of course, detailed the failures of the Hawaiian commanders and, in turn, left most in Washington out of any level of responsibility for the American losses at Pearl Harbor.
The first part of this section stated emphatically that no high officials in Washington were involved. In essence, the secretaries of state, war, and the navy, along with the chief of naval operations and the army chief of staff, had all fulfilled their duties and had closely cooperated with each other. Their warnings to the Hawaiian commanders had been deemed sufficient. They had cooperated in Hawaiian and national defense and had given the Hawaiian commanders free reign in reconnaissance and defense of the islands.
The second part of “Conclusions” dealt with the Hawaiian commanders themselves, charging them with “errors of judgment [that] were the effective causes for the success of the attack.”18 They were accused of failing to confer on the November 27 war warning and of failing to put into effect existing directives to meet the emergency. Had orders from the army chief of staff and the chief of naval operations been followed, the army’s aircraft warning system would have been operational, and there would have been distant reconnaissance of the island by the navy, as well as inshore air patrol by the army. Inshore batteries and antiaircraft batteries would have been manned, supplied, and ready. The commission determined that the Pearl Harbor commanders should have been at the ready regardless of the December 7 warning message from Washington that arrived too late. The report also asserted that the commanders had a “lack of interest in, the measures undertaken by the other to carry out the responsibility assigned to each other”19 concerning defensive logistics, and that the commanders simply did not take their role responsibilities seriously.
The third group of “Conclusions” did call some attention to the officers in the War Department in Washington. They had failed to interpret or correct the Pearl Harbor commanders’ misinterpretation of Washington’s November 27 war warning, and instead had placed too much emphasis on the Far East and sabotage.
Kemp Tolley, who would be sent on a fishing expedition by FDR just prior to the attack on the Philippines, referred to the Roberts Commission report as a “whitewash.”20 But readers of American newspapers, when the report was released in early 1942, immediately came to the conclusion that everyone in Washington, military and civilian, up to and including the president, had fulfilled his obligations. All responsibility was placed on Kimmel and Short, who had been found guilty of “dereliction of duty and errors of judgment,” which were the causes of the disaster at Pearl.
Both commanders would live the balance of their lives in the shadow of Pearl Harbor. Early on, there were death threats, not only to themselves but to members of their families and even their pets. Many Americans felt that these men should have to pay for the loss of their loved ones. The commanders would end their lives with most Americans convinced that they alone, Admiral Kimmel and General Short, were personally responsible for the loss of 2,403 American lives at Pearl Harbor. Not only were Kimmel and Short relieved of their commands, each officer was demoted, and both officers were reduced to two stars. The Roberts Commission would follow the president’s instructions to the letter and point all blame for the surprise attack to Hawaii with no shadow cast on Washington whatsoever.
Chapter 2
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Japan’s Targets
For years, the entire Hawaiian Islands had stood as an issue amongst Americans. The five mountainous islands, representing an area of about the size of Connecticut and Rhode Island combined, two thousand miles west of San Francisco, were the last bastion of defense or warning for an attack on the U.S. west coast. But even in the years leading up to World War II, a national poll found 25 percent of American citizens had voted for its abandonment in the case of its invasion.1
It was Captain Cook who discovered the islands in 1778 and named them the Sandwich Islands. (On his second visit, Captain Cook had a dispute with the natives, who killed him, cut out his heart, hung it on a tree, and then later ate it.) By the early nineteenth century, American sailors, traders, and missionaries began to visit an
d make their homes there. But it was the American Civil War that opened the door to Hawaii’s prosperity. When the Union states were cut off from their supply of Southern sugar, they turned to Hawaii, which had the world’s finest sugar. With the Civil War focusing on the economic advantage of the islands, the westward expansion to the coast brought them even closer. It was President Ulysses Grant who realized that the United States had become a Pacific power and saw Hawaii as the apex of a triangle of west coast defense. Japan at this time was still considered just a barbaric kingdom.
Pearl Harbor, also known to the Hawaiians as Pu’uloa or “long hill,” was handed over by the Hawaiian monarchy in exchange for a treaty that gave Hawaiian produce the right to enter the United States duty free. The annexation of the islands by the United States was first proposed by the Hawaiian government as far back as 1853, but the offer was rejected. Americans were at peace. Hawaii was foreign, and the two oceans would keep the United States safe.
Minds changed in 1898 when the United States went to war with Spain. Having occupied the Philippine Islands for three centuries, Spain was a Pacific power. This was prior to the Panama Canal, and America as yet had no base in the entire Pacific. So by 1898, the annexation proposal suddenly had priority, and by 1900, Hawaii officially became a territory of the United States. But beyond grass skirts, palm trees, and Waikiki Beach, most Americans with no other facts started to consider Hawaii as a liability.
Between the wars, American enterprise had developed two giant industries in the islands, sugar and pineapples. In 1900 the pineapple industry was next to nothing, but it grew to 80 percent of the world’s supply by 1940,2 by which time Hawaii was also supplying the United States with one-sixth of its sugar needs.3 Because all of this production required labor and the work was long and hard, most of it was done by Orientals. The native Hawaiian population itself had begun to dwindle soon after the discovery of the islands.
Because of centuries of isolation, they had no immunity to introduced diseases. Minor illnesses like measles and chicken pox killed them off like major plagues. Between 1800 and 1900, the native Hawaiian population was reduced by 90 percent.4 American plantation owners felt the disappearance of labor and turned to Asia, and in 1850 began to import Chinese and Japanese laborers an influx that reached its peak in the 1890s. Few Chinese women came, but the Japanese brought their wives with them with the end result that the Chinese population started to fall while the Japanese population rose. Since the Americans spoke neither Japanese nor Chinese, English became the universal language. Of the one hundred fifty thousand people of Japanese origin living in the islands, 75 percent were American citizens. And of the twenty-eight thousand Chinese, 85 percent were American citizens. Whites totaled about one hundred seven thousand, and native or mixed Hawaiians represented sixty-two thousand.5
As the majority of Orientals had now been actually born and educated in the islands, their Oriental forebears seemed strange to them and trips to the Orient were awkward. So when Japan went to war with China, it meant nothing to them. Their allegiance was to the United States, even though, as of 1941, the Japanese had on file a protest against American possession of the Hawaiian Islands. The Japanese government had even suggested that the white race should evacuate all South Seas islands. Such demands had just compelled France to cede its Thailand territory long held by the French.
Following the annexation of Hawaii in 1898, the U.S. Navy continued to make improvements at Pearl Harbor to allow access for larger ships, and by 1908, the Pearl Harbor naval shipyard was firmly established. Later, Ford Island would be purchased in 1917, bringing in the U.S. Army to establish military aviation as well. By 1940, Pearl Harbor would become the home of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, a move that was not supported by Commander in Chief, U.S. Fleet (CINCUS), Admiral James O. Richardson.
Prior to his appointment to CINCUS, Richardson had served as assistant to Chief of Naval Operations Admiral William Leahy, and then as chief of the Bureau of Navigation, where he helped to revise War Plan Orange, the military’s strategy for dealing with potential conflict with Japan. By the time he was appointed commander in chief of the U.S. Fleet in January 1940, Richardson was well known as the navy’s expert on Japanese warfare strategy. If war was coming, he believed that Pearl Harbor would be the first point of Japanese attack, and the navy in the Pacific simply was not prepared to defend itself. His protest to President Roosevelt over moving the Pacific Fleet to Pearl Harbor would be his undoing.
Leading the army operations on Hawaii was Lieutenant General Charles D. Herron, who served as commander of the Hawaiian Department from 1938 to 1941. Herron, too, was concerned about the Americans’ inability to defend Hawaii, and in his warnings to Washington, he correctly predicted that an air-carrier attack was the most likely to occur, emphasizing the need for long-range reconnaissance patrols, as well as an early warning communication system.
Next on Japan’s agenda to conquer the western Pacific would be the Philippines. The seven thousand islands comprising the Philippines6 were mostly Catholic from centuries of Spanish occupation. The islands had been in American possession since the turn of the century, when the United States captured them in the war with Spain in 1898. In 1934, the Tydings-McDuffe Act created a system of government in the Philippines similar to that of the United States, with two levels of congress, providing for the election of their first president, and later granting independence to the Philippines in 1946, contingent upon their ability to defend themselves.
When Franklin Roosevelt became president in March 1933, he had inherited General Douglas MacArthur as his army chief of staff, who had been appointed by President Herbert Hoover in 1930. As one of World War I’s most decorated heroes, MacArthur had become the army’s youngest major general, achieving that rank at the age of forty-four, and upon being promoted to the rank of general he would serve as army chief of staff until 1935.
One of the more controversial incidents during his tenure as chief of staff involved MacArthur’s participation in the Bonus March of 1932. About forty-three thousand people, of whom eighteen to twenty thousand were World War I veterans, marched on Washington to redeem their World War I service certificates.7 Technically, the certificates were not due to be paid until 1945. But with nationwide hardships resulting from the Depression, the veterans were looking for their cash early. U.S. Attorney General William Mitchell had ordered the veterans to leave government property, but the veterans refused, and the army was called in. Against the advice of others, MacArthur accompanied then Major George S. Patton, infantry troops, and six tanks in their action to force the veterans out. The first effort proved successful, and President Hoover ordered the army to cease, but MacArthur took things a step further: he ordered a second action by crossing the Anacostia River against the president’s orders, forcing the veterans to burn their camp. Later criticized for his participation, MacArthur defended himself, claiming that the march had been an attempt at overthrowing the government.
Franklin Roosevelt never did like MacArthur, and now as president, he liked him even less. He considered MacArthur to have an extraordinary ego in that MacArthur considered his own decisions to be flawless. After Roosevelt was elected, he had proposed a significant budget cut for the army, which incensed MacArthur. In a heated discussion with Roosevelt about the cuts, MacArthur offered to resign, but Roosevelt wasn’t quite ready to accept his resignation. By 1935, however, Roosevelt wanted to retire him. MacArthur knew that his days were numbered and that his only future may be in a rocking chair, when out of the clear blue appeared Manuel Quezon, the newly elected first president of the Philippines.
MacArthur’s relationship with Quezon went back thirty-five years to the days when MacArthur’s father, General Arthur MacArthur, Jr., had served as the military governor-general of the Philippines in 1900. Douglas MacArthur himself had paid several subsequent visits to the Philippines since: in 1903 as a member of the Third Engineer Battalion to supervise wharf construction; in 1922–23 as commander o
f the Twenty-Third Infantry Brigade of the Philippine Division, involving the Philippine scout mutiny; and in 1929 as commander of the Philippine Department. In 1935, when Quezon asked MacArthur to come to the Philippines to build the defense force necessary for their independence in 1946, MacArthur was happy to oblige, and Roosevelt was happy to give MacArthur his blessing.
Heading back to the Philippines as the U.S. Army’s military advisor to the Commonwealth Government of the Philippines, MacArthur made two demands of President Quezon: that he, MacArthur, be appointed field marshal, and that he be paid $33,000 annually, including a salary of $18,000 with allowances of $15,000, by the Philippine government.8 President Quezon met both demands. So, in addition to the U.S. military salary he was collecting, MacArthur enjoyed the distinction of being one of the highest-paid officers in the military. With him he took then Major Dwight Eisenhower and Lieutenant Colonel James Ord as his assistants. (In July of 1936, Eisenhower would be promoted to lieutenant colonel.) Considering MacArthur’s former role of army chief of staff, Quezon thought he would have available to him a bottomless pit of military hardware, reasoning that MacArthur’s connections in Washington would be well worth the investment.
In May 1937, after a short trip back to the United States to get married, MacArthur took up his official residence on the sixth floor of the Manila Hotel at $1,500 per month, also paid for by the Quezon government.9 And to settle the issue with those who objected to the squandering of government funds, MacArthur accepted a hotel staff position in exchange for free rent.
MacArthur’s team of assistants, Major Eisenhower and Colonel Ord, were both assigned to work out the details of building the Philippine Army. Unfortunately, Ord was later killed in a plane crash at Camp John Hay (Philippines) on January 30, 1938, and he was replaced by Major Richard Sutherland in March 1938, while Eisenhower was in the States on leave. Eisenhower would have to return all the way to the Philippines to learn that Major Sutherland had replaced Ord. Sutherland would be promoted to lieutenant colonel in July 1938, and due to what many believe to be philosophical differences between MacArthur and Eisenhower, MacArthur assigned Sutherland to squeeze out Eisenhower. Eisenhower would return to the States in 1939, holding various staff positions, including Chief of War Plans, until his appointment as Commanding General, ETO (European theater of operations) in June of 1942.
