by James Johns
The Tripartite Pact in itself recognized Germany’s leadership in economic, political, and military affairs in a new order in Europe. It offered the same for Italy in the Mediterranean and for Japan in the greater East Asia. Further, the three governments agreed to assist each other with the same economic, political, and military means when and if one of the three powers was attacked. Support would also be provided if one of the pact members declared war on a power at present not involved in the war in Europe or the Japanese war in China. Since Germany had already signed a nonaggression pact with the Soviet Union in 1939, this measure was aimed specifically at keeping the United States out of the war in Europe or out of any potential involvement in the Pacific.
Although the ceremony itself was brief, Hitler appeared at the end of the ceremony long enough to give it his blessing. The immediate goal of the Tripartite Pact was to keep the United States out of Germany’s war with Great Britain. But Washington was worried about a sudden German takeover of the Suez Canal that would give Germany access to the raw materials in the Pacific, thereby cutting off Britain. And in the end, the pact achieved exactly the opposite of its intended purpose. Germany would later expect Japan to attack Russia from the east when Germany broke her pact with the Soviet Union in June 1941.
Tension between Japan and Russia had been traditional, and Japan’s invasion of China’s northern province of Manchuria bordering Russia didn’t help. Russia considered this a threat to her eastern territory. Added to this were the Communist and Nationalist Chinese maneuvering for more territory in the 1930s. Tensions between the two countries would eventually be reduced with the Russo-Japanese Non-Aggression Pact, which was signed in April 1941. (In an interesting side note to history, it was President Theodore Roosevelt who brought Japan and Russia together to negotiate a settlement in 1905. This was the end of all Japanese naval engagements until Pearl Harbor.)
With the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor, however, Germany would finally find herself in a war with the United States that she had tried to avoid. The existence of the Tripartite Pact involving both Germany and Japan provided mutual support if either were attacked by a third power. Because war between Russia and Germany seemed unlikely when the pact was drawn up in 1940, it secured Japanese fears from Russia while Japan concentrated on expansion in the Pacific. The subsequent Russo-Japanese Pact of 1941 carried a term of five years, but with the collapse of Germany in 1945, Russia denounced the pact in order to grab up space under Japanese control before the war would end.
Even before Germany, Japan, and Italy signed the Tripartite Pact, the U.S. ambassador to Japan, Joseph Grew, warned Washington against economic embargoes. America should not be deceived by Japan’s limited progress in China. To impose sanctions on scrap iron and petroleum may have the reverse effect rather than the intended effect, and could force Japan to quicken aggression in order to maintain stockpiles of reserves.
Grew had served in several ambassadorships (Denmark, Switzerland, and Turkey) before being posted in Tokyo in 1932. Developing an intimate knowledge of the Japanese culture, he understood their unwillingness to back down, regardless of the cost. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, he was interned by the Japanese for nine months, before returning to the United States in August 1942.
By October of 1940, Japanese Ambassador Kensuke Horinouchi, who served in that role for just a short time, presented himself to Secretary Hull at the State Department and advised that the U.S. embargo was a very unfriendly act, and if it were continued, future relations could be unpredictable. Hull, who to this point felt that he had been exceptionally patient, unloaded. He could not understand how Japan could consider it an unfriendly act not to support Japan’s war in China with the necessary war materials. To strengthen the Americans’ message, FDR now demanded that the Japanese get out of French Indochina, get out of China itself, and drop out of the Tripartite Pact, or he would see to it that the Americans would arrange a total cut-off of exports to Japan.
To the Japanese, this was ill-timed while their military machine was in high gear. They had occupied the Marshall, Mariannas, and Caroline Islands, as well as Manchuria, Formosa, Korea, and French Indochina, and were fighting in China itself when their chief source of supply suddenly threatened to cut them off. As previously mentioned, Japan was importing 80 percent of the war materials she needed, and the majority of the coal, iron, steel, rubber, oil, and aviation fuel was coming from the United States. Since Japan was so dependent on the Americans, it was obvious that one of two things would have to occur: either the Americans would have to make a drastic change in their foreign policy, which didn’t seem very likely, or Japan would have to step up her calendar for occupation to the south: to British Malaya for its tin and rubber, and to the Dutch East Indies, Java, and Sumatra for their oil. But such a move would bring upon it the wrath of the American fleet based at Pearl Harbor, and within a couple of months, the U.S. long-range bomber force based out of the Philippines.
In addition to the increasing embargoes, Roosevelt had made yet another political statement to Japan, and in April 1940, the Pacific Fleet based at San Diego was ordered to the Hawaiian area for fleet maneuvers. In May, the order came that Pearl Harbor would be their new home. Ostensibly, this decision was a political one to remind Japan that to enforce Washington’s decision, the United States Navy was a force to be reckoned with. This decision did not sit well with the commander in chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, Admiral James Richardson, and his arguments were difficult to refute. He was of the conviction that political decision should not interfere with military logic. He flew to Washington in July to meet with Chief of Naval Operations Harold Stark, who politely informed him that there would be no change.
On October 8, shortly after the Tripartite Pact was signed, Richardson returned to Washington and was invited to a lunch with his former boss, Admiral William Leahy, and the president. FDR first asked Leahy’s opinion on strengthening the U.S. Asiatic Fleet based in Manila. The consensus was that any ships sent would probably be lost in a shooting war.
Admiral Richardson now brought up the subject of returning the Pacific Fleet based at Pearl Harbor to San Diego. The president replied that the fleet was there to exercise a restraining influence on Japan and to return the fleet would show a sign of weakness. Again Richardson insisted that that may be true with a civilian government, but Japan had a military government that knew the American fleet, being unprepared, undermanned, and without auxiliary ships, could not possibly take on distant operations. The base itself lacked adequate repair and refueling facilities, and as a result, it would offer no restraining influence on Japan. The last words on the subject were that if the president could convince the American people and the Japanese government that such a move would not be backing down, he would consider it. In just a few months, however, Richardson would no longer command the U.S. Pacific Fleet.
Since May of 1940, Winston Churchill had been looking to the Americans for help. It was well known that British shipping was desperate for protection from German submarines, especially after the fall of France. This offered the instigation of FDR’s deal to exchange fifty U.S. destroyers for bases held by the British. Churchill himself had suggested the loan of forty or fifty destroyers, but FDR’s hands were tied in the disposal of weapons that could weaken U.S. defenses. So he consulted with Attorney General Robert Jackson to determine if he could fall back on his executive power to make the deal with Britain.
Robert Jackson had held the position of U.S. solicitor general since 1938, before being appointed U.S. attorney general in January of 1940. He would only serve in this capacity until June of 1941, being nominated by Roosevelt to serve on the Supreme Court and taking that oath the following month.
Similar to the heated debates that would come with Roosevelt’s Lend-Lease program in 1941, there were those who were equally concerned about Roosevelt abusing his executive powers. Some compared him to Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini, but his critics in Congress were of the minority, and they
were not successful in raising the votes that would have been required to kill the destroyers-for-bases deal. Jackson, in his written opinion of August 27, 1940, asserted that based on Roosevelt’s role as commander in chief of the armed forces, it was within his power “to dispose of vessels of the Navy and unneeded naval material”20 as he saw fit, and that his commander-in-chief responsibilities included providing “adequate bases and stations for the utilization of the naval and air weapons of the United States at their highest efficiency in our defense.”21 Jackson also relied on the absence of any international treaty, which would have required congressional approval, and in the end, he deemed Roosevelt within his power to make the deal with Britain. On September 2, 1940, Americans became the new lessees of seven naval bases, and the navy’s inventory was reduced by fifty destroyers.
For those who may have questioned the bold move on Roosevelt’s part, the trade was considered legal because it strengthened American defenses, and the bases absorbed were in Newfoundland, Bermuda, the Bahamas, Jamaica, St. Lucia, Trinidad, and British Guiana. It was a good deal for the Americans, but not that good of a deal for the British because of the destroyer vintage.
The destroyers, nevertheless, were updated to include the installation of sonar. They were then commissioned into the Royal Navy and immediately transferred to the Atlantic, where their only advantage was in having a greater range than their British correlates. Upon hearing of the proposed deal, the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff objected that if Britain fell, as many thought it would, the Americans would have assumed those bases anyway. The deal represented fifty fewer destroyers that the United States would have to fight with, and without a doubt, the trade would represent a step closer to the Americans’ undeclared war.
As Congress was gearing the country up for war, American intelligence teams were also making breakthroughs. For years, Japan had used a number of military and diplomatic codes in their communications with their military forces in Asia and her diplomatic embassies around the world. The most secret of the diplomatic codes was an exceedingly complicated cipher system, used for her most secret, most sensitive communications with her embassies, code-named Purple by American intelligence personnel.
In 1930, the Army Signal Intelligence Service had been created in Washington, and heading up the SIS was a genius named Lieutenant Colonel William Friedman. For the better part of two years, Friedman and a small, select staff had been working feverishly to break the Purple code.
Naval intelligence operations, on the other hand, dated back to 1922 with then Lieutenant Laurence Safford heading what was now called OP-20-G, the navy’s cryptanalysis and intelligence group. (Safford would later prove to be one of the most steadfast of all those brought into the ensuing Pearl Harbor investigations.) He had helped establish naval cryptography operations after World War I and worked closely with Agnes Meyer Driscoll, who not only held a degree in mathematics, but also was fluent in French, German, and Japanese. Given her many talents, she became one of the navy’s leading cryptanalysts and made a significant contribution toward breaking JN-25, the Japanese naval operational code.
So dedicated and accomplished was Lieutenant Safford in breaking codes and mechanizing the cryptology operations, some compared him to Friedman of the Army Signal Intelligence Service, and many referred to him as the “Friedman of the Navy.” By January of 1942, Safford was promoted to the rank of captain, only to be “demoted” in responsibilities a couple of weeks later. Being edged out of his role in OP-20-G, he was advised by his commanding officer, Admiral Leigh Noyes, that he would be relegated to Admiral King’s staff to handle cryptographic research, work he had done nearly twenty years earlier. But his time would be well spent. By 1941, he uncovered the fact that the Germans were reading Naval Cipher 3, the code that the Americans were using to communicate with the British, which cost many lives and a great deal of shipping losses. He tried to warn the senior military staff in Washington, but he was not taken seriously. Out of frustration, he developed an electronic adapter that would allow the American and British cipher machines to communicate with one another, and at the same time, disable German access to decipher their communications. And again, the Joint Chiefs of Staff turned their heads. Not until December of 1943, after countless more lives and millions of tons of supplies were lost, did his superiors finally pay attention to him: his Combined Cipher Machine was finally put to use, and the German submarines were no longer victorious.
Although the Army Signal Intelligence Service and the Office of Naval Intelligence were neighbors in Washington, there was no cooperation or sharing of intelligence that each jealously guarded. They had collaborated on Japanese diplomatic code systems, but not a speck more. No one outside of intelligence circles was aware of this, least of all the president. In the near future, this non-sharing would be to the Japanese advantage at Pearl Harbor.
Breaking the Japanese code Purple involved building a copy of the Japanese code machine with the help of the naval cryptanalysts of OP-20-G. On September 25, they broke the code by being able to read a Japanese message. However, the Japanese then had to be translated into English. Ideally, a machine that would do it all was needed, and such a machine was invented. Because of the countless hours that it saved, this technology was named Magic. How much equipment was needed and who would get it also had to be decided.
Eight machines were decided upon. The SIS (army intelligence) would receive two, and two would go to the OP-20-G (navy intelligence). One would also go to General MacArthur in the Philippines for the Station CAST intelligence operations located on Corregidor. Chief of Staff General Marshall was of the opinion that because the Army SIS had broken the Purple code, they should make the decision as to whom the recipients should be. An agreement had already been made that Great Britain and the United States would share intelligence information, so it was decided that Britain would receive two Magic machines.
When it was announced that two would go to Bletchley Park Naval Intelligence, Britain’s main decryption center and cypher school, some in naval intelligence operations were not happy. Admiral Walter Anderson, director of Office of Naval Intelligence, and Rear Admiral Leigh Noyes, Naval Communications Director, were foaming at the mouth. The British, it appeared, were in no hurry to share with Washington their breakthrough with Germany’s Enigma, the encryption and decryption code machine the Germans used for their diplomatic and military communications.
Later, it was also decided that Bletchley Park would receive a third machine, one that had originally been destined for Station Hypo at Pearl Harbor. Station Hypo, also known as Fleet Radio Unit Pacific, was responsible for cryptographic intelligence on Hawaii, and diverting a third machine to Bletchley Park left Pearl Harbor totally dependent on Washington for their diplomatic intelligence. The third machine promised to Bletchley Park would be in exchange for Britain’s sharing information about Ultra, the code name they had designated to the Enigma decryptions. But the two intelligence officers delivering the Magic machines to Britain came back empty-handed, while the British made headway with Ultra.
The question would later be raised as to why Pearl Harbor was not given priority in receiving a Magic machine, and the response was there was no need for military leaders to have access to diplomatic information. If this is a legitimate argument, why was one provided General MacArthur in the Philippines? American intelligence operations eventually learned to decode Purple faster than the Japanese Embassy could manually decode it themselves.
The end of 1940 also brought about a successful British operation that would later influence the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. In the late fall, the British gave the world a tactical lesson in such an operation. On the night of November 11, the carrier HMS Illustrious, in what would be the world’s first carrier-based air attack, launched twenty-one slow but tough Fairey Swordfish biplane torpedo bombers that flew one hundred fifty miles at low level to attack the Italian fleet moored in port at Taranto, Italy. The full-moon nighttime operation was meant t
o minimize losses from Italian fighters. The Swordfish bombers attacked at thirty-five feet above the waves with twelve aircraft carrying torpedoes and nine of them carrying bombs and flares. All but two returned after successfully crippling three Italian battleships, the Littorio, the Conte di Cavour, and the Caio Dullio, with eleven torpedoes, in addition sinking two supply ships and damaging two destroyers, leaving only one battleship still operational. This mission contributed to the reluctance of the Italian fleet to challenge the Royal Navy’s supply lines to troops in Greece. The success of this mission was observed by the Japanese Navy in studying offensive tactics. There is evidence that this operation convinced Admiral Yamamoto, as commander in chief of their combined fleet, that the Hawaiian operation could be achieved. For the Taranto operation, the British had used those special, shallow-running torpedoes the Japanese were studying.
On the same day of the Taranto attack, however, Germany would even the score with Britain. The defense of Britain’s Far East possessions, Malaya, Singapore, New Zealand, and Australia, were of paramount concern to the British war cabinet. In the event of war with Japan, the 1937 defense plan would send a large battle fleet sailing around the Cape of Good Hope to arrive at Singapore within seventy days. This assumed that the fleet would be available. But by 1940, war with Germany had altered the situation. It would now be ninety days, and with a considerably reduced fleet because the main fleet was required in England to protect the supply routes from the United States. Could Singapore hold out that long?
