The World War II Collection

by Lord, Walter;

  Command center for the evacuation was the austere “Dynamo Room,” buried deep in the Dover cliffs. Here Ramsay’s staff, using a battery of telephones, assembled and deployed a rescue fleet that ultimately totaled 861 ships. This photo is believed to be the only picture ever taken of the room. (Courtesy of W. J. Matthews)

  Every kind of vessel was used for the evacuation, ranging from warships to small pleasure craft. Above, a “G” Class destroyer races toward Dunkirk “with a bone in her teeth.” This entire class was eventually knocked out. Below, the yacht Sundowner was luckier. She rescued 135 men and escaped without a scratch. Her owner-skipper, Commander C. H. Lightoller, had performed earlier heroics as Second Officer on the Titanic.(Top: Imperial War Museum. Bottom: courtesy of Patrick Stenson and Sharon Rutman)

  Dunkirk was easy to find. A huge pall of smoke from burning oil tanks hung over the shattered port. The smoke seemed to symbolize defeat and disaster, but had the happy side effect of concealing the harbor from German bombers. (Courtesy of W. J. Matthews)

  In contrast, La Panne, at the eastern end of the evacuation area, looked deceptively tranquil. Rescue ships can be seen here, picking up troops near the shore. Gort’s headquarters was in one of the detached houses on the far right. (Courtesy of J. L. Aldridge)

  Picking up troops direct from the beach seemed to take forever—“loading ships by the spoonful” was the way one embarkation officer described it. Above, a trawler and a coaster take aboard men wading out from the shore. At right, British Tommies are up to their shoulders in water, approaching a rescue ship. (Top: Wide World Photos. Bottom: The Granger Collection)

  Captain William G. Tennant (left) was finally appointed by Admiral Ramsay to take charge at Dunkirk and speed up the evacuation. As Senior Naval Officer (SNO), Tennant discovered that the eastern mole of Dunkirk harbor was ideal for loading ships. Here a destroyer could lift 600 men in 20 minutes, while it took 12 hours along the beaches. For most of the next week the mole was packed with an endless line of troops (below) trudging out to the waiting ships. (Top: ILN Pic Lib. Bottom: Times)

  Ingenuity triumphed on the beaches too. Abandoned lorries were strung together, to form improvised piers leading out into the water. Here one of these “lorry jetties” is visible in the background. (Courtesy of D.C.H. Shields)

  Soon an unbroken line of crowded ships could be seen carrying the men across the Channel to safety. (Culver Pictures)

  The Luftwaffe did not leave the rescue fleet alone. These two pictures show how suddenly disaster could strike. In the top photo an Allied ship has just blown up, while two others lie nearby still untouched. In the bottom photo, taken an instant later (note that the configuration of smoke is still the same), the two nearby ships have now disappeared, obliterated by the rain of bombs. Troops on the beach are futilely firing their rifles at the planes. (Top: Imperial War Museum. Bottom: Fox Photos Ltd.)

  The French destroyer Bourrasque joins the growing list of Allied casualties. Packed with troops, she struck a German mine and went down with a loss of 150 lives. (Imperial War Museum)

  A fleet of French fishing trawlers was a late addition to Ramsay’s armada. They concentrated on the inner harbor of Dunkirk, where hundreds of poilus swarmed aboard. (Wide World Photos)

  Bombs and mines were not the only perils faced by the rescue fleet. The Schnellboote, fast German motor torpedo boats, prowled the seas at night, sinking and damaging Ramsay’s ships. (Hergestellt im Bundesarchiv Bestand)

  German artillery added to the toll. Nothing was safe—neither the ships, the harbor, the mole, nor the men on the beaches. “Greetings to Tommy” is the message painted on this shell. (Hergestellt im Bundesarchiv Bestand)

  German troops finally broke into La Panne on June 1 and began moving down the beach toward Dunkirk itself. Below, the fall of Dunkirk, June 4, Weary but triumphant, German troops of the 18th Infantry Division stack their arms and rest. (Hergestellt im Bundesarchiv Bestand)

  The quarry was gone. In nine desperate days Ramsay’s fleet brought back more than 338,000 Allied troops. Typical was this batch, disembarking from the minesweeper Sandown. Naval officer in the lower-left foreground is Lieutenant Wallis, the ship’s First Lieutenant. (Courtesy of J. D. Nunn)

  Sometimes it seemed as if half the canine population of France had been evacuated too. Never was the Englishman’s legendary fondness for dogs more ringingly affirmed. At least 170 dogs were landed in Dover alone. (Wide World Photos)

  Disheveled but happy, the Tommies were sent by train to assembly areas all over Britain for rest and reorganization. At every station a relieved populace showered them with cigarettes, cakes, candy, and affection. (Wide World Photos)

  At Dunkirk, the captured French rear guard heard no cheers. They would soon be marching off to POW camp, most for the duration of the war. (Hergestellt im Bundesarchiv Bestand)

  In another two weeks France was knocked out of the war. The new pro-German Vichy government lost no time charging that the British had run out, leaving the French holding the bag at Dunkirk. Actually, Ramsay’s rescue fleet saved over 123,000 French soldiers, 102,570 in British ships. Despite the statistics, French bitterness continues, even today. (Musée des Deux Guerres Mondiales—B.D.I.C., Universités de Paris)

  Day of Infamy

  Walter Lord

  To Lanet Cody

  CONTENTS

  FOREWORD

  CHAPTER I “Isn’t That a Beautiful Sight?”

  CHAPTER II “A Dream Come True!”

  CHAPTER III “Gate Open — White Lights”

  CHAPTER IV “You’d Be Surprised What Goes On Around Here.”

  CHAPTER V “Well, Don’t Worry About It”

  CHAPTER VI “Joe, This One Is for the Tourist!”

  CHAPTER VII “I Didn’t Even Know They Were Sore at Us”

  CHAPTER VIII “I Can’t Keep Throwing Things At Them”

  CHAPTER IX “You Don’t Wear a Tie to War”

  CHAPTER X “I Want Three Volunteers: You, You, and You”

  CHAPTER XI “Chief, My Mother and Dad Gave Me This Sword”

  CHAPTER XII “We’re Leaving Now — Explode Gloriously!”

  FACTS ABOUT THE ATTACK

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS

  INDEX

  IMAGE GALLERY

  FOREWORD

  IT HAPPENED ON DECEMBER 7, 1941.

  One part of America learned while listening to the broadcast of the Dodger-Giant football game at the Polo Grounds in New York. Ward Cuff had just returned a Brooklyn kickoff to the 27-yard line when at 2:26 P.M. WOR interrupted with the first flash: the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor.

  Another part of America learned half an hour later, while tuning in the New York Philharmonic concert at Carnegie Hall. Artur Rodzinski’s musicians were just about to start Shostakovich’s Symphony Number 1 when CBS repeated an earlier bulletin announcing the attack.

  The concertgoers themselves learned still later when announcer Warren Sweeney told them at the end of the performance. Then he called for “The Star-Spangled Banner.” The anthem had already been played at the start of the concert, but the audience had merely hummed along. Now they sang the words.

  Others learned in other ways, but no matter how they learned, it was a day they would never forget. Nearly every American alive at the time can describe how he first heard the news. He marked the moment carefully, carving out a sort of mental souvenir, for instinctively he knew how much his life would be changed by what was happening in Hawaii.

  This is the story of that day.

  CHAPTER I

  “Isn’t That a Beautiful Sight?”

  MONICA CONTER, A YOUNG Army nurse, and Second Lieutenant Barney Benning of the Coast Artillery strolled out of the Pearl Harbor Officers’ Club, down the path near the ironwood trees, and stood by the club landing, watching the launches take men back to the warships riding at anchor.

  They were engaged, and the setting was perfect. The workshops, the big hammerhead
crane, all the paraphernalia of the Navy’s great Hawaiian base were hidden by the night; the daytime clatter was gone; only the pretty things were left — the moonlight … the dance music that drifted from the club … the lights of the Pacific Fleet that shimmered across the harbor.

  And there were more lights than ever before. For the first weekend since July 4 all the battleships were in port at once. Normally they took turns — six might be out with Admiral Pye’s battleship task force, or three would be off with Admiral Halsey’s carrier task force. This was Pye’s turn in, but Halsey was out on a special assignment that meant leaving his battleships behind. A secret “war warning” had been received from Washington — Japan was expected to hit “the Philippines, Thai, or Kra Peninsula or possibly Borneo” — and the carrier Enterprise was ferrying a squadron of Marine fighters to reinforce Wake Island. Battleships would slow the task force’s speed from 30 to 17 knots. Yet they were too vulnerable to maneuver alone without carrier protection. The only other carrier, the Lexington, was off ferrying planes to Midway, so the battleships stayed at Pearl Harbor, where it was safe.

  With the big ships in port, the officers’ club seemed even gayer and more crowded than usual, as Monica Conter and Lieutenant Benning walked back and rejoined the group at the table. Somebody suggested calling Lieutenant Bill Silvester, a friend of them all who this particular evening was dining eight miles away in downtown Honolulu. Monica called him, playfully scolded him for deserting his buddies — the kind of call that has been placed thousands of times by young people late in the evening, and memorable this time only because it was the last night Bill Silvester would be alive.

  Then back to the dance, which was really a conglomeration of Dutch treats and small private parties given by various officers for their friends: “Captain Montgomery E. Higgins and Mrs. Higgins entertained at the Pearl Harbor Officers’ Club … Lieutenant Commander and Mrs. Harold Pullen gave a dinner at the Pearl Harbor Officers’ Club …” — the Honolulu Sunday Advertiser rattled them off in its society column the following morning.

  Gay but hardly giddy. The bar always closed at midnight. The band seemed in a bit of a rut — its favorite “Sweet Leilani” was now over four years old. The place itself was the standard blend of chrome, plywood, and synthetic leather, typical of all officers’ clubs everywhere. But it was cheap — dinner for a dollar — and it was friendly. In the Navy everybody still seemed to know everybody else on December 6, 1941.

  Twelve miles away, Brigadier General Durward S. Wilson, commanding the 24th Infantry Division, was enjoying the same kind of evening at the Schofield Barracks Officers’ Club. Here, too, the weekly Saturday night dance seemed even gayer than usual — partly because many of the troops in the 24th and 25th Divisions had just come off a long, tough week in the field; partly because it was the night of Ann Etzler’s Cabaret, a benefit show worked up annually by “one of the very talented young ladies on the post,” as General Wilson gallantly puts it. The show featured amateur singing and dancing — a little corny perhaps, but it was all in the name of charity and enjoyed the support of everybody who counted, including Lieut. General Walter C. Short, commanding general of the Hawaiian Department.

  Actually, General Short was late. He had been trapped by a phone call, just as he and his intelligence officer, Lieutenant Colonel Kendall Fielder, were leaving for the party from their quarters at Fort Shafter, the Army’s administrative headquarters just outside Honolulu. Lieutenant Colonel George Bicknell, Short’s counterintelligence officer, was on the wire. He asked them to wait; he had something interesting to show them. The general said all right, but hurry.

  At 6:30 Bicknell puffed up. Then, while Mrs. Short and Mrs. Fielder fretted and fumed in the car, the three men sat down together on the commanding general’s lanai. Colonel Bicknell produced the transcript of a phone conversation monitored the day before by the local FBI. It was a call placed by someone on the Tokyo newspaper Yomiuri Shinbun to Dr. Motokazu Mori, a local Japanese dentist and husband of the paper’s Honolulu correspondent.

  Tokyo asked about conditions in general: about planes, searchlights, the weather, the number of sailors around … and about flowers. “Presently,” offered Dr. Mori, “the flowers in bloom are fewest out of the whole year. However, the hibiscus and the poinsettia are in bloom now.”

  The three officers hashed it over. Why would anyone spend the cost of a transpacific phone call discussing flowers? But if this was code, why talk in the clear about things like planes and searchlights? And would a spy use the telephone? On the other hand, what else could be going on? Was there any connection with the cable recently received from Washington warning “hostile action possible at any moment”?

  Fifteen minutes … half an hour … nearly an hour skipped by, and they couldn’t make up their minds. Finally General Short gently suggested that Colonel Bicknell was “too intelligence-conscious”; in any case they couldn’t do anything about it tonight; they would think it over some more and talk about it in the morning.

  It was almost 7:30 when the general and Colonel Fielder rejoined their now seething wives and drove the fifteen miles to Schofield. As they entered the dance floor, they scarcely noticed the big lava-rock columns banked with ferns for a gala evening — they were still brooding over the Mori call.

  General Short had a couple of cocktails — he never drank after dinner — and worried his way through the next two hours. Perhaps it was the Mori call. Perhaps it was his troubles with training and equipment (there was never enough of anything). Perhaps it was his fear of sabotage. To General Short, Washington’s warning had posed one overwhelming danger — an uprising by Hawaii’s 157,905 civilians of Japanese blood, which would coincide with any Tokyo move in the Far East. He immediately alerted his command against sabotage; lined up all his planes neatly on the ramps, where they could be more easily guarded; and notified the War Department. Washington seemed satisfied, but the fear of a Japanese Fifth Column lingered — that was the way the Axis always struck.

  By 9:30 he had had enough. The Shorts and the Fielders left the officers’ club, started back to Shafter. As they rolled along the road that sloped down toward town again, Pearl Harbor spread out below them in the distance. The Pacific Fleet blazed with lights, and searchlight beams occasionally probed the sky. It was a moment for forgetting the cares of the day and enjoying the breathless night. “Isn’t that a beautiful sight?” sighed General Short, adding thoughtfully, “and what a target they would make.”

  General Short’s opposite number, Admiral Husband E. Kimmel, Commander in Chief of the Pacific Fleet — known as CINCPAC in the Navy’s jargon of endless initials — had an even less eventful evening back in Honolulu. He was dining quietly at the Halekulani Hotel, a Waikiki landmark that maintained a precarious balance between charm and stuffiness. Several of the Navy’s top brass lived there with their wives, and tonight Admiral and Mrs. Fairfax Leary were giving a small dinner, attended by the commander in chief. It was anything but a wild party — so slow, in fact, that at least two of the wives retreated to a bedroom upstairs for some refreshment with a little more authority.

  But Admiral Kimmel was no party admiral anyhow. Hard, sharp, and utterly frank, he worked himself to the bone. When he relaxed, it was usually a brisk walk with a few brother officers, not cocktails and social banter. Proudly self-contained, he looked and acted uncomfortable in easygoing surroundings — he even disapproved of the Navy’s new khakis as “lessening the dignity and military point of view of the wearer.”

  He was a difficult man to know, and his position made him more so. He had been jumped over 32 admirals to his present job. Relations were utterly correct, but inevitably there was a mild awkwardness — a lack of informal give-and-take — between himself and some of the men who had always been his seniors. Finally, there was his responsibility as CINCPAC — enough to kill the social inclinations in any man: refitting the fleet with the new weapons that were emerging, training the swarm of new recruits that were arrivin
g, planning operations against Japan if hostilities should explode.

  Admiral Kimmel had spent the early afternoon discussing the situation with his staff. The Japanese were now burning their codes … their fleet had changed call letters twice in a month … their carriers had disappeared. On the other hand, the Japanese would naturally take precautions at a time like this; and the lost carriers might not mean anything — Navy intelligence had already lost them 12 times the past six months. Whatever happened, it would be in southeast Asia —Washington, the official estimates, the local press, everybody said so. As for Hawaii, nobody gave it much thought. To free Kimmel’s hands, defense of the base was left to the Army and to the Fourteenth Naval District, technically under Kimmel but run by Admiral Claude C. Bloch pretty much as his own show. Local defense seemed fairly academic anyhow. Only a week before, when Admiral Kimmel asked his operations officer, Captain Charles McMorris, what the chances were of a surprise attack on Honolulu, the captain firmly replied, “None.”

  The staff meeting broke up about three o’clock. Admiral Kimmel retired to his quarters for the afternoon, went on to the Learys’ party around 5:45. While they dined under the big hau tree on the Halekulani terrace, the admiral’s driver waited in the car outside, slapping away at mosquitoes. At one point, Richard Kimball, the hotel manager, passed by and said he was sorry about the bugs. The driver replied he didn’t mind the mosquitoes — it was the boredom that got him. If only the car had a radio. But it turned out he didn’t need one tonight. The admiral left at 9:30, drove straight home, and was in bed by ten. It had been a long, tiring week, and tomorrow morning he had an early golf date with General Short.