The World War II Collection

by Lord, Walter;

  Most of the officers stayed up later, but their evenings were hardly more spectacular. Rear Admiral Robert A. Theobald, commanding Destroyer Flotilla One, danced at the staid Pacific Club until midnight. Lieutenant Commander S. S. Isquith, engineering officer of the target ship Utah, played cards at the Hawaiian Bridge Center. Young Ensign Victor Delano — reared in the Navy and just out of Annapolis himself — spent a properly respectful evening at the home of Vice Admiral Walter Anderson, commander of Battleship Division Four.

  The enlisted men were less circumscribed. Radioman Fred Glaeser from Pearl Harbor … Sergeant George Geiger from the Army’s bomber base at Hickam Field … two thirds of Company M, 19th Infantry, from Schofield Barracks … thousands of others from posts scattered throughout the island of Oahu converged on Honolulu in a fleet of buses, jalopies, and ancient taxis.

  Most were dropped at the YMCA, a convenient starting point. Then, after perhaps a quick one at the Black Cat Café across the street, they fanned out on the town. Some, like Chief M. G. Montessoro, patroled the taverns of Waikiki Beach. Others watched “Tantalizing Tootsies,” the variety show at the Princess. Most swarmed down Hotel Street — a hodgepodge of tattoo joints, shooting galleries, pinball machines, barber shops, massage parlors, photo booths, trinket counters — everything an enterprising citizenry could devise for a serviceman’s leisure.

  Jukeboxes blared from Bill Lederer’s bar, the Two Jacks, the Mint, the New Emma Café. Thin shafts of light escaped around the drawn shades of hotels named Rex … Ritz … the Anchor. Occasional brawls erupted as the men overflowed the narrow sidewalks.

  The Shore Patrol broke up a fight between two sailors from the cruiser Honolulu; caught a seaman from the California using somebody else’s liberty card; arrested a man from the Kaneohe Naval Air Station for “malicious conversation.” But the night was surprisingly calm — only five serious offenses as against 43 for the whole month so far.

  The MPs had a quiet time too. They found perhaps 25 soldiers passed out — out of 42,952 in the islands — and these were sent to the Fort Shafter guardhouse to sober up. Otherwise, nothing special.

  A surprisingly large number stuck to their ships, bases, and military posts. As the Army and Navy swelled with reservists, an ever-growing number of men seemed to prefer the simpler pleasures. At the Hickam post theater Private Ed Arison watched Clark Gable outwit oriental chicanery in Honky Tonk. In the big new barracks nearby, Staff Sergeant Charles W. Maybeck played Benny Goodmans and Bob Crosbys on his new phonograph. Up at Schofield, Private Aloysius Manuszewski had some beer at the PX, spent most of the evening writing home to Buffalo.

  At Pearl Harbor, Boatswain’s Mate Robert E. Jones joined the crowd at the Navy’s new Bloch Recreation Center. It was a place designed to give the enlisted man every kind of relaxation the Navy felt proper — music, boxing, bowling, billiards, 3.2 beer. Tonight’s attraction was “The Battle of Music,” the finals of a contest to decide the best band in the fleet. As the men stamped and cheered, bands from the Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Argonne, and Detroit battled it out. The Pennsylvania band won; everybody sang “God Bless America”; and the evening wound up with dancing. When the crowd filed out at midnight, many still argued that the battleship Arizona’s band — which had already been eliminated — was really the best of all.

  Slowly the men drifted back to their ships; the Hotel Street bars closed down; the dances broke up — Honolulu’s strict blue laws took care of that. Here and there a few couples lingered. Second Lieutenant Fred Gregg of Schofield proposed to Evolin Dwyer and was accepted; Ensign William Hasler of the West Virginia was not so lucky, but he happily learned later that a woman can change her mind. Lieutenant Benning drove Monica Conter back to Hickam, where she was stationed. There they laid plans for the following day —lunch, swimming, a movie, some barbecued spareribs. Another engaged couple, Ensign Everett Malcolm and Marian Shaffer, drove to the Shaffer home high in the hills behind Honolulu. He arranged to meet her for golf at one.

  About 2:00 A.M. Ensign Malcolm started back for Pearl Harbor but discovered he would never make the last launch to his ship, the Arizona. So he headed instead for the home of Captain D. C. Emerson. The old captain had been senior dentist on the Arizona, and his congenial bachelor establishment was a sort of shoreside bunk-room for the ship’s junior officers.

  On arriving, Ensign Malcolm was quickly hailed in by the captain, who sat on the floor with three other officers, arguing about (of all things) Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points. Mildly bewildered, Malcolm joined in and they were all still at it when the clock touched three.

  Only the people who had to be up were now abroad. Radioman Fred Glaeser couldn’t find a bed at the Y, resigned himself to a cramped night in his car. Lieutenant Kermit Tyler, a young pilot at Wheeler Field, was up too — but he was already starting for work. He had drawn the 4:00-8:00 A.M. shift in the Army’s new interceptor center at Fort Shafter. Now as he rolled along the road to town, he flicked on his car radio and listened to KGMB playing Hawaiian records.

  About 320 miles to the north, on the Japanese aircraft carrier Akagi, Commander Kanjiro Ono listened intently to the same program. He was staff communications officer for Vice Admiral Chuichi Nagumo, commanding a huge Japanese task force of six carriers, two battleships, three cruisers, and nine destroyers that raced southward through the night. Admiral Nagumo was about to launch an all-out assault on the U.S. fleet at Pearl Harbor, and everything depended on surprise. He felt that if the Americans had even an inkling, the radio would somehow show it.

  But there was nothing — nothing whatsoever, except the soft melodies of the islands. Admiral Nagumo settled back, relieved. There seemed a good chance that a great deal of hard work would not be wasted.

  CHAPTER II

  “A Dream Come True!”

  TEN MONTHS HAD NOW passed since Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, Commander of the Japanese Combined Fleet, remarked almost casually to Rear Admiral Takajiro Onishi, Chief of Staff of the Eleventh Air Fleet, “If we are to have war with America, we will have no hope of winning unless the U.S. fleet in Hawaiian waters can be destroyed.”

  Then he ordered Admiral Onishi to start studying the possibility of launching a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. Onishi called in Commander Minoru Genda, a crack young airman, and ten days later Genda came up with his appraisal: risky but not impossible.

  Yamamoto needed no further encouragement. A few trusted subordinates went quietly to work, and by May Rear Admiral Shigeru Fukudome of the Naval General Staff was able to toss a fat notebook at Rear Admiral Ryunosuke Kusaka.

  “Go ahead, read it,” invited Fukudome. Kusaka plunged into a mass of statistics on Pearl Harbor, but missed any operational plans. “That,” said Fukudome, “is what I want you to do.”

  The job seemed overwhelming. The U.S. strength looked enormous. Hawaii was thousands of miles from Japan. There were airfields scattered all around Oahu — Hickam, Wheeler, Ewa, Kaneohe, probably others. Pearl Harbor itself was narrow and shallow, making it extremely difficult to get at the ships. On top of everything else, Vice Admiral Nagumo, commander of the First Air Fleet, and slated to lead any attack, was dragging his feet. As his chief of staff, no wonder Kusaka was discouraged.

  “Don’t keep saying, ‘It’s too much of a gamble,’ just because I happen to be fond of playing bridge and shogi,” Admiral Yamamoto cheerfully admonished. “Mr. Kusaka, I am fully aware of your arguments. But Pearl Harbor is my idea and I need your support.” He added that it would certainly help if Kusaka could win over Admiral Nagumo.

  Kusaka worked on, and somehow the project began to make sense. Commander Genda did wonders with the torpedo problem. All summer he experimented on the Inland Sea, setting up short shallow torpedo runs. By August he was trying out shallow-draft torpedoes at Saeki. As for the short length of run — well, there was Southeast Loch, a narrow arm of water that led like a bowling alley straight to the battleship moorings in the center of Pearl Harbor.

  Everyth
ing was done in the darkest secrecy. One afternoon late in August, Lieutenant (j.g.) Toshio Hashimoto, a young naval pilot, took some papers to his wing commander’s office and found a group of high-ranking officers poring over charts and maps of Pearl Harbor. They were stamped “Top Secret,” and Lieutenant Hashimoto was appalled at his intrusion. Nobody rebuked him, but he went away petrified by the mere knowledge of such an enormous secret.

  By the end of August, Admiral Yamamoto was ready to unveil the scheme to a select few. Admiral Osami Nagano, Chief of the Naval General Staff, and 13 other key officers were called to Tokyo and given the word. Then, from September 2 to 13, they all tested the idea on the game board at the Naval War College.

  The attacking team “lost” two carriers; Admiral Nagano began complaining that December was too stormy; Admiral Nagumo, commander of the all-important First Air Fleet, still had cold feet. Other officers argued that Japan could take southeast Asia without U.S. interference; that if America came in, the place to catch the fleet was nearer Japanese waters.

  But Yamamoto stuck to his guns — if war came, America was bound to be in it … her fleet was Japan’s biggest obstacle … the best time to crush it was right away. By the time it recovered, Japan would have everything she needed and could sit back and hold out forever.

  This logic won the day, and on September 13 the Naval Command issued the rough draft of a plan that combined Pearl Harbor, Malaya, the Philippines, and the Dutch East Indies in one huge assault.

  Next, the training stage. One by one, men were tapped for the key jobs. Brilliant young Commander Mitsuo Fuchida was mildly surprised to be transferred suddenly to the carrier Akagi, having just left her the year before. He was far more amazed to be named commander of all air groups of the First Air Fleet. Commander Genda sidled up with the explanation: “Now don’t be alarmed, Fuchida, but we want you to lead our air force in the event that we attack Pearl Harbor.”

  Lieutenant Yoshio Shiga and about a hundred other pilots got the word on October 5 from Admiral Yamamoto himself. He swore them to secrecy, told them the plan, urged them to their greatest effort.

  The men practiced harder than ever —mostly the low, short torpedo runs that had to be mastered. The torpedoes themselves continued to misbehave in shallow water, diving to the bottom and sticking in the mud. Commander Fuchida wondered whether they would ever work. But Genda only grew more excited — once perfected, they would be the supreme weapon. And by early November he had succeeded. Simple wooden stabilizers were fitted on the fins, which would keep the torpedoes from hitting even the shallow 45-foot bottom of Pearl Harbor.

  Meanwhile, other pilots practiced bombing techniques, for nobody except Genda was completely sold on torpedoes. Besides, the meticulous intelligence now pouring in from Consul General Nagao Kita in Honolulu showed that the battleships were often moored in pairs; torpedoes couldn’t possibly reach the inboard ship. To penetrate tough armor-plated decks, ordnance men fitted fins on 15-inch and 16-inch armor-piercing shells. These converted missiles would go through anything.

  While the pilots practiced and the inventors worked their miracles, Admiral Kusaka battled the red tape that snarls anybody’s navy. Some time during October he flew to Tokyo to argue headquarters into giving him eight tankers for the task force that was now taking shape. It meant the difference between using four or six carriers, and at a time like this it seemed incredible that there should be any question about it. But headquarters hemmed and hawed, and it took several weeks to wangle the extra ships.

  Thirty-three-year-old Suguru Suzuki, youngest lieutenant commander in the service, had a more stimulating job. Around the end of October he boarded the Japanese liner Taiyo Maru for an interesting journey to Honolulu. Instead of following her usual course, the ship sailed far to the north, crossed over between Midway and the Aleutians, and then cut south to Hawaii —exactly the course the task force planned to follow to avoid detection.

  Lieutenant Commander Suzuki whiled away the trip taking reams of notes. He checked the winds, the atmospheric pressure, the roll of the vessel. Could a scouting seaplane be launched in these seas? It could. Would any special refueling problems arise? They would. He observed that during the entire voyage the Taiyo Maru didn’t sight a single ship.

  In Honolulu, Lieutenant Commander Suzuki spent a busy week. From occasional visitors to his ship he learned that the fleet wasn’t now assembling at Lahaina Anchorage as it used to. He confirmed that the weekend was a universally observed American institution. He picked up some choice titbits — structural data on the Hickam Field hangars, interesting aerial shots of Pearl Harbor taken October 21. These were made from a private plane that took up sightseers at nearby John Rogers Airport. Anybody could do it.

  Then back to Tokyo again, guardedly comparing notes with Lieutenant Commander Toshihide Maejima, who was also on board. Commander Maejima seems to have had much the same interests, but directed rather more toward submarines.

  By now things were moving fast in Tokyo. November 3, Admiral Nagano’s final blessing … November 5, Combined Fleet Top Secret Order Number 1, spelling out the plan … November 7, Admiral Nagumo officially named commander of the Pearl Harbor Striking Force. The same day Yamamoto tentatively set the date — December 8, or Sunday, December 7, Hawaii time. Good for a number of reasons: favorable moonlight … perfect coordination with the Malay strike … the best chance to catch the ships in port and the men off duty.

  A few more people were let in on the secret. Admiral Kusaka confided in Commander Shin-Ichi Shimizu, a middle-aged supply officer. The problem: how to draw winter gear without attracting attention, when everybody else was getting ready for the tropics. Commander Shimizu’s solution: requisition both summer and winter gear. He glibly told the startled depot that if war came, you never knew where you might go. Then he piled everything on the freighter Hoko Maru and chugged off to sea about November 15. Once out of sight, he swung north and made for Hitokappu Bay in the bleak, cold Kuriles — the secret rendezvous point for the Pearl Harbor Striking Force.

  Admiral Nagumo himself was not far behind. His flagship, the carrier Akagi, left Saeki in the late evening of the 17th. His chief of staff, Admiral Kusaka, tingled with optimism. Only the day before, he had received a letter from his old housekeeper, telling of a pleasant dream — the Japanese submarine fleet had achieved a splendid surprise victory at Pearl Harbor. A strange dream for a housekeeper, but Admiral Kusaka thought it was a good omen.

  On November 19 Lieutenant Commander Suzuki arrived back from his junket to Honolulu and took a fast launch to the battleship Hiei, anchored off Yokohama. Suzuki climbed aboard with his bulging briefcase, and the Hiei, too, steamed off for Hitokappu.

  One by one they slipped away. Always separately, never any apparent connection. Once out of sight, the sea simply swallowed them up. At the great Kure naval base a lively radio traffic crackled from the rest of the ships, designed to give the impression that the fleet was still at home. The regular carrier operators stayed behind to give these signals their usual “swing.” (A wireless operator’s touch is as distinctive as his handwriting.) The camouflage was so good it even fooled Admiral Kusaka, who bawled out his communications man for breaking radio silence, only to find the “message” was a fake concocted back home.

  One by one they glided into Hitokappu Bay — the lumbering carriers Akagi and Kaga; the huge new flattop Zuikaku; the light carriers Hiryu and Soryu; the old battleships Hiei and Kirishima; the crack new cruisers Tone and Chikuma; nine destroyers led by the light cruiser Abukuma; three screening submarines; the eight tankers finally wangled from headquarters. Last to arrive in the twilight of November 21 was the great carrier Shokaku, which had put on such an effective masquerade of turbine trouble that she was almost late.

  Now they were all there — 32 ships incongruously packed in a desolate harbor. Snow crowned the mountains that ringed the cold, gray bay. Three lonely radio masts stood against the sky. Three small fishermen’s huts and one bare concret
e pier were the only other traces of civilization. Even so, Nagumo took no chances — no shore leaves, no rubbish overboard. When Seaman Shigeki Yokota got the Kagas garbage detail, he had to burn it right beside the pier.

  Commander Shimizu and the other supply ship skippers gradually transferred food, clothes, and thousands of drums of fuel oil to the task force. Five-gallon tins of oil were crammed into every empty space. When all was loaded, Shimizu told his crew to stay put until December 10: “Go fishing. Do anything you want, but you can’t leave the area.” Then he transferred to the Akagi — he couldn’t resist going along for the ride.

  Admiral Nagumo held a last conference on the Akagi on the night of the 23rd. Lieutenant Commander Suzuki told about his interesting trip to Honolulu. Commander Fuchida, who would lead the air strike, scribbled away at his notes. The meeting ended with a toast of sake and three banzais for the emperor.

  On the 25th Yamamoto ordered the fleet to get going the following day, and inevitably Admiral Nagumo spent a restless last night. At 2:00 A.M. he finally called in Lieutenant Commander Suzuki, apologized for waking him, and said he just had to check one point again: “You’re absolutely certain about not spotting the U.S. Pacific Fleet in Lahaina?”

  “Yes, Admiral.”

  “Nor is there any possibility that it might assemble at Lahaina?”

  Suzuki reassured him and went back to bed, deeply moved by the sight of the old admiral, all alone with his worries, pacing away the night in his kimono.

  At dawn Suzuki left the Akagi and stood on the shore waving goodbye as the anchor chains rattled upward and the ships got under way. On the bridge of the Akagi Admiral Kusaka tugged at his coat collar to escape the bitter wind that swept the cheerless morning.