Neither surface ships nor submarines properly may be employed to perform this duty, even if the necessary number is available.… A defensive deployment of surface ships and submarines over an extensive sea area as a means of continuously guarding against a possible attack from an unknown quarter and at an unknown time, is not sound military procedure either in peace or in war.112
But in extremis?
It worked for the Japanese.
* * *
What Kimmel did do after receipt of the 27 November warning dispatch was the following: He maintained in force the tightened readiness measures he had taken after the 16 October warning. He issued new orders for “full security measures” to be taken by ships in operating areas and at sea.113 In Pearl Harbor proper he and Bloch warned all antisubmarine patrol forces to take additional security measures against submarines.114 He issued orders to the fleet to “exercise extreme vigilance” against submarines in operating areas and to depth-charge all contacts expected to be hostile in the fleet operating areas.115 He gave the depth-charge order despite Stark’s previous resistance, dating from 23 September, to such an order. Stark had told Kimmel that “if conclusive, and I repeat conclusive, evidence is obtained that Japanese submarines are actually in or near United States territory,” a “strong warning” should be sent to Japan. But Kimmel decided on his own to give the “bomb on contact” order, and so informed Stark, who made no reply.116 (There would be no conclusive evidence until 7 December.) “The Pearl Harbor operating area was some 2,000 miles from the nearest Japanese possession,” Kimmel reasoned. “I knew that if we sent any submarines into a Japanese operating area they wouldn’t hesitate a moment to bomb them.”117 Kimmel’s estimate of Japanese intentions after receipt of the 27 November dispatch was that if an attack was made against the Philippines, then
there was a very good chance that a mass submarine attack would occur in the Hawaiian area. I thought an air attack was still a remote possibility, and I did not expect an air attack to be made on Pearl Harbor at this time due to the tenor of the dispatches, the other information available to me, the difficulties of making such an attack, and the latest information I had from the Navy Department and other sources was that the greater portion of the carrier forces were located in home waters.118
He issued orders for Task Forces 8 (departing 28 November) and 12 (departing 5 December) taking Marine F4F fighters 2,004 nautical miles to Wake and 1,300 miles to Midway, respectively, to conduct en route morning and afternoon air searches out to 300 miles from their positions for any sign of hostile shipping. Thus, Kimmel did have distant air reconnaissance in the western and northwestern sectors, and to a greater distance than could have been achieved by patrol planes based on Oahu. Furthermore, he ordered a patrol plane squadron to proceed from Midway to Wake and to search the ocean en route; and while at Wake, to search varying sectors on 2 and 3 December to a distance of 525 miles. He ordered another squadron from Oahu to replace the squadron that went from Midway to Wake. It proceeded by way of Johnston Island, 700 miles to the southwest, making a reconnaissance sweep along both legs. After reaching Midway, that squadron flew distant searches of varying sectors of not less than 500 miles on 3, 4, 5, and 6 December. On the seventh, five of that squadron’s PBYs were searching the sector from 120 to 170 degrees from Midway to a distance of 450 miles. Another two PBYs of that squadron flew a sweep on the seventh while rendezvousing with the Lexington 400 miles from Midway. Four others remained at Midway, each loaded with depth charges, on ten-minute notice.119 As Kimmel testified before the JCC:
In the week before December 7, these reconnaissance sweeps of the patrol plane squadrons moving from Midway to Wake; from Pearl Harbor to Johnston and from Johnston to Midway; from Wake to Midway and Midway to Pearl Harbor, covered a total distance of nearly 5,000 miles. As they proceeded, each squadron would cover a 400-mile strand of ocean along its path. They brought under the coverage of air search about 2,000,000 square miles of ocean area.120
At the same time, on and after 27 November, Kimmel maintained surface patrols of varying ocean sectors by two submarines out of Wake and two out of Midway.121
Nor were the PBYs on Oahu standing idle. In addition to daily employment in expansion training, PBYs flew scout training missions on 1, 2, 3, and 4 December northward and northwestward of Oahu to a distance of about 400 miles. While these flights did not constitute distant reconnaissance as such, it is worth remarking that they exceeded in distance the flights conducted by Admiral Richardson after the Marshall-Herron alert of 1940. On the fifth, the PBYs held ground arming drills with live bombs. On the sixth and seventh the PBYs that flew the scout training missions were down for maintenance and upkeep, “in order not to depreciate the material readiness of the planes,” said Lt. Comdr. (in 1941) Logan Ramsey, who drew up the wing tactical exercises for Patrol Wing 2.122 Moreover, since 15 November and continuing each day of the week preceding the Japanese attack, including the seventh, three PBYs flew a dawn patrol over the operating area south of Oahu.123 Lifting off the water at Kaneohe Bay at just after 0600, the Catalinas each flew, with tanks topped off with 1,000 gallons of gasoline, with two depth charges on wing racks, and with all machine guns armed, pie-shaped sectors over the fleet operating area south of Oahu to a distance of 300 miles.124 It was on the dawn patrol flown on the seventh, as will be shown, that Catalina 14P1 sighted and attacked a Japanese submarine. In addition, on the morning of the seventh, four other Catalinas were near Lahaina Roads off Maui Island to the east conducting exercises with U.S. submarines in inter-type tactics for communication and recognition.
Finally, Kimmel activated certain features of the Joint Coastal Frontier Defense Plan, including an inshore and offshore patrol of the immediate Oahu perimeter by ship; activation of the harbor control post; deployment of sonobuoys to detect enemy submarines; operation of torpedo nets at the entrance to Pearl Harbor and Honolulu; and daily sweeping of channels. Furthermore, beginning 30 November, he kept and updated a daily memorandum entitled “Steps to be taken in case of American-Japanese war within the next 24 hours.” (The last issue of the preparedness memorandum, dated 6 December, was presented to the JCC on 15 January 1946.) And he directed his war plans officer Soc McMorris, to draw up a memorandum of “Recommended steps to be taken in case of American-Japanese War within the next forty-eight hours” (completed on 5 December).125
* * *
Meanwhile, a confident United States citizenry, including the millions who did not know the location or even the name of Pearl Harbor, basked in the knowledge of America’s oceanic remoteness from the fields and seas of battles then raging. Where Japan was concerned, many in the Midwest read approvingly an editorial in the Chicago Tribune, which held:
What vital interests of the United States can Japan threaten? She cannot attack us. That is a military impossibility. Even our base at Hawaii is beyond the effective striking force of her Fleet.126
SEVEN
CLIMB NIITAKAYAMA
Our objective lies more than three thousand miles away. In attacking this large fleet concentration it is to be expected that countless difficulties will be encountered in preserving the absolute security of the plans. If these plans should fail at any stage, our Navy will suffer the wretched fate of never being able to rise again. The success of our surprise attack on Pearl Harbor will prove to be the Waterloo of the war to follow.
Rear Admiral Ugaki Matome
Chief of Staff, Combined Fleet
When in April 1941 Onishi Takijiro and Genda Minoru presented their analysis of the Pearl Harbor attack proposal to its author, Admiral Yamamoto Isoruku, it was considered by the C-in-C, Combined Fleet alongside analyses undertaken independently by his own staff. Taking the two analyses together, we find in them two propositions that would be deleted before adoption of a final plan: (1) that not one but repeated raids should be mounted against Pearl Harbor in order to secure a thorough crippling effect; and (2) that landings should be made on Oahu for the purpose of capturing
all or as many as possible of the U.S. naval officers at Pearl. Yamamoto made a few amendments in the Onishi-Genda analysis and, sometime in April, ordered it to be sent to the Naval General Staff for their reaction.
While awaiting staff response, Yamamoto proceeded to move from analysis to a formal plan of operations. To draw up that plan he appointed four study groups headed by a brilliant and eccentric senior staff officer, Captain Kuroshima Kameto. Working naked at his desk (the flagship Nagato lacked air conditioning), chain-smoking and burning incense through an intense period of intellectual labor, Kuroshima produced a document that Yamamoto could take to the Naval General Staff at the end of April. There it met with serious resistance and lay fallow for several months. On 7 August Yamamoto sent Kuroshima himself to argue the plan’s virtues before the General Staff, but staff members were unmoved. First, the staff wanted the Combined Fleet to be kept under its control, not the obverse; and second, staff members thought that Yamamoto’s operation was far too much of a gamble. Even if a striking force were to approach Oahu successfully and without detection, what guarantee was there that the American fleet would be in the harbor on the day chosen? Kuroshima did win one concession: that the Navy’s annual map maneuvers at the War College be moved from November (sometimes December) to September, and that a special section be devoted to the Pearl Harbor problem. That would enable the operation, if approved, to proceed before adverse weather conditions occurred in the North Pacific, if that was selected as the preferred route, which would make the passage impossible.
Also in August, an unusual order arrived at the desk of Lt. Comdr. Fuchida Mitsuo, a newly promoted staff member in the Third Carrier Division. It directed him to return to the carrier Akagi, from which he had just been transferred, and to reassume the lower-ranking duties of a flight commander. His puzzlement was relieved when, on board his old carrier, he was let in on the still very secret plan to bomb Pearl Harbor, and told that he would lead the attacking air fleet. Placed in charge of training the air crews of all participating carriers, Fuchida created a series of “near-combat” exercises in Kagoshima Bay, where the topography happened to resemble that at Pearl Harbor, but in which no secrets would be revealed, since, so far as his aviators were aware, Kagoshima could represent a foreign harbor anywhere in the Far East, such as Singapore. There, for many weeks, the carrier pilots unknowingly simulated the attacks they would make at Pearl Harbor only months later in December.1
In suburban Tokyo, on Meguro Street, a few minutes walk from the Meguro railway station, stood the four-story black building of the Naval War College. There, in a sealed room on the east wing, thirty carefully selected Combined Fleet commanders and staff members gathered on 2 September to begin tabletop map maneuvers, or “war games,” to test the feasibility of the Hawaiian Operation. The officers were organized into three teams, designated “N” (Nippon), “A” (America), and “E” (England). When the exercises were completed, on 13 September, it was judged that four U.S. Navy capital ships had been sunk and one seriously damaged, two carriers were sunk and one damaged, six cruisers were sunk or damaged, and 180 aircraft were shot down. But Japanese losses had also been heavy, including one Akagi-class carrier and one Soryu-class carrier sunk, and two slightly damaged, as well as 127 aircraft shot down. The amphibious landing and capture proposition was rejected because of insuperable logistical problems. The other results and the collected written materials were delivered to Yamamoto’s flagship, Nagato, then anchored at Hashirajima, the anchorage of Kure.2
Opposition to the plan mounted among both task force command staffs and members of the Naval General Staff. The commanders of the First and Second Air Fleets, Vice Admiral Nagumo Chuichi and Vice Admiral Kondo Nobutake, respectively, sent written messages to Yamamoto urging him to abandon the plan. It was Nagumo who eventually would command the Pearl Harbor Striking Force. Two other officers carried their objections personally to Yamamoto—Rear Admiral Kusaka Ryunosuke, chief of staff to Nagumo, Commander of the First Air Fleet; and Rear Admiral Onishi Takijiro, who occupied the same position with the Eleventh Air Fleet. Onishi, the reader will remember, was the first line officer to whom Yamamoto had confided his plan, in the previous January; on that review he had given the plan a 60 percent chance of success. After the two officers expressed their views, Yamamoto is purported to have replied:
But what would you do if, while we were engaged in the South Pacific, the U.S. Fleet launched air raids on Japan from the east? Are you suggesting that it’s all right for Tokyo and Osaka to be burned to the ground so long as we get hold of oil? Still, the fact is I’m determined that so long as I’m C. in C. we shall go ahead with the Hawaiian raid. I’m sure there’ll be many things that are difficult for you, or go against the grain, but I’m asking you to proceed with preparations on the positive assumption that the raid is on.3
With this and other arguments plus a full display of his not inconsiderable charm and powers of persuasion, the C-in-C overcame his visitors’ objections and, as they departed the gangway, won their pledges of support. During 9–14 October, Yamamoto conducted tactical war games on board Nagato, and upon their completion, with all the ships assigned to the Striking Force assembled in the western sector of the Inland Sea (an inlet of the Pacific in southeastern Japan, extending 240 miles between Honshu on the north and Shikoku and Kyushu on the south), he had all the commanding officers of ships and aircraft brought together to receive a detailed briefing on the raid. Many of the officers present were hearing of it for the first time. To command the Striking Force Yamamoto had named Nagumo, who had opposed the operation. He was an unlikely choice for another reason: though commander of the First Air Fleet, he had only marginal experience in aviation. He won the command through seniority, Yamamoto’s request to have the command himself having been rejected by the Naval General Staff.
Now all that remained was to receive the approval of that staff. Yamamoto dispatched Kuroshima again to staff headquarters in Tokyo armed with the latest operational draft and a personal written message from the C-in-C stating, in essence, that he was no less determined at that date to make the surprise attack on Hawaii, and that he would stake his rank and position on bringing it off. Impressed by Yamamoto’s confidence, Chief of Staff Admiral Nagano Osami decided to give the operation a green light. Rear Admiral Fukudome Shigero, who had been Yamamoto’s chief of staff until the preceding April and, in that capacity, had given the plan only a 40 percent chance of success, and was now on the naval staff as chief of the First Division, was present when Nagano said, “If he has that much confidence, it’s better to let Yamamoto go ahead.” The only condition the chief imposed was a requirement that the Striking Force turn back at once if it suffered a setback en route, such as premature discovery by the enemy, an on-board explosion, or an inability to refuel from tankers owing to high seas.
When the new Navy minister, Admiral Shimada Shigetaro, who had sought every means of avoiding war with the United States and who would have preferred that the United States struck the first blow so that Japan could declare war with honor, also, and reluctantly, came on board, the Naval General Staff sought the additional support of the chief of the Army General Staff. The Army’s endorsement was necessary for the plan to be advanced to the level of the Imperial General Headquarters, which alone could approach Hirohito for the Emperor’s sanction. The Army came approved, and the imperial sanction was received on 5 November.4
Contrary to the conventional historical view of Hirohito as an enigmatic, passive, and generally benign monarch who was duped by his ultra-nationalist military chiefs, the “divine” descendant of Emperor Mutsuhito (1867–1912), known after death as “Meiji the Great,” was in fact an active driving agent in Japanese war-making from Manchuria in 1931 through Pearl Harbor to final ignominious defeat in 1945.5 In the latter part of 1941 the Emperor took a direct role in promoting the military’s preparations for war and in establishing a deadline for negotiations with Washington. Of the Hawaii Operation he said, approvingly,
“This surprise attack operation, comparable to the Battle of Okehazama [a feudal-period battle in central Honshu, Japan, in 1560], is extremely bold. Of course its success will largely depend on the luck of the battle. However, so long as the enemy fleet is anchored there on the day of the attack, it is possible to sink two or three battleships and aircraft carriers.”6 On 5 November Admiral Nagano gave the Emperor a detailed briefing on the Imperial Navy Operations Plan for War Against the United States, Britain, and the Netherlands. It was at that audience, Hirohito’s most recent biographer states, that “Hirohito gave the final go-ahead to attack Pearl Harbor.”7
On the same day, Imperial Navy General Staff Order No. 1 was issued to Yamamoto “by Imperial Order”:
1. The Empire has decided to schedule various operational preparations for completion in the early part of December in view of great fears that she will be obliged to go to war with the United States, Britain, and the Netherlands for her self-existence and self-defense.
2. The Commander-in-Chief Combined Fleet will make necessary operational preparations.
3. Detailed instructions will be given by the Chief of the Naval General Staff.8
Under the same date, but actually not until 8 November, Yamamoto issued his own Combined Fleet Top Secret Operation Order No. 1, which showed that the fleet was already prepared not only for the Hawaii but also for the Southern Operation, as well as for further operations (Phase Two) to consolidate victories in those two theaters. The extraordinary order, 100 pages in length, had been drafted by the indefatigable Kuroshima, who explained its comprehensive nature by saying that he believed “an order should … include all potential operations.”9 The Naval General Staff printed 700 copies of the order, but, save in the original, omitted the Hawaii Operation.10 Only in one known fragment of that original do we have language about Pearl Harbor:
Pearl Harbor Betrayed Page 21
