Pearl Harbor Betrayed

by Michael Gannon

  The time was approximately 0725. Fuchida’s air fleet was now sixty miles distant from Opana.7

  Tyler’s reasoning was that the flight was one of two possibilities. The first was that it was a flight of B-17s, a bit off course, coming into Hickam from the West Coast. A bomber friend-pilot had told him that when the B-17s staging through Hawaii approached the islands, the local radio stations played Hawaiian music through the night to serve as identifiable signals for the pilots to home in on. That morning, before 0400, as he drove to the center, Tyler had listened on his car radio to the wistful music of the islands and surmised that bombers were coming in—and they were, just three degrees off Fuchida’s course and five minutes behind. The other possibility that occurred to Tyler was that those aircraft were a Navy launch from an aircraft carrier north of Oahu. Frequently, when the carriers came into port from exercises on Saturdays or Sundays, their aircraft would participate in air raid drills on Sunday mornings.8 On this particular Sunday, though Tyler did not know it—“The movement of the Navy was usually secret, more so than we are”—two of the three carriers were at sea to the west and west-northwest, and the third was in overhaul on the West Coast.9

  Suppose the planes were the enemy’s? During the 1944 Army Pearl Harbor Board, Maj. Gen. Henry D. Russell bore home on that third possibility:

  GENERAL RUSSELL: You knew that the pursuit officer in that information center was there to get planes in the air, to intercept incoming hostile planes if they appeared, did you?

  COLONEL TYLER: Yes, sir.

  GEN. RUSSELL: And you knew the only thing you had to do was to get in touch with the people who could put those up, isn’t that true?

  COL. TYLER: That is not exactly true, sir, because we had nothing on the alert. We had no planes.10

  The Army aircraft were at parade attention in closed ranks to prevent sabotage. General Short conceded that, if Tyler had sounded the alarm at 0720, there would not have been enough time to arm, refuel, and warm up the engines of fighter aircraft before the dive-bombers were overhead. But there would have been sufficient time, he said, to disperse many of the planes, which probably would have reduced losses.11 The Army would also have been able to man and arm some of its AA guns.

  On the Navy side, the thirty-minute window that Tyler’s alert would have provided (if the Army shared the alert with its sister service) an opportunity for all ships in harbor to sound general quarters, which would have meant among other actions taken, that all AA guns would be manned with ammunition boxes at the ready, and all ships would go to material readiness Condition Zed, which required that all double bottoms, compartments, passageways, and access openings be closed, except for those necessary to fight the ship. As a result, the battleship California might have been saved from sinking, with the loss of ninety-eight lives, by the closing of manhole covers that had been left open for maintenance.12

  * * *

  It has often been pointed out that, if General Marshall or Admiral Stark had used the scrambler telephones on their respective desks in Washington to call Short and Kimmel, the window of emergency preparedness in Hawaii would have been a more gainful one hour and thirty-five minutes. Why did they not do so? Marshall, who was the more concerned of the two about alerting Hawaii to the one o’clock trigger, stated in 1944 and 1945 that he never considered using the scrambler because it was not secure. If the Japanese had succeeded in tapping and descrambling the transpacific lines, as he was sure the Germans had done with the transatlantic cable, his mention of one o’clock would have given away the fact that the United States was reading the Purple cipher. “I had a test made of induction from the telephone conversations on the Atlantic cable from Gardiners Island [off the eastern tip of Long Island],” he testified. “I found that that could be picked up by induction. I talked to the President not once but several times. I also later, after we were in the war, talked with the Prime Minister [Churchill] in an endeavor to have them be more careful in the use of the scrambler.” This line of reasoning is persuasive. But another reason Marshall offered for not having used the scrambler strains credulity. It was that the heightened defensive posture adopted by the Army in Oahu as a result of his alert call would have been taken by Japan as an overt provocation justifying a Japanese declaration of war. In the JCC hearings the general was asked by Senator Homer Ferguson (R. Mich.), “Now, how could the use of that telephone to Hawaii have been an overt act of war by America against Japan in alerting Hawaii?” Marshall answered: “I think, Senator, that the Japanese would have grasped at most any straw to bring to such portions of our public that doubted our integrity of action that we were committing an act that forced action on their part.”13 Surprisingly, Senator Ferguson did not follow up his question. If he had, these additional questions would have been appropriate: Why then did you send the cabled alert, which, though slower in reaching Hawaii, would have had exactly the same effect? Why did you send General Short your warning of November 27, which you have testified was meant to put the Army on full alert? Why was that warning not provocative and this one was? Do you mean to tell me that every time the Army held field maneuvers there, or practiced air raid defense, Japan would feel justified in declaring war?

  Marshall stated further that, if he had used the telephone, he would not have called Hawaii first. The Philippines would have come first, and the Panama Canal second. “We were open in a more vulnerable way in the Panama Canal than we were in Hawaii.”14

  Stark, who was reluctant at first to send an alert to Kimmel, similarly mistrusted the security of the scrambler phone. But he had a better reason than Marshall for not using his scrambler to call Hawaii. The Navy had no descrambler at the other end.15 Stark may have been averse to using telephones of any kind for transoceanic communications. Kimmel had a regular commercial line in his office, but Stark, despite their long association and friendship, had never called him on the telephone during the whole of 1941.16 When asked in 1960 why he did not urge Stark to pick up a telephone and call Kimmel, Kelly Turner answered, obliquely:

  Why weren’t I and a lot of others smarter than we were? I didn’t put all the Two’s and Two’s together before Savo [the Battle of Savo Island, 8–9 August 1942, a U.S. Navy defeat] to get four. Maybe I didn’t before Pearl, but damned if I know just where. If Noyes had only known that Kimmel couldn’t read the diplomatic Magic, If Kimmel had only sent out a few search planes. If the words “Pearl Harbor” had only survived the redrafting of the warning messages.… You find out the answers and let me know.17

  Admiral Richardson, whom Kimmel had relieved at the start of the year, was unforgiving on this point. He delayed publication of his somewhat intemperate book, On the Treadmill to Pearl Harbor, until 1973, after Stark’s death:

  I consider that “Betty” Stark, in failing to pick up the telephone and give Kimmel a last-minute alert on the morning of Pearl Harbor, committed a major professional lapse, indicating a basic absence of those personal military characteristics required in a successful war leader. I believe his failure in these respects were far more important derelictions than those of any of his subordinates.18

  In the interest of preserving the secrecy of Magic, which was one of Marshall’s arguments, much was sacrificed at Pearl: many of the 2,403 lives and the reputations of two commanders. The losses could have been much less. One is reminded of the false story—still circulating—of Churchill sacrificing Coventry to the Luftwaffe rather than warn its population and thus betray Britain’s penetration of the German Enigma cipher.19 In the present true case there was no credible intent on the part of Marshall and Stark to make such a sacrifice: after all, they did send a message. Their failure was in their decision not to use the most expeditious means: the telephone.

  Stark, like Marshall, was probably chary of spoken use of the one o’clock information. He need not have mentioned it. Taking a cue from the British, who were adept at masking their use of Enigma-derived information by making certain that the same information could have come from anothe
r, more conventional, source, Stark might have camouflaged his real purpose with a spoken message such as the following: “In view of the deteriorating state of U.S.-Japanese relations, I remind you of OpNav’s message to you last April first advising that ‘Axis Powers often begin activities in a particular field on Saturdays and Sundays or on national holidays of the country concerned.’ I hereby advise you, if it has not already been done, that you go on maximum alert immediately—repeat immediately—and that you maintain such highest state of alert on all subsequent Saturdays and Sundays, as well as on Christmas and New Year’s. More to follow.”

  It would have been good advice, regardless.

  Of course, a different personality might have taken this tack: “To hell with the diplomatic cipher! There’s not going to be any more diplomacy. I’d rather risk Purple than my people. Get Admiral Kimmel on that telephone!”

  Of course, too, Stark could have sent an enciphered explicit message by means of what he called the Navy’s “quite rapid” radio system.

  But he did none of these things. And, by 1944, it was clear that he regretted it. “There is only one thought,” he told the NCI “—that doesn’t mean that I am right—in my mind there is only one thought that I regretted. What the effect would have been I don’t know—and that was the dispatch which was sent by the Army on the morning of December 7, that I had not paralleled it with my own [radio] system, or that I had not telephoned it.… That is the one regret, that I have had.”

  Pacific Fleet intelligence officer Layton wrote, “Admiral Kimmel [after he learned of it in 1944] considered the delayed warning of Tokyo’s one o’clock deadline as the most shocking example of Washington’s mishandling of the whole matter of intelligence.”20 And Kimmel would hold his old friend Stark primarily to blame.

  * * *

  Commander Fuchida’s air armada droned south both through and beneath the unbroken cloud cover that he measured at 2,000 meters. Then, as Kahuku Point came up, the clouds suddenly broke, and the first faint rays of the rising sun enabled the flight leader to look around at his fleet: forty-nine level bombers in triangular formations astern; forty torpedo planes to starboard and slightly below; fifty-one dive-bombers at about 200 meters overhead; and forty-three fighters, unable to keep to the low 125-knot base speed, snarling back and forth like warrior bees over the entire argosy.

  Ahead he could see partly cloudy skies, except that the mountains were thickly wreathed with clouds at 1,000 meters. He had had no midair collisions to that point, and did not want to risk any in the mountains. So he banked to starboard as a signal that all aircraft, except those fighters detailed to strafe the Army’s Wheeler Field, north-northwest of Pearl, would divert to the west, circle that shore of the island, and attack Pearl from the west and south. About fifteen miles to the west of Pearl, the torpedo bombers would divide into two groups, one of twenty-four Kates that would swing south and around the channel entrance and attack Battleship Row from the southeast over Merry Point and the submarine base; and another of sixteen Kates that would strike from the northwest across the West Channel against ships moored to the northwest of Ford Island.

  Fuchida’s second signal did not work as planned. When he thought he had achieved surprise—which he now did think since there were no American fighters airborne to contest him—he was to fire one flare from his Very pistol. On that visual signal the torpedo planes were to sweep in low and make the first strikes at Pearl. The level bombers would follow next, and then the dive-bombers. The planner had not wanted the dive-bombers to attack first in the event of surprise because the smoke generated by their bombs would obscure targets assigned to the torpedo and level bombers. If, however, surprise was not achieved, Fuchida was to fire two flares, in which case the dive-bombers would attack first to sow panic and confusion. In either case, the fighters were to peel off for their assigned duties of strafing airfields and interception of any American fighters that might be climbing to oppose them. As it happened, however, the air fleet demonstrated that Murphy’s Law applied in the Orient as well as in the West.

  Convinced of surprise, at 0740 Fuchida raised his signal pistol above the canopy and fired a single “black dragon” flare. At that his level bombers assumed the 3,000-meter altitude they would maintain through their bombing runs, the dive-bombers climbed to 4,000, and the torpedo bombers began a slow descent to near sea level. The fighters, however, flew on as before instead of banking left toward their targets. Apparently, at their high altitude they had missed seeing the signal because of clouds beneath them. Fuchida thereupon fired a second flare in their direction, which got their attention. But it also got the attention of the commander of dive-bombers, Lt. Comdr. Takahashi Kakuichi, who saw the flare as the second of two indicating “dive-bombers first.” He promptly ceased his climb to altitude and pushed his fifty-one-plane flight into fast forward. Seeing this, and apparently thinking that his own flight of torpedo bombers was slow off the mark, Murata hurried his descent. Fuchida now realized that Genda’s carefully crafted plan had gone awry. The dive-bombers would strike five minutes before Admiral Yamamoto’s firmly established start time of 0800. At this moment the Chikuma’s scout seaplane broke radio silence to report—not very accurately—that ten battleships, one heavy cruiser, and ten light cruisers were anchored in the harbor. The pilot also reported on meteorological conditions at Pearl: “Wind at 14 meters from bearing 080, 7-density clouds at 1,700 meters.”21

  There was nothing to do but go ahead with the final attack order. Fuchida turned to the radio operator aft and called out: “To-renso.” The operator began tapping with his Morse key, repeating the single first syllable of Totsugeki (Charge!): “To, to, to, to, to, to…” The time was 0749, and the attack was irrevocably on. Because of the total surprise achieved, the slight hitch in attack sequence and timing was not likely to make any real difference in the result. As he looked forward through his windshield with binoculars at the immobile array of unexpectant warships, Fuchida would be forgiven if he imagined himself Napoleon in 1800, after taking his army across the St. Bernard Pass before the snow had melted, catching entirely by surprise the rear of the Austrian army besieging Genoa. He called out a second order to the radio operator: transmit the prearranged code signal to Admiral Nagumo indicating that complete surprise had been achieved: “Tora, Tora, Tora.” The time was 0753.

  Thanks to an unusually reflective ionosphere, the code signal was received 3,400 miles away in the radio shack of Yamamoto’s flagship Nagato, anchored in Hiroshima Bay. The message was rushed to the admiral in the ship’s operations room, where the creator of Hawai sakusen was seated on a folding chair, his eyes shut, his mouth set. When the news was read to him, he opened his eyes and nodded.22

  At 0755 the first dive-bomber struck, placing a delayed-fuse bomb on the PBY ramp at the south end of Ford Island. Its explosion was followed by others in rapid succession as the torpedo Kates, pouncing from the southeast and northwest, launched their first missiles starting at 0757. Lieutenant Goto Jinichi later described himself as “shocked to see the row of battleships in front of my eyes.” He squared off at Oklahoma:

  Three things were the key elements to the attack: speed must be 160 knots, the nose angle zero [horizontal to the sea], an altitude of 20 meters. We were told if one of these were off, it would change the angle and the torpedo would go deep under the water and miss the target. I didn’t have time to say “ready” so I just said “fire.” The navigator in the back pulled the release lever. The plane lightened with the sound of the torpedo being released. I kept on flying low and flew right through, just above the ship.… I asked my observer, “Is the torpedo going all right?” … I saw two water columns go up and go down.… But then I realized we’re being attacked from behind.… I was avoiding bullets by swinging my plane from right to left. I felt frightened for the first time and thought my duty was finished.23

  Meanwhile, bombers and fighters simultaneously bombed and strafed Army and Navy aircraft parked at the Hickam, Wheele
r, Ford Island, Kaneohe, and Ewa bases. It was a predicate of operational success that American air strength be neutralized so that the first and second Japanese waves could work over the battleships and cruisers unimpeded. Fighters and dive-bombers also struck the U.S. Army’s Schofield Barracks and Fort Kamehameha, adjacent to Hickam. At Pearl, the level bombers struck last, but only moments later than the other attackers. Fuchida had formed them into a single column with intervals of 200 meters, his best pilot and bombadier in the lead:

  As my group made its bomb run, enemy anti-aircraft suddenly came to life. Dark gray bursts blossomed here and there until the sky was clouded with shattering near misses which made our plane tremble. Shipboard guns seemed to open fire before the shore batteries. I was startled by the rapidity of the counterattack which came less than five minutes after the first bomb had fallen. Were it the Japanese fleet, the reaction would not have been so quick, because although the Japanese character is suitable for offenses, it does not readily adjust to the defensive.

  Suddenly, the plane bounced as if struck by a huge club. “The fuselage is holed to port,” reported the radio man behind me, “and a steering-control wire is damaged.” I asked hurriedly if the plane was under control, and the pilot assured me that it was.24