by Craig Nelson
While presenting awards to the various Fleet sports teams at the start of December 1941, Admiral Isaac Kidd made a special announcement: “I think I know what all you men want for Christmas, and you’re going to get that.” “We all wanted leave,” John Rampley remembered. “After he said that, scuttlebutt started floating around the ship that we were scheduled to leave Monday the eighth for R and R in San Diego.” Galen Ballard, with a week of duty left on his ticket, was told he’d be going home on December 13: “I don’t think any of us had any idea whatsoever that anything was going to happen. We were happy as larks.”
They were, on the whole, happier than larks. Some places in the world are so beautiful it’s impossible to believe they haven’t been retouched by Hollywood or Photoshop, and one of these is a swath of volcanic peaks shimmering in the midst of a too-blue-to-be-true Pacific. Today, California likes to think she’s the prettiest one, but she is wrong; the most beautiful state in America is both a glorious archipelago and a military stronghold, with an ocean undulating in cobalt blue and Coke-bottle green; butter-yellow sands; creamy-white surf; hell-black lava; pencil-thin waterfalls; primordial canyons; and even a snowcap. She is home to marine-mammal leviathans, and the planet’s most active volcano, belching white smoke and fiery red magma; and she is a territory of flowers: orchids and jacaranda; hibiscus and bougainvillea; lavender and oleander; the latter with such strong perfumes they stop passersby in their tracks. In case you can’t tell, I love her like Christmas, and Charles Lindbergh loved her so much, he arranged to die there.
Hawaii is a salting of 130 islands and atolls over fifteen hundred miles of the Pacific. Her first arrivals were Polynesians from the Marquesas, bringing gods that were tall and lean and grimacing, as well as a society with a code of behavior and relationships called kapu, which included wife swapping, torture, human sacrifice, and a worship of gods and spirits found in such things as canoes, mists, odd noises, and lunatics. The first European arrival was James Cook, who returned a year later to retrieve a stolen boat, but came under attack by two hundred warriors and died in combat. Over the next hundred years, Cook’s fellow travelers, lured to this crossroads of the Pacific, would wreak a kind of vengeance, as 90 percent of the archipelago’s population died of European diseases.
Records portray the first American and British visitors to what were then known as the Sandwich Islands as concentrating on Maui, Kauai, and the big island of Hawaii. In 1794, US merchant ship Lady Washington used her cannon to help the king of Oahu win a victory at Rabbit Island and Wai-Momi—today’s Ford Island and Pearl Harbor. Fifteen years later, the first King Kamehameha united the archipelago into a Polynesian state, and ten years after that, the Congregationalist Church sent the first of a dozen missionaries to his kingdom. By 1820, an “Agent of the United States for Commerce and Seamen” was stationed at Honolulu to assist the great fleets of American whalers and merchants, which numbered forty-two out of the forty-eight ships in the city’s harbor by November of 1867. On January 20, 1887, the US Senate amended its treaty with Hawaii to include that “His Majesty the King of the Hawaiian Islands, grants to the Government of the U.S. the exclusive right to enter the harbor of Pearl River, in the Island of Oahu, and to establish and maintain there a coaling and repair station for the use of vessels of the U.S. and to that end the U.S. may improve the entrance to said harbor and do all things useful to the purpose aforesaid.” Maui’s Lahaina became practically an American city, she was so filled with whaling crew, and the isle of Molokai became a notorious leper colony. Sufferers were taken by boat and forced into the waves after being told, “Prepare for Molokai as for the grave.”
Establishing schools and creating a written Hawaiian language, missionaries converted Queen Keopuolani on her deathbed in 1823, beginning a protected niche for haole (whites) in the islands, many of whose descendants made their fortunes in white gold—sugar. In 1850, the general population was bequeathed ownership of their lands, and the Alien Land Ownership Act was passed, letting them sell said lands to outsiders. As whaling declined, sugar roared, as did a Hawaiian craze for American clothing and furniture, paid for by devastating the archipelago’s groves of sandalwood. In an 1893 coup led by the American Annexation Club (composed of the “Big Five” sugar executive haoles—onetime missionaries who’d tried to outlaw surfing and that “vile obscenity,” hula dancing) and supported by marines invading from a ship in the harbor, Queen Lili‘uokalani was deposed. She appealed to the White House, but refused to promise leniency for the guilty Americans, and the Hawaiian throne fell to a shameful swipe by colonial plutocrats.
After five years as a republic under President Sanford Dole, the onetime kingdom was annexed to the United States as a territory in 1898, with the official ceremony on August 12 at Iolani Palace attended by no one of native birth; Lili‘uokalani’s niece called that moment “bitterer than death to me.” The following year the United States Navy started building on Oahu its keystone for operations in the Pacific, and by 1935 the New York Times could report, “An armada of 160 ships, the greatest fleet ever to visit Pearl Harbor, was moored or anchored in the east and west lochs tonight. Twelve battleships, two flotillas of destroyers, about thirty submarines, twelve heavy and seven light cruisers and several score auxiliaries were ‘home from the sea.’ . . . Only the large aircraft carriers, the Lexington, the Ranger, and the Saratoga, lay at anchor in the open roads off Honolulu. . . . It is the first time such a large number of ships has ever been, and their presence definitely indicates that Pearl Harbor has assumed first rank as a naval base.”
With Admiral James Richardson in command, the US Fleet was dispatched to Hawaii in the spring of 1940 for its annual maneuvers known as Fleet Problem XXI. Less than a week before they were to return to California on May 9, however, Richardson was ordered to instead remain in Hawaii by Chief of Naval Operations Harold “Betty” Stark.I Two weeks later, Richardson complained to Stark that Pearl Harbor’s facilities were inadequate: “My objections for remaining there were, primarily, that you only had one port, secure port, and very crowded, no recreation facilities for the men, a long distance from Pearl Harbor to the city of Honolulu, inadequate transportation, inadequate airfields. A carrier cannot conduct all training for her planes from the carrier deck. In order to launch her planes she must be underway at substantial speed, using up large amounts of fuel. So that wherever carriers are training their squadrons there must be flying fields available, so that while the ship herself is undergoing overhaul, or repair, or upkeep, the planes may conduct training, flying from the flying fields. There were inadequate and restricted areas for anchorages of the fleet; to take them in and out of Pearl Harbor wasted time.”
With one of the signature “on the one hand, on the other” cables that would eventually get him demoted, CNO Stark replied on May 27, “You are there because of the deterrent effect which it is thought your presence may have on the Japs going into the East Indies. . . . Suppose the Japs do go into the East Indies? What are we going to do about it? My answer is I don’t know and I think there’s nobody on God’s green earth who can tell you.”
On June 17, the US War Department, believing that an aggressive Tokyo, having concluded a treaty with Moscow, was now setting its sights on Hawaii, cabled Major General Charles D. Herron, the army’s Hawaiian Department commander, with the first of a stream of warnings: “Immediate alert. Complete defensive organization to deal with possible transpacific raid. . . . Maintain alert until further orders.” The warning was held for a number of months, then faded away.
After Stark refused to reconsider Richardson’s orders to remain in Hawaii, the Commander-in-Chief, United States (known as CINCUS) came to Washington to make his case directly. “On October 7, I talked with Stark, Nimitz, Knox,” Richardson said. “And while here I lunched with the President. Had a long talk with him. The President stated that the fleet was retained in the Hawaiian area in order to exercise a restraining influence on the actions of Japan. I stated that in my opinion t
he presence of the fleet in Hawaii might influence a civilian political government, but that Japan had a military government which knew that the fleet was undermanned, unprepared for war, and had no train of auxiliary ships without which it could not undertake active operations. Therefore, the presence of the fleet in Hawaii could not exercise a restraining influence on Japanese action. . . .
“The President said in effect, ‘Despite what you believe, I know that the presence of the fleet in the Hawaiian area, has had, and is now having, a restraining influence on the actions of Japan.’
“I said, ‘Mr. President, I still do not believe it, and I know that our fleet is disadvantageously disposed for preparing for or initiating war operations.’
“The President then said, ‘I can be convinced of the desirability of returning the battleships to the west coast if I can be given a good statement which will convince the American people and the Japanese Government that in bringing the battleships to the west coast we are not stepping backward.’ ”
Secretary of State Cordell Hull, among others, took issue with Richardson’s version of events. “Now, someone suggested that the government was trying to bluff the Japanese,” Hull later testified. “The whole truth is that we were in our own waters, in our territory, on our own side of the Pacific, and that we were pursuing a perfectly peaceful and defensible course. In all our talks with the Japanese and all of our representations, we were pleading with them for peaceful relations and their continuance. If we happened to have a double-barreled shotgun sitting back in the corner somewhere in the house when we are talking to a desperado, it does no harm, to say the least. I always feel a little better and I think he would feel a little worse if he could see the outlines of that gun back there. It is a psychological thing that nobody can escape.”
Another Washington official taken aback by Richardson’s statements was Fleet Admiral William Leahy. “The President asked me to have luncheon with him on October 8,” Leahy recalled. “I found after I arrived that Admiral Richardson was also to be at lunch. . . . My memory in that matter is good, principally because I was exceedingly surprised to learn that the commander in chief of the fleet did not consider the fleet prepared for war and at that time I was apprehensive in regard to an early war situation in the Pacific, although I was very far from sources of information and I had no late information in regard to that matter.
“[Richardson] said the ships did not have their war complements; that the facilities in Pearl Harbor were not sufficient to keep the ships in a top condition at all times; that he had not a sufficient number of fuel ships to make it possible for him to operate the fleet at any distance from the Hawaiian Islands; that the personnel of the fleet, the officers and the crews, did not know why they were in the Hawaiian Islands; that apparently nobody expected to be called upon for war duty; that the families of the men and officers were in the continental United States and they wanted to get home and see their families; that the recreation facilities and the means for taking care of his men when they were on shore in Honolulu were almost nonexistent, at least they were entirely insufficient and that he felt that if there was a prospect of calling upon the fleet for war service it could be done much more advantageously in a port on the Pacific Coast of the United States where he could clear his ships for action, get the additional things that would be needed and reinforce his peacetime crews. . . . I expressed to Admiral Richardson my surprise to find that the fleet was in the condition which he had stated to the President and I said that I hoped he would manage to correct as many of the deficiencies as possible without any delay because I had been telling the Congress and the people of this country for some time that the Navy was ready for war and I was distressed to find that it was not.”
The Japanese had in fact taken notice of the American fleet remaining at Pearl Harbor, but their reaction was not what FDR had presumed. Japanese admiral Isoroku Yamamoto: “Conversely, we’re within striking distance [of Hawaii], too. In trying to intimidate us, America has put itself in a vulnerable position. If you ask me, they’re just that bit too confident.”
Admiral Richardson and President Roosevelt had their difference of opinion solved in ninety days. “In early January, a dispatch came in ordering Richardson to be relieved by Admiral Husband E. Kimmel,” Vice Admiral George Dyer remembered. “Richardson’s remark was ‘My God, they can’t do that to me.’ But, of course, they could and did.” The by-the-books, humorless, hardworking, and picture-perfect Rear Admiral Kimmel arrived in Oahu on February 1, 1941, with the dual title of commander in chief, United States Fleet, and commander in chief, Pacific Fleet. While Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto would be known for a temper that left the elfin man stomping his office floors so hard the furniture quaked, Kimmel—called by his friends Kim or Mustapha—would throw his hat on the ground and stomp on it while screaming . . . and he had a hat on standby to be used in such circumstances. In his first months after taking command, Kimmel moved his administration out of the USS Pennsylvania and into an office on the second floor of the Fleet Headquarters building at the submarine base opposite Ford Island, not for the admiral’s comfort, but for the battleship to be readied for war instead of pomp. Yamamoto never did this, making in turn his flagships Nagato and Yamato residences instead of the dreadnoughts they were built to be.
While Richardson had alternated half the fleet at sea and half in port, Kimmel started three task forces under William Pye, William Halsey, and Wilson Brown, resulting in ships spending 60 percent of their time in port and 40 percent at sea. Kimmel had wanted to regularly have two task forces on the prowl at a time, but Hawaii didn’t have the fuel reserves to allow it. One key drawback of basing the US Fleet in Hawaii was that all of Pearl Harbor’s fuel had to be tankered across the Pacific from the American mainland.
Oahu’s other significant drawback, one shared by the majority of America’s military installations, was its paucity of surveillance aircraft. On January 16, 1941, Naval Base Defense Air Force commander Admiral Patrick Bellinger wrote CNO Harold Stark, “After taking over command of Patrol Wing Two and looking over the situation, I was surprised to find that here in the Hawaiian Islands, an important naval advanced post, we were operating on a shoestring and the more I look the thinner the shoestring appeared to be [which] indicates to me that the Navy Department as a whole does not view the situation in the Pacific with alarm.” After meeting with Kimmel, Bellinger was ordered to work with Hawaiian Air Force commander General Frederick Martin to draft a plan coordinating army and navy air operations in the event of an attack on Oahu. On March 31, 1941, their memorandum warned:
(a) A declaration of war might be preceded by:
1. A surprise submarine attack on ships in the operating area.
2. A surprise attack on OAHU including ships and installations in Pearl Harbor.
3. A combination of these two.
(b) It appears that the most likely and dangerous form of attack on OAHU would be an air attack. It is believed that at present such an attack would most likely be launched from one or more carriers which would probably approach inside of 300 miles.
(c) A single attack might or might not indicate the presence of more submarines or more planes awaiting to attack after defending aircraft have been drawn away by the original thrust.
(d) Any single submarine attack might indicate the presence of a considerable undiscovered surface force probably composed of fast ships accompanied by a carrier.
(e) In a dawn air attack there is a high probability that it could be delivered as a complete surprise in spite of any patrols we might be using and that it might find us in a condition of readiness under which pursuit would be slow to start, also it might be successful as a diversion to draw attention away from a second attacking force. The major disadvantage would be that we could have all day to find and attack the carrier. A dusk attack would have the advantage that the carrier could use the night for escape.
What would later be known in Pearl Harbor history as the remarkably p
rescient Martin-Bellinger Report concluded, “The aircraft at present available in Hawaii are inadequate to maintain . . . a patrol extensive enough to insure that an air attack from an Orange [Japanese] carrier cannot arrive over Oahu as a complete surprise.”
On February 4, Kimmel’s army counterpart, Lieutenant General Walter Short, arrived to replace Herron as commander of the Hawaiian Department, and despite their services’ decades of vicious rivalry, the admiral and the general quickly began a tradition of playing golf together on alternate Sundays. Just as quickly, since Short’s army was supposed to protect Kimmel’s navy while it was anchored in Hawaii, Kimmel complained to CNO Harold Stark that the army was underarmed and understaffed for the assignment, notably in the category of aerial patrols. In response, army chief George Marshall said that, just as every army base and command had been shortchanged through years of disastrous economic depression, so it was in Honolulu, but that “Hawaii is on a far better basis than any other command in the Army.”
One man who did not think much of the newly arrived Walter Short was the general’s predecessor, Major General Charles Herron, who’d commanded Hawaii for the army since 1937. Herron’s opinion began with their first meeting. Since Herron would be returning to the mainland on February 7 aboard the same ship that had brought Short and his wife to Hawaii on the fourth, they had about two days to work out the transfer of command and fully brief Short on his new position. To help with this, Herron had his staff create a briefing book, which was sent to Short in San Francisco to read on the voyage to Oahu. “Upon my meeting Short when he arrived” on February 7, Herron said, “I asked him whether he had read the papers and material. He replied that . . . he had not given them much time while en route.” Instead he’d read the Kenneth Roberts novel Oliver Wiswell.
