by Craig Nelson
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During this state of crisis, State’s Cordell Hull, Navy’s Frank Knox, and War’s Henry Stimson met every Tuesday morning at nine thirty. On the Tuesday morning of November 25, Hull showed them America’s counteroffer of a modus vivendi to Togo’s Plan B. With some restrictions, the United States would resume trade and release Japanese assets if Japan reduced its northern-Indochina troops to twenty-five thousand. This truce agreement was to last for three months, at which time it could be extended.
On that same morning in Hawaii, Kimmel and Short met with a group of army and navy officers to decide whether to send planes and crews to help defend Wake and Midway, or to keep them in Hawaii to defend Oahu. General Short insisted, “If I man these islands, I must command them.”
“Over my dead body,” Admiral Kimmel said. “The army should exercise no command over navy bases.”
The Hawaiian Air Force’s chief of staff, James Mollison, returned to Short’s original point: “Our mission is to protect Oahu, and shipping out these army planes will lessen our capability to do so.” Kimmel wanted details on his thinking: “Why are you so worried about this? Do you think we are in danger of attack?” When Mollison replied, “The Japanese have such a capability,” the admiral argued, “Capability, yes, but possibility?”
Kimmel then asked his naval war plans officer, Rear Admiral Charles McMorris, “What do you think about the prospects of a Japanese air attack?” McMorris said, “None, absolutely none.” But Mollison’s comments struck a chord with the admiral. Kimmel held on to the better P-40s for Hawaii and sent the more-dated Marine F4Fs to Wake and Midway.
At noon that day in Washington, Hull, Knox, and Stimson met Roosevelt, Marshall, and Stark at the White House. They read Togo’s November 22 cable to his ambassadors and were struck by the point that diplomatic efforts to reach what Togo called “the solution we desire” had to be concluded by November 29. Kurusu and Nomura were told that the “deadline absolutely cannot be changed” and, ominously, “after that, things are automatically going to happen.”
Henry Stimson remembered Roosevelt saying “that we were likely to be attacked perhaps as soon as next Monday, for the Japanese are notorious for making an attack without warning. The question was how we should maneuver them into the position of firing the first shot without allowing too much danger to ourselves. It was a difficult proposition.”
Washington’s vague lassitude at this time was captured by analyst Roberta Wohlstetter: “A curious kind of numbness seemed to characterize these last moments of waiting, a numbness that was an understandable consequence of long association with signals of mounting danger. The signal picture had been increasingly ominous for some time, and now apparently added up to something big, but not very definitive. There was also a fundamental passivity connected with the avowed policy the United States could not strike the first blow.”
That afternoon, Kimmel met with Vice Admiral William F. Halsey Jr., whom he’d known since Annapolis days. On November 28, Halsey would depart Pearl Harbor with Task Force 8—the carrier Enterprise; heavy cruisers Northampton, Chester, and Salt Lake City; and nine destroyers—to carry twelve of those Grumman F4F-3 Wildcats to the marines stationed on Wake Island. After they read Stark’s memo, Kimmel asked Halsey if he wanted to take any battleships along with him, to make his task force appear more routine. “Hell no!” Halsey retorted. “If I have to run, I don’t want anything to interfere with my running!”
Kimmel’s only stroke of good luck in the devastation to come was that his aircraft carriers were away from Hawaii on the morning of December 7. While Halsey was delivering Wildcats to Wake, Rear Admiral John H. Newton with Task Force 12—carrier Lexington; heavy cruisers Chicago, Portland, and Astoria; and five destroyers—was carrying eight Vought SB2U-3 Vindicators to Midway, while the third Pacific Fleet carrier, Saratoga, after getting overhauled at Bremerton in Washington, was just entering North Island Naval Air Station in San Diego.
In Washington, DC, Henry Stimson received an army intelligence cable that same afternoon of November 25 from “G-2 that was very disturbing. It indicated that the Japanese were embarking on a large expeditionary force of thirty, forty, or fifty ships at Shanghai and that this expedition was proceeding along the China coast south of Formosa . . . with the possibility that it might be proceeding to the Philippines or to Burma to cut off the Burma Road, or to the Dutch East Indies.” By phone, Stimson told Hull the details of what he’d learned, and informed the president with a hand-delivered memorandum.
When the next morning Stimson hadn’t heard any response, he called Roosevelt, who “jumped into the air, so to speak, and said he hadn’t seen it,” Stimson recalled. The president “fairly blew up”—Roosevelt was, indeed, entirely enraged—and “that while they were negotiating with him—negotiations in which we were asking for a withdrawal of their invading troops in China—they should be sending a further expedition down to Indo-China.”
Japanese apprehensions that moving forward with both war and diplomacy at the same time would be seen as duplicitous by the Americans had come true. Cordell Hull was immediately summoned to the White House, and when he then returned to State, he seemed entirely defeated. “Those men over there do not believe me when I tell them that the Japs will attack us,” he told an employee. “You cannot give an ultimatum to a powerful and proud people and not expect them to react violently.”
For all of Cordell Hull’s failings as secretary of state, he had been so close to achieving a great diplomatic triumph that might have saved American lives and even extracted Japan from her Axis alliance. Instead, Tokyo’s double-dealing had killed Roosevelt’s modus vivendi compromise. Hull later said, “The slight prospect of Japan’s agreeing to the modus vivendi did not warrant assuming the risks involved in proceeding with it, especially the risk of collapse of Chinese morale and resistance, and even of disintegration in China.” This moment presents one of the great what-ifs of history. If FDR had met with Konoye, or if FDR’s modus vivendi had been achieved, would it have prevented the attack on Pearl Harbor? And what would America be today if she had only needed to fight World War II in Europe and North Africa?
That same morning, Kurusu, with Nomura’s enthusiastic support, cabled Togo with an idea. What if they asked Roosevelt to send a message to Hirohito about peace in East Asia and Japanese-American friendship? Due to his immortal station, the emperor could not begin such a dialogue, but Hirohito could reply, and talks could restart. And if Tokyo suggested that the neutralized zone FDR had proposed for Indochina be expanded to include Thailand and the Dutch East Indies, Japan could get its oil, and military forces on both sides could be excluded. Communicating the seriousness of the matter in the same way Togo had talked to him, Kurusu “sincerely desired that the message be communicated to Privy Seal Kido and be answered urgently.” Togo cabled back a refusal, but asked Kido nonetheless; the Privy Seal said that “it was not an appropriate time” for the emperor to negotiate with the president.
That afternoon, Nomura and Kurusu arrived at the State Department to receive “Steps to Be Taken by the Government of the United States and by the Government of Japan,” which would be known by history as the Hull Note. Instead of a simple treaty between Washington and Tokyo, it proposed an agreement to be signed by the United States, Japan, Britain, China, Holland, the Soviet Union, and Thailand. It included, “The Government of Japan will withdraw all military, naval, air and police forces from China and from Indochina. The Government of the United States and the Government of Japan will not support—militarily, politically, economically—any government or regime in China other than the National Government of the Republic of China with capital temporarily at Chongqing.” After looking it over, Kurusu said that, when the Japanese government saw this, it would “throw up its hands” as the “proposal could be interpreted as tantamount to meaning the end.” It was so aggressive that Hull later admitted, “We had no serious thought that Japan would accept our proposal.” On the phone
later that day with Stimson, Hull “told me he had broken the whole thing off. As he put it, ‘I have washed my hands of it and it is in the hands of you and Knox, the army and the navy.’ ”
Nomura and Kurusu tried to get the secretary to revise the document before sending it to Togo. Hull refused. When they asked for amendments, such as a gradual timeline on withdrawing from China and a bilateral treaty that the other countries could later join, Hull refused. Couldn’t the United States come to terms on a temporary modus vivendi, as they had been discussing? Hull said it could not. Nomura said that since there is “no last word between friends,” could they meet again directly with Roosevelt? To this, Hull said yes.
On that same November 26, the US consulate in Tokyo warned American citizens to leave Japan as quickly as possible.
On the twenty-seventh, FDR received a memo on the latest military intelligence from Army Chief of Staff Marshall and CNO Stark, concluding, “Japan may attack the Burma Road, Thailand; Malaya; the Netherlands East Indies; the Philippines; the Russian Maritime Provinces . . . The most essential thing now, from the United States viewpoint, is to gain time.”
That afternoon, the president met with Hull, Nomura, and Kurusu at the Oval Office and successfully hid his anger at Tokyo’s duplicity and his conviction that Japan was about to strike American soil. Instead, he was wholly gracious, beginning the meeting by a ritual offering of cigarettes. He told Nomura and Kurusu that the American people wanted a peaceful solution to the troubled Pacific, and he hadn’t yet given up. But those fifty troopships invading southern Indochina were “a cold bath” to his hopes, as were the “movements and utterances of the Japanese slanting wholly in the direction of conquest by force and ignoring the whole question of a peaceful settlement and the principles underlying it.”
The Hull Note and Washington’s ensuing refusal to compromise were received in Tokyo as an “ultimatum” and a “humiliating proposal” that the Japanese could never accept, the last-straw instance of a bullying and demeaning United States that unified the country’s leaders to battle against a common enemy. “I was struck by despair,” Togo said. “I tried to imagine swallowing whole [the Hull Note’s terms], but there was no way to force them down my throat.” Prime Minister Tojo told his cabinet that it meant “no glimmer for hope,” and at a public rally on November 30, he decried “the desire of Britain and the United States to fish in the troubled waters of East Asia by pitting the East Asiatic peoples against each other, and to grasp the hegemony of East Asia. This is a stock-in-trade of Britain and the United States. For the honor and pride of mankind we must purge this sort of practice from East Asia with a vengeance.” In the eyes of the militarists, though, the Hull Note was manna from heaven, “nothing short of a miracle!” as one Army General Staff bakuryo officer remembered. “This must be divine grace; this makes it easy for the Empire to cross the Rubicon and determine on going to war. That’s great, just great!”
In fact, Hull’s Note was no ultimatum, and he clarified the administration’s position by telling Nomura and Kurusu directly that, when it came to the Imperial Japanese Army’s intransigence on troops in China, “the evacuation [of Japanese forces from China and Indochina] would be carried out by negotiations. We are not necessarily asking that it be effected immediately.” Many historians now believe that Japan’s leadership kept the Hull Note’s details secret because they knew her people were sick of the China quagmire and might easily have accepted its terms.
When asked after the war by Congress why he didn’t try harder to negotiate peace with Japan, an outraged Cordell Hull replied: “I knew at the same time as a matter of psychology that the worst bandit—and they were bandits of the most savage type, the leaders of Japan and Germany—the worst bandit, as he prowls about and he looks about, has always got his eyes open to see if any pistols or any guns or any weapons are in sight. He does not like for the most innocent citizen to point an unloaded pistol or an unloaded gun at him. None of us care for that, as a matter of fact. And it was the same way as a matter of psychology with this bunch of overlords who were running rife over the earth. . . . Somebody who knows little and cares less now says, ‘Why didn’t the United States make concessions and save us from the war,’ when any person knows, and if you look back at the situation as it existed during those last ten, twelve, fourteen days, any rational person knows just what the Japs were doing. They were off on this final attack and no one was going to stop them unless we yielded and laid down like cowards, and we would have been cowards to have lain down.”
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On that same November 27 that the president was meeting with Nomura and Kurusu, Harold Stark cabled his commanders and asked Husband Kimmel to copy Walter Short: “This dispatch is to be considered a war warning. Negotiations with Japan looking toward stabilization of conditions in the Pacific have ceased and an aggressive move by Japan is expected within the next few days. The number and equipment of Japanese troops and the organization of naval task forces indicates an amphibious expedition against either the Philippines, Thai or Kra Peninsula, or possibly Borneo.”
Marshall cabled a similar message to his Western Defense commanders that day, including Short, and Stark copied it in a cable to his admirals the following day: “Negotiations with Japan appear to be terminated to all practical purposes with only the barest possibilities that the Japanese Government might come back and offer to continue. Japanese future action unpredictable but hostile action possible at any moment. If hostilities cannot repeat not be avoided the United States desires that Japan commit the first overt act. This policy should not repeat not be construed as restricting you to a course of action that might jeopardize your defense. Prior to hostile Japanese action you are directed to undertake such reconnaissance and other measures as you deem necessary but these measures should be carried out so as not repeat not to alarm civil population or disclose intent. Report measures taken. A separate message is being sent to G Two Ninth Corps Area re subversive activities in United States. Should hostilities occur you will carry out the tasks assigned in Rainbow Five so far as they pertain to Japan. Limit dissemination of this highly secret information to minimum essential officers.”
Within thirty minutes, Short replied to the War Department that he had instituted Alert No. 1. Perhaps Marshall and the other leaders in Washington did not fully understand what was happening in Hawaii because, according to Washington’s Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) involving alerts, No. 1 was the highest alert and No. 3, the lowest. But on November 5 Short and his staff reversed this numbering, yet never sent that revision to Washington.
The new alert system instituted by Short read:
Alert No. 1: This alert is a defense against acts of sabotage and uprising within the islands, with no threat from without.
Alert No. 2: This alert is applicable to a condition more serious than Alert No. 1. Security against attacks from hostile sub-surface, surface, and air-craft, in addition to defense against acts of sabotage and uprisings, is provided.
Alert No. 3: This alert requires the occupation of all field positions by all units, preparing for maximum defense of OAHU and the Army installations on outlying islands.
This revised SOP was first received by Washington in March of 1942. This fact led the Judge Advocate General to overrule the Army Pearl Harbor Board’s censure of General George Marshall.
Stark would later testify, “We considered [the November 27 cables] an unequivocal war warning . . . that war was imminent,” but unfortunately, “unequivocal” is not how it was received by General Short, for one. He thought “war warning” meant “no more than saying that Japan was going to attack someplace.” The commanders in Hawaii additionally believed army intelligence’s reports, which had located the Japanese fleet as either in home waters or off to invade Southeast Asia, and which had judged Japan’s air forces as having no bombers capable of reaching from the nearest Japanese base to Oahu, twenty-one hundred miles away. Regardless of the naval lessons of Taranto
and their own prior analyses, few in Hawaii were thinking of the dangers of carriers and winds from the north.
General Short later explained his decision in the face of a war warning: “(1) The message of November 27 contained nothing directing him to be prepared to meet an air raid or an all-out attack on Hawaii; (2) he received other messages after the November 27 dispatch emphasizing measures against sabotage and subversive activities; (3) the dispatch was a ‘do-don’t’ message which conveyed to him the impression that the avoidance of war was paramount and the greatest fear of the War Department was that some international incident might occur in Hawaii which Japan would regard as an overt act; (4) he was looking to the Navy to provide him adequate warning of the approach of a hostile force, particularly through distant reconnaissance which was a Navy responsibility; and (5) that instituting alerts 2 or 3 would have seriously interfered with the training mission of the Hawaiian Department.”
Short’s excuses are especially outrageous when considering that, starting January 24, 1941, the general received fifty-six pages of warnings from Washington about Japanese attacks in the Pacific, 25 percent of them arriving between December 1 and 6, 1941, even to the point of explicit instructions from the chief of the American Army on exactly what might happen and exactly what needed to be done. On February 7, 1941, Marshall wrote Short: “My impression of the Hawaiian problem has been that if no serious harm is done us the first six hours of known hostilities, thereafter the existing defenses would discourage an enemy against the hazard of an attack. The risk of sabotage and the risk involved in a surprise raid by air and by submarine constitute the real perils of the situation. . . . Please keep clearly in mind in all your negotiations that our mission is to protect the base and the Naval concentration.” This was followed up on March 5, when Marshall cabled Short: “I would appreciate your early review of the situation in the Hawaiian Department with regard to defense from air attack. The establishment of a satisfactory system of coordinating all means available to this end is a matter of first priority.”
