by Craig Nelson
The court did not accept this since “nothing was done . . . to detect an approaching hostile force coming from the north and northwest, recognized as the most dangerous sector. . . . Admiral Kimmel has suggested that under the Joint Coastal Frontier Defense Plan, Admiral Bloch was responsible for distant reconnaissance, and had the latter desired planes, he could have called upon the commander in chief of the Pacific Fleet. This suggestion, apart from being incompatible with Admiral Kimmel’s stating he made the decision not to conduct distant reconnaissance, is not tenable. Admiral Bloch had no planes with which to conduct distant patrols and Admiral Kimmel knew it.” In fact, Kimmel didn’t even discuss the matter or share the war warning message with Defense Air Force commander Admiral Patrick Bellinger, who oversaw eighty-one patrol planes. Indeed, Bellinger wasn’t informed of the many alerts from either War or Navy during October, November, and December until after December 7.
About all this, General Marshall told Congress, “I never could grasp what had happened between the period when so much was said [by officers in Hawaii] about air attack, the necessity for antiaircraft, the necessity for planes for reconnaissance, the necessity for attack planes for defense, and the other requirements which anticipated very definitely and affirmatively an air attack—I could never understand why suddenly it became a side issue.”
Henry Stimson pointed out to Congress that the warning of November 27 specifically ordered reconnaissance, and said, “This is to my mind a very important part of the message, not only because of its obvious desirability but also because we had provided the Hawaiian Department with what I regarded as the most effective means of reconnaissance against air attack and one to which I had personally devoted a great deal of attention during the preceding months. I refer to the radar equipment with which the Hawaiian Department was then provided. This equipment permitted approaching planes to be seen at distances of approximately 100 miles, and to do so in darkness and storm as well as clear daylight. In the early part of 1941, I had taken up earnestly the matter of securing such radar equipment for aircraft protection. I knew, although it was not generally known, that radar had proved of the utmost importance to the British in the Battle of Britain, and I felt in the beginning of 1941 that we were not getting this into production and to the troops as quickly as we should, and put on all the pressure I could to speed up its acquisition. By the autumn of 1941, we had gotten some of this equipment out to Hawaii, and only a few days before this I had received a report of the tests which had been made of this equipment in Hawaii on November 19th, which indicated very satisfactory results in detecting approaching airplanes. I testified at considerable length with regard to this before the Army Pearl Harbor Board. When we specifically directed the commanding officer at Hawaii, who had been warned that war was likely at any moment, to make reconnaissance, I assumed that all means of reconnaissance available to both the Army and the Navy would be employed.”
The navy court also found Kimmel’s reaction to the warning that Japan was destroying its code machines lackadaisical: “In strange contrast with the view of the code burning intelligence taken by Admiral Kimmel, virtually all witnesses have agreed that this was the most significant information received between November 27 and December 6 with respect to the imminence of war. Indeed, the overwhelming weight of the testimony is to effect that orders to destroy codes mean from a military standpoint only one thing—war within a very few days. While orders to burn codes may not always mean war in the diplomatic sense, it very definitely meant war—and soon—in a military sense after the ‘war warning’ of November 27. Admiral Kimmel received this intelligence less than four days before the attack; it gave him an opportunity to correct his mistake in failing to institute distant reconnaissance and effect a state of readiness commensurate with the likelihood of hostilities after the November 27 war warning. Nothing was done—General Short was not even informed.” The court concluded that Kimmel “knew that the only effective means of detecting a surprise raiding force in adequate time to combat it was by distant reconnaissance. He knew the Japanese reputation for deceit and treachery. He knew the greatest danger to the Fleet at Pearl Harbor was the possibility of an air raid. . . . He had been categorically warned of war.”
Yet even with all their flaws fully detailed, the case can be made that Kimmel and Short took too much of the blame, that they were in fact scapegoated, especially by the court of public opinion. In parceling out blame for Pearl Harbor, Washington had plenty of fingers to point at itself. If Kimmel and Short deserved courts-martial for their actions in Hawaii, and Harold Stark deserved demotion for his in Washington, then MacArthur deserved similar treatment for his behavior in the Philippines. The warning cables sent to admirals and generals triggered by the Nazi invasion of France, the start of Washington’s embargoes, the announcement of Tojo as prime minister, and the Hull Note, which were considered so vigorous from the War Department’s perspective, were exceedingly vague when seen from the perspective of Oahu. Each said that something, somewhere, might happen, so be ready, and three of the four sent from Stark to Kimmel included a side note that said more or less that this warning probably didn’t apply to Hawaii. When Short told Marshall’s office that he was going to sabotage alert only, no one from Washington replied that more was called for under the circumstances; Marshall himself later testified, “That was my opportunity to intervene and I did not do it.” Admiral Stark reminded Congress of the number of times in 1940 and 1941 he had appeared before it to ask for the American navy to be strengthened and was refused, adding US legislators to the legion of those responsible for Pearl Harbor.
From July 20 to October 20, 1944, ten of those legislators (six Democrats and four Republicans) impaneled the Joint Congressional Committee on the Investigation of the Pearl Harbor Attack. After testimony from 151 witnesses, the committee produced over 10 million words on 9,754 printed pages with an attendant 469 exhibits. Researchers discovered some basic facts explaining the success of the attack: the Japanese had superior torpedoes, fighter planes, flashlights, gunpowder, warhead explosives, and optics, with sonar that was four to five times better than America’s, and her pilots had been seasoned over the skies of China. General Short defended himself by reading a 61-page statement, and Admiral Kimmel read one of 108 pages. Then at a private lunch, Kimmel revealed to the committee’s assistant counsel, Edward Morgan, the essence of what had happened: “I never thought those little yellow sons of bitches could pull off such an attack, so far from Japan.” Back in 1941, two weeks after December 7, Kimmel’s Japanese counterpart, Isoroku Yamamoto, had exactly this same rationale for Operation Z’s success: “That we could defeat the enemy at the outbreak of the war was because they were unguarded and also they made light of us. ‘Danger comes soonest when it is despised’ and ‘don’t despise a small enemy’ are really important matters. I think they can be applied not only to wars but to routine matters.”
Two pieces of evidence were of particular interest to the committee. When General Short and Admiral Kimmel learned about the bomb-plot cable sent to Yoshikawa during the postwar investigations, they were enraged at not having been informed. “With the dispatch of September 24, 1941, and those which followed,” Kimmel said, “there was a significant and ominous change in the character of the information which the Japanese government sought and obtained. . . . It was no longer merely directed to ascertaining the general whereabouts of ships of the fleet. It was directed to the presence of particular ships of the fleet. . . . These Japanese instructions and reports pointed to an attack by Japan upon the ships in Pearl Harbor. . . . No one had a greater right than I to know that Japan had carved up Pearl Harbor into subareas and was seeking and receiving reports as to the precise berthings in that harbor of the ships of the fleet.” Congress’s interrogation of G-2, chief of the army’s Military Intelligence Service, Brigadier General Sherman Miles, reflected his outcry:
[Chief Assistant Counsel Gerhard] Gesell: It is really, is it not, looking at it as one mes
sage alone, and, if you will, from hindsight, a plan for laying out what amounts to a bombing plan for Pearl Harbor?
[Army Intelligence G-2] General Miles: That is exactly what it looks like now, sir, now that we know Pearl Harbor was bombed.
Mr. Gesell: Would it be a fair statement to say that one of the functions and responsibilities of a properly organized and functioning military intelligence division would have been to single out this message, recognize its difference from the other messages, and attempt to evaluate its significance?
General Miles: Yes, sir, but we did not give it the significance at that time that it now has in the light of subsequent events.
Mr. Gesell: Do I gather from what you have just stated, General Miles, that prior to December seventh you personally at least had not reached the conclusion in your own mind that there was an immediate possibility of hostilities between the United States and Japan?
General Miles: Oh, no, sir; that is not so. The crisis that resulted in General Marshall’s telegram of November 27 certainly indicated that the possibility of a war between the United States and Japan had very much increased. By the third of December, when we knew that they were burning their codes, one would have rated that possibility, now well within the realms of probability, now even higher, so that if you are asking me on December seventh I am quite sure in saying that I would have rated quite highly the probability of an involvement immediate, or certainly in the fairly near future, of a Japanese-American war.
General Miles then explained why this particular cable triggered no special notice from his department: “It should always be remembered that it was well-known to everyone in the intelligence departments of the two services that the Japanese were following as closely as they possibly could the movement of all of our warships. I remember on several occasions going to Admiral Kirk’s or Admiral Wilkinson’s secret room in the Navy Department and looking at his big map of the positions of the Japanese warships. Everybody was doing it.”
The director of the Office of Naval Intelligence, Admiral Ted Wilkinson, testified, “The Japanese for many years had the reputation, and the facts bore out that reputation, of being meticulous seekers for every scrap of information, whether by photography or by written report or otherwise. We had recently, as reported to me, apprehended two and I think three Japanese naval officers on the West Coast making investigations of Seattle, Bremerton, Long Beach, and San Diego. In the reports that we had gotten from them, there had been indications of movements and locations of ships; in the papers that they had, there were instructions for them to find out the movements and locations of ships except in Hawaii and the Philippines, the inference being that these fellows that were planted in America, these naval officers, were not to be responsible for movements in Hawaii and the Philippines because there were agencies finding that information there.” To confirm or deny these assertions, congressional investigators produced a study, “Japanese Messages Concerning Military Installations, Ship Movements, etc.,” which included fourteen pages of cables on Hawaii, seventeen on the Panama Canal, forty-three on the Philippines, seventeen on Southeast Asia, and four on the American West Coast. CNO Stark: “There was literally a mass of material coming in. We knew the Japanese appetite was almost insatiable for detail in all respects.”
Later in his testimony, General Miles would boomerang Congress’s attempts at scapegoating the military and the Roosevelt Administration:
Vice Chairman Cooper: General, I understood you to say that for years it had been understood by the Army—I assume that means, of course, the high-ranking officers of the Army—that hostilities with Japan would involve an attack on Hawaii, and that a knowledge of the Japanese people caused the anticipation of a surprise attack. That is substantially and in essence your statement on that, isn’t it?
General Miles: That the possibility if not the probability of an attack on Hawaii was inherent in a Japanese war. You gentlemen of the Congress appropriated millions of dollars for that fortress. Against whom were you building it?
• • •
Another contentious piece of evidence was Tokyo’s November 19 message about what its radio stations would broadcast in case of a diplomatic breakdown, which became known as “east wind, rain,” as that was the code for trouble with the United States. OP-20-G’s Captain Laurance Safford insisted that one of his radio operators intercepted a confirmation of “the winds message” on December 4:
“We knew that the Japanese ambassador in London had destroyed his secret codes three days previously: this was the only way that Tokyo could get news to him secretly. Reception or nonreception at other points was irrelevant. Tokyo knew full well, before the winds message was sent, that it probably would not be received in Washington or in Rio. That was immaterial—the winds message was intended for London. . . . I immediately sent the original of the winds message up to the director of naval communications [Rear Admiral Noyes] by one of the officers serving under me and told him to deliver this paper to Admiral Noyes in person, to track him down and not take no for an answer, and, if he could not find him in a reasonable time, to let me know.”
But that intercept has never been found, and the Japanese, interrogated after the war, insisted that no such message was ever sent. The point is in fact moot. “East wind, rain” only meant “Japan-US relations in danger,” which American leaders already knew.
Not only did no piece of MAGIC point directly to an attack on Pearl Harbor, since Operation Z’s secrecy was so well maintained, but a great deal of MAGIC’s trouble in raising alarm was that, by the closing months of 1941, when the worst was expected at any moment and when Japan’s consular cable traffic was a deluge, the whole of Washington’s decoding team was thirty-six analysts and six Japanese translators. “The agency was simply too small and too exhausted,” one cryptanalyst explained. “Our eyes were red and glazed; exhaustion and dream consciousness had overcome us months before the event. . . . Had these [critics] been among us and seen how buried we were in stacks of messages through the Purple machine, which had . . . priority, they would not wonder that we failed to process and translate a few messages.”
The Joint Congressional Committee on the Investigation of the Pearl Harbor Attack concluded on July 16, 1946, that Kimmel and Short were not guilty of derelictions of duty, but had committed errors of judgment, and that the War Plans Division had not warned either commander to the fullest extent necessary. The committee also found no evidence that Roosevelt, Hull, Stimson, Marshall, Stark, or Knox “tricked, provoked, incited, cajoled, or coerced Japan into attacking this Nation.” Two Republicans on the committee issued a “Minority Report” that judged Roosevelt “responsible for the failure to enforce continuous, efficient, and appropriate cooperation among the Secretary of War, the Secretary of the Navy, the Chief of Staff [General Marshall], and the Chief of Naval Operations [Admiral Stark] in evaluating information and dispatching clear and positive orders to the Hawaiian commanders as events indicated the growing imminence of war.” When it came to foreknowledge of the attack, the committee decided:
Virtually everyone in Washington was surprised Japan struck Pearl Harbor at the time she did. Among the reasons for this conclusion was the apparent Japanese purpose to move toward the south—the Philippines, Thailand, the Kra Peninsula; and the feeling that Hawaii was a near-impregnable fortress that Japan would not incur the dangers of attacking. The latter consideration necessarily contemplated that Hawaii was alert and that the enemy would be met with the full weight of Army and Navy power provided for defense.
It is apparent, however, that an attack on the fleet by Japan at some time was regarded as a distinct possibility. The warning messages sent the Hawaiian commanders contained orders requiring defensive measures against this possibility. Admiral [Richmond Kelly] Turner, Director of War Plans in the Navy Department, is the only officer in Washington in the higher echelons who indicated a strong belief that Hawaii would be attacked—he testified that he regarded such an attack as a “50-50
chance.” Asked if he had gained this impression around December 1 as a result of the Japanese ship-location reports, he testified: “No. That had been the opinion all along, expressed by the Navy Department, expressed in Hawaii, expressed by the War Department, expressed by everybody else, that there was a strong possibility that there would be an attack, a raid, that is, against Hawaii. That was merely following along the line the Navy officers and Army officers had been thinking about for twenty-five years or more. There was no change.”
When asked why, around November 27, if the Navy felt in this way about the chances of an air raid on the fleet in Pearl Harbor, some further message was not sent suggesting this possibility, Admiral Turner stated: “That had been in correspondence right along. The dispatch of November twenty-seventh fully covers it, in my opinion. I think on the fifth, the afternoon of the fifth of December, after canvassing the situation with officers in my division, I went into Admiral Ingersoll’s office and we talked for an hour as to what more the Navy Department could do to warn the forces in the field, the fleets, what ought to be done, should we send any more dispatches, or what. We came, both, to the conclusion that everything had been done covering the entire situation that ought to be done, and we then proceeded into Admiral Stark’s office, discussed the same question with him for fifteen minutes, and it was the unanimous decision that the orders that we had sent out for Admiral Kimmel to take a defensive deployment there were sufficient.”
In this connection Captain [Arthur] McCollum said: “I was not surprised at the Japanese attack, sir. I was astonished at the success attained by that attack, sir. I do not mean by that statement to imply that I had any knowledge that the Japanese were going to attack Pearl Harbor, and I wish to state categorically that there was no bit of intelligence that I had at my disposal that definitely to my mind indicated that the Japanese would attack Pearl Harbor, but I had for many years felt that in the event of an outbreak of hostilities between the United States and Japan that the Japanese would make a very definite attempt to strike the fleet at or near the commencement time of those hostilities. . . . There was historical precedent if the Japanese wished to start a war with us. Their war with China in 1895 was started that way; their war with Russia in 1907 was started that way; their war against Germany in Tsingtao in 1914 was started in that way.”
