Threshold of War

by Heinrichs, Waldo;

  Epilogue

  Japan Attacks

  For Washington, the days following Hull’s comprehensive note to the Japanese of November 26, his so-called Ten-Point program, were filled with excruciating uncertainty. The steady southward progression of Japanese forces indicated an attack soon, but officials were at a loss to know where the blow would fall or what more might be done to prevent it. How to respond depended on where the Japanese attacked. The response to an attack on American territory was obvious, but if British or Dutch territory were involved and not American, a question would arise, and if, say, Thailand alone were the victim, many doubts as well.

  The most likely outcome still seemed to be a move into Thailand. More and more Japanese troops landed in neighboring Indochina, the total in the southern part rising from 50,000 to 90,000 just between November 21 and 29, according to the American consul in Saigon, and with them came large numbers of trucks and aircraft. Some intelligence officials inferred that these were the troops which had embarked at Shanghai (which in fact were harboring at Hainan Island in the Gulf of Tonkin).1 A move on Thailand seemed to fit Japanese behavior: step-by-step encroachment taking advantage of developing opportunities but avoiding head-on collision. It opened the way to Malaya and to Rangoon, port of entry for the Burma Road.

  Japanese preparations seemed more extensive than required for the seizure of Thailand, however, as if the next step, not the next but one, would provoke war. In a speech reported in the American press on November 30, Premier Tōjō condemned Britain and the United States for “fishing in troubled waters” by pitting Asians against each other. On December 1 the Japanese navy changed its radio call signs, the first time it had done so twice in a thirty-day period, and sharply reduced its radio traffic, indicating concern for the secrecy of impending naval operations. American intelligence had lost track of the aircraft carriers.2 The Japanese appeared to be forming new task forces in the South China Sea and the Mandates, indicating “major operations” in the Indochina-Thai area soon, possibly including a descent on Borneo.3 Meanwhile MAGIC was decrypting instructions from Tokyo on destruction of codes, and Japanese nationals were hurrying home from British arid Dutch territories. Guam and the British Gilbert Islands sighted Japanese reconnaisance planes.4

  Was all this activity and secrecy directed merely at the Thai operation or were there ulterior objectives such as the Kra isthmus, Singapore or the Dutch East Indies? How could Japan possibly attack such objectives across the South China Sea without dealing first with American power on its flank in the Philippines? But why would Japan force a war with the United States when its every interest lay in avoiding consolidation of its enemies and engagement with a power of such enormous latent strength? These questions circled through the minds of tired American officials as they fretted over the weekend of November 29–30 and into the following week.

  On November 27 the army and navy sent out war warnings to relevant commands including Hawaii but especially directed to the Philippines. An “aggressive move by Japan” was expected in the next few days, the navy warning read, against “either” the Philippines, Thailand, the Kra isthmus, or Borneo. The military view was that, if Japan invaded the main body of Thailand or through Thailand China, the United States should stand still, allowing further reinforcement of the Philippines. However, if Japan attacked the southerly extension of Thailand, the Kra isthmus, thereby imperiling Malaya, or other British or Dutch territory, America must resist.5

  The distinction between Thai and other possible ventures seemed increasingly artificial, however. Britain urgently needed to occupy the beaches in the southerly portion of the Kra isthmus inside Thailand to protect Malaya but would only invite Japanese occupation of Bangkok and become cast as the aggressor if it moved first. A Japanese first move would remove that inhibition and bring in the British. Given this likely sequence, either a clash between Japan and Britain would occur in Thailand or the Japanese would preempt by striking the Kra first. This at least appears to be the strategic logic that Roosevelt gathered from discussions with his closest advisers and Halifax.

  On December 1 the president called in the British ambassador for a critical conversation. In case of a Japanese attack on Thailand, the president said, he would support British action, meaning the movement of British troops into the Kra. The British must do what was strategically necessary, he said. As to how and how soon he would provide support he was not so clear, but he would need a few days to “get things into political shape.” Respecting the case of a direct Japanese attack on British or Dutch territory he spoke more plainly, though in a typically informal manner. In that event, he said, “we should obviously all be together.” On December 3, this time with Welles present, Roosevelt assured Halifax he meant armed support and assented to the British plan for a preventive occupation of the Kra area. The British government now authorized its Malaya command to initiate this plan, called MATADOR, to forestall a Japanese landing on that shore or as a response to any Japanese incursion into Thailand. It now also gave the Dutch a formal guarantee of armed support. Admiral Phillips, his capital ships having arrived in Singapore, flew to Manila to coordinate naval action with the Americans. Admiral Hart ordered Destroyer Division 57 at Balikpapan in Borneo to sail for Singapore.6 Thus ABDA seemed finally locked together.

  This new solidarity was reactive not preventive, however. The British still hoped for an Anglo-American warning to Japan. Stimson urged the president to draw a line, transgression of which would lead the United States to fight. Roosevelt consistently resisted, sensitive to the Constitutional limitations he had already exceeded by his promise to Halifax, but above all ever-cautious, unwilling to confront the public and Congress until he knew which eventuality he faced. He intended to make an appeal for peace to the Emperor of Japan, but apparently only at the last minute when reconnaissance showed an attack coming. His main object probably was to establish a formal interest in protecting Thailand, Malaya, and the Dutch East Indies in case he needed to ask Congress for a declaration of war.7 As the first week of December wore on, with American policy settling into this passive vein and the South China Sea still largely empty, an eerie stillness overhung the Pacific and East Asia.

  From another part of the world came decisive and welcome news. By December the German campaign against Moscow was finally petering out from exhaustion and icy cold. On December 1, word arrived that the Soviets had retaken Rostov, saving the Caucasus.8 On the night of December 4 the Red Army, stiffened by its Siberian divisions, launched a counteroffensive on the Moscow front, and BARBAROSSA went into winter quarters.

  On December 1, Tokyo time, the Japanese government in Imperial Conference confirmed the decision for war. Only some positive outcome of the Hull-Nomura negotiations could have possibly fore stalled that decision. The Hull note of November 26 made it apparent that further negotiation was hopeless. The attack on Pearl Harbor by six carriers, the heart of the Imperial Navy’s air arm, would go forward. On December 3 this Pearl Harbor Striking Force, which had sortied from the Kurile Islands on November 26, crossed the International Date Line south of the Aleutians in its passage across the barren, stormy North Pacific toward Hawaii. On December 4 (Tokyo time) nineteen Japanese transports departed from Hainan and gathering contingents from Cam Ranh Bay and Saigon and covering forces from Mako in the Pescadores headed southwest into the South China Sea. On December 6, British reconnaissance aircraft sighted these convoys as they rounded the southernmost tip of Indochina into the Gulf of Siam.9 Before the RAF could find out whether they were headed for the Kra coast and Malaya or Bangkok, they were lost in monsoon clouds. When Roosevelt learned of the report the following day, December 6 (Washington time), he sent his plea for peace to Emperor Hirohito.

  Around midnight December 7/8 (Singapore time), Japanese transports arrived at Kota Bharu in the northeast, corner of Malaya and Patani and Singora on the Kra isthmus and began landing troops. At approximately the same time, dawn December 7, 275 miles north of Hawaii, the Striking
Force launched more than two hundred planes against the United States Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor and an hour later sent off 170 more. In the following hours occurred air raids on Singapore, the Philippines, Guam, and Wake and an assault on Hong Kong. Japanese air power, whether aboard the Striking Force, situated on Formosa and the southern Indochina coast, or quickly landed in Malaya and the Philippines, devastated British and American defenses.

  At Hawaii surprise was complete. The Japanese immediately attacked the airfields at Pearl Harbor and nearby, gutting hangars and aircraft neatly lined up on taxiways for better security against sabotage. They left seventy-nine usable army airplanes out of the original 231. At Pearl Harbor, high-level bombers, dive bombers, and torpedo planes concentrated on Battleship Row, where, singly and in pairs, the pride of the Pacific Fleet was moored. They sank five. Bombs ignited the forward magazine of Arizona, shattering the battleship. Oklahoma capsized, trapping hundreds of seamen inside. West Virginia and California! settled in the mud upright. Nevada, attempting to escape the harbor, was beached in flames. Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and Maryland suffered damage but remained afloat. Colorado, undergoing modernization on the West Coast, escaped altogether.

  Otherwise damage was relatively light. No aircraft carrier was in port: Lexington and Enterprise were delivering planes to outlying bases and Saratoga was on the West Coast. One heavy cruiser present, New Orleans, was peppered with fragments, the other, San Francisco, was unharmed. Of six light cruisers, one was sunk, one heavily damaged, one lightly damaged, and three were unscathed. Only three destroyers were put out of action. The power plant, repair shops, and oil storage tanks were spared. Nonetheless, the Japanese now had every reason to believe that their attacks southward would not be threatened from the Pacific flank.

  Dawn came to the Philippines several hours later but in spite of forewarning, the American command was caught with its planes down. It delayed action for hours, lulled by the belief that the airfields of central Luzon were beyond reach of Japanese air power and torn between sequestering its precious B-17s and hurling them against Japanese air concentrations on Formosa. Shortly after noon that day, eighty-eight Japanese naval bombers and Zero fighters, with engines modified to extend their range, attacked Clark Field. Half of the thirty-five B-17s in the Philippines, arming and fueling for a mission to Formosa, were destroyed. Within the first day, half of the modern fighters were gone too. Having promptly seized command of the air, Japanese forces were in a position to destroy or force the withdrawal of American air and naval power from the Philippines, leaving the islands open to invasion.

  The night after these attacks, H.M.S. Prince of Wales and Repulse with four destroyers left Singapore and steamed north to pounce on Japanese transports off Singora. Sighted by Japanese aircraft, Admiral Phillips wisely turned about. Then what proved to be a false report of Japanese landings further south diverted him to the coast and delayed his withdrawal long enough for the Japanese to spot him again. At 11:00 a.m. December 10 local time, eighty-eight naval bombers and torpedo planes from Indochinese bases attacked, again operating well beyond their expected range. They methodically destroyed the battleship and battle cruiser, sending them down with 840 men and Admiral Phillips. The blow to British morale and prestige in East Asia was immense.

  The British and Americans consistently underrated the Japanese and failed to appreciate the defiant, do-or-die mentality of its current leadership. Western defenses were still weak, weapons ineffective or obsolete, and leadership mostly mediocre. The rituals and routines of peace prevailed; minds were not at war pitch. These Western weaknesses in no way detract from the brilliance and daring of the Japanese plan and the effectiveness of the wide-ranging Japanese attacks. Imperial headquarters riveted Western attention on the preliminaries that could not be concealed—the staging of forces to Indochina and the Gulf of Siam—keeping their ultimate destination ambiguous, while moving in on the Americans by stealth. Japan obtained its immediate objectives. The way was open for conquest of a broad domain from the borders of India to the mid-Pacific and from the Aleutians to New Guinea.

  The day after Pearl Harbor the United States, powerfully united and vowing vengeance, declared war on Japan. Hitler, delighted to find the United States weakened, its forces divided, and anxious to sustain Japan and prevent any possible rapprochement between the Pacific antagonists while he finished off Russia in 1942, declared war on December 11. He undoubtedly believed he had little to lose, given existing American engagement in the Battle of the Atlantic, and he had much to gain by turning loose his submarines on unprotected American commerce along the East Coast. The U-boat fleet had nearly tripled in size during 1941.10 Italy followed Germany, and the United States instantly responded with a declaration of war on both. December 11 was nine months to the day since the passage of Lend-Lease. Now the great neutrals had joined the fray, by choice and force of circumstance. The questions that overhung international relations in March of global alignment and balance of forces had all been answered: The world was at war.

  Notes

  List of Abbreviations Used in Notes

  ABC

  American-British-Canadian war plans

  ABD

  American-British-Dutch naval conversations and war plans

  ABDA

  American-British-Dutch-Australian conversations and war plans

  ADM

  British Admiralty records

  ALUSNA

  American naval attaché in London

  CAB

  British Cabinet office records

  CINCAF

  Commander-in-Chief, U.S. Asiatic Fleet

  CINCLANT

  Commander-in-Chief, U.S. Atlantic Fleet

  CINCPAC

  Commander-in-Chief, U.S. Pacific Fleet

  CNO

  U.S. Chief of Naval Operations

  COMDESLANT

  Commander, Destroyers, U.S. Atlantic Fleet

  COMDESRON

  Commander, Destroyer Squadron

  COMNAVFOREUR

  Commander, U.S. Naval Forces, Europe

  COS

  Chief of Staff, U.S. Army

  DGFP

  U.S. Department of State, Documents on German Foreign Policy

  EW

  740.0011 European War 1939 file, RG 59

  FDR

  Franklin D. Roosevelt

  FDRL

  Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park

  FO

  British Foreign Office

  FR 1941

  U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1941

  FR Japan

  U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States: Japan, 1931–1941

  FRS

  Federal Record Center, Suitland, MD

  GAF

  General administrative files (CINCLANT and COMDESLANT)

  JIC

  British Joint Intelligence Committee

  LC

  Library of Congress, Washington

  MID

  U.S. Army Military Intelligence Division

  NA

  National Archives, Washington

  NHC

  U.S. Naval History Center, Navy Yard, Washington

  NHOB

  U.S. Naval History Operations Branch, Federal Record Center, Suitland, MD

  NOA

  U.S. Navy Operational Archives, Navy Yard, Washington

  NWPD

  U.S. Navy War Plans Division

  OCS

  Office of Chief of Staff, U.S. Army

  OF

  President’s Official File, FDRL

  ONI

  U.S. Navy Office of Naval Intelligence

  OPD

  U.S. Army Operations Division (successor to War Plans Division)

  OPNAV

  Office of U.S. Chief of Naval Operations

  PHA

  U.S. Congress, Hearings on the Pearl Harbor Attack

  PPF

  President’s Personal File, FDRL

/>   PREM

  British Prime Minister’s office records

  PRO

  Public Record Office, Kew, United Kingdom

  PSF

  President’s Secretary’s File, FDRL

  PW

  740.0011 Pacific War file, RG 59

  RG

  Record Group

  SecState

  U.S. Secretary of State

  SOPD

  Strategical and Operational Planning Documents, NOA

  SPDR

  U.S. Navy Strategic Plans Division records

  SPENAVO

  U.S. Special Naval Observer, London

  SRDJ

  Translations of Japanese diplomatic messages, (MAGIC)

  SRGN

  German navy U-boat messages

  WPD

  U.S. Army War Plans Division

  Prologue

  1. Walter Consuelo Langsam, The World Since 1919 (New York, 1948), 77.

  2. Gerhard L. Weinberg, The Foreign Policy of Hitler’s Germany: Diplomatic Revolution in Europe, 1933–36 (Chicago, 1970), 7; Weinberg, The Foreign Policy of Hitler’s Germany: Starting World War II, 1937–39 (Chicago, 1980), 657–59.

  3. On Roosevelt’s foreign policy: Robert Dallek, Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 1932–1945 (New York, 1979).

  4. Michael A. Barnhart, Japan Prepares for Total War: The Search for Economic Security, 1919–1941 (Ithaca, 1987), 144–46.