The Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire, 1936-1945 (Modern Library War)

by Toland, John

  The wrestling match brought no repercussions—or results—but a few days later Yamamoto himself got the two carriers reinstated with a phone call to Tokyo.

  Several weeks later Kusaka summoned all carrier captains and their chief aviation officers to Akagi. He told them about Pearl Harbor and ordered targets changed from moving to stationary. At Tominaka Air Base a large rock fifteen feet in diameter was painted white, replacing the towed raft as a target. Lieutenant Heijiro Abe, who commanded ten high-level bombers, made an outline in lime of a battleship on a beach at Kagoshima Bay and told his men to drop their dummy bombs on it. Only he knew it was the outline of the battleship California.

  Thanks to all the weeks of arduous practice, the bombing results were remarkable, with scores as high as eighty percent. But they had been achieved at a price; chickens were refusing to lay eggs because of the almost constant roar of planes.

  3.

  On the evening of September 24 the Mackay cable office delivered a coded radiogram to Consul General Kita in Honolulu. It was a message from Captain Ogawa ordering future reports on Pearl Harbor to be keyed to five subareas:

  … AREA A: THE WATERS BETWEEN FORD ISLAND AND THE ARSENAL. AREA B: WATERS ADJACENT TO BUT SOUTH AND WEST OF FORD ISLAND. AREA C: EAST LOCH. AREA D: MIDDLE LOCH. AREA E: WEST LOCH AND THE CHANNEL.

  Kita passed this on to Yoshikawa, who made several tours of all areas and four days later cabled back a list of warships at anchor. It included a battleship, heavy and light cruisers, destroyers and submarines—but no carriers.

  Another Navy agent was at work in Mexico City, but his cover was in grave danger of being exposed. Commander Tsunezo Wachi had been posing for the past year as assistant naval attaché. He was the chief of “L,” Japan’s largest overseas espionage ring, and his primary mission was to intercept messages of the U. S. fleet in the Atlantic. He soon broke the simple American code and was sending accurate reports to Tokyo on all naval movements in the Atlantic.

  As a sideline he was buying mercury—he had already picked up some two thousand 90-lb. bottles—through a Mexican general. Since mercury was on the embargo list, these bottles had to be secreted in big drums, the top half containing bronze scrap. Late in September, however, one bottle was broken while its drum was being loaded onto a Japanese ship, and the mercury spilled out. Wachi’s espionage career would have ended but he had smuggled in a big bundle of $1,000 bills for just such an emergency. His contact, an influential Mexican banker, promised to suppress the story and gave him a list of officials to be paid off—$100,000 was written opposite the name of the President of Mexico.

  Wachi paid willingly, for he was on the verge of a major espionage breakthrough. A cashiered American Army major was already on his payroll at $2,000 a month. The disgruntled major, using the code name of Sutton, had given Wachi detailed reports of all naval shipping through the Panama Canal which he knew were accurate from his own intercepts. Once war broke out, Wachi planned to send Sutton to Washington, where he still had a number of friends in high places, as well as access to the Army-Navy Club.

  On October 22—five days after the Emperor had ordered Tojo to form a new cabinet—Colonel Tsuji himself went on an espionage mission. Captain Asaeda had brought him information about the beaches and tides of Malaya, but he wanted to take a look for himself and persuaded Captain Ikeda, commander of a reconnaissance squadron, to fly him over the peninsula. At dawn the two men took off from Saigon, the new headquarters of the invasion forces, in an unmarked, unarmed twin-engine plane with fuel for five hours. Tsuji was wearing an air force uniform in case they were forced down in British territory.

  They traversed the Gulf of Siam and two hours later could see the eastern coastline of Malaya stretched out clearly in front of them. On the left was Kota Bharu, the northernmost town of British-held Malaya, and on the right, Pattani and Singora, two Thai coastal towns. They flew directly over Singora and its pitiful airstrip. There were rubber plantations on either side of the main road. One good battalion, Tsuji figured, could seize the airfield and use it as a base of operations. He excitedly took a picture.

  Next they turned toward the west coast of Malaya. Rain had lowered the visibility, so Tsuji told Ikeda to drop to 6,500 feet. Suddenly they saw a large air base through the haze. Tsuji shouted that it was Alor Star, a British base, and Ikeda pulled up into the storm and headed south. They flew over two equally impressive British aerodromes, turned back north and saw clearly two more fields, just as large. Tsuji was stunned. A small Japanese base at Singora would be helpless in the face of air attacks from such modern installations. Alor Star itself, as well as Kota Bharu, would have to be seized at “any sacrifice” within hours after the first landings.

  They landed at Saigon with ten minutes of fuel left. “I saw all I wanted to see,” Tsuji told the pilot, “and now I know we will win.”

  Still in air force uniform, Tsuji reported his findings to the Army commander and his staff, and new operations were devised which called for simultaneous landings of the 5th Division (at Singora and Pattani) and part of the 18th (at Kota Bharu); the 5th Division would seize the strategic bridge over the Perak River and occupy the Alor Star air base while the men of the 18th Division, after taking Kota Bharu and its field, would push south down the east coast.

  Tsuji knew that it would be almost impossible to get the Army General Staff to accept such a radically different plan without loss of face, so he flew to Tokyo in order to present it in person. But even the remarkable Tsuji could not have succeeded without the help of an old friend, Colonel Takushiro Hattori, recently promoted to chief of the Operations Section of the Army General Staff. Hattori was not only stirred by Tsuji’s daring flight but convinced his solution alone would work. Against considerable opposition, Hattori persuaded Army Chief of Staff Sugiyama to approve the Tsuji proposal.

  In Hawaii, the regular diplomatic courier had just arrived with a package of $100 bills and instructions to deliver the money to a German on the payroll, Otto Kühn. An acquaintance of Himmler, who didn’t like him, he had quit the Nazi party and come to Hawaii. Here he had lost his capital in a furniture venture and was now living off espionage and the profits from his wife’s beauty salon. As yet he had done little for the Japanese except boast of his contacts.

  Consul General Kita wrote “Kalama” on a sheet of paper, tore it in half through the word and sent one of the pieces to Kühn. Then he summoned Yoshikawa, gave him the other half, and asked him to take it “to a German-American who will carry on espionage when we all leave Hawaii.”

  Yoshikawa was reluctant—he knew nothing about any German and didn’t want to act as a messenger boy—but Kita insisted. He went over to the safe and brought out the package, wrapped in newspapers, which contained $14,000 and a message. “Show your half of the paper to the German; if he has the other half, give him the money.” Yoshikawa was also to get an answer to the message.

  Not long before sunset on October 28 Yoshikawa, wearing green pants and an aloha shirt, strode out the front gate of the consulate and into a waiting taxicab. After climbing Diamond Head, it proceeded up the east coast for several minutes. About a mile from Kühn’s house Yoshikawa dismissed the cab and sauntered down the road until he came to the right address, a large house with a spacious courtyard. Yoshikawa knocked at the kitchen door, but no one answered. He went inside, calling, “Hello … hello?” He waited for ten minutes; then, out of nowhere, a man appeared. He was in his early forties.

  “Otto Kühn?”

  The man nodded, but in case it was an FBI agent, Yoshikawa inconspicuously slid his half of the paper onto the edge of a table. The other turned pale and started to tremble but drew out a piece of paper. Still without saying a word, Yoshikawa matched the two pieces—“Kalama.” He followed the equally silent Kühn out the back door to an open-air summer house, a Hawaiian-style gazebo. Here he handed over the bundle and told Kühn there was a message inside. Kühn fumbled with the package until he found unsigned instructions requesti
ng a test with a shortwave transmitter. Using the call letter EXEX on frequency 11980, Kühn was to get in touch with station JHP at 0100 Pacific standard time on November 3 and at 0530 on November 5.

  Yoshikawa asked for a reply and for the first time Kühn spoke. “I’ll give the consul general an answer in two or three days,” he said in a high, shaky, almost inaudible voice, then wrote down on a piece of paper that he could not make the test. He sealed the note in an envelope and handed it to Yoshikawa.

  It was dusk by the time Yoshikawa reached the highway, half expecting some FBI man to jump out at him. He caught a taxi and, with relief, headed back for the consulate.

  Two more secret agents were on their way to Oahu aboard the liner Taiyo-maru. One was Commander Toshihide Maejima, a submarine expert, disguised as a ship doctor. The other was the assistant purser, Takao Suzuki. Only the ship’s captain and purser knew he was Suguru Suzuki, the youngest lieutenant commander in the Navy and an aviation expert. He was the son of a general and nephew of a famous admiral, the Grand Chamberlain Kantaro Suzuki, who had escaped assassination so narrowly during the 2/26 Incident. His primary mission was to determine the exact positions of the targets, what types of bombs should be used, a possible emergency landing site and—most important—whether the Lahaina harbor on the island of Maui was still a base for U. S. naval ships. If so, a large number of planes would have to be diverted from the attack on Pearl Harbor. And he had been told to study sea and weather conditions on the trip to Honolulu. Taiyo-maru was going out of its way to track the exact course that Nagumo’s Striking Force was scheduled to take.

  The American passengers aboard were comfortable in spite of the heavy seas, but most of them, like Carl Sipple and his wife, felt ill at ease. The Sipples had left Japan with their two small children because of the growing international tension. Their uneasiness increased as day after day passed without an announcement of the ship’s position. Considering how windy and cold it was and how low the sun stood above the horizon, they guessed they were far north of the usual shipping lane, and there was no trace of other vessels. Were they being taken to another port? The Sipples tried to send a radiogram to friends in Honolulu, but no messages could be dispatched. Taiyo-maru was on radio silence.

  Before dawn of November 1 the ship finally approached Oahu. Sipple went up on deck to get a glimpse of Diamond Head and at first light saw a small white launch in the ship’s wake. Fighter planes circled above, then swooped so low that the passengers could exchange waves with the pilots.

  Suzuki was on the bridge, scanning the mouth of Pearl Harbor with binoculars. It was barely wide enough for one big ship to slip through. Just after six o’clock a launchload of U. S. Marines boarded and stonily stood guard at the bridge and engine room. Suzuki guessed they were there to prevent any attempt to sink the ship at the entrance of Pearl Harbor.

  He accosted the group of port officials, including several U. S. Navy officers, who came aboard to pilot the ship into Honolulu, and offhandedly asked how deep the water was, and if there were any mines. The answers came readily. Over drinks at the ship’s bar he also learned there was a steel net across the mouth of the harbor which opened and closed automatically, and that the whirling gadget on the mast of a nearby British warship was something called radar.

  But the rest of his mission could not be carried out. Kita sent a staff member with a warning that it would be wiser if the two agents stayed aboard the ship. Suzuki industriously made up a list of ninety-seven questions. He was told the answers would be brought back before the ship left.

  The questionnaire was turned over to Yoshikawa. “On what day of the week are the greatest number of ships in the harbor?” That was easy—Sunday. “Are there any large flying boats on patrol?” That too was easy—the big PBY’s went out every morning and evening. “Where do the ships that leave the harbor go, and why?” He had no idea, but surmised from the ships’ speed and the time they were gone that they traveled some five hundred miles for maneuvers. “Is there an antisubmarine net at the mouth of Pearl Harbor? If so, describe.” He had only heard there was but decided to find out for himself. Wearing his sporty outfit of the usual green trousers and aloha shirt and carrying a bamboo fishing pole, he walked down the highway past Hickam Field, then crossed a barren area toward the mouth of Pearl Harbor, ready to pose as a Filipino if caught. He walked into a small woods next to some naval buildings and almost blundered into sailors hanging up wet laundry. He hid in the brush until sunset. He thought briefly of committing suicide if he was apprehended, but decided to just say, “I give up,” and to hell with it.

  At dusk he crept to the entrance of the harbor. He heard voices and froze until there was silence. Then he lowered himself gently into the water, and quietly fluttering his legs, swam fifty yards into the channel. He groped with his feet. Nothing. He dived for the net but was so excited that he had only enough breath to go down a few yards. Five more times he dived. Still nothing. He swam back to shore. These were his most anxious moments as an agent, and in the end he had nothing positive to report.

  On Taiyo-maru, Suzuki spent hours observing and taking pictures of the Pearl Harbor entrance and the adjoining Hickam Field. During the next few days various consular employees carrying newspapers walked past the Marines guarding Taiyo-maru. Inside the newspapers was the information Suzuki wanted.

  By November 5, the day of departure, he knew the thickness of both the concrete roofs of the hangars at Hickam Field and the armor of the battleships, and had pictures of Pearl Harbor taken from surrounding hills, as well as recent aerial photographs. He summarized all he could on a single sheet of paper and hid it. His mission was completed at three o’clock in the afternoon, when the final courier came aboard ship just prior to sailing time with a locked diplomatic pouch containing Yoshikawa’s latest findings and the most accurate maps.

  4.

  Off Kyushu a large crate was brought aboard Nagumo’s flagship, Akagi, and carried to Kusaka’s office. Inside was a seven-foot square mock-up of Oahu. For the next few days Genda, the planner, and Fuchida, the leader, memorized every feature of the terrain.

  The Combined Fleet moved from its regular base off Sakurajima, the beautiful little island two hours’ sail south of Hiroshima, into Bungo Strait, where it posed as the U. S. Pacific Fleet. Nagumo’s carriers moved to within two hundred miles of the “Americans” and launched dive bombers and their fighter escort, followed by high-level and torpedo bombers. The planes assembled without an intercom system, by means of signals chalked on slates and held up in the cockpits.

  The ultimate technical problem—a suitable torpedo—had finally been solved by Captain Fumio Aiko, a torpedo expert at Yokosuka. He made wooden fins from aerial stabilizers and fitted them on torpedoes. After scores of tests in Kagoshima Bay, 80 percent of the torpedoes ran shallow enough for the Pearl Harbor waters. Now the problem was to manufacture the improvised fins in time for the attack.

  All objections within the Navy to Operation Z ended on November 3 when Yamamoto and his key staff officers flew to Tokyo to see Nagano. At the end of the discussion the Chief of Staff sighed and said, “As for the Pearl Harbor attack, my judgment is not always good, because I’m old. So I will have to trust yours.”

  Two days later Yamamoto issued “Combined Fleet Top Secret Operation Order No. 1,” a bulky 151-page document. It outlined naval strategy for the first phase of hostilities covering not only Pearl Harbor but more or less simultaneous assaults on Malaya, the Philippines, Guam, Wake, Hong Kong and the South Seas.

  Yamamoto then assembled all squadron leaders to his flagship and told them about Pearl Harbor.a “This time,” he said, “you must not think lightly of your enemy. America is not an ordinary foe and will never fall short as one.”

  On November 6 General Count Hisaichi Terauchi took command of Southern Army, which was made up of four armies. He was to seize all American, Dutch and British possessions in the “southern area” as soon as possible. After simultaneous attacks on Mala
ya and the Philippines, Lieutenant General Tomoyuki Yamashita (pronounced Ya-mash-ta) would take Malaya and Singapore with the 25th Army. Lieutenant General Masaharu Homma, an amateur playwright and leader of the pro-British-American minority in the Army, was to conquer the Philippines with the 14th Army. General Tsukada, who had represented the Army at so many stormy liaison conferences, was made Terauchi’s chief of staff. Many officers at Army General Staff headquarters watched him leave Tokyo with foreboding. Now who could control the tempestuous younger officers?

  Within twenty-four hours Yamamoto issued his second secret order setting the tentative date to start hostilities as December 8. Two factors had determined the choice: there would be a full moon, which would facilitate launching from the carriers, and it would be Sunday (December 7) in Hawaii. From Yoshikawa’s reports it had been established that the Pacific Fleet usually entered Pearl Harbor on a Friday and left the following Monday.

  On November 10 Admiral Nagumo put Yamamoto’s plan into effect by issuing his first operational order. There was an understanding that if diplomatic negotiations with America were successfully concluded even at the very last moment, the attack on Pearl Harbor would be called off and the Striking Force returned to a rendezvous point at latitude 42 degrees north by longitude 170 degrees east, where it would stay in a state of readiness until further instructions.

  The six carriers were stripped of personal belongings and unnecessary equipment and loaded with extra jerricans and drums of oil. All ships were under tight security. Usually when a fleet left Japan it was stocked with tropical clothing and special food for southern climates. This time the sailors would need foul-weather clothing, antifreeze grease, special weatherproof gun tarpaulins and other equipment for the cold, and Kusaka hoped it could all be collected without arousing suspicions.