Fighting to Lose

by John Bryden

  November 28: MAGIC decrypts disclosed Tokyo’s reaction to Hull’s “humiliating” proposals. Japan’s ambassadors in Washington were told that relations between the two countries were now “de facto ruptured” but that they were to pretend that the talks were still continuing.28

  Still that same day, Admiral Stark issued another war warning, which said that the Japanese still might continue negotiations but hostile action was possible. Pacific stations were directed to undertake such reconnaissance “as you deem necessary, but these measures should not be carried out so as to alarm the civilian population or disclose intent.” Admiral Kimmel maintained the usual level of reconnaissance.

  December 1: The director of naval communications in Washington sent an urgent message to Admiral Hart in the Philippines, with a copy going to Admiral Kimmel, that the Japanese were planning a landing at Kota Bharu on the Malaya Peninsula. That meant the Japanese intended to attack Singapore, reinforcing Kimmel’s impression that the British were the target, not the Americans.29

  Also, the Americans read a message from Tokyo stressing that the appearance of continued negotiations had to be maintained in order “to prevent the United States from becoming unduly suspicious.”

  December 2: Churchill received and read a super-secret Tokyo to Berlin decrypt in which the ambassador was told to advise Hitler that a breakdown in talks between Japan and the United States was inevitable and that an “armed collision” leading to “a state of war” with the British and Americans “may happen sooner than expected.”30

  December 3: Army codebreakers released a message of the day before from Tojo, the Japanese prime minister, to the Washington embassy, ordering that its cipher machine and all codes and ciphers save the “PA” and the “LA” codes be destroyed.31 The destruction by a diplomatic post of its codes and ciphers is universally recognized as a prelude to war.

  Canadian aviation pioneer William Seymour met with an official of Canada’s Defence Department in the Château Laurier hotel in Ottawa. Seymour had been covertly recruiting American flyers for the air war in England, but now he was told things were about to change:

  Mr. Apedaile informed me that British Military Intelligence had informed Ottawa that it was expected that the Japanese would make a surprise air attack on Pearl Harbor on December 8th, 1941…. Mr. Apedaile then explained to me that if the attack did take place it obviously meant that the United States immediately would be involved in War with Japan, would probably become involved in the War with Germany and Italy, and, therefore, require all the pilots they could train….32

  In Honolulu, Captain Irving Mayfield, the navy’s 14th District intelligence officer, and Lieutenant Colonel George Bicknell of Hawaii Army Intelligence learned from the local navy cryptographic agency, Station HYPO, that Washington had sent Admiral Kimmel an advisory to the effect that Japanese embassies and diplomatic posts in London, Washington, Hong Kong, Singapore, Batavia, and Manila had been ordered to destroy their codes and secret papers. The Honolulu consulate was not included, so Mayfield asked the local FBI’s Robert Shivers if they were burning papers there. The FBI had a telephone tap on the consulate. Shivers informed Mayfield they were.33

  Admiral Kimmel was told, but he did not see it as any different from what was happening elsewhere.

  December 4: Lieutenant John Burns, head of the Espionage Bureau of the Honolulu police, was called to the office of FBI agent Shivers, a small man who prided himself on being “deadpan.” He was almost in tears. “I’m not telling my men but I’m telling you this. We’re going to be attacked before the week is out.” Pearl Harbor is going to be hit, he said.34

  December 5: In England, Victor Cavendish-Bentinck, chairing a subcommittee of Britain’s Joint Intelligence Committee, was surprised when told that a Japanese fleet was headed to Hawaii. “Have we informed our transatlantic brethren?” he asked. Yes, he was assured. William Casey, then on Colonel Donovan’s staff, confirmed it: “The British had sent word that a Japanese fleet was steaming east toward Hawaii,” he remembered.35

  Still in England, the lead cryptographer for Japanese traffic at the Government Code & Cipher School, confided in his diary, “The All Highest [Churchill] all over himself at the moment for the latest indications re Japan’s intentions and rings up at all hours of the day and night….”36

  December 7–10: In the early hours of the morning of December 7, as the six great Japanese aircraft carriers turned into the wind in the predawn darkness, and as exhaust flames flickered from the engines of the “Kate” torpedo bombers lined up on their decks, General Marshall and Admiral Stark fussed over how they should get word to Hawaii that the latest intelligence indicated Pearl Harbor might be attacked in a couple of hours. Radio? Teletype? Both men turned down picking up the phone.

  At 7:55 a.m., Admiral Kimmel was just up for the day when he heard the sound of distant explosions. The navy had been his life for forty-one years. He had begun as a cadet, then served as a gunnery and turret officer, and had sailed around the world during President Theodore Roosevelt’s 1907 “white fleet” show of American power. He had spent the First World War on battleships and had witnessed the surrender of the German High Seas Fleet at Rosyth in 1918. An orderly series of commands followed: a squadron of destroyers; the battleship New York; a division of heavy cruisers in the Pacific Fleet; and, finally, command of the Pacific Fleet itself. His Hawaii residence was on a hill overlooking the anchorage, and when he stepped outside, he looked down a long green lawn to see black blossoms springing up around, and among, and on, his precious battleships.

  Canada was first to declare war on Japan, doing so that very evening. The United States and Britain declared war the following day, on December 8, and Hitler against the United States on December 11.

  The Japanese launched coordinated attacks against Hong Kong, Singapore, and the Dutch East Indies, and then the Philippines, just as the Pujol questionnaire had anticipated. On December 8, the Japanese landed virtually unopposed at Kota Bharu, Malaysia, to begin their march down the Kra Peninsula to Singapore. On December 10, the Prince of Wales and the Repulse were sunk on the open sea by Japanese bombers. The Canadians in Hong Kong held out until Christmas Day, Singapore until mid-February, and the Americans in the Philippines until May.

  December 18: Assistant Secretary of State Adolf Berle noted in his diary:

  (Re. PH investigation) Since the Secretary (Hull) as far back as November 27 had been telling the War Cabinet that hostilities might start at any time when the Japanese replied to his last proposals his record is clear. In the evening of the 6th when I came in with the children for a moment, we knew that the forces (Jap) were already started for somewhere, though we did not know where.

  All this info was in the hands of the navy — indeed, most of it came from the navy. But there seems to have been no effective orders sent to Pearl Harbor.37

  None indeed.

  16

  December 7–31, 1941

  It was an oft-told story around the FBI about how Hoover first heard of the Japanese surprise attack. He was in New York that Sunday at a baseball game when the FBI switchboard patched the call from Hawaii through to his private box. Amid the hissing and static came the voice of Special Agent Robert Shivers: “The Japanese are bombing Pearl Harbor. There’s no doubt about it — those planes are Japanese. It’s war. You may be able to hear the explosions yourself. Listen.” Shivers put the phone to the window. Hoover could.1

  Of all those in leadership positions within the U.S. government and military who had seen Popov’s questionnaire, the director of the FBI was probably the only one who was surprised by the surprise. As far as he knew, everyone who needed to know that the Japanese had their sights on Hawaii did know. He had seen to it.

  On the other hand, he had not been on the list for MAGIC. None of the decrypted spy messages reporting on the disposition of the warships in Pearl Harbor had crossed his desk. He had no idea that more than a dozen such reports had passed through the hands of army and n
avy cryptographers over the previous ten weeks, and beneath the eyes of the army and navy chiefs of staff. America’s civilian chief of counter-espionage had been kept in the dark in his own field.

  Anxious to please, anxious to show that the FBI was on the ball, the next day — December 8 — Hoover sent the president two memos, one outlining the war measures the FBI was taking and the other informing him of a two-hour telephone conversation intercepted by the FBI on December 5 between a Mr. Mori and someone in Tokyo. There had been probing questions about the defences of Pearl Harbor and Hawaii, plus some irrelevant ones that looked to be in open code. The one that sounded most suspicious had asked what flowers were in bloom. “Hibiscus and poinsettia,” was the reply.2

  On December 12, Hoover followed up with another memo that developed the theme. He said the Honolulu special agent in charge (Robert Shivers again) had been convinced the flowers reply indicated a direct and urgent threat to Hawaii, but Navy Intelligence (ONI) had “scoffed” at the suggestion and had failed to refer the matter to higher authority. Although Hoover did not specifically state it, one can see what made Shivers so certain: The hibiscus was the territory’s official flower and it normally blooms in February, not December.3

  Hoover was on the hunt. Someone had messed up, and it was not him. Americans were outraged that the mighty U.S. Pacific Fleet had been caught napping, and that many of their “boys” had been killed. Heads were going to roll, and hungry eyes were already on America’s Dick Tracy. No one cared a whisker that the FBI had ceded counter-intelligence leadership for Hawaii to the navy. Hoover well appreciated that occasionally the innocent get the electric chair.

  The second half of his memo to Roosevelt was even more accusatory. From Japanese wireless messages intercepted by military authorities in Hawaii and decoded in Washington, the Military Intelligence Division “discovered the messages contained substantially the complete plans for the attack on Pearl Harbor as it was subsequently carried out.”

  Hoover continued:

  The messages contained a code Japanese word which would be sent by radio to the Japanese fleet as the signal for the attack when the word was repeated three times in succession. Military authorities in Washington sent by Army radio to the Hawaiian Islands the entire plan for the information of the authorities in Hawaii. On Friday morning, December 5th, the code word previously identified as the signal for the attack was intercepted, which indicated the attack was to be made on Saturday or Sunday, and this information was sent by military radio to the Hawaiian Islands….4

  Hoover concluded by observing that either “army radio” had failed to get through, or the authorities in Hawaii had failed to act.

  The director of the FBI did not disclose it just then, but he had a very solid source. His information came from none other than Colonel John T. Bissell, the army’s MID chief of counter-intelligence, the very same officer who had screened answers to parts of Popov’s questionnaire earlier in the fall. He let slip to his opposite number in the FBI the following — the writer is actually one of Hoover’s deputies:

  Col. John T. Bissell today informed G.C. Burton, in the strictest of confidence (and with the statement that if it ever got out that he had disclosed this information he would be fired), that about ten days before the attack on Pearl Harbor a number of Japanese radio intercepts had been obtained in Hawaii. When they were unable to break the code in these intercepts in Hawaii they sent them to Washington where G2 broke them. It was found these radio messages contained substantially the complete plans for the attack on Pearl Harbor as it was actually carried out. The messages also contained a code Japanese word which would be sent out by radio to the Japanese fleet as the signal for the attack, when this word was repeated three times in succession….5

  Sure enough, the Japanese pilots in their fighters and bombers circling over the black sea north of Hawaii had heard in their earphones “TORA! TORA! TORA!” — Tiger! Tiger! Tiger! — before they turned south and formed up against the red rays of the rising sun.

  Special Agent Shivers submitted his formal report on the events of December 7 on December 26.6 In the week before, in the hours he spent picking out the words on his typewriter, he could anytime have walked around the anchorage of the wrecked Pacific Fleet, with the USS Oklahoma bottom-up in the oily water, the USS Arizona awash to the decks, its upper works a tower of twisted and blackened metal. The air reeked of fuel oil and burned paint.

  The report began by asking that it not be shown to the army or navy, a request that Hoover respected since it never was mentioned in any of the subsequent Pearl Harbor inquiries. Shivers then went on to tell how, shortly after the attack, he asked the Honolulu police to raid the Japanese consulate, and how they arrived just in time to save a codebook that the consul general was trying to burn. It was turned over to the navy cryptographers at Station HYPO, the Hawaii branch of Op-20-G. Within a few days, they had used it to decipher some of the messages Consul Kita had sent to Tokyo in the week before the attack. These included some stunning last-minute ships-in-harbour reports.

  The HYPO cryptographers normally worked strictly on Japanese navy ciphers. They did not receive diplomatic intercepts and did not have the keys to break that kind of message. However, they happened to have some of Consul Kita’s most recent enciphered originals because they had been brought in the Friday before and the day of the attack by the district Naval Intelligence officer, Captain Irving Mayfield. He had managed to persuade one of the local radio-telegraph services, RCA Communications, to secretly hand them over. Ten or so had been easily solved but were of little interest. The rest were in a code-cipher combination that could not be broken. These, on December 9, the codebook unlocked.7

  This look by the HYPO cryptographers at Japanese espionage activities in their own backyard, as it were, must have been tremendously exciting. The messages clearly set out the Japanese consulate’s role in paving the way for the attack, and if they had been available beforehand, the Pacific Fleet could have been ready. In the enthusiasm of the moment, strictly against the navy’s rules, the decrypts were shared with Shivers.

  The most significant of them, in terms of providing ample warning in ample time, was the so-called “lights message” sent by Kita on December 3. More than four hundred words long after translation, it was apparently prepared by the Abwehr’s spy in Honolulu, Otto Kühn, and comprised an elaborate set of procedures for signalling seaward by means of lights at night and visual cues by day. It would seem the idea was to provide Japanese submarines lurking off shore with the latest on the whereabouts of the warships in Pearl Harbor.

  #0245 (1) “PA”

  From: Kita

  To: Foreign Minister, Tokyo

  (Secret Military Message No.) (By Chief of Consulate’s Code)

  To: Chief of Third Section, Naval General Staff

  From: FUJI

  Re Signals: I wish to simplify communications as follows:

  Code:

  Battle force including scouting force are about to put to sea

  Several aircraft carriers plan to put to sea

  All battle force has sailed (1st–3rd dates inc.)

  Several aircraft carriers have sailed (1st to 3rd)

  All aircraft carriers have sailed (1st to 3rd)

  All battle force have sailed (4th–6th)

  Several aircraft carriers have sailed (4th–6th)

  All aircraft carriers have sailed (4th–6th)….

  The message goes on to explain that 1 through 8 are to be signalled at night on the hour between 7:00 p.m. and 1:00 a.m. by a light in the dormer window of a certain house, or in a certain beach house, or by car headlights on a particular hill. The number of sheets on a clothesline and stars on a sailboat’s sail were to do the same during the day.8

  The “lights message” has been derided by some historians over the years, but the generals sitting on the 1944 Army Pearl Harbor Board took it seriously enough. This was the third in a series of eight investigations into the failures at Pearl Harb
or, that began in 1942 and culminated in the 1945–46 hearings of the Joint Committee of Congress investigating the attack. The army probe zeroed in on the lights message: “The period in which the signals were to be given was December 1 to 6. If such information had been available to our armed forces it would have clearly indicated the attack.”9 In other words, if the lights message had got to the decision-makers in Washington or Hawaii promptly, the sirens would have sounded.

  It did not happen. The lights message was intercepted and copied the same day it was sent, but did not become available in translation until December 11 — far, far too late. The how and why of this delay is at the centre of determining whether the Americans being surprised at Pearl Harbor on December 7 was by accident or design.

  The story accepted by the Joint Committee in its 1946 report runs generally like this. On December 2–3, the Japanese Foreign Ministry in Tokyo sent out circular notices to Japan’s diplomatic missions in American- and British-controlled territories ordering them to destroy their high-grade codes and enciphering machines. They were to retain only the low-security LA and PA codes. This became a crucial point because the congressmen accepted testimony that precisely because various Japanese messages indicating war was imminent were in low-grade PA code, they were not deciphered and translated in time. The congressional report, dealing with some specific examples, is worth quoting: