To Wake the Giant

by Jeff Shaara

  Biggs continues to dream of playing baseball, but is realistic about his age and the lingering effects of his injury. He never pursues any potential opportunity.

  In 1951, Biggs’s father dies of a heart attack, and his mother dies a year later. Biggs returns to Florida only long enough to attend the two funerals.

  He and Eileen live outside of Chicago until his retirement in 1988, at age sixty-seven. He dies of a stroke in 2011, at age ninety. She dies in 2018, at age ninety-five.

  On the official recommendation of Dr. Condon, Biggs is awarded a Bronze Star for his efforts during the attack on the Arizona. He is also awarded two Purple Hearts.

  Though invited often to the reunions at Pearl Harbor for survivors of the Arizona, he will never attend.

  LIEUTENANT J/G DANIEL CONDON, MD—USN

  Condon is released from the Naval Hospital in January 1942. But his wounds cause severe difficulties with mobility, and he is forced to retire from the navy. He returns to his home—ironically, in the state of Arizona—and becomes medical examiner for Maricopa County. He is soon regarded as one of Arizona’s leading experts in polygraph examinations.

  His expertise in legal medicine and postmortem examinations earns him respect from Hollywood, and he serves as a consultant to author Erle Stanley Gardner, who creates the Perry Mason legal series.

  He dies in 1992 at age seventy-seven, and is buried in the National Memorial Cemetery of Arizona, in Phoenix.

  SEAMAN 2/C EDWARD “ED” WAKEMAN—USN

  Escaping the destruction of the Arizona without significant injury, Wakeman accepts an assignment to serve aboard the heavy cruiser USS Portland. On November 14, 1942, he is killed when the ship is torpedoed by a Japanese submarine during the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal. He is twenty-four, and is buried in his hometown of Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

  ADMIRAL HUSBAND E. KIMMEL—USN

  Kimmel is relieved of command on December 16, 1941, replaced temporarily by his subordinate, Admiral William Pye. Within two weeks, Kimmel’s permanent successor arrives in Hawaii. He is Admiral Chester Nimitz.

  Kimmel endures the torturous process of testifying before various boards and inquiries, steadfastly insisting that his greatest errors could be blamed mostly on Washington and that his removal is uncalled for. But the American people seek scapegoats, and Admiral Kimmel is front and center. On December 18, the Chicago Tribune prints, “It is a military maxim that there is no excuse for surprise…If commanders prove themselves unequal to their tasks they must be replaced at once lest greater harm befall the nation.” He is determined by the first major inquiry to have been in “dereliction of duty.” Those words, while not ensuring a court-martial, effectively destroy any opportunity Kimmel has for further service.

  That judgment is considered excessively harsh by many who have served with Kimmel, and subsequent hearings back away from such a severe verdict. On February 7, 1942, it is made public that Kimmel has submitted his retirement. Many who push for a court-martial are disappointed, as though the great secrets will never be made known. One enormous incentive for the government to avoid any kind of public trial is that, while the war still rages, there can be no revealing the existence of the Magic decoding system, which is still top secret, and still in use to monitor Japanese communications.

  Kimmel is subjected to considerable abuse, in both newspapers and Congress. He responds by keeping a low profile, returns to his home in Henderson, Kentucky. In July 1942, he accepts a position with the Frederic R. Harris Shipbuilding Company, in New York City. In 1947, he leaves the company, moves to Groton, Connecticut, where his son Thomas is an instructor at the navy’s submarine school. Another son, Manning Kimmel, dies in 1944, when his submarine is sunk by a Japanese ship.

  Because of his decades of service to the navy, Kimmel would, to most of his subordinates, be entitled to retire into a peaceful postwar life. But he cannot ignore the verbal punishment and condemnation he suffers from a public still out for blood. Worse, for those who attempt to support him, he will not apologize for his errors, refuses to show contrition for his failures that led to the events on December 7.

  Late in his life he mounts a somewhat irrational attack on men who are no longer alive, and thus unable to respond. He accuses President Roosevelt, the secretary of war, and many other senior officers of deliberately withholding information from his command in Hawaii, as though they knew that an attack by the Japanese was imminent. Other than the bitterness of Kimmel’s passing years, there is no basis for these charges, though the claims provide even more fuel for conspiracy theorists.

  He dies in Groton, Connecticut, of a heart attack in 1968, at age eighty-six.

  LIEUTENANT GENERAL WALTER C. SHORT—USA

  Like Kimmel, Short is relieved of command on December 16, 1941, replaced by Lieutenant General Delos C. Emmons. Short goes quietly, and submits his retirement early in 1942. Like Kimmel, he is called to testify at various hearings, by the army, navy, and Congress. But he does not have Kimmel’s polish in public speaking, and his manner is somewhat awkward. Thus it is not difficult for others to judge, rightly or wrongly, that perhaps he is not entirely truthful in his version of the details.

  Short makes no effort to hide why he took certain specific actions, such as ordering his people to focus more on the threat of local sabotage rather than on any dangers from the outside. He unwisely suggests that the “war warning” message he received from Washington didn’t seem important or meaningful as it related to Hawaii. He also suggests the belief that it was the navy’s job to protect the island, never quite admitting, or showing any understanding, that it was the army’s job to protect the fleet inside the harbor.

  Unlike Kimmel, Short seems to accept his place in the history of Pearl Harbor, as though the energy required to defend himself to his many critics is more than he has to give. Behind the scenes, his wrath is aimed at the War Department, including Henry Stimson and General George Marshall, who he believes have offered him to the public as a sacrificial lamb in order to disguise their own mistakes.

  After the war, Short and his wife retire to Dallas. He occupies his waning years with a passion for gardening. Stricken by pneumonia, Short remains in ill health until his death in 1949, at age sixty-nine. He is buried in Arlington National Cemetery. According to his son, Major Walter D. Short, “He laid all the facts about Pearl Harbor before the congressional committee. There was no book for him to write, nothing more that he could say.”

  “The fact of the matter was that our commanders and their forces were both caught with their pants down…According to law, [Short and Kimmel] appeared to be guilty of criminal negligence and dereliction of duty.

  —HENRY C. CLAUSEN, WAR DEPARTMENT INVESTIGATOR

  “[General Short] had narrowed his vision to the point where the whole military power at his command—and it was considerable—stalked a mouse, while the tiger jumped through the window.”

  —GORDON PRANGE, HISTORIAN

  “To cluster his airplanes in groups…that they could not take the air for several hours, and to keep antiaircraft ammunition so stored that it could not be promptly and immediately available, and to use [radar] only for a very small fraction of the day and night, in my opinion betrayed a misconception of his real duty which was almost beyond belief.”

  —SECRETARY OF WAR HENRY STIMSON, REFERRING TO GENERAL SHORT

  COMMANDER JOSEPH J. ROCHEFORT—USN

  Unlike some of his superiors, Rochefort feels enormous personal guilt for the shocking surprise of the assault on December 7, and vows to raise the level of his department’s usefulness so that nothing like it can happen again.

  He continues to work in his Dungeon near Pearl Harbor, painstakingly decoding any useful pieces of Japanese communication he and his staff can detect. The level of urgency increases with the coming of the war. Instead of plodding through what had se
emed to be a mystery, his department is now becoming a critical weapon in the growing fight against the enemy. In May 1942, Rochefort and his team make an enormous breakthrough, intercepting Japanese military orders for the occupation of the Aleutian Islands.

  But a different link in that chain of communication carries even more weight. The Japanese code suggests plans to attack another target. Using a process of elimination, and a brilliant piece of deception by his own signals to the Japanese, Rochefort concludes that the Japanese are aiming toward Midway Island. The decoded message indicates Japanese intentions, direction of approach, and entire battle plan. Though there are skeptics above him, the information Rochefort decodes results in the kind of preparedness completely missing from the Pearl Harbor attack. Laying a trap for the Japanese, the Americans engage in a critical battle both at sea and in the air, in what is known as the Battle of Midway. The results of that battle change the history of the war.

  Admiral Chester Nimitz recommends that Rochefort be awarded the navy’s Distinguished Service Medal, but Rochefort refuses the honor, feeling that such attention would only backfire, since he continues to feel responsibility for Pearl Harbor.

  He dies in 1976, at age seventy-six, and is buried at Inglewood Park Cemetery in California. The medal he refuses is awarded to him posthumously. Other posthumous awards include the Legion of Merit and the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

  SECRETARY OF WAR HENRY STIMSON

  Despite having been a lifelong Republican, Stimson serves as secretary of war through Roosevelt’s final term and remains in the job through the end of the war, serving under another Democrat, Harry Truman. He is a strong advocate of the development of the atomic bomb, and at the war’s end he strongly opposes some in the administration who wish to see Germany carved up into nation-states. To Stimson, it is fuel on a dangerous fire, the kind of punishment inflicted on Germany at the end of the First World War.

  Stimson is a principal architect of a mechanism for punishing German officers and officials, at what becomes the Nuremburg trials. With the surrender of the Japanese in September 1945, Stimson feels his time has passed, that nothing which follows the war will be as challenging. He retires from President Truman’s cabinet at the end of that September.

  His leadership at the War Department contributes greatly to the astonishingly high level of American wartime industrial production. He pushes the Truman administration into working toward a mutually trusting relationship with the world’s other great power, the Soviet Union, going so far as to suggest that the United States willingly share the secrets of the atomic bomb. The president does not agree.

  Upon Stimson’s retirement, Truman awards him the Distinguished Service Medal.

  Early in the war, Stimson makes plain his opposition to placing black troops under black officers, claiming that they can only be effective if led by white men, that social equality is effectively impossible. That argument has been made by many others, though none have Stimson’s influence as secretary of war. With Stimson’s retirement, that policy is changed, and President Truman eliminates official segregation of the military.

  In February 1942, Stimson pushes hard for the government to adopt another position of his that emphasizes safety over civil liberties. He displays unbridled racism toward the Japanese, is gravely concerned that younger Nisei, who are in fact American citizens, pose a genuine danger to America through spying or espionage. He insists, with some support in Washington, that the Nisei should be part of a wholesale evacuation and internment of Japanese peoples. He says, “Their racial characteristics are such that we cannot understand or trust even the citizen Japanese.”

  Despite strenuous objections from the Justice Department, Stimson convinces the Roosevelt administration to issue Executive Order 9066. In February 1942, some 110,000 Japanese-Americans are ordered into internment camps. In a self-congratulatory statement, Stimson says that the order represents “a long step forward towards a solution of a very dangerous and vexing problem.”

  Thus is Stimson’s admirable and extensive public service badly tarnished by two philosophical themes that in many ways erase the good.

  He dies in October 1950, at age eighty-three, near his home in West Hills, New York.

  LIEUTENANT WILLIAM OUTERBRIDGE—USN

  In sinking the Japanese midget submarine outside the entrance to Pearl Harbor, the skipper of the destroyer USS Ward likely strikes America’s first blow against a hostile enemy in World War Two. Long after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Outerbridge’s superiors recognize their enormous mistake in not appreciating the significance of his report of the encounter with the submarine. None of that is a comfort to Outerbridge.

  In 1942, Outerbridge is transferred to Washington, assigned to the office of the chief of naval transportation. With the war expanding, he pushes again for sea duty, and finally, in 1944, is assigned to command the destroyer USS O’Brien. His first duty is in support of the Normandy landings, but his time in the Atlantic is limited. By the end of 1944, Outerbridge and the O’Brien are back in the Pacific, where his ship adds support for the Battle of Leyte Gulf, in the Philippines.

  He works in close proximity to a ship he knows well, the destroyer USS Ward. Outerbridge is appalled to see the Ward struck by a Japanese kamikaze attack. Damaged beyond repair, the Ward nevertheless continues to float. Outerbridge receives the order that, once the crew is removed, he is to fire upon the stricken ship and sink her, thus preventing possible salvage by the Japanese. There is no written account available to describe what he must feel, especially since the date he sinks his former ship is December 7, 1944.

  After the war, Outerbridge continues to command destroyer- or cruiser-class ships, and teaches at the Naval War College and the Industrial College of the Armed Forces. His final posting is at the transportation and petroleum branch of the chief of naval operations.

  For his service, he is awarded the Navy Cross and the Legion of Merit.

  He retires in 1957, as a rear admiral, moves to Florida, and becomes a schoolteacher. He dies in 1986, at his home in Tifton, Georgia, at age eighty.

  LIEUTENANT KERMIT TYLER—USAAC

  The lone officer who receives the first radar reports from the Opana Radar Site indicating the incoming Japanese attack, Tyler reflects often on his failure to appreciate the significance of those signals. Like many others on or before December 7, he is one of an enormous number of commanders, observers, and planners who could not grasp the meaning of the clues they were given, and like many, Tyler carries that as a source of lifelong guilt. In Tyler’s defense, early on December 7, he is assigned to command the Intercept Center with no training or instruction, and no supervision or support staff to guide and assist him. In a broad sweep that seeks to assign blame, Tyler is targeted by the Naval Board of Inquiry. But once the details of his posting are revealed, including the relative inexperience of the two privates who are assigned the enormous responsibility of manning the new technology of the radar station, Tyler and both privates, Lockhard and Elliott, are exonerated, and there is no disciplinary action recommended against them. Nonetheless, Tyler displays enormous regret, as though offering a lifelong personal apology for his fateful words, “Well, don’t worry about it.”

  Tyler serves in the United States Air Force until his retirement as a lieutenant colonel in 1961. He moves to San Diego, becomes a real estate broker, and dies in 2010 at age ninety-six.

  COMMANDER MINORU GENDA—IJN

  Along with his commander, Admiral Yamamoto, Genda is the chief architect of a transition from the old-style ship-to-ship fighting to a greater emphasis on the use of tactical aircraft. It is a practice that will greatly help determine the outcome of the war.

  Genda is chiefly responsible for the energy behind the effort to modify the torpedo so that it can be effective in shallow water. That design proves to be the single most damaging weapon against the American fleet a
t Pearl Harbor. Operating under the intense pressure of Yamamoto’s timetable, Genda succeeds in training pilots who will fly four different tactical missions: high-altitude bombing, dive-bombing, torpedo bombing, and fighter support (the Zero). To judge by the astonishing lack of Japanese losses in both aircraft and pilots, Genda’s lessons have been well learned. But Genda is the first to admit that it is the surprise achieved by the attack that ensures its success. He understands, as do his pilots, that had the Americans been ready and waiting, with fully equipped antiaircraft guns, the outcome would have been a catastrophe for the Japanese.

  Like his admiral, Genda appreciates the enormity of the mistake in not locating the American aircraft carriers. He supports Yamamoto’s plan to return to the central Pacific, to aggressively attack those valuable ships once more.

  His service as a pilot and air planner continues throughout the war, and he logs more than three thousand hours of air time, including numerous combat missions. In December 1944, Genda assembles an elite air unit, the 343rd, to fly the most modern and what he considers the greatest fighter aircraft of the war. However, the Japanese high command is instituting a very different kind of program, that of the kamikaze suicide flights. Genda is outraged, believing his planes can overmatch anything the enemy is flying against them. But his voice is not heard, his efforts too late in the war to turn any tide.

  After the war, he continues to serve in the much-reduced Japanese military, but there is little to challenge a man with Genda’s drive. He finally retires in 1962, pursues politics, and is elected to the Japanese House of Councillors, where he serves for twenty years.