Joseph E. Persico

by Roosevelt's Secret War: FDR;World War II Espionage

  Besides the unmistakable content of the diplomatic traffic, other intelligence sources pointed to a Japanese attack. An eye-opener was a September 24 message from Foreign Minister Togo to the consul general in Honolulu, Nagao Kita, telling him to divide Pearl Harbor into five sectors and report on ship moorings and other activities in each sector. The message went on: “With regard to warships and aircraft carriers, we would like to have you report on those at anchor (these are not so important) tied up at wharves, buoy and in docks.”

  Kita had a sharp-eyed agent to fulfill Tokyo’s requests. Ensign Takeo Yoshikawa had been assigned to Hawaii by the Third Bureau, the intelligence branch of the Japanese Naval General Staff, to serve undercover as vice consul. He had arrived in Honolulu on March 26, 1941. Yoshikawa’s assignment was to provide intelligence on U.S. Pacific Fleet activity in Pearl Harbor for Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, then masterminding the strike against this target. Yoshikawa led a deceptively leisurely life. He hung around a Japanese-owned restaurant, the Shunchu-ro, located conveniently on a hill overlooking Pearl Harbor. It had two telescopes for sightseers to enjoy the magnificent view. Yoshikawa took girlfriends on boat rides around Kaneohe Bay. He rented a Piper Cub at John Rodgers Airport and cruised above the harbor. All the while, this apparently indefatigable tourist was taking pictures, making notes, and preparing reports for Kita to send to Tokyo. He also sent home postcards of aerial views which were used to construct a mock-up of Pearl Harbor to train Japanese torpedo bomber pilots for the strike.

  Captain Theodore S. Wilkinson, about to be named as chief of naval intelligence and described as “one of the best brains in the armed forces,” huddled with Lieutenant Commander Alwin D. Kramer, the Navy’s chief Japanese translator, over the September 24 message dividing Pearl Harbor into sectors. Kramer’s responsibility was to choose which messages to distribute to senior officials. The two officers concluded that Togo’s interest in ship locations did not mean that the Japanese intended to attack Pearl Harbor; that was too farfetched. Rather, they concluded that the Japanese wanted to know in what order and how quickly American warships might sortie from the harbor to prevent or retaliate against an attack by Japan in Southeast Asia. The significance attached to this message is indicated by the fact that the Army did not translate it for over two weeks. The President was shown only those intercepts deemed worth his attention, and no evidence exists that FDR was shown this particular message which, after the fact, became known as “the bomb-plot message.” The decrypt was not even forwarded to Admiral Husband Kimmel, commander of naval forces at Pearl Harbor. In retrospect, Wilkinson and Kramer’s misreading of the bomb-plot message appears obtuse. Yet, this particular decrypt would not have stood out as unique at the time. Tokyo was demanding similar information from its agents throughout Southeast Asia, the Philippines, Panama, and even San Francisco, San Diego, Seattle, and Vancouver. On November 19, Tokyo had alerted several diplomatic posts, including Washington, of a special signal to be inserted into the daily radio weather forecast: “In case of emergency (danger of cutting off our diplomatic relations).” If the threatened break involved the United States, the weather report would say, “Higashi No Kazeame,” meaning “East Wind Rain.” “When this is heard,” Tokyo instructed its envoys, “please destroy all code papers, etc.”

  On December 1, the day FDR returned from Warm Springs, Tokyo told Nomura and Kurusu: “[T]o prevent the United States from becoming unduly suspicious we have been advising the press and others that though there are some wide differences between Japan and the United States, the negotiations are continuing.”

  The cascade of clues pointing to an imminent attack continued. On December 2, Foreign Minister Togo asked Consul General Kita for more pinpoint intelligence on Pearl Harbor: “… [T]he presence in port of warships, airplane carriers, and cruisers is of utmost importance… . [L]et me know day by day. Wire me in each case whether there are any observation balloons above Pearl Harbor… . Also advise me whether or not the warships are provided with anti-mine nets.” While with hindsight the purpose of this and the preceding requests regarding Pearl Harbor seems glaringly obvious, they were, at the time, not given immediate priority by American codebreakers.

  The Japanese had unwitting evidence from Roosevelt himself that their duplicity was working. On the same day that Foreign Minister Togo was asking for more intelligence on Pearl Harbor, FDR received Nomura and Kurusu in the Oval Office. The President’s demeanor was cool as he warned them that he possessed information revealing that their country was moving a large expeditionary force south from Shanghai toward Indochina. The Americans evidently still knew nothing of the task force steaming toward Hawaii.

  On December 4, Lieutenant Commander Kramer had in hand an intercepted message that informed all recipients to execute the so-called winds message to destroy their ciphers and coding machines. The communication was strong evidence that Japan intended to sever diplomatic relations with the United States, but not a clear war signal, nor was it handled as such.

  On December 5, Ensign Yoshikawa again flew a reconnaissance over Pearl Harbor in a Piper Cub enabling him to report to Consul General Kita that nine battleships, three light cruisers, and seventeen destroyers were in the harbor, plus four light cruisers and two destroyers in dry dock. His figures were off by only one light cruiser, two heavy cruisers, and ten destroyers. He could further report that the Americans were not using their new torpedo nets; nor did they have barrage balloons aloft.

  The final Japanese diplomatic stall began on Saturday evening, December 6, after a preoccupied FDR left his dinner guests early, skipping the musicale. Grace Tully had thought a long day was finally over when the President unexpectedly summoned her back to his study. He wanted to make one last effort to head off war with Japan through an unprecedented channel, a direct appeal to Emperor Hirohito “to restore traditional amity and prevent further death and destruction in the world.” As the President was dictating his message, the first thirteen parts of a fourteen-part Japanese message to the embassy in Washington were being intercepted by a U.S. Navy listening post near Seattle. Though the President had by now put an end to the pointless system of Magic deliveries by the Army in one month and the Navy in the next, codebreaking was still being done on alternate days by the two rival services. Though the Navy had intercepted the multi-part message, December 6 was an Army day to decrypt, and the Navy wasted time sending the intercept to the Army’s Signal Intelligence Service. The delay was compounded by the fact that SIS cryptanalysts had already taken off for the weekend. Delivery of one of the most vital communications ever handled in American foreign relations was further delayed as the long message was returned for the Navy to break. An embarrassed SIS officer finally put together an emergency shift to help the Navy, not, however, before the two teams agreed on one final inanity: Any message parts broken by the Army were still to be typed up by the Navy.

  While FDR was testing different phrases in his appeal to Hirohito, an overworked Lieutenant Commander Kramer carefully checked the translations of the first thirteen parts of the Japanese message. FDR’s appeal to Hirohito was dispatched at 9 P.M. A half hour later Kramer arrived at the White House with his decrypt in a locked pouch. The moment marked the first time that Magic traffic had ever been delivered to the President outside regular office hours. Kramer turned the message over to a young lieutenant, Lester R. Schulz, a naval aide filling in on a Saturday night for Captain Beardall. It was only Schulz’s second day on the job when the junior officer hesitantly tapped on the door of the President’s study. There he found FDR in somber conversation with his principal confidant and White House boarder, the cadaverous Harry Hopkins, who slouched in an armchair opposite Roosevelt. As Schulz stood by, the President began to read the long dispatch. He read slowly. A good ten minutes passed. Finally, he turned to Hopkins and said, “This means war.” Hopkins replied that it was a pity “we could not strike the first blow and prevent any sort of surprise.” “No,” the President said, “we can’
t do that. We are a democracy and a peaceful people.” The jaw set belligerently as he added, “But we have a good record.” Schulz later remembered of FDR and Hopkins’s conversation, “The only geographical name I recall was Indo-China. The time at which the war might begin was not discussed … there was no indication that tomorrow was necessarily the day.” There had been no mention, Schulz was positive, of Pearl Harbor.

  In Hawaii, the Army commander, Lieutenant General Walter Short, and the Pearl Harbor fleet commander, Admiral Kimmel, had been in possession for the previous ten days of Admiral Stark’s November 27 “war warning” that “an aggressive move by Japan is expected within the next few days.” General Short had contingency plans for three conditions. Number 1 was for “a defense against sabotage, espionage and subversive activities without any threat from the outside.” Number 2 was to defend against air, surface, and submarine attack. Number 3 required preparations for “a defense against all-out attack.” Short chose number 1, thereby bunching up his aircraft wingtip to wingtip and locking up guns and ammunition to protect the planes and weapons from saboteurs. He chose this level of alert to avoid unnecessarily frightening civilians with scare stories about the Army preparing for attack. For the same reason, Admiral Kimmel, the naval commander, did not increase the state of readiness of his ships in the harbor. The two men cannot be blamed entirely for fearing local saboteurs over foreign attackers. The Navy chief, Admiral Stark, while warning the Pacific Fleet of “hostile action possible at any moment,” had added that any measures taken “should be carried out so as not repeat not to alarm civil population… .” Stark was reflecting a by now embedded national conviction, fostered in no small measure by the President himself. For the previous two years, Americans had been indoctrinated that subversion from within was the prime threat to their country. Still, the November 27 message and a supplementing War Department message to General Short sent the same day warning of “hostile action possible at any moment,” though not mentioning Pearl Harbor, would seem unmistakable calls to gird for an attack from within or without.

  One last warning remained. On Sunday morning, December 7, Navy cryptographers were decrypting the last piece of the fourteen-part Japanese message, the so-called Final Memorandum, which declared that Tokyo was breaking off negotiations. At the same time, Army cryptographers were breaking a separate instruction to Ambassador Nomura to submit the long message to the State Department at 1 P.M. Washington time. Colonel Rufus Bratton, the astute head of the Far East section of Army intelligence, was struck by the preciseness of the hour and its unusual Sunday afternoon delivery. To Bratton, this timing signaled a Japanese attack at that hour, probably, he guessed, against the Philippines. Precious time was lost while Bratton tried desperately to locate General Marshall, who was off on his regular Sunday horseback ride. Two and a half hours later, Bratton was finally explaining his interpretation of the 1 P.M. delivery to Marshall. The Army Chief of Staff immediately fired off to commanders in the Pacific a warning that the Japanese had, in effect, presented an ultimatum and “to be on the alert accordingly.” The message went first to Manila, next to the Panama Canal, and last to Hawaii. “Fired off” is perhaps not the right phrase regarding the Hawaii delivery since the signalmen could not get through on their military circuits, and Marshall’s warning of imminent hostilities had to be sent by commercial cable. By the time the warning reached General Short’s headquarters, the skies over Pearl Harbor were dotted with Japanese planes. The church bells announcing Sunday services were being drowned out by torpedoes exploding against Kimmel’s clustered warships and by bombs destroying Short’s bunched-up planes.

  The Japanese diplomats had been instructed to deliver the Final Memorandum at 1 P.M., but it was not brought to Secretary of State Hull until 2:20 P.M., with the attack well under way. The delay would later enable Japanese officials, wanting to escape the dishonor of making a sneak attack, to blame the tardy delivery on administrative bungling and on time spent decoding garbles. Subsequent research in the Japanese foreign ministry archives, however, makes manifest that the Japanese never intended a proper declaration of war. An entry in the Japanese war diary dated December 7 reads: “[O]ur deceptive diplomacy is steadily proceeding toward success.” On an idyllic Sunday morning, on an island demi-paradise, American blood was copiously spilled, the nation’s pride wounded, and anger aroused until retribution became the only tenable response. “No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion,” the President told Congress the next day in asking for a declaration of war, “the American people in their righteous might will win through to absolute victory.”

  That same day Britain declared war on Japan. On December 11, Hitler kept his word to the Japanese and declared war on the United States. Senator Wheeler’s leak of Rainbow Five appears to have figured into his decisions since, Hitler said, “… there has now been revealed in America President Roosevelt’s plan by which, at the latest in 1943, Germany and Italy are to be attacked in Europe… . Germany and Italy have been finally compelled in view of this and in loyalty to the Tripartite Pact, to carry on the struggle against the United States and England jointly and side by side with Japan for the defense, and thus for the maintenance, of liberty and independence of their nations and empires.” A leak engineered by isolationists to keep America out of war had helped produce the opposite effect.

  Hitler had detailed knowledge of what had been said in the White House on the day of Pearl Harbor. The chain was long, but effective, and the first link was located astonishingly close to the President. The Swiss minister to the United States, fifty-two-year-old Dr. Charles Bruggmann, had previously served in Washington eighteen years before, when he had met and married Mary Wallace, the sister of FDR’s vice president. Through the years, Henry Wallace developed a deep affection for his brother-in-law. They met often, and talked on the phone almost daily. Wallace felt safe in confiding to Bruggmann the most intimate secrets to which his position made him privy. Months before Pearl Harbor, on August 17, 1941, Wallace told Bruggmann about the briefing the President had given the cabinet regarding FDR’s meeting on the Atlantic with Churchill. Soon after Pearl Harbor, Wallace told Bruggmann what he had heard and seen on the day of the attack as he sat among those summoned by the President. Whatever his family ties to the Vice President, Bruggmann was first of all a professional diplomat. What Wallace confided to him he cabled back to the Swiss foreign ministry in Bern. What Bruggmann did not know was that a German agent, code-named Habakuk, had penetrated the Swiss foreign ministry and read all of his reports. Thus, soon after Pearl Harbor, Habakuk was able to send a message to Berlin of “precise and reliable information” that Bruggmann had heard “in strictest confidence” from Vice President Wallace. He told his superiors, almost word for word, how FDR had characterized the first gathering as: “The most serious Cabinet session since Lincoln met with the Cabinet at the outbreak of the Civil War.” The spy was further able to report the President’s revelations of the losses the Japanese had inflicted at Pearl Harbor.

  The blame for Pearl Harbor has been the assiduous study of eight official investigations, the most thoroughgoing of which, conducted by Congress after the war, ran to fifteen thousand pages of testimony. With the mass of intelligence available to President Roosevelt, with his capacity to read Japan’s most secret communications at almost the same time that Japanese diplomats read them, with the pointed Japanese inquiries about Pearl Harbor’s layout, known to American cryptanalysts, with his own admission that the Japanese Final Memorandum “means war,” how could the President not have known, almost down to the hour, that Pearl Harbor would be attacked?

  His seeming ignorance of the strike must be examined against three possible explanations. One, FDR genuinely did not know that Pearl Harbor was targeted. Two, he knew and deliberately did not act in order, as revisionist historians have claimed, to force America into a war that he believed was just but that most Americans did not want. Three, Prime Minister Churchill possessed
intelligence, as again has been argued by revisionists, revealing the Japanese attack, but deliberately withheld it in order to see the United States drawn into war on Britain’s side.

  Choosing the correct one of these three explanations must be prefaced by an overarching question: Why did Japan choose to attack Pearl Harbor in the first place? The strike was intended not to entangle Japan in a protracted war against the United States, but as a knockout punch. It was supposed to eliminate America’s floating fortress, the Pacific Fleet, and thus force the United States to withdraw from Southeast Asia and leave Japan free there to work its will. The blow was analogous to having one member of a gang take out the guard so that the rest can then rob the bank unimpeded. The Japanese were well aware that the United States had its attention focused on the war in Europe and that its president wanted to join that fight. They could not imagine that the Americans would undertake two prolonged wars, one across the Atlantic and one in the Pacific.

  Against this backdrop, the question arises again, given the wealth of intelligence available to him, how could President Roosevelt not have divined that Pearl Harbor was the target? In retrospect, the clues seem to lead to that conclusion like lights on a well-marked runway. The truth, however, is that not one of the 239 messages intercepted between Tokyo and the Japanese envoys in Washington in the six months before December 7 ever mentioned Pearl Harbor. So closely held was the secret that even Nomura and Kurusu were left in the dark that the American base was to be attacked. Though told to wrap up their negotiations by November 25, a deadline extended to the 29th, and though told, “After that things are automatically going to change,” the two envoys were never informed precisely of what these “things” were. After the war, Nomura told an interviewer that he had been “the worst-informed ambassador in history.”