by James Johns
In 1939, General Miles had been appointed military attaché to Britain, and after serving about six months in that capacity, he returned to the States to join General Marshall’s staff. By 1941, he was promoted to assistant chief of staff, taking on his new responsibilities as head of the MID. Whether he, too, was scapegoated, or simply did not fulfill his duties, this would be the last general staff role that he would hold.
Incompetence, negligence, and the lack of experienced codebreakers have all been suggested in the failure of MID to properly alert those in Washington, and in turn, those in the field commands. Some believed that the Magic intercepts coming into MID before the attack on Pearl Harbor were not being properly and thoroughly analyzed. For whatever reason, MID did not see the significance of the pre-attack messages, and as a result, they failed to interpret the true meaning of the intercepts.
Colonel Rufus Bratton, the chief of Far Eastern Section of MID, and Lieutenant Commander Alvin Kramer, a section chief in naval intelligence, both considered the bomb plot message, at the least, an aide to sabotage.
After the war, the joint congressional committee’s findings of 1945–46 would reveal how the bomb plot message was actually distributed in Washington. The “Minority Report” prepared by those who dissented from the congressional committee’s majority opinion points out that Kramer had “promptly distributed the Pearl Harbor ‘bomb plot’ message to the president, the Secretary of the Navy, the Chief of Naval Operations, the Director of Naval Communications, the Director of War Plans, and the Director of Naval Intelligence.”14 In distributing the message, Kramer had added a summary: “Tokyo directs special reports on ships in Pearl Harbor which is divided into five areas for the purpose of showing exact locations.”15
Additional conclusions of the “Minority Report” also indicate that Colonel Bratton “delivered the ‘bomb plot’ message to the Secretary of War, the Chief of Staff, and the Chief of War Plans Division.”16 Bratton would also testify to the subsequent conversations with the War Department’s general staff, debating its significance, and concluding with the implication that it was a Japanese “plan for an air attack on ships in Pearl Harbor.”17 The 1945–46 congressional committee, however, never determined why the bomb plot messages were not forwarded to Pearl Harbor.
After the attack on Pearl Harbor, General Miles would be assigned to perform installation inspections in South America, and later, to a support service role until his retirement in 1946. Regardless of the perceived notion that Miles was not on top of things, it seems that the bomb plot message did reach all the right places.
Today, what seems so obvious to ask is: why were the intelligence officers in Washington not exercising intelligence and doing what seemed so logical, warning the Pearl Harbor commanders? But one can only speculate as to what difference it would have made.
What also seems so incredible today is that, thanks to the presence of a Magic machine at Station CAST on Corregidor in the Philippines, even General MacArthur was aware of the attention to detail of the ships berthed at Pearl Harbor, information that was of absolutely no value to him, and yet the Pearl Harbor commanders themselves were kept in the dark.
In early October, just after the bomb plot message was sent, Japanese aviators were introduced to the Japanese war plans in progress. In a statement made after the war by a former Japanese naval aviator, he confirmed that in a briefing to about one hundred aviators held aboard the carrier Akagi in home waters, they were told that the war with America would start on December 8 (Tokyo time) with an attack at Pearl Harbor.
On November 4, both Ambassadors Grew and Nomura were informed by Tokyo that a special envoy would be sent to Washington to assist Nomura with his negotiation efforts. Saburo Kurusu, another career diplomat, had previously served as ambassador to Belgium in 1937, and then was reassigned as ambassador to Germany in 1939. In this role, he represented Japan when the Tripartite Pact was signed in September 1940. As Ambassador Nomura was making little progress with the U.S. State Department, Special Envoy Kurusu was being dispatched to the States to reinforce his efforts.
On his way to Washington, Kurusu had stopped off in the Philippines, where he confided to friends that he was not hopeful about having any success in Washington. By the time he reached San Francisco, however, he tried to convince reporters otherwise. Kurusu told a throng of reporters there, “I hope to break through the line and make a touchdown…. If I didn’t have a hope, why do you think I came such a long way?”18
Anticipating Kurusu’s arrival, whispers around Washington began to spread. Would he bear something solid or merely bring more of their status quo? Would he be able to change the tide of the negotiations?
On November 5, 1941, the day after Kurusu left Japan, the Japanese navy issued to its top commanders the Combined Fleet Top Secret Operation Order #1, Admiral Yamamoto’s plan for the attack on Pearl Harbor, which also included cutting Americans’ supply lines to the Orient, cutting British supply lines on the Burma Road, and the occupation of British Malaya.
Also on November 5, a new twist appeared in the routine of reading Purple (Magic) intercepts. Instructions came to Nomura to move ahead with Proposal A, one of Japan’s final efforts to negotiate a settlement with the Americans in the interest of turning exports back on to Japan. (Proposal A, which provided only a partial withdrawal of Japanese troops from China, was presented by Nomura to the State Department on November 6 and was later rejected by the Americans.) Per Tokyo’s message to Nomura, there would also be an amended Proposal B if the State Department refused Proposal A: “If the United States expresses too many points of disapproval to Proposal A … we intend to submit our absolutely final proposal, Proposal B…. Be sure to advise this office before Proposal B is submitted to the United States…. We wish to avoid giving them the impression that there is a time limit or that this proposal is to be taken as an ultimatum. In a friendly manner, show them that we are very anxious to have them accept our proposal.”19
But in a later message that same day, a time limit for acceptance of either proposal was given: “Because of various circumstances, it is absolutely necessary that all arrangements for the signing of this agreement be completed by the 25th of this month.”20
Whenever dealing with a contract or negotiation that stipulates a time limit, it is accepted that upon the arrival of the deadline, something will change. The Japanese had just signaled that on or after November 25, something would happen. There were twelve authorized readers of Magic with four of those authorized to alert overseas commands: General Marshall, Admiral Stark, and the two officers heading up their respective war plans divisions, General Leonard Gerow and Admiral Richmond Turner.
Considering all the senior officers who were reading Magic, and with a suspense date in their hands, why no warning was sent to Admiral Kimmel or General MacArthur defies the most elementary logic. Bearing in mind that Corregidor had a Magic machine, MacArthur could have deduced this himself, if he saw it. Kimmel was out in the cold.
In Tokyo, Foreign Minister Shigenori Togo (not to be confused with Tojo) was encouraging Ambassador Grew to recommend to Washington a quick but favorable settlement of either Proposal A or Proposal B. Togo had joined the cabinet in October 1941. Ultimately opposed to war with the United States, he would be among those pushing at the last minute for a conference between Konoye and Roosevelt. (By September of 1942, Togo would resign from the cabinet over political differences concerning Japan’s newly occupied territories.)
At the same time, Togo also wired Nomura to emphasize the urgency in getting the American State Department to respond:
The United States is still not fully aware of the exceedingly criticalness [sic] of the situation here. The fact that the date [November 25] set forth in my message #736 is absolutely immovable under present conditions. It is a definite dead-line and therefore it is essential that a settlement be reached…. You can see, therefore, that the situation is nearing a climax…. When talking to the Secretary of State and others,
drive the points home to them…. At the same time, do everything in your power to have them give their speedy approval to our final proposal.21
But by November 12, intelligence reached Tokyo that all was not well in the United States.
In an attempt to defeat Nazi Germany, FDR had initiated military, industrial, and economic measures, which many considered as dictatorial as Hitler’s. The America First Committee was feverously involved in attempting to impeach the president for his foreign policy agenda. At the end of October, twenty thousand AFC members had gathered at Madison Square Garden make this demand.22 Even the New York Times Herald advised that FDR may find himself in impeachment proceedings.
On Saturday, November 15, Kurusu arrived in Washington, where again the news media were waiting for a statement. “I greet you with all my heart,”23 he said, commenting that he anticipated a “fighting chance for peace.”24 There was no response to the question of any proposal in his possession to end the standoff, although he already had an appointment for Monday morning at the White House.
Meanwhile, Nomura had been personally wrestling with what he considered a lost cause in trying to sway the State Department into the slightest sign of conciliation. Tokyo was making its own demands, and he was caught in the middle. He sent a long, cautious personal appeal to Togo. In it, he warned that any move toward the south would bring war with Britain and America. He cautioned the foreign minister not to be misled by American entanglement in the Atlantic. It could still launch its “main strength”25 in the Pacific. Interestingly, he forecast that Germany had already reached its zenith in Russia and that Tokyo should exercise “patience for one or two months in order to get a clear view of the world situation.”26 His answer came in record time and was in his possession on Sunday, November 16, and by the following day, Magic recipients were reading it: “In your opinion we ought to wait and see what turn the war takes and remain patient. However, I am awfully sorry to say that the situation renders this out of the question. I set the deadline for the solution of these negotiations in my #736 and there will be no change…. Press them for a solution on the basis of our proposals.”27
And at this point, Grew sent a wire through to Secretary Hull, warning of “sudden Japanese naval or military actions in the Pacific,”28 as Japan was amassing troop concentrations in Formosa and Manchuria. Although his information was not firsthand, it might suggest a Japanese move north or south in the near future. But Grew pressed that opportunities for him, from the standpoint of being a diplomat, were “negligible.”29 After the hour-long meeting between Kurusu, Nomura, Hull, and Roosevelt, it became obvious that Kurusu had brought nothing new to the table but a reminder that the Pacific was a “powder keg”30 and that Tokyo had attained the “explosive stage.”31
On Tuesday, November 18, the Japanese ambassadors met with Hull again. The full three hours consumed only three subjects: the trade embargo, China, and the Tripartite Pact, with no agreement reached on any. While Hull should be applauded for safeguarding America’s long-range interests, using the advantage of reading Magic as fast as the Japanese ambassadors could, and pleading to the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff to buy time in order to sufficiently reinforce the Philippines and Hawaii, there should have been caution against bullheaded diplomacy. The door was open to explore stopgap measures in the interest of obtaining that time, and yet he feigned ignorance of their deadline, suggesting nothing with any promise to extend it. Nomura even suggested that to ease the tense atmosphere they should start with the situation that existed prior to the freeze order. But Hull showed little interest and even suggested that there was no guarantee that the troops withdrawn from southern Indochina wouldn’t be sent someplace “equally objectionable.”32 Was a commitment to withdraw troops from Indochina not worth exploring in the bid for time?
While the Japanese ambassadors were putting forth their solid proposal of vacating all of Indochina, Hull was getting bogged down in what seemed like unrelated issues: the Tripartite Pact and China. In forwarding the progress or lack of progress to Tokyo, Tokyo responded that the tradeoff of southern Indochina for an end to the freeze would still leave the United States in a position to introduce “rather complicated terms.”33 The message continued, “The Ambassador [Kurusu] did not arrange this with us beforehand, but made the proposal … for the purpose of meeting the tense situation existing within the nation, but this can only result in delay and failure in the negotiations. The ambassador, therefore … will please present our B Proposal of the Imperial Government, and no further concessions can be made. If the United States’ consent to this cannot be secured, the negotiations will have to be broken off; therefore, with the above well in mind, put forth your very best efforts.”34
Foreign Minister Togo was not convinced that the Americans appreciated how critical the situation in the Far East was. Even Berlin was pressuring Tokyo, requiring Nomura to demand that the United States cease in its actions against the Axis powers. Nomura then attempted a clarification of what the details concerning the Tripartite Pact involved. Hull had been insistent that as long as Japan continued with alliances such as the Anti-Comintern Pact and the Tripartite Pact, it would be difficult to convince the United Sates of their sincerity.
Almost unbelievably, the ambassadors requested and received another appointment with Secretary Hull on Thanksgiving Day, at which time they presented him with Proposal B:
1. The Governments of Japan and the United States agree that neither will militarily invade any area in Southeast Asia and the South Seas with the exception of French Indo-China.
2. The Governments of Japan and the United States will cooperate mutually in guaranteeing the obtention of the materials they need in the Netherlands Indies.
3. The Governments of Japan and the United States will mutually return to the situation prior to the freezing of their respective assets and the government of the United States will agree to furnish Japan with the petroleum she needs.
4. The Government of the United States will engage in no activity which might put an obstacle in the way of Japan in her efforts to make peace with China.35
The addendum to Proposal B assured everyone that if the main points could be agreed upon, and if peace in the Pacific became a reality, Japan would withdraw her troops from China, as well as revisit the terms of the Tripartite Pact.
While Hull found Proposal B to be completely unacceptable, he had no doubt that the Japanese ambassadors were laboring under a deadline. Reiterating the deadline of November 25, Magic intercepts had revealed that no further concessions could be made and that negotiations would have to be broken off. At the congressional investigation of 1945–46, Hull would describe the Americans’ position:
The plan thus offered called for the supplying by the United States of as much oil as Japan might require, for suspension of freezing measures, for discontinuance by the United States of aid to China, and for withdrawal of moral and material support from the recognized Chinese Government. It contained a provision that Japan would shift her forces from southern Indo-China to northern Indo-China but placed no limit on the number of armed forces which Japan might send into Indo-China…. There were no provisions which would have prevented continued or fresh Japanese aggressive activities in … for example, China and the Soviet Union.36
The only certainty was that Japan would not take on the Soviet Union with her oil prospects unresolved. Suddenly there was a desperate need for time—time to create a temporary alternative solution that would be satisfactory to Tokyo and to give the Americans a little more time. Such a possibility came from Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau, Jr.
Morgenthau had been serving in Roosevelt’s cabinet since 1934, and while he didn’t agree with all aspects of Roosevelt’s New Deal, he did help with designing and financing it. With war approaching, he felt strongly that financing for the war should come on a voluntary basis, as opposed to increasing taxes again. So with the help of others, he was instrumental in developing the War Bond Program
, similar to the Liberty Bond Program of World War I. And by the end of World War II, Americans would make loans to their government to the tune of roughly $185 billion.
Dabbling in foreign policy, it was Morgenthau, in December of 1940, who had prepared a draft, outlining the move to freeze Japanese funds. But now, with negotiations with Japan going nowhere, he outlined another proposal for Roosevelt, in the interest of avoiding the inevitable. Members of the State and War Departments studied it. There was some skepticism, but overall, it had merit. In essence, as FDR sketched out:
1. U.S. to resume economic relations—some oil and rice now—more later.
2. Japan to send no more troops to Indo-China or Manchurian border….
3. Japan to agree not to invoke tripartite pact….
4. U.S. to introduce Japs to Chinese to talk things over but U.S. to take no part in their conversation.37
And as roughed out by General Gerow, Chief of War Plans: “The adoption [of the Morgenthau proposals] would attain one of our present major objectives—the avoidance of war with Japan. Even a temporary peace in the Pacific would permit us to complete defensive preparations in the Philippines and at the same time ensure continuance of material assistance to the British—both of which are highly important…. War Plans Division wishes to emphasize it is of grave importance to the success of our war effort in Europe that we reach a modus vivendi with Japan.”38
The alternative in submitting to Proposal B was, in Secretary Hull’s view, “clearly unthinkable. It would have made the United States an ally of Japan in Japan’s program of conquest and aggression and of collaboration with Hitler. It would have meant yielding to the Japanese demand that the United States abandon its principles and policies. It would have meant abject surrender of our position under intimidation. The situation was critical and virtually hopeless.”39