by James Johns
The more logical interpretation of “not to alarm the civil population” in Short’s mind was Washington’s fear that Tokyo would charge him with undue harassment of the local Japanese civilian population rather than the thought of an external military attack. Thus, the antiaircraft artillerymen remained in their barracks, and the ammunition remained in the magazines.
And finally, it is difficult to accept the War Department’s claim, where everything goes up in the chain of command, that Marshall did not see Short’s response and the activation of Alert No. 1 for nine days. It is difficult to accept, especially considering the urgency of the war warning that was issued just hours after the Hull Note was delivered to the Japanese.
Armed with the Alert No. 1 order, General Frederick Martin, chief of the air corps in Hawaii, ordered all aircraft at the army airfields of Hickam, Wheeler, and Bellows to be parked in the center of the fields and close together in compliance with the sabotage alert, so they would be inaccessible to saboteurs. And the guard was doubled.
When General Short received no response from Washington, he assumed that the action he had taken was approved. It is difficult to believe that, with his nearly forty years of military experience, he would have lined up the planes as he did if he had had any inclination or related orders concerning a possible air strike. That simply makes no sense.
And where some historians have credited part of the success of the Japanese attack to Short’s misinterpretation of the November 27 war warning, those same historians totally disregard the fact that the same war warning was ignored by MacArthur in the Philippines. “Prior to hostile Japanese action, you are directed to undertake such reconnaissance and other measures as you deem necessary.” Hart had previously advised MacArthur that the navy PBYs could not maintain reconnaissance north toward Formosa and west of Luzon with any degree of adequacy. A change put the air force in charge of reconnaissance north to the International Treaty boundary between the Philippines and Formosa. The order was to make such flights to Formosa, five hundred miles to the north, even at the risk of a shooting match. But when General Brereton asked permission to make such flights, to check out the obvious place from which Japan would launch such an attack on the Philippines, his request was denied.
MacArthur informed Brereton that his limit would be the International Treaty Line, south of Formosa. Brereton argued that that was not close enough to observe Japanese activity. What about oblique photos from high altitude? Again, the answer was “No.”69 When one B-17 returned from an unofficial mission and reported airfields stacked with bombers, it was reported that MacArthur was convinced that they were intended for an attack on Malaya or Thailand. While MacArthur had his staff of officers, he never sought their advice. His selection of his staff included “yes men,” those readily accepting his point of view. Only his point of view was ever released for publication. It has even been stated that he did not want an official history of the Philippine campaign published because it might be critical of him. (While Admiral Hart outranked him with four stars, MacArthur occupied the entire top-floor penthouse at the Manila Hotel while Hart lived in a small third-floor apartment.)
General MacArthur’s reply to the November 27 war warning was in sharp contrast to reality. He replied, “Everything is in readiness for the conduct of a successful defense. Air reconnaissance in conjunction with Navy and ground security measures taken. The inability of an enemy to launch an attack on these islands is our greatest security which leaves me with a complete sense of security.”70 Unlike General Short, MacArthur was never called to account, and his disaster in the Philippines paled in comparison to that of Pearl Harbor.
Although MacArthur’s message instructed that it be shown to Hart, this communication would not suffice for Pearl Harbor. To make the point a little stronger, Admiral Stark sent his own warning to both Hart and Kimmel:
Top Secret.
This dispatch is to be considered a war warning. Negotiations with Japan looking toward stabilization of conditions in the Pacific have ceased and an aggressive move by Japan is expected in the next few days. The number and equipment of Japanese troops and the organization of naval task forces indicates an amphibious expedition against either the Philippines, Thai, or Kra Peninsula or possibly Borneo. Execute an appropriate defensive deployment preparatory to carrying out the tasks assigned in WPL 46 (Rainbow 5). Inform district and Army authorities. A similar warning is being sent by War Department. SPENAVO (the naval mission in London) inform British. Continental district Guam, Samoa directed take appropriate measure against sabotage.71
In the not too distant future, Americans would be told that the sabotage threat was Short’s invention. Sabotage, here, specifically references Guam and Samoa, where nothing had been done for fear of provoking the Japanese. But as of February 1941, Congress had approved expansion of bases on both islands.
Had Washington been paying more attention to military planning in Hawaii, a far more powerful and effective alert would have included an order to the commanding general of the Hawaiian Department and the commandant of the Fourteenth Naval District to execute the Joint Coastal Frontier Defense Plan. This advance warning would have provided ample time for the two services to trade their aircraft to beef up the long-range patrols as well as the army’s island air defense, rather than having the planes parked in neat rows awaiting destruction on the ground.
Even Admiral Stark had voiced his concern for sabotage. Concerning the November 27 war warning itself, no one had addressed it better than Rear Admiral Robert Theobald. Theobald had previously served as chief of staff to Admiral Bloch while Bloch was commander in chief of the U.S. Fleet. And at the time of the attack, he was serving as the commander of Pacific Fleet, Destroyers. It would be Theobald who would assist Admiral Kimmel during the Roberts Commission’s investigation of the Pearl Harbor attack, and as he later wrote, “Critics of Admiral Kimmel and defendants of the Washington Administration magnify the significance of the Navy Department dispatch of November 27 because it contained the sentence, ‘This dispatch is to be considered a war warning.’ They would have us believe that this one message counter-balanced the withholding of the mass of information which made the Japanese attack possible.”72 Theobald went on to say that had the two messages to Hawaii included the fact that Secretary Hull had, for all practical purposes, ended the negotiations, the warnings would have been greatly strengthened.
Fridays were the regular press conference day, but on Friday, November 28, there was nothing to report. The only news was that after a two-day delay, FDR would travel to Warm Springs, Georgia, to the Little White House for a belated Thanksgiving with the patients of the Infantile Paralysis Foundation he had established.
In the interest of eliminating the possibility of making premature decisions, FDR had decided that he should not be too available in Washington as the situation unfolded. For days, the trip to Warm Springs had been postponed, but now on November 28 he announced that he would leave that afternoon and would not return until Tuesday, December 2, world conditions permitting.
Japanese deception was working perfectly. Their expeditionary forces of some thirty thousand men heading south into Indochina were making no attempt to hide their positions. So all attention would be on them to cover Japan’s vital operations elsewhere. But their destinations could determine peace or war. If they were headed for Indochina, there would be little relevance, but if their destinations were either the Kra Isthmus (the southern narrow neck of Thailand) or the Dutch East Indies, the British would probably fight, and the Americans would have been locked in. The simple answer would have been to strike it at sea. But how could that be explained to the voters? By the time the Japanese naval attack force passed through the South China Sea, FDR would be back in Washington.
Hull, himself, had held a press conference where he expressed fear of a Japanese attack on Thailand, and commented that Americans were most likely on the brink of war, closer to it at that point than at any other point in history.
Well, you two Ambassadors have exerted superhuman efforts but, in spite of this, the United States has gone ahead and presented this humiliating proposal. This was quite unexpected and extremely regrettable. The Imperial Government can by no means use it as a basis for negotiations. Therefore, with a report of the view of the Imperial Government on this American proposal which I will send you in two or three days, the negotiations will be de facto ruptured. This is inevitable. However, I do not wish you to give the impression that the negotiations are broken off. Merely say to them that you are awaiting instructions and that, although the opinions of your Government are not yet clear to you, to your own way thinking the Imperial Government has always made just claims and has borne great sacrifices for the sake of peace in the Pacific. Say that we have always demonstrated a long-suffering and conciliatory attitude, but that, on the other hand, the United States has been unbending, making it impossible for Japan to establish negotiations…. From now on, do the best you can.73
In Washington, this message should have served as a final wake-up call, understanding that after tomorrow, November 29, things were automatically going to happen. This latest message revealed that negotiations were officially broken off. But Japan did not want this known to the Americans. The ambassadors were under orders to drag things out, and they were to make things appear to be better than they really were, so that the American government’s guard would be down.
And on November 29, things did happen. Magic translated a message from Tokyo to the Japanese ambassadors that would become a key issue in later investigations. Certain affected embassies with endangered relations were notified that upon receipt of a certain code, they were to destroy all secret codes and documents. Nomura’s message read:
In case of emergency (danger of cutting off our diplomatic relations), and the cutting off of international communications, the following warning will be added in the middle of the daily Japanese language short wave news broadcast.
1. In case of a Japan-U.S. relations in danger—HIGASHI NO KAZEAME (East Wind rain).
2. Japan-U.S.S.R. relations—KITANOKAZE KUMORI—(North Wind cloudy).
3. Japan-British relations: NISHI NO KAZE HARE—(West Wind clear).
This signal will be given in the middle and at the end as a weather forecast and last sentence will be repeated twice. When this is heard please destroy all code papers, etc. This is as yet to be a completely secret arrangement.74
Tokyo followed this up with:
When our diplomatic relations are becoming dangerous, we will add the following at the beginning and end of our general intelligence broadcasts:
1. If it is Japan-U.S. relations, “HIGASHI.”
2. Japan-Russia relations, “KITA.”
3. Japan-British relations (including Thai, Malaya and N.E.I.),–“NISHI.”
The above will be repeated five times and included at beginning and end. Relay to Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires, Mexico City, San Francisco.75
This became known as the winds message, and once the November 29 transmissions were read, Washington established a listening watch on the most likely radio frequencies. But the Japanese now created a number of deceptive devices to confuse and lull American intelligence into following Japanese movement. While they were making no attempt to hide or deceive the movement of their task force headed south toward Malaya, they were creating a volume of false radio traffic to position Japanese ships where they were not.
To make sure that there would be no suspicion of any action to commence in early December, Tokyo announced that it would dispatch the ocean liner Tatsuta Maru, also known as the Tatuta Maru, to sail to America on December 2 to pick up Japanese nationals who wanted to return home. Her initial passengers would be many Americans anxious to leave Japan. Obviously, nothing could happen until the ship returned home. The reality was that the Tatsuta Maru would sail only as far as the International Date Line and then return to Japan. Her American and British passengers were imprisoned for the balance of the war, America’s most forgotten.
On Sunday, November 30, Magic decoded a message from Tokyo to Berlin. Between the lines, it announced that Japan was about to go to war with the United States:
The conversations begun between Tokyo and Washington last April … now stand ruptured—broken…. In the face of this, our Empire faces a grave situation and must act with determination. Will Your Honor, therefore, immediately interview Chancellor HITLER and Foreign Minister RIBBENTROP and confidentially communicate to them a summary of the developments?… Say very secretly to them that there is extreme danger that war may suddenly break out between the Anglo-Saxon nations and Japan through some clash of arms and add that the time of the breaking out of this war may come quicker than anyone dreams.76
This was followed up with a December 1 message to Nomura and Kurusu in Washington that “the situation continues to be increasingly critical. However, to 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.”77
And on December 1 another message came to explain the process of destroying code machines and documentation: “When you are faced with the necessity of destroying codes, get in touch with the Naval Attache’s office there and make use of chemicals they have on hand for this purpose…. The four offices in London, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Manila have been instructed to abandon the use of the code machines and to dispose of them … the U.S. [office] retains the machines and machine codes.”78
The destruction of codes was last-minute business before war. Those authorized to read Magic were now well aware that war was a possibility somewhere at any time. The war warnings were weak because they did not have specific information. And it must have been difficult for the president not to share what he knew, that the Kido Butai had been en route to Pearl Harbor since November 25. But sharing this information would bring the demand to meet the Japanese head-on, and that would eliminate his legitimacy for war with Germany per the Tripartite Pact. Besides, how strong could Japan be, anyway? In four years, they had not been able to defeat the poorly armed Chinese, and it was difficult to rate their air power because the only aircraft that went up to meet it were obsolete relics.
Magic received on November 30 was obviously passed on to the president because late that night, he reappeared in Washington, two days ahead of plan. When queried by the press why he returned early, he simply responded that a speech by Prime Minister Tojo in Tokyo was full of aggressive overtones, and that he wanted to be atop of developments. The Japanese were reacting to the Ten Point Note.
It has been over seventy years since Churchill made the November 26 call to Roosevelt, advising him that the Japanese were on their way and would arrive at Pearl Harbor on December 8. And while those missing intelligence files of the November 26 communications make it difficult to verify that phone call, an appeal to a sense of logic makes everything fit.
A review of the events is chronological. Regardless of who actually wrote the Ten Point Note, it had to carry FDR’s final approval, which, in essence, brought all negotiations to a standstill.
Admiral Kimmel had been alerted as early as November 10 of a planned mission for the carriers to deliver planes to Wake and Midway. But suddenly on November 26, he was ordered to get the carriers out of port immediately and to take the fastest ships with them. The ships left behind consisted of eight old and slow World War I battleships.
Whether one agrees or not with Gregory Douglas’s published account of the Roosevelt-Churchill call of November 26, the Vacant Sea Order issued on November 25 adds further evidence that Roosevelt was fully aware that the Japanese were on their way.
Perhaps Harry Hopkins had made the best analysis, concluding that Cordell Hull was really a
man of peace and not aggressive enough with the Japanese ambassadors to meet FDR’s force-them-into-a-corner policy. The Ten Point Note was forced on Hull to present a full two days before the Japanese deadline, and up to the last minute, Hull had hoped that something could be worked out. As a result, he took FDR’s blame for the stubbornness or unyielding nature of the American government’s foreign policy. Upon FDR’s re-election in November 1944, Hull would resign.
Chapter 8
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Final Warnings
For over sixty-five years the first question asked by skeptics has been: if the attack on Pearl Harbor was such a surprise, how was it that the main targets, the carriers, were gone? This one subject has been the source of heated arguments on both sides of the conspiracy theory. These are the facts.
As far back as November 10, a heads-up signal had been issued by Washington with the plan of reinforcing Wake and Midway Islands with fighters, twelve for Wake and eighteen for Midway. The islands were being prepared to accommodate the planes, and Kimmel would make his carriers available for the delivery. At the time, Kimmel’s fleet still included the three aircraft carriers, the Enterprise, the Lexington, and the Saratoga, but the Saratoga had just returned to San Diego for refitting.