by James Johns
And with the possibility that Japan could strike somewhere in the Pacific at any moment, there was now concern in Washington that the additional forty-eight B-17s1 that had accumulated on the West Coast for delivery to the Philippines could be attacked en route. Because of the distance involved, they would be defenseless. They could carry only minimum crews and no defensive guns or ammunition. The weight saved would provide just enough fuel to reach Hawaii, the longest leg of their trip.
On November 26, Admiral Stark forwarded the order to Kimmel to immediately prepare the two remaining carriers, the Enterprise and the Lexington, with the fastest escorting ships in his command, for the delivery of some of the army’s P-40 fighters to both Wake and Midway Islands. The fighters would provide some degree of security for the bombers’ refueling stops. The army had offered them to the navy, but the catch was that General Short would have to provide them. All Short had for fighter protection for all of Hawaii were the fourteen Boeing P-26s, which were of 1934–35 vintage; the thirty-nine P-36s, which were of 1939 vintage; and a total of (now) ninety-nine Curtiss P40B and C fighters with top speeds of about 350 miles per hour.
Because only the P-40s were relatively state of the art, Short was reluctant to give up 30 percent of that strength. The Joint Chiefs had promised to replace them as soon as possible, but admitted that until such time, there would be a risk involved. But to even have considered such a transfer of fighters leaves no doubt that Pearl Harbor was not considered at risk. At this time, two hundred P-40s were on their way from the United States to Russia.
Kapiolani Park, near Waikiki Beach, before the December 7, 1941, attack (Diamond Head is in the background). In just two weeks the park would be scattered with junk to prevent enemy landings.
The problem now arose of loading army aircraft onto an aircraft carrier. Unlike naval aircraft, army planes had no fittings to lift them onto the decks by crane. Nor were there off-loading docks at the destinations, although they could fly off the carriers that they could not land on. This meant that, once there, they would have to stay.
With the urgency of the order, Kimmel decided to substitute the P-40s with Marine Grumman F4Fs that could be lifted or flown aboard. For the defense of Pearl Harbor, this left Kimmel with virtually no navy or Marine fighters. And it would eliminate the navy’s ability to loan its fighter strength to the army for island defense in compliance with the Joint Coastal Frontier Defense Plan. The balance of Kimmel’s protection was at the Marine air station at Ewa that was home to the SBD and SB2U dive bombers and some F4F fighters. Ford Island and Kaneohe were home to the PBY patrol bombers.
For the B-17s destined for the Philippines that required fighter protection, FDR’s priority had been to send them to Britain. But Stimson had argued they be sent to the Philippines to keep Japan away from Singapore. And Marshall had preferred they go to Hawaii. Of course, no one thought to ask General Brereton, who, as commander of the Far East Air Force, considered it bad judgment to send B-17s to the Philippines, where, as events would bear out, they would have no fighter protection, nor any place to land them. Clark Field had no more room for additional bombers. There remains only the speculation on future events. If the B-17s, which were later destroyed on the ground at Clark Field, had been sent to Pearl Harbor for long-range patrol instead, would events at Pearl Harbor have vastly changed?
The author’s wife observing a modern carrier departing Pearl Harbor.
At 0800, Friday, November 28, the Enterprise, under the command of Admiral “Bull” Halsey, carrying twelve Grumman F4Fs2 and supporting crews, led Task Force 8 through the narrow channel leading out of Pearl Harbor, followed by three fast cruisers and a squadron of destroyers. When clear of the harbor entrance, they turned toward Wake Island, twenty-five hundred miles west. The Enterprise and the Lexington, the latter of which was preparing to take reinforcements to Midway, had identical air groups for offensive or defensive action. So with both carriers away from port, Kimmel would lose thirty-six SBD dive bombers, eighteen TBD torpedo bombers, and eighteen fighters—per carrier, a total of 144 aircraft.
At the time of the initial order, General Martin in Hawaii suggested that, regardless of which branch furnished the fighters, they send the obsolete planes “because those were the ones we could afford best to lose.”3 But General Short insisted, “If we are going up against the Japanese, we wanted the best we had instead of the worst.”4
Not understanding the underlying purpose of Washington’s order, Kimmel had asked Halsey, who would take the Enterprise to Wake, “Do you want to take the battleships with you?”5 “Hell no,” Halsey replied. “If I have to run I don’t want anything to interfere with my running.”6 The two Annapolis classmates finally agreed that in order to cover themselves with Washington, escorting vessels should go along and make the trip look more routine to watchful eyes. But they would return to Pearl Harbor as soon as possible. In the event of trouble with the Japanese, Halsey inquired, “How far do you want me to go?”7 Kimmel replied, “Goddamitt, use your common sense!”8 Halsey understood , thinking that those were “the finest orders ever given to a man.”9 Halsey’s interpretation of common sense would be “all ships in readiness for instant combat.”10 This meant warheads on the torpedoes, aircraft loaded with machine gun ammunition, bombs brought up to readiness position, radio silence, and daily air patrols two hundred miles ahead, with orders to sink any Japanese ship they encountered.
On December 2, twelve navy PBY patrol bombers took off from Midway for the twelve-hundred-mile trip to Wake Island to check the route and search five hundred miles around and then cover the arrival of the Enterprise task force. At the same time, Kimmel ordered a squadron of PBYs from Pearl Harbor to replace those at Midway.
On December 4, the Enterprise squadron was two hundred miles northeast of Wake when one of the Wake PBYs appeared overhead. The twelve F4Fs took off and followed it to the airfield on the island. After making a precision pass over, they landed and were cheered by all sixteen hundred-plus military and civilian personnel. On December 6, all the PBYs departed Wake for the return trip to Pearl Harbor.
And on December 5, after some delays, Task Force 12, under the brief command of Rear Admiral John Newton, departed Pearl Harbor. Led by the Lexington, which carried eighteen Vought SB2U-3 dive bombers11 and supporting crews, and accompanied by three heavy cruisers and five destroyers, they embarked on their mission to Midway. These fighters would beef up the Marine Fighter Squadron 221, which was currently flying the obsolete Brewster F2A Buffalos. Their departure left eight old World War I–vintage battleships remaining in port, all tethered to Ford Island. For some, this was a little too ironic.
Adding to the irony is that after weeks of gathering the B-17s on the West Coast for delivery to the Philippines, there was suddenly the urgency of reinforcing their route (Wake and Midway Islands) on, of all days, November 26, the day of FDR’s call from Churchill. And it was on this same day that Secretary of State Cordell Hull washed his hands of further negotiations, and one day after the Vacant Sea Order had been issued. Many scholars have argued that the real intention was to get the carriers, the main Japanese targets, out of port as quickly as possible, leaving behind the ships that could best afford to be lost.
In all the Philippines, there were just the two airfields large enough to handle the B-17s, Clark and Del Monte. By December 7, Clark already had thirty-five of them and could not handle the additional forty-eight waiting on the West Coast. And Del Monte was still under construction. Thus the immediate urgency to get reinforcements to Wake and Midway, requiring the carrier missions, remains highly questionable. The absence of any place to land or refuel them does not support a legitimate argument.
While the Lexington was en route to Midway, the daily routine scout planes were dispatched, flying out two hundred miles to secure the route ahead. One of “Lady Lex’s” TBD torpedo bomber pilots, Norman Sterrie, M.D., told this author that one of these scouts reported the sighting of a Japanese single-engine, fixed-
landing-gear scout plane. The mere fact that it was a single-engine plane would indicate the not-too-distant presence of the mother ship or task force in the moderate vicinity. This highly decorated American aviator, who would become the last surviving TBD pilot, has pondered all these years as to what ever happened to that report and how more attention to it may have changed history. (In five months, Sterrie would have to swim away from the sinking Lexington to save his life.)
Task Force 12 was at a position four hundred twenty miles southeast of Midway that Sunday morning, with the plan to launch the planes at noon, when the report of the attack at Pearl Harbor was received. Rather than launch these dive bombers so badly needed at Midway, Admiral Newton ordered the return of the fleet to Pearl Harbor with its aircraft still aboard. Whether or not he was ordered to turn around is in question, but Newton was criticized for that action with the argument that the planes would have been of more value at Midway in scouting for the Japanese. Command of the Lexington would next go to Vice Admiral Wilson Brown who, at the time, was one of the oldest naval officers to serve in combat operations during World War II. After Wilson took command of the Lexington, Newton would serve in deputy-commander roles through the early part of 1944.
In 1941, the word “radar” was a term of mystery, and the small percentage of the public or military who had heard the word considered it as futuristic, the state of the art in protection from air attack. At the time, barrage balloons were used, as well as sound locators that had a maximum range of five miles. Smoke protection was also used to obscure targets. Hawaii had none of these. The War Department recognized that unless an enemy could be detected hundreds of miles out, there was no protection.
In response to an earlier request from Marshall, Short responded that air defense for Hawaii was totally inadequate. What was needed was an aircraft warning system that could detect an enemy far enough out to sea to give the island sufficient time to respond, not just the five-mile range of the sound detectors, but hundreds of miles out. Nor did the airfields themselves have any protection, no means of aircraft dispersion, nor any bunkers. While some of the ships had state-of-the-art shipborne radar, they were useless while the ships were in port because of the high surrounding hills.
Eventually, three fixed and six mobile radar sets were promised, and by late summer, the mobile sets had arrived. The first one was set up at Schofield Barracks for installation and operator training. By mid–November, five of the six mobile sets were in place around the island.
An information center was created at Fort Shafter to disseminate the collected information, which required the training of additional enlisted personnel, as well as the training of officers to determine what to do with the gathered information. In the middle of 1939, then Lieutenant Kenneth Bergquist was posted to Wheeler Field, and by the middle of 1940, he was promoted to operations and intelligence officer of the Eighteenth Pursuit Wing, later transferring over to the Fourteenth Pursuit Wing. It was Lieutenant Bergquist who organized the entire intelligence operation at Fort Shafter.
General Short had instructed that the mobile sets should all operate between 0400 and 0700, the most critical or dangerous hours. At the field radar sites, enlisted operators were learning their trade, while at the information center, more enlisted operators were learning how to receive and plot these radar intercepts. Each morning, an unlucky pilot had the additional duty to report at 0400 and learn as much about the operation as he could and to determine what to do with the information collected. And this was just ten days prior to December 7.
While sabotage warnings to Hawaii from Secretary Stimson and Generals Gerow and Miles seemed to be the order of the day, Hap Arnold, chief of the army air force, forwarded yet another message to General Short: “Critical situation demands that all precautions be taken immediately against subversive activities…. Also desired that you initiate forthwith all additional measures necessary to provide for protection of your establishments, property, and equipment against sabotage, protection of your personnel against subversive propaganda, and protection of all activities against espionage.”12
With so much emphasis being placed on sabotage, General Arnold would later testify, “We had been having a lot of trouble with our airplanes all over the United States…. We had had many accidents that we could not explain…. In certain cases the finger pointed right directly at sabotage; in certain other cases, looking back on it now, I know it was inexperienced workmen…. But at that time we were so convinced that it was sabotage that we had sent sabotage messages all over the United States.”13
For Admiral Kimmel, about the only defense without alarming the civil population was defense against submarine attack. During the preceding year, there had been many incidents of unidentified underwater propeller sounds in the vicinity of Hawaii, but Admiral Stark had given strict orders not to attack such contacts. But after receipt of the November 27 war warning, Kimmel had apparently changed his mind and issued an “order that any submarine contacts in the operating areas around the island of Oahu should be depth bombed.”14 After passing a copy of his order to Washington, he received no negative response, and consequently, it was on file in Washington. This order would constitute the justification of the Ward’s attack and sinking of the Japanese sub in one week.
By the end of November, all Japanese radio could talk about was the Ten Point Note with extreme severity. The United States had broken the peace and established an ultimatum, and would be solely responsible for whatever happened next. These sharp radio commentaries brought a plea from Kurusu in Washington. In a call to Tokyo on November 30, he stressed, “Unless greater caution is exercised in speeches by the Premier and others, it puts us in a very difficult position. All of you over there must watch out about these ill-advised statements. Please tell Mr. Tani.”15
Kurusu was confused on what appeared to be the main issue. First, Tokyo was in a hurry to settle negotiations, but now it appeared that they wanted them stretched out. Trying to clarify the direction he was to take, Kurusu said, “We will need your help. Both the Premier and the Foreign Minister will need to change the tone of their speeches!!! Do you understand? Please use all discretion.”16 This was sent on the last Sunday of peace.
Formal approval of hostilities against the Americans, British, and Dutch was approved by the Japanese cabinet on Monday, December 1, and the orders were issued accordingly from Chief of the Naval General Staff, Admiral Osami Nagano, to Admiral Yamamoto and to Vice Admiral Mineichi Koga, who was the commander in chief of China Area Fleet:
1. It has been decided to enter into a state of war between the Imperial Government on one side and the United States, Great Britain, and the Netherlands on the other during the first part of December.
2. The C-in-C Combined Fleet will destroy the enemy forces and air strength in the eastern seas [and] at the same time will meet any attack by the enemy fleet and destroy it.
3. The C-in-C Combined Fleet will, in co-operation with the Commander of the Southern Army, speedily capture and hold important American and British bases in eastern Asia and then Dutch bases. Important strategic points will then be occupied and held.17
An additional order was sent specifically for Yamamoto: “Japan under the necessity of self-preservation has reached a decision to declare war on the United States of America, British Empire, and the Netherlands. The C-in-C Combined Fleet shall at the start of the war direct an attack on the enemy fleet in the Hawaiian area and reduce it to impotency using the First Air Fleet as the nucleus of the attack force.”18
At the end of November, there was also a sudden, complete change of direction by British Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax and Australian Minister to the United States Richard Casey. On November 29, they appeared at the State Department, bent on extending negotiations to allow more time for military preparations. But by this time it was too late. They had finally come to the realization that time was of the essence. Upon departing, Lord Halifax left this message in Hull’s office:
&
nbsp; There are important indications that Japan is about to attack Thailand and that this attack will include a sea-borne expedition to seize strategic points in the Kra Isthmus…. R.A.F. are reconnoitering on an arc of 180 miles from Tedta Bharu for three days commencing November 29 and our Commander-in-Chief, Far East has requested Commander-in-Chief, Asiatic Fleet at Manila to undertake air reconnaissance on line Manila-Camranh Bay on the same days. Commander-in-Chief, Far East has asked for permission to move into Kra Isthmus, if air reconnaissance establishes the fact that escorted Japanese ships are approaching the coast of Thailand, and he asks for an immediate decision on this point.19
The bottom line to all of this was that the British now considered it necessary to invade the Kra Isthmus themselves in order to beat Japan to the draw, as the Japanese would consider it important to get all the troops ashore before the shooting started in the move into Malaya. Lord Halifax wondered what the reaction in Washington would be. Hull’s only answer was that he would show it to the president.
Almost as if timed to the moment, the Japanese consulate in Bangkok reported to Tokyo that the majority of the Siamese wanted to remain neutral. Therefore, whoever occupied Siam would be considered the aggressor. The message even suggested that Japan should land troops in the area of Kota Bharu, just across the Malay border, which would almost force British occupation of Thailand to keep from being boxed in.
That same day, November 29, Tokyo also received a communiqué from Berlin. It contained a low-key hint that while Russian forces were engaged on the western front, this would be the pristine time for Japan to start the occupation of Siberia through Russia’s back door. It would provide the expansion from Manchuria that Japan had always hungered for. But of course, the underlying motive was that such a move would take some of the pressure off Germany’s eastern front, where the advance into Russia had slowed to a halt.