by Rising Sun Victorious: An Alternate History of the Pacific War
*6. R. Gowan, Kameto Kuroshima: The Man Behind Yamamoto (ECU Press, 1973), 110.
*7. Ibid., 173–85. The name given to the operational plan accentuated its critical nature. At Tsushima, Togo had sent the famous Z signal to his fleet, “On this one battle rests the fate of our nation. Let every man do his utmost.”
8. A surprise pact with the Soviets had secured the northern border for Japan, much to the consternation of Adolf Hitler.
*9. From the admiral's prepared notes, dated September 10. 1941; Yamamoto Papers, Harvard University.
*10. The secret formation of the ABDA naval command in October 1941 indicates an acknowledgment by the United States of the inevitability of war with Japan. See Admiral Karl Doorman's The One Victorious Fleet (Greenhill, 1967).
*11. Official Transcript of the Court-Martial of Admiral William F. Halsey (U.S. Government, 1943), 99–100.
*12. Note that this reduced TF 1 to ten battleships: Arizona, Nevada, Oklahoma, New Mexico, California, Tennessee, Maryland, West Virginia, Idaho, and Texas.
*13. Letter to “Dad” dated December 7, 1941; Zumwalt Presidential Papers, Annapolis. President Zumwalt was first in the accelerated Class of 1943 at the Naval Academy. In July 1941 the top ten percent of the class found themselves seconded to naval staffs as aides, releasing experiences officers for command slots.
*14. JNI to Yamamoto, 12.8.41, Yamamoto Papers, Harvard University. That civilian telegraph service still existed between Hawaii and Tokyo at 0645 on December 8 may seem shocking, but it should be remembered that the United States did not actually declare war on Japan until 1603 EST and that the civilian sector always reacts much slower to a declaration than does the military establishment.
*15. Official Transcript of the Court-Martial of General Douglas MacArthur (U.S. Government, 1943), 738.
*16. G. Bush, Truk-ing with the Bull (Yaquinto, 1988), 111. Halsey's utterance was, of course, correct. The stalking horses sank splendidly, but Ruyjo suffered only slight damage. In fact, though its planes contributed to the sinking of the Indomitable, the remaining British vessels had fallen prey to land-based aircraft.
*17. T. Hara, Red Sun Rising: A Japanese Destroyer Captain Remembers (GDW, 1961), 58–71. Hara was correct. Training in night combat, with or without torpedoes, had been minimized by order of the Department of the Navy in order to “prevent training accidents.” Such foolishness, along with the cost-cutting common to all peacetime navies, played a large part in the USN's performance in the Pacific.
*18. J. Beeler, All the World Wonders and Other Naval Blunders (U.S. Press, 1998), 31–32.
*19. H. Jones, Zumwalt at the Helm: The Reason America Used Its Secret Atomic (UA Press, 1999), 53.
*20. Hara, op cit., 126–53.
*21. Shirakumo's captain, Sataru Tenabe, would become prime minister of Japan in 1951, in great measure because of his ordeal after being rammed by Arizona and given up for dead by the Japanese navy. He heroically swam to shore with the strap of his badly burned chief engineer's life jacket clutched between his teeth, having pulled him for twelve miles despite a severe injury to his own back. See H. Shimizu, Destroyer 109 (Gei Sha Publishers, 1947).
*22. Both Smith and Coombs, though seriously wounded, survived the action. John Ford's 1942 movie, The Gauntlet of Surigao, immortalized both men. The one-armed Smith went on to write the navy's official history of World War II, The One Ocean War, while the tragic Coombs, victim of deep mental wounds, ended his days as an alcoholic blues singer in New Orleans.
*23. In 1948, Japan dedicated the Arizona Memorial, actually built above the sunken hull and inscribed with the names of the crewmen forever entombed therein as well as the names of every Japanese sailor lost in the brief Pacific War.
*24. Archives, CBS, New York.
25. I would be remiss if I did not mention that storytellers (and writers) invariably make this statement because we are compensated “by the story.”
CHAPTER 3
Pearl Harbor
Irredeemable Defeat
Frank R. Shirer
December 7, 1941, is a day that has lived in infamy—not only because of the surprise attack of the Japanese on Oahu, but because America's sentinels were asleep at their posts in Hawaii. The well-planned attack was successful because the Americans feared sabotage by a “fifth column” more than an aerial attack, an attack that the U.S. Navy had proven altogether possible in 1933. The thought pervading the command structure in Hawaii was that if Japan did move against the United States, the attack would come in the Philippines, to guard the left flank of its march on the oil fields in the Dutch East Indies.
Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto had been charged with leading the Japanese navy's assault to seize the natural resources Japan required. He realized that to get time to consolidate Japanese gains in the Indies, he would have to remove the U.S. Pacific Fleet as a threat. Cmdr. Minoru Genda devised the plan that called for a fleet of six aircraft carriers, escorted by fast battleships, cruisers, destroyers, and tankers, to sail north of the regular shipping lanes through the North Pacific to a point 200 miles northwest of Oahu. From there, nearly 400 torpedo, dive, and level bombers and Zero fighters were to be launched in two waves against the American fleet on a quiet Sunday morning. The final approved order left open the possibility that there might also be follow-up strikes.1
The 1st Air Fleet, composed of the 1st (Akugi and Kaga), 2nd (Soryu and Hiryu), and 4th (Ryujo) Carrier Divisions, was to be the centerpiece of the attack force. The Ryujo was detached during the summer of 1941 because she had older, Type 96 Claude fighters, and the 5th Carrier Division (Shokaku and Zuikaku) was added. Selected to command this powerful carrier force was Vice Adm. Chuichi Nagumo, who was unacquainted with naval aviation but specialized in torpedo attacks and large-scale surface warfare. He got the job because of his seniority.
Nagumo expressed his misgivings about the attack and enumerated the risks. It would be difficult, he said to keep an exact timetable across more than 3,000 miles of ocean, to refuel the escorting destroyers in the rough winter North Pacific waters, and there was an ever-present chance of discovery by U.S. submarines, aircraft carriers, or land-based aircraft. Nagumo also stressed the outcome of an August war game in which the attack force had two carriers sunk and two damaged and lost forty percent of its aircraft and aircrew. However, he said that he would follow orders and command the 1st Air Fleet.
For ten days the fleet sailed across the North Pacific, arriving undetected at its final refueling point 600 miles north of Lanai Island at 0530 on December 6. After refueling of the carriers, cruisers, and destroyers was completed at 0830, the tankers departed for their December 13 rendezvous point west of Midway Island. Three hours later Vice Adm. Nagumo broke out the famous Z flag that Admiral Togo had used at Tsushima, and ordered the fleet to begin its final high-speed (24 knot) run to the launching point, 240 miles north of Pearl Harbor, at 0600 the next morning. Still nervous about being discovered Nagumo, kept all of his scouting planes out of the air that last day. None would be launched until the following morning, when they would do a final reconnaissance to determine whether the U.S. fleet was at Lahaina Roads or in Pearl Harbor, and whether the carriers Lexington and Enterprise were in port.
Pearl: A Quiet Saturday
Saturday, December 6, saw U.S. Army and Navy units in Hawaii securing their equipment after a week of training. The battleships were preparing for an “admiral's inspection” that would commence on Monday. They had spent the day opening up entry hatches into the double bottoms and dogging open watertight doors, which were usually closed even in port and always at night. The 24th and 25th Infantry Divisions and the Coastal Artillery Command, which controlled army antiaircraft batteries in the area, were cleaning up their equipment and returning ammunition to bunkers for proper storage. It had been a week of Alert Number Three (full alert) for the army troops, even though few among the local populace noticed.
That evening soldiers and sailors, officers and men, went on liberty to P
earl City and Honolulu, to enjoy an evening off before a lazy Sunday. There were still three task forces at sea. Enterprise (Task Force 8) was returning from delivering a Marine F4F-2 (Wildcat) squadron to Wake Island; after encountering heavy seas on December 5, she got clear weather the next day and expected to dock at Pearl by 0800 Sunday morning. Lexington (Task Force 12) was en route to Midway Island to deliver a Marine dive-bomber squadron. And Task Force 3, consisting of the cruiser Indianapolis and five destroyers, was on patrol near Johnston Island.
Meanwhile, in San Francisco sixteen B-17 Flying Fortresses (eight C and eight E models with partial crews, no ammunition, and their machine guns still packed in cosmoline) had already taken off for a night flight to Hawaii. There, they would refuel, get some crew rest, then continue on to reinforce the Philippines. They were scheduled to arrive on Sunday morning at 0830 hours Hawaii time.
In Washington, D.C., the Army and Navy Departments were receiving a fourteen-part message that Tokyo was sending to its embassy. It was to be distributed to the president, secretaries of war and navy, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Harold R. “Betty” Stark, and Army Chief of Staff Gen. George C. Marshall. Not until the following morning would decisions be made that alerted the commanders in Hawaii, giving them just a couple hours' explicit warning that they might be attacked in force by the Japanese.
December 7, Last Minute Alert
Just after midnight, December 7, the fourteenth part of the message arrived in Washington, where it was decoded, then left until morning for translation and delivery. Lt. Cmdr. Alwin D. Kramer (Office of Naval Intelligence)2 and army Col. Rufus S. Bratton (Army G-2), who shared the duties of distributing decoded messages from Japan, arrived at their office in the Navy Department by 0900 EST (0330 PH). They translated the fourteenth part and prepared copies for delivery. Admiral Stark was in his office already that morning, while General Marshall was out for his morning ride at Fort Myer, Virginia.
While the two intelligence officers were making their rounds with messages, the minesweeper Condor reported spotting a submarine in the Defensive Sea Area around Oahu. It notified a nearby destroyer, USS Ward, at 0342 (0912 EST). Ward searched fruitlessly until 0435, when she returned to her regular patrol route outside the harbor entrance. She did not detect the five I-class submarines lying in wait in a double arc outside the channel. They had already surfaced and launched their two man minisubmarines, which would penetrate the harbor and assist in the coming attack.
Stark Alerts Kimmel
Lieutenant Commander Kramer walked down the corridor of the Navy Building to the office of Chief of Naval Operations (CNO). He gave the messages to Cmdr. Arthur H. McCollum, chief of the Office of Naval Intelligence's (ONI) Far Eastern Section, shortly after 1000 EST. Kramer pointed out to McCollum that 1300 EST was 0730 in Hawaii and 0200 in the Philippines. He then continued with his deliveries to the White House and the State Department. McCollum took the messages to Admiral Stark and the ONI chief, Capt. Theodore S. Wilkinson. After the messages were read and reread Captain Wilkinson said: “There is enough here to indicate that we can expect war.” Admiral Stark agreed. Then Wilkinson suggested: “Why don't you call Kimmel?” Stark paused, then picked up his scrambler telephone. His call reached Admiral Kimmel at 0515 (1045 EST), awakening him. Stark briefly told Kimmel about the fourteen-part message that seemed to break diplomatic relations between the United States and Japan. He also informed him that the message ordered the embassy to destroy all its codes and coding machines. Kimmel asked about the portent for Hawaii. Stark said he did not know, but that he feared an attack might occur because the Japanese consulate in Honolulu had also been ordered to destroy all its codes and papers. Kimmel mentioned that Captain Layton had told him on Saturday that the consulate personnel were burning a lot of papers. When asked about the status of the fleet, Kimmel said it was safely in harbor and preparing for his inspection the following morning.
At that, Stark blew up in rage. “Didn't you get our message of November 27 stating that 'this is a war warning, execute defense deployment'?”
“Yes,” replied Kimmel, “but I figured that you were talking about strategic defensive deployment, when I deploy the fleet to sea after the beginning of hostilities.”
“No!” exclaimed Stark. “I expected you to begin wartime defense measures, including defense against attack while the fleet is in the harbor. Don't you remember Admiral Schofield's 1933 war games? I thought you were there.”
“No, I wasn't out here then,” said Kimmel. “I remember something about it. Didn't he strike Pearl with the carriers?”
“Yes, carriers striking from the north. Your first concern is to protect the fleet, and that includes when it is in the harbor.”
“I've got the fleet at stage three,” said Kimmel, “but I'm doing an inspection tomorrow. Most of the battleships are open for that. I've let Bloch and Short take care of the harbor defense.”
“You had better go to condition Zed on all your ships at once and recall all your people just in case,” advised Stark. “Captain McCollum says that he thinks that the Japs will attack our fleet out there because it is a threat to them, even if they go for the Philippines.”
“I'll call Bloch and my chief of staff as soon as we finish and get the fleet to General Quarters,” replied Kimmel. “It will take us two or three hours to get fully ready, and four hours to get up enough steam to take the fleet to sea. Hopefully we can get some PBYs up. I remember Ellis Zacharias telling me last May that he thought the Japs would attack here with carriers and from the northwest. I'll have them search in that direction.”
“You may not have that long,” said Stark. “But hopefully this will end up being a drill that will just cause the folks to grumble about having their weekend loused up.”
“Yes, sir,” said Kimmel. “Let me get off and call my people.”
“Good luck.”3
Kimmel called the commander of the 14th Naval District, Rear Adm. Claude C. Bloch, and ordered him to put the district on alert and to notify the commander of Patrol Wing 2, Rear Adm. Patrick N. L. Bellinger, to get PBYs (flying boats) into the air as quickly as possible. They were to search to the north, sixty degrees either side of zero degrees north out to a distance of 700 miles. He closed by telling Bloch to meet him at his headquarters by 0600.
Bellinger's Patrol Wing 2 was at Condition B-5, which meant that fifty percent of the PBY-3s and -5s and their crews were on four hours' notice. In reality they had less than two hours to avoid being caught on the ground at Ford Island and Kaneohe Bay Air Station. Kimmel rapidly dressed and was driven to his headquarters in the Submarine Headquarters Building. He had already forgotten about his 0800 golf outing with Lieutenant General Short, and about contacting him to cancel it.
As all of this activity was taking place in Hawaii, the Japanese were launching their aerial armada's first wave of 183 bombers and Zero fighters.
As the American fleet was being awakened and the battleship crews were rapidly closing up the inspection hatches and undoing the preparations for Admiral Kimmel's canceled inspection, the tug Antares sighted a submarine off the harbor entrance. She signaled USS Ward, which was still on patrol. Steaming to the Antares's assistance, Ward engaged the unidentified submarine with gunfire and depth charges and sank it in five minutes. At 0651 Lieutenant Outerbridge, Ward's captain, reported: “Depth-bombed sub operating in defensive sea area.” The 14th Naval District immediately relayed the message to Admirals Bloch and Kimmel.
At 0645 hours the first of USS Enterprise's air complement of SBD-3 Dauntless dive-bombers and TBD Devastator torpedo bombers began landing on Ford Island. Their arrival was the first notification for Admiral Kimmel that Enterprise was nearing the harbor after being delayed by a day due to heavy seas. Kimmel had ordered her to sail under radio silence and thus did not know her exact arrival date. He immediately notified her commander, Vice Adm. William F. Halsey, Jr., to keep his task force (TF 8) south of Oahu, and go to General Quarters. He also told Halsey
that his planes would be fueled armed and returned to him. Throughout it all, he added, Halsey's force was to maintain radio silence.
The Hawaiian Air Force
While Admiral Kimmel was putting the fleet on general alert, Lieutenant General Short continued to sleep, as did Maj. Gen. Frederick L. Martin, the commander of the Hawaiian Air Force.4At 0645, Rear Admiral Bellinger awakened Martin by phone to tell him about the warning from Washington and that he was launching his PBYs to scout the northern approaches to the islands. He wanted to know if army radar sites on the northern side of the island at Opana Point and Kaaawa were working that morning and if the Air Warning Center (AWC) was manned. Martin said that the three sites were scheduled to operate until 0700 but that there was only a skeleton shift on at the AWC. Bellinger said he was sending the navy's AWC liaison officer along with the navy contingent responsible for coordinating with all naval aviation units.
Earlier that year, Martin had worked with Bellinger to split the responsibilities for reconnaissance and aerial defense of the islands. The navy would do the bulk of the reconnaissance, while the army would provide air defense. Martin's B-17 force had been reduced from thirty-five in May to only a dozen when twenty-three were sent to the Far East Air Force in the Philippines in September. Six of the remaining twelve were non-operational hangar queens, providing replacement parts for other B-17s shuttling from the United States to the Philippines. Martin also had thirty-three obsolete B-18s (only twenty-one capable of flying) that could perform reconnaissance.5 These forty-five aircraft were a far cry from the 180 B-17 or equivalent aircraft that an official study completed earlier in the year had said would be necessary to provide 360-degree coverage for the islands against a possible attack by six enemy aircraft carriers.6