Pearl Harbor Betrayed
Page 40
3. Ibid., p. 229.
4. Fukudome, “Hawaii Operation,” Proceedings, p. 1322.
5. See the newly published Herbert P. Bix, Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2000), passim.
6. Quoted in Bix, Hirohito, p. 422.
7. Ibid., pp. 425–26.
8. Fukudome, “Hawaii Operation,” Proceedings, pp. 1322–23.
9. Quoted in Prange, At Dawn We Slept, p. 330
10. The Operational Order No. 1 is given in PHA, Pt. 13, p. 431 ff; also in NARA, RG 80, PHLO, Box 36. A copy of the order was recovered at war’s end from the Japanese cruiser Nachi, sunk in Manila Bay.
11. Quoted in Prange, At Dawn We Slept, p. 332.
12. Agawa, Reluctant Admiral, p. 236.
13. Rear Admiral Walter C. Ansel, USN (Ret.), “The Taranto Lesson,” in Stillwell, ed., Air Raid, Pearl Harbor!, p. 74. After the war, some curious remarks about the attacks at Taranto and Pearl were made by Admiral William V. Pratt, USN (Ret.), a former CNO as well as a former CINCUS: “Didn’t the Taranto sinkings, which happened in November 1940, mean anything? There three Italian battleships and two cruisers, lying in an enclosed harbor, with a water depth of 42 feet and less, were sunk in a British air torpedo attack. The water depth at Pearl Harbor was 45 feet. And now [it is said] it was not thought a successful torpedo attack could be made in that depth of water. What is a Commander-in-Chief for?” Newsweek, 10 September 1945. (In 1933, the reader will remember, Pratt called Kimmel “a humdinger.”) One should have thought that a former CNO would have access to nautical charts. The writer consulted a chart of the Port of Taranto and Mare Grande, with soundings in meters, in the Map Library, University of Florida Libraries (D5.356.54061/1997).
14. The best recent analysis of the Type 91 modification 2 torpedo is De Virgilio, “Japanese Thunderfish,” pp. 61–68. The writer is grateful to Daniel A. Martinez, National Park Service historian at the USS Arizona Memorial, at Pearl Harbor, who explained to him the aft section of a Japanese torpedo that was recovered from the harbor bottom. See also Prange, At Dawn We Slept, pp. 160, 324, 332–33. The 17.7-inch Type 91 had a 2,200-yard range, 42-knot speed, and a 452-pound warhead (explosive charge).
15. PHA, Pt. 33, p. 1283.
16. Ibid., Pt. 23, p. 1138. In the attack at Taranto torpedoes were dropped at distances of 400, 600, 700, 800, 1,000, and 1,300 yards from targets. The water allowances for aerial torpedo runs against the battleships and cruisers at Pearl Harbor were 1935 yards from the navy yard to berths off northeast Ford Island, measured from Merry Point Landing, and 800 yards from Pearl City Peninsula southeast to berths off northwest Ford Island.
17. Ibid., Pt. 33, p. 1284.
18. NARA, RG 80, PHLO, Box 5, “Statement of Evidence,” p. 226.
19. Ibid., p. 227. NARA, RG 80, PHLO, Box 8, “Information Derived from Alusna London Confidential Dispatch to OPNAV, 22 November 1940.”
20. Ibid., p. 228; and PHA, Pt. 23, p. 1138.
21. NARA, RG 80, PHLO, Box 5, “Statement of Evidence,” pp. 229–30.
22. PHA, Pt. 39, p. 362.
23. NARA, RG 80, PHLO, Box 5, “Statement of Evidence,” pp. 230–31.
24. Ibid., Box 8, untitled and undated list, probably drawn up by Lt. Comdr. Baecher.
25. Ibid., Box 8, Intelligence Report, from Naval Attaché, London, No. 855 (Secret), issued by the Intelligence Division, Office of Chief of Naval Operations, 15 May 1941, no. 8 of 9 copies.
26. See above, n. 24.
27. Ibid., Box 8, Intelligence Report, from Naval Attaché, London, No. 1347 (Secret), 26 June 1941, no. 3 of 20 copies. This weapon was dropped regularly at 2,000 feet by Beaufort bombers equipped with specially adapted bombsights. It was found that the point of entry in the water could be controlled within a maximum error of 200 yards. Successful drops, it was reported, had been made from as high as 10,000 feet.
28. Ibid., Box 8, Intelligence Report, from Naval Attaché, Ottawa, No. 570–41 (Confidential), 5 September 1941. See A. J. Smithers, Taranto 1940: “Prelude to Pearl Harbor” (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1995), p. 84. From a 15 July 1941 report of Capt. C. A. Lockwood, USN, Naval Attaché in London, the Royal Navy Fleet Air Arm 18-inch Mark XII aerial torpedo then in use “may be dropped in water as shallow as 4 fathoms [24 feet] [emphasis added].” NARA, RG 38, Box 75, Intelligence Report, Summary of Rear Admiral Mediterranean Carrier’s report dated 5 February 1941 (0575/577/16), “Air Attacks on Italian Harbors by Naval Aircraft.” The routing slips and distribution lists accompanying intelligence reports from London do not clearly specify that the 15 July report was shared with CINCPAC.
29. See above, n. 24. The actual language reads: London Report No. 1347, 26 June 1941: “The report was sent to C. in C. U.S.,” Ottawa Report No. 570-41, 5 September 1941: “The report was sent to C. in C. U.S.”
30. PHA, Pt. 32, p. 391.
31. NARA, RG 80, PHLO, Box 15, Kimmel to Chief of Naval Operations, 18 October 1945 (signed by R. A. Lavender, by direction).
32. Ibid., Box 34, Information Furnished to Rear Admiral H. E. Kimmel, USN (Ret.).
33. KC, Roll 3.
34. NARA, RG 80, PHLO, Box 4, “Japanese Plan for the Attack on Pearl Harbor,” p. 3. See also ibid., Box 36, “Combined Fleet Top Secret Operation Order 1, Flagship NAGATO, Saeki Bay 5 Nov 41” and “Combined Fleet Secret Operation Order 2, Flagship NAGATO, Saeki Bay, 7 Nov. 41.”
35. Fukudome, “Hawaii Operation,” Proceedings, pp. 1325–26; Prange, At Dawn We Slept, pp. 204, 338. The enumeration of the main body of the Striking Force differs slightly in the accounts given by Fukudome and Fuchida. Cf. PHA, Pt. 13, pp. 487–88.
36. NARA, RG 80, PHLO, Box 18, “Reconstruction of Jap Attack Plan,” pp. 9–10.
37. PHA, Pt. 12, pp. 195, 206. Roberta Wohlstetter has presented the argument that the fraudulent character of these negotiating tactics could be deduced by Magic readers only after 7 December, since, in her view, “there is not enough evidence of fraud in the dispatches alone to arouse suspicion.” Furthermore, she cites Ambassador Grew’s belief that Foreign Minister Togo “had no prior knowledge that an act of war was to be committed by the Japanese forces [against the United States]”; Wohlstetter, Warning and Decision, pp. 202 and n. 100, 205. Her, and Grew’s, position is debatable given the recent findings (1999) of Professor Takeo Iguchi in the Foreign Ministry archives. There Iguchi discovered documents revealing that a “pliant” Foreign Ministry connived in the military’s deceit stratagem; and he quotes from a 7 December (Japan time) entry in the Imperial General Staff’s war diary: “Our deceptive diplomacy is steadily proceeding toward success.” New York Times, 9 December 1999, p. A3.
38. Agawa, Reluctant Admiral, p. 244. See, for example, Fukudome, “Hawaii Operation,” Proceedings, p. 1326; Fuchida, “Attack on Pearl Harbor,” ibid., p. 942. Robert B. Stinnett, in Day of Deceit: The Truth About FDR and Pearl Harbor (New York: The Free Press, 2000), identifies a radio intercept traffic chief for the Pacific Fleet named Homer Kisner, who claims now to have “detected the Japanese advance on Hawaii” from intercepts of messages transmitted by ships of the striking force; p. 54. If so, as he said he would have done if he had seen McCollum’s eight-point memorandum, he did not go “direct to Admiral Kimmel” and alert him to this bombshell information. In a review of Stinnett’s book, the noted cryptographer David Kahn wrote: “Central to the surprise was the radio silence of the strike force. The Japanese, commanders and radio operators alike, say unanimously that they never transmitted any messages whatever, not even on low-power ship-to-ship [radio]. Except for Kisner, an American intercept operator, everyone else who was listening for Japanese messages says the same thing. And the naval communications intelligence summaries produced in Hawaii have only one statement to make about the Japanese aircraft carriers after November 26 [Japan time], when the strike force sailed: ‘Carriers are still located in home waters.’ On December 3, in the last mention before the attack, the summaries say, ‘No information on subm
arines or Carriers.’” New York Review of Books (November 2, 2000), p. 59. The contention that radio transmissions from the Striking Force were intercepted was also made in John Toland, Infamy: Pearl Harbor and Its Aftermath (New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1982), chapter 14, “The Tracking of Kido Butai,” pp. 287–321. But Admiral Genda Minoru answered Toland in a letter to The New York Times: “We kept absolute radio silence”; 13 March 1982.
39. NARA, RG 80, PHLO, Box 4, “Japanese Plan for the Attack on Pearl Harbor,” p. 4; ibid., Interrogation of Yoshio Shiga, pp. 4–5, The unnamed pilot in the alleged 5 October briefing was adopted as the official source in the U.S. Navy’s presentation of evidence during the opening sessions of the JCC.
40. Ibid., p. 8.
41. PHA, Pt. 13, p. 421.
42. Ibid., p. 377.
43. Most of the foregoing is drawn from Prange’s account of his interviews with Kusaka, Genda, and Fuchida; At Dawn We Slept, pp. 373–88. Fuchida’s comments about what would be done if the American fleet was not in harbor are given in “Reply to a Questionnaire Concerning the Pearl Harbor Attack,” Allied Translator and Interpreter Section, United States Army Forces, Pacific, 1 November 1945; NARA, RG 80, PHLO, Box 26.
44. Chigusa, “War Diary,” Goldstein and Dillon, eds., Pearl Harbor Papers, pp. 183–84.
45. Ibid., pp. 177–78, 208.
46. The Torres Strait order is found in PHA, Pt. 14, p. 1403; cf. Pt. 4, p. 1943. It was repeated in short form on 25 November; Pt. 14, p. 1406, where CINCPAC and CINCAF were ordered to provide escorts. A discussion of the order before the JCC by Kelly Turner is given in ibid., Pt. 4, pp. 1942–44. In his conspiracy book, Day of Deceit, Stinnett quotes from a sentence in Turner’s testimony. He presents the quotation as a full and accurate sentence complete with a period: “We sent the traffic down via Torres Strait, so that the track of the Japanese task force would be clear of any traffic.” The full and accurate sentence in fact is as follows:
We sent that down via Torres Straits so that the track that the Japanese task force actually took would cross the composite great circle course close to Japan and they would be clear of any traffic that would be there in a very short time and that traffic that went on that composite course went through the normal operating areas where the Japanese held their maneuvers.
Granted that is a difficult locution, but to excise and cite only a segment as standing for the full sentence and context is less than forthright, especially when in an end note, most kindly described as sly, Stinnett reveals his agenda: “The significance of his admission that the North Pacific was cleared for the Japanese carrier force did not register with Congress or with the news media covering the 1945–46 investigation” (p. 349, n. 10). Kelly Turner had his faults, but complicity with the enemy was not one of them.
47. Fuchida, “Air Attack,” Proceedings, pp. 942–43. NARA–RG 457, SRH 406, “Pre–Pearl Harbor Japanese Naval Dispatches,” p. 114.
48. “Pearl Harbor Attack,” Interrogation of Captain Minoru Genda, Naval Technical Mission, General Headquarters, Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers, 28 November 1945; NARA, RG 80, PHLO, Box 3. Picked up by U.S. Navy radio antennas on Bainbridge Island in Puget Sound, WA, the “Climb Mount Niitakayama” order was not decrypted and translated until 1945.
49. This information comes from Prange’s interviews with Yoshikawa, Okuda, and Kotoshirodo; At Dawn We Slept, pp. 70–77, 133, 148–49, 155–56.
50. PHA, Pt. 12, p. 261.
51. Ibid., p. 262–63. A subsequent message from Tokyo on 29 November refined the request: “We have been receiving reports from you on ship movements, but in future will you also report even when there are no movements”; ibid., Pt. 12, p. 263. This was translated by the Navy on 5 December.
52. Layton, “And I Was There,” pp. 144, 163. Layton points out that reports to Tokyo from the consulate in Manila were read in Washington more quickly because the consulate there transmitted in the Purple cipher, regarded as more productive of first-rank intelligence.
53. PHA, Pt. 9, p. 4534. The same may be said for another Tokyo-Honolulu dispatch dated 20 November: “Strictly secret. Please investigate comprehensively the fleet [air?] bases in the neighborhood of the Hawaiian military reservation.” Ibid., Pt. 12, p. 263.
54. Ibid., Pt. 9, pp. 4195–96. Kramer’s “impression” was mistaken. Noyes testified to the JCC that the consular decrypts had not been sent to Kimmel as an information addressee. “It wouldn’t be sent out for information to anybody,” he stated. On the Army side Major General Miles described the grid messages as just part of a routine effort of the Japanese to track the movements of U.S. naval vessels worldwide, though he did allow that the Pearl Harbor reports were unusual “in the sense of dividing any particular waters.” PHA, Pt. 2, p. 795.
55. Layton, “And I Was There,” pp. 144, 167.
56. PHA, Pt. 7, pp. 2956–57.
57. Ibid., Pt. 6, pp. 2540, 2542–43. Layton wrote, much later, “Whether it would have enabled us to spring an ‘ambush on the Japanese striking force as it approached Hawaii’ is a matter of debate”; Layton, “And I Was There,” p. 168. On 7 December 1999, at a Washington, D.C., colloquium on Admiral Kimmel, Vice Admiral David C. Richardson, USN (Ret.), who had been aboard the carrier USS Yorktown at the time of Pearl Harbor, and since became an expert authority on the attack, addressed the question of the Pacific Fleet’s chances in a sea engagement with Nagumo’s force. Among his remarks were the following: “Their [Japan’s] carriers at top speeds exceeded thirty knots—their weapons range three hundred miles. Kimmel’s battleships’ speeds were seventeen knots—weapons range fifteen miles. Kimmel was literally incapable of harming the Japanese force. Even had his two carriers been suitably placed, given Japan’s submarine presence, the odds against him still exceeded three-to-one.” Pearl Harbor and the Kimmel Controversy: The Views Today, cited earlier.
58. PHA, Pt. 3, p. 1102.
59. Ibid., Pt. 2, pp. 791, 793, 810, 812; Pt. 3, pp. 1210, 1369.
60. Ibid., Pt. 2, pp. 890, 894–95, 904.
61. Ibid., Pt. 4, pp. 1922–23, 1927–28, 2018–19.
62. Ibid., pp. 1746–48, 1830, 1853.
63. Ibid., Pt. 9, pp. 4235–37.
64. Ibid., Pt. 5, p. 2174; Pt. 4, p. 1748.
65. Ibid., Pt. 12, p. 266.
66. Ibid., p. 269.
67. Ibid., p. 270.
68. NARA, RG 80, PHLO, Box 15, Re-intercepted Message of 6 December 1941, 3 pp.
69. Another message from consul general Kita to Tokyo during this period contained what came to be called the “lights code.” Dated 3 December and encrypted in PA-K2, the code consisted of an elaborate system for signaling information to submarines, by night with shore light patterns including house lights and bonfires, by day with a star and Roman numerals on a boat sail, and by want ads broadcast over a Honolulu commercial radio station. The bizarre plan, which was never implemented, originated with a Nazi German resident of the city named Bernard Julius Otto Kuehn. A sometime agent for the consulate, he generally was kept at arm’s length. The dispatch of his plan was translated by the Navy on 11 December. It is found in PHA, Pt. 12, pp. 267–68. See also Pre-War Espionage in the Hawaiian Islands, District Intelligence Office, Honolulu, 7 November 1945; NARA, RG 80, PHLO, Box 48.
70. The Army’s intercept stations were located at Fort Hunt, VA, Fort Hancock, NY, San Antonio, TX, Panama, Honolulu, and Manila. The Navy’s main stations were at Bainbridge Island, WA, Winter Harbor, ME, Cheltenham, MD, and Cavite in the Philippines. The Army’s intercepts were handled by the Signal Intelligence Service (SIS), supervised by Colonel Otis K. Sadtler. Cryptanalysis was supervised by Col. William F. Friedman, inventor of the Purple machine. Col. Rufus S. Bratton, head of Far Eastern Intelligence, G-2, made the evaluations. In the Navy Department a Communications Security unit handled the intercepts. Commander Lawrence F. Safford supervised cryptanalysis and Lieutenant Commander Kramer oversaw the evaluation process. The services shared in the distribution of Magic, which w
ent only to the President, the secretaries of state, war, and navy; the army Chief of Staff; the Chief of Naval Operations; and the heads of each service’s war plans and intelligence offices. See Wohlstetter, Warning and Decision, pp. 170–86.
71. PHA, Pt. 12, pp. 215, 236.
72. Ibid., p. 237.
73. Ibid., Pt. 6, p. 2765, Pt. 14, p. 1408.
Chapter Eight: Imperiled
1. Ibid., Pt. 12, pp. 154–55. The phrases given are from the first messages. They are reduced to single words in the second message: HIGASI, KITA, NISHI.
2. Wohlstetter, Warning and Decision, pp. 217–18.
3. PHA, Pt. 9, p. 4347.
4. Layton, “And I Was There,” p. 219.
5. Wohlstetter, Warning and Decision, pp. 62, and n. 138, 181, n. 25, 186.
6. PHA, Pt. 36, p. 81.
7. See SRH 210, Collection of papers relating to the “Winds Execute Message, U.S. Navy 1945,” 80 pp., NARA, RG 457, Records of the National Security Agency; Graydon Lewis, “Higashi No Kaze Ame,” Cryptolog, vol. 8, no. 1 (fall 1986), pp. 1, 2, 21; Layton, “And I Was There,” pp. 219–20, 264–69, 517–23, 568 n. 46; Prange, At Dawn We Slept, pp. 360–61, 457–59, 665–66, 680–81, 713–19; Wohlstetter, Warning and Decision, pp. 51, 214–19, 307–08; NARA, RG 80 PHLO, Box 19, correspondence of Comdr. Baecher re: futile search for winds code prompt cards, 9, 17, 23 April 1946; Morgan, “Confidential Report,” Appendix C, “The ‘Winds Code,’” pp. 285–302.
8. PHA, Pt. 39, p. 514. Prange wrote: “Why the ‘winds’ message caused such a stir when the much more significant ‘bomb plot’ series did not is another of the Pearl Harbor mysteries. Certainly no one in Washington needed the Japanese Foreign Ministry to tell him that diplomatic relations with Japan were ‘becoming dangerous’;” At Dawn We Slept, p. 361. Wohlstetter wrote: “An authentic execute would have told Washington nothing that it did not already know on December 4”; Warning and Decision, p. 219.