by Craig Nelson
Like all of official Washington, Hull’s office at State had ivory- and gray-painted walls; heavily padded furniture in oak or walnut, in damask or leather; thick carpets and drapes; and clocks that chimed not quite in unison every fifteen minutes. At their initial meeting, the secretary reminded the ambassadors of their nation’s diplomatic history with Germany, when the Nazis signed the Anti-Comintern Pact with Japan, then turned around and signed a nonaggression pact with the Soviet Union, then turned around again and attacked Russia. Couldn’t the Japanese see that it was only a matter of time before Hitler showed up in Asia to double-cross them, too?
Kurusu understood that the most important issue in FDR’s mind blocking forward movement on normalizing relations was not China, but the Tripartite Pact. He explained that, though it would be hard for Tokyo to formally renounce that alliance, a “general understanding” with America would “outshine” the treaty with Nazi Germany. This salvo, though an honest reflection of Tokyo’s current murky thinking, was not successful. As Kurusu was himself the one who had signed the Tripartite Pact, for the large percentage of American leaders who thought the Japanese were duplicitous, here was one more flagrant example. The meeting ended, and Hull invited the ambassadors to continue their conversation, but Kurusu, perhaps because he was tired, or needed to do more research, or was awaiting further instructions from Togo, declined. This was a grave miscall, for it hardened the secretary’s feelings.
When Hull met with Kurusu and Nomura the next day, the eighteenth, Kurusu repeated that a treaty with Washington would doubtlessly “outshine” the one with Berlin, and Hull certainly knew that “big ships cannot turn around too quickly, that they have to be eased around slowly and gradually.” Seeing things falling further and further apart, Nomura revealed his final option: What would happen if Japan withdrew from southern Indochina, and she and America returned to the status “before [the US] freezing measures were put into effect?” Hull did not react as expected, instead saying that the Japanese would just send those soldiers “to some equally objectionable” target, and that reversing the embargo meant the United States “believed that the Japanese were definitely started on a peaceful course and had renounced purposes of conquest.” But Nomura continued, insisting Japan was tired of its pointless war in China and ready to take steps away from colonial expansion. Couldn’t Hull see a way to create a détente to soothe relations, as Roosevelt had suggested with his “modus vivendi”?
This approach worked. At the end of the meeting, Hull said he would discuss Japan’s offer with the British and the Dutch, meaning he was now turning to “formal negotiations.” The two ambassadors were convinced that they were steps away from a great diplomatic success. Kurusu, as soon as he could, cabled Togo with the encouraging news.
The following night, Nomura and Kurusu met with Hull at his apartment, where the secretary was remarkably congenial, saying if they could come to an agreement, a pact “might enable the leaders in Japan to hold their ground and organize public opinion in favor of a peaceful course.” He even allowed that this process of reversing public thinking “might take some time.” It was the first hopeful meeting between the United States and Japan since 1931’s Manchurian Incident, ten years before.
• • •
A First Air Fleet sailor writing under the pseudonym Iki Kuramoti remembered that momentous third week of November: “At the time of year when green leaves turn suddenly to red in the cool winds of approaching autumn, and one begins to feel the piercing breath of the North Wind—that is to say, on 18 November 1941—we left Kure harbor and sailed for the distant northern seas. The purpose of this operation was unknown to us. We had taken on board warm clothing, materials for protecting the guns against the cold, and a great quantity of sea nets, but understood nothing of this. Day after day and night after night the ships carried out target practice.
“In the newspapers that we had on board it was said that we were to attack Dutch Harbor [in Alaska’s Aleutians], but we did not believe it. Why did we not believe it? Consider the moderate course of Japanese diplomacy up to that time. It seemed unlikely that Japan meant at this time to lift up her hand against Britain and America. Indeed, was there not at that moment a conference in progress at Washington between America and Japan?”
Mitsuo Fuchida: “At six o’clock on the dark and cloudy morning of 26 November, our twenty-eight-ship task force weighed anchor and sailed out into the waters of the North Pacific Ocean. . . . The crew shouted ‘Banzai!’ as they took what might be their last look at Japan. . . . I thought the plan should have called for complete destruction of the US Pacific Fleet at the outset, followed by an invasion of the Hawaiian Islands to push America entirely out of the Central Pacific. . . . In the meantime, the fleet had assumed formation. The carriers sailed in parallel columns of three, followed by the tankers. On the outside, two battleships and two heavy cruisers took positions, the whole group encircled by a screen of the light cruisers and destroyers. The submarines patrolled about two hundred miles ahead of our force.”
As the ships plowed into heavy Pacific swells, the commanders enforced strict radio silence. To save fuel on that chilly journey, only Shokaku and Zuikaku had heat and hot water. The tanker skippers weren’t experienced in keeping up with the fleet at night, so every dawn, the destroyers would herd them back to the force.
Refueling in the stormy North Pacific turned out to be backbreaking, dangerous work. As the ships bucked and lurched in the rough seas, the big hoses connecting the oilers would break loose and whiplash, leaking fuel. Even after a thorough cleaning of the decks, crewmen had to tie straw rope around their shoes to keep from slips and falls. Several were swept overboard and lost, but nothing could be done.
Nagumo continually worried about evading enemy and neutral eyes. If the fleet was spotted before December 6, he was to return home; after the sixth, he was to proceed with the attack; on the sixth, the call was his. He received daily updates of the US Fleet’s position from Yoshikawa and Kuehn via Tokyo and especially worried about the weather. If it was bad and the seas were rough, that could make refueling impossible. Sunny skies, however, meant an extremely visible fleet traveling across hundreds of miles of empty ocean.
Akagi’s engine was run by Commander Yoshibumi Tanbo and 350 men, who almost never left their charge, which was in the bowels of the ship. Their meals were brought to them—rice balls, pickled plums, and radishes, wrapped in bamboo bark. Almost none of the crew knew what they were going to do since negotiations were ongoing, and if an agreement was reached, the fleet would return to Japan and its mission would remain secret and unknown. The engineers, however, knew how much fuel was available and, calculating the distance, were certain that they were on their way to the Philippines.
On November 19, Tokyo’s foreign office radioed her embassies two messages preparing them for an escalation of global war:
Regarding the broadcast of a special message in an emergency.
In case of emergency (danger of cutting off our diplomatic relations), and the cutting off of international communications, the following warnings will be added in the middle of the daily Japanese language short-wave news broadcast.
(1) In case of a Japan-US relations in danger: HIGASHI NO KAZE AME [East wind, rain].
(2) Japan-USSR relations: KITA NO KAZE 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 each sentence will be repeated twice. When this is heard, destroy all code papers, etc. This is as yet to be a completely secret arrangement.
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-US relations, “HIGASHI” [east].
(2) Japan-Russia relations, “KITA” [north].
(3) Japan-British relations (including Thai, Malaya, and N.E.I.), “NISHI” [
west].
The above will be repeated five times and included at beginning and end.
• • •
That month, a doctor and an assistant purser arrived in Honolulu aboard passenger ship Taiyo Maru from Yokohama. They were in fact agents of the Navy General Staff who had come to Hawaii to assemble the latest detailed information on American forces. The lead agent was the youngest lieutenant commander in the Japanese Imperial Navy, Suguro Suzuki, and the Taiyo would be one of the last ships making the trip between Japan and the United States, her voyage following the route the First Air Fleet would use across the North Pacific. Along the way, Suzuki prepared daily reports on visibility, direction, and velocity of the wind, pitch and roll of the ship, sea conditions, and the appearance of any foreign vessels or patrol planes. He would return to Tokyo with remarkably good news, reporting that, except for a brief storm, the weather had been fine, and no American patrols were spotted until a mere two hundred miles north of Oahu, and none whatsoever adjacent to Midway.
Honolulu consul chief Kita and other members of the embassy visited the Taiyo multiple times to deliver daily newspapers in Japanese, with bits of military information tucked inside. At harbor security, they were forced to flip the pages, but these men knew a flipping technique to keep the tucked-in reports hidden from American eyes.
Honolulu spy Takeo Yoshikawa was not allowed anywhere near the ship, as a safety measure. He did, however, have to answer a detailed hundred-item questionnaire brought by Suzuki on a “tiny ball of crumpled rice paper.” When one consulate employee saw it, he remembered thinking, “Would it be possible for the Japanese to come all the way out here and launch a successful attack? I do not recall any statement by consulate personnel that Pearl Harbor might be attacked. But after the episode of the ship and the important questionnaire, the implications were there.”
Yoshikawa had twenty-four hours to finish the queries, with Kita returning with his answers to the ocean liner. They included:
This is the most important question: On what day of the week would the most ships be in Pearl Harbor on normal occasions?
A: Sunday.
How many large seaplanes patrol from Pearl at dawn and sunset?
A: About 10, both times.
Where are the airports?
A: For this question, I was able to provide a map with every detail, plus aerial photos which I had taken . . . as late as October 21, and considerable structural detail on the hangars at Hickam and Wheeler Fields.
Are the ships fully provided with supplies and ready for sea?
A: They are not ready for combat; [they are] loaded with normal supplies and provisions only.
Yoshikawa also reported that aerial reconnaissance to the north was “at a minimum . . . poorly organized . . . downright bad.” Though this was true, how he knew this is a mystery. Other agents from the Taiyo investigated where in Hawaii midget-sub and air crews should go in case of emergency for rescue. They decided on the privately owned, sparsely populated island of Ni‘ihau. (Fuchida, researching the issue back in Japan, had arrived at the same conclusion.)
Yoshikawa also provided Suzuki with drawings, photographs, and maps. A “Souvenir of Honolulu” aerial photo of Pearl Harbor that Yoshikawa had marked up with numbered squares, similar to the ones described by the “bomb plot” message, as well as overhead photographs of the harbor he’d taken from a sightseeing plane, would be found in the cockpits of Japanese bombers brought down on December 7. Later he said, “We knew then that things were building to a climax and that my work was almost done.”
The feeling of amity and hope built by Hull, Kurusu, and Nomura in their negotiations was destroyed on November 20 when a furious cable from Togo arrived. Since Hull hadn’t yet responded to Plan A, Kurusu and Nomura were not authorized to offer the troop withdrawals of Plan B, and Togo excoriated Nomura for his impudence. Togo then ordered them to submit Japan’s final proposal, which offered a halt to military advances beyond Indochina and withdrawal of troops from the south of that territory while requesting US help in securing Dutch East Indies oil; an American restoration of trading status back to the conditions of July; and no American intervention in Tokyo’s negotiations with Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist government.
At their meeting on that day, Hull was given Japan’s final Plan B offer and took issue with the terms. He was then so stricken with flu that he couldn’t work. By the twenty-third, Hull had fully recovered and refused to offer an official US reaction to Plan B. He instead said that, since the Japanese had told the American State Department in the spring that her oil purchases would be “used for normal civilian consumption,” but were instead employed to invade southern Indochina, why should he trust her envoys now claiming a desire for peace? And why was the Japanese press filled with anti-American editorials? Hull later explained that the Americans saw Plan B as “condonement by the United States of Japan’s past aggressions, assent by the United States to unlimited courses of conquest by Japan in the future, abandonment by the United States of its whole past position in regard to the most essential principles of its foreign policy in general, betrayal by the United States of China, and acceptance by the United States of a position as a silent partner aiding and abetting Japan in her effort to create a Japanese hegemony in and over the Western Pacific and Eastern Asia. . . . no responsible American official could ever have dreamed of accepting it.”
CNO Stark cabled his fleet commanders including Husband Kimmel on the twenty-fourth, “Chances of favorable outcome of negotiations with Japan very doubtful. This situation coupled with statements of Japanese Government and movements of their naval and military forces indicate in our opinion that a surprise aggressive movement in any direction including attack on Philippines or Guam is a possibility.”
The next day in a private letter to Kimmel, Stark said, “I have been in constant touch with Mr. Hull and it was only after a long talk with him that I sent the message to you a day or two ago showing the gravity of the situation. He confirmed it all in today’s meeting, as did the President. Neither would be surprised over a Japanese surprise attack. From many angles an attack on the Philippines would be the most embarrassing thing that could happen to us. There are some here who think it likely to occur. I do not give it the weight others do, but I included it because of the strong feeling among some people. You know I have generally held that it was not time for the Japanese to proceed against Russia. I still do. Also I still rather look for an advance into Thailand, Indo-China, Burma Road areas as the most likely. I won’t go into the pros or cons of what the United States may do. I will be damned if I know. I wish I did. The only thing I do know is that we may do most anything and that’s the only thing I know to be prepared for; or we may do nothing—I think it is more likely to be anything.”
After the Taiyo Maru returned from its espionage mission, Suzuki debriefed Nagumo, Genda, Fuchida, and other officers aboard Akagi. He was full of good news about surveillance—not a single foreign vessel was spotted in either direction across the northern route—and a piece of bad news. Even though they spotted a number of carrier planes in the skies, they saw no carriers in the harbor itself. He also warned the admirals that, if they did not achieve surprise with this mission, they could expect a vigorous American defense followed by a vicious retribution.
Suzuki’s report inspired Genda and Fuchida to create one strategy if the Americans were caught by surprise, and another if they were found ready and waiting. In the former case, Fuchida would fire his flare gun once, bringing Murata and the torpedo planes to the fore to do as much damage as possible, followed by the dive-bombers and the high-level bombers. But if the Americans were ready to fight back, Fuchida would shoot off two flares, bringing in the dive and horizontals first.
Genda so fretted over the shallowness of Pearl Harbor and the possible failure of his torpedoes that he came up with an novel strategy, suggesting to Furukawa, the leader of the horizontal bombers, “If your bomb hits directly beside the turret and i
f it explodes in the powder magazine, the ship will be reduced to fragments.” When Furukawa expressed his doubts about achieving such accuracy in targeting—since the horizontals had a hard enough time just hitting ships, much less turrets—Genda said, “Do it with spiritual strength.” Furukawa pleaded, “Genda, don’t ask such unreasonable things!” As it turned out, the most famous and devastating high-level strikes at Pearl Harbor would be those that struck directly by a turret and exploded in powder magazines exactly as Genda had hoped, turning the American warships themselves into bombs.
Back in Tokyo at Operations, Tomioka now brooded over his role in all of this, how he had vociferously opposed Yamamoto’s plan but, under the threat of resignation, had succumbed, agreeing to this ridiculous scheme. He decided that he could never forgive himself if disaster struck the First Air Fleet and became so certain of catastrophe at Hawaii that he decided to keep a .38-caliber revolver in the drawer of his desk. If Nagumo, Genda, and Fuchida failed in their mission, Tomioka was going to shoot himself in the head.
On November 22, a strange advertisement appeared in the New Yorker magazine. It pictured a group of people sheltered from an air raid, playing dice. Under the headline “Achtung, Warning, Alerte!” the copy read, “We hope you’ll never have to spend a long winter’s night in an air-raid shelter, but we were just thinking . . . it’s only common sense to be prepared. If you’re not too busy between now and Christmas, why not sit down and plan a list of the things you’ll want to have on hand. . . . And though it’s no time, really, to be thinking of what’s fashionable, we bet that most of your friends will remember to include those intriguing dice and chips which make Chicago’s favorite game: THE DEADLY DOUBLE.” Scattered throughout the issue were six smaller tag ads referring back to the main copy, with the dice numbered 12 and 7, numbers on no known dice. Later during the war, navy transport pilot Joseph Bell was flying a South Pacific route when one of his passengers, an intelligence officer, told him that many in intelligence considered this ad a secret warning. He had been assigned to investigate the matter, but every lead had led to a dead end—the ad’s copy had been presented in person at the magazine’s offices, and the fee paid with cash. Neither the game offered in the ad, nor the company that purported to make it, ever existed.