by Craig Nelson
“Within an hour, all the planes were brought aboard. We had lost only twenty-nine planes. It was an incredibly small number when compared with our glorious battle results; nevertheless, when their heroic end was announced, the hearts of the crew were filled with sorrow for those men and/or the fate of our special submarines.”
• • •
Commander Mitsuo Fuchida was one of the last airmen to set down, as he’d stayed behind, circling over the skies of Oahu to ensure the safe return of as many of his crews as possible, as well as to determine what damage the Japanese had wrought. The harbor’s burning oil was churning up such huge pillars of smoke that Fuchida couldn’t see much. Returning to Akagi, he landed and went to the bridge, where, after being given a cup of tea and a slice of bread, he reported to Ryunosuke Kusaka, Minoru Genda, and Chuichi Nagumo that the mission was an even greater success than anyone could have predicted.
“Four battleships sunk,” Fuchida announced with pride. “I know this from my own personal observation.”
“Four battleships sunk!” Nagumo exulted. “Good! What about the other four?”
Fuchida unrolled a chart of the Pearl Harbor moorings, prepared from Yoshikawa’s reports: “There hasn’t been time to check results precisely, but it looks like three were seriously damaged, the other somewhat damaged, although not quite so badly.”
Nagumo then asked, “Do you think that the US fleet will be able to operate out of Pearl Harbor within six months?” This was the whole point of their mission after all; to protect the flank of Operation Number One, keeping the Americans out of the Pacific until the resource-rich Asian colonial territories could be conquered, occupied, and integrated into the Japanese economy.
“The main force will not be able to come out within six months,” Fuchida first said with conviction. Then he hedged: “A lot of light cruisers and other vessels remain in the harbor. It would be worthwhile to launch another attack.”
Kusaka: “What do you think the next targets should be?”
Fuchida: “The dockyards, the fuel tanks, and an occasional ship.”
Kusaka then asked about the threat of an American counterstrike on the Japanese ships. Both Genda and Fuchida insisted that the Japanese were masters of the air between the fleet and Hawaii. But when a senior staff officer asked about dangers to the task force a second time, Fuchida honestly replied, “I believe we have destroyed many enemy planes, but I do not know whether we have destroyed them all. The enemy could still attack the fleet.”
“Where do you think the missing US carriers are?” Nagumo asked. Fuchida said he wasn’t sure, but assumed that, since they were not at Pearl Harbor, they must be out on training exercises, and “by this time no doubt they know about the attack, and they’re searching for us.”
Commander Tamotsu Oishi asked Genda for his opinion, which was pure Genda: “Let the enemy come! If he does, we will shoot his planes down. Stay in the area for several days and run down the enemy carriers.”
While Fuchida went to his command post to enjoy a celebratory dessert—sweet rice cake with red adzuki-bean paste—Genda, Kusaka, and Nagumo continued discussing what to do next. They considered the percentage of losses between the two strikes, where the first was a surprise, and the second was not. They wondered where the Americans could have sent their carriers. Perhaps they had trailed a plane back to the task force? Nagumo pointed out that the planes for a third strike had already been armed to defend against an American attack. The weather was turning against them, making both launch and recovery more difficult. And the tankers were waiting due north, and in a battle might the entire First Air Fleet run out of fuel?
Even though many Japanese thought Operation Z was an overwhelming success, the returning airmen had mixed feelings. “There were seven planes of the Kaga torpedo squadron behind me. And five of them were shot down by antiaircraft machine guns,” Haruo Yoshino said. “Fifteen men were lost, three in each plane. When I got back to the Kaga, my senior officer was under the bridge. He said dejectedly, ‘We had terrible damage.’ And because the American aircraft carriers were not there, it was hard for me to say that we had a big victory.” After coming home to the Akagi, Zenji Abe remembered, “I was still in a dazed and dreamy state when I returned to my quarters. I entered the tiny room and began to remove my flying clothes. In the center of my otherwise clean desk lay the envelope containing my will, addressed to my father. Suddenly, my spirits lifted. It was good to be alive.” “It was my first experience in battle,” Iyozou Fujita remembered. “I thought I was going to fight such a powerful country. I thought I was going to die bombing Pearl Harbor. I didn’t expect to come back. It’s a wonder that I returned. They were ready for us, so three out of nine planes never returned. I only did my duty. It is not for me to say whether that strategy was good or bad. We were just pawns on a chessboard.”
Back on Akagi’s bridge, Nagumo made his decision: “We may conclude that anticipated results have been achieved.” He ordered, “Preparations for an attack canceled.”
For this withdrawal, Admiral Chuichi Nagumo would be judged by Japanese military history as timid, his decision known in classic battle theory as “failure to pursue.” Ugaki said it had “the quick pace of a fleeing thief and also as being contented with a humble lot,” and by the end of 1942, a rueful Yamamoto said, “Events have shown that it was a great mistake not to have launched [another] attack against Pearl Harbor.”
But Nagumo was right. A third strike would have been excessively risky. American defenses were awake and looking to kill. Even if a decent percentage of Japan’s pilots in a third strike survived the antiaircraft fire, the Americans could plausibly have followed a plane and discovered the location of the ships. Minoru Genda later admitted that his and Fuchida’s bravado was excessive; that, without knowing the location of the American carriers, “Nagumo would have been a standing joke for generations if he had attacked Pearl Harbor again.”
One remarkable piece of luck for the United States was that Pearl Harbor’s 4.5-million barrel petroleum tank farm was untouched. One of the central reasons for the war between Japan and the United States—oil—would also be a crucial resource for Americans fighting in the Pacific theater. As Admiral Kimmel explained, “If they had destroyed the oil, which was all aboveground at the time and which could have been destroyed, it would have forced the withdrawal of the Fleet to the coast because there wasn’t any oil anywhere else out there to keep the Fleet operating.”
Even taking into account the unexpected consequences, the Japanese achieved a profound victory with Operation Z. In thirty minutes, all eight of the Pacific Fleet’s battleships had been bombed and torpedoed until inoperable, and in another twenty minutes two-thirds of US military airpower in Hawaii—180 planes—had been left in ruins.
At 1330, signal flags were raised on Akagi giving an order to the whole of the First Air Fleet: “Withdraw.”
• • •
The Hawaiian archipelago arcs from southeast to northwest, with its northwestern point the island of Ni‘ihau. On December 7, 1941, the whole of Ni‘ihau was a privately owned cattle and sheep plantation that the Robinson family maintained as a preserve of Polynesian culture staffed by two hundred native borns still speaking the Hawaiian language. The island was also the site selected by Yamamoto’s Sixth Fleet for submarine I-4 to lie in wait as an emergency rescue for any First Air Fleet crew who couldn’t make it back to their carriers.
Two pilots headed for Ni‘ihau after the attack, arriving just in time for church service at the island’s sole village, Puuwai. The locals watched in surprise as one plane crashed and burned, and the other, flown by Shigenori Nishikaichi, set down just outside the village. Nishikaichi was taken into custody by one Hawila Kaleohano; though the news of Pearl Harbor had yet to make it to Ni‘ihau, Kaleohano knew that diplomatic talks were not going well between Washington and Tokyo, and the sudden appearance of a Japanese warplane, shot up with bullets, made him suspicious. The Hawaiian confiscated the pilo
t’s pistol, map, and documents and took the prisoner to his house, where Kaleohano’s wife, Mabel, made everyone breakfast.
Three people of Japanese descent lived on Ni‘ihau. Shintani raised bees for the Robinsons, but he refused to help Kaleohano translate Nishikaichi’s pleas, so Hawila turned to the Haradas, a married couple who, besides assisting Shintani with the apiary, did housework and oversaw salaries. After the couple arrived at Kaleohano’s house, pilot Nishikaichi told the Haradas in Japanese that Pearl Harbor had been attacked and asked for their help in getting his things back and escaping. The Haradas did not tell their neighbors any of this. However, news quickly spread across the small community that an exciting visitor had shown up, and soon enough there was something of a to-do. The locals decided that the right thing to do now would be to keep the pilot under custody until the issue could be decided by the island’s controller, Aylmer Robinson, who lived twenty miles to the east on Kauai, and who visited Ni‘ihau on Mondays.
On Monday the eighth, a group brought their hostage to the dock at Kii Landing, but neither Aylmer Robinson nor any other visitor appeared. Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday also brought no Robinson, and no supplies, perhaps due to General Short’s shutting down local boat traffic as a security measure. As the Ni‘ihauans became more and more alarmed, Harada offered to calm things down by keeping the prisoner at his place at Kie Kie instead of bringing him all the way back to town, where he was a source of unease. Everyone agreed to this, and on Friday after work, they set off to build a signal fire to alert Mr. Robinson on Kauai, leaving Nishikaichi at Kie Kie in the custody of a man named Haniki. The captive told Haniki that he could read and write some English, and that he considered Ni‘ihau such a beautiful and perfect place, he would like to live here someday. After warming Haniki up, Nishikaichi begged him for a favor. He needed to talk to Yoshio Harada; couldn’t they go and see him?
At the honey house, Nishikaichi and Harada had a brief talk in Japanese. Then Harada, armed with the Robinson’s pistol and shotgun, locked up Haniki in the supply room, and Nishikaichi made his escape. They came across a horse and carriage, forced the passengers out at gunpoint, and ordered the girl leading the horse to take them as quickly as possible to Puuwai. There the two ransacked Kaleohano’s house, but couldn’t find the pilot’s papers. They went back to the Zero, pulled out its machine gun, and walked thorough the village, threatening the locals with bursts of gunfire. Then they went through the house another time and finally found the map and pistol, but still not the other papers. So at three o’clock in the morning, they set the house, and the plane, on fire.
The whole of Ni‘ihau meanwhile was hiding from the Japanese in the bush, except for the men working on the signal fire. After getting no response from Kauai, Kaleohano convinced some of the men that the situation was so serious that they should go to Kauai for help. Six of them rowed a whaleboat for sixteen hours, docked, and found Mr. Robinson, who, along with fourteen soldiers under the command of First Lieutenant Jack Mizuha, loaded into the tender Kukui and made their way back to Ni‘ihau.
In Puuwai, a shepherd named Bene Kanahali snuck up behind the two renegades and took away their machine-gun ammo belt. At dawn, Bene and his wife, Ella, came out of the bush and returned to the village to see what had happened. The Japanese caught them and took them hostage. Bene told Harada enough was enough, that it was time to get the gun away from Nishikaichi and accept that nothing good could come of this. Harada said he just couldn’t do it. So Bene jumped the pilot, who shot the Hawaiian twice before being overpowered. The shepherd grabbed the airman by the leg and the neck—as he’d done so often with sheep—and bashed his head against a stone wall. Harada used the gun to shoot himself in the stomach.
Robinson, Kaleohano, and the rest arrived from Waimea at about 7:30 a.m. on Sunday. At the Puuwai schoolhouse, Mizuha conducted an inquiry, which eventually led to Irene Harada being interned and then banned from Ni‘ihau; Kanahali being awarded a Purple Heart; and Mizuha being appointed a state Supreme Court justice.
For all of General Short’s and the local FBI’s obsession with fifth columnists, Harada was the only instance of any person of Japanese descent living in Hawaii who assisted enemy forces.
• • •
On Oahu, the B-17s from California, the SBD-3s from Enterprise, and John Dains weren’t the only Americans who had faced friendly fire. The worst collateral damage wouldn’t be uncovered for two years. Many in Honolulu and the suburbs around Pearl Harbor assumed they, too, were attacked on December 7 by Japanese bombs. But in 1943, an ordnance investigation at a closed-door hearing of the Army Pearl Harbor Board revealed that, except for one strike on an electric-power station, US antiaircraft shells “whose time fuses had failed to function in the air” were the source of the thirty-nine explosions that killed forty-eight Hawaiian civilians. Seven-month-old Eunice Wilson died in her mother’s lap in a rocking chair that morning; her father was killed by the same shell blast. Twelve more of the dead were younger than nineteen; the youngest was three-month-old Janet Yumiko Ohta. The investigator said that they “were navy five-inch shells. I went out and dug up the fragments and looked at the markings on them. I know they were navy shells; so does the navy.” It wasn’t anyone’s fault. Besides bad fuses, if a US gunner missed, his shell had to land somewhere and hit something.
Hit especially hard were Pearl Harbor’s neighbors, the next-door sugar plantations of Waipahu and Ewa, where four fires ignited in the cane fields, with shrapnel and shells killing two and injuring thirty-seven at Waipahu. A Japanese plane crashed into Schofield Barracks’ neighbor, the town of Wahiawa, the resulting fire demolishing five houses before being doused by a bucket team of Boy Scouts.
Rose Wong: “I was a teenager at that time and lived right in the center of town. One plane flew over the house and dropped a bomb which landed about a hundred yards or so away. The way the bomb fell, I thought the house had been hit. The entire house shook. There was a group of teenaged boys who were on their way to the gym on that Sunday morning. They were all killed by the blast. Upon impact, the flesh and body parts just flew and hung up in one of our trees. My uncle was out in the road and came running into the house and told us not to go outside. He didn’t want us to see what had happened. That’s when we looked out the window and saw the flesh in the trees. It was still burning.”
These “forgotten victims of Pearl Harbor,” as their historian, Nanette Purnell, described them, have been poorly treated. The government refused to grant them any form of reimbursement, even funeral costs, and until the fiftieth anniversary in 1991 they were excluded from official Pearl Harbor events. During the congressional investigation of the attack, a civilian-casualty memorandum was prepared; it has vanished from the National Archives.
• • •
On the afternoon of December 7, General Short and his staff were evacuated to the underground bunker of the Red Hill ordnance depot at Aliamanu Crater. With over twenty rooms and six-hundred-foot tunnels, the bunker was well protected, but dank and remote. That day, hearing one report of catastrophe and loss after the next, the general became more and more enraged, slamming phones and swearing like a sailor.
As Hawaiian radio stations went off the air to keep them from being used as directional beacons by the enemy, Governor Joseph Poindexter declared a state of emergency, shutting down the archipelago’s schools and initiating a nighttime blackout. He then called President Roosevelt, with Secretary of the Territory Charles Hite listening in to take notes: “Gov. managed to inform President Japs had attacked and about fifty civilians killed. Badly needed food and planes. Roosevelt marvelous—said he would send ships with food, and planes already ordered. Gov. said Short asked for martial law and he thought he should invoke it. President replied he approved.”
Poindexter was wary of giving up civilian governance, but was shocked by the devastation and believed the military would move quickly and efficiently to return life on Oahu to a semblance of normal. When the governor then met
with the general, Short “requested and urged Martial Law, saying for all he knew landing parties en route. . . . Said attack probably prelude to all-out attack—said otherwise all government and business functions to continue as usual. Gov. said he would accede and asked Short how long in his opinion such status would continue. Short said he unable to say, but if it developed this was a raid only and not the prelude to a landing, Martial Law could be lifted within a reasonably short time. Trouble was he didn’t have complete reports, he himself in the dark and could not afford to take chances. Short obviously under great strain—Gov. calm and collected. Gov. signed Declaration. When Short left Gov. said never hated doing anything so much in all his life.”
Poindexter later said he thought “reasonably short time” meant about thirty days. Instead, martial law—suspending habeas corpus and placing the police and courts under the jurisdiction of the US Army—was the rule of law in Hawaii for three years. Short’s orders to his new civilian charges were published that afternoon in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin: “If you are ordered by military personnel to obey a certain command, that order must be obeyed instantly and without question. Avoid the slightest appearance of hostility in words or act. Civilians who go about their regular duties have nothing to fear. All citizens are warned to watch their actions carefully, for any infraction of military rules and regulations will bring swift and harsh reprisals. Prisoners when captured, will be turned over to the nearest military patrol, military guardhouse, police patrol or police station. Information regarding suspicious persons will be telephoned to the provost marshal at Honolulu. A complete blackout of the entire territory will go into effect at nightfall tonight. Anyone violating the blackout by showing a light will summarily be dealt with. All civilian traffic except in case of dire emergency, will cease at dark. In this emergency, I assure you that the armed forces are adequately dealing with the situation and that each and every one of you can best serve his country by giving his wholehearted cooperation to the military and civilian governments.”