by Toland, John
b Morality is an unstable commodity in international relations. The same America that took a no-compromise stand on behalf of the sanctity of agreements, maintenance of the status quo in the Orient, and the territorial integrity of China, reversed herself a few years later at Yalta by promising Russia territory in the Far East as an inducement to join the war in the Pacific. A rapprochement with Japan in 1941 would admittedly have meant American abandonment and betrayal of Nationalist China. Yet it might have led to a more stable non-Communist China in the long run.
c After his trial Tojo admitted that the independence of the Supreme Command had led to Japan’s ruin. “We should have risen above the system we inherited, but we did not. It was the men who were to blame.… Especially myself.”
6
Operation Z
1.
In early summer of 1939 when the Army was urging closer ties with Germany and Italy, Navy Minister Mitsumasa Yonai and his deputy had opposed any pact. The Army was sure that by conquering all Europe, Hitler would be in a position to help Japan settle the China Incident. But Admiral Yonai and his deputy were convinced that a war between England and Germany would be a prolonged affair. Eventually America would get into it, Germany would wind up the loser, and if Japan had a treaty with Hitler, she would find herself fighting the United States all alone.
The Navy Vice Minister was even more outspoken than his chief, publicly predicting that Japan would be defeated in any war with the United States. He was only five feet three inches tall (the exact height of the legendary Admiral Togo), but gave an impression of size with his broad shoulders and barrel chest. He was Admiral Yamamoto and his first name, Isoroku (meaning “fifty-six”), was the age of his schoolmaster father at the time he was born. He had enlisted in the Navy “so I could return Admiral Perry’s visit,” and subsequently lived in America—at Harvard as a student and in Washington as naval attaché. Consequently he had sounded the warning of her industrial strength so often and so persuasively that Yonai, fearing that Yamamoto might be assassinated by ultranationalists, sent him to sea in August 1939 as commander of Combined Fleet.
The basic strategical plans of Japan’s admirals in the thirties had been to let her enemy, America, sortie from Pearl Harbor to make the initial attack: as the Americans proceeded they would be harassed by submarines while the Japanese fleet simply waited in their own territory. By the time the forces met in Japanese waters, the Americans would be so weakened by losses that they could be defeated in one great surface battle somewhere west of Iwo Jima and Saipan.
Once Yamamoto assumed command of the fleet, however, he extended the theoretical battle line to the Marshall Islands, which, together with the Carolines, had been turned over to Japan as mandates after World War I and constituted her possessions farthest east in the Pacific. Then in 1940, while witnessing the remarkable achievements of carrier-based planes in the spring fleet maneuvers, he turned to his chief of staff, Rear Admiral Shigeru Fukudome, as they paced the deck of the flagship Nagato and said, “I think an attack on Hawaii may be possible now that our air training has turned out so successfully.” In one sudden crushing blow the American fleet at Pearl Harbor would be crippled, and before it could be rebuilt Japan would have seized Southeast Asia with all its resources.*
The idea for a surprise attack was based on the tactics of his hero, Admiral Togo, who had, without any declaration of war, assaulted the Second Russian Pacific Squadron at Port Arthur in 1904 with torpedo boats while its commander, an Admiral Stark, was at a party. The Russians never recovered from this loss—two battleships and a number of cruisers—and the following year almost their entire fleet was destroyed in the Battle of Tsushima during which, incidentally, young Ensign Yamamoto lost two fingers on his left hand.
(The concept of achieving decisive victory by one surprise blow lay deep in the Japanese character. Their favorite literary form was the haiku, a poem combining sensual imagery and intuitive evocation in a brief seventeen syllables; a rapier thrust that expressed, with discipline, the illumination sought in the Japanese form of Buddhism. Similarly, the outcome in judo, sumo [wrestling] and kendo [fencing with bamboo staves], after long preliminaries, was settled by a sudden stroke.)
Yamamoto was not the only one thinking seriously of an air attack on Pearl Harbor. In Tokyo, Commander Kazunari Miyo, the aviation operations officer of the Navy General Staff, was trying to convince his chiefs that the way to beat a powerful enemy like America was to force her into a decisive battle as soon as possible. This could be done by using giant six- to eight-engine aircraft in a number of bombing raids on the U. S. fleet at Pearl Harbor. The Americans would either have to flee to the mainland or come out and fight near the Marshalls on Japanese terms.
Although the idea was never seriously considered by Miyo’s superiors, the discussion at naval headquarters might have been overheard. On January 27, 1941, Dr. Ricardo Rivera Schreiber, the Peruvian envoy in Tokyo, told a friend, First Secretary Edward S. Crocker of the American embassy, of a rumor that the Japanese intended to make a “surprise mass attack on Pearl Harbor” with all their strength. Crocker passed this on to Ambassador Grew, who cabled Washington. The message was routed to Naval Intelligence, which reported that “based on known data regarding the present disposition and employment of Japanese Naval and Army forces, no move against Pearl Harbor appears imminent or planned for the foreseeable future.”
At that moment Yamamoto was already moving forward. On February 1 he wrote an unofficial letter to Rear Admiral Takijiro Onishi, chief of staff of the Eleventh Air Fleet, outlining his plan and asking Onishi to carry out a secret study of its feasibility. Onishi turned to his friend and subordinate, Commander Minoru Genda, one of the Navy’s most promising officers, whose influence extended far beyond his rank—in China his brilliant innovations in mass long-range fighter operations had won him fame. Now he was asked to study the Yamamoto plan. After ten days he presented his conclusions: the attack on Pearl Harbor would be difficult to mount, and risky, but contained “a reasonable chance of success.”† Onishi forwarded this report to Yamamoto, along with his own deductions. The admiral was by then discussing the attack with his own operations officer, Captain Kameto Kuroshima, a brilliant eccentric who would absent-mindedly roam the flagship in kimono leaving a trail of cigarette ashes behind him. Orderlies referred to him as “the foggy staff officer.” Kuroshima closeted himself in his cabin for several days and finally emerged in a cloud of garlic, incense and cigarette smoke with a detailed plan entitled Operation Kuroshima.‡
Success rested on two precarious assumptions: that the Pacific Fleet (the United States Fleet had been so renamed on February 1) would be anchored at Pearl Harbor at the time of attack; and that a great carrier force could be moved halfway across the Pacific Ocean without being detected. Only a gambler would embark on such a venture and Yamamoto was certainly this. He was an expert at bridge and poker, as well as at shogi (Japanese chess). Once an American asked him how he had learned bridge so quickly. “If I can keep five thousand ideographs in my mind,” he explained, “it is not hard to keep in mind fifty-two cards.” He often told Commander Yasuji Watanabe, perhaps his favorite staff officer, that gambling—half calculation, half luck—played a major role in his thinking. As for the Hawaii attack, it was dangerous but the odds were too good not to take. “If we fail,” he said fatalistically, “we’d better give up the war.”
Two days after sending the letter to Onishi, Yamamoto outlined the plan to Captain Kanji Ogawa of Naval Intelligence, requesting that he collect as much data as possible about Hawaii. Although Ogawa already had a small group of spies in the islands—a timid German named Otto Kühn who needed money, a Buddhist priest and two Nisei—they merely provided unimportant bits of information. He decided to send in a naval intelligence expert who had already been selected and prepared for such a mission, even though an amputated finger made him readily identifiable. Takeo Yoshikawa was a twenty-nine-year-old ensign from Section 5, the American de
sk. He was slender, good-looking and appeared younger than his years.
Yoshikawa had attended the Naval Academy at Etajima, where he was a swimming champion (before graduating, every cadet was required to swim the ten miles of cold, jellyfish-ridden waters from the famed shrine at Miyajima to Etajima) and won fourth rank at kendo. He was a unique scholar. While his mates crammed for exams, he studied Zen Buddhism to attain spiritual discipline. Even so, he graduated on schedule and after a term as code officer on a cruiser, attended torpedo, gunnery and aviation schools. Heavy drinking, however, led to stomach trouble and temporary retirement from the service. He returned as a Reserve officer in Naval Intelligence. At first he served in the British section, then was transferred to the American section, where he sifted through a mountain of material that had accumulated, familiarized himself with ship movements and memorized various types of naval equipment.
In the spring of 1940 he was asked by his section chief, Captain Takeuchi, if he would volunteer to serve in Hawaii as a secret agent. He would get no espionage training, not even a single manual, and would in effect be on his own. Yoshikawa accepted and turned into a civilian, assuming the cover name of Tadashi Morimura. In preparation for his role as consular official, he let his hair grow and began to study international law and English at Nippon University. He passed the diplomatic exams and divided his time between the Foreign Ministry, where he did research on American politics and economy, and Section 5.
By the time Admiral Yamamoto made his request for additional Hawaiian intelligence it was spring of 1941, and Yoshikawa was ready. On March 20 he boarded the liner Nitta-maru at Yokohama. A week later he arrived in Honolulu, keyed up at the thought of pitting himself against the U. S. Navy. Consul General Nagao Kita greeted him cordially and the following night took him to the Shunchoro, a Japanese restaurant located on a hill overlooking Pearl Harbor. The proprietress, Namiko Fujiwara, came from Yoshikawa’s own prefecture, Ehime. She told him she had five geishas, trained in Japan. The assignment would not be a dull one.
Yoshikawa got a salary of $150 a month, as well as $600 for six months’ expenses. He began operations, improvising his own methods. First he made a grand tour of all the main islands, followed by two auto trips around Oahu, and then an air junket over Oahu wearing a loud aloha shirt like any other tourist and accompanied by a pretty geisha. After a second tour of the islands he was sure there were no naval ships except at Pearl Harbor and decided to concentrate on Oahu. Twice a week he took a six-hour drive around the island and visited the Pearl Harbor area every day. As a rule, he would simply gaze at it from the crest of a hill, but several times he got inside the gates. Once, armed with a lunch box, he followed a group of laborers and spent the day wandering around without being questioned; he tapped a big oil tank to see how much was inside and discovered that full tanks usually leaked and could easily be detected from outside the fence. Another time he persuaded a hostess at an officers club to hire him as a kitchen helper at a big party, but all he learned was how Americans wash dishes.
The large Japanese community was no help at all. Yoshikawa sounded out many individuals, usually over drinks at the consulate, but discovered that almost all considered themselves loyal Americans; to Yoshikawa it didn’t make sense to be American while worshiping at Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines and contributing generously to the Imperial Army’s relief fund. One old man did promise to set fire to a sugar-cane field in case of war and talked freely of all the guns he’d seen, but Yoshikawa discounted the man’s reports when he began describing one on top of Diamond Head as “big as a temple bell.”
Gossiping with American sailors was just as fruitless. They talked a lot without saying a thing. What information he got was by simple, unexciting methods. He sat on a tatami in the Shunchoro with the geishas—sometimes Shimeko, sometimes Marichiyo—and drew diagrams of the ships in the sprawling harbor below. On his regular drives he usually took a girl—a geisha or one of the maids at the consulate—because guards stopped him if he was alone.
Once he taxied up to Hickam Field, the big Army Air Corps bomber base near Pearl Harbor. At the gate he told the guard he was meeting an American officer and was waved on. As the cab slowly cruised around the base, Yoshikawa made mental notes of the number of hangars and planes, and the length of the two main runways. He also attended an air show at Wheeler Field, a fighter air base in the center of Oahu. He sat on the grass with other spectators watching P-40 fighter pilots do aerobatics; several swooped through an open hangar. He made no notes, but memorized the number of planes and pilots, hangars, barracks and soldiers. He never photographed anything, depending instead on his “camera eyes.”
Once a week he submitted a report to Kita, who sent his chauffeur with the coded messages to the Mackay cable office in Honolulu. Within a month Yoshikawa was sure he was being “tailed” by the FBI in a black car with radio antenna. Kita warned him to be more careful but Yoshikawa stubbornly continued his routine; before long the two men found themselves quarreling almost every day.
2.
By April the Pearl Harbor plan had a new name—Operation Z, in honor of the famed Z signal given by Admiral Togo at Tsushima: ON THIS ONE BATTLE RESTS THE FATE OF OUR NATION. LET EVERY MAN DO HIS UTMOST. Now it was time to turn it over to those who would have to put it into effect—the First Air Fleet.
On April 10 Rear Admiral Ryunosuke Kusaka was made chief of staff of the First Air Fleet. He was sturdy and energetic, with a candid face. His father had been a business executive, but young Kusaka’s calling was the sea. After graduation from the Naval Academy in 1913 he spent most of his time in naval aviation, once crossing the Pacific in the Graf Zeppelin as an observer. He captained two carriers, Hosho and Akagi, and before coming to Tokyo, commanded the 24th Air Squadron in Palau.
After reporting to the Navy General Staff, the forty-eight-year-old admiral was brought to the office of a former classmate at the Naval War College, Admiral Shigeru Fukudome, the then chief of the Operations Bureau. “Take a look at this,” Fukudome told his colleague and held out a sheaf of papers written in pen. A glance through the pages made it clear to Kusaka that the writing was Onishi’s. “This is supposed to be an operational plan,” he said, “but we can’t use it in a real fight.”
“This is merely a proposal. Nothing has been decided yet. In case of war, we need a practicable plan from you. Make it work.”
Kusaka took a train south to Hiroshima, where he reported to his new chief, Vice Admiral Chuichi Nagumo, on board the flagship Akagi. Nagumo was short, slight. A torpedo expert, he knew little of aviation, and told Kusaka he would have to be responsible for Operation Z. Kusaka was no flier, either; he considered himself “an aviation broker.” The details would have to be drawn up by men with intimate knowledge of flying, so he summoned the senior staff officer, Commander Tamotsu Oishi, and the aviation staff officer, Commander Minoru Genda. The latter, of course, knew all about Pearl Harbor, but kept it to himself when Kusaka told the two to draw up a complete, workable plan.
The more Kusaka studied the project the more he doubted its feasibilities: it was too risky, and defeat in such an initial battle would mean losing the war. As Operation Z developed, so did Kusaka’s concern. He visited Admiral Onishi late in June and pointed out the flaws in the plan so persuasively that Onishi finally conceded it was too much of a gamble.
Kusaka suggested that they go to Yamamoto.
“You were the one who started this argument,” said Onishi. “You tell him.”
Kusaka returned to Akagi, got permission from his commander to see Yamamoto, and took a launch to Nagato, the flagship of the Combined Fleet. The plan was too speculative, he said, and summed up all his arguments.
Yamamoto took Kusaka’s criticisms good-naturedly. “You just call it speculative because I play poker and mah-jong, but actually it isn’t.” These words ended the interview, but not Kusaka’s anxiety. Downcast, he was walking toward the gangway when he felt a tap on his shoulder. It was Yamamoto. “
I understand why you object, but the Pearl Harbor attack is a decision I made as commander in chief. Therefore I’d appreciate it if you will stop arguing and from now on make every effort to carry out my decision. If in the future you should have any objections from other people, I’ll back you up.”
Oishi worked out the overall plan and Genda studied the techniques of air attack—he had been thinking of a concentrated carrier strike since watching an American newsreel in 1940—while Kusaka himself devoted his energies to the aspect he felt was the most vulnerable: bringing the Striking Force within air range of Pearl Harbor without being discovered. It seemed an impossible task. Japanese ships were faster than American, but at the expense of armor and cruising range. The ships in the Striking Force, except the new carriers Shokaku and Zuikaku, simply did not have the fuel capactiy to approach Pearl Harbor. How would he be able to refuel on the run?
There was also the element of surprise. What course would ensure it? He called in Lieutenant Commander Toshisaburo Sasabe, the staff navigation expert, and told him to study the nationalities and types of ships which had crossed the Pacific during the past ten years. Sasabe reported that no ships traveled at latitude 40 degrees north during November and December because of rough seas. The first thing that came to Kusaka’s mind when he read Sasabe’s report was the surprise attack made by Yoshitsune Minamoto in the twelfth century upon the enemy’s supposedly impregnable castle; Minamoto had gained access by launching an assault from a completely unexpected quarter.§ Kusaka could do the same thing by striking at Pearl Harbor from the north; the U. S. fleet usually held maneuvers southwest of Hawaii, on the assumption that any attack would come from the Japanese base on the Marshall Islands. The one drawback—and it was a considerable one—was the problem of refueling his ships in the rough seas, but Kusaka dismissed it at once; he would overcome that problem by discipline and training.