The Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire, 1936-1945 (Modern Library War)
Page 26
On November 16 the Pearl Harbor Carrier Striking Force (Kido Butai) gathered at the mouth of the Inland Sea. It was a formidable armada: six carriers; two fast battleships with 14-inch guns, Hiei and Kirishima; two heavy cruisers, Tone and Chikuma; a light cruiser; eight destroyers; and a train of three oilers and a supply ship. Two of the carriers, Akagi (Red Castle) and Kaga (Increased Joy), had been converted from a battle cruiser and a battleship and displaced more than 30,000 tons. Hiryu (Flying Dragon) and Soryu (Green Dragon) were only 18,000 tons, but of more modern design. Shokaku (Soaring Crane) and Zuikaku (Happy Crane) were the newest and largest, 826 feet long, almost exactly the same size as America’s most formidable carrier, Enterprise. The six carriers held 360 planes: 81 fighters, 135 dive bombers, 104 high-level (horizontal) bombers and 40 torpedo bombers, which had only thirty torpedoes fitted with the new fins. The remaining hundred would not be ready for more than a week and Kido Butai would have to start without them.
Late the following afternoon Yamamoto visited Akagi to wish Nagumo and key personnel good luck. Fuchida thought the admiral looked grim as he warned of the strongest foe in their history, but later at a farewell party in the wardroom Yamamoto’s confidence was infectious. He said, “I think this operation will be successful,” and a rousing toast was drunk to the Emperor.
Soon after dark Akagi slowly steamed out of Saeki Bay flanked by two destroyers. Her lights were out and crystals had been temporarily removed from the communications equipment to ensure radio silence. But the ships left behind in the Inland Sea were ready to set up a large volume of radio communication to mislead enemy listeners.
On the quarterdeck of Nagato, hands behind his back, Yamamoto paced back and forth, stopping every so often to stare at the dim shape of the departing carrier. Confident as he was of Operation Z, he still dreaded war with America. “What a strange position I find myself in now,” he had recently written an Academy classmate, “having to make a decision diametrically opposed to my personal opinion, with no choice but to push full speed in pursuance of that decision. Is that, too, fate? And what a bad start we’ve made.…”
One by one, at irregular intervals, other ships in the Striking Force weighed anchor and headed on separate courses for a rendezvous some thousand miles north of Tokyo. It would have been too obvious to set sail directly en masse for Oahu. Instead Kido Butai would reassemble at Eterofu Island in the Kuriles which possessed a large deep bay, rough in summer but strangely calm in winter. The island was an ideal clandestine rallying point. Its single village comprised three dwellings, a small concrete pier, a post office and a wireless station. To be on the safe side, the gunboat Kunajiri was already impounding outgoing mail and telegrams, while patrol boats rounded up any fishermen in Hitokappu Bay.
Kaga was the last carrier still left in the Inland Sea. It was being loaded with the final modified torpedoes. Once the ship got under way the captain gathered the entire crew on deck to announce that they were heading for Hitokappu Bay and then Pearl Harbor—where Yoshikawa was watching a large battleship enter the harbor along with eight destroyers. Already at anchor were five heavy cruisers and one Enterprise-class carrier.
Taiyo-maru was docking in Yokohama. The vital information Suguru Suzuki needed was still locked in the diplomatic pouch. And now he had to turn it over to a Foreign Ministry representative. Empty-handed, he took the train to Tokyo, where Admiral Nagano ordered him to leave at once for Hitokappu Bay with the latest information from Hawaii. But the pouch had been lost in transit. The Foreign Ministry officials knew nothing about it, neither could they locate it, and Suzuki was forced to head north on the battleship Hiei, bringing only a single sheet of paper which contained his own summary of the missing information and a sketch of Pearl Harbor made from memory.
Urgent though his mission was, it took him four days to reach Kido Butai. He learned that the missing diplomatic pouch had finally been found in Tokyo, only to disappear again. The courier plane with the pouch aboard, sent out two days earlier, had not yet arrived and Suzuki had to brief Genda, Kusaka and other staff officers on the basis of his page of notes. He described Hickam and Wheeler fields in detail and said there were 350 Army planes on Oahu.b No one at the Japanese consulate had seen any ships at Lahaina and he had confirmed this on the voyage back to Japan over drinks from half a dozen returning Nisei.
On Akagi, ship captains and their executive officers were given the course. One of the captains wanted to know what to do if he ran into a Soviet merchant ship out of Vladivostok. “Sink it,” was the answer. “Sink anything flying any flag.”
In the late afternoon on November 25 more than five hundred flying officers from all the carriers jammed into Akagi’s aviaition-crew quarters, which had been stripped of bunks and tables. Nagumo outlined the attack. It was the first time most of them had heard the words Pearl Harbor. As the admiral spoke, excitement mounted and when he ended with a “Good fight and good luck!” there was a deafening cheer.
When the noise died down, Genda and Fuchida detailed the attack on the Pearl Harbor mock-up. Each flier was given pictures of American warships and islands near Oahu which could be used for forced landings; friendly submarines would be at marked positions to pick them up.
It had grown so dark and the seas were so rough that many of the fliers could not get back to their own ships. That night, the eve of departure, there was a giant sake party aboard Akagi. But the commander in chief was in no mood for celebration. For a man of courage, Nagumo was a compulsive worrier and the past week he had been telling his chief of staff over and over, “I wonder if it will go well,” and Kusaka would invariably reply, “Daijobu”—“Don’t worry.”
But Nagumo could not be reassured. Long after midnight he got out of bed and ordered his aide to rouse Lieutenant Commander Suguru Suzuki. Still in sleeping kimono, he apologized for waking Suzuki, but something bothered him. “You’re absolutely certain no one sighted the Pacific Fleet in Lahaina?”
“Yes, Admiral.”
“Is there any possibility the Pacific Fleet might assemble in Lahaina?”
“None.”
Nagumo seemed to relax. He nodded his thanks. Suzuki retired, grateful and moved that he had been able to calm his commander’s fears.
The morning of the twenty-sixth dawned bright and clear with unusually high pressure for this time of year. The seas had calmed. It seemed a good omen; but just as the fleet was weighing anchor, one of the giant screws of Akagi got fouled in wire, and a sailor fell into the icy waters of Hitokappu Bay.
Half an hour late, the armada finally got under way, except for the man overboard who could not be found. There was a feeling of excitement and purpose on every ship and as they filed past Eterofu, fringed with its usual veil of mist, the heavy cruisers and battleships test-fired their guns by throwing live rounds into a hillside of the island. The sound of the guns and the splashes of snow bursting on the hill like huge white flowers stirred the men.
In Washington, Hull’s uncompromising note was being typed out for Ambassadors Kurusu and Nomura.
* It is intriguing to speculate on the inspiration for Yamamoto’s plan for an attack on Pearl Harbor. In 1921 a book entitled Sea Power in the Pacific was published in the United States, written by Hector C. Bywater, naval correspondent for the London Daily Telegraph. Four years later, part of this book was expanded into a novel under the title The Great Pacific War. In it, Bywater described a Japanese surprise attack on the U. S. Asiatic Fleet in Pearl Harbor, with simultaneous assaults on Guam and the Philippines, and with landings on Luzon at Lingayen Gulf and Lamon Bay. The Navy General Staff in Tokyo, which had had Sea Power in the Pacific translated and distributed among top naval officers, also adopted The Great Pacific War for the curriculum at the Naval War College.
At the time The Great Pacific War was published, Yamamoto was serving as naval attaché in Washington. In September 1925 the New York Times Book Review featured the book on page one, under the headline IF WAR COMES IN THE PACIFIC. Undoub
tedly Yamamoto, an obsessive student of naval affairs, had the book called to his attention.
† The main source of this information is Minoru Genda, whose testimony was inconsistent. He was questioned on November 28, 1945, by Captain Payton Harrison, USNR, with Douglas Wada interpreting. Captain Harrison conducted several more interrogations, and Genda also made a deposition for the defense in the Tokyo trials. Each time the facts varied: the Pearl Harbor attack was conceived on February 1 in a conversation with Admiral Onishi; then, it was outlined in a letter from Yamamoto to Onishi, but he gave three different dates—January 27, February 1 and February 10.
‡ After the war, shortly before his death, Kuroshima told Miyo, “The Pearl Harbor attack was my idea.”
§ This battle, fought on February 7, 1184, followed by a sea victory a year later, decided the struggle between the Minamoto and Taira clans for domination of Japan.
ǁ Takamori Saigo, the prototype of the Japanese man of action, led the Satsuma Rebellion in 1877 against the Meiji government. Though one of Japan’s great heroes, the people failed to respond to his call for revolt. His statue, standing in Kagoshima, is still a shrine of Japanese seishin (spirit).
a Lieutenant Commander Shigeru Itaya, who would command all the fighter squadrons, was the only fighter squadron leader present. The others had already been informed of Pearl Harbor by Genda. He told them it would have to be a one-way mission but when they vowed to kill the men who had made such a plan, he promised to get it changed.
b Most of his information was fairly correct except for this figure. There were 231 (Army) planes in all the Hawaiian islands.
The courier plane with the vital information arrived several hours after the Striking Force departed. Suzuki had remained behind and he ordered the pilot to give chase and drop the material on Akagi. But the plane ran into a local snowstorm and had to turn back.
7
“This War May Come Quicker Than Anyone Dreams”
1.
On the morning after Hull sent the note, Secretary of War Henry Stimson phoned him to ask whether he had dispatched the modus vivendi to Japan. The Secretary of State replied, “I have washed my hands of it and it is now in the hands of you and Knox—the Army and the Navy.”
Stimson called Roosevelt and expressed concern about reports that a large Japanese expeditionary force was moving out of Shanghai for the south. Shouldn’t a final alert be sent to Lieutenant General Douglas MacArthur, commander of the United States Army Forces in the Far East (USAFFE), in the Philippines advising him to be “on the qui vive for any attack”? The President thought it was a good idea, and at nine-thirty Stimson summoned to his office Brigadier General Leonard T. Gerow, chief of the General Staff Operations Division, as well as Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox and Admiral Harold (“Betty”) Stark, the Chief of Naval Operations.
Once more the military urged that a crisis be postponed as long as possible. Stimson said that he also would be “glad to have time,” and thought Stark was being “as usual, a little bit timid and cautious” when it came to a real crisis, but he “didn’t want it at any cost of humility on the part of the United States or of reopening the thing which would show a weakness on our part.”
“The war warning they finally radioed to MacArthur read:
NEGOTIATIONS WITH THE JAPANESE APPEAR TO BE TERMINATED TO ALL PRACTICAL PURPOSES WITH ONLY THE BAREST POSSIBILITIES THAT THE JAPANESE GOVERNMENT MIGHT COME BACK AND OFFER TO CONTINUE PERIOD JAPANESE FUTURE ACTION UNPREDICTABLE BUT HOSTILE ACTION POSSIBLE AT ANY MOMENT PERIOD IF HOSTILITIES CANNOT, REPEAT CANNOT, BE AVOIDED THE UNITED STATES DESIRES THAT JAPAN COMMIT THE FIRST OVERT ACT PERIOD THIS POLICY SHOULD NOT, REPEAT NOT, BE CONSTRUED AS RESTRICTING YOU TO A COURSE OF ACTION THAT MIGHT JEOPARDIZE YOUR DEFENSE …
A similar message was sent to General Walter C. Short, commander of the Hawaiian Department of the Army, but it also ordered him to do nothing “to alarm civil population or disclose intent.”* General Short took the entire warning to mean he should institute a sabotage alert. He informed Washington of this but apparently nobody there read his reply carefully. He was never told he had missed the import of the instructions.
Admiral Stark wrote his own message to the naval commanders in the Pacific—Admiral Thomas C. Hart in the Philippines and Admiral Husband E. Kimmel in Hawaii. It was clear and to the point:
THIS DISPATCH IS TO BE CONSIDERED A WAR WARNING X NEGOTIATIONS WITH JAPAN LOOKING TOWARD STABILIZATION OF CONDITIONS IN THE PACIFIC HAVE CEASED AND AN AGGRESSIVE MOVE BY JAPAN IS EXPECTED IN THE NEXT FEW DAYS X THE NUMBER AND EQUIPMENT OF JAPANESE TROOPS AND THE ORGANIZATION OF NAVAL TASK FORCES INDICATES AN AMPHIBIOUS EXPEDITION AGAINST EITHER THE PHILIPPINES THAI OR KRA PENINSULA OR POSSIBLY BORNEO X EXECUTE AN APPROPRIATE DEFENSIVE DEPLOYMENT PREPARATORY TO CARRYING OUT THE TASKS ASSIGNED IN WPL 46 [War Plan] X …
Despite these alerts, the negotiations continued in name. That same day Kurusu and Nomura called on the President. Roosevelt said he still hadn’t given up hope for a peaceful settlement. But the recent occupation of Indochina, troop movements to the south and hostile talk from Japan all had had “the effect of a cold bath on the United States Government and people.”
Just before midnight Kurusu phoned Tokyo, using a clumsy voice code that wouldn’t have deceived a layman. The negotiations, for example, were “marriage proposal”; Roosevelt was “Miss Kimiko”; a critical turn was the “birth of a child.” For seven minutes Kurusu talked to Kumaichi Yamamoto, chief of the American Bureau in the Foreign Ministry, as American intelligence recorded every word.† He asked how things were in Japan. “Does it seem as if a child might be born?”
“Yes,” Yamamoto replied firmly, “the birth of the child seems imminent.”
“… In which direction …” Kurusu hesitated, realizing he was not using the code. “Is it to be a boy or a girl?”
Yamamoto laughed, then caught on. “Oh, it’s to be a strong healthy boy.… The matrimonial question, that is, the matter pertaining to arranging a marriage—don’t break them off.”
“Not break them? You mean talks?” asked the befuddled Kurusu. “Oh, my,” he said helplessly and added with a resigned laugh, “Well, I’ll do what I can.” He paused. “Please read carefully what Miss Kimiko had to say as contained in today’s telegram.… They want to keep carrying on the matrimonial question. They do. In the meantime we’re faced with the excitement of having a child born. On top of that Tokugawa [the Japanese Army] is really champing at the bit, isn’t he? Tokugawa is, isn’t he?” He laughed nervously. “That’s why I doubt if anything can be done.”
Yamamoto said he didn’t think it was as bad as all that. “Well, we can’t sell a mountain [Well, we can’t yield].”
“Oh, sure, I know that. That isn’t even a debatable question any more.”
“Well, then, although we can’t yield, we’ll give you some kind of a reply to that telegram.”
“In any event,” Kurusu went on, “Miss Kimiko is leaving town tomorrow, and will remain in the country until Wednesday.”
“Will you please continue to do your best?”
“Oh, yes. I’ll do my best. And Nomura’s doing everything too.” Yamamoto asked if the talks that day with Miss Kimiko contained anything of interest. “No, nothing of particular interest, except that it is quite clear now that southward—ah …”—Kurusu began to flounder again—“the south—the south matter is having considerable effect.”
“I see. Well, then, good-bye.”
“Good-bye,” said the relieved Kurusu.
The next day MAGIC uncovered even more important information from an intercepted message to Consul General Kita sent from Tokyo nine days earlier:
… In case of emergency (danger of cutting off our diplomatic relations), and the cutting off of international communications, the following warning will be added in the middle of the daily Japanese-language shortwave news broadcast:
(1) In case of Japan-U. S. relations in danger: HIGASHI NO KAZE AME [east wind, rain]
(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, please destroy all code papers, etc. This is as yet to be a completely secret arrangement.
This “winds” message created a turmoil in Washington. Alarmed intelligence officers made arrangements to monitor around the clock all future Japanese newscasts for the key phrases, unaware that a packet of untranslated intercepts could instantly have unmasked the attack on Pearl Harbor. Yoshikawa’s espionage reports were piling up in the busy translators “Incoming” baskets—too low on the priority list for even a cursory examination.
That same morning—it was November 28—Stimson burst into Roosevelt’s bedroom, finding the President still in bed but in conference, with more news of the southbound Japanese expedition. Stimson wanted to attack it with Philippine-based B-17’s but Roosevelt would not be panicked, and when he met a few hours later with the War Council it was agreed that there should be no precipitous countermeasures. Japan would only be warned that “we should have to fight” once her troops reached a certain point. It was also decided to have the President send a personal message to the Emperor expressing a desire for peace and a warning that war was bound to come if Japan persisted in her aggression.
It was a good idea and the Emperor would have been receptive. He had just requested the jushin to re-examine the entire situation and report back to him. The former prime ministers—Prince Konoye was the eighth—had not been involved in the previous decisions and would have a more objective viewpoint. Marquis Kido, the Privy Seal, had wanted the meeting conducted in the presence of His Majesty, but Prime Minister Tojo refused on the grounds that the jushin had no legal function. A compromise was reached: after the meeting the senior statesmen would lunch with the Emperor and express their opinions.