by Toland, John
At the head of Kaga’s fighters was Lieutenant (s.g.) Yoshio Shiga, the amateur painter. He was champing, hoping to be the first to take off. He beckoned to one of his ground-crew men and told him to yank out the chocks at his own command—not to wait, as usual, for the flagman’s signal.
On the bridge Chief Aviation Officer Naohiro Sata told the carrier captain, “Planes are ready,” and the skipper turned Kaga into the wind. A triangular pennant with a white circle on a red background was run halfway up the mast of the command ship, Akagi. In this position, the aviation flag meant “Get ready for takeoff.” Then it was hoisted to the top of the mast. Commander Sata was watching it from Kaga; when it was lowered he would give a hand signal to drop Kaga’s aviation flag.
Lieutenant Shiga was not watching his own carrier’s flag. He had his eyes glued on Akagi’s. It dropped. He shouted, “Remove chocks!” and roared down the runway. Kaga’s captain was leaning out a window, expecting to see the usual courtesy salute, but Shiga was too intent on getting into the air before anyone else. His Type Zeroh plunged off the deck, dropped precipitously to within 15 feet of the sea. He turned left and climbed, noticing with dismay that the first fighter pilot on Akagi, Lieutenant Commander Shigeru Itaya, had beaten him by a few seconds. He had not waited for his flagman either. Shiga took his time in the turn so that his squadron could catch up, then joined Itaya, who was commanding all the fighters. They streaked south in loose formation like a flock of swallows.
Behind them the high-level medium bombers were taking off. Squadron leader Heijiro Abe was in the first Mitsubishi to leave Soryu. Contrary to American practice, he was not the pilot but the navigator-bombardier. Concerned about the roll and pitch of the carrier, he looked back anxiously into the dimness as the others followed. To his relief all his planes were soon in a precise V formation behind the fighters. Next the Aichi Type 99 dive bombers got off the runway and joined up.
The takeoff of the Nakajima Type 97 torpedo bombers was the most hazardous, and putting them in the initial wave while it was still partially dark was a gamble. The first off Hiryu was squadron leader Hirata Matsumura. When he plunged from the deck it was like being sucked into a dark pit. He fought his way up to 500 feet and was immediately engulfed in dense clouds. He broke through into the open, then veered left. Once his men had collected, he met the Soryu torpedo planes, and together they tagged after the Akagi and Kaga planes at 13,000 feet. The entire launching had taken no more than fifteen minutes—a record—and a single aircraft, a Zero fighter, had crashed.
Up ahead, Shiga looked back upon a great straggling formation. Never before had he seen so many planes. Half an hour after the takeoff a huge, brilliant sun rose to the left. It was the first time Juzo Mori, a young torpedo pilot—son of a farmer—had ever seen a sunrise from the air. The planes ahead were etched in black silhouette against the red, and it was such a romantic, incongruous sight that he could not believe he was heading for Japan’s most important battle. To Lieutenant Matsumura, the sunrise was a sacred sight; it marked the dawn of a new century.
In Pearl Harbor it was 6:30 A.M. The antitorpedo net across the entrance to Pearl Harbor was open for an approaching vessel, the target ship Antares. Outside the entrance to the harbor Lieutenant William Outerbridge, the young skipper of the destroyer Ward, had just been roused from his bunk, and wearing glasses and a Japanese kimono, was peering off the port bow at Antares in the murky light. It was towing a raft into Pearl Harbor. Outerbridge saw something else following. It looked like a submarine’s conning tower. “Go to general quarters,” he shouted. Just then Antares blinkered confirmation: “Small sub 1,500 yards off starboard quarter.”
Ward closed to a hundred yards and fired Number 1 gun at point-blank range. It missed. Number 3 gun fired, hit the conning tower and the midget began to sink. While the crew was still cheering, Outerbridge shouted, “Drop depth charges!” The destroyer’s whistle blasted four times and four charges rolled off the stern.
At 6:51 A.M. Outerbridge radioed the 14th Naval District: WE HAVE DROPPED DEPTH CHARGES ON SUB OPERATING IN DEFENSIVE AREA. THEN, DECIDING THIS MESSAGE WASN’T STRONG ENOUGH, SENT ANOTHER TWO MINUTES LATER: WE HAVE ATTACKED FIRED UPON AND DROPPED DEPTH CHARGES UPON SUBMARINE OPERATING IN DEFENSIVE SEA AREA.
Because of delay in decoding, the second message didn’t reach Admiral Kimmel’s chief of staff, Captain John B. Earle, until 7:12 A.M. A few minutes later Admiral Claude C. Bloch read it and said, “What do you know about it?”
Earle was dubious. “We get so many of these false sightings. We can’t go off half-cocked.”
Bloch saw his point. In the past few months there’d been a dozen such sub warnings—all false. “Ask this to be verified.”
At almost this same moment another warning was being reported to the Army—and also discounted—from the Opana outpost at Kahuku Point on the northern tip of Oahu. Private George Elliott, Jr., of the 515th Signal Aircraft Warning Service, a recent transfer from the Air Corps, had seen a large blip on his radar unit at 7:06 A.M. He called over Private Joseph Lockard, who had much more experience. It was the largest group Lockard had ever seen on the oscilloscope and looked like two main pulses. He figured something had gone wrong with the machine, but after a check agreed with Elliott that it was really a large flight of planes.
By now Elliott had located the blip on the plotting board: 137 miles to the north, 3 degrees east. He was so excited that he suggested they call the Information Center at Fort Shafter. At first Lockard was reluctant but finally let his assistant make the call. The switchboard operator at tie Information Center could find no one on duty except a pilot named Kermit Tyler. When told that the blips were getting bigger and that the planes were now only ninety miles from Oahu, Tyler said, “Don’t worry about it,” and hung up—the blips must represent the flight of Flying Fortresses coming in from the mainland or planes from a carrier.
In Washington it was 12:30 P.M. and Nomura was frantic. In thirty minutes he was to see Hull, and the fourteenth part of the note had just been deciphered and turned over to Okumura for typing. This harried man and his inept assistant were still punching away at the first thirteen parts. The confusion had been compounded when two “correction” messages were received: one amending a single word, and the other announcing that a sentence had been dropped in transmission. The first meant the retyping of one page, and the second, two pages.
As the minutes ticked away, Nomura returned to the doorway again and again, pleading with Okumura and his helper to hurry. The pressure created more mistakes. Already it was obvious that the envoys would be at least an hour late.
A Japanese floatplane from Tone was above Lahaina Roads and another from Chikuma was almost directly over Pearl Harbor. No one on the ground noticed either plane. Nor was any communications man listening when the plane over Lahaina radioed back to Kido Butai in simple code at exactly 7:35 A.M.:
ENEMY’S FLEET NOT AT LAHAINA 0305.
A moment later came another:
ENEMY’S FLEET IN PEARL HARBOR.
This was about “the most delightful message” Kusaka had ever received. Right on its heels came a third report: there were some clouds over Oahu, but the sky over Pearl Harbor was “absolutely clear.”
Togo had just arrived at the Palace grounds. Stars shone brilliantly. It was going to be a fine day. The Foreign Minister was immediately ushered into the Emperor’s presence. It was almost at the exact moment Nomura and Kurusu were supposed to see Hull. Togo read Roosevelt’s message and the proposed draft of the Emperor’s reply. The Emperor approved the reply, and his countenance, Togo thought, reflected “a noble feeling of brotherhood with all peoples.”
The spacious plaza outside the Sakashita Gate was deserted, and as Togo drove away, the sole noise in the city was the crunching of gravel under the car tires. His mind was far away: in a few minutes one of the most momentous days in the history of the world would begin.
* The Army Pearl Harbor Board later sarcastically referred to
this as the “Do or Don’t Message.”
† The U. S. translation is the only source available. No Japanese record could be found, and both Yamamoto and Kurusu are dead.
‡ He knew about the combined Army and Navy operations in the Philippines and Malaya, but it was not until the following day that he learned of Pearl Harbor, and even then he was given no operational details. None of the civilian members of the Cabinet or high court officials, like Kido, yet had an inkling of the main target—nor would they be told.
§ This dialogue is taken from the MAGIC translation, “a preliminary condensed version” of the eight-minute conversation.
ǁ In January 1946 the Emperor broke his silence about these events in a rare display of confidence to his Grand Chamberlain, Hisanori Fujita: “Naturally, war should never be allowed. In this case, too, I tried to think of everything, some way to avoid it. I exhausted every means within my power. However, my utmost endeavor was to no avail, and we plunged into war at the end. It was truly regrettable.…
“The Emperor of a constitutional state is not permitted to express himself freely in speech and action and is not allowed to willfully interfere with a minister’s authority invested in him by the Constitution.
“Consequently, when a certain decision is brought to me for approval, whether it concerns internal affairs, diplomacy or military matters, there is nothing I can do but give my approval as long as it has been reached by lawful procedure, even if I consider the decision extremely undesirable.…
“If I turned down a decision on my own accord, what would happen? The Emperor could not maintain his position of responsibility if a decision which had been reached by due process based on the Constitution could be either approved or rejected by the Emperor at his discretion. It would be the same thing as if the Emperor had destroyed the Constitution. Such an attitude is taboo for the Emperor of a constitutional state.” (“I believe,” Fujita observed, “that His Majesty was talking abstractly about the prewar imperial conferences and so forth.”)
a After the Tokyo trial U. S. Chief Prosecutor Joseph Keenan met the Emperor, who reportedly told him he didn’t know Pearl Harbor was going to be bombed. From available evidence, however, it is evident he did know and approve of Operation Z. It is also well documented that he issued explicit directives to give America due notice before the attack.
b Mount Niitaka on Formosa was, at 13,599 feet (1,211 feet higher than Mount Fuji), the highest peak in the Japanese Empire.
c Commander Naohiro Sata, Kaga’s Chief Aviation Officer, however, was openly critical of the entire operation. He told a group of pilots, “Here we are heading out into the North Pacific where not even a bird flies.” What Japan needed was oil and that was far to the south. “Therefore, it is the height of stupidity to attack Pearl Harbor.”
d Some attention was diverted by a bitter political controversy involving treason. Several anti-Roosevelt Army officers had stolen top-secret documents revealing America’s war plans and turned them over to three isolationist newspapers—the Chicago Tribune, the New York Daily News and the Washington Times-Herald—which simultaneously published these secrets on December 4 in an effort to prove that Roosevelt was a warmonger.
e After the war Colonel Rufus Bratton of Army Intelligence declared. “If we had gotten that message [on December 6] … the whole picture might have been different.”
f They must also have been jolted by an article by a retired admiral in Saturday night’s edition of the Japan Times & Advertiser. The author boasted that U. S. naval authorities were “apparently talking in delirium when they say it is improbable for Japan to extend its activities to Hawaii, and that such an attempt is bound to end in failure.”
g A bellyband worn as a good-luck charm. Mothers, wives or sisters would stand on street corners and ask passers-by to add their stitch to the belt until it had one thousand. This meant each belt contained a thousand prayers for good luck and a good fight.
h The name came from the date of the plane’s origin, 1940, the 2,600th year of Japanese recorded history.
PART THREE
Banzai!
8
“I Shall Never Look Back”
1.
The first Zeros approached the northern tip of Oahu, Kahuku Point, at 7:48 A.M. Through clouds below him Lieutenant Yoshio Shiga, leader of the Kaga fighters, could barely make out a jut of land and a rim of white surf. A moment later he saw Fuchida’s high-level command bomber and awaited a blue flare, the attack signal for the fighter planes, which were without radios. Those in the bombers were tuned in to a local Honolulu station. They heard the haunting strains of a Japanese song.
Banks of cumulus clouds clung to the peaks of the mountain ranges east and west of Pearl Harbor, but over the great naval base, lying in a valley between, the clouds were scattered. The sun shone brightly, its slanting rays giving the cane fields a deep-green hue. The waters of Pearl Harbor—originally named Wai Momi, “water of pearl”—glimmered a brilliant blue. Several civilian planes were lazily circling over the area, but of all the Oahu-based Army planes, not one was airborne. They were tightly bunched together, wing to wing, for security against saboteurs at Hickam, Bellows and Wheeler fields. So were the Marine planes at Ewa Field. The only American military planes in the air were seven Navy PBY’s on patrol many miles to the southwest.
Antiaircraft defense was also off-guard. Three quarters of the 780 AA guns on the ships in Pearl Harbor were unmanned, and only four of the Army’s 31 AA batteries were in position—and their ready ammunition had been returned to depots after practice, since it was “apt to disintegrate and get dusty.”
Upon reaching Kahuku Point, Fuchida’s plane—he was the observer—began circling around the west coast of Oahu to approach Pearl Harbor. At exactly 7:49 A.M. Fuchida radioed back to Kido Butai in Morse code: TO … TO … TO … This represented the first syllable of Totsugeki! (Charge!) and meant: “First wave attacking.” As Fuchida neared the target, he was faced with a tactical decision. If in his judgment the Americans were completely surprised, the torpedo planes would streak directly for Battleship Row; if not, the fighters would first have to eliminate any interceptors. The sky ahead was empty and peaceful. Before long, Pearl Harbor—legendary abode of the shark goddess Kaahupahau—was spread out below like a huge relief map. It looked exactly as he had imagined. Still not a single fighter climbed up to challenge, neither was there one mushroom puff of AA fire. It was incredible.
At 7:53 A.M. he radioed to Nagumo TORA, TORA, TORA! The repeated code word, meaning “tiger,” stood for “We have succeeded in surprise attack.” He set off one blue flare to signal that surprise had been achieved. The nearest fighter squadron leader failed to waggle his wings in acknowledgment and Fuchida fired a second flare. Shiga, who was some distance to the rear, thought this was the two-flare signal indicating that surprise had not been achieved and that he was to head directly for Hickam Field to clear the skies there of enemy interceptors. He shot through Kola Kola Pass, signaling the others with his right hand to get into attack formation. The leader of the fifty-one dive bombers, Lieutenant Commander Kakuichi Takahashi, also misinterpreted the second flare and veered off to knock out the AA guns protecting Pearl Harbor.
But the torpedo bombers were heading straight for their targets. Lieutenant Commander Shigeharu Murata, had not been confused by the second flare, and radioed his forty bombers to proceed as planned. By the time he saw the mix-up, so many torpedo planes were in attack formation that he decided to go ahead with the strike on Battleship Row.
The torpedo planes from Soryu were cutting directly across the island through Kola Kola Pass behind Shiga’s fighters, and Lieutenant Mori could make out slit trenches in the mountain slopes. They’re ready for us! he thought with a start. As he emerged from the pass he swooped down at 130 knots, just clearing the barracks and hangars of Wheeler Field. Scanning the runway, he guessed there were two hundred fighters packed in neat rows. He was stunned. He hastily calculated that with a
t least five airfields on Oahu, there would be a thousand enemy fighters.* His machine-gunner began strafing the parked planes—probably the first shots fired that morning—and then Mori made for Pearl Harbor.
Royal Vitousek, a Honolulu lawyer, and his seventeen-year-old son Martin were circling the island in the family Aeronca when they saw two Japanese fighter planes—undoubtedly Shiga’s—approaching. Vitousek dived under the raiders and headed for his home field to make a report. He prayed the Japanese would ignore his little plane. Shiga kept zigzagging toward Pearl Harbor. It reminded him of a Japanese box garden. The American ships looked bluish white, unlike the gloomy gray of Japanese warships. How beautiful, he thought, like peace itself. In seconds he was past Pearl Harbor and over his target, Hickam Field. There wasn’t a single enemy fighter in the air or taking off. The attack was a surprise! He looked around. Where were the torpedo bombers? Now was the time to strike.
Just then a dive bomber roared down on Ford Island, loosed a bomb and zoomed up. A cloud of heavy black smoke billowed out of a hangar. It would obscure nearby Battleship Row by the time the torpedo bombers got there, and Shiga thought angrily, What is that crazy helldiver doing?† To the west he saw a lazy line of torpedo planes. Why were they coming in so slowly? Like children trotting to school. They approached the big battleships moored along the southeast side of Ford Island. This was Battleship Row, seven warships anchored together in two rows—five on the inside, two on the outside. The line of planes dumped their torpedoes like “dragonflies dropping their eggs” and arced away. There was a pause. Then a jarring explosion. The battleship Oklahoma shuddered. In seconds two more torpedoes tore into her side and she took a list of about 30 degrees.