by Toland, John
At Ford Island all the Navy planes had been destroyed or were inoperable. With little else to do, six pilots hid behind palm trees to take pot shots at the invaders with their pistols.
The Army fighter pilots had some success; they shot down eleven Japanese. The two lieutenants from Wheeler—Kenneth Taylor and George Welch—accounted for seven of these.
The citizens of Honolulu were more reluctant than the military to believe that war had come to Hawaii. They ignored the noise; it was either maneuvers or practice firing of the giant coastal defense batteries at Fort DeRussy near Waikiki Beach. Edgar Rice Burroughs, author of the Tarzan stories, did not interrupt breakfast with his son at the Niumalu Hotel. Afterward they played tennis with two Navy wives, still unaware that the war had started a few miles away.
At his Waikiki apartment Robert Trumbull, city editor of the Honolulu Advertiser, was awakened by the telephone. His wife, Jean, answered it and came back half puzzled, half amused. A friend had called to say that from his vantage point on a hill it looked as if Pearl Harbor was being bombed “for real,” and Trumbull as a newspaperman might know something about it.
“It’s just another maneuver,” said Trumbull. No sooner had he hung up than Ray Coll, his editor, called to say there was a reported raid on Pearl Harbor and to get down to the office at once. Incredulous, Trumbull hung up and phoned one of the best-informed reporters in town, who said, “What’s the boss been drinking?”
Trumbull wasn’t convinced until he heard Webley Edwards of station KGMB say, “The island is under attack! I repeat, the island is under attack! This is the real McCoy!” At his office Trumbull checked the flood of reports (all false) of sabotage by local Japanese: an arrow was cut out of a sugar-cane field pointing to Pearl Harbor; a high-powered radio transmitter was found in a gym owned by a Japanese.
Trumbull dialed the number to the residence of the governor of Hawaii. To his amazement Joseph Poindexter, the seventy-two-year-old governor, answered himself. He didn’t know a thing about any attack, and in a skeptical but polite tone asked for details.
At 9:45 A.M. the skies above the smokebound harbor were all at once empty. The stench of burning oil was overwhelming. Arizona, Oklahoma and California were sunk at their berths. West Virginia, aboil with flames, was sinking. Nevada was aground. The other three battleships—Maryland, Tennessee and drydocked Pennsylvania—were all damaged.
In Honolulu the secret agent Takeo Yoshikawa had been eating breakfast when the windows started to rattle and several pictures dropped to the floor. He went into his backyard and looked up in the sky. There was a plane with Japanese markings. They did it! he told himself. This is just about perfect with so many ships in the harbor.
He clapped his hands and rushed to the back door of Consul General Kita’s official residence. “Mr. Kita!” he called. “They’ve done it!” Kita came out and said, “I just heard ‘East wind, rain’ on the shortwave!”‡ This meant, of course, that Japanese-American diplomatic relations were in danger of rupture. “There’s no mistake.”
The two stood looking up at the dense black clouds rising over Pearl Harbor. Tears in their eyes, they clasped hands. Finally Kita said, “They’ve done it at last. Good job, Morimura.”
Yoshikawa locked himself and a clerk in the code room and set about burning code books in a washtub. Within ten minutes there was a loud knocking. Someone shouted, “Open the door!” It was the FBI, alerted by the smoke.
The door caved in and half a dozen armed men burst in and began stamping on the burning code books. “Good-bye to the days of my youth—forever,” whispered Yoshikawa. He walked out into the yard to watch the tiny planes above Pearl Harbor. The other members of the consulate were being rounded up and kept in the office, but nobody paid any attention to the secret agent. He returned to the office, found it locked, and suggested to an FBI man that he be incarcerated with the others.
“Who are you?”
“Morimura, an official.”
“Get in,” said the FBI man.
In Honolulu, few doubted any longer that it was war. Sixty-eight civilians lay dead. A single Japanese bomb had hit the city. The forty-nine other explosions were caused by spent AA shells improperly fused. Still, there was no panic. At the height of the attack Hawaiian girls in hula skirts appeared as usual at the Pan American dock, arms loaded with leis to bid aloha to departing Clipper passengers. They had to be told it was the end of traditional ceremony for a long, long time.
3.
Yamamoto and his staff aboard the flagship Nagato, anchored off Hashirajima, had all been awake since 2 A.M., an hour before the scheduled attack. They sat around in silence, time and again getting up to examine a large chart. Chief Steward Omi passed around tea and cakes to relieve the tension. All at once a voice called excitedly over the voice tube, “We have succeeded in surprise attack!” It was the chief code officer in the message room and by a “skip” due to atmospheric conditions, he had just heard Fuchida signal, “TORA, TORA, TORA!”
The staff officers shook hands, bursting with elation and relief after their prolonged anxiety. Yamamoto tried to hide his emotions, but Watanabe could see that he, too, was excited. Omi brought out sake and surume (dried squid) to celebrate, and numerous toasts were tossed down. Every few minutes the voice tube would repeat triumphant reports from the attacking planes and frantic American messages: “All ships clear Pearl Harbor”; “This is no drill”; “This is the real McCoy.”
Yamamoto gave orders to leave for Hawaii after dawn so that the Combined Fleet could support Kido Butai in case of a U. S. attack.
In Tokyo a relay of Fuchida’s first signal, the tactical order to attack, was picked up at the message room of Navy General Staff headquarters. The code officer phoned the operations room and said, “The commander of Akagi is repeating ‘TO’ over and over.” It wasn’t in the code book and he had no idea what it meant. Commander Miyo spoke up and said he had originated that code long ago as squadron leader on Kaga. “They’re doing fine,” he said. “It means ‘charge.’ ” It was the first good moment Miyo had had since hearing the report that the Malay invasion had jumped the schedule. A few minutes later the second message came in—this one in the code book: TORA, TORA, TORA.
The first planes found their way back to the carriers at 10 A.M. The weather worsened and a number of planes crashed on the pitching decks. As Matsumura’s tail hook caught the landing wire on Hiryu he felt a surge of joy. He’d never expected to come back and there he was, alive!
Fuchida returned about an hour later and was greeted by an exultant Genda; then he went to the bridge and reported to Nagumo and Kusaka that at least two battleships had been sunk and four seriously damaged. He begged the admirals to launch another attack at once and this time concentrate on the oil tanks. American air power had been smashed, he assured them, and the second attack would just have antiaircraft fire to contend with.
Kusaka considered Fuchida’s suggestion. His volatile friend Admiral Yamaguchi had already signaled that Soryu and Hiryu were prepared to launch another attack, and Kaga’s captain, at the urging of Commander Sata, also recommended a strike against installations and fuel tanks. The oil was an alluring target, but Kusaka believed a commander should not be obsessed by such temptations. The second attack would surely be no surprise; and no matter what Fuchida thought, the bulk of their planes would probably be shot down by AA fire. More important, the task force itself would be placed in jeopardy. Kido Butai was the heart of the Japanese Navy and should not be risked. From the beginning he had wanted to deliver a swift thrust and return like the wind.
“We should retire as planned,” Kusaka advised Nagumo, who nodded.
A staff officer suggested that they try to locate and sink the American carriers. Opinion on the bridge was divided. “There will be no more attacks of any kind,” said Kusaka. “We will withdraw.”§
Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox was at his office in the Navy Department on Constitution Avenue. It was long past noon and h
e was getting hungry. He was about to order lunch when Admiral Stark burst in with Kimmel’s “This is no drill” message.
“My God, this can’t be true!” Knox exclaimed. “This must mean the Philippines.”
Stark assured him grimly it did mean Pearl Harbor, and Knox picked up the phone with a direct connection to the White House. It was 1:47 P.M. Roosevelt was lunching at his desk in the Oval Office with Harry Hopkins. Knox read the dispatch.
“There must be some mistake,” said Hopkins. He was sure “Japan would not attack in Honolulu” but Roosevelt thought the report was probably true and said, “It’s just the kind of unexpected thing the Japanese would do.” He talked at some length of his efforts to complete his administration without war, finally remarked somberly, “If this report is true, it takes the matter entirely out of my hands.”
At 2:05 P.M. Roosevelt phoned Hull and in steady but clipped tones passed on the news. Hull told him that Ambassadors Nomura and Kurusu had just arrived and were in the Diplomatic Reception Room. Roosevelt advised him to receive them, but not to mention that he knew about Pearl Harbor. He should be formal, cool and “bow them out.” Then the President called Secretary of War Henry Stimson, who was lunching at home, and excitedly asked if he had heard what had happened.
“Well,” Stimson replied, “I have heard the telegrams which have been coming in about the Japanese advances in the Gulf of Siam.”
“Oh, no, I don’t mean that,” said Roosevelt. “They have attacked Hawaii! They are now bombing Hawaii!”
Stimson replaced the receiver. Well, that was an excitement indeed, he told himself. His immediate feeling was one of “relief that the indecision was over and that a crisis had come in a way which would unite all our people.”
At the State Department, Hull turned to Joseph Ballantine and said, “The President has an unconfirmed report that the Japanese have attacked Pearl Harbor. The Japanese ambassadors are waiting to see me. I know what they want. They are going to turn us down on our note of November 26. Perhaps they want to tell us that war has been declared. I am rather inclined not to see them.” Finally he decided to take Roosevelt’s advice and admit the envoys. Besides, there was “one chance out of a hundred” that the report wasn’t true.
In the waiting room the anxious Nomura was still breathing heavily after the race from the embassy. He was already more than an hour late and knew the fourteen-part message contained several minor typographical errors. Okumura had wanted to retype the entire message but Nomura had impatiently snatched it away from him. He still hadn’t had time to read it carefully.
At 2:20 P.M. Kurusu and Nomura were finally ushered into Hull’s office. The Secretary of State greeted them coolly, refusing to shake hands. He didn’t invite them to sit down.
“I was instructed to hand this reply to you at one P.M.,” said the admiral apologetically, holding out the note.
Hull’s face was stern. “Why should it be handed to me at one P.M.?”
“I do not know the reason,” Nomura replied truthfully, puzzled that his friend should be so upset just because he and Kurusu were late.
Hull seized the note and pretended to glance through it. Ordinarily his speech was slow and gentle, but now the words tumbled out headlong as he assailed them bitterly, “I must say that in all my conversations with you during the last nine months I have never uttered one word of untruth. This is borne out absolutely by the record. In all my fifty years of public service I have never seen a document that was more crowded with infamous falsehoods and distortions—infamous falsehoods and distortions on a scale so huge that I never imagined until today that any government on this planet was capable of uttering them.”
Nomura started to say something, but Hull raised his hand and dismissed them by a curt nod toward the door. Still bewildered, the admiral approached Hull, said farewell and held out his hand. This time the Secretary of State shook it, but as the two Japanese turned and walked out, heads down, Hull, reverting to his Tennessee vocabulary, was heard to mutter, “Scoundrels and piss-ants!”
At the embassy Okumura told them, “Our planes have bombed Pearl Harbor!” Military Attaché Isoda, eyes filled with tears, approached Nomura and sadly said it was regrettable that things “had come to such a pass” despite the admiral’s efforts. “But, alas, this is Fate.” Nomura was too deeply moved to be consoled, particularly by an Army man.
At the Navy Department, Admiral Stark had already sent a message to all commanders in the Pacific area and Panama: EXECUTE UNRESTRICTED AIR AND SUBMARINE WARFARE AGAINST JAPAN. A few doors away, Knox was on the phone with Pearl Harbor, talking to the commandant of the 14th Naval District, Admiral Claude C. Bloch, who described the damage he could see through his window. “Oklahoma’s badly hit. Also Arizona. But Pennsylvania and Tennessee are only superficially damaged, and we can raise California without too much trouble. Fortunately, there’s no damage to the Navy Yard and oil reserves.”
The Giants-Dodgers football fans at their radios were the first of the American public to learn of the attack. At 2:26 P.M. station WOR interrupted its broadcast of the game with the initial news flash. There was no announcement at the Polo Grounds itself, where Brooklyn had just scored the game’s first touchdown, but there was a stir of curiosity when Colonel William J. Donovan was paged by Washington over the PA system. He headed the Office of the Coordination of Information, an intelligence organization.
Another announcement came just before the 3 o’clock broadcast of the New York Philharmonic concert. In Washington, Rear Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, chief of the Bureau of Navigation, was settling down to enjoy the Artur Rodzinski concert over CBS. When the broadcast was interrupted, he shot out of his chair and was on his way to the Navy Building.
A few blocks away Masuo Kato of Domei heard the news over a taxicab radio. “God damn Japan,” said the driver. “We’ll lick the hell out of those bastards now.” In New York, radio station WQXR hastily switched its Gilbert and Sullivan program from The Mikado to H.M.S. Pinafore “in honor of the Royal Navy.” And on the banks of the Potomac someone cut down one of the cherry trees donated years before by Japan. This sense of outrage was shared by a large group of Nisei living in the Manhattan area. Without delay the Tozai (East-West) Club of New York dispatched a telegram to Roosevelt:
WE THE AMERICAN CITIZENS OF JAPANESE DESCENT OF NEW YORK CITY AND VICINITY JOIN ALL AMERICANS IN CONDEMNING JAPAN’S AGGRESSIONS AGAINST OUR COUNTRY AND SUPPORT ALL MEASURES TAKEN FOR THE DEFENSE OF THE NATION.
A restive crowd had gathered outside the Japanese embassy on Massachusetts Avenue. Kurusu was summoned to the phone. It was Ferdinand Mayer, until recently an American diplomat; the two had become good friends in Berlin. Mayer said he would be glad to see Kurusu—without mentioning that he had called at the suggestion of Colonel Donovan, whose intelligence organization would soon become the Office of Strategic Services. America’s first genuine espionage system.
His voice breaking, Kurusu thanked “Ferdinand” for phoning but said he “would hate to inconvenience” him, since there was a surly crowd outside the embassy. From the tone of his voice Mayer guessed Kurusu was “quite overwhelmed and in the deepest sort of despair.”
Crushed as he was, Kurusu still had no feeling of bitterness toward Hull, who had despised him on sight—and shown it. That old man, he thought, had worked to the best of his ability to preserve peace. The trouble was that both America and Japan were like children. Diplomatically, neither was mature. Now the two children were playing foolish war games.
By evening the envoys were confined under guard in a luxury hotel by Assistant Secretary of State Adolf A. Berle, Jr. The admiral asked for a samurai sword but Berle rejected the request; Nomura’s suicide might endanger Ambassador Grew.
That evening the Cabinet met in the Red Room on the second floor of the White House at eight-thirty. The members formed a semicircle facing Roosevelt, who sat behind his desk. This was the most serious meeting of a cabinet since the outbreak of the Civil Wa
r, the President solemnly announced. He enumerated the losses at Pearl Harbor, then slowly read a message he planned to make to Congress the following noon.
It was effective, Stimson thought, but didn’t cover Japan’s “lawless conduct in the past. Neither did it connect in any way with Germany.” Hull, too, wanted Germany included, but Roosevelt said the message would be “more effective … and certain to be read if it was short.” He could not be budged, even in the face of Hull’s insistence that Congress and the nation would listen to “anything” the President had to say.
Stimson wanted to go further than Hull, and at the end of the meeting went up to Roosevelt and urged him to declare war against Germany before the indignation of the people subsided. The President refused but did promise to present the full matter to the people in two days.
Just before nine-thirty the leaders of Congress were ushered into the room: Vice President Henry Wallace and six senators, including Alben Barkley, Speaker of the House of Representatives Sam Rayburn and two congressmen. Roosevelt told them frankly what had happened in Hawaii. His listeners sat riveted in dead silence. When Roosevelt finished, Senator Tom Connally wondered why the fleet was “caught napping,” but the others were still tongue-tied.
A little later in the evening Marine Captain James Roosevelt, the President’s eldest son, came upon his father thumbing through his beloved stamp collection “with no expression on his face, very calm and quiet.” He didn’t look up, only said, “It’s bad, it’s pretty bad.”
Mrs. Roosevelt found her husband more serene than she’d seen him for a long time and thought to herself that “it was steadying to know finally that the die was cast” and that the future “presented a clearer challenge than the long uncertainty of the past.”
4.
Japan had started the war but had yet to declare it. At a hurriedly assembled Cabinet meeting an hour before dawn, Navy Minister Shigetaro Shimada calmly described the results of Pearl Harbor, cautioning his listeners to make allowances for the exaggerations of bomber pilots. Hastily an imperial rescript declaring war was composed, signed and sent on to the Privy Council.