Fighting to Lose

by John Bryden

  Area C. East Loch.

  Area D. Middle Loch.

  Area E. West loch and the communicating water routes.

  2. With regard to warships and aircraft carriers, we would like to have you report on those at anchor, (these are not so important) tied up at wharves, buoys, and in dock. (Designate types and classes briefly.) If possible, we would like to have you make mention of the fact when two or more vessels are alongside the same wharf.

  Army 23260 Trans 10/9/41 (S)5

  This, like Popov’s questionnaire, is so obviously a prescription for air attack that it has become known over the years as the first “bomb-plot” message — plot being used here in the sense of plotting targets on a map. It was followed the next day by another message that assigned code letters to the berthing locations of the warships.

  29 September 1941

  (J19)

  Honolulu to Tokyo #178

  Re your 3083

  (Strictly Secret)

  The following codes will be used hereafter to designate the location of vessels.

  Repair Dock in Navy Yard. (The repair basin referred to in my message to Washington #45): K8.

  Navy dock in the Navy Yard (The Ten Ten Pier): KT

  Moorings in the vicinity of Ford Island: FV

  Alongside in Ford Island: FG. (East and West sides will be differentiated by A and B respectively)

  Relayed to Washington, San Francisco.

  JD-1: 5730 23313 (D) Navy Trans. 10-10-4: X6

  Tokyo wanted to know what ships were where within the harbour. That could only be for air attack purposes, and it was asked only of Pearl Harbor. Admiral Kimmel would have seen it instantly. Yet none of these messages, or others like them, were given to him or to Short.7

  The postwar congressional inquiry was told that the army did not share these decrypts with General Short because the codes used for army communications were less secure than those of the navy. This is nonsense — for such short messages super-secure, one-time pads could have been used. The Office of Naval Intelligence claimed it did not give the messages to Kimmel because it assumed that the Japanese were merely keeping track of the Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor in excessive detail.

  What the inquiry did not hear was that the other Pacific command, the Philippines, which was under General Douglas MacArthur and Admiral Thomas Hart, continued to receive MAGIC and did receive the bomb-plot messages. This was described in the 1956 biography of MacArthur by his former chief of staff. General Charles Willoughby:

  We saw some of the intercepts in Manila, on a relay through special channels…. It was known that the Japanese Consul in Honolulu cabled Tokyo reports on general ship movements. In October the daily reports were “sharpened.” Tokyo called for specific instead of general reports. In November the daily reports were on a grid system of the inner harbor with coordinate locations of American men-of-war.

  It was plain to see, Willoughby continued, that “our battleships had become targets.”8

  Also, just after the Atlantic meeting, General Marshall ordered that the written summaries, or “gists,” of the incoming decrypts that normally accompanied the army’s distribution of the day’s MAGIC in Washington be discontinued. The MAGIC recipients affected included the secretaries of state, war, and the navy, the army chief of staff (Marshall), and the chief of naval operations (Stark), as well as the chiefs of army and navy intelligence and war planning. From then on, they received only the raw decrypts. As they were “For Your Eyes Only,” each man was required to keep track of their unfolding story by himself.

  Consequently, when asked by the congressional inquiry why he missed the “bomb-plot” messages, Marshall was able to reply, “If I am supposed to have final responsibility for the reading of all MAGIC, I would have ceased to be Chief of Staff in practically every other respect…. It was very difficult for me to read MAGIC sufficiently, even as it was.”

  General Gerow, chief of the General Staff Operations Division, made the same excuse. Both must have been slow readers, however. MAGIC deliveries averaged twenty-six messages a day, the majority of them being fewer than two hundred words.9

  Admiral Stark also claimed that he never noticed these Honolulu–Tokyo messages, even though they involved the ships and sailors under his ultimate charge. All must have crossed his desk, but apparently neither he nor his director of intelligence gave them any special heed,10 causing Kimmel’s intelligence officer at the time, Lieutenant-Commander Edwin Layton, later to write, “the failure of the office of naval operations to ensure that the bomb plot messages were sent to us at Pearl Harbor was blind stupidity at the least, and gross neglect at best.”11

  The two intelligence officers in Washington responsible for selecting and distributing the decrypted messages were Lieutenant-Commander Alwin Kramer for the navy and Colonel Rufus Bratton for the army — both Japanese linguists. It can be safely assumed they would have been expected — even ordered — to get on the telephone to their higher-ups if they spotted a decrypt of urgent importance in the original Japanese. This did not come out at the inquiries, leaving the impression that Marshall and Stark first knew of the content of any decrypt only after it had been formally translated and sent around. This is highly unlikely.

  Of the two officers handling MAGIC, Kramer was the more important, in that he had Admiral Stark and the White House on his daily distribution list. Prior to mid-November, the task of delivering MAGIC to the White House had been shared by the army and navy month over month, the former that fall responsible for July, September, and November, and the latter for August, October, and December. The army, however, alleging security problems, unilaterally cut the White House off from its deliveries; and in October, a navy aide appointed to the White House to receive the day’s decrypts filtered them out, passing only summaries to the Oval Office instead. Intentional or not, this gave Roosevelt an iron-clad excuse — should he ever need it — for not knowing about the bomb-plot messages.

  In any case, apparently the president did learn that he was not getting the full MAGIC, insisted that from that point on he see the “raw intercepts,” and gave the White House delivery job solely to the navy effective November 12.12

  Upon his return from their Atlantic conference, Roosevelt kept his promise to get even tougher with the Japanese. On August 17 he summoned the Japanese ambassador and warned him that Japan’s behaviour in Southeast Asia risked war. The ambassador proposed that the Japanese prime minister, Prince Fumimaro Konoye, meet with the president face-to-face, possibly in Hawaii, to talk out their differences. Roosevelt prevaricated, rudely replying that his schedule was very tight. Meanwhile, Japan struggled with the crippling embargo imposed by the U.S., especially on oil and gas. Japan had oil reserves for only two years, so the country was being pushed into an intolerable position. The government of Prince Konoye fell in October and he was replaced by the former war minister, General Hideki Tojo.13

  At this same time, the British were breaking much of the same Japanese diplomatic traffic as the Americans — including at least some of the “bomb-plot” messages — and could follow Japan’s inexorable drift toward war.14 Nevertheless, over the objections of his own naval chiefs, on October 25 Churchill sent the Prince of Wales and the battle cruiser Repulse to Singapore, even though the British then had no appreciable air cover in the Far East and the Japanese in Indochina were in easy torpedo-bombing distance of the Malayan coast.

  Historians have long puzzled over Churchill’s move. He claimed he intended the ships to serve as a deterrent, but with the recent fatal wounding of Germany’s ultra-modern pocket battleship Bismarck by obsolete British carrier-launched biplanes, it must have been perfectly obvious what would happen should war bring down onto the ships scores of modern, land-based enemy aircraft. Churchill also uselessly reinforced Hong Kong, acknowledged to be untenable, with two battalions of Canadian troops. If Japan threw down the gauntlet, they, too, were doomed.15

  There have been other “countdowns” to December 7 in the m
any previous accounts of the Pearl Harbor attack, but the following includes new information found in British and Commonwealth archives, and documents lately found in American archives.

  November 3: Military Intelligence (MID) in Washington circulated a “reliable” secret-source report that the Japanese director of intelligence and former prime minister of Japan, Koki Hirota, had told the Black Dragon Society in late August that the new Japanese prime minister, Tojo, had ordered general military preparations to be made for an “emergency” with the United States. “War with the United States would best begin in December or in February,” Hirota was reported to have said. This information was passed on to the State Department, the U.S. Navy, to all U.S. Army departments, and to the FBI. Apparently, it did not get to Admiral Kimmel or General Short, though.16

  November 5: The Americans intercepted a message from Tokyo to Japan’s ambassador in Washington describing two proposals to be tried on the Americans in an effort to avoid war. The message would have been in the MAGIC package delivered to Secretary of State Cordell Hull, to the chief of naval operations, Admiral Stark, and to the U.S. Army chief of staff, General Marshall. Roosevelt would have only been told about it, as it would be another week before he started receiving the actual decrypts again.

  November 10: Against the backdrop of the bombed-out ruin of London’s medieval Guildhall, Churchill delivered another speech condemning Nazi atrocities:

  The condition in Europe is terrible to the last degree. Hitler’s firing parties are busy in a dozen countries … and above all else, Russians are being butchered by thousands and by tens of thousands after they have surrendered, while individual and mass executions in all the countries I have mentioned have become part of the regular German routine….

  I must say generally that we must regard all these victims of the Nazi executioners, who are labelled Communists or Jews — we must regard them as if they were brave soldiers who die for their country on the field of battle. Nay, in a way, their sacrifice may be more fruitful than that of a soldier who falls with his arms in his hands. A river of blood has flowed and is flowing between the German race and the peoples of all Europe. It is not the hot blood of battle, where good blows are given and returned. It is the cold blood of the executioner and scaffold, which leaves a stain indelible for generations and for centuries.17

  He went on to warn that the war in Europe threatened to spread to the Far East and, while the Americans were doing their utmost to preserve peace, “should the United States become involved in war with Japan, the British declaration would follow within the hour.”

  November 13: Roosevelt received an “urgent” report from William Donovan, his newly appointed civilian spy chief: the German chargé d’affaires in Washington, Dr. Hans Thomsen, had said that “if Japan goes to war with the United States, Germany will immediately follow suit.” Donovan further quoted Thomsen: “Japan knows that unless the United States agrees to some reasonable terms in the Far East, Japan must face the threat of strangulation…. Japan is therefore forced to strike now.”18

  Donovan’s information was crucial. Until that point, war with Japan had not necessarily meant war with Germany. Dr. Thomsen said it now did. The key condition that Roosevelt needed to make losing the Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor worthwhile had been met. Even if Japan attacked first, Germany would still join in.

  November 18: During talks on the new Japanese proposals with Saburo Kurusu, the special envoy sent out by Tokyo, U.S. Secretary of State Cordell Hull brusquely told him that it was Japan’s alliance with Germany and Italy that was the problem: “If Japan had any different ideas on this point, he could tell them [in Tokyo] that they would not get six inches in a thousand years with the U.S. government, who would not have anything to do with the greatest butcher in history.”19

  This was brutal language to use on a foreign diplomat. Hull had read the text of Churchill’s speech. To be so sure that the Germans had committed the crimes they were accused of, he must have seen decrypts of the SS and German police traffic dealing with the atrocities. He was too experienced not to have required hard evidence.

  Hull then presented the position to Kurusu that Churchill and Roosevelt had worked out together in August. Japan was to abandon its air bases in Indochina and, Hull continued, “In the second place, Japan must withdraw her troops from China. The United States could not find the basis of a general settlement unless this were done.” There would be no relaxing of the trade sanctions, either.

  This put the Japanese envoy “in a great state” — Hull’s words — and he asked that Japan be allowed to retain at least some troops in China, and for the United States to release small quantities of rice and oil exclusively for Japan’s civilian population. In exchange, Japan would withdraw entirely from Indochina, Kurusu said. Hull was taken aback. Japan abandoning its air and naval bases in Indochina took away the principal grounds of conflict between their two countries. Hull said he would think about it, which meant he was taking it to the president.20

  Also on this same day, U.S. Naval Operations (Admiral Stark) unaccountably issued the “North Pacific Vacant Sea Order” whereby all Allied ships were ordered to avoid the Pacific north of Hawaii effective November 25. The six aircraft carriers, two battleships, two cruisers, six destroyers, and eight supply vessels of the Japanese attack force would take up a lot of sea room, and under normal circumstances a chance encounter with another vessel was almost inevitable. The Japanese could sink any ships they came in contact with, of course, but before going down they would likely get off a radio distress message. By all accounts, Admiral Stark should have wanted to see the North Pacific busy with shipping to avoid the possibility of a surprise attack.21

  November 22: Tokyo showed signs it was getting desperate. According to MAGIC decrypts that Stark, Marshall, Hull, and Roosevelt are supposed to have been reading, the Japanese wanted to avoid war with the United States, but if the talks did not succeed by November 29, “things [were] automatically going to happen.”

  November 24: Admiral Stark alerted all Pacific commands that the current negotiations with Japan were likely to fail and that a “surprise aggressive movement [could be taken] in any direction including attack on Philippines or Guam.” Admiral Kimmel took this to mean that his chief, with whom he was on a first-name basis, believed that the Japanese navy was looking south, not east.

  November 25: The North Pacific Vacant Sea Order took effect. The Japanese aircraft carriers were just then leaving their home waters for Hawaii. The empty ocean sparkled before them.

  Also on this day, Admiral Stark sent a personal note to Admiral Kimmel in Pearl Harbor describing the tense Japanese-American negotiations behind his warning of the day before. He closed it with, “Neither the President nor Mr. Hull would be surprised over a Japanese surprise attack; that from many angles an attack on the Philippines would be the most embarrassing thing that could happen to us….”22

  Again he made no mention of Hawaii, even though the evidence is overwhelming that he saw the Pearl Harbor questionnaire either at the Atlantic conference or after Popov delivered it to the FBI, if not by both means. It is also not credible that the chief of naval operations, the top man in the navy and first on the list for MAGIC, did not see the bomb-plot messages targeting the Pacific Fleet.

  November 26: Secretary of State Hull dropped all appearances of being conciliatory and returned to his original requirement that Japan break with the Axis powers and withdraw all its troops from China, adding the wholly unreasonable demand — suggested by Churchill — that the Japanese recognize Chiang Kai-shek as China’s legitimate leader. This amounted to the wholesale surrender of the Japanese to the Chinese after years of bitter war, so it was bound to be rejected. Stimson, the secretary of war, called it “kicking the whole thing over.”23

  November 27: Admiral Stark issued a formal “war warning,” saying that “for all practical purposes” negotiations had broken off and an aggressive move by Japan was expected. “The number and equip
ment of Japanese troops and the organization of task forces indicates an amphibious expedition against either the Philippines, Thai or Kra peninsula or possibly Borneo.” This confirmed Admiral Kimmel’s impression that the navy leadership in Washington thought Japan was focused south, not east.24

  Meanwhile, General MacArthur and Admiral Hart in the Philippines, who were still receiving and reading the Japanese diplomatic decrypts denied Kimmel and Short, were aware that the Japanese had a current, fully developed plan of attack against Hawaii.25

  Admiral Stark asked Admiral Kimmel to use one of his two aircraft carriers to transfer twenty-five fighter aircraft to the naval bases at Midway and Wake Islands. As this denuded Pearl Harbor’s air defence by nearly half, Admiral Kimmel concluded that Admiral Stark — who he understood was in receipt of all intelligence — did not think Hawaii was in any imminent danger. That same day the War Department (Marshall) proposed to replace the marines on Wake and Midway Island with army troops, a lengthy and complicated process that would require Kimmel’s other aircraft carrier. Kimmel presumed this was further indication Pearl Harbor was safe for the time being.26

  With great confidence, he sent both carriers on these routine missions.

  Even the Canadians now knew war with Japan was imminent. The work of the little cipher-breaking unit in Ottawa — the Examination Unit — had expanded into low-grade Japanese diplomatic traffic that fall, and it became obvious from the decrypts that the Japanese consulate in Ottawa was primarily interested in military topics, and was especially concerned about the troops Canada was sending to Hong Kong. The British were also providing the Canadian government with daily bulletins on Hull’s negotiations with the Japanese, which Canada’s prime minister, Mackenzie King, described as being of a “most unyielding character.”27