Pearl Harbor after a Quarter of a Century
Harry Elmer Barnes
V: The So-Called Warnings to Short and Kimmel
“
[General]
Short and [Admiral] Kimmel have been vigorously criticized on the ground
that . . . they did not . . . recognize the probability that . . . the
Japanese would first attempt a surprise attack on the American Pacific
fleet, wherever it was stationed . . . . As a matter of fact, they never
lost sight of this possibility . . . . From
the time Kimmel assumed command at
Pearl Harbor
in February, 1941, both he and Short had frequently mentioned and
discussed the possibility . . . and recognized the action and supplies
needed to detect and turn back such an attack. They had vainly
requested the equipment required effectively to carry out such a
protective policy . . . but they had received virtually nothing . . . .
General Frederick L. Martin and Admiral Patrick N. L. Bellinger,
commanders of the Army and Navy air forces in Hawaii, handed in a report
about the feasibility and danger of a Japanese surprise air attack on
Pearl Harbor that was virtually identical to the plan Yamamoto actually
carried out . . . . It was carefully studied by Short and Kimmel and was
forwarded to
Marshall
in Washington on April 14th but without any response directing
appropriate defensive operations at Pearl Harbor or supplying adequate
equipment.”
—Harry Elmer Barnes
Now
that we have seen that Short and Kimmel were denied the extensive body
of valid and relevant information which would have enabled them to learn
of the probability of a Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in ample time to
have taken proper action to have averted or repelled it, we may consider
the so-called “warnings” that were sent to them. These have been
presented by the defenders of Roosevelt, Stimson, Marshall and Stark as
clear and precise warnings that Pearl Harbor was definitely threatened
by an imminent Japanese air attack, and it has been asserted that if
Short and Kimmel had taken proper cognizance of the information they
would have been prepared for the Japanese attack that came on the
morning of December 7th. Actually, these so-called warnings to Short
and Kimmel on November 27th and 28th were nothing of the sort.
Commander Hiles has stated the reality clearly: “A genuine,
forthright, and honestly inspired war warning can be expressed most
lucidly, concisely, intelligently and forcibly in one sentence—the
shorter the better. The warnings to Short and Kimmel were lacking in
all these virtues. They were probably the most profuse collection of
misleading verbiage ever to grace two military messages that purported
to warn two important field commanders of a war already known in
Washington to be a fait accomcli.” They were a great contrast
with the warning that
Marshall had sent to General Herron in
Hawaii in June, 1940.
On
November 27th, General Short received from
Washington
the following message which has been represented as a warning of
approaching war, with the direct implication that he was being informed
of a probable attack by
Japan “at any moment”:
Negotiations with
Japan appear to be terminated to all practical purposes with
only the barest possibilities that the Japanese Government might come
back and offer to continue. Japanese future action unpredictable but
hostile action possible at any moment. If hostilities cannot, repeat
cannot be avoided the
United
States desires that
Japan commit the first overt act. This Policy should not,
repeat not, be construed as restricting you to a court of action that
might jeopardize your defense. Prior to hostile Japanese action you are
directed to undertake such reconnaissance and other measures as you deem
necessary but these measures should be carried out so as not to alarm
civil population or disclose intent. Report measures taken. Should
hostilities occur you will carry out the tasks assigned in Rainbow five
so far as they pertain to
Japan. Limit dissemination of this highly secret information to
minimum essential officers.
The
message just cited did not even imply any threat of a Japanese attack at
Hawaii. It stated that negotiations with
Japan, of which Short had no specific knowledge, had come to an
end, with little prospect that the Japanese would renew them. Hostile
action, which could have meant either distant war or local sabotage,
might start at any time, but it was essential that
Japan must commit the first overt act. Prior to any hostile
act, Short was to take all protective measures deemed necessary, but
they must not alarm the civil population. If hostilities did start,
Short was to operate in accord with War Plan Rainbow 5, so far as it
applied to
Japan.
The
message to Short bore Marshall’s signature although he was away from
Washington
that day watching maneuvers in North Carolina. Its inception was
conceived by Secretary Of War Stimson, possibly at Roosevelt’s
suggestion, and it was written by Stimson and General Leonard T. Gerow,
chief of Army War Plans, with some aid from Colonel Charles W. Bundy of
the Army General Staff. They consulted
Roosevelt,
Hull and Knox, Admirals Stark, Turner, and Ingersoll, and General
William Bryden, Deputy Army Chief of Staff. Commander Hiles has
appropriately observed that it was both strange and suspicious that such
a large group and range of top level signatories had to be assembled if
the purpose was actually to formulate a clear and precise warning of
imminent war, which could have been prepared by any bright second
lieutenant or ensign in ten minutes. To prepare a war warning that was
not a war warning required, however, the pooling of much skill in
obfuscation and deception. From the statements of Stimson and Gerow, it
appears certain that the message was originally conceived and formulated
to guide General MacArthur in the
Philippines, to whom substantially the same message was sent. It was
also sent to the Caribbean Defense Command in the Panama Canal zone and
to the Fourth Army headquarters at the Presidio in
San
Francisco.
Short
logically replied to the November 27th message as follows: “Department
alerted against sabotage.” His reply was read by Stimson, Marshall and
Gerow. Since Short received no reply from Washington he correctly assumed that these men were satisfied with
his report.
Three
other messages were sent from Washington to
Fort
Shafter on the 27th and 28th, amplifying the directions as to
measures to be taken by Short against local sabotage. One was sent by
General Sherman Miles, chief of Army Intelligence in Washington, to
Colonel Kendall J. Fielder, chief of Army Intelligence in Hawaii; one by
Adjutant General Adams to Short, and one by General Henry H. Arnold,
chief of the Army Air Corps in Washington, to General Frederick L.
Martin, chief of the Hawaiian Air Force. All of these indicated to
Short that he had been correct in instituting an alert against local
sabotage.
These
messages merely added more detailed directions as to how Short should
apply his alert against local sabotage. They stressed the need to
assure security against the danger of hostilities, by which was plainly
implied local subversive activities in Hawaii, to avoid publicity and not excite the public at
Honolulu, and to maintain strict legality in all actions. To the
Army authorities in Hawaii, it appeared obvious that the main fear in
Washington, as expressed in the messages to Short and his subordinates,
was that subversive activities, such as rioting in Honolulu, might
produce some overt act by Americans that Japan could regard as
justifying a declaration of war. The
United States could then be accused of having precipitated war without
any attack. It was Roosevelt who, personally, directed that the
stipulation that Japan must be permitted to commit the first overt act
of war should be included in the message to Short of November 27th and
in that of Stark to Kimmel on November 29th. This was the basic formula
of
Roosevelt
as the situation approached hostilities, and was immortalized by the
statement of Stimson in his Diary after the meeting of the War
Cabinet on November 25th: “The question was how we should maneuver them
[the Japanese] into the position of firing the first shot without
allowing too much danger to ourselves.”
On
November 29th and December 4th, Short and Martin sent detailed reports
to Marshall and Arnold, as to the manner in which they had carried out
the directions on instituting and operating the alert against local
sabotage. Once more, there was no reply from Washington, and Short
again felt assured that
Washington
was satisfied with what they were doing in
Hawaii. Marshall admitted, when being examined by Senator Homer
Ferguson during the Joint Congressional Committee Investigation in
1945-46, that Short was entirely correct when he assumed that, since
there were no replies to his reports on the operations he had instituted
to check local sabotage, what he had done was fully satisfactory to
Washington.
In
assessing the nature and significance of these bogus “warning” messages
to Short, one may well start with pointing out that they were not in any
way even labelled as a “war warning.” Nothing indicated any thought of
war at
Hawaii. It is obvious that the vague reference to Japanese
hostility in the message to Short had been inserted for the benefit of
MacArthur who was located at the Philippines in the Far East, the area
where the authorities in Washington were becoming ever more convinced
that, if any Japanese attack occurred, it would take place. This
overlooked the fact that an attack on the Philippines and the
destruction of Hart’s small fleet would not serve the main purpose of
the first Japanese attack, which was to destroy the Pacific fleet and
protect the Japanese flank against their further campaigns in the Far
East.
The
emphasis in all four messages to Short was placed primarily on watching
and suppressing local subversive activities and on handling such
operations with care and with studied legality. Subversive activities
were obviously what were meant by “hostilities,” so far as
Hawaii was concerned, although they doubtless envisaged possible
military activities in the case of MacArthur. This throttling of
subversive activities was to be effective but executed with restraint
and caution. Neither any subversive activities nor Short’s restraint of
them should be allowed to get out of hand and make it possible for Japan
to regard some extreme incident as an overt and plausible “act of war,”
which, according to Roosevelt’s policy, must be left for the Japanese to
provide.
All
this restraining action must be so executed as not to alarm the civilian
population or create excitement or demonstrations which might lead the
Japanese consul general and spies in Honolulu to interpret them as a
genuine Pearl Harbor alert against a possible Japanese attack and report
this to Tokyo. The latter could send such information on to Admiral
Nagumo in command of the task force enroute to Pearl Harbor, which on
the 27th was still not too far from its point of departure in the
Kurile Islands.
Nagumo was jittery enough about the venture as it was without any
suspicion that
Hawaii was already getting ready for an attack. It was this
unusual combination of insistent directives and qualifying restrictions
in the
Washington
messages to Short which led the Army Pearl Harbor Board, when
investigating the responsibility for the surprise attack, somewhat
cynically to designate the
Marshall message of the 27th to Short as the “do-and-don’t
message.”
But
more important than the above comments on the so-called warning messages
to Short on the 27th and 28th is this crucial observation: If the men
who wrote or approved these messages to Short really suspected any
probability of an immediate Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, and
then ordered Short to go on an alert against local sabotage, they would
have had to be nothing short of military idiots or political traitors,
which would scarcely be true of Stimson, Generals Marshall, Gerow,
Bryden, Miles, Arnold and Adams, and Colonel Bundy, or of Admirals Stark
and Turner.
Concentration
on local sabotage and civilian responses constituted a complete reversal
of the attitudes and operations which would have been required to
prepare for a possible enemy attack by warships and airplane bombers.
Local sabotage turned attention inward and groundwise rather than
outward and upward from which an air attack by
Japan
would take place—local sabotage in
Honolulu from the air was very unlikely. An attack by
Japan, and there were no other possible assailants, would come
from the outside and the air.
Exclusive
devotion to suppressing local sabotage also demanded operations which
would be militarily suicidal, such as bunching the planes in a circle,
wing to wing, where they could be more easily guarded and protected, but
would be helpless in the event of a surprise air attack, as proved to be
the case when the Japanese struck on the early morning of December 7th.
Experienced military officers like Marshall, Gerow, Bryden, Miles,
Arnold,
Adams,
and Bundy were very well aware of this.
Suppressing
local sabotage without alarming civilians also encouraged giving very
restricted attention to checking and preparing anti-aircraft protection.
Concentrating on local civilian activities also naturally shifted
emphasis away from detecting any possible approaching enemy task forces.
Further, the special and repealed directions to avoid arousing civilian
curiosity or excitement precluded any serious military operations, even
increased reconnaissance, that would have been involved in getting ready
for an attack by aircraft. It would have been impossible even to carry
out an alert involving artillery operations without causing great
excitement in Honolulu. Some of the heavy coast artillery was located right in
the center of the city, and live ammunition had to be taken from
magazines and placed by the guns. Fort de Russey was situated close to
Waikai
Beach and the most important hotel in the city.
Hence,
it can safely be maintained that, if Washington had desired to tell
Short indirectly and obliquely, but very clearly and obviously that the
top military “brass” at Washington apparently did not expect in any
immediate period a Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, they could hardly
have done better than the messages sent to Short on November 27th and
28th. They were a masterly achievement in the way of producing a “war
warning” that did not warn against war, at least at Hawaii. The
Washington brass knew that these were no actual war warnings, but
some of the authors or advisers, notably Admiral Turner, acted, even
before the attack, as though they thought they were. When Short was
caught off guard by the surprise attack, the men who fashioned and sent
these fake warning messages tried to pass them off as genuine and
adequate warnings, and so have their defenders among publicists,
historians, and journalists over the last quarter of a century.
The
question naturally arises as to whether Roosevelt, Stimson, Marshall,
Bryden, Gerow, Miles, Adams, Bundy, Arnold, Stark, Turner, and Ingersoll,
in reality meaning Roosevelt, Stimson, and Marshall, deliberately
intended the fake “warnings” to deceive Short end give him additional
assurance that there was no probability of an attack on Pearl Harbor in
order to insure that he would take no action which might frighten
Admiral Nagumo and lead him to turn back with the task force that
Yamamoto was sending to Pearl Harbor. Many of the more critical
students of the Pearl Harbor episode have contended that the warnings to
Short were actually intended to be misleading, and good arguments can be
produced to support this interpretation, notably in the case of Stimson.
At
this time (November 26-27), it appears that Roosevelt and most of the
top military brass in
Washington
may have been pretty well convinced that, if
Japan struck at all, it would probably do so at the outset in
the southwest Pacific. Apparently, it was not before the afternoon or
evening of December 3rd, at the earliest, that Roosevelt became finally
convinced in his own mind or actually learned that the Japanese were
planning to strike at Pearl Harbor on or about the 7th, confided this to
Marshall and Arnold on the 4th, and immediately bottled up all possible
warnings to Short and Kimmel by making it necessary to clear them
through Marshall, who would certainly not forward any such warnings in
violation of Roosevelt’s wishes and orders. Even on the 4th, as will be
shown later on, while Roosevelt may have been convinced that the
Japanese were on their way to attack Pearl Harbor, he was still waiting
anxiously for an attack on one of the “three small vessels” that he had
ordered sent out from the Philippines to draw Japanese fire, thus being
able to start war after an attack and yet in time to save Pearl Harbor.
It
was not until after the attack and the bad planners and bad guessers had
been exposed that the attempt got underway to make Short and Kimmel the
scapegoats for the surprise attack and try to interpret the fake
warnings to them on the 27th and 28th as definitive and adequate
warnings of an approaching Japanese attack. This malicious mendacity
reached its most contemptible and despicable depths in some of the
post-Pearl Harbor investigations, beginning with the kangaroo court of
the Roberts Commission, thus creating what has been well designated as
the “American Dreyfus Case.”
We
now come to the alleged “warning” sent to Kimmel by Stark on the 27th.
It has already been pointed out that Kimmel had casual but friendly
relations with Roosevelt for a quarter of a century before he assumed
command at Pearl Harbor, and was a close personal friend of Stark.
Hence, he was justified in expecting a fair deal from Washington. He was told by Stark that he would promptly receive all
the relevant information concerning any threats to
Pearl
Harbor and he had every reason to expect that he would get them.
He did not. He did not receive any of the diplomatic intercepts in
Purple after the Argentia meeting at
Newfoundland in early August, 1941. He did not even get the Bomb Plot
messages in J-19 and PA-K2 that were intercepted by MS5 from September
24th onward right at
Fort
Shafter. The fact that, before the Argentia meeting, Kimmel did
obtain some of the contents of a few of the Japanese diplomatic messages
from the Purple code, although there had been no mention of Purple or
Magic in them, actually deceived him. This made him believe that he was
getting all that came in after that time, whereas he received none.
Stark
wrote Kimmel frequently and in a friendly manner but the main theme of
his letters before September was that Germany was our main enemy, that
Roosevelt wished to get into the war directly in Europe, and that the
administration did not desire to be drawn into waging a two-front
conflict by having a war with Japan on its hands. When Stark did begin
later on to write Kimmel about a possible war with Japan, he stressed
the fact that it would probably begin thousands of miles away in the
Philippines, the southwest Pacific, or in the English possessions and
the Dutch East Indies, and even here was as likely to be one of Japan
against Britain and Holland as directly against the United States. Of
course, Stark was fully aware that any Japanese attack on British or
Dutch territory would immediately bring the United States into war against
Japan, as arranged in ABCD and Rainbow 5. Never once did Stark
hint of any early Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, and it is very
possible that he did not expect one until December 4th, when Roosevelt
by his order to Marshall bottled up any Navy warnings to Pearl Harbor
and Stark was so informed.
The
actions of the Washington authorities which related to Kimmel’s and
Bloch’s operations at Pearl Harbor supplemented Stark’s letters in
giving Kimmel a definite impression that no attack on Pearl Harbor was
expected by Washington. When Kimmel took over the command of the
Pacific fleet in February, 1941, the Japanese Navy was, in Kimmel’s own
words, superior to our Pacific fleet “in every category of fighting
ships.” Nevertheless, in April and May, 1941, Kimmel was ordered to
send about a fourth of his fighting force to the Atlantic to engage in
what was described to him by Washington as the “first echelon of the
battle of the Atlantic”—surely an unwise act if Washington was expecting
to get involved in a prior war with Japan.
This
early impression was reinforced by the failure of
Washington to send Short and Bloch the additional planes they needed
and requested if they were to maintain effective reconnaissance around
the Hawaiian area and repel any Japanese air attack. Knox had indicated
the need of more planes for
Pearl
Harbor in January, 1941, and Bloch had requested one hundred
additional patrol planes, but not one had been sent before December 7th,
1941. Only six usable B-17 flying fortresses had been sent to Short
before
Pearl
Harbor, although he had been officially allocated one hundred and
eighty. Planes of all types were being shipped to Europe, especially to
Britain and
Russia, and B-17’s were being ferried to the
Philippines and the
Far East
to bolster the defense there.
Furthermore,
it is essential once more to recall Kimmel’s assignment and role as
commander of the Pacific fleet. While he was in supreme command of all
naval vessels stationed at Hawaii, the actual naval defense of Pearl
Harbor was vested in Admiral Bloch, commander of the Hawaiian Coastal
Frontier—the Fourteenth Naval District. To be sure, Bloch consulted
with Kimmel and took orders from him when necessary, but Bloch and Short
were responsible for protecting
Pearl Harbor,
and even here the main responsibility was that of Short and the Army.
Kimmel’s function was to train personnel, provide and improve
equipment, recondition ships, and, when so directed, to send them
westward to Wake and Midway, and even to the Far East to raid the
Japanese islands if war broke out between the United States and Japan.
By assignment, duties, and activities, his role was offensive and
oriented toward the mid-Pacific and the
Far East,
in accordance with the naval phases of Rainbow 5, based on the ABCD
agreement.
We
are now in a position to examine the so-called war-warning to Kimmel
that he received from Stark on November 27th. To get a better idea of
what was on the mind of Stark and his associates in
Washington
at this moment, we may note that Kimmel had received a dispatch from
Stark on the 24th which included the following statement: “Chances of
favorable outcome of negotiations with
Japan very doubtful. This situation coupled with statements of
Japanese Government and movements of their Naval and Military forces
indicate that in our opinion that a surprise aggressive movement in any
direction including an attack on the
Philippines or
Guam is a possibility.” On the next day, Stark wrote a letter
to Kimmel. Although Kimmel did not receive it until December 3rd, it
reveals the trend of Stark’s thinking on the 25th. He stated that a
Japanese attack on the
Philippines would be the most embarrassing thing that could happen to
the
United
States and that some
Washington authorities thought that this might occur. Stark went on
to say that he, personally, was inclined to “look for an advance into
Thailand,
Indo-China,
Burma Road area as the most likely.” Stark concluded by stating
that: “Of what the
United States may do, I’ll be damned if I know. I wish I did. The only
thing that I do know is that we may do almost anything.” This well
illustrates Stark’s frequent personal confusion and uncertainty.
One
may observe that the “almost anything” did not include an attack on
Pearl Harbor, despite Stark’s knowledge of the Bomb Plot messages from
the time of the decoding and translation of the first one on October
9th. By the 24th and 25th of November, his thinking appeared to be
almost entirely dominated by the thought that the Japanese would first
attack in the Far East, indeed in the furthest East.
Kimmel,
of course, knew nothing about the negotiations with the Japanese or the
details of the Japanese movements which had led Stark to these
conclusions. He did not even know that
Hull
had sent an ultimatum to Japan on November 26th, which
Washington
expected would lead to war with the
United States in a few days—when the Japanese sent their reply to
Hull. On November 27th, Kimmel received from Stark the
following so-called “war warning” message, which has been represented by
Roosevelt’s defenders as sufficient to alert Kimmel as to the
possibility of an imminent Japanese attack on
Pearl Harbor,
although this was not even mentioned by implication:
This
despatch is to be considered a war warning. 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. The number and
equipment of Japanese troops and the organization of naval task forces
indicate an amphibious expedition against either the
Philippines, Thai, or Kra peninsula, or possibly
Borneo.
Execute an appropriate defensive deployment preparatory to carrying out
the tasks assigned in WPL 46. Inform District and Army authorities. A
similar warning is being sent by War Department. SPENAVO inform British
Continental Districts Guam
Samoa
directed take appropriate measures against sabotage.
Not
only the content of Stark’s “war warning” message but also the method
used in transmitting it further emphasized to Kimmel that Stark and
Washington were concentrating on the threat of Japanese movements in the
Far East. Just as the message sent to Short on the 27th was drafted
with MacArthur primarily in the mind of Washington authorities, so
Stark’s message to Kimmel clearly indicated that Washington framed it
primarily for Admiral Hart, Commander of the Asiatic fleet in the Far
East. This Navy “war warning” message was addressed as follows:
For
Action: Cincaf (Hart), Cincpac (Kimmel).
For Info:
Cinclant (King, USN, Ghormley, London) Spenavo (Creighton,
Singapore) . . .
It
would, of course, be quibbling to contend that Kimmel did not know that
the message was designed for him as well as for Hart. But it is also a
fact that, as shown by the prior listing of the lower ranked Hart, that
it was the latter whom the drafters had primarily in mind. Admiral
Ingersoll actually testified that the warning of the 27th was intended
primarily for Hart. It is equally true that Kimmel noted this order of
address and naturally interpreted it as deliberately intended to
emphasize that Washington believed that the real danger from
Japan
lay in the Far East. With never one mention of a threat to
Hawaii, Stark’s message diverted attention to the
Far East.
Nevertheless, Kimmel faithfully carried out the directions in this
message of the 27th, as well as in the supplementary messages from
Stark, just as though he had been the sole addressee in the “war
warning” message. Stark testified on the witness stand that Kimmel had
done all that was required of him in the message of the 27th.
Stark’s
statement started off with the assertion that “This dispatch is to be
considered as a war warning.” This carried a much weaker and more
generalized connotation than, “This is a war warning.” It went on to
state that negotiations with
Japan,
of which Kimmel knew no details, had ceased and aggressive action by
Japan might be expected within the next few days. All known
Japanese equipment and activities indicated an “amphibious expedition
against the
Philippines, Thai or
Kra
Peninsula, or possibly
Borneo.” Kimmel was ordered to “execute an appropriate defensive
deployment preparatory to carrying out the tasks assigned in WPL 46” if
war broke out.
Two
later supplementary messages were sent to Kimmel by Stark on the 27th.
One dealt with sending infantry divisions to defend adjacent bases in
the Pacific. The other ordered, if Kimmel thought it feasible, sending
Army patrol and pursuit planes to Wake and Midway on carriers then at
Pearl Harbor.
There was no suggestion of an extensive offensive deployment by the
Pacific fleet to the
Marshalls to restrain Japanese movement toward the Malay barrier.
Commander Hiles has suggested that if the Stimson message to Short on
the 27th was a “do-don’t message,” those of Stark to Kimmel on the 27th
constituted “do nothing” messages, so far as preparing Hawaii for an
attack on Pearl Harbor. On November 29th, Stark sent Kimmel another
message directing him to take no action under WPL 46 until “Japan has committed an overt act,” thus matching the similar
order sent to Short on the 27th.
Kimmel
carried out these orders promptly. On November 28th, Admiral William F.
Halsey was sent to Wake with the carrier
Enterprise, three heavy cruisers and nine destroyers. On December
5th, Admiral John H. Newton was sent to Midway with the carrier
Lexington, three heavy cruisers and five destroyers; and also on the
5th, Admiral Wilson Brown was sent to
Johnson
Island on a practice operation with some cruisers and destroyers,
there being no remaining carrier for him. The carrier
Saratoga
had been sent to the Pacific coast for reconditioning and equipment with
radar and was just starting to return to Pearl Harbor. It was fortunate
that the carriers and heavy cruisers had been sent out of Pearl Harbor
before the 7th; otherwise, the naval disaster from the surprise attack
would have been far more serious. The battleships which were destroyed
or injured were of very secondary importance in the type of naval
warfare which ensued.
Of
course, if Kimmel had been actually warned of imminent danger on the
27th, as he could and should have been, the battleships, carriers, and
heavy cruisers at Pearl Harbor would all have been deployed and directed
in such fashion as possibly to have detected, intercepted and surprised
the Japanese task force under Nagumo and inflicted serious injury upon
it, even though it was outnumbered by the Japanese in carrier and
planes: that is, provided that the Japanese consul general and spies in
Honolulu had not become alarmed by this desertion of Pearl Harbor,
informed Tokyo, and the latter had not recalled Nagumo, which is
probably what would have happened. Even if Nagumo had proceeded to
Pearl Harbor, there is little probability that he would have sent his
bombers to attack an empty naval base.
Kimmel
ordered the planes that were taken on the carriers by Halsey and
Newton to conduct reconnaissance sweeps to detect any possible
enemy movements or threats. This was done promptly and on an extensive
scale—about two million square miles of ocean area.
There
was no valid reason why Kimmel should have regarded these messages that
he received from Stark on the 27th and 29th as, in any sense, a warning
that Japan might strike at Pearl Harbor within any immediate period.
The first message received on the 27th was obliquely labelled a “war
warning” but it meant nothing at all in this respect, when considered in
connection with the remaining portion of the message and those that
followed. Indeed, their total implications were quite to the contrary.
“War warning” as used by Stark was only a formal label and a vague,
convenient and routine semantic “catch-all,” as Kimmel has well
described it. Since Kimmel had been denied any knowledge of Magic
operations, was not sent a Purple machine, and was ignorant of
diplomatic negotiations with
Japan
after the Argentia meeting in August, the statement that negotiations
with
Japan had ceased could not have meant anything specific or
alarming to him.
He
not only had no knowledge of the details of the negotiations revealed in
the intercepted Japanese diplomatic messages that were kept from him
after August but he was not informed of even such fundamental items as
Hull’s having sent an ultimatum to Japan on November 26th. The only
possible war mentioned was one that might start in the southwest
Pacific, East Indies, or Philippines, some thousands of miles away, as
the result of a possible Japanese amphibious expedition and attack, and
no assurance was expressed by Stark that even this expedition would
inevitably mean an attack on the United States unless it was made on the
Philippines. All the orders or suggestions for action contained in the
messages received by Kimmel on the 27th and 29th clearly indicated that
Kimmel was to get ready for possible war in the Far East, and if
feasible to send ships to Wake and Midway with planes and
reinforcements. Only in the event of war in the Far East was he to make
forays against the
Marshalls, and try to draw Japanese strength away from the Malay
barrier.
Just
as the order to go on alert against local sabotage and concentrate
attention on civilians in Honolulu and environs made Short believe that
Washington had no suspicions of any imminent attack on Hawaii, so the
measures Kimmel was directed to take, as laid down in the messages of
the 27th and 29th, gave him the inevitable impression that Washington
had no suspicion of any immediate Japanese action against Pearl Harbor.
The Naval Court of Inquiry, which met from July to October, 1944,
asserted that the so-called war warning message sent by Stark to Kimmel
on November 27th “directed attention away from
Pearl Harbor
rather than toward it.”
The
orders given to Kimmel also involved the further depletion of the
already inadequate defensive personnel and equipment at Pearl
Harbor—sending more sailors and soldiers to the mid-Pacific, along with
robbing Pearl Harbor of pursuit and patrol planes, which were in almost
fantastically short supply there, and sending all the carriers away. In
the same way that ordering Short to go on alert against local sabotage
convinced him that there was no fear in Washington of any attack on
Hawaii, so the orders to Kimmel further to deplete his Pearl Harbor
supplies, equipment and personnel were tantamount to telling him that
Pearl Harbor was not in any danger of attack, so far as Washington was
aware, on November 26th and 27th. He received no direct warnings of any
probable attack there after that time.
One
item that has been especially seized upon by defenders of Roosevelt to
demonstrate that Kimmel was adequately informed of the threat of a
Japanese air attack on Pearl Harbor is that he did receive the
information that on December 1st and 2nd that Japan had ordered the
destructions of its codes and code machines.
This
contention will not hold up under the most elementary analysis. In the
first place, Kimmel is expected to have reacted to this information as
though he had been informed of everything that the Washington
authorities knew by December 4th: the whole complex of Magic, the
breaking of the Purple code in August, 1940, our reading of all Japanese
diplomatic messages from that time to December, 1941, all the
negotiations that had taken place since August, 1941, the deadlines set
by Tojo in November, 1941, his statement of “the things that are
automatically going to happen” if negotiations had not been settled by
November 29th, Hull’s ultimatum of November 26th, which Washington was
convinced the Japanese would reply to by a declaration of war, and the
whole Winds set-up and its execution on December 4th. None of these
vital facts, which gave the codes destruction orders their real
significance and implications, were known to Kimmel. On the other hand,
in
Washington, the codes destruction orders were a dead giveaway as to
imminent war when taken in the context of all the other vast array of
intercepts and intelligence that was available there.
Despite
all this, even at
Washington
the codes destruction orders were not taken as an infallible sign that
Japan
was going to make war, especially war on the
United States. Even Commander Safford did not consider that the codes
destruction orders meant certain war until Winds Execute was intercepted
on December 4th. The latter did make it clear that
Japan
was going to make war and would start it against the
United States and
Great
Britain, but not against
Russia. This is precisely why Winds Execute was so vitally
important in incriminating the
Washington authorities and why it was frantically suppressed and so
emphatically declared non-existent by those who sought to conceal their
guilt after December 7th.
While
Kimmel was informed of the Winds code and Commander Rochefort had
experts monitoring on it, neither Kimmel nor Rochefort was told that
Winds Execute had been intercepted by
Washington on December 4th. Rochefort’s staff was unable to
intercept it at Pearl Harbor because they were monitoring the voice
circuit from
Japan. Winds Execute actually came over the Japanese Morse code
and Safford was lucky enough to pick it up at
Cheltenham,
Maryland, as indicated earlier.
Further,
there is actual evidence that the codes destruction messages did not
inevitably mean war in December, 1941. This news came to
Washington on December 1st and 2nd. Nagumo was not ordered to climb
Mount
Niitaka until the 5th. If the
United
States had offered to resume negotiations on the 2nd, 3rd or 4th, his
task force could have been called back and most probably would have
been. It was so arranged in his orders. It is very possible that an
American offer to resume negotiations as late as early on December 6th
might have led to calling off the attack on Pearl Harbor, but Roosevelt,
Hull and Stimson were determined that negotiations would not be resumed
after Hull sent his ultimatum on November 26th. Its terms assured that
they would not be.
Moreover,
the routine destruction of codes was a not unusual occurrence, and had
often taken place without an ensuing war. It can be only a casual or
formal process. Kimmel had known that the Japanese consulate in Honolulu
had frequently burned its papers, which might have been codes, for all
that he knew. It is true that, when taken in their full context, as
known by
Washington, the Japanese code destruction orders of December 1st and
2nd were extreme and sweeping and very probably were a conclusive sign
of war, but Kimmel knew nothing of this context. Along with this was the
fact that all the information and so-called war warnings that Kimmel and
Short received on November 27th, 28th and 29th distracted attention away
from
Hawaii
and emphasized the Far East. Further, any appropriate action by Kimmel, if based on a
full recognition of the meaning of the codes destruction order, would
have required a complete alert which would have been wholly at variance
with the orders to Short not to alarm the civilian population at Hawaii,
and these orders to guard against local sabotage were not lifted prior
to the Pearl Harbor attack, not even on the West Coast by General Arnold
until December 6th at Sacramento. Stark’s message to Kimmel on the 29th
had also ordered Kimmel not to take any sweeping offensive action under
WPL 46 until after Japan had committed an overt act of war.
Hence,
one can safely conclude that Kimmel’s having received the news of the
Japanese code destruction orders of December 1st and 2nd was no more of
a war warning that the Japanese might strike Pearl Harbor from the air
almost immediately than were the messages received by him and Short on
the 27th, 28th, and 29th.
In
short, the “warnings” received by Kimmel on the 27th and 29th hardly
went much further as to details or the imminence of war than Admiral
Stark’s release to his Admirals after the Singapore Conference of April,
1941, and the formulation of Rainbow 5, to the effect that the question
of the United States entering the war was no longer one of whether
but of when and where.
Short
and Kimmel have been vigorously criticized on the ground that, in the
light of the traditional strategic assumptions about naval warfare in
the Pacific, they did not, on their own knowledge and initiative,
recognize the probability that, in the event of war, the Japanese would
first attempt a surprise attack on the American Pacific fleet, wherever
it was stationed, even though top authorities in Washington seemed to
overlook this. As a matter of fact, they never lost sight of this
possibility at any time; indeed, they seemed far more aware of it than
Stimson, Marshall, or Stark. Knox had stressed this possibility in
January, 1941.
From
the time Kimmel assumed command at Pearl Harbor in February, 1941, both he and Short had frequently
mentioned and discussed the possibility of a surprise Japanese attack
there, and recognized the action and supplies needed to detect and turn
back such an attack. They had vainly requested the equipment required
effectively to carry out such a protective policy, especially the planes
necessary to carry out adequate and continued reconnaissance and to
destroy or cripple any Japanese task force approaching Pearl Harbor, but
they had received virtually nothing down to the
Pearl Harbor
attack. As noted earlier, on April 9, 1941, General Frederick L. Martin
and Admiral Patrick N. L. Bellinger, commanders of the Army and Navy air
forces in Hawaii, handed in a report about the feasibility and danger of a
Japanese surprise air attack on
Pearl
Harbor that was virtually identical to the plan Yamamoto actually
carried out under Admiral Nagumo’s command. It was carefully studied by
Short and Kimmel and was forwarded to Marshall in
Washington on April 14th but without any response directing
appropriate defensive operations at
Pearl
Harbor or supplying adequate equipment.
Early in
1941, Admiral Bloch had asked for one hundred additional patrol planes
that would be needed for effective reconnaissance, and Short had
requested 130 B-17 bombers needed for both reconnaissance and attacking
an approaching Japanese task force. These planes were promised but
never delivered. None of the hundred was ever sent to Admiral Bloch for
naval reconnaissance at
Pearl Harbor,
and a scant twelve B-17 bombers were sent to Short, only six of which
were suitable for use after they arrived. Planes needed by Short and
Kimmel at Pearl Harbor had been diverted to the Atlantic and Europe to
aid Britain and Russia, along with one-fourth of Kimmel’s naval force,
sent there in April and May, 1941. Other planes were belatedly sent to
the
Philippines and to
China.
Throughout
1941, Short and Kimmel were actually far more alert and apprehensive to
the danger of a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor in the event of war with
Japan than was Washington, even though they had been denied the Bomb
Plot messages. They were simply refused the equipment required to meet
and allay their apprehensions in this matter. Nevertheless, despite the
blackout of Pearl Harbor, the patrol planes at Pearl Harbor carried out
limited reconnaissance and the planes on the task forces sent out under
Admirals Halsey and Newton did conduct extensive reconnaissance in the
days just before Pearl Harbor in the effort to detect any evidence of a
Japanese task force moving against Pearl Harbor, covering no less than
two million square miles of the surface of the Pacific.
In
conclusion, it is abundantly clear that Short and Kimmel were not
adequately informed, or literally even warned at all, about the prospect
of an imminent Japanese surprise attack on
Pearl Harbor.
What were later dishonestly described as warnings by defenders of
Roosevelt actually confirmed and intensified their impression that Pearl
Harbor was not in any immediate danger of a surprise attack.
This almost criminal failure to warn Short and Kimmel was fully
realized in Washington in late November and early December, 1941, by
such outstanding operating experts as Colonel Otis K. Sadtler, acting
chief of the Army Signal Corps, Colonel Rufus S. Bratton, chief of the
Far East Section of Naval Intelligence, and Commander Arthur N.
McCollum, chief of the Far East Section of Naval Intelligence.
These
men sought to have Short and Kimmel directly and adequately warned, only
to have their efforts ignored or frustrated. McCollum believed that
Kimmel should have a better warning on the 27th of November. He was
probably the best informed person in Washington at the time on the
situation in the Pacific, and he prepared a general survey and
evaluation of the state of affairs in the Pacific area, suggesting what
should be done, and showed this to Turner, Noyes, and Wilkinson, but it
got no further. It would have been invaluable to Kimmel, and if sent to
Pearl Harbor would doubtless have led to preparations that would have
frustrated Yamamoto’s plan to carry through the task-force attack.
McCollum then prepared a precise warning to Kimmel on December 1st and
another on the 4th, but neither was sent. They were killed by Stark and
Turner, which in this case meant Turner, who stubbornly contended that
the “warnings” sent on November 27th provided all necessary information
to put the Hawaiian commanders on the alert. When McCollum, along with
Admiral Noyes and Captain Wilkinson, suggested to Stark on the morning
of the 7th that he warn Kimmel at once, both were ignored.
No
honest and competent Intelligence, Signal Corps, or Naval Communications
officer who was in Washington in November and December, 1941, has ever
contended, at least not prior to being intimidated during the post-Pearl
Harbor investigations, that Short and Kimmel were clearly and adequately
warned of any probable impending attack on Pearl Harbor, despite the
increasing abundance of material available in Washington from early
October onward to justify and validate such a warning and make it
mandatory.
There
is no substantial evidence whatever that either Short and Kimmel failed
in their duties in any way whatever at Pearl Harbor or were in any
manner responsible for not anticipating and repelling the arrival of the
Japanese task force that made the attack on the morning of December 7,
1941. They did not have divine wisdom or insight, but it is very
doubtful if two men better fitted or more competent for the posts they
were occupying in 1941, or officers more diligent in executing their
duties, could have been found in the United States. They were clearly
more competent, energetic and alert with respect to all matters
connected with their assigned duties at Pearl Harbor than their superior
officers, General Marshall and Admiral Stark, were in
Washington.
The
allegation of Secretary of the Navy James V. Forrestal, backed up by
Admiral Ernest J. King, after the Hewitt Inquiry, that Kimmel failed to
demonstrate the superior judgment necessary for exercising command
commensurate with his rank and assigned duties, and the order that
Forrestal then issued that Kimmel should never again hold any position
in the United States Navy which required the exercise of such superior
judgment, was one of the most unfair, malicious, and mendacious
statements ever made by prominent American public figures in their
official capacity. It flew directly in the face of the conclusions of
the Naval Court of Inquiry. The criticisms of General Short in the
post-Pearl Harbor investigations were equally biased and unfounded and
were completely refuted.
Since
substantially the same “warning” message that was sent to General Short
on the 27th was also sent to General MacArthur in the Philippines at the same time, it is instructive to point out
significant differences in the message sent to the latter. These
variations all stem primarily from the fact that there was little to
hide from MacArthur and Hart. Both
Washington
and
Manila
knew that war with Japan was coming soon and that the
Philippines were almost certain to be attacked soon after it started.
Hence, MacArthur and Hart were left free to take all measures they
deemed essential to get ready for the blow. The only exception was that
Japan must be allowed to fire the first shot. MacArthur and
Hart expected that the Japanese would attack Pearl Harbor before they
struck the
Philippines because they needed to destroy the Pacific fleet and
protect their flank before they could safely carry on extensive
campaigns in the
Far East and the southwest Pacific.
There
was nothing in the message to MacArthur relative to refraining from
alarming the civilian population; nothing forbidding the disclosure of
intent; and nothing restricting the dissemination of the “highly secret
information to minimum essential officers.” Manila was to operate under a “Revised Rainbow 5,” which
had been brought out to MacArthur personally by General Brereton. There
was no reference to any “Revised Rainbow 5” in the message to
Short or any indication that he knew of any such revision. Finally,
MacArthur was directed to inform Hart of the contents of the November
27th message, while no suggestion was made to Short that he notify
Kimmel. As Commander Hiles characterizes the situation:
The conclusion seems obvious and incontestable. The Far
East Commands at
Manila were given a free hand with no special admonitions or
restrictions whereas the Hawaiian Commands were handcuffed and hogtied.
It required some finagling to do the trick and fit it nicely into a
pattern of intrigue and deceit in such fashion as to appear plausible
for the record. To devise and express in words a war warning that is
not a war warning calls for some nice mental gymnastics, but it was done
and it worked, even though it involved the cooperation of a considerable
number of the highest functionaries of the government and no end of
conferences, memoranda, and the like.
It
is interesting and illuminating to know that while MacArthur and Hart
were favored in the above manner by
Washington, they did not really need such special concern. They were
far more fortunate in having a Purple machine at
Manila and were also assisted by a special arrangement unique in
all pre-Pearl Harbor communications connected with Japanese-American
relations and any probable Japanese attack on American forces or
territory.
When
MacArthur felt the need of being well informed as to the diplomatic
situation between the United States and Japan, he requested that he be
sent one of the best experts from the Army Signal Corps in Washington,
and specified Colonel Spencer Akin as the man he desired. Colonel Akin
had access to Magic and was fully aware that neither
Manila
nor
Fort
Shafter had been fully informed of the increasingly tense
situation in Japanese-American relations. He was especially concerned
over the failure to send the Bomb Plot messages to
Hawaii. Hence, Akin arranged with Colonel Otis K. Sadtler,
acting head of the Signal Corps in Washington, that Sadtler would send
him such information as would be required to keep MacArthur fully
informed of the increasingly alarming developments. Akin was shrewd and
foresighted enough to insist on being promoted to Brigadier General
before he would consent to accepting MacArthur’s request to come to
Manila. Sadtler worked just as honestly and patriotically but
lived and died a colonel.
Sadtler
sent Akin all the information he thought necessary to keep MacArthur
fully informed as to the likely time and place of any Japanese attack,
whereas Short did not receive any Purple, J-19 or PA-K2 messages after
the end of July. A specially important item in the information sent
over this secret Sadtler-Akin pipeline were the Bomb Plot messages being
intercepted at MS5 at Fort Shafter and other monitoring stations in the
United States and forwarded to Washington to be decoded, translated,
read, filed away and kept from Short.
Hence,
MacArthur had been adequately informed of the imminence of war with
Japan
before he received the Marshall message of the 27th. He did not need it, but he was able
to read far more into it than could Short, who had been kept completely
in the dark about the ominous developments during November, 1941. MacArthur
was ready for the attack and had cleared his beaches in anticipation of
the approaching Japanese assault that he expected to take place
immediately after an attack on
Pearl Harbor.
One
of the main myths circulated by the “blackout” and “blurout” historians
is that MacArthur was actually surprised by the Japanese, even six hours
after he had learned of the attack on Pearl Harbor, and that his
airplanes had remained huddled helplessly on the ground and were
destroyed by the Japanese bombers as Short’s had been that morning at
Hawaii. They had actually been in the air on reconnaissance during the
morning of the 7th, and had just returned to refuel when the Japanese
attack came, quite unexpectedly at the moment. It had been doubted that
the Japanese bombers could fly from Formosa to
Manila and return, and weather conditions were also such that it
seemed unlikely that they would even make the attempt on the 7th.
MacArthur
and Akin knew that Short was being deprived of this alarming information
that they received from Sadtler in Washington, but had to sit quietly by and await a Japanese attack.
They did not dare pass on this crucial information to Short because any
resulting precautionary action on the part of Short might reveal the
existence of the Sadtler Akin pipeline and lead to its suppression,
which would have been a serious loss for
Manila.
Commander
Laurance F. Safford, chief of the Security Section of Naval
Communications in Washington, thought at the time that all such
disturbing information was being sent from Washington to Admiral Bloch
at Pearl Harbor. Hence, he made no attempt to set up a secret Safford-Rochefort
pipeline which would have given Commander Rochefort, chief of Naval
Communications Intelligence at Pearl Harbor, essentially the same
information that Sadtler was sending Akin. Rochefort has told me
several times that if this had been done, Pearl Harbor would have gone
on alert long before Nagumo approached Pearl Harbor, in all probability
before he left the
Kurile Islands.
Rochefort
has criticized Safford for even failing to give him some clear hints of
the dangerous developments in Japanese-American relations after November
26th, or even earlier, since they were close friends and in constant
communication. Even a few allusions about the actual situation would
have led Rochefort to intensify precautionary monitoring action. He
could not decode Purple, for Pearl Harbor had no Purple machine, but he
could have decoded and read messages sent in J-19 and PA-K2, many of
which, notably the Bomb Plot messages, indicated a serious threat to
Pearl Harbor.
Safford
asserts that he supplied Rochefort with the changing keys for these
codes but did not feel that it was necessary to suggest that Rochefort
use them for intercepting and reading the Japanese diplomatic messages
because he thought that Kimmel and Bloch were getting all the relevant
information from their superior officers in Washington. He remained
misled about this for nearly two years after the Pearl Harbor attack,
when he first discovered that Bloch and Kimmel had not been sent the
relevant information on Japanese-American relations at any time before
the attack. Until then, he had believed that Kimmel had actually been
seriously derelict in not heeding his warnings and executing his duties.
Safford made this discovery when he was examining the Navy files and
found that the incriminating documents relative to Pearl Harbor had been removed. Fortunately, he found where they had
been hidden before they could be destroyed and restored them to the
files. Later on, this enabled the Army Intelligence officers to
discover that most of the incriminating documents had been removed from
the Army files and not replaced.
Forward to Chapter VI
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