Pearl Harbor Betrayed (28 page)

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Meanwhile, a confident United States citizenry, including the millions who did not know the location or even the name of Pearl Harbor, basked in the knowledge of America's oceanic remoteness from the fields and seas of battles then raging. Where Japan was concerned, many in the Midwest read approvingly an editorial in the
Chicago Tribune,
which held:

What vital interests of the United States can Japan threaten? She cannot attack us. That is a military impossibility. Even our base at Hawaii is beyond the effective striking force of her Fleet.
126

SEVEN

CLIMB NIITAKAYAMA

Our objective lies more than three thousand miles away. In attacking this large fleet concentration it is to be expected that countless difficulties will be encountered in preserving the absolute security of the plans. If these plans should fail at any stage, our Navy will suffer the wretched fate of never being able to rise again. The success of our surprise attack on Pearl Harbor will prove to be the Waterloo of the war to follow.

Rear Admiral Ugaki Matome
Chief of Staff, Combined Fleet

 

When in April 1941 Onishi Takijiro and Genda Minoru presented their analysis of the Pearl Harbor attack proposal to its author, Admiral Yamamoto Isoruku, it was considered by the C-in-C, Combined Fleet alongside analyses undertaken independently by his own staff. Taking the two analyses together, we find in them two propositions that would be deleted before adoption of a final plan: (1) that not one but repeated raids should be mounted against Pearl Harbor in order to secure a thorough crippling effect; and (2) that landings should be made on Oahu for the purpose of capturing all or as many as possible of the U.S. naval officers at Pearl. Yamamoto made a few amendments in the Onishi-Genda analysis and, sometime in April, ordered it to be sent to the Naval General Staff for their reaction.

While awaiting staff response, Yamamoto proceeded to move from analysis to a formal plan of operations. To draw up that plan he appointed four study groups headed by a brilliant and eccentric senior staff officer, Captain Kuroshima Kameto. Working naked at his desk (the flagship
Nagato
lacked air conditioning), chain-smoking and burning incense through an intense period of intellectual labor, Kuroshima produced a document that Yamamoto could take to the Naval General Staff at the end of April. There it met with serious resistance and lay fallow for several months. On 7 August Yamamoto sent Kuroshima himself to argue the plan's virtues before the General Staff, but staff members were unmoved. First, the staff wanted the Combined Fleet to be kept under
its
control, not the obverse; and second, staff members thought that Yamamoto's operation was far too much of a gamble. Even if a striking force were to approach Oahu successfully and without detection, what guarantee was there that the American fleet would be in the harbor on the day chosen? Kuroshima did win one concession: that the Navy's annual map maneuvers at the War College be moved from November (sometimes December) to September, and that a special section be devoted to the Pearl Harbor problem. That would enable the operation, if approved, to proceed before adverse weather conditions occurred in the North Pacific, if that was selected as the preferred route, which would make the passage impossible.

Also in August, an unusual order arrived at the desk of Lt. Comdr. Fuchida Mitsuo, a newly promoted staff member in the Third Carrier Division. It directed him to return to the carrier
Akagi,
from which he had just been transferred, and to reassume the lower-ranking duties of a flight commander. His puzzlement was relieved when, on board his old carrier, he was let in on the still very secret plan to bomb Pearl Harbor, and told that he would lead the attacking air fleet. Placed in charge of training the air crews of all participating carriers, Fuchida created a series of “near-combat” exercises in Kagoshima Bay, where the topography happened to resemble that at Pearl Harbor, but in which no secrets would be revealed, since, so far as his aviators were aware, Kagoshima could represent a foreign harbor anywhere in the Far East, such as Singapore. There, for many weeks, the carrier pilots unknowingly simulated the attacks they would make at Pearl Harbor only months later in December.
1

In suburban Tokyo, on Meguro Street, a few minutes walk from the Meguro railway station, stood the four-story black building of the Naval War College. There, in a sealed room on the east wing, thirty carefully selected Combined Fleet commanders and staff members gathered on 2 September to begin tabletop map maneuvers, or “war games,” to test the feasibility of the Hawaiian Operation. The officers were organized into three teams, designated “N” (Nippon), “A” (America), and “E” (England). When the exercises were completed, on 13 September, it was judged that four U.S. Navy capital ships had been sunk and one seriously damaged, two carriers were sunk and one damaged, six cruisers were sunk or damaged, and 180 aircraft were shot down. But Japanese losses had also been heavy, including one
Akagi
-class carrier and one
Soryu
-class carrier sunk, and two slightly damaged, as well as 127 aircraft shot down. The amphibious landing and capture proposition was rejected because of insuperable logistical problems. The other results and the collected written materials were delivered to Yamamoto's flagship,
Nagato,
then anchored at Hashirajima, the anchorage of Kure.
2

Opposition to the plan mounted among both task force command staffs and members of the Naval General Staff. The commanders of the First and Second Air Fleets, Vice Admiral Nagumo Chuichi and Vice Admiral Kondo Nobutake, respectively, sent written messages to Yamamoto urging him to abandon the plan. It was Nagumo who eventually would command the Pearl Harbor Striking Force. Two other officers carried their objections personally to Yamamoto—Rear Admiral Kusaka Ryunosuke, chief of staff to Nagumo, Commander of the First Air Fleet; and Rear Admiral Onishi Takijiro, who occupied the same position with the Eleventh Air Fleet. Onishi, the reader will remember, was the first line officer to whom Yamamoto had confided his plan, in the previous January; on that review he had given the plan a 60 percent chance of success. After the two officers expressed their views, Yamamoto is purported to have replied:

But what would you do if, while we were engaged in the South Pacific, the U.S. Fleet launched air raids on Japan from the east? Are you suggesting that it's all right for Tokyo and Osaka to be burned to the ground so long as we get hold of oil? Still, the fact is I'm determined that so long as I'm C. in C. we shall go ahead with the Hawaiian raid. I'm sure there'll be many things that are difficult for you, or go against the grain, but I'm asking you to proceed with preparations on the positive assumption that the raid is on.
3

With this and other arguments plus a full display of his not inconsiderable charm and powers of persuasion, the C-in-C overcame his visitors' objections and, as they departed the gangway, won their pledges of support. During 9–14 October, Yamamoto conducted tactical war games on board
Nagato,
and upon their completion, with all the ships assigned to the Striking Force assembled in the western sector of the Inland Sea (an inlet of the Pacific in southeastern Japan, extending 240 miles between Honshu on the north and Shikoku and Kyushu on the south), he had all the commanding officers of ships and aircraft brought together to receive a detailed briefing on the raid. Many of the officers present were hearing of it for the first time. To command the Striking Force Yamamoto had named Nagumo, who had opposed the operation. He was an unlikely choice for another reason: though commander of the First Air Fleet, he had only marginal experience in aviation. He won the command through seniority, Yamamoto's request to have the command himself having been rejected by the Naval General Staff.

Now all that remained was to receive the approval of that staff. Yamamoto dispatched Kuroshima again to staff headquarters in Tokyo armed with the latest operational draft and a personal written message from the C-in-C stating, in essence, that he was no less determined at that date to make the surprise attack on Hawaii, and that he would stake his rank and position on bringing it off. Impressed by Yamamoto's confidence, Chief of Staff Admiral Nagano Osami decided to give the operation a green light. Rear Admiral Fukudome Shigero, who had been Yamamoto's chief of staff until the preceding April and, in that capacity, had given the plan only a 40 percent chance of success, and was now on the naval staff as chief of the First Division, was present when Nagano said, “If he has that much confidence, it's better to let Yamamoto go ahead.” The only condition the chief imposed was a requirement that the Striking Force turn back at once if it suffered a setback en route, such as premature discovery by the enemy, an on-board explosion, or an inability to refuel from tankers owing to high seas.

When the new Navy minister, Admiral Shimada Shigetaro, who had sought every means of avoiding war with the United States and who would have preferred that the United States struck the first blow so that Japan could declare war with honor, also, and reluctantly, came on board, the Naval General Staff sought the additional support of the chief of the Army General Staff. The Army's endorsement was necessary for the plan to be advanced to the level of the Imperial General Headquarters, which alone could approach Hirohito for the Emperor's sanction. The Army came approved, and the imperial sanction was received on 5 November.
4

Contrary to the conventional historical view of Hirohito as an enigmatic, passive, and generally benign monarch who was duped by his ultra-nationalist military chiefs, the “divine” descendant of Emperor Mutsuhito (1867–1912), known after death as “Meiji the Great,” was in fact an active driving agent in Japanese war-making from Manchuria in 1931 through Pearl Harbor to final ignominious defeat in 1945.
5
In the latter part of 1941 the Emperor took a direct role in promoting the military's preparations for war and in establishing a deadline for negotiations with Washington. Of the Hawaii Operation he said, approvingly, “This surprise attack operation, comparable to the Battle of Okehazama [a feudal-period battle in central Honshu, Japan, in 1560], is extremely bold. Of course its success will largely depend on the luck of the battle. However, so long as the enemy fleet is anchored there on the day of the attack, it is possible to sink two or three battleships and aircraft carriers.”
6
On 5 November Admiral Nagano gave the Emperor a detailed briefing on the Imperial Navy Operations Plan for War Against the United States, Britain, and the Netherlands. It was at that audience, Hirohito's most recent biographer states, that “Hirohito gave the final go-ahead to attack Pearl Harbor.”
7

On the same day, Imperial Navy General Staff Order No. 1 was issued to Yamamoto “by Imperial Order”:

1. The Empire has decided to schedule various operational preparations for completion in the early part of December in view of great fears that she will be obliged to go to war with the United States, Britain, and the Netherlands for her self-existence and self-defense.

2. The Commander-in-Chief Combined Fleet will make necessary operational preparations.

3. Detailed instructions will be given by the Chief of the Naval General Staff.
8

Under the same date, but actually not until 8 November, Yamamoto issued his own Combined Fleet Top Secret Operation Order No. 1, which showed that the fleet was
already
prepared not only for the Hawaii but also for the Southern Operation, as well as for further operations (Phase Two) to consolidate victories in those two theaters. The extraordinary order, 100 pages in length, had been drafted by the indefatigable Kuroshima, who explained its comprehensive nature by saying that he believed “an order should … include all potential operations.”
9
The Naval General Staff printed 700 copies of the order, but, save in the original,
omitted
the Hawaii Operation.
10
Only in one known fragment of that original do we have language about Pearl Harbor:

1. The Task Force will launch a surprise attack at the outset of war upon the U.S. Pacific Fleet supposed to be in Hawaiian waters, and destroy it.

2. The Task Force will reach the designated stand-by point for the operation in advance.

3. The date of starting the operation is tentatively set forth as December 8 [Japan time; December 7 Hawaii time], 1941.
11

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Being prepared for combat did not mean, however, that aerial bombing performance had been brought to concert pitch, at least in Yamamoto's estimation. One day late in October, having learned of Yamamoto's dissatisfaction from Combined Fleet air staff officer Comdr. Sasaki Akira, Fuchida went personally to see the C-in-C on board
Nagato
. There he reviewed the air training to date in Kagoshima Bay and proposed to Yamamoto that demonstration maneuvers be conducted in Saeki Bay utilizing all six carriers dedicated to the Pearl Harbor mission. Yamamoto agreed, pointing out that he wanted to see the aircraft drop their bombs or torpedoes not at safe distances from but within close proximity to their targets. Accordingly, four days of maneuvers were laid on for 4–7 November. In four groups—dive-bombers, torpedo bombers, horizontal bombers, and fighters—the aircraft displayed their newly acquired skills in mock attacks on Saeki, in northern Kyushu, which served as Pearl Harbor. Yamamoto pronounced himself satisfied.
12

But there was one problem affecting the torpedo bombers that remained unresolved. Though they were now pressing their attacks close in to their targets, the torpedo-bomber pilots were achieving a disturbingly low percentage of hits. Part of the reason, it was decided, was the tendency of the torpedoes, when dropped, to plunge too deep in the water before ascending to their programmed attack depth, 13 to 20 feet. The water depth at Pearl Harbor was only 30 feet, except in the channels, where it was 45 feet. The successful British aerial torpedo attacks at Taranto had generally been made in depths of 84 to 90 feet, with a few runs made at 66 to 72 feet. The Japanese studied the site and took photographs, but Genda said after the war that Taranto had had no influence on the Japanese tactics for Pearl Harbor.
13
Unless some modifications were made to the Japanese torpedoes it was certain that they would dive uselessly into the muck at shallow Pearl. This had been one of the two chief concerns about the raid expressed by Onishi in April.