Pearl Harbor Betrayed (3 page)

The defeat fell hardest on the shoulders of Admiral Husband Edward Kimmel, commander in chief, United States Pacific Fleet (CINCPAC) and commander in chief, United States Fleet (CINCUS). Between receiving messages and giving orders, the fifty-eight-year-old Kentuckian watched the awful drama unfold from his second deck corner office at the submarine base. For over ten months since assuming command, he had trained this powerful fleet to maximum readiness and proficiency with what ships, aircraft, and weapons he was supplied. His officers and men were at concert pitch. They were ready to sail.

And now—how could
this
happen?

While he observed the losing battle, “his jaw set in stony anguish,” a witness wrote, communications officer Commander Maurice “Germany” Curts at his side, a spent .50-caliber machine gun bullet shot through the window glass and cut his white jacket. A welt on his chest was all that Kimmel suffered, but he said to Curts:

“It would have been merciful had it killed me.”
16

TWO

TOO THIN A SHIELD

Or what king, going to encounter another king in war, will not sit down first and take counsel whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand?

Gospel of Luke 14:31

 

Oahu is the third largest of the eight major islands and 124 islets that compose the archipelago of Hawaii. Ranging 1,500 miles in a crescent from Kure Atoll in the west to the largest island, Hawaii, in the east, the volcanic mountaintops form what Mark Twain called “the loveliest fleet of islands that lies anchored in any ocean.” The U.S. Navy's anchorage at Pearl Harbor is an indentation on the southern, or lee, side of Oahu, six statute miles west of the capital city, Honolulu. From the pearl oysters that once grew there the harbor took its original Hawaiian name,
Wai Momi
—“pearl waters.” The United States secured the site by treaty as a coaling and repair station in 1887. In 1908 it became a full-fledged naval station.

Providing ten square miles of navigable water thirty to forty-five feet deep, landlocked Pearl Harbor is entered from the south through a narrow coral-barred channel, which in 1911 was dredged to a depth of thirty-five feet. To the immediate south of the channel the winds are moderate, the seas are relatively smooth, and visibility is excellent. By contrast, the winds and seas to the north of Oahu are stronger and generally there is a weather belt characterized by low ceilings, squalls, rain, and low visibility. The harbor's position in the North Pacific Ocean is 2,091 nautical miles (a nautical mile being approximately 11⁄6 land miles) west to southwest of San Francisco, 4,685 nautical miles northwest of Panama, 4,767 nautical miles east of Manila in the Philippines, and 3,430 nautical miles southeast of Tokyo, Japan.

In 1941, the principal warships of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, battleships, carriers, and cruisers, were berthed to the northwest and southeast of Ford Island, which rises in the center of the harbor waters. Smaller warships and auxiliary vessels were anchored in adjacent districts. Carrier-based aircraft and patrol bomber seaplanes occupied parking aprons and hangars on Ford Island itself, site of the fleet air base. To the southeast side of the harbor stood the naval station's administrative offices, submarine base, torpedo boat piers, signal tower, magazine wharf, dry docks, repair basin, tank farms for storage of fuel oil, hospital, and other facilities—the “Navy behind the Navy.” Immediately south of the naval station was a large U.S. Army Air Corps base named Hickam Field. Two other Air Corps bases, Bellows and Wheeler, were within twenty miles, to the east and northwest, respectively. A Marine Corps air station was at Ewa, a short distance west of the harbor. And the Navy operated a new air station for patrol aircraft (flying boats) at Kaneohe Bay on the eastern shore of Oahu. U.S. Army ground forces, some 58,000 strong, were stationed at Fort Shafter, Schofield Barracks, and scattered forts and camps throughout the island. “The Hawaiian Department is the best equipped of all our overseas departments,” declared Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson on 7 February 1941.
1
Some journalists spoke of Oahu as the “Gibraltar of the Pacific.” And, on 14 June of the same year,
Collier's
magazine, writing about “Oahu, the fortress of the Hawaiian Archipelago,” stated in a subhead that, “The Navy Isn't Worrying,” and titled its piece “Impregnable Pearl Harbor.”
2

But the Navy
was
worrying. And Pearl Harbor was
not
impregnable. Reason: the Army, which was officially charged with the defense of the fleet and naval station at Pearl, was, in the Navy's view, woefully unequipped to perform that task. Rear Admiral Claude C. Bloch, the Commandant of the 14th Naval District, acting as Naval Base Defense Officer, was charged with the employment of such naval units as Commander in Chief Kimmel could make available for the purpose of
assisting
the Army in its defense of the fleet. But by joint agreement between the War and Navy Departments, and by provision of the Navy's war plan (WPL-46), protection of the fleet was the core reason for the Army's considerable presence on Oahu.
3
Army Chief of Staff George C. Marshall made the point forcefully when he wrote to the newly installed commanding general of the Hawaiian Department, Lieutenant General Walter C. Short, on 7 February 1941: “The fullest protection for the Fleet is
the
rather than
a
[Marshall's emphases] major consideration for us.”
4

Six days before assuming command of the Pacific Fleet on 1 February 1941, Kimmel joined his name to that of outgoing commander in chief Admiral James O. Richardson in pointing out to Admiral Harold A. Stark, Chief of Naval Operations in Washington, that “the existing deficiencies in the defenses of Oahu and in the Local Defense Forces of the Fourteenth Naval District impose a heavy burden on the Fleet for purely defensive purposes.” The most glaring of those deficiencies were: (1) the small number and obsolescent condition of land-based aircraft, requiring constant use of fleet planes for local patrol; and (2) the “critical inadequacy of A.A. guns available for the defense of Pearl Harbor, necessitating constant manning of ships' A.A. guns while in port.”
5
On his own, Kimmel tackled the same subject two days later, noting that, after a hurried survey of the situation, he had become all the more concerned about the absence of means for “defending this base.”
6
Kimmel could call attention to Navy General Order 142, Paragraph 42: “The Fleet must have no anxiety in regard to the security of its base.”
7

In Admiral Stark, Kimmel had a ready and willing ear. On the previous 22 November Stark had written to Richardson: “Since the Taranto incident [a British carrier-borne air attack on warships in the Italian anchorage at Toronto on 12 November] my concern for the safety of the Fleet in Pearl Harbor, already great, has become even greater.”
8
The CNO showed Kimmel's communication to Marshall, who, on 7 February, confided the Navy's concerns to General Short at Fort Shafter: “Of course the facts are as he [Kimmel] represents them.… What Kimmel does not realize is that we are tragically lacking in this matériel throughout the Army, and that Hawaii is on a far better basis than any other command in the Army.… You should make clear to Admiral Kimmel that we are doing everything that is humanly possible to build up the Army defenses of the Naval overseas installations, but we cannot perform a miracle.”
9
Stark probably heard the same from Marshall. We do know that he heard the same from Secretary Stimson, who stated that the Hawaiian Department “continues to hold a high priority for the completion of its projected defenses because of the importance of giving full protection to the Fleet.”
10
On 10 February Stark urged Kimmel, “in view of the inadequacy of the Army defenses,” to continue his faithful acceptance of “the responsibility which must rest upon the fleet for its own protection while in Pearl Harbor,” despite the fact that ships' guns were not equal to an attacker's threat, and without respect to the fact that such constant vigilance took away from fleet training and readiness.
11
By 18 February Kimmel had the very feelings of anxiety that General Order 142 had been crafted to prevent: “I feel that a surprise attack (submarine, air or combined) on Pearl Harbor is a possibility. We are taking immediate practical steps to minimize the damage inflicted and to ensure that the attacking force will pay.”
12
He made no claim to future ability to
repel
an attacker with the forces at his disposal. In August 1944, he would elaborate on his “feelings”:

I felt that the most probable form of attack in the Hawaiian area was submarine attack. I felt that the bombing attack by airplanes was probably second in order of probability. I felt also that the danger of torpedo plane attack in Pearl Harbor was nil because I believed that torpedoes would not run in the shallow water in that harbor. The maximum depth at any point was on the order of 45 feet with the prevailing depth in the deepest part, 40 feet. I felt that the probability of surface gunnery attack or bombardment was of a very low order of priority, but the probability of mining was considered of a high order of priority.
13

On 5 February, Major General Walter Campbell Short arrived at Honolulu Harbor aboard the liner
Matsonia
. Twenty-four bombers from the Eighteenth Bombardment Wing at Hickam Field roared overhead in welcome to the officer who would relieve Lieutenant General Charles D. Herron as commanding general of the Hawaiian Department. After greetings at the dock from Herron, the lean, five-foot-ten-inch, somber-faced Short took up temporary residence at Admiral Richardson's house in Honolulu. There he was promptly visited by Admiral Kimmel, in civilian clothes, who welcomed him to the islands and offered him the Navy's full cooperation in every detail of his assignment. “He responded wholeheartedly,” Kimmel would say later, “and I had a real regard for him before I had known him for a very long time.” On 7 February, in ceremonies conducted on the parade ground of Fort Shafter, fifteen minutes by car to the east of Pearl Harbor, Herron formally passed command to Short, who, later the same day, received a third star representing temporary advancement to lieutenant general.

Two years older than Kimmel, Short was born, the son of a physician, in Fillmore, Illinois, on 30 March 1880. He was graduated Phi Beta Kappa and Distinguished Military Graduate from the University of Illinois in 1902. In February of the same year he received a Regular Army commission as a second lieutenant of infantry. During the next eleven years he served successively at posts in Texas, the Philippines, Nebraska, Alaska, and San Francisco, where in 1913 he entered the School of Musketry. An expert pistol shot, he won the U.S. National Match in 1909 and placed second in 1913. When in 1915 the School of Musketry was moved to Fort Sill, Oklahoma, he went with it, and in that state he met and married Florence Isabel Dean, of Oklahoma City.

In June 1917, Short sailed for France with the American Expeditionary Force of World War I and was sent at once to the British and French fronts. His duties were primarily in training commands, including machine gun instruction. Rising to temporary rank of colonel, he remained in Europe following the Armistice until July 1919. Reverting to major on his return, he attended the School of the Line (later Command and General Staff School) at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. He also attended the Army War College, graduating in 1925. In 1936 he succeeded Brigadier General George C. Marshall as assistant commandant of the Infantry School at Fort Benning, Georgia. Promoted to brigadier general in 1937, he was given command of the 2nd Brigade of the 1st Division, and, in the following year, promoted to major general, he was assigned the division command. In 1940, General Marshall, then chief of staff, sent him to Fort Jackson, South Carolina, to organize the I Corps. And from there, in December of that year, Marshall selected Short to head the Hawaiian Department.

Though Short had never shirked an Army assignment, this one he was reluctant to accept, since his father-in-law was seriously ill, and he thought he should stay nearby. “But [Marshall] considered it important and ordered me [to Oahu],” Short said. In the first week of January 1941, Short conferred at the War Department with Marshall, Brigadier General Leonard T. Gerow, chief of the War Plans Division, and Colonel Carl A. Spaatz, of the Air Corps. He learned that, in addition to his primary responsibility to defend the fleet and the naval base, he was to hold Oahu against any attempt to invade, prevent sabotage, protect the other U.S. islands as far west as Wake, and aggressively train ground troops and air crews for the Pacific war that seemed increasingly predictable. Short's assessment of the situation was that the Hawaiian Department was amply prepared against submarine attack and against civilian sabotage, but that it was dangerously vulnerable to air attack by gravity bombers and torpedo bombers.
14

Over the next two months, Short and Kimmel worked hand in glove to develop a joint defensive strategy with the means at hand. Each found the other in “complete agreement” on the broad steps that should be taken, while Rear Admiral Bloch worked with Short on the fine details—Bloch, because he, not Kimmel, was Short's opposite number. “I saw General Short frequently,” Kimmel said,

because I made it a point to see him. I think he also made it a point to see me. We conferred officially on many occasions, and at practically every official conference, Admiral Bloch was present, because Admiral Bloch was the officer in Hawaii who was charged with dealing with the Army, and at no time did I wish to by-pass him. I think I kept Admiral Bloch thoroughly informed of every dealing I had with General Short. I played golf with General Short at a little 9-hole golf course which he had established near his headquarters at Fort Shafter.
15