Pearl Harbor Betrayed (36 page)

During the same midnight hours, the Japanese carrier task force, having made its high-speed daylight approach from the north undetected, slowed from twenty-four knots and undertook final deck and hangar procedures to ready aircraft for takeoff. Arming and fueling were done both on deck and in the hangars below. Ample gasoline outlets existed and all points could be reached by hoses. Three elevators served the flight deck, where aircraft were spotted abaft the beam centerline. Warm-up was never done in the hangar. On deck the aircraft were secured by chocks fore and aft of the main wheels and by wing and tail lashings to ring bolts that folded flush into the deck. The forward 230 feet of the deck was used as the takeoff length. For night launch operations the flight deck was marked by rows of flush white lights that ran down the center and sides of the deck. The command islands of
Akagi
and
Hiryu
stood on the port side; the other four carriers had starboard-side islands.
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While the deck crews went about their work, the pilots and bombadiers, breakfast of red rice with sea bream and chestnuts under their belts, were given their final briefings in ready rooms just below the flight decks in the vicinity of the islands. They were all “Division I” veterans of combat operations in China. For the last fifteen days they had rehearsed the various segments of the attack plan. Everyone assigned to strike Pearl Harbor possessed a packet including, among other things, an air chart of Oahu, a diagram of ship positions in the harbor, and a code table for making reports by voice or Morse key. (“Each pilot,” Admiral Kimmel would write to Stark on 12 December, “judging from my material from unburned or partially burned planes, carried a book of silhouettes of our ships. The charts of Pearl Harbor in planes were as good as anything we have.”)
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Those pilots and bombadiers assigned to hit airfields carried diagrams showing the runways, warming-up aprons, and hangars of those installations. When group and squadron commanders finished their sum-ups and exhortations, the first wave airmen, already in their flying togs, with pistols, mounted their aircraft. The six carriers had reached their final rendezvous, Point E, 230 nautical miles from Kahuku Point on the north shore of Oahu. Admiral Naguno now ordered a fleet course change toward the northeast, into the strong trade winds, for launching.

*   *   *

Part fourteen of the No. 902 Japanese response to Secretary Hull's Ten-Point note was intercepted by the Puget Sound station at 0300 Washington time and was decrypted by the Navy for distribution at some time between 0730 and 0800. Crafted in the same strident, accusatory language of the first thirteen parts, the final part contained nothing substantially new or different. It concluded:

The Japanese Government regrets to have to notify hereby the American Government that in view of the attitude of the American Government it cannot but consider that it is impossible to reach an agreement through further negotiations.
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Shortly after the fourteenth part arrived, an instruction message was intercepted:

No. 904

Re my No. 902

There is really no need to tell you this, but in the preparation of the aide memoire [memorandum] be absolutely sure not to use a typist or any other person.

Be most extremely cautious in preserving secrecy.
58

When Roosevelt was handed his copy of the fourteenth part by Captain Beardall, he commented only that it looked “as though the Japanese are going to sever negotiations.” Beardall testified later that there was nothing in the President's manner to suggest that he was expecting an attack within hours; that there “was no alarm” and “no mention of war.”
59
When Kramer arrived at his desk on the second deck of Main Navy at 0730 he seems to have been unaware that two far more critical messages had been intercepted after 0437 and sent over to the Army, since there were no Navy cryptanalysts on duty at that hour. The first of these was a time of delivery message, later to become known as the “one o'clock message”:

No. 907 (Urgent–Very important)

Re my No. 902.

Will the Ambassador please submit to the United States Government (if possible to the Secretary of State) our reply to the United States at 1:00 p.m. on the 7th, your time.
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The second message read:

No. 910 (Extremely Urgent)

After deciphering part 14 of my No. 902 and also Nos. 907, 908 and 909, please destroy at once the remaining cipher machine and all machine codes. Dispose in like manner also secret documents.
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Kramer would not have these two messages in hand until “about 1100.” In the meantime, at 0900, when Stark came in, he made delivery of the full fourteen parts to the CNO's office, where he found “quite a number [of officers], possibly 15 or more, standing around, not yet seated.… I hardly glanced at them, more than to note that Adm. Turner, Noyes, and Wilkinson, the principal other usual recipients, were also there, and consequently it would not be necessary to run them down in the building for separate individual delivery.… I don't believe I spent as much as a minute in his [Stark's] office.” In January 1944, admittedly “hazy” about his brief conversation with Stark, he allowed as though it went “most likely along the lines of”:

S
TARK:
My God! This means war!

K
RAMER
: Admiral, it has meant war for the past three months.

S
TARK
(picking up a message blank): I must get word to Admiral Kimmel. Does General Marshall know of this?

K
RAMER
: Most of it was sent over to his office last night. This last part [part 14] was sent over ten minutes ago and should be on the General's desk by now.
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Stark's alleged concern, expressed here, to warn Kimmel seems unlikely in view of his reaction to the one o'clock message, as shown below.

At 1000 Kramer delivered the full fourteen parts to Secretary Knox (who had read the first thirteen the night before), who was meeting with Stimson and the secretary of State in Hull's office. He would make another Magic run “about 1100” when he had the decrypts of the one o'clock and code destruction messages. Obviously struck by the specificity of the Sunday time of delivery—an hour when, as the Japanese must have known, secretaries of State did not normally make themselves available to foreign diplomats—Kramer made a point of calling it to the attention of each recipient, as well as the fact “that 1300 [Eastern Standard Time] was 0730 [an hour after sunrise] at Pearl, and 0300 approximately or shortly before morning twilight at [the beaches of] Kota Bharu [in northern Malaya].” In a comment to Captain Safford made in January 1944, Kramer wrote that he especially drew Knox's attention to the correlation of times—Washington, Pearl, Kota Bharu:

I distinctly remember that the tieup of those times would be apparent to experienced naval officers, but that a civilian (Mr. Knox) might overlook it. Hence the pains I took to point it out at the State Dept. I repeated this point at least half a dozen times that morning to others.
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At the War Department, Colonel Bratton was even more alarmed than Kramer by the time-of-delivery message, which was placed in his hands about 0900. “This immediately stunned me into frenzied activity,” he would say later, “… trying to locate various officers of the General Staff,” starting with the chief, whose quarters at Fort Myer he called shortly after 0900. One of Marshall's orderlies answered the phone and informed Bratton that the general was out horseback riding.

I said, “Well you know generally where he has gone. You know where you can get hold of him?”

He said, “Yes, I think I can find him.”

I said, “Please go out at once, get assistance if necessary, and find General Marshall, ask him to—tell him who I am and tell him to go to the nearest telephone, that it is vitally important that I communicate with him at the earliest practicable moment.”

The orderly said that he would do so.
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The orderly did not do so, though he may have tried. That Sunday morning, for a man who had much of the world on his shoulders, Marshall was moving in an unaccustomed leisurely manner, as though he deserved a respite before that world exploded. He had slept late and had breakfast an hour or so beyond his normal time on Sundays. Afterward, he sent for his horse and rode for about fifty minutes along the Virginia shore of the Potomac, first at a trot, then at a canter, and finally at a full gallop across the grounds of a government experimental farm, where the Pentagon stands today.
65
After his return to quarters, where he learned of Bratton's call, Marshall telephoned. The time, Bratton remembered, was, “between 10 and 10:30; sometime closer to the half-hour.”
66
Bratton explained that he had “a most important message” and that he would be glad to drive it over. Marshall said, no, don't bother. “I am coming down to my office. You can give it to me then.”
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His office was seven minutes away.

After his first failure to reach Marshall, Bratton called Miles, at his home. The G-2 chief arrived on the scene “around 10 o'clock,” and immediately conferred with Bratton. Miles, too, was struck by the singularity of the 1300 hour, and agreed with Bratton that it signified that some target in the Pacific or Far East was going to be hit at that time. Neither officer expressed particular concern about the ships in Pearl Harbor, because, as Bratton said, “We all thought they had gone to sea.”
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*   *   *

At 0530 (Hawaii time) the Japanese cruisers
Chikuma
and
Tone
each catapulted an Aichi E13A1 Jake floatplane into the morning twilight, which began at 0510.
Chikuma
's twin-float plane would reconnoiter Pearl Harbor at high altitude and break radio silence to report ships present.
Tone
's would double-check
I
-
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's signal that no elements of the Pacific Fleet were in Lahaina Roads. Without waiting for their reports, Admiral Nagumo ordered the engines of all his aircraft on six flight decks started and warmed up. The flattops pitched and rolled in the still heavy seas, and there was not yet a visible horizon. Still, Genda and Fuchida were confident that their first wave aircraft would lift off all right. Before entering their cockpits, each airman tied a cloth
hachimaki,
or headband, around his leather helmet; on it was the word
Hissho,
meaning “Certain Victory.”

At 0600 a launch officer on the foredeck of each carrier swung a green lamp as a signal to take off. The light-gray-painted Type 21 Reisen Zero fighters, under the command of Lt. Comdr. Itaya Shigeru, were the first to push their carburetors to full power. More nimble because they carried no bombs or torpedoes, they needed the least space to take off. In Japanese carrier practice, aircraft were not individually signaled by a dispatcher. Instead, deck crews removed the forward wheel chocks in planned order, and planes taxiing out of their spots began their takeoff runs as soon as they could. Deck hands cheered every launch, waving their caps overhead.
Banzai!
After the fighters came the green-painted Type 97 Kate high-level bombers, with Fuchida as observer in the lead plane off
Akagi
's deck, all carrying a single 1,760-pound converted 16-inch armor-piercing gun shell. Next came Type 99 Val dive-bombers, and last, the Kates fitted with the modified, shallow-water torpedoes, on which so much of Japan's hopes rested.

As the roaring sound gathered and circled in the gray haze overhead, Genda counted only three dive-bombers that failed to get airborne because of mechanical malfunctions. With Fuchida in overall command, 183 aircraft formed up under light signals in well-rehearsed, disciplined attack groups—43 fighters, 49 level bombers, 51 dive bombers, and 40 torpedo bombers. By prearrangement, the signal for the first wave to shape course for Oahu was to be Fuchida leading the level bombers across
Akagi
's bow. This he did at about 0620. The entire air fleet swung south and homed in on the Hawaiian music playing over Honolulu's radio station KGMB.
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*   *   *

Finally, at 1125, General Marshall entered his office, where Bratton had laid out the fourteen-part message on his desk. Bratton and Miles stood by impatiently while Marshall read through the No. 902 pages. When he finished, Bratton handed him the No. 907 time-of-delivery.

On 15 December, responding to a request from Marshall that he put into writing what he recalled of that moment, Miles wrote the chief:

You then asked what Col. Bratton and I thought should be done about it, or what it signified. We said that we believed there was important significance in the time of the delivery of the reply—1:00 p.m.—an indication that some military action would be undertaken by the Japanese at that time. We thought it probable that the Japanese line of action would be into Thailand, but it might be any one or more of a number of other areas.

I urged that the Philippines, Hawaii, Panama and the West Coast be informed immediately that the Japanese reply would be delivered at one o'clock that afternoon, and to be on the alert. You then picked up the telephone and got Admiral Stark. You told him you thought we should send out warning as indicated above.
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Bratton's recollection in 1945 was that he and Miles both told Marshall “that we were convinced it meant some
American
installation in the Pacific at or shortly after 1 o'clock that afternoon [emphasis added].” He also mentioned that, during the discussion, they were joined by Gerow and Bundy, who also, according to Bratton, concurred in the estimate that the Japanese intended to attack “us” at about that hour.
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In a
Rashomon
-type disparity, Miles's aide-mémoire similarly notes the arrival of Gerow and Bundy but states that they concurred only in that the Japanese reply and timing “probably meant Thailand”; no American installation was mentioned. Bratton, when asked during the JCC hearings, “Was there any discussion that 1 p.m. meant 7:30 Hawaiian time?” answered, “No, sir.”
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