Pearl Harbor (8 page)

Secretary of War Stimson also feared that Japan would strike British and Dutch holdings in the Pacific, carefully avoiding a direct confrontation with the United States. If that happened, what would the cautious Roosevelt do? He wrote in his diary, “We should maneuver them into the position of firing the first shot.” He never expected the first shot to be delivered in such a devastating manner.
²³

4

“This is no drill!”

A
T 1:25 P.M. eastern standard time (7:55 a.m. in Hawaii), fighter pilot Mitsuo Fuchida peered down at the U.S. Navy ships berthed at the U.S. Naval base at Pearl Harbor. Fuchida shouted, “To-to-to,” the first syllable of the Japanese word for
charge
, into his radio. That was followed by an even more significant transmission: “Tora, tora, tora,” meaning
tiger
, the message confirming that the attack caught the Americans by surprise.

The island of Oahu, which housed the American Pacific Fleet, was considered by many military planners to be the strongest military outpost in the world. “Here in Hawaii,” said the American commander, Walter Short, “we all live in a citadel.” Massive coastal guns surrounded the perimeter, 45,000 army troops protected the fleet and air bases from attack, and squadrons of bombers, scouts, and fighters patrolled the skies. Three aircraft carriers, eight battleships, and twenty-nine destroyers provided the anchor for military operations in the Pacific.
¹

The formidable American naval base at Pearl Harbor seemed an unlikely target, but over the past few months, Japan's military leaders had decided that it was essential to cripple the U.S. Navy in order to realize their territorial ambitions in the region.

 

 

T
he attack on Pearl Harbor was the brainchild of Admiral Isoruko Yamamoto, the commander in chief of the Japanese Combined Fleet. He was a battle-tested warrior. In 1905, at age twenty-one, he
lost the second and third fingers on his left hand during a ferocious battle with the Russians at the Tsushima Strait. After World War I, he traveled to the United States, studied at Harvard, and later served as a naval attaché in Washington. More than most Japanese leaders, he understood the United States and respected its enormous industrial capability. He also demonstrated an appreciation for American culture and history. When a junior officer asked him what he should read to improve his English, Yamamoto recommended Carl Sandburg's biography of Abraham Lincoln. “I like Lincoln,” he said. “I think he's great not just as an American, but as a human being.”
²

Although he was not a pilot, Yamamoto had developed great respect for the military capability of airpower. He had also earned a reputation for being a bold thinker who was willing to take risks. In his spare time, he enjoyed high-stakes all-night poker games where he tested his opponents' nerves and patience. “In all games Yamamoto loved to take chances just as he did in naval strategy,” an aide recalled. “He had a gambler's heart.”
³

In 1940, Yamamoto devised a daring and pragmatic plan for defeating the United States. He advocated an offensive operation against the American Pacific Fleet in its home port of Pearl Harbor. He believed the American fleet needed to be crippled before Japan could wage war in Asia. The model for his attack was Hitler's successful
Blitzkrieg
strategy in Europe. The goal was to hit the enemy hard with overwhelming force.

Yamamoto understood the risks of going to war against an industrial giant like the United States. In order to gain the upper hand, he realized that Japan would need to strike a decisive blow. As he explained to his navy minister, “We should do our very best . . . to decide the fate of the war on the very first day.” A decisive, crippling blow, he believed, would demoralize the American people, making them less likely to support a long, costly war in the Pacific. It would take years for the United States to recover, and by that time it would face a fait accompli, with Japan controlling everything between the Indian and Pacific oceans.
⁴

When Yamamoto first raised the idea, it was universally dismissed as impractical: Pearl Harbor was too far away and too well defended. Yamamoto,
however, remained convinced that with careful planning, and some luck, Pearl Harbor could be destroyed by a massive stealth air attack. Quietly, the determined admiral began assembling a team of trusted lieutenants to plan the assault. To execute the attack, Yamamoto turned to Commander Minoru Genda, a thirty-six-year-old daredevil pilot who was the famed leader of “Genda's Flying Circus,” a team of skilled pilots who entertained audiences with acrobatic aerial performances. Known as “Mad Genda,” for his fanaticism, he was also a profound strategic and tactical thinker.
⁵

Genda convinced Yamamoto that a successful attack would need to be made at dawn and would require every available carrier in the fleet. He believed that it should include dive-bombing and high-level bombing as well as torpedoes. The element of surprise was essential. They had to strike before the Americans could mobilize their potent ground and air defenses. Perhaps most important, he convinced the admiral to recruit a classmate, Mitsuo Fuchida, to train the pilots and lead them into the attack. The thirty-nine-year old Japanese commander was the grandson of a famous samurai. He wore a toothbrush mustache to express his admiration for Adolf Hitler.

Throughout the summer, Fuchida drilled his pilots, using Kagoshima Bay in Kyushu because it resembled the topography of Pearl Harbor. The biggest challenge was to figure out a way to get torpedoes to work in the shallow forty-five-foot average depth of Pearl Harbor's water. Aerial torpedoes usually needed at least one hundred feet of water to operate successfully. Genda came up with the solution: He added wooden tail fins to the torpedoes so they would remain closer to the water's surface. He also added steel fins to the sixteen-inch armor piercing bombs that would be used to penetrate the thick armor on the American battleships. The fins guaranteed that the bombs would fall tip down, maximizing their explosive impact.
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The plan called for the torpedo bombers to strike first, descending to thirty feet above the water line, assaulting the largest battleships. Since the ships were moored in pairs, the bombers would be able to hit
only the outside ships. Torpedo bombers would be followed by horizontal or high-level Nakajima B5N2 bombers that were responsible for hitting the remaining battleships. Genda scheduled a final wave of dive-bombers to destroy the main army and navy airfields. The plan also involved using well-placed spies on the island to provide intelligence about ship movements and security procedures.

 

 

O
n November 17, the Japanese armada left their training base in Saeki Bay for their rendezvous point at Hitokappu Bay in the Kuriles, north of Japan's main islands. There it began its relentless drive toward Pearl Harbor. The task force boasted six carriers, 400 warplanes, two battleships, two cruisers, nine destroyers, and a dozen other surface ships. At an average speed of thirteen knots, refueling daily, the attack fleet pursued a 3,500-mile course across the empty expanse of the North Pacific. Included in the fleet's orders was a provision that “in the event an agreement is reached in the negotiations with the United States, the task force will immediately return to Japan.” But nobody expected that to happen.

By the time the government issued the attack order—“Climb Mt. Nitaka 1208”—on December 2, the fleet had already traveled half the distance to Pearl Harbor. The reference was to the highest peak in Japan, a fitting metaphor for such an ambitious plan. Moving in wedgelike formation, they were roughly 900 miles north of Hawaii on December 4. At 11:30 a.m. on December 6, the sprawling armada turned south toward Oahu and increased its speed to twenty knots. By 5:50 a.m. the following morning, December 7, the fleet was 220 miles north of Oahu. “I have brought the task force successfully to the point of attack,” the commander told Genda. “From now on the burden is on your shoulders.”
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At 6:00 a.m. the Japanese carriers turned into the wind and launched their first wave of 183 planes. All six carriers launched at the same time. It took fifteen minutes for all the planes to lift into the air for the first assault. Before taking off, each officer tied a
hachimaki
around his head. This traditional white cloth, marked with the symbol of the Rising Sun, signified that they were embarking on an important mission that required courage and determination. Once launched, the bombers assumed their aerial positions. The high-level bombers rose to 9,300 feet, with torpedo bombers to their right and dive-bombers to their left. Zero fighters swarmed around the constellation of bombers, providing protection.
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At 7:05, the carriers launched a second wave of 167 aircraft. Military planners would have preferred a single strike with overwhelming force, but because it would take too long to get all the planes into the air, they broke into two separate strike forces. The first wave started its flight toward Oahu as a second wave began launching. It took ninety minutes for all the Japanese assault planes to be airborne.
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The Japanese pilots had practiced a careful system of signals for the final approach. If they managed to achieve complete surprise, Fuchida would fire one “black dragon” signal from a pistol. That would allow the slow-moving and vulnerable torpedo planes to attack first. They would be followed by the horizontal bombers and finally the dive-bombers. If Fuchida did not have the element of surprise, he would fire two flares, which would mean the torpedo bombers would engage last while the Americans were focused on the other bombers.
¹⁰

Realizing that he had caught the Americans unprepared, Fuchida fired his single “black dragon” flare. When the fighter-group leader did not respond, Fuchida assumed he had missed the signal, so he fired a second flare. The leader, however, saw both flares and interpreted it as the signal that they had lost the element of surprise.
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The tactical miscue failed to slow the advancing planes. Peering through his binoculars, Fuchida could see Battleship Row in the distance. The fleet's aircraft carriers were out to sea that day, but the battleships and destroyers were lined up like sitting ducks. Although disappointed not to see any American carriers in their designated places, he was thrilled by the line of apparently unsuspecting targets in the distance. “What a majestic sight, almost unbelievable!” he thought to himself.
He was told there would be nine ships, but he counted only seven (he missed the
Pennsylvania
, which was in drydock).
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The first wave of 183 fighters, bombers, and torpedo planes split into two groups. A dozen planes set out for Hickam Field, while the rest headed for the ships on Ford Island. Fighters and dive-bombers swarmed over the airfields at Kaneohe, Hickam, Ewa, Bellows, and Wheeler. Meanwhile, the main force headed to the primary target at Pearl Harbor.

As Fuchida's aircraft swooped overhead, the brass band on board the USS
Nevada
was playing “The Star-Spangled Banner” in preparation for the standard 8:00 a.m. flag raising. Japanese fighters sprayed the band with machine-gun fire and dropped a torpedo that missed the nearby USS
Arizona
. Soldiers and sailors were so accustomed to military drills and the crackle of gunfire that they were not immediately alarmed by the sounds. It never occurred to anyone that they could be under attack from the Japanese. On board the USS
Arizona
, shocked soldiers stood on deck, watching the Japanese planes dropping bombs and firing machine guns, but it did not register. “This is the best goddamn drill the Army Air Force has ever put on!” remarked one confused sailor.
¹³

With bombs exploding around them and machine-gun fire strafing the decks, it soon became clear that the sailors at Pearl Harbor were witnessing the impossible: a full-scale Japanese attack on what most Americans considered an impenetrable fortress. At 7:58 a.m. the command center at Ford Island announced, “Air raid, Pearl Harbor, this is no drill!” A sailor onboard the USS
Oklahoma
issued a more impassioned warning on the ship's public address system: “Man your battle stations! This is no shit!”

Of the one hundred ships at Pearl Harbor that day, the main targets were the eight battleships, seven of which were moored on Battleship Row on Ford Island. Within the first few minutes, all seven of the battleships near Ford Island were hit. Two torpedoes had already rocked the USS
Oklahoma
, which started listing to port and then capsized. Nearby, a bomb fell into the forward magazine of the USS
Arizona
, creating
a fireball that soared five hundred feet above the ship. The explosion and fire killed 1,177 crewmen.
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For the men onboard the stricken ships, the quiet morning had turned into a living hell. Many were engulfed by the flames that consumed the ships. “There were bodies of men” everywhere, recalled Private First Class James Cory, who was on the deck of the
Arizona
before it sank. “These people were zombies, in essence. They were burned completely white. Their skin was just as white as if you'd taken a bucket of whitewash and painted it white. Their hair was burned off; their eyebrows were burned off . . . and the insoles of their shoes was about the only thing that was left on these bodies.”
¹⁵

Flying overhead, Commander Fuchida could not take his eyes off the inferno. “A huge column of dark red smoke rose to 1,000 ft., and a stiff shock wave rocked the plane,” he recalled years later. “It was a hateful, mean-looking red flame, the kind that powder produces, and I knew at once that a big magazine had exploded. Terrible indeed.”