On the morning of 7 December, 1941, Japan launched a surprise attack against United States military installations on Oahu, Hawaiian Islands. Three hundred and fifty planes launched from six Imperial Japanese Navy aircraft carriers struck the U.S. Pacific Fleet, then anchored at the naval base at Pearl Harbor, as well as airfields, barracks, and other military installations on the island. In less than two hours, Japanese airmen had left eight battleships, three light cruisers, three destroyers, and four auxiliary craft either sunk, capsized or damaged. Ninety-seven U.S. naval aircraft and seventy-seven U.S. Army Air Force planes were destroyed. Another eighty-eight Army planes had suffered various degrees of damage. Airfields and installations were heavily hit. The raid killed more than 2,400 Americans, 2,008 of whom were Navy personnel, and wounded another 1,178. Japanese losses were twenty-nine planes, one large submarine, and five midget submarines. Nevertheless, the Japanese attack was not a total success. Pearl Harbor's docks, cranes, and oil storage areas were untouched.
The Second Strike
Several months before the Pearl Harbor attack, the Imperial Japanese Navy had organized the First Air Fleet by bringing together in one operational unit the First and Second Carrier Divisions. The First Carrier Division's two fleet carriers Akagi and Kaga had been converted from a battle cruiser and battleship keel respectively. Each was more than 800 feet long and displaced over 40,000 tons. Together they held 82 Zero fighters and 53 Val dive bombers. The smaller Hiryu and Soryu of the Second Carrier Division carried 33 Zeros, 36 Vals, and 36 Kate level bombers, some of which were modified as torpedo bombers. The Fifth Carrier Division's two new, large 30,000 ton fleet carriers were nearly 800 feet long. Zuikaku and Shokaku, combined for another 11 Zeros, 54 Vals, and 51 Kates, 30 of the latter modified as torpedo bombers.
It was shortly after 10 A.M. on the Akagi's bridge when Nagumo spotted black specks far to the south. Soon afterwards the six carriers began welcoming home the jubilant flight crews. High seas, tricky winds, and worsening weather challenged deck crews and pilots, but the superbly nurtured flying skills of the navy's top-notch airmen were equal to the task. Flight officers who recovered on the Akagi reported to Air Officer Masuda who tabulated their claims on a large blackboard set up on the flight deck near the bridge. It soon became apparent that the raid had been a great success and subsequent pilot debriefings underlined the victory. The Japanese had sunk four battleships and crippled the American battle fleet. They had inflicted heavy damage on four other battleships, four cruisers, and three destroyers. They estimated that the raid had destroyed about 100 American aircraft (actually 65 of all types), most of them on the ground.
Fuchida reported the battle damage to a straight-faced Nagumo who listened quietly until Fuchida completed his account. Rear Admiral Kusaka Ryunosuke, Nagumo's chief of staff, then questioned Fuchida about which targets to attack next. Without hesitation Fuchida said the dockyards and the fuel tanks. Nagumo then observed that of the 29 aircraft shot down, 20 were lost from the second wave or twelve percent of its 168 planes. Seventy four other planes had been damaged.
More to the point, his striking power was seriously diminished. On the positive side, his fighter force suffered the least damage in the strike and could be counted on to protect the carriers against an enemy aerial counterattack. Many of the damaged aircraft could be quickly repaired and made operational. Yet two imponderables had to be factored into any second strike. How many American aircraft remained at Pearl Harbor and where were the missing American carriers?
If Nagumo opted for a second strike against the installations and oil tanks around Pearl Harbor, he would have to commit his fleet to at least another twenty-four hours within striking distance of the target. The element of surprise, which all pilots agreed was decisive in the opening attack, would be sacrificed and losses would probably exceed those of the morning's second wave. Returning pilots, especially those from the second wave, talked about thick anti-aircraft fire and dozens of American fighters racing frantically around the Hawaiian skies. Cumulative losses might so weaken Nagumo's air arm that it would be unable to defend the task force against the American carriers. Moreover, after their return the warplanes had been re-configured for attacks against surface ships. Maintenance crews were also repairing dozens of lightly damaged aircraft and it would take them until nightfall to re-fit and re-arm the planes for another strike. At 2 P.M. as the carriers turned northward, Nagumo retreated to his cabin, and the assembled staff officers exchanged resigned glances that conceded that the operation was over.
Two hundred miles west of Hawaii, Task Force 8, commanded by Vice-Admiral William Halsey aboard the carrier Enterprise, learned of the attack on Pearl Harbor. Enterprise was on the return leg to Pearl Harbor after delivering twelve U.S. Marine aircraft to Wake Island on December 4. Halsey had launched eighteen aircraft on a routine flight from the carrier to Ford Island. They arrived in the midst of the Japanese attack and lost five aircraft. After they had re-fueled and re-armed at Ford Island, the surviving aircraft began searching for the Japanese fleet.
At 10:15 A.M. Halsey received a priority message from Admiral Kimmel that two Japanese carriers had been sighted about 30 miles southwest of Barbers Point which was only ten miles from Pearl Harbor. Hastily launched air crews flew to the area but could find no trace of the alleged enemy fleet, although they did spot the cruiser Minneapolis which was the source of the mistaken report. Then a radio direction finder intercepted a radio transmission from a Japanese carrier almost due north of Pearl Harbor. Direction-finders record simultaneously reciprocal bearings, and in this instance the interpreter reversed the direction from almost due north to almost due south. Around noon Halsey ordered his task force to turn on a south course towards the false bearing. Unknown to the admiral or the task force, a Japanese submarine I-74 had been shadowing his fleet since early Sunday morning.
Meanwhile Task Force 12, three heavy cruisers, Chicago, Portland, and Astoria and five destroyers organized around the carrier Lexington, commanded by Captain Frederick
C. Sherman were about 400 miles southeast of Midway Island, where they were bound to deliver eighteen aircraft to that Marine garrison. Admiral Kimmel originally ordered Sherman to rendezvous with Halsey about 150 miles west of Pearl Harbor. When Halsey reported his southward course, Kimmel in turn directed Task Force 12 to proceed on a southerly heading to meet Task Force 8 in the waters northeast of Hawaii. Kimmel also requested that Lieutenant General Walter C. Short, the Army commander on Oahu, order his four surviving B-17s to patrol the waters in a fan shaped area due south of the islands. Short further directed the commanding general of Hawaiian Air Force, Major General Frederick L. Martin, to ready the seventy-five remaining operational fighter, reconnaissance, and pursuit aircraft for combat and to insure that ammunition was distributed immediately to the dozen or so Army anti-aircraft installations around Pearl Harbor.
Aboard the I-74 Lieutenant Commander Ikezawa Masao was about to make a fateful decision. After spotting the Enterprise task force in the false dawn of 7 December, he had shadowed the 20,000 ton carrier throughout the morning. Rough seas and swells could cover his attack, but when Enterprise swung southward at high speed the submarine, which could only make eight knots submerged, would soon be left in its wake. Instead of trailing the zig-zagging warships, Ikezawa opted to drop back from the task force, then surface and broadcast its position on an open radio frequency reserved for just such sighting reports. Shortly before 2:30 P.M., I-74 broke the rough ocean surface long enough for its radio operator to tap out in Morse Code an enciphered priority signal “ENEMY WARSHIPS SIGHTED; ENTERPRISE CLASS CARRIER; POSITION 21-40 NORTH 162-30 WEST; COURSE 170; SPEED 25 KNOTS.” Three hundred miles northeast, Akagi's communications officer deciphered the message and ran to the carrier's bridge. One hundred and seventy miles nearly due east, U.S. Navy intercept operators used radio direction finding gear to fix the position of the submarine's radio transmitter. Hawaii dispatched an urgent message to Task Force 8 that identified the location of a suspected enemy submarine. Two of the nine destroyers screening Enterprise turned north and set off at full speed to search the suspected area. While they hunted I-74, another momentous decision had been made on the Akagi.
The six carriers were about 300 nautical miles northwest of Oahu when Nagumo, Kusaka, Fuchida, Genda, and a few other staff officers huddled in Akagi's wardroom. Why was Enterprise steaming south at high speed away from the strike force? Genda thought it might be headed to meet Lexington and combine forces, but Fuchida was less certain, suggesting it might head for Johnston Island. Certainly Enterprise's departure left Pearl Harbor uncovered, unless the Americans planned to swing east and return to the naval base. The screening force of eleven submarines of the Third Submarine Force deployed south of Oahu would intercept such a maneuver.
Nagumo then reviewed the earlier debate about the feasibility of a second strike on the tank farm and the dock and repair facilities at Pearl Harbor. The destruction of the American battleships left Nagumo's fleet immune to surface attack. If his ships reversed course and sailed at 20 knots, by 0600 on December 8 they could be about 200 nautical miles east-north-east of the American base. From there the carriers could launch an attack by Vals and Kates while the torpedo-configured Kates could be kept on Zuikaku and Shokaku's flight decks ready for action if the enemy carriers reappeared. He had enough Zeros to fly air patrols above the fleet and could dispatch his cruisers' catapult launched float planes on long-range reconnaissance missions.
Several of the assembled staff officers suggested that a concentrated attack on Pearl Harbor by the entire carrier force was necessary to inflict the destruction of the docks, facilities, and oil tank farm. Nagumo quickly cut them short. He was unwilling to commit everything to a second strike. It was imperative, he insisted, to maintain a large reserve as long as the two American carriers were loose. His decision to withhold Zuikaku and Shokaku's planes from the attack coupled with the aircraft lost and damaged in the attacks left fewer than 150 aircraft available for the second strike.
Japanese staff officers aboard Akagi assumed that the Americans at Pearl Harbor would be on full alert, so they looked for ways to reduce losses. The best way was to minimize the time that their air crews would have to spend over the targets and be susceptible to enemy ground fire. The oil storage farms and dockyard works were on the east side of Pearl Harbor. If the raiders struck from that direction, they would drop their bomb loads before they encountered the heaviest shipboard anti-aircraft defenses. Then lightened by the loss of their bombs, the planes could fly faster and maneuver better to escape the enemy flak or pursuit aircraft. An attack out of the morning sun might also interfere with anti-aircraft optical range finding instruments and throw off the aim of enemy gunners. The advantage of a smaller, compact force was that it could be concentrated in tight echelons capable of executing a one-pass attack with minimum losses. Because fewer aircraft were participating in the second strike, the carriers could also recover them faster than the previous day so the fleet could retire quickly from Hawaiian waters. It was risky, yet the destruction of the logistics infrastructure at Pearl Harbor was a prize well worth the gamble. After reviewing the plan and confident that his large reserve could protect the carriers and his fleet, Nagumo ordered reverse course. The flagman on Akagi's bridge semaphored the command to the other warships. In complete radio silence the superbly trained sailors of the battle fleet turned their ships so methodically to follow the Akagi's wake that it reminded one sailor of the grand fleet annual maneuvers.
Far to the south, I-74 was maneuvering for its life. The two American destroyers had initially detected the submarine around 1600 and maintained a strong sonar contact with it for the next several hours. With each passing minute the Enterprise task force drew farther and farther from the hunted submarine. Ikezawa had no way of knowing that the American carrier had already reversed course to the northeast. He would never know because shortly afterwards the destroyers depth charged I-74 to the surface and finished off the submarine with gunfire. There were no Japanese survivors. Meanwhile Sherman's Task Force 12 was plowing through the seas at a steady 22 knots to make the pre-designated rendezvous with Halsey west of Oahu.
At dawn on December 8, Nagumo's six carriers were about 140 miles due north of Hilo, Hawaii and sailing into the wind. Shortly afterwards Akagi and Kaga launched 40 Zeros. The two light carriers Soryu and Hiryu sent a total of 40 Kates, and 40 Vals into the skies. After forming above the carriers, the pilots turned due east for Pearl Harbor 200 miles away. Twenty Zeros left the formation to form an air cover and patrol for the fleet. Aboard Shokaku 30 torpedo-configured Kates were ready on the deck for immediate launch if enemy carriers appeared. Zuikaku's flight deck was packed with Vals and Kates to fill out a powerful reserve to ward off any threat from enemy carriers. As soon as the strike force was airborne, Nagumo's task force turned to course of 313 degrees and headed northwest at 25 knots.
Nagumo's hurriedly drawn plan depended on precise timing. The two large oil tank storage areas at Pearl Harbor bracketed the docks, piers, and installations along the south side of the harbor opposite battleship row. Fuchida expected the Americans to be waiting for another attack, so he wanted the Val dive bombers to strike the harbor installations just before the Kates bombed the oil storage tanks. If the oil tanks were hit first, thick smoke might obscure the other nearby targets that lay between the tanks and the water. Ideally the last Val would pull off its target just as the first Kate dropped its bomb load.
The Army Air Force's Opana Mobile Radar Unit station at Kahuka Point, about thirty miles north of Pearl Harbor had detected the 7 December Japanese raid about fifty minutes and 130 miles before the first bombs fell on battleship row. At that time the enlisted radar operators were told not to worry because the blips on the oscilloscope were caused by a scheduled flight of four-engine B-17 heavy bombers arriving in Hawaii. Now almost twenty-four hours later, the same radar screen showed a medium size green blip approaching Oahu from the east. This time officers grabbed the phone to alert the air bases. All operational Army Air Force planes – thirty-six P-40s, sixteen P-36s, and four P-26s – and a handful of available Marine and Navy fighters scrambled to intercept the attack.
Thirty minutes and 60 miles to the east later, American pilots sighted three tiers of aircraft off the north coast of Molokai Island. The forty Vals at 10,000 feet approaching Oahu at 200 miles per hour were trailed at a five mile interval by 40 Kates positioned 5,000 feet higher. Twenty Zeros hovered still higher over both formations. Eight Army Air Force P-36s accelerated to their top speed of 310 miles per hour to close on the slower, bomb laden Vals while nine F4F-4s climbed at 300 miles an hour to challenge the Kates. Twenty of the faster P-40s also began climbing to place themselves between the interceptors and the Zeros. Half the Zero pilots dived into the attackers and the others engaged the P-40s. Although slightly faster, the P-40 was less maneuverable than the Zero whose pilots snap-rolled their planes to evade pursuers and line up victims. Against the slower P-36s and F-4Fs, the Zeros were deadly and drove off the attackers, shooting down four of them without a single loss. Outnumbered 2 to 1 by the P-40s, the Japanese pilots held their own, claiming two P-40s in exchange for two Zeros. One Val was smoking and losing altitude, and a Kate had disappeared from formation. The attack was over in less than five minutes but, more than the loss of four planes, the determined American pilots had thrown the tightly scheduled Japanese formations into disarray, particularly the lower flying Vals. Concerned about another fighter attack, flight leader Genda fired a green flare that told pilots to attack. Already twelve miles ahead of the Vals, the Kate bombers pressed on at full speed to Pearl Harbor.
Although the Japanese pilots expected to encounter a stiff defense, they were unprepared for the heavy flak thrown up by the Army anti-aircraft batteries. The inexperienced American gunners, however, were not leading the planes sufficiently to achieve the full effect of their firepower and many of their shells burst too low and behind the Japanese aircraft because the glare of the morning sun did throw off their aim. Still the big anti-aircraft guns did enough damage, especially when combined with the barrage from several warships scattered throughout the large harbor. Five more Kates and two Vals crashed to earth and further disrupted the delicate timing of the attack. The distance lengthened between the Kates which were nearing their targets and the Vals. With orders to make only one pass over the oil storage farms, the Kates had to make their bomb run before the Vals which reversed the order in the plan.
The first of four “V” waves of nine Kates lost two aircraft before they released their bomb loads on the western oil tank farm below. Several bombs hit two of the tanks causing large secondary explosions. Billowing smoke obscured the target for the second wave which flew through intense anti-aircraft fire. Veteran pilots “juked” their bombers to throw off the gunners' aim. It also threw off their aim and their bombs dropped just west of the vulnerable tanks. One minute and six Kates fewer the third echelon bore in on the eastern cluster of storage tanks. Bombs hit one big tank with a reverberating roar and rush of black oily smoke. In the last wave Pilot Officer Suzuki Toranosuke wondered how the American gunners could keep firing through the flames and smoke he saw through his windshield. Still flak bursts buffeted his plane and he had no idea whether or not his bombs hit the target. Instead of reversing direction, the Kates continued to fly almost due west skirting Ford Island before heading across Oahu for open water. A few American pilots were airborne and in deadly pursuit. Zero fighters tried to block the angle of attack but the Americans, regardless of losses it seemed to Suzuki, closed on the now ragged Kate formations. Several Japanese bombers were streaming oil or leaving smoke trails as they tried to keep formation.
The dive bombing Vals fared little better. They had to navigate through heavy flak and the dive lower into machine gun and 20 millimeter bursts of fire. Flying Sergeant Second Class pilot Takahashi Koji and his observer of the same rank Matsui Katsu had flown from Zuikaku on 7 December to bomb Hickam Field. This morning the two airmen found themselves in a seven plane “V” formation that was supposed to strike the dry dock installations. The Americans were using smokescreens to mask the dock, and the thick black smoke from the burning oil tanks drifted over the harbor obscuring the shoreline. It was not only difficult to see their target, but it was also nearly impossible to judge their altitude in relation to the ground during a steep dive. Matsui called out at least three Vals that never reappeared after their attacks. Suddenly their plane shuddered and both knew they had been hit. Takahashi released his bombs about where the dock should be, but could not tell if they had any effect. How much different than yesterday. The crippled Val struggled west and made its northern turn uncontested. Other Japanese planes were not as lucky.
After ten minutes and about 60 miles north of Oahu, the American pursuit planes broke contact with the retreating Japanese. Fuchida circled the broken force counting planes. His quick assessment showed that 14 Kates, 9 Vals, and 4 Zeros were missing. At least six planes were too damaged to maintain formation and it appeared that they would have to ditch at sea at any moment. Another 33 planes lost, but this time they represented 33 percent of the attacking force. The strikes on the oil tanks appeared successful because bright orange flames mixed with thick black columns of smoke could still be seen from fifty miles away. The attacks against the dock yard facilities seemed ineffective to Fuchida. It could not be helped. The airmen had to return to their carriers quickly in order to withdraw before the Americans discovered their whereabouts.
At Pearl Harbor soldiers, sailors, and oil company workers battled to control the damage and stop the spreading flames from igniting more oil storage tanks. About 30 percent of the western oil tank farm had been destroyed, but remarkably the pumping facilities were unscratched. The eastern group of tanks fared better despite the spectacular explosion when two tanks on the perimeter of the field exploded. Superficial damage marked the dock installations where labor gangs were already restoring docks and cranes to working order. Exhausted anti-aircraft crews found themselves lugging ammunition to use against another attack. During their debriefings, American pilots reported shooting down fifty enemy planes, an exaggeration to be sure, but there was sufficient evidence in the form of wrecked Japanese aircraft to show that the second raid had cost the enemy dearly without inflicting the degree of destruction and mayhem of the 7 December raid.
One hundred and sixty miles east-north-east of Pearl Harbor Akagi, Kaga, Hiryu, and Soryu began receiving 65 returning planes (two Kates were last seen losing altitude after dropping from formation). Nagumo's only purpose was to get away before American carrier aircraft or long range reconnaissance planes discovered his fleet. Shortly after the morning air raid alert, three PBY Catalinas, the U.S. Navy's land-based patrol planes, and four B-17 heavy bombers had been launched to find the enemy carriers. The PBYs were all that remained of 36 planes, 33 of which Japanese flyers destroyed on 7 December at the sea plane base in Kaneohe Bay. Together with the B-17s the PBYs flew fan-shaped patterns in search areas that extended from 300 miles due north of Oahu to 300 miles due east. By this time Halsey and Sherman had joined forces about 200 miles west-north west of Pearl Harbor and were heading on a west-north-west course. In other words about 400 miles separated the opposing carrier forces and the gap was closing quickly.
Nagumo ordered his cruisers to launch their float scout planes and his battleships added their reconnaissance aircraft to the patrols sweeping the waters north and west of Hawaii on the lookout for enemy ships. The fleet increased speed to 30 knots and antiaircraft crews broke out ammunition. Zero fighters circled the task force looking for any intruding enemy aircraft. At 1330 a Zero pilot spotted an ungainly PBY and promptly shot it down. The communications center on the Akagi, however, intercepted a coded radio message from the doomed American plane.
Four hundred miles to the northwest, Enterprise picked up a radio transmission that stated, “ENEMY FLEET SIGHTED 21 - 15 NORTH 155-50 WEST; BEARING - - -” Halsey estimated that the enemy had to continue heading northwest because any other direction either brought the Japanese closer to American airpower or placed them farther away from their base. Several other PBYs had also overheard the radio transmission and were heading for the last reported location of the Japanese task force. Nagumo resigned himself to the appearance of more American reconnaissance planes and ordered ten more Zero fighters into the air to greet them. Deck crews prepared for combat while Shokaku and Zuikaku's mechanics and armorers readied more than 100 torpedo planes and dive bombers for action. Hiryu and Soryu's planes had, of course, to be re-fueled, re-armed, and re-configured for attacks against ships and this would take at least eight hours. Rather than risk all the carriers and use all the remaining daylight, Nagumo ordered his two light carriers to separate from the other four carriers and run northwest at 30 knots. Aboard Akagi Nagumo instructed his two battleship captains on the Hiei and Kirishima to ready their anti-aircraft defenses and close in to protect the remaining carriers. If the task force commander had slapped both officers the effect could not have been greater. Battleships were supposed to lead the battle line, not convoy aircraft carriers.
About 30 minutes after the carriers split formation, another PBY appeared on the horizon ducking in and out of cumulonimbus clouds. Zero pilots went racing for the plane, but it again vanished in the towering clouds. Certain that his latest position and bearing was now in American hands, Nagumo waited for word from his scout planes. Land-based planes no longer concerned him because the task force was beyond the range of all but the heaviest B-17 bombers. Yet there was no further intelligence about the American carriers since I-74's report the previous morning. It was 1435 when a float plane pilot from Hiei radioed in the clear of his sighting of an enemy carrier at 23-10 North 115-30 West bearing 065 degrees. Then the transmission broke into static. A quick plot located the fleet about 250 miles northwest of the Japanese task force and blocking its escape route. If the report was accurate, was the carrier Lexington or Enterprise? Was the other American carrier nearby or had the carriers joined forces? Any enemy attack by carrier planes was likely within the next ninety minutes. Nagumo hesitated. He was reluctant to launch all of Shokaku and Zuikaku's torpedo and dive bombers until he learned the location of the second American carrier. He ordered Shokaku's torpedo planes and dive bombers to attack the American carriers with ten Zeros from Akagi as escorts. Twenty other Zeros from Kaga would commence air patrol to defend the task force. Zuikaku would remain in general reserve and continue to ready its bombers for a possible strike.
By 1510 the torpedo-configured Kates were airborne and on their way toward the enemy carriers. Float planes from heavy cruisers Chikuma and Tone had preceded the flight and were attempting to pinpoint the exact location of the American carriers. One hour earlier Lexington and Enterprise had launched 110 aircraft. All 28 of Lexington's dive bombers and torpedo planes joined with 21 dive bombers and a like number of torpedo planes from Enterprise in an all-out strike against the Japanese fleet. Six fighters from Lexington and 21 from Enterprise maintained an air umbrella over the American task force. Enterprise carried 15 more fighters on her deck, ready to launch if needed. The Chikuma's float plane sighted the massed formation of American warplanes and twenty minutes later at 1530 discovered the two carriers in the distance. The Kates altered course to adjust for the latest intelligence.
About this time the first navy torpedo planes were meeting Zero fighters with predictable results. One after another the slow, ponderous torpedo planes fell under murderous cannon and machine gun fire. Engaged by the anti-aircraft guns of two battleships, more torpedo planes fell into the sea. Still they pressed their attack, flying at low level over the battleship escorts and toward the two carriers. One group of three planes released its torpedoes at Akagi, but the Japanese skipper skillfully maneuvered the big carrier from the torpedoes' path. Zuikaku was less fortunate and took a torpedo hit in her rear starboard area. The force of the explosion also damaged the rudder and propeller, forcing the big carrier to slow to eight knots. To score this one hit, 29 American torpedo bombers and their three-man crews had been lost. The six surviving aircraft headed to the west just as 35 dive bombers began their concentrated attacks on the stricken Zuikaku. Three bombs exploded in quick succession on the flight deck and the explosions ignited a fire that caused a chain reaction as Vals and Kates exploded one after another. Zuikaku was now dead in the water, a flaming wreck spewing smoke and steam into the sky.
The second flight of dive bombers went after Akagi. A final flight of seven dive bombers struck at Akagi and managed to score one hit that damaged the flight deck and elevators. Nagumo watched in near despair as the American pilots pressed home their attacks despite fearsome losses. Then the attack was over as suddenly as it began. Akagi's gun crews were cheering until someone pointed to a burning hulk about three miles off their port bow. Its fire raging out of control, Zuikaku's captain ordered his men to abandon ship. He remained aboard as the ship burned brightly through the night before sinking early on 9 December.
While the Americans who had survived the battle were making their way home to their carriers, Japanese pilots were meeting American fighters which were screening the two ships. The Kates fared no better against fighter planes than their American counterparts, but the pilots shared a similar brand of courage. A Kate cartwheeled into the sea while the surviving flight of five conducted a textbook scissors attack. Three Kates wheeled in at low level on Lexington's starboard and two others on her port bow. Two of their five torpedoes intersected against Lexington's hull stopping the carrier which listed heavily to port. Then aburning Kate smashed into Lexington's superstructure killing most of the command group and setting off secondary explosions. The order was given to abandon ship. Of the 30 attacking Kates, only eight survived to return to Shokaku.
Both sides were spent. On 8 December alone, the Americans lost 47 aircraft, 117 pilots or air crew members, and the carrier Lexington. Nagumo had neither the stomach nor the airmen and planes for another battle. Besides the loss of Zuikaku, the Japanese had lost 90 planes and 211 elite air crew members in the two days of fighting. Akagi had suffered light damage and soon returned to operations. In return they had crippled the American battle fleet at anchor in Pearl Harbor, but had not seriously damaged the oil tank farms or repair facilities that were critical to the American war effort in the Pacific. They had sunk an old carrier, the Lexington, but had lost one of their newest carriers in the battle. It is true that the strike force returned to Japan unmolested, but it is also true that Admiral Yamamoto Isoroku accepted responsibility for Nagumo's actions and offered his resignation when he made his formal report on the battle to the Navy Ministry on 29 December 1941. As we know, his request was denied and the diminutive admiral returned to his Pacific battlegrounds where he was later killed in action. Nagumo's command decisions on 7 and 8 December remain controversial.
Analysis
Fifty years after the Pearl Harbor attack, naval strategists and historians on both sides of the Pacific are unanimous in their criticism of Nagumo's conduct of the so-called Battle of Hawaii. The most vociferous critics point out that the Japanese squandered their carrier air superiority for the Hawaii operation. General Douglas MacArthur's air chief, General George C. Kenney, who fought the Japanese army and navy air forces in the Solomons and New Guinea, insisted that the Japanese never fully appreciated that air power had to be concentrated for massive strikes against objectives. As we have seen, Nagumo neither used all six carriers in the second strike on Pearl Harbor nor in the naval engagement off Hawaii. Instead of his piecemeal attacks, critics allege, an all-out second strike might have destroyed the naval installations.
Oddly enough the controversy over Nagumo's conservative tactics originated during the Pearl Harbor Hearings. Two American admirals testified that if Nagumo employed all his aircraft in a second strike, he would have been able to destroy the oil tank farms as well as dock facilities. American and Japanese naval experts also fault Nagumo's decision to launch a weak second strike against Pearl Harbor on December 8. They observed that the American defenders were on full alert and expecting a follow-up attack. In such circumstances, the pilots who flew the second mission had little prospect of success and indeed were able to accomplish the limited damage to tank farms and facilities that they did only because of their elite flying skills and raw courage. In effect Nagumo's indecision offset their bravery. Several authors have noted, however, that the second raid alone cost the Japanese another 33 planes and 71 precious pilots or air crew. When one adds those casualties to the aircraft and pilots lost when Zuikaku exploded, the second strike appears as a grave strategic error that left the Imperial Navy fatally weakened in subsequent operations. Numerous Japanese commentators have recalled Nagumo's cautious nature to argue that he hedged his bets on the second strike by withholding such a large reserve from the raid. The admiral, of course, was unavailable to explain his actions having perished on Saipan in July 1944.
Each side lost a carrier in the Battle of Hawaii, but the Zuikaku was a new ship, that had joined the fleet in 1941 and carried 58 aircraft, while Lexington had been converted in 1927 from a battle cruiser hull to a carrier. While the Lexington was a sentimental favorite because so many of the Navy's World War II carrier leaders had once trained on the old carrier, its loss could easily be made good. Zuikaku's loss was irreplaceable and the extra carrier was sorely missed at Midway seven months later. For that reason, the preeminent American naval historian declared the two-day Battle of Hawaii an American strategic victory. He reasoned that the losses of obsolete battleships, though painful, did not affect greatly the strategic course of the war in the Pacific. The loss of a first-line carrier by Japan, however, exerted significant material and psychological influence on the later Coral Sea (April 1942) and Midway (June 1942) operations.
Elaborating on this interpretation, a recent school of Japanese revisionist historians argue that the Battle of Hawaii colored Yamamoto's later decisions during the disastrous Battle of Midway in June 1942. They allege that Yamamoto was determined to avoid charges that he, like Nagumo at Hawaii, failed to commit his entire carrier air force and thus squandered the possibility of a great victory. Yamamoto, the theory runs, compensated at Midway by throwing all his carrier forces into the losing battle. Though provocative, such an interpretation relies on extensive interviews with Japanese participants and is based more on their subjective evaluations than on any documentary sources.
No discussion of the Battle of Hawaii would be complete without a mention of the alleged plot of American President, Franklin D. Roosevelt, to draw Japan into war. First enunciated by an American historian who maintained that the president's public and private views about America's entry into World War II were not only contradictory but also that Roosevelt was leading the nation to war, the interpretation has spawned a variety of conspiracy theories. Most “plot-advocates” turn to the massive amount of intercepted Japanese Foreign Ministry material “to prove” that Roosevelt and other high ranking leaders in Washington knew that a Japanese attack against Pearl Harbor was imminent. They allege that Roosevelt and other leaders kept this intelligence in order to force the Japanese “to fire the first shot” of the war. In fact the hysteria of 7 December in the United States was somewhat mitigated the following day by inflated Allied reports of the damage they inflicted on the Japanese task force during the Battle of Hawaii. Nevertheless, conspiracy enthusiasts insist that the fact that American carrier aircraft intercepted Yamamoto's task force after the second attack shows that they could have done it before the attack. Such hypotheses usually depend on draping various tatters of evidence on the Pearl Harbor framework which enables them to give their theories the appearance of originality. Although careful examination of their sources reveals a haphazard patchwork whose seams split with disappointing regularity, these revisionists continue to enjoy some popularity.
Because the Pearl Harbor attack is still embroiled in controversy, can anything definitive be said about the event nearly a half-century later? Fifty years after the event the judgement of historians is that if the Japanese had used all six carriers in two mighty strikes against the U.S. Navy based at Pearl Harbor, its logistics infrastructure, and nearby airfields, they would have inflicted damage at least severe enough to impede U.S. naval operations in the Pacific Ocean for 18 months. The consensus is that Nagumo was ill-suited temperamentally to command the task force. Neither side was satisfied with the results of the Battle of Hawaii and this may explain why the air and naval engagement continues to generate heated controversy after all these years.
In late September 1940, American cryptanalysts solved the Japanese Foreign Ministry's most secret communications cipher. This joint effort took 18 months and involved U.S. Army and Navy cryptanalysts as well as civilian code-breakers working for both services. From the fall of 1940 until the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, American cryptanalysts deciphered hundreds of Foreign Ministry cables whose translations were made available to the president and other high-ranking civilian and military leaders in Washington, D.C. These deciphered Foreign Ministry cables clearly indicated that Japan was planning some kind of military action against southeast Asia in December 1941. Foreign Ministry officials, however, were not privy to Imperial Navy operational plans, so their messages spoke in broad terms of “things happening automatically,” but not in specifics like military objectives. Without access to the Japanese navy's operational ciphers, American leaders were aware of Japan's warlike intentions but unaware that the naval, air, and military bases at Pearl Harbor were the targets of a Japanese carrier aircraft attack.
Breaking JN-25, the Imperial Japanese Navy's operational code.
On a humid mid-summer night in August 1941, a small fire broke out in the Japanese embassy in Washington, D.C. Fortunately a passerby noticed the smoke and quickly summoned the fire department. Despite the protests of the Japanese embassy guards, the fire chief insisted on evacuating the building because of the thick black smoke. Before leaving, code clerks placed all their cryptanalytic library in specially designed safes. They notified the chief of embassy security who, in turn, called the army and naval attachés to the embassy. That evening, however, the Japanese naval attaché was aboard a yacht sailing along the Potomac.
The smoky fire proved more persistent than it looked, but at midnight, after four hours of fighting what turned out to be an electrical fire, the firemen allowed everyone back into the embassy. Fortuitously the naval attaché returned at approximately the same time. A thorough investigation of the embassy communications' room and the code room where the safes were kept revealed no evidence that the firemen had tampered with them. An official report to the embassy regretted the need to evacuate the Japanese diplomatic personnel, and then went into numbing detail about the short-circuit that sparked the blaze. There was no mention in the report about four very special firemen – a locksmith, a professional safecracker, and two officers assigned to the Office of Naval Intelligence.
The fire was, as we know today, a sham that allowed naval intelligence operatives to enter the Japanese embassy. Picking locks was child's play, but the code room safes resisted unlocking for nearly two hours. In the time remaining, the two officers photographed as much of the JN-25 code as their surreptitious schedule permitted. While they could not copy all of the code book, they stole enough of it to allow a break into JN-25 the following month.
U.S. Navy cryptanalysts in the Philippines had been studying JN-25, but a major cryptographic change in December 1940 complicated their efforts. They understood the cryptographic system used by the Japanese, but were unable to recover sufficient code group meanings to make sense of any JN-25 messages. As relations between Japan and the United States deteriorated throughout 1941, the Office of Naval Intelligence proposed a break-in and burglary of the Japanese embassy in order to obtain the JN-25 code book. It is unclear whether or not President Franklin D. Roosevelt approved the theft, but a July 1940 memo exists from the Secretary for the Navy, Frank Knox, to the head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, J. Edgar Hoover, requesting Hoover's cooperation in a “sensitive matter” involving a foreign embassy. Knox also refers to Captain Theodore S. Wilkinson's recommendation. Wilkinson was the head of ONI.
Although the exact provenance of the August break-in remains shrouded in secrecy, the results of the burglary are well known. The stolen code group meanings combined with the cryptanalysts' existing knowledge of the JN-25 encipherment system enabled U.S. Navy code breakers to read large portions of the hitherto sacrosanct Japanese navy's general purpose code. Between September and December 1941, more than 26,000 Japanese naval messages in various cryptographic systems were intercepted. Originally only eight of the 53 naval officers in Op-20-G, the navy's Communications Division in Washington, were assigned to study the Japanese fleet's general purpose code, JN-25. After cryptanalysts began reading JN-25 with regularity, more officers found themselves assigned to the general purpose code. Nevertheless, many messages went undeciphered. Only one in ten was considered significant enough to translate into English, and among these fewer than 200 pertained specifically to the proposed Pearl Harbor attack. As events proved, this handful of messages was enough.
A 5 September 1941 broken Japanese naval message warned that “a state of complete readiness for battle operations must be achieved by the first of November.” Another message just four days later from the Chief of Staff, Combined Fleet, enjoined his subordinate commanders to be “fully prepared for commencing war operations by the first part of November.” In early October specific details of Japanese plans for war began to appear in decrypted messages. Cables from the First Air Fleet told of aerial torpedo attack exercises involving four aircraft carriers in Kagoshima Bay on Japan's southernmost main island of Kyushu. Follow-up messages in late October talked about “near surface” (or shallow running) torpedoes and the need to complete adjustments to aerial torpedoes by 5 November. Another radiogram from the Chief of Staff First Air Fleet revealed that three carrier divisions, a total of six aircraft carriers, were using these modified torpedoes. November messages from the Commander, Second Carrier Division, referred to torpedo firing exercises in Kagoshima Bay against anchored capital ships. Similar references to dive-bombing and strafing exercises by dozens of carrier aircraft were decrypted and made available to naval intelligence.
Intelligence analysts called attention to the similarity between the present Japanese carrier pilots' training and the British carrier raid against the Italian Fleet at anchor at Taranto in southern Italy the previous November. This surprise attack was still fresh in their memories because it had devastated the Italian navy, leaving half its battle fleet out of action for six months and shifted the balance of naval power in the Mediterranean. The purpose of the Japanese training, however, was unclear to American analysts. Were they experimenting because of the Taranto precedent in order to defend against similar surprise attacks or were they planning such an attack? The most likely target of such an attack, all agreed, was the British naval bastion at Singapore on the southern tip of the Malayan Peninsula. The British Prime Minister's recent dispatch of two capital ships to Singapore and an aircraft carrier soon to follow gave credence to this logic.
When combined with naval traffic analysis and deciphered Japanese diplomatic cables, the JN-25 decrypts clearly revealed a “Southern Operation.” It was known that Japan's Third Fleet was building up in French Indochina for some type of operation; that an expanded naval air force communications network was operational in south China and Indochina; and that transfers of naval land-based aircraft from the Japanese home islands to the Japanese Mandated Islands in the Central Pacific, Taiwan, and Indochina had recently been completed.
Based on this evidence, Admiral Husband E. Kimmel, the Commander in Chief of the United States Fleet at Pearl Harbor, was in receipt of Admiral Harold A. Stark's, Chief of Naval Operations, first war warning. It was issued on 24 November and alerted the commander-in-chiefs of the Pacific and Asiatic fleets that a surprise Japanese attack from any direction, including an attack on the Philippines or Guam, could be expected. Stark's immediate concern was based on recently decrypted Japanese Foreign Ministry cables which revealed that “things are automatically going to happen.”
Reports from the 14th Naval District Communication Intelligence Unit, available on 26 November, disclosed that Japan's Second and Third Fleets had formed a strong task force. Possibly operating with carriers of the Second Carrier Division, the fleet might be readying themselves for operations in Southeast Asia while components of the task force operated from the Marshalls and the Palaus. The following day the 16th Naval District Communication Intelligence Unit countered that analysis by stating that it was impossible to confirm that carriers and submarines were in the Marshalls because the best sources indicated that the First and Fifth Fleet carriers were still in home waters near the Sasebo-Kure area. Intelligence analysts were less certain of the whereabouts of the Second Carrier Division. Radio calls did suggest that the Second Fleet was on the high seas, but the evidence was too slim to conclude that the Second Carrier Division was attached to the southern task force.
These latest reports did re-emphasize a continuing Japanese interest, evident since October, in an as yet unidentified southern operation. This military intelligence coupled with the MAGIC decryptions that disclosed the failing state of the peace negotiations compelled Stark to signal to his top lieutenants again to be vigilant against a Japanese attack likely to occur in the next few days. His 27 November message began bluntly, “This dispatch is to be considered a war warning,” and proceeded to outline a likely Japanese amphibious attack against the Philippines or the Malayan Peninsula or possibly the Netherlands East Indies. Subsequent messages dispatched on 29 November warned that negotiations with Japan appeared terminated and that “hostile action possible at any moment.” At no time was Pearl Harbor mentioned and American authorities thought that Guam, Wake, and the Philippines were the likely targets of Japan's southern sweep. A warning dispatched on 30 November fixed American attention on the Malayan Peninsula as the probably site for attack by an overseas expedition.
Last-minute negotiations between Japan's emissaries in Washington and the Secretary of State, Cordell Hull droned along, but the evidence from decrypted Japanese Foreign Office cables implied that the Japanese were playing a double-game. So too did evidence from Japanese naval radio networks. Traffic analysis, that is the study of radio message networks, showed that preparations were underway for a southward advance against Malaya, the Dutch East Indies, and perhaps the Philippines. Patterns of radio broadcasts between Combined Fleet headquarters and flagships of the Combined Fleet suggested that the Second Carrier Division was moving south. Otherwise the First and Fifth Carrier Divisions remained absent from radio communications and were presumed to be refitting in home waters from where they would soon join the southern task force.
Meantime, radio messages dispatched by the chief-of staff, First Air Fleet revealed that the objective of the carrier fleets was far beyond their ordinary cruising range. Fleet oilers were to conduct re-fueling exercises with carriers, and the warships themselves would carry extra fuel in drums or tins on board. A 5 November message made plain that all four carriers of First Air Fleet – Akagi, Kaga, Hiryu, and Soryu were involved in loading and storing extra fuel drums. A key decrypt, dated 1 December, explained that a fleet oiler was scheduled to depart the great naval base at Yokosuka, Japan, two days hence and proceed eastward to a point northeast of Wake and northwest of Midway by 8 December. Why was a fleet oiler planning to loiter in the central Pacific?
The fleet oiler mystery was linked to the movements of a Japanese officer from Tokyo to the headquarters of First Air Fleet which was temporarily located aboard the battleship Hiei. A related message transmitted on 18 November stated that the officer would be picked up in late November at Hitokappu Bay on Etorofu Island in the southern Kurile chain. A third message, sent 20 November by the staff of the Second Submarine Division reported that submarine I-19's eastward movement crossed three communications' zones – Yokosuka, Ominato on the northeastern coast of Japan, and thence to First Air Fleet's zone in the Kuriles. Neither the schedule for the fleet oiler nor the presence of First Air Fleet Headquarters in the Kuriles lent credence to their participation in a southern strategy because these operational forces were moving away from southeast Asia and the Singapore base. Yet sufficient radio intelligence existed to indicate that Japan was prepared for offensive action somewhere in the so-called southern region. A 27 November message carried the former Chief of the Naval General Staff Admiral Prince Fushimi Hiroyasu's personal message to Commander-in-Chief of the striking force, Vice-Admiral Nagumo Chuichi, wishing him “long and lasting battle fortunes.”
All of these decryptions accurately monitored the movements of the striking force. The first echelons of Nagumo's fleet had sailed from the Kure naval base on the Inland Sea in early November. Meanwhile pilots continued their low-level attack training by launching shallow-running torpedoes in Kagoshima Bay until the carriers had sortied in echelon from Kure between 10 November and the 18th. On 22 November, while Japanese and American diplomats negotiated in Washington, the Hawaii strike force assembled in Hitokappu Bay. Warships topped off their fuel tanks, strapped additional barrels of fuel oil on their decks, and, at eight A.M. 26 November, weighed anchor and steamed south to rendezvous with fleet oilers which would refuel them on their long voyage to Hawaii.
U.S. Naval Intelligence was certain that the Japanese were about to strike, but unsure of the exact target. Naval communications analysts reported deciphering three messages between 10 November and 25 November that enjoined the fleet to maintain wartime radio silence on shortwave from 11 November. A later radiogram instructed the departing carriers to maintain radio silence when shifting aircraft. A final message of 25 November from the Commander-in-Chief, Combined Fleet, Admiral Yamamoto Isoroku, ordering all ships of the Combined Fleet to cease radio communications except in cases of “extreme emergency”.
Naval communications analysts in Washington and in Hawaii recognized that radio silence was an indication of either impending operation action or total inactivity, for example when a warship or a fleet was in home port. They did not agree, however, on the purpose of Yamamoto's order. Washington argued that the 25 November description was part of an elaborate pattern of communications' deception designed to cover a strike against British Malaya and the Netherlands East Indies. Analysts reasoned that the messages related to a northern route were designed to divert attention from an attack on the British naval base at Singapore. Hawaii insisted that the imperial fleet had put to sea and was somewhere in the north Pacific. Its destination remained uncertain.
The location of the Japanese carriers was the key to the puzzle, but U.S. Naval intelligence was unable to locate them. If the carriers had indeed moved to the Kuriles, could the mysterious fleet oiler be waiting to rendezvous with them in the central Pacific? If so, did the Japanese intend to attack the American outposts at Guam, Wake, Midway, or perhaps the Philippines? Yet if these places were the Japanese targets, the exercises against anchored ships appeared excessive for the few warships that they might find in Manila Bay or the other scattered islands. The major anchorage was, of course, at Pearl Harbor, but its extreme distance from Japan left any attacking force exposed to American retaliation. These were the central issues in the highly secret debates that continued in Washington about the Japanese purpose.
Meanwhile, the three carrier divisions and their accompanying warships and support vessels were plowing through the grey seas of the north Pacific en route to Pearl Harbor. On 2 December, the entire strike force took on an added sense of urgency. From Tokyo Admiral Yamamoto broadcast a priority coded message to the Combined Fleet “THIS DISPATCH IS TOP SECRET. THIS ORDER IS EFFECTIVE AT 1730 ON 2 DECEMBER. CLIMB NITAKAYAMA 1208, REPEAT 1208.” Nitakayama, a Formosan peak, was the highest point in the Japanese Empire and its symbolic value as the code word to execute the Pearl Harbor attack was clear to the Japanese recipients. In plain language, Yamamoto had ordered the attack on Pearl Harbor to commence on 8 December, Tokyo time, or Sunday, 7 December 1941, in Hawaii. U.S. Navy intercept stations deciphered Yamamoto's coded message by 3 December, but intelligence analysts argued over its exact meaning. They all agreed that Japan intended to open hostilities with the United States on 8 December. The question was where the first battle would occur.
With Yamanioto's Nitakayama message in hand, Admiral Stark dispatched another war warning to Admiral Kimmel. Stark's 4 December cable read, “There are recent indications that Japan will open hostilities on 8 December. Available intelligence suggests the presence of at least one Japanese carrier task force operating in northern Pacific waters. Although carrier location is tenuous, desire you institute air patrols immediately to cover the area north of the Hawaiian Islands to distance of 800 nautical miles. Inform of patrol routes and schedules.”
Long-range aerial patrol was the Navy's responsibility and for the task Kimmel had a total of eighty-one PBY patrol aircraft in the Hawaii area, including twelve at Midway. Of these, fifty-four were the newest model which had only recently arrived in Hawaii and were still undergoing operation shakedown tests. There were not enough aircraft to cover a full 360 degree sweep of the islands, but the latest message gave priority to northern patrol routes. Kimmel ordered his PBYs at Midway to commence easterly patrols (he had not been informed about the possibility of a Japanese fleet oiler in the area). He allotted twelve PBYs to patrol Hawaii's northern sea frontier. To have four aircraft available to cover the northern approaches during daylight hours required two shifts of four PBYs each. The remaining four PBYs served as spare aircraft and a source of back-up crews to insure coverage during periods of routine maintenance on the aircraft.
The initial patrols on 5 December extended in a fan-shaped arc 800 nautical miles north of Hawaii and proved uneventful. At dawn on 6 December four PBYs of the second day's reconnaissance patrol departed the U.S. Navy seaplane base at Kaneohe Bay, Oahu. Climbing to 7,000 feet, the pilot set a course due north at a steady 160 miles per hour. The other seven crewmen passed the next five hours scanning an empty sea and following an ingrained routine broken only by occasional radio checks. The navigator had just opened a thermos of coffee when a enlisted observer reported an unidentified aircraft off the port wing. Two crew members quickly confirmed the sighting and then the navigator spotted the tell-tale wakes of at least two ships.
On his emergency frequency, the radio operator transmitted a brief coded signal, “UNIDENTIFIED AIRCRAFT AND SHIPS 29-50N 157-00W; HEADING 180.” The ensign piloting the ungainly PBY continued due north in search of the mother ship which had launched the fighter aircraft. Instead the forward observer shouted over the voice intercom that a task force of about two dozen warships was off the starboard wing at two o'clock. About the same time the two aircraft, now positively identified as Japanese Zeros, peeled off and made dry-run firing passes at the slow-moving PBY apparently hoping to scare it away. By this time the PBY radio operator was broadcasting emergency messages in the clear as fast as he could handle the operator's key. Aboard Akagi, Admiral Nagumo Chun'ichi saw the PBY a few minutes before a radio operator handed him an intercept of one of the plain-language broadcasts. Nagumo did not hesitate. His communications room ordered the fighter cover not to fire on the American plane. With radio silence broken, Nagumo then transmitted a coded message to the task force ordering it to reverse course. (This message was intercepted and later decrypted in Hawaii.) The PBY circling over the fleet duly reported the change of course.
At Pearl Harbor Kimmel ordered an immediate alert. All ships in the harbor made steam and prepared to sortie to meet the Japanese task force. Naval aircraft either flew to other nearby fields or were placed in reveted areas. Army anti-aircraft crews broke open boxes of live ammunition and all Army fighter aircraft were dispersed across several airfields. The Oahu commercial radio station was ordered to announce that Army and U.S. Marine patrols would enforce an eight P.M. to dawn curfew and an island-wide blackout. All available PBYs were alerted to stand by for patrols north of Hawaii. At dusk eight PBYs started due north under orders to cover an area stretching 1,000 miles north of Pearl Harbor.
Word of the sighting of a Japanese fleet reached Washington shortly before 9 P.M. By 10:30 President Roosevelt was meeting with his senior military, naval, and diplomatic advisors who determined that the State Department would lodge an official protest to the government of Japan. On 7 December 1941, Secretary of State Cordell Hull called the Japanese Ambassador to the United States, Nomura Kichisaburo, to the State Department to deliver the protest personally.
By the time Nomura received the protest, Japanese attacks against Malaya and the Dutch East Indies had commenced. Because Nagumo's task force had been unable to accomplish its mission against Pearl Harbor, however, Imperial Headquarters ordered the planned attack against the Philippines cancelled. Consequently the Japanese attacks on the British and Dutch colonies of 8 December (7 December in the United States) found the U.S. Navy fully alerted for war with Japan but unable to aid the European belligerents.
When the facts surrounding Roosevelt's handling of this war-scare became known great controversy resulted. Roosevelt personally decided not to reveal to the Japanese that American codebreakers were reading their diplomatic and naval ciphers. Unable to make public the cryptographic evidence, the State and Navy Departments had to accept the Japanese Navy's reply to Washington that the task force was merely conducting a fleet exercise in international waters. Indeed the deciphered JN-25 messages made plain that Japan had much more in mind, but Roosevelt's insistence on security considerations prevented the declassification and release of those messages for almost fifty years. When a young graduate student accidentally discovered the documents in a dusty Hollinger Box in the National Archives, the public uproar reopened the raw wounds that characterized American domestic politics in early 1942.
Because the Japanese did not attack American territory or possessions on 7 December 1941, Roosevelt could not persuade Congress to declare war against Japan. Isolationist sentiment against American boys dying to preserve European colonial empires was too strong for even a master politician to overcome. The United States stood by as Japan overran Malaya, the Netherlands Fast Indies, the Bismarck Archipelago, and moved onto New Guinea. In May 1942 Japanese warships intercepted an American convoy carrying lend-lease supplies to the Soviet port at Vladivostok. The U.S. Navy cruiser U.S.S. Honolulu and five destroyers escorting the American merchantmen refused to heave to and obey Japanese instructions. To this day it remains uncertain who fired the first shot, but the result was two American and one Japanese destroyers sunk, one merchantman sunk, one captured, and two damaged. American casualties were 472 killed or wounded which included 52 merchant seamen. With casus belli, Congress did declare war against Japan – by a margin of a single vote!
Such muddled antecedents made the Pacific War of 1942-45 an unpopular and divisive conflict lacking a common purpose to bind Americans together in a national effort. Many liberals objected to the notion of bailing out colonial empires while conservatives denounced the idea of spilling American blood to aid a communist regime. More thoughtful commentators lamented that Japan was the wrong enemy to fight while Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany was gobbling up Europe and North Africa.
The American war against Japan was a naval effort fought to gain supremacy in the Pacific. Early U.S. Navy thrusts into the Japanese Mandates were beaten back after the first aircraft carrier battles in history. Meanwhile Japanese ground troops conquered the Philippines by December 1942, but even this loss did not galvanize public opinion in the United States. Instead the navy's botched Mandates Campaign and subsequent inability to relieve the besieged Philippine garrison became the subjects of congressional inquiry.
The Central Pacific became the focal point of the American strategy. After bloody island fighting American Navy-Marine task forces broke through Japanese defenses by mid-1945 and liberated the Philippines. By that time, however, Roosevelt had been defeated in his quest for a fourth term and the Republican president heeded the voices of the electorate and entered into peace negotiations with Japan. This so-called “sell out” cost the Republicans the White House in 1948 as the Democrats denounced them for throwing away the opportunity for victory.
Meanwhile in Europe the German dictator Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin's Soviet Union fought four years to exhaustion before they too concluded a negotiated peace. On 22 June 1951, during a long harangue on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the German invasion of the Soviet Union, Hitler revealed that his greatest fear at that time was that the United States would find some pretext to enter the European War and tip the balance in favor of the Soviet Union.
Great Britain, crippled by the loss of her Far Eastern bases and colonies of Burma and Malaya sued Japan for peace in 1943 in order to concentrate all her forces against Hitler. Many Americans regarded this as an act of treachery, but, as historical scholarship has shown, Britain was exhausted from four years of fighting Germany and two of fighting Japan.
In strategic terms, the results of the negotiated settlements of the Pacific and European wars resulted in the creation of four great power blocs. The United States controlled the eastern and southwest Pacific from Midway to the Philippines and thence to Papua, New Guinea. Japan held sway over the northern and western Pacific, holding an arc from the Kuriles through the Indochina Peninsula into the Netherlands East Indies. Burma became a neutral buffer zone between Japanese-dominated Malaya and British-controlled India. Hitler's Third Reich enslaved western Europe, except Great Britain, and the Mediterranean. The Soviet dictator held the USSR east of Kiev. By 1950 there were two superpowers emerging – the United States and Nazi Germany – which by early 1952 had entered a state of cold war.
On 11 December 1941, four days after the Japanese struck at Pearl Harbor and its Pacific Fleet, the Nazi dictator declared war on the United States. His motivations for this fateful step count among the most mystifying of Hitler's twelve years of rule. The debates concerning this decision will no doubt continue for generations. So illogical did it seem even to his principal henchman and successor designate, Hermann Göring, that it slipped his memory. When questioned about it at Nuremberg, Göring exclaimed in disbelief: “We declare war on you? But didn't you first declare war on us?”
The proposition that no rational explanation is possible continues to have wide support. Some analysts (e.g., Sebastian Hafner) hold that in the aftermath of the military disaster at the gates of Moscow, Hitler gave up hope of victory. By adding the United States to the forces arrayed against him, he set the stage for a Wagnerian finale. This makes Hitler the victim of a compelling death wish. It may be argued that considerably more evidence for such a degree of irrationality must come to light in order to sustain such an abstract psychological interpretation. If Hitler was driven by suicidal urges, many of his survival and victory-oriented courses in the remaining years of war would have made small sense.
A second interpretation, supplied by a large body of direct evidence, is that Hitler's assessment of the American war-making potential was so abysmally inaccurate that he appraised the general impact of Japan's entry into the war far above that of the United States. In his mind the Americans were a mongrel people, not fitted to make effective use of their undoubtedly vast human and material resources. The morrow of Pearl Harbor witnessed a tumble of words and gestures giving voice to his obsessions. On hearing at Wolf's Lair of the Japanese assault, he acclaimed this a vital turning point and rushed out through the snow to apprise Keitel and Jodl. To Foreign Office representative Hewel he effervesced: “Now it is impossible for us to lose the war. We now have an ally who has not been vanquished for three thousand years.”1 That evening he summoned the officers of his staff to a lively champagne party and amazed all by violating his hitherto fixed rule against alcohol consumption by taking some sips himself.2
Returning to Berlin on 9 December, the Führer assured Japanese ambassador Oshima that the United States would not prove a formidable foe: “How can you expect a nation to fight whose only god is the almighty dollar?” One might take such effusions as momentary exuberance if there were not impressive indications of their prevailing over the following months. When the Washington military attaché, General von Bötticher, was repatriated with the rest of the embassy staff via Tehran and was immediately summoned to the Führer, he naturally assumed that he would be questioned at length on the American military and industrial potential. But his two briefcases of notes and documents were never opened. For an hour and a half Hitler orated about the “Jewification” of America with a President whose family name must obviously once have been Rosenfeld and whose wife, from her general physiognomy, could be judged to be of Negro origin.3
A third and logically kindred explanation that has been offered for Hitler's fatal step considers it an exercise in short-range Realpolitik, the necessary price of Japan's entry into the war and the accompanying division of American resources between two distant theaters. This would give assurance for Japan lasting the course while Germany finished with the Soviets in 1942. Subsequently the Americans would shrink from a war of attrition against the united resources of Europe under Nazi control.
If Hitler indeed pursued such a line of reasoning, it was most likely a rationalization to justify his response to the string of insults and unneutral injuries to which he had been subjected by the Roosevelt administration during the preceding year. Moreover, Hitler had no objective need to follow through what pledges and assurances he had made to Japan before 7 December.4 Japan's decision to ‘jump off the roof’ had been made independently. Hitler's determination to go to war with the United States may well have been largely emotional – the release of pent-up resentments that he at last felt free to indulge. It was as if a trussed-up Führer had been subjected to blows in the face from a hitherto immune Uncle Sam and could at last hit back.
The actual course of affairs amply illustrates that a German defeat became certain once Hitler was at war with the United States. For the second time within less than six months, Hitler without compelling reasons made war on one of the superpowers of the postwar world. But what if he had acted as if nothing was changed by the American involvement with Japan? What if the Führer had seen the advantage of leaving well enough alone, of allowing Japan to fight as best she could the war she had initiated? The ball would have been in the American court.
Would the United States have declared war on Germany at this time?
Opposition to American participation in the war was widespread to the very day of Pearl Harbor. Selective service had been extended by a single House vote. Polls showed support for aid to Britain but also stressed keeping this short of war. Roosevelt's program of rearmament was acceptable because of its emphasis on a defensive posture. There was much hostility to Nazi Germany but, even during the war that now came, this remained a far cry from the visceral loathing reserved for Japan.
Given these circumstances, it appears questionable whether the President would have ventured to urge declaring war on Germany after Pearl Harbor. The Japanese coup had given the nation a measure of unity hitherto undreamed of and, indeed, unique in American history. This union of hearts and of national purpose would have been compromised and conceivably shattered by a heated debate on extending the war to the European Axis. The frequent postwar charge that the President had maneuvered to bring America into the war with Germany via the Asian back door would have sprung to life then and there, with negative impacts even on fighting the war in the Pacific. The “Asia firsters” protestations even before 7 December that Roosevelt was sacrificing true national interests on behalf of Britain would have gained new force. They would have offered a rallying point for a broad spectrum of administration critics on domestic issues from the New Deal to the third term.
Many Americans no doubt went along with the President when, in his “fireside chat” of 9 December, he flailed the European Axis as having in effect sicked Japan onto us. It is noteworthy, however, that Roosevelt did not associate this denunciation with a recommendation to declare war on Germany and Italy. From Magic intercepts, he knew of course that the Axis was about to relieve him of this burden. But, even if he had not been able to anticipate this, it is highly questionable whether he would have urged such declarations at this juncture. And, had he done so, the response from Congress would have been highly questionable. At the very least, a politically devastating debate was in prospect. The weight of logic thus inclines one to the assumption that Roosevelt would not have maneuvered to extend the war at this time.
Few analysts would venture the opinion, much less a conviction, that the European and Pacific wars would have continued indefinitely without the United States becoming in some way entangled in the former. The impact upon the world scene, of course, would have depended essentially upon time and circumstance of American entry into the European conflict. The longer the postponement, for example, the greater became the chance of America becoming so committed to the Pacific that the “Europe first” formula of the Anglo-American pre-Pearl Harbor agreement would have become irrelevant.
It is usually thought that Roosevelt would have continued to seek opportunities to bring America closer to and, in time, into the European war. This is, of course, to assume that he himself would not have become so caught up in Pacific affairs as to begin thinking of Europe as a distraction. In any event, consummate politician that he was, Roosevelt might have chosen to bide his time, ignoring Germany temporarily while working behind the scenes to bring Congressional leaders to support a war on two fronts across two oceans. If this process had continued through 1942, and assuming affairs on the Eastern Front had gone much as they did by the end of that year, the decline of Hitler's fortunes would have reduced in some measure the pressures for American intervention. In any event, further discussion will be based on the thought of America not being involved as a full belligerent in the European war in 1942.
Probable Consequences for the War in Europe
If one commences with the proposition that there would have been no full American war with Germany in 1942, one is driven toward the conclusion that the fighting in Europe might well have resulted in a stalemate. American assistance was vital to Britain in the Battle of the Atlantic and for a clear-cut victory in the Middle East. It also played a significant, though still not fully admitted, role in the rejuvenation of the Soviet war effort.
In the Atlantic battle the assistance rendered in 1941 would probably have continued in much the same form during 1942. Any extension would have depended upon the probable Roosevelt policies as they developed after Pearl Harbor. If the President sought to escalate his support of Britain and the Soviet Union to the point of forcing a final break with the Axis, he would do what he could to increase protection of convoys as far eastward as possible, perhaps even to British ports, welcoming resulting frictions. He would have to proceed with caution if, as appears likely, the popular American mood was sensitive to whatever threatened to impede national absorption in the Pacific conflict. However, since Britain would now by the grace of Japan be our ally in the Far East, a corresponding feeling of greater solidarity with our British friends was likely to result. This could be manipulated to foster greater sympathy for Britain's fate in the old world. It thus appears likely that there would have been increasing popular support for the existing measures to assist British convoys and of lend-lease aid to Britain and the Soviet Union. Without direct American involvement, victory over Germany in the Battle of the Atlantic, given the escalating performance of Ultra, would still have been probable. It might, however, have been delayed and reduced in scope.
The war in the Middle East and the Mediterranean generally would have been much tougher for Britain. There would have been no Operation Torch or takeover of French and Italian North Africa. The possibility that Hitler at some point would have forced Franco's hand to associate Spain more closely with the Axis would have been greater. The 500 Grant and Sherman tanks that arrived in time to play a critical role in the El Alamein victory would scarcely have been forthcoming. Rommel, however ill supported, might have remained on the frontier of Egypt and the Axis might have mounted an over-delayed invasion of Malta. In sum, there could have been little thought of sweeping Italy out of the war in the summer of 1943. Looking at a worst-case scenario, the Mediterranean might yet have become something like an Axis lake.
The Soviets, with only Britain's rapidly eroding forces available to create distractions for Germany in the west, could have entertained little hope of an early “second front.” American military and economic aid would to some extent have remained forthcoming, but probably at a sharply reduced level. Absent direct involvement in the European war, it is difficult to perceive anything like the flood of American materiel that helped so much to stiffen Soviet forces in the last two years of the struggle. Though Lend-Lease in 1943 was not yet the vital factor in the Soviet war effort that it later became, the outlook with America continuing to stand aside was still discouraging. Stalin's repeated demands for a “second front now” are an indication of his evaluation of a future American impact on the course of the war. What if the Russo-German campaigns of 1942 had been fought with the uncomfortable knowledge that this time the Yanks were not coming? Most probably Stalin's still mysterious, rather half-hearted peace overtures to Germany in the summer of 1943 would have been pushed more seriously if the outlook for eventual military victory had been that much more bleak.5
Few students of the European war would argue that a reduced, and generally more grudging, American support of Britain and the Soviets would have brought victory to Hitler. Nevertheless, removing America from the equation suggests a drawn-out war between the great continental powers – a war perhaps periodically interrupted by truces, each in turn broken by a savage renewal of fighting. In that contest Germany would have had some opportunity to consolidate her position in the occupied lands of western and central Europe, though whether the Reich would have done so is another question. A compromise peace of mutual exhaustion nevertheless seems a reasonable assumption – perhaps accompanied by Hitler's overthrow or death from natural causes.
Britain for her part was by 1942 impregnable to German invasion but equally incapable of threatening the continent with her own resources. At most she might have undertaken something against the German forces of occupation in Norway. In the context of a German-Soviet stalemate, Churchill or his successor might well have sought rapprochement, formal or informal, in the effort to avert complete exclusion from Europe. And in that case – but here we leave the realm of alternative history and enter that of historical speculation.
To return to both greater realism and a less gloomy scenario, there are strong reasons to argue that, before a genuine European stalemate had been reached, America would have taken a more vigorous hand in the game. As war production skyrocketed and enlistments exceeded what could possibly have been utilized in the Pacific, the national mood, accentuated by the common cause made with Britain in the Far East, promised to become increasingly amenable to European involvement. Worsening relations with Germany, most probably associated with a steadily escalating support of Britain in the Battle of the Atlantic, could well have brought affairs to a critical stage by late 1942, when the U-boat war was reaching the height of its intensity.
Supposing the entry of the United States into the European conflict toward the turn of the year, a strategic pattern quite different from the one actually then reached would have prevailed. There would have been greater impatience in Washington with any diversion from the aim of striking as soon as possible at the heart of Hitler's empire. Except perhaps for a rescue expedition to succor a foundering British force in the eastern Mediterranean, appeals to concentrate upon the “soft underbelly” of the Axis would have elicited meager response. Concentration rather than peripheral nibblings would have been the watchword. An earlier D-Day in this context? Perhaps even in 1943? But here again we find ourselves in the realm of speculation.
Probable consequences for the war in the Pacific
Next to FDR personally, the element in the American leadership most leaning toward involvement in the war against Nazi Germany resided in the Pentagon. Amidst the outburst of national outrage at the Japanese “sneak attack,” the first impulse was to throw all into the conflict in the Pacific. Somewhat astonishingly, this was quickly enough stifled so that, when Churchill arrived in Washington some three weeks later, he was gratified to note a continuing commitment to the “Europe first” strategy.6 But what if there had been no war with Germany? One can only surmise how much, in the months that followed, attention, hopes, and planning would have focused on the Pacific within the Pentagon. The same might have been true in some measure with the President himself.
Even in the actual historical scenario, the shock of the Japanese attack drew a high percentage of America's immediately deployable resources westward. More National Guard units were to fight in the Pacific than in Europe. As late as 1943, American troop strength in the ETO was less than in the Pacific. And from Admiral King downward, the Pacific remained the Navy's principal theater emotionally and psychologically throughout the war. In the absence of a shooting war with Germany, shelving all the Rainbow plans and reviving Plan Orange would hardly have called for major adjustments. The color and force of Douglas MacArthur would have focussed national attention to a degree that much exceeded the divided attentions that actually prevailed during this period.
On the other hand, it is questionable whether a “Pacific first” option could have absorbed enough military resources to influence significantly the conduct of a European war that, in our scenario, began near the turn of the year 1943. After Midway, America's war in the Pacific was handicapped less by shortages of men and materials than by difficulties in transporting and sustaining her forces in the theater. The presence of more divisions, or more aircraft of the types available in 1942-45, would have had limited consequences. The balance of naval forces did not swing decisively in America's favor until 1943, as the new construction joined the fleet. In historical fact, King saw to it that landing craft were never in decisively short supply in either the central or southeast Pacific theaters. The absence of European requirements for these vessels would have facilitated MacArthur's and Nimitz's operations but hardly altered them essentially.
In a situation where Germany and the United States never went to war, or did so only in 1943, a likely outcome seems a major Japanese peace initiative no later than the last quarter of 1944. By that time the imbalance of forces would have been plain to the most determined militarists – though the striking power of the U.S. Navy might not have been much greater than it actually was in history. America's response might have been one of opening negotiations. It might also have taken advantage of the much larger ground and air forces available in the absence of a German war to launch a campaign on the Asian mainland. The urge to do more in Burma and China might have begun to play a role as early as 1942.
The latter possibility must not be exaggerated. Under many circumstances, the United States would have kept one eye on Germany and been correspondingly reluctant to become involved in unfamiliar terrain halfway around the world. Probably America would have continued the war roughly along the strategic lines actually pursued, with Japanese capitulation antedating the completion of the atomic bomb. What that could have implied in the cold and hot wars of post-war generations is anyone's guess.
1 David Irving, Hitler's War (New York: Viking, 1977), 352.
2 Interrogation of Jodi's deputy, General Walter Warlimont, by Harold C. Deutsch, September, 1945. Warlimont, whose year of study in the United States of the American economy had fitted him to judge realistically the American potential, was himself so downcast that he retired to his room and sat in the dark sunk in gloomy forebodings.
3 Interrogation of Friedrich von Bötticher by Harold C. Deutsch, September 1945.
4 Hitler at times expressed contempt for those who kept to agreements when they became unprofitable. The Japanese, though much encouraged by his assurances through Ribbentrop of 21 and 28 November 1941, no doubt would have gone to war without them.
5 The fuller story of these overtures counts among significant aspects of Stalin's policies on which there should be welcome clarification as the restrictions on Soviet archives are relaxed or lifted.
6 Virtually on the morrow of Pearl Harbor, the War Department convened a committee of eight to make a quick reassessment of the strategic situation. A preliminary straw vote found seven of the officers agreeing that the Pacific should now receive principal attention. Then, one by one, those favoring this view changed sides until in the end there was unanimity that the “Europe first” concept should be preserved. Conversations with General Haywood S. Hansell, Jr., October 1948. Hansell was a participant in the committee's deliberations.