Having returned to the capital on April 21, 1941, after a brief trip to New England, Stimson telephoned Knox to bring himself up to date. Knox suggested that Stimson read “some rather startling cables” which had come in about the Far East. Stimson promptly sent for the papers and “was amazed to find that negotiations were apparently going on” of which he knew nothing—“associations between us and Japan.”1 The secretary of war’s ignorance indicated a surprising lack of coordination at Cabinet level.
The situation was somewhat rectified the next morning, when Hull, Stimson, and Knox gathered in the State Department. Hull told his colleagues about his Japanese problem. Stimson recorded with obvious relish: “It was rather a singular position to be in—to be able to get the report of it to the home office in Tokyo and their comment on it and see how the Japanese mind had deviously and ingeniously tried to put us in a hole.” After this meeting Stimson moved across to the White House for an 1100 appointment. The President launched into a discussion of the naval situation, telling Stimson “just how thin he was spread out in regard to the territory he had to cover.”2
Quick to take the hint, Stimson got together with Marshall the next morning, April 23. When he informed the general of Roosevelt’s view on the necessity of keeping the Fleet in Hawaii for the Islands’ defense, Marshall “indicated his strong dissent.” He countered that “with our heavy bombers and our fine new pursuit planes, the land forces could put up such a defense that the Japs wouldn’t dare attack Hawaii. . . .” Stimson passed this to Roosevelt by phone that afternoon, whereupon the President asked Stimson to come to the White House at noon the next day, bringing “the papers regarding the defense of Hawaii.” He further requested that Stimson ask Knox to come along and “bring the naval situation on that point.”3
The noon conference of April 24 opened with a lengthy discussion about arrangements for patrolling the Atlantic. It soon blended into a dissertation from Roosevelt about “the difficulties that he was having in regard to the size and numbers of the present Atlantic Fleet. . . .” This was just the opening Stimson wanted. In preparing for the meeting, he said, he “had found that Marshall felt that Hawaii was impregnable whether there were any ships left there or not; that the land defense was amply sufficient, together with the air defense, to keep off the Japanese and the air defense could always be reenforced from the mainland of America.” He then handed the President an aide-mémoire which embodied these views.4
This document which Stimson left with Roosevelt sheds much light on the thinking of Marshall, who signed it, and of those around him. It also helps clarify the Pearl Harbor picture because the two subjects of the discussion—depletion of the Pacific Fleet and the defense of the Islands—could not be separated. The memorandum began with a forceful statement much in keeping with popular opinion:
The Island of Oahu, due to its fortification, its garrison, and its physical characteristics, is believed to be the strongest fortress in the world.
To reduce Oahu the enemy must transport overseas an expeditionary force capable of executing a forced landing against a garrison of approximately 35,000 men, manning 127 fixed coast defense guns, 211 antiaircraft weapons, and more than 3,000 artillery pieces and automatic weapons available for beach defense. Without air superiority this is an impossible task.5
All very true. But the Japanese were not planning to occupy Oahu. Yamamoto’s only current interest in the Hawaiian Islands was Kimmel’s Pacific Fleet. And he would not attempt his daring strike without air superiority. Genda’s planning called for immediate destruction of U.S. air power. The aide-mémoire continued:
Air Defense. With adequate air defense, enemy carriers, naval escorts and transports will begin to come under air attack at a distance of approximately 750 miles. This attack will increase in intensity until when within 200 miles of the objective, the enemy forces will be subject to attack by all types of bombardment closely supported by our most modern pursuit.6
This was an ideal picture-book concept, but it bore no relation to the realities of the moment. Oahu did not have patrol planes that could fly out on a 750-mile arc, and even if it did, no one could guarantee that they would be able to locate an enemy moving in for a quick air strike. Nor did Short have sufficient bombers to bring the enemy under effective air attack at such range. Here, too, there was a tacit assumption of advance warning—early knowledge that the enemy was coming and from what direction. Marshall’s document went on to amplify his thesis:
Hawaiian Air Defense. Including the movement of aviation now in progress Hawaii will be defended by* 35 of our most modern flying fortresses, 35 medium range bombers, 13 light bombers, 150 pursuit of which 105 are of our most modern type. In addition Hawaii is capable of reinforcement by heavy bombers from the mainland by air. With this force available a major attack against Oahu is considered impracticable.7
A man of Marshall’s innate honesty would not have deliberately given the President and Stimson a false impression. Yet when the first Japanese torpedo slammed into one of Kimmel’s battleships, Short did not have thirty-five B-17s. He had twelve—only six of them operational.8
Moreover, it is difficult to imagine that in a real emergency Short would have had time to order twenty or thirty B-17s from the mainland as if they were so many crates of fresh eggs. In the highly problematical event that they would have been available on demand, they would still have had to fly the long distance to Hawaii. On landing, they would have needed a complete maintenance check, refueling, arming, and—last but decidedly not least—rested, competent crews standing by ready to take over.
The Army seems to have regarded the B-17 as a sort of magic cure-all. But although a fine aircraft, it had not been designed for action against ships at sea. Who knew how it would perform against Yamamoto’s battlewagons? To a certain extent, therefore, the Army rested the defense of Hawaii on an unproved premise.
Marshall’s aide-mémoire concluded: “In point of sequence, sabotage is first to be expected and may, within a very limited time, cause great damage. On this account, and in order to assure strong control, it would be highly desirable to set up a military control of the islands prior to the likelihood of our involvement in the Far East.”9
The Chief of Staff accepted widespread sabotage in Hawaii as a fact beyond dispute. This in turn indicated that he expected one of two things: either a general advance warning, such as a formal declaration of war, at which signal thousands of Hawaii’s Japanese would spring to action, or Tokyo’s coordination of an attack with the local brethren. In fact, nothing could have been further from Yamamoto’s intention, and one can scarcely picture the United States, with its traditional distaste for “military control,” placing an entire territory outside the civil law just on “the likelihood of our involvement in the Far East.”
At this stage Marshall concentrated on the Atlantic, and logically so. Washington had decided upon a “Europe First” policy to save England and defeat Hitler. German U-boats were sinking British ships, and soon the United States would engage in convoying. It was only natural that the War and Navy departments should pay primary attention to the present danger in the Atlantic instead of the potential one in the Pacific.
What Marshall, along with so many others, failed to see was that Yamamoto was dead set on protecting the Japanese flank into Southeast Asia. To do so, he was prepared to risk an immensely dangerous attack against Kimmel’s ships. Of course, no one could expect the Chief of Staff to be clairvoyant. Yet there is a refusal in his aide-mémoire to come to grips with the immediacy of the moment. Marshall preferred to explain to the President what the United States would do in the future rather than state how Short could defend Hawaii if the Japanese attacked that very day.
Pa Watson, the President’s military aide, wrote across the top of the aide-mémoire: “Modern planes have completely changed the situation as to defensibility.”10 He never penned a truer word. But Genda or Martin could have told him that air power is essentially an offensive weapon, not a Maginot Line.
The role of aircraft as defensive instruments occupied a large part of Short’s mind when, on May 12, in cooperation with the Navy, he launched “the greatest war drills ever staged” in the Islands.11 This included a strong force of defending bombers which attacked “enemy” flattops several hundred miles at sea.12 “Defending bombers swept down on the mythical carriers, assumed to be harassing the Hawaiian Islands, just as one carrier was in the act of sending a flight of planes off her decks, maneuver authorities said.”13 Here we have the idealized picture of Army bomber perfection—locating and hitting the enemy at the strategic moment of launching.
During the early stages twenty-one B-17s roared into Oahu from the mainland to augment the Hawaiian Air Force.14 The decision to provide Short with Flying Fortresses entailed considerable discussion because heavy bombers had never flown en masse from the West Coast to Hawaii. However, the need to put real muscle into Hawaii’s defense weighed against the risk involved in the flight tipped the scales in favor of the former.15
The exercises reached a smashing climax at the end of the second week. Early on May 24 the tide turned. “A huge pincers movement, combining the fire power of ground troops with the striking force of the army’s newly arrived flying fortresses, caught and annihilated the enemy invading units.”16
Short wrote an enthusiastic letter to Marshall on May 29 about his exercises. He described the maneuvers as divided into three phases. The first consisted of air action, during which U.S. forces “actually located and bombed airplane carriers 250 miles out at sea.” So far American expectations moved in the same channel as Japanese planning. “The Navy cooperated very fully . . .” he reported, “and I believe we learned more about the coordination of Army Air Force, Navy Air Force and Antiaircraft than we had during any previous exercise.”
The second phase, Short related, “consisted of the completion of our plans and the organization of the ground, including the construction of Field Fortifications. . . . The whole command dug diligently upon them day and night.”
The third phase, “the maneuver proper,” was headed “Repelling of a Serious Attack.” Short thought that such an assault would be possible only under the following conditions: “Our fleet would be either absent or very greatly inferior. Our air force would be destroyed or very greatly inferior.”17
Short had visions of wave after wave of tough Japanese troops hitting the beaches behind withering naval bombardment. And there the enemy would encounter Short’s own men, equally tough, equally courageous. Hence his emphasis on training in the basics of soldiering, training to the point of reflex action. In combat one did not have time to consult manuals or consciously recall instructions; one had to react automatically. Once the enemy landed, Short, the ground soldier, would be in his element. And no doubt he would have given a good account of himself had the dice rolled in that direction.
He went all out to simulate a well-conceived assault on the Islands. But he had a few curious notions. “The situation was built up by the destruction of our large guns so that the Harbor Defense troops in the last phase of the exercise manned 3″ and 6″ secondary armament which are not normally manned on account of the lack of personnel. . . .” There is a cowboys-and-Indians touch about the mentality which could destroy heavy artillery in order to man the light guns. “Likewise air personnel which were available through almost complete destruction of our planes were used for anti-sabotage work and finally to take over a short sector of beach defense. . . .”18
Granted, Short’s problem in this war game was to defend Oahu against a simulated invasion. To do this, he had to make certain assumptions, among them destruction of most of his air power, as he indicated to Marshall. Nevertheless, one has the impression that Short regarded this disaster as so much underbrush to be cleared away as rapidly as possible so that he could get down to the real business of fighting on the ground, where fighting belonged.
Of far more serious moment is the frightening demonstration that Short did not understand his basic mission on Oahu, despite all his instructions and despite his own lip service to the concept. We seek in vain in Short’s war games of May 1941 for the slightest indication of a drill aimed at protecting Kimmel’s ships. On the contrary, he based his maneuvers on the assumption that the Fleet would be somewhere at sea or else so hopelessly inferior that the enemy would not fear it and thus attack Oahu.
Almost equally disturbing is Short’s obvious failure to understand or trust air power. He was entirely correct in assuming that if the Japanese tried to take Hawaii, they would do so only after clipping the wings of American aviation in the Islands. Nevertheless, he accepted the loss of command of the air with a certain nonchalance and set to work with “air personnel” thus made “available” for routine soldiering. One feels that he rather welcomed the addition to his ground forces, in which lay his own heart and interest—and acknowledged skill. His program for training airmen along these lines stirred up a bitter hassle during the summer which almost undid all the painstaking, delicate work of building up Army-Air Force goodwill.
Combine these two blind spots in Short’s mentality, and one understands why he simply could not conceive of the type of attack the Japanese actually launched: an air strike complete in itself aimed at the destruction of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, with no intention of planting one Japanese boot, let alone the Rising Sun banner, on Hawaiian soil. Short looked upon an initial air attack as a softening-up operation preliminary to the main attempt at seizure and occupation of the Islands, especially Oahu. And, of course, the whole would be coordinated with widespread sabotage. This again assumed either advance warning which activated Tokyo’s Trojan Horse or full tactical contact between Japan and the local fifth column.
This was the German pattern—the worming from within; the aerial blitzkrieg; the ground battle; the occupation. Indeed, Hitler’s blueprint had worked so well that it almost drove other concepts of warfare out of the free world’s head at this point. But it was not the Japanese way. And the Japanese did not need instructions from Berlin on how to run a war—especially one initiated by naval aviation, which the Germans neither possessed nor understood.
Short had a good record, and he worked hard at his job, but he lacked creative imagination. When the Pearl Harbor attack came, it was a traumatic shock to him. The very nature of the operation knocked the props from under every military tenet on which he had based his life and work. And, as we have suggested before, Short failed to understand his true mission: that of protecting Kimmel’s fleet. When the actual scene of Pearl Harbor confronts us, this tragic feature will stand out with blazing clarity in the spotlight’s pitiless glare.