Poco Smith stared sightlessly around the dining room of the Waialae Golf and Country Club on Sunday evening, May 18. He was dimly aware of Hilo Hattie, a favorite entertainer, putting across her comedy routine, but to Smith she “was not amusing that night.” He applauded mechanically, smiled an ersatz copy of his usually cheerful grin. Occasionally he sipped a tasteless cup of coffee. He “felt like a sick clam.”
Glancing covertly at his guests, Rear Admiral and Mrs. Kent Hewitt, he thought gloomily that the admiral, commander of Cruiser Division Eight, would not see his wife again for a long time. Hewitt had just shifted his flag from the light cruiser Philadelphia to Savannah, in the belief that his former flagship was leaving Honolulu “for extended overhaul at Mare Island Navy Yard.” Smith knew that it was not.
Mrs. Vance D. Chapline, wife of Philadelphia’s skipper, remarked happily that she had rented a house at the yard, where their four daughters would join them both. Smith’s kind heart smote him. And what about young John Briscoe Pye, second son of Admiral Pye—“a fine clean-cut lad of the class of ’39”? His fiancée was on her way to Honolulu, and neither Smith nor any of his staff officers could tell the boy that his wedding had to be postponed. And when he found out the hard way, he could not even send regrets because to do so would break radio silence.
Smith’s thoughts turned sadly to the battleship New Mexico. Her captain, Robert G. “Plug” Coman, was a classmate of Smith’s, and his lovely wife, Mary, was slowly dying of cancer; Plug would not be able to receive word of her condition for weeks.1
What had happened to upset this peaceful naval community, so closely knit from seasoned admirals to youngsters with the gloss of Annapolis still on their boots?
German U-boats had grown bolder with every passing month as they sought to cut the vital lifeline between Britain and the New World. By mid-March 1941 merchant-ship sinkings extended well beyond Iceland and almost to the fortieth parallel. A dangerous gap existed between the point where Canadian convoy escorts turned back and the British took over. Roosevelt signed House Resolution 1776, the lend-lease agreement to aid embattled Britain, on March 11, but what good would lend-lease be if the German wolf packs sank every cargo ship as soon as it reached the mid-Atlantic?
Both Stimson and Knox had urged the use of the Navy to escort the convoys and thus ensure delivery of supplies. Technically Stimson had no business concerning himself with Navy matters, but he took a particular interest in the Fleet because he thought it “the one weapon that the United States had now ready which could make a telling blow. . . .”2 Also, he felt driven to preserve Great Britain. If the German undersea fleet succeeded in starving it into submission, Stimson believed that not only would the United States stand in mortal peril, but with Britain would fall the whole moral code and rule of law in the Western world.3
By December 29, 1940, he had reached the firm conviction that “we cannot permanently be in a position of toolmakers for other nations to fight.”4 He took the typical and practical step of checking out any legal roadblocks and cautioned Knox that any restriction “which would forbid the President to use ships of the Navy to convoy was clearly unconstitutional.”5
On March 24, 1941, Knox briefed Stimson about a series of conferences he had been having with the President on the Navy’s “readiness and position.” Both secretaries agreed “that the crisis is coming soon and that convoying is the only solution and that it must come practically at once.”6 The next day Stimson, Knox, Marshall, and Stark met with a group of English officers. All agreed that the British could not, “with their present naval forces, assume the entire escort duty. . . .”7
The situation set the President at war with himself—on the one hand, Roosevelt the statesman, who understood that if Britain fell, the Americas would live, if you could call that living, with a Nazi dagger at their throats; and on the other, Roosevelt the politician, who had promises to keep to the electorate and a determined bloc of isolationists waiting to pounce on any error of judgment he might make.
He solved his dilemma with typical suavity at a meeting in the White House on April 10 with his personal adviser Harry Hopkins in attendance, along with the Plus Four, as Mrs. Stimson nicknamed the quartet of Hull, Stimson, Knox, and Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau, Jr. Stimson captured the scene for posterity:
We had the atlas out and by drawing a line midway between the westernmost bulge of Africa and the easternmost bulge of Brazil, we found that the medium line between the two continents was at about longitude line 25. By projecting that northward, it took into the western hemisphere most of Greenland, running up the East side of Greenland until it finally struck the coast near Scorsby Sound, which is one of the most important, in fact the only landing place on the east side of Greenland, considerably north of the Arctic Circle.
[The President planned, therefore, that the United States should] patrol the high seas west of this median line, all the way down as far as we furnish the force to do it, and that the British will swing their convoys over westward to the west side of this line, so that they will be within our area. Then by the use of patrol planes and patrol vessels we can patrol and follow the convoys and notify them of any German raiders or German submarines that we may see and give them a chance to escape. Also notify the British warships so that they can get at the raider. Further than this, we shall defend Greenland—the major part of Greenland . . . if the Germans landed there we would put them out.8
This policy placed an immense burden on the Atlantic Fleet and posed the United States the question of how to cover two oceans with a one-ocean Navy. From January 29 to March 27 conversations had been going on in Washington between representatives of the United States Army and Navy and those of the United Kingdom’s Chiefs of Staff. A report dated March 27 covering these talks outlined the strategy to be employed “should the United States be compelled to resort to war.”9 It arrived at the following far-reaching conclusions:
(a) Since Germany is the predominant member of the Axis Powers, the Atlantic and European area is considered to be the decisive theatre. The principal United States Military effort will be exerted in that theatre, and operations of United States forces in other theatres will be conducted in such a manner as to facilitate that effort.
(d) . . . If Japan does enter the war, the Military strategy in the Far East will be defensive. The United States does not intend to add to its present Military strength in the Far East but will employ the United States Pacific Fleet offensively in the manner best calculated to weaken Japanese economic power, and to support the defense of the Malay barrier by diverging Japanese strength away from Malaysia. . . . 10
For Kimmel the catch was this: The United States planned not only to refrain from adding to its strength in the Pacific but actually to deplete it. In April Vice Admiral Ernest J. King, Commander in Chief of the Atlantic Fleet, reorganized that force and stationed it in Narragansett Bay virtually on a war footing. Where could he get enough combat ships to fulfill the Atlantic commitment if not from the Pacific?
Stark broke the news to Kimmel in an attachment to a letter dated April 4. In his covering note he hinted at a ray of light in the Pacific but painted the Atlantic scene in very somber colors: “On the surface, at least, the Japanese situation looks a trifle easier, but just what the Oriental really [Stark’s italics] plans, none of us can be sure. I have had several long talks with Admiral Nomura and unless I am completely fooled, he earnestly desires to avert a Japanese crisis with us. . . .”11
Stark told Kimmel that the memorandum about convoys, which he had drawn up for the President, concerned him directly. “The situation is obviously critical in the Atlantic,” he explained. “. . . Without our giving effective aid I do not believe the British can much more than see the year through, if that. . . .”12 The kernel of Stark’s communication lay in the last page of the memorandum, in which he listed the anticipated requirements to ensure the safety of convoys in the western Atlantic. These included, among others, the battleships Idaho, New Mexico, and Mississippi, a carrier—preferably Lexington—and twelve destroyers. He added, “The possible effect of this transfer as regards Japan is realized, but must be accepted if we are to take an effective part in the Atlantic.”13
Stark followed up with a secret letter on April 7. He retold part of the Atlantic story and informed Kimmel that some of his ships would be transferred.
The movement of these units to the Atlantic must be accomplished with the utmost possible secrecy. In order to promote secrecy, it has been decided not to transfer all vessels at once but to make the transfer in several groups, with about two weeks elapsing between departures of groups. The Chief of Naval Operations will instruct you by secret dispatch as to the final dates for departure of each group from the Hawaiian area. . . .
. . . You will direct that all vessels of the Atlantic detachments maintain radio silence, except in emergency, from the time of departure from Hawaii until arrival in Hampton Roads. . . . 14
Kimmel had slightly more than a week to think over this distasteful prospect. Several events of early April gave the President and his more vigorous pro-Atlantic advisers pause. The signing on April 13 of the Soviet-Japanese Neutrality Pact might well remove any Japanese hesitation toward expanding southward. Then, too, the U.S. destroyer Niblack, seeking to rescue survivors of a U-boat attack, had depth-bombed a Nazi submarine, thus giving a fine beltful of ammunition to the isolationists. Accordingly, on April 15, Hemisphere Defense Plan No. 2 went into effect. It called for United States vessels to trail Axis warships and broadcast their positions, instead of using force to exclude them from Western Hemisphere waters. By this time the median line had moved from 25 to 26 degrees.15
On April 19 Stark advised Kimmel that his earlier proposal no longer applied. Roosevelt had decided that “he did not want, at this particular moment, to give any signs of seriously weakening the forces in the Pacific.” The President therefore had pared the commitment down to one carrier and a division of destroyers.16
Accordingly Kimmel dispatched the initial increment on April 20 and 21—Yorktown with four destroyers—and another destroyer followed on April 26. Naturally the CinCPAC did not relish the depletion of his strength, but he took it like a good sailor. He confined himself officially to pointing out to Stark on April 22 that “the effect of detachment of a carrier or any light force from this command will affect the operations out of all proposition to the apparent fighting strength of the forces detached. . . .”17
But this was only the beginning. The President’s Atlantic-oriented advisers renewed their pleas to revert to the escorting of convoys and to transfer from the Pacific the ships to do so. This school of thought had a large measure of reason on its side. The decision having been reached that the Atlantic should take priority, the Pacific must perforce accept second place. Even at full strength, the Pacific Fleet could not protect the Philippines, while Hawaii’s defense was the responsibility of Short’s air and land forces. Marshall, in particular, argued that the new heavy bombers such as the B-17 increased the American defensive posture and that twenty-one of the Flying Fortresses would shortly join the Hawaiian defenders.
The President asked Stimson and Knox “to sound out the British on the subject of moving the Fleet.”18 On April 25 Turner on instructions from Stark wrote to Rear Admiral V. H. Danckwerts, a member of a United Kingdom military-naval mission participating in joint staff discussions in Washington. Turner inquired, “. . . would it be advisable at this time, for the United States to transfer from the Pacific to the Atlantic three battleships, four light cruisers, and two destroyer squadrons?”19 Under the circumstances how could the British object? So without waiting for a formal reply, Stark warned Kimmel on April 26 to be “mentally prepared that shortly a considerable detachment from your fleet will be brought to the Atlantic. . . .”20 On April 28 Danckwerts replied to Turner’s inquiry, forwarding the opinion of the British Chiefs of Staff that “the move proposed . . . would be advantageous.” They were satisfied that “the consequential reduction in the strength of the . . . Pacific Fleet would not unduly encourage Japan.”21
Matters hung fire for a few days because Hull was delaying the transfer. “Marshall, Admiral Stark, Secretary Knox and I are all united in feeling that the Fleet should be brought over at once,” Stimson wrote, fuming. So he and Knox decided to have a showdown with Hull on May 5. At 1500 in Hull’s office, Stimson and Knox, “in perfect accord,” met “every point that Hull produced as the basis of his reasoning.” The secretary of state was “still clinging to the treatments and fictions and everything else in his hope of by some means or another of preventing the Japanese from going down to Singapore and he keeps the Fleet there for that purpose. . . .” As Stimson saw it—and his view was both shrewd and reasonable—Hull’s position resulted in neutralizing “the Fleet in the Pacific, where it is well known that we don’t intend to use it actively against the Japanese and to keep it from its real function in the main theater of operations.” After considerable arguing Hull finally “seemed to yield,” but very reluctantly.22
By the next day the effect of Stimson and Knox’s arguments apparently had worn off. At a meeting in the White House Hull stood firmly on his old position. Furthermore, to Stimson’s “utter surprise, Stark switched around and trimmed on the subject and was only for moving . . . three capital ships. Of course this was fatal,” Stimson added bitterly, “as the President has been rather shy on the subject.”23
On or about May 8 Knox delivered to Roosevelt an aide-mémoire of that date from Danckwerts, conveying a message from Winston Churchill’s Cabinet. It advised that the Australian and New Zealand authorities agreed that “any marked advance by the U.S. Navy in or into the Atlantic would be on the whole more likely to deter Japan from going to war than the maintenance of the present very large U.S. Fleet at Hawaii.”24 This rather remarkable opinion presupposed a much greater degree of cooperation than existed between the two major Axis partners. The Japanese Navy danced to no tune of Hitler’s piping, and the Japanese government was infinitely less concerned about serving German interests than the United States was about bolstering Britain.
The day of decision appears to have been May 13. Stimson began by putting in some missionary work on Hornbeck, who had been “one of the recalcitrants that are holding back from the movement of getting the Fleet over to the Atlantic. . . .” Parting from Hornbeck on cordial terms, he went to the State Department, where he met with Hull, Knox, Marshall, and Stark. Hull informed his colleagues that Roosevelt “was ready now to order the first three capital ships and their accompanying vessels through the Canal.” They discussed how many ships should follow, Stimson urging that the “full naval force” should be in the Atlantic. Stark “held back and was very weak compared with the position that he had taken before.” For once Knox had little to say, while Hull still believed that he had a one-to-ten chance “to win something out of the negotiations with the Japs.”25
Stark was not as weak as Stimson made out. After all, it took a certain amount of fortitude to stand up under the torrent of arguments poured out by Stimson and to some extent Knox. And he was by no means unmindful of the Pacific.
Reading over a batch of cables and messages from G-2 on May 15, Stimson felt “rather horrified to find the terms of the negotiations which have been going on between the State Department and Japan.”26 One must admit that the Walsh-Drought proposals were enough to horrify a former secretary of state. These high-level discussions lay far beyond Kimmel’s scope. He knew only that no matter what turn events took in Washington or Tokyo, the nation would expect him to keep the watch—and with a fleet greatly reduced in size. On May 19 the major movement of ships from Hawaii began, and by the end of the twenty-second it had been completed in an atmosphere of utter secrecy. One can easily imagine the anguish that tore Captain Coman as New Mexico steamed farther and farther away from his dying wife.
On the twenty-fourth Stark indicated to Kimmel that his troubles had ceased temporarily. “I do not contemplate for the moment [Stark’s italics] ordering anything to the Atlantic except auxiliaries in connection with the Azores task and except possibly later four CA’s [heavy cruisers] as per Rainbow 5. However, “I am not the final ‘Boss of this show.’ ”27
Too true! And during the summer additional forays would cost Kimmel three oilers, three transports, and a number of auxiliaries—a total of sixteen ships. All in all, Kimmel lost about one-fourth of his Pacific Fleet:28 the battleships Mississippi, Idaho, and New Mexico, the carrier Yorktown, four light cruisers, seventeen destroyers, three oilers, three transports, and ten auxiliaries—more ships than the Japanese destroyed at Pearl Harbor.
What priceless irony! The most Yamamoto could possibly have expected from the execution of his plan would have been the elimination of between one-fifth and one-quarter of the U.S. Pacific Fleet. Even before his Pearl Harbor operation had emerged from its cocoon, the United States government obligingly dispatched about that percentage to the Atlantic! Inevitably the questions arise: Did Yamamoto understand the situation, and if so, why did he continue along his charted course? Indeed, in summarizing its voluminous evidence the joint congressional committee investigating the attack brought up that very point: “If the Japanese really knew the weakness of the Pacific Fleet they must also have known that it did not present a formidable deterrent to anything Japan desired to do in the Far East.” The investigators therefore suggested that “the role played by espionage in the Pearl Harbor attack may have been magnified out of all proportion to the realities of the situation.”29
Japanese Intelligence in Tokyo knew well enough what was going on. Despite the tight secrecy, the moves of the ships did not pass unnoticed. The President himself had practically informed the entire nation of the situation in his fireside chat of May 27. It was certainly no trick to deduce from the announced Atlantic buildup where the vessels would come from.
Yoshikawa had been reporting battleships present in Pearl Harbor by name. After his report of May 23, Idaho, Mississippi, and New Mexico disappeared from the rolls, while on May 26 he cited seven light cruisers instead of the ten reported on the twelfth.30 Yes, the Japanese Navy had a very good idea of the exact strength of the U.S. Pacific Fleet; to keep track of the ships from Yoshikawa’s reports involved a simple charting process which any competent yeoman could handle. Furthermore, if anything on earth is easily visible, it is a carrier or a battleship going through the Panama Canal. And Japan had a competent consular establishment in the Canal Zone reporting to Tokyo on the movements of American shipping.
Nevertheless, Yamamoto could not assume that this situation would continue. For the moment the United States had given the Atlantic priority, but in view of the very fluid world situation this could change rapidly. Roosevelt could send his ships back to the Pacific anytime the notion struck him. The Japanese had evolved a war plan so grandiose, with so much at stake, that Yamamoto was convinced he could not afford to leave his eastern flank uncovered. Therefore, it is unrealistic to believe that the day-to-day strength of the U.S. Pacific Fleet influenced his thinking much one way or the other.
This brings us to the crucial question: Was the reduced Pacific Fleet still a deterrent to Japan, or did the transfers to the Atlantic encourage the Japanese to strike? Actually in no case was the Pacific Fleet—at full strength, half strength, or quarter strength—a deterrent to Japan. It would carry out its policy of developing the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere no matter where Roosevelt put his ships. Japan did not rely upon Washington for the formulation of its foreign policies.
Leadership in Washington proceeded from a false premise at the very outset: that the U.S. Pacific Fleet located in Hawaii could act as a brake on Japan. On the contrary, the stronger the Fleet, the more Yamamoto would have wanted to strike it a surprise blow to keep it from threatening the Japanese flank in Southeast Asia.
Of course, the Atlantic orientation was the inevitable corollary of the national policy to keep Britain’s head above water and by every means short of war to contain the German menace. And Kimmel could not do a thing about it because in the United States, with a philosophy deeply rooted in the subordination of the military to the civil, naval strategy waited upon the State Department and the administration. No such handicap troubled Yamamoto or the Naval General Staff. In Tokyo the military held the reins of national policy and could drive the Japanese war-horses whither they willed.