While Farthing and his assistants were working on their clear-sighted report, once more Short put the cart before the horse. In line with an SOP of July 14, the general instituted a six weeks’ to two months’ training schedule to indoctrinate Hawaiian Air Force enlisted personnel as infantrymen. He explained his reasoning to Marshall when the latter questioned the wisdom of the move later in the autumn, replying on October 14:
At the time our tentative Standing Operating Procedure was put out the Air Corps had 7,229 men. Full Combat details and all overhead required only 3,885 men for the planes and organizations actually on hand. This left a surplus of 3,344 men with no assigned duties during Maneuvers. One of the main reasons for the assignment was to give these men something to do during the Maneuvers. Another reason was the belief that any serious threat of an enemy ground attack on Oahu could come only after destruction of our Air Forces. The fact that our planes had been destroyed would not mean that all the men had been put out of action. It is probable that several thousand men would still be left and it would not look plausible to have them sit down and do nothing while Infantrymen were detailed to protect them and their air fields. . . .
Short concluded sarcastically: “If it is not desired to train Air Corps men for their own protection and for the final defense of the air fields I would like to be so advised.”1
This letter vividly recalls Short’s maneuvers of May 1941.* If Short indeed believed that the enemy would attempt no invasion until he had broken Hawaii’s air power, the general should have utilized his ground forces to back up the initial line of defense—the Hawaiian Air Force—and not the other way around.
One gets the impression that Short and his ground staff officers believed that airmen hung by their heels, like bats, when not actually flying. It was indiscreet of Short to refer to these men as “surplus,” especially because he had been fighting all year for more personnel. With the acute shortage of trained men throughout the Army Air Corps, one can only wonder why Washington did not immediately order Short to release the airmen for reassignment where the War Department could “give these men something to do.” Plenty of commanders would have known how to make use of them if Short had not.
Indeed, Hap Arnold made that very point to Martin when he learned of this development. “It would appear,” he said in a letter dated September 25,
that we have overestimated the requirements for the Hawaiian Air Force. Obviously, it would be impossible for the Hawaiian Air Force to carry out the mission above noted in addition to its Air Force combat mission, unless there were a surplus of Air Corps and related troops.
As we are so short of trained officers and personnel in the Air Force, it is most undesirable to employ such personnel for other than Air Corps duties, except under most unusual circumstances.2
Short’s ill-advised program set tempers soaring in the Hawaiian Air Force. In general, Martin’s officers believed that Colonel Phillips had originated the action and sold it to Short. Needless to say, the scheme did nothing to help the morale of the airmen.
In late July Martin had acquired a new chief of staff of his own selection, Lieutenant Colonel James A. “Jimmy” Mollison, an able airman and a warm, outgoing person. Although beset each day by a multitude of problems, he smiled easily and cooperated willingly with one and all. But chunky, friendly Jimmy Mollison could be firm and was a practical man. He had advanced through the ranks, loved the Air Corps, and knew it from the ground up.
On Oahu he soon learned that although interservice relations had moved steadily upward throughout 1941, some ill feeling remained. He resolved to make every possible effort to end once and for all this silly, futile waste of energy. Because Phillips would not become chief of staff until November 1, Mollison worked directly with Colonel Hayes, whom he admired wholeheartedly. He found Martin eager, nay, determined to please, and Short amiably willing to be pleased. So ground-air relations had sailed along on an even keel until the question of infantry training upset things, much to Mollison’s displeasure.3
He realized how much Martin’s airmen needed training in their own field. For instance, when fighter pilots reached Wheeler Field, they had only 200 or 300 hours of flight time. All these pilots had received good, standard aviation training, but none in gunnery. Some of them had never fired a weapon, and “they knew very little about the stuff that is necessary for combat.”4 In contrast, many of Nagumo’s airmen had flight logs reaching into thousands of hours, much of it gained in combat in the China skies.
It therefore distressed Mollison to see Martin’s airmen devoting precious time to guarding barracks and other ground chores. The situation also held the inescapable corollary that the upper echelon did not understand the duties and responsibilities of Air Corps personnel.
Another kind of heat, literal and figurative, shimmered over Tokyo. In the foreign minister’s office on August 18, sweat poured down the intent faces of Toyoda and Grew. They had been talking and taking notes for an entire hour when Toyoda discarded formality and sent for cold drinks and wet towels. Both men then shed their coats and rolled up their shirtsleeves.5
Toyoda meandered in detail over the old, thorny path of Japan’s pure intentions and America’s misunderstandings. The upshot of this verbosity was the desirability of a face-to-face meeting between Konoye and Roosevelt, with Honolulu as a suggested site.6 The proposal kindled Grew’s ready enthusiasm. Urging the State Department to give the suggestion “very prayerful consideration,” he declared hopefully, “The good that may flow from a meeting between Prince Konoye and President Roosevelt is incalculable,” and he even compared the opportunity to “the recent meeting of President and Prime Minister Churchill at sea. . . .”7
In his eagerness to bridge the gap separating the country he served so loyally and the Japanese he liked so much, Grew failed to consider that the Atlantic Charter meeting had taken place between two heads of government whose relations could scarcely be more cordial. No basic differences existed in their global goals, although each remained, most properly, acutely conscious of his own position in relation to his nation. On the other hand, a chasm yawned between the aims of Konoye and Roosevelt. Hence, when on August 17 Nomura met with Hull and Roosevelt, the President very carefully read aloud, then gave Nomura, a statement of warning. In essence, this declared that Japan’s deeds had not matched its words. Now “nothing short of the most complete candor” on the part of the United States would be of use. The document concluded:
. . . if the Japanese Government takes any further steps in pursuance of a policy or program of military domination by force or threat of force in neighboring countries, the Government of the United States will be compelled to take immediately any and all steps which it may deem necessary toward safeguarding the legitimate rights and interests of the United States.
If Nomura thought this stiff, he should have seen the original document framed in Argentia before Hull applied the ice pack of common sense to the Roosevelt-Churchill exuberance.
After assuring Roosevelt of his country’s sincerity, Nomura asked about the possibility of the President’s meeting with Konoye and of resuming the conversations which had broken off when Japan invaded Indochina. Roosevelt answered the last item first, reading another document which stated that the United States would consider resuming the conversations if Japan would agree to suspend its expansionist activities. But first, the paper asked the Japanese government “to furnish a clearer statement than has yet been furnished us as to its present attitude and plans. . . .”
Despite the tone of these two documents, Roosevelt was in excellent spirits and cordial to the ambassador. He rather liked the idea of conferring in person with Konoye and even suggested a possible date—about October 15.8
Back from Argentia and again at his desk in Navy Headquarters, Stark found his inbox crowded with correspondence. Settling his spectacles firmly on his nose, he began “wading into a mass of mail.” In his eagerness to bring Kimmel up to date, on the twenty-second he forwarded a lengthy draft without waiting to put it in final form. “I can readily understand your wish to be kept informed as to the Department’s policies and decisions,” he assured Kimmel. “This, we are trying to do, and if you do not get as much information as you think you should get, the answer probably is that the particular situation which is uppermost in your mind has just not jelled sufficiently for us to give you anything authoritative.” Here was the old story that plagued Kimmel throughout the year. But Stark did relieve one of the admiral’s qualms: He would not have to transport aircraft to Russia; they would fly over via Iceland.9
When Roosevelt met with Hull and Nomura on August 28, he still had not rejected the proposal that he meet with Konoye,10 but in this instance he and the premier were operating on separate wavelengths. Konoye was thinking like one of the European dictators. He visualized himself and Roosevelt meeting in a figurative ivory tower and deciding all the important issues, leaving only minor details for Hull and Nomura to thresh out. Granted that Roosevelt had a good opinion of his own gifts, and granted equally that he had a large segment of the American electorate securely behind him, there were limits beyond which he could not go. In meeting with any head of a foreign government, he represented much more than just himself and therefore had to work within a set framework. Konoye never quite grasped this simple fact of American political life.
At first glance the plan might look fine, but it was fraught with dire possibilities. In fact, the President could not come out of it ahead. If he gained every point with Konoye, this would not affect the situation in Tokyo. It would only bring down the Konoye government and might even result in the prince’s assassination. If Roosevelt lost, at best he saddled his administration with the image of another Munich, in which case he would lose the confidence of the American people.
Beginning in mid-August, important Army-Navy discussions took place at Imperial General Staff Headquarters. Hitherto, the Army had accepted the Navy’s leadership in determining policy concerning the United States, recognizing that a war with that nation would be primarily naval. Furthermore, the Army had not been able to come up with a war plan against the United States in which it had any confidence. On August 15 the Navy section of Imperial General Headquarters surprised the Army with a plan built around the following decisions:
1. To finish war preparations against Britain and the United States by 15 October.
2. To requisition an additional 300,000 tons of ships in both August and September.
3. To put into effect on 20 September the Operational Agreement between the Army and the Navy.
4. To extract three land combat battalions.
5. An additional 500,000 tons of ships are scheduled to be requisitioned in the early part of September and thereafter.11
Of course, this was not a war plan, but a statement of intent. According to Uchida’s notes, in July a “detailed operational plan against the U.S.” had been completed.12 Moreover, at the end of July Uchida thought the Japanese should expect war to break out by October 15.13 Nevertheless, the Navy’s declaration of August 15 is another Pearl Harbor milestone because here for the first time the Japanese Navy admitted outside the family that it would seriously consider fighting the United States. And in submitting this document, the Navy tacitly assumed leadership in any such war.
But Japanese debate on this schedule revealed a division of opinion. Fundamentally the Navy position was this: Let the Navy prepare for war. If it came, the Navy would be ready; if not, it had lost nothing. This outline implied that a decision for war or peace might hang fire until mid-October. Nor did it commit the Navy to fight, no matter how the negotiations ended. Fearing that the Navy might pull out at the last minute, the Army preferred an immediate decision to the effect that Japan should fight if diplomacy failed to satisfy its desires and on that basis should proceed at full throttle on both military and diplomatic tracks.
The Army had a more acute personnel and logistics problem than the Navy. Basically the latter had merely to shuffle men and ships already available; the Army had to mobilize, organize, arm, and transport men to the prospective battlefield. Obviously this cut too deeply into the life of the Japanese man in the street to be carried out without a firm national policy.14
For its part, the Naval General Staff moved right along. On August 19 Genda, Sasaki, and Captain Chihaya Takahashi, senior staff officer of the Eleventh Air Fleet, met in the Operations Section “to discuss over-all operations.” This phase covered the southern strategy and also the Pearl Harbor attack plan. And the next day Uchida noted: “To complete the Southern Operation, the Army needs five (5) divisions. The Navy must expedite the commencement of the war.”15 Obviously Uchida meant five more divisions; five divisions alone could not carry out the vast Southern Operation.
On the twenty-third he took part in war games held at the Army General Staff. He was the only Navy representative present, and he briefed those attending on naval operations. This audience included Tojo and Major General Akira Muto, chief of the Military Affairs Bureau.16 Muto and his Navy opposite, Rear Admiral Takuzumi Oka, who headed the Navy Ministry’s Bureau of Naval Affairs, were in some respects the éminences grises of the armed services. Any other government agencies having business with the Army or Navy had to work through respectively Muto and Oka. Both were ex officio members of the highly important liaison conference and had their fingers in every Japanese diplomatic, military, or naval pie worth sampling.17
In an attempt to clarify their thinking about war with the United States, Army and Navy Bureau chiefs held a two-day conference on August 27 and 28. Oka spoke out forcefully against an immediate decision to fight. He advised that even if the negotiations with Washington broke down, Japan should carefully weigh the state of affairs in Europe before committing itself. An Army spokesman proposed that they change the wording of their draft on national policy from “determined to wage war” to “with a determination to wage war.” Unimpressed by this exercise in hairsplitting, Oka refused, and matters carried over to the next day. Evidently mellowed by a night’s sleep, Oka then agreed to accept the phraseology “under a determination not to decline a war.”
Hattori tells us: “As to when, if ever, hostilities should be opened, an agreement had already been reached between the Supreme Commands of the Army and Navy that the date should be set for the beginning of November. . . .” But before launching actual combat, the Army had to concentrate heavy air forces in Indochina and gather transports in the South China sea. The Army still insisted that such massive movements could not begin without a decision for war. Obviously they could not proceed full scale while Japan negotiated for a peaceful settlement. Both services agreed that these preliminaries should begin in early October. All that remained was to persuade the government to decide on war.18 And on the basis of past performances, few, if any, of the top brass could doubt that the Cabinet and Konoye would jump through the hoop when the military cracked the whip.