Yamamoto’s fine dark eyes rested thoughtfully on Vice Admiral Mitsumi Shimizu, Commander in Chief of the Sixth Fleet (Submarines). Shimizu was a handsome man of calm and dignified presence. His benevolent smile and friendly eyes revealed a spirit well disposed toward his fellowmen. The whole Navy recognized him as an officer of sterling qualities and professional competence.
“Under present conditions I think war is unavoidable,” Yamamoto said somberly. Then he delivered his punch line. “If it comes, I believe there would be nothing for me to do but attack Pearl Harbor at the outset, thus tipping the balance of power in our favor.”
Shimizu knew well that Yamamoto could come up with ideas of daring originality. Nevertheless, had he not heard this incredible message straight from the horse’s mouth, he would not have believed it: “I know the operation is a gamble,” Yamamoto went on, as if reading Shimizu’s mind, “but I am absolutely convinced that it is the only method that can be used to meet the present situation. It will be the most effective way of holding the U.S. Fleet in check because this is what they will least expect.” Then he showed Shimizu precisely where he would fit into the picture. “I would like you to command our submarine forces as commander of the Senken Butai [Advance Force].”
Such evidence of Yamamoto’s faith and regard stirred Shimizu deeply. This is a very tall order, he thought, especially since I am not a submarine man. Even as the thought of his inexperience ran through Shimizu’s head, his calm self-confidence took over. All my subordinates from my chief of staff on down are veterans of submarine warfare, he reflected, and I have been given this honorable assignment in the face of a number of capable high-ranking submarine officers. So he answered Yamamoto earnestly, “I will do my very best to fulfill your expectations.”1
Thus, at this morning conference on July 29 Yamamoto had established the Big Three of the Pearl Harbor plan: himself, Commander in Chief of the Combined Fleet, who hated the idea of the war he must wage; Nagumo, a carrier task force leader who was a shipborne torpedo expert; and Shimizu, a submarine fleet commander who lacked five minutes’ personal experience in that specialty.
From this point began the integration of the two forms of attack—air and underwater. The First Air Fleet’s officers were apprehensive when they learned that submarines would participate. Undersea warfare added a new, difficult, and controversial dimension to the Pearl Harbor planning. Neither Genda’s nor Onishi’s drafts had included the use of submarines. The airmen could not imagine a circumstance in which the undersea branch could accomplish anything commensurate with the risk of ruining the entire venture by premature exposure.2
In the context of the time the Pacific Fleet would be much more likely to expect and prepare for a submarine strike than an airborne assault. Indeed, Kimmel thought an undersea attack would be the most feasible and probable Japanese action at the outset of war.3 One ribbon of broken water threading astern of a periscope, and Nagumo’s task force could move straight into a double trap, one that would snap shut not only on the First Air Fleet but on the entire Japanese nation.
Still, an air attack on Pearl Harbor, however brilliantly conceived and meticulously prepared, posed so many imponderables that no one could guarantee its success even if no accident alerted the enemy beforehand. “The air raid plan was a new development and risky at the outset,” explained Rear Admiral Hisashi Mito, Shimizu’s chief of staff. Unlike Shimizu, Mito was virtually a creature of the deep, having been a submariner since World War I. “No one knew whether it would be successful or not; speculation was rife. The submarine operation, however, had been based on planning of longer duration. It was considered sound and in some degree more certain. The hope was that if the air attack should not succeed, the submarines would deal the knockout blow in case the U.S. Fleet came out. In other words, the submarines were double insurance.”4 With the whole plan such a hideous gamble, why quibble over a little additional risk? The object of the raid was maximum damage to the enemy, not minimum risk to the Japanese. So why not shore up every potential weak spot in the offensive?
In short, now that the Pearl Harbor plan was no longer just a gleam in Yamamoto’s eye but a definite possibility, the Japanese Navy could not bring itself to admit that the air arm could carry it through unaided. Indeed, on the basis of Yamamoto’s post-Pearl Harbor operations, it is quite evident that he was somewhat more conventional than many of his ex-colleagues were prepared to admit.
Operation Hawaii, as Yamamoto’s plan came to be called, provided the opportunity to test a secret weapon—the midget submarine. The pygmies weighed about forty-six tons, carried two torpedoes and two crewmen, and measured approximately seventy-eight by six feet. Their actual maximum speed was nineteen knots when submerged, but they could run at full throttle for only about fifty minutes; when held to four knots, they could achieve a radius of approximately 100 miles. The midget submariner had to be an excellent judge of speed and distance as well as a good navigator.5 And the ancestral gods have mercy on him if he had a tendency toward claustrophobia, for these small craft were a tight squeeze even for two men. At first glance they seemed the epitome of the Japanese preoccupation with smallness and precision—the mechanical counterpart of a bonsai tree.
As of late August and early September, however, the Pearl Harbor package did not yet include midget submarines. The undersea participation which Yamamoto visualized at this time consisted of elements of Shimizu’s Sixth Fleet engaged in important, hazardous, but essentially conventional full-scale, long-range submarine activity in line with the old plan of Operation Attrition.
The seas of the world were very much on Roosevelt’s mind when he delivered a forceful Labor Day broadcast from Hyde Park on September 1. He asserted that the United States possessed “a strong Navy, a Navy gaining in strength . . .” and promised that the American people would “do everything in our power to crush Hitler and his Nazi forces.”6
Throughout his speech Roosevelt did not so much as mention the word “Japan,” but his silence seemed to bait Tokyo’s metropolitan journals into an outburst of vituperation. “If the United States is going to bar Japan’s advancement based on the pretence of freedom of the seas, Japan will not hesitate to break through this,” shrilled Nichi Nichi.7 And on September 3 the Japan Times and Advertiser remarked: “President Roosevelt kept silence over Japan in his last Fireside Speech, but that period of quiet was followed by the freezing order. Japan takes a position of watchful waiting to see what this new silence portends, and its own silence can be understood to mean no lack of preparedness.”
All this was not lost on the United States. No doubt about it, Nomura had a rough row to hoe, and for once even the Foreign Ministry admitted to a small embarrassment in connection with the proposed Roosevelt-Konoye conference. “Since the existence of the Premier’s message was inadvertently made known to the public, that gang that has been suspecting that unofficial talks were taking place, has really begun to yell and wave the Tripartite Pact banner,” Tokyo advised Nomura on September 3. The government wished “to keep the matter a secret until the arrangements had been completed.” His superiors asked Nomura “to make all arrangements for the meeting around the middle of September, with all possible speed, and issue a very simple statement to that effect as soon as possible. . . .”8
The Foreign Ministry had an excellent reason for hastening the arrangements. Konoye had called a liaison conference for September 3 to consider the “Outline Plan for the Execution of the Empire’s National Policy,” fruit of the Imperial General Headquarters discussions. After considerable haggling over phraseology, the upshot of seven hours of discussion was a historic decision which the Cabinet approved on September 4. This consisted of a set of “Minimum Demands” and “Maximum Concessions.”9 After a rolling introduction, the document shot off the mark:
I. Our Empire, for the purpose of self-defense and self-preservation, will complete preparations for war, with the last ten days of October as a tentative deadline, resolved to go to war with the United States, Great Britain and the Netherlands if necessary.
II. Our Empire will concurrently take all possible diplomatic measures vis-à-vis the United States and Great Britain, and thereby endeavor to attain our objectives. . . .
III. In the event that there is no prospect of our demands being met by the first ten days of October through the diplomatic negotiations mentioned above, we will immediately decide to commence hostilities against the United States, Britain and the Netherlands.
Policies other than those toward the South will be based on established national policy; and we will especially try to prevent the United States and the Soviet Union from forming a united front against Japan.
The “Minimum Requirements” contained these demands: no interference with Japan’s settlement of the “China Incident” and the closing of the Burma Road with no more political, economic, or military aid to the Chiang regime. In China Japan kept an ace up its sleeve:
This does not prejudice the position that our Empire has been taking in relation to the settlement of the China Incident in the Nomura operation. We should particularly insist on stationing our troops under a new agreement between Japan and China. However, we have no objection to affirming that we are in principle prepared to withdraw our troops following the settlement of the Incident, except for those that are dispatched to carry out the purposes of the Incident. . . .
One wonders what Japanese troops were in China except those brought in for that purpose. Further “Minimum Demands” insisted that the United States and Great Britain take no action “that may threaten the defense of our Empire in the Far East” and should not “increase their military forces in the Far East beyond present strength. . . .” Japan would accept no demand “to dissolve the special relations between Japan and French Indochina. . . .” What is more, the two target nations were to “cooperate in the acquisition of goods needed by our Empire.”
If these demands were met, Japan promised not to use Indochina as a base for operations against “neighboring areas other than China.” Here the Japanese handsomely promised to observe their neutrality pact with the Soviet Union if the Russians did the same. Japan would withdraw its forces from French Indochina “after a just peace has been established in the Far East,” and it would “guarantee the neutrality of the Philippine Islands.” If the United States entered the European war, “Japan’s interpretation of the Tripartite Pact and her actions therein” would be “made by herself acting independently.” Nevertheless, Japan’s leaders asserted, “The above does not alter our obligations under the Tripartite Pact.”
These provisions ring an old familiar tune, being a theme and variations on the Walsh-Drought program and an amplification of the proposals Nomura had already presented to Hull. It is certainly difficult to believe that Japan’s diplomats and, more important, its military leaders expected any nation in the full possession of its faculties to buy such a package deal voluntarily. This document left no viable alternative to war. Yet neither Konoye nor Toyoda opposed acceptance of this program, although both were trying to arrange a summit meeting with Roosevelt, ostensibly to work out a peaceful solution to Japanese-American problems. They may have been sincere in their own fashion. But the cold fact remains that they sat back and watched while the Japanese Army and Navy played Russian roulette with the destiny of Japan.
The Army did not even wait for the liaison conference’s approval, let alone that of the Cabinet or Emperor. In a brief note concerning the meeting of September 3, Uchida observed in his private journal: “Mobilization of the Army is expected to begin about mid-September.” Nor did the Navy waste any time. On this same date Uchida was busy taking part in tabletop maneuvers held in the Operations Section of the Naval General Staff to review the Southern Operation strategy. Uchida gave no details of these maneuvers,10 but this does not matter. What is significant is that the Naval General Staff had already carried the Southern Operation to the war games stage within its own headquarters.
According to a Gallup poll taken early in September, the American people’s willingness to adopt a hard-nosed attitude toward Japan had appreciably increased since July. At that time 51 percent expressed a willingness to risk war with Japan; now 70 percent said they would “take steps to keep Japan from becoming more powerful even if this means risking a war.”11 Of course, the poll may well have reflected increased American anger because of the Japanese takeover in Indochina rather than diminished respect for Japan as a possible enemy.
Confidence in Hawaii’s invulnerability and the U.S. Navy’s power still reigned supreme. “A Japanese attack on Hawaii is regarded as the most unlikely thing in the world, with one chance in a million of being successful. Besides having more powerful defenses than any other post under the American flag, it is protected by distance,” journalist Clarke Beach assured his readers on September 6.
“The Japanese Fleet would have no bases from which to operate,” he continued. “It would have so far to come that American patrols would spot it long before it arrived.
“In any case,” Beach concluded, “American naval men would like nothing better than to see the Japanese fleet outside of Pearl Harbor where they could take it on.”12
Perhaps somewhere one might have uncovered one or two “American naval men” spoiling for a fight with Japan because any large organization collects a few bullies and neurotics, but their names certainly would not have been either Stark or Kimmel. The CNO wanted to concentrate on the Atlantic, and Kimmel knew that his Pacific Fleet was in no condition to take on Yamamoto’s full power, off Pearl Harbor or anywhere else.