At Dawn We Slept: The Untold Story of Pearl Harbor

Since 1300 in Washington would be 0730 in Honolulu and the attack was scheduled for 0800, obviously the diplomatic niceties would not be allowed to interfere with the strategic necessities. In evident preparation for delivery of the note Tokyo instructed its embassy in Washington to retain their key to the remaining code in its custody until the last minute.²

On this day Nagumo’s task force hit rough seas. “Maximum rolling sometimes 45 degrees to one side, therefore, refueling was cancelled today,” Chigusa observed in his diary on December 4. In such circumstances lookouts had to be doubly perceptive now that the task force had entered the most hazardous leg of the cruise. Lady Luck still held her hand on Nagumo’s shoulder, but she was a capricious mistress.

At 0925 on December 3 Nagumo signaled his force, expressing clearly his anxiety and sense of lurking danger:

1. It has already been ordered to go to war on 8 December, but so critical has become the situation in the Far East that one can hardly predict war would not explode by that time. So far no new information on Hawaii area received and also no indications of our Task Force being detected. But since the enemy intention is naturally far beyond prediction, strict attention will be directed to meet any unexpected encounter with an enemy.

2. It is intended that this force will operate as scheduled even if war breaks out before 8 December. . . .⁴

At 1040 on December 4, local time—henceforth all times pertaining to the task force are local—Nagumo further instructed: “When an enemy or Third Power’s warship or merchant ship is sighted, her communication equipment will be destroyed if and when necessary to protect secrecy of our intention, and, in case of an emergency, she will be sunk.”⁵ Nagumo’s signal should dispose of any idea that if his task force were spotted, he would have abandoned Operation Hawaii, despite Kusaka’s and Genda’s remarks at Hitokappu Bay. At X–3 Day the moment to recall the First Air Fleet for any reason short of a sudden diplomatic victory in Washington had passed.

As Nagumo’s armada battled the sea, official Washington rocked before a gale blowing from the McCormick newspaper chain. This had published the estimate for Victory Parade—the official nickname for the “General Staff strategic plan of national action in case of war in Europe.”⁶ As Stimson exploded in his diary, “Nothing more unpatriotic or damaging to our plans for defense could very well be conceived of.” Both he and the President had press conferences lined up for the fifth, and Roosevelt wisely decided to leave this ugly development for Stimson to handle, as he did very competently.⁷ All in all, a thoroughly nasty political confrontation between the government and the isolationists seemed to be in the making, but within two days it had sunk into oblivion along with some of Kimmel’s ships.

Obviously Congress expected no pressing business to develop over Friday, Saturday, and Sunday because on December 4 the lawmakers adjourned for the long weekend. Whether the President was equally sanguine is questionable. Among the Magic dispatches he saw the one concerning the burning of Japanese codes. His naval aide, Captain John R. Beardall, directed his attention to it: “Mr. President, this is a very significant dispatch.” Roosevelt read the document carefully, then asked, “When do you think it will happen?” By this, Beardall supposed he meant when “war is going to break out, when we are going to be attacked, or something.” He answered, “Most any time.”⁸

McCollum took a grim view of the situation. He prepared a message based on a condensed version of the information contained in his summary of December 1 and also stated that “we felt everything pointed to an immediate outbreak of hostilities between Japan and the United States.” He took this to his chief, Captain W. A. Heard, and together they brought it to Wilkinson, who directed McCollum to take the dispatch to Turner for consideration.⁹

Turner read it and made a number of corrections, “striking out all except the information parts of it, more or less. . . .” Then he showed McCollum the messages of November 24 and 27 respectively. This was the first time McCollum had seen these, and the “war warning” especially made a deep impression on him. Turner asked McCollum if he did not think that was enough. The intelligence expert replied tactfully, “Well, good gosh, you put in the words ‘war warning.’ I do not know what could be plainer than that, but, nevertheless, I would like to see mine go too.”

One can see Turner’s beetle brows join over his nose as he growled back, “Well, if you want to send it, you either send it the way I corrected it, or take it back to Wilkinson and we will argue about it.” So back to Wilkinson McCollum trotted and talked it over. Finally, Wilkinson said, “Leave it here with me for a while.” As far as McCollum knew, that was the end of the matter. He never found out what, if anything, Wilkinson did with it, and it never went out.⁹ However, Turner told a somewhat different story of this incident. He claimed that McCollum “tore up his proposed dispatch” on the spot, saying, “That is enough,” in reference to the messages of November 24 and 27.¹⁰

McCollum’s proposed message did not warn of a Japanese attack in Hawaiian waters, nor could it do so because its author had no idea of such an eventuality. We cannot know exactly what it contained or how McCollum phrased his warning. It was still in draft form; hence no copies were on file. No one can say just what effect such a dispatch would have had upon Kimmel and Short had it ever reached them. A cynic might observe, “On the basis of their past performance, we can assume that one more warning would have made no more impression than its predecessors.” However, better one message too many than one too few. The very accumulation might have had an effect. Sometimes, too, a certain turn of phrase can ring an alarm bell. But when about this date Stark, Ingersoll, and Turner reviewed the information sent to the commanders thus far, they “were all of the opinion that everything we could do had been done to get them ready for war, and that we had sent them sufficient information and directives.”¹¹

The naval station at Guam received an alert which Noyes had rewritten from a much stronger original which Safford prepared. The latter was not trying to use the dispatch as a war warning. He just wanted to make sure that Guam “stripped ship” before a Japanese raid captured all the codes and ciphers—for which Safford was “officially responsible.” When Safford took the message to Ingersoll for release, the deputy CNO noted that Turner’s initials were missing. So he instructed Safford to show it to Turner. The chief of War Plans “glanced at it, snorted, and added his initials.”¹⁴

However disdainful he was at the time, Turner later testified: “The fact that we considered it necessary to burn codes was considered by the Department as an additional advisory warning to the Commanders in Chief.”¹⁵ But the Far Eastern stations were not in CinCPAC territory, so neither Kimmel nor Bloch received information copies. They did, however, receive copies of the Guam dispatch. But Guam was a long way from Hawaii, and no one had ever seriously considered it defensible. Under the circumstances the destruction of its codes and classified material could scarcely have appeared more than a logical and necessary precaution.

Kimmel busily made plans for the reinforcement of Midway. He ordered Task Force Twelve, consisting of Lexington, the heavy cruisers Chicago, Astoria, and Portland, and five destroyers, to move by direct route until 400 miles 130 degrees from Midway, a point they should reach by late morning on December 7. Thence they would fly off the Marine planes destined to reinforce the Midway garrison. Then the task force would return and resume normal operations.¹⁶

At this critical juncture Nomura faced the loss of one of his best aides—Terasaki. He had asked Tokyo on December 3 to postpone his popular assistant’s departure until “the sailing on the 19th” because he was in the midst of “intelligence work.”¹⁷ But his superiors came back curtly on the fifth: “Will you please have Terasaki . . . and others leave by plane within the next couple of days.”¹⁸

When the U.S. Navy translated this on December 6, Kramer placed a double asterisk beside the name of Terasaki and added a pencil note: “Terasaki, Second Secretary, is head of Japanese espionage in Western Hemisphere. He and his assistants are being sent to South America.” It was “rather rare” for Kramer to add such footnotes; however, he thought Terasaki’s being transferred at this time “a very significant point.”¹⁹

U.S. Naval Intelligence knew that Terasaki “was an especially trained espionage man and he had a number of especially trained men with him. His chief concern during the summer was in setting up an espionage establishment in Latin America. The fact that he was directed to leave was a further straw in the wind.”²⁰ G-2 agreed wholeheartedly. In fact, Bratton used the same expression as Kramer, calling Terasaki’s transfer order “another straw in the wind. It meant that the time was running out, that the crisis was approaching.”²¹

Of course, Nomura and Kurusu had another reason for wanting to keep Terasaki on tap—that delicate matter of the President’s telegram to the Emperor. As soon as Tokyo’s message of December 5 arrived, Kurusu sent off an urgent dispatch:

. . . I feel confident that you are fully aware of the importance of the intelligence set-up in view of the present conditions of the Japanese-U.S. negotiations. I would like very much to have Terasaki, who would be extremely difficult to suddenly replace because of certain circumstances, remain here until we are definitely enlightened as to the end of the negotiations. I beg of you as a personal favor to me to make an effort along these lines. I shall have him assume his post as soon as his work here is disposed of.²²

Counselor Iguchi also wanted a reprieve. He asked the Foreign Ministry’s chief of the Communications Service for approval “to delay for a while yet the destruction of one of the code machines” because the U.S.–Japanese talks were still continuing.²³ He could not imagine what a workout that machine would soon give him and his colleagues.

In the War Department’s G-2 an acute sense of impending trouble preoccupied Bratton. On Tuesday, December 2, he had told the members of his office that “something was going to blow in the Far East soon” and that his section would “henceforth remain open on a 24-hour basis.”²⁴ Now he conferred with McCollum, asking, among other things, about the status of Kimmel’s Fleet. “Are you sure these people are properly alerted? Are they on the job? Have they been properly warned?” he persisted.

Fresh from his own tussle to arrange for just such a warning and from his reading of the messages which Turner had shown him, McCollum replied confidently, “Oh, yes, the fleet has gone . . . to sea.” On the basis of this conversation, Bratton assumed that all major Fleet units were out of Pearl Harbor. He recalled this conversation as “several days before the attack” and could not place it more definitely, but the sequence of events makes it likely that it took place on December 5. He did not remember McCollum’s exact words.²⁵

On December 5 the “winds” blew through the War and Navy departments. Noyes called Turner to tell him that the first “weather message” had come in. “What did it say?” Turner asked.

“North wind clear,” answered Noyes. This phraseology did not fit in with the “winds” code established on November 19,^* so Turner said firmly, “Well, there is something wrong about that.”

At about 0900 Noyes informed Sadtler that the message which “implied a break in relations between Japan and Great Britain” had come in. Sadtler thought this “the most important message I ever received.” But he never saw an actual dispatch, and so far as he knew, “no such execute message was received in the War Department.” He hurried to Miles’s office with Noyes’s information.²⁷ Miles sent for Bratton and instructed Sadtler, “Tell Bratton what you have just told me.” Sadtler informed him that “the word had been received from Admiral Noyes to the effect that diplomatic relations between Japan and Great Britain were in danger.” When Bratton returned to his office, he talked with either McCollum or Kramer—he could not recall which one—but his Navy friend knew no more about a “winds” message than did Bratton. He promised to let Bratton know if one came in. Then the colonel tried SIS, equally without results.

Bratton was not too convinced of the urgency of this message, if any. To him, the “winds” code was simply a means for Tokyo to contact its overseas diplomats if the usual channels failed. Furthermore, to Bratton the real indication of imminent severance of diplomatic relations was the “direct order given to the Japanese Ambassador to start burning his codes. That was the purpose of the whole thing. That was it.

“Any winds execute message received after that would simply just be another straw in the wind confirming what we already knew.”²⁸

Of the key personnel in a position to see a “winds execute,” only Safford maintained, “There was a Winds Message. It meant War—and we knew it meant War.” He pointed out that whereas the Japanese Embassy in Washington still retained a code machine, the ambassador in London had destroyed his. So “the winds message was intended for London.” He further claimed that it read “England and the United States.”²⁹

Ingersoll thought he saw such a message but could not recall whether this was before or after December 7.³⁰ Certain officers came to his office with “a piece of paper . . . which purported to be a message sent in the wind code.” Ingersoll “paid no further attention to it because of the fact that it simply confirmed, if it was a genuine message, . . . what we had already sent out regarding the destruction of codes, which was absolutely positive.”³¹ He later stated that since his earlier testimony he had learned that this was not a valid “winds execute.”³²

Bratton had had “a number of false alarms on this thing” in late November and the first week in December. He had been “waked at all hours of the night on several occasions by the FCC who repeated what they had picked up, believing it to be a part of the implementing message.”³³

This put Bratton in a quandary. G-2 had no authority to send out intelligence based upon Magic. Moreover, for security reasons the Navy objected to highly classified material going out over the Army net. Not the man to let technicalities divert him, Bratton prepared and secured Miles’s consent to a message in “rather innocuous form” to Short’s G-2: “Contact Commander Rochefort immediately thru Commandant Fourteen Naval District regarding broadcasts from Tokyo reference weather.”

On the basis of information from McCollum, Bratton believed that Rochefort “knew everything that we did in Washington at that time.” He thought that if he “could get Fielder to go and talk to this Naval officer under any pretext whatsoever,” this would accomplish the purpose—“to bring them closer together for an exchange of intelligence.” Bratton had no reason to doubt that Fielder and Rochefort cooperated, but they could not be too close to suit him. “I wanted them to sit in each other’s laps, if necessary.” He thought war was coming, and he wanted them alerted.³⁶

Bratton could have saved his time and trouble. In the first place, Fielder could not recall having seen this message, and if he had done so, he probably would have turned it over to Bicknell, who knew Rochefort and worked closely with Mayfield; in the second place, “the way the radio was worded it would not have seemed urgent or particularly important.”³⁷ Bicknell testified to seeing this dispatch on Fielder’s desk and to checking with Rochefort, who was monitoring for the “winds execute” message.³⁸ Rochefort never received any such implementation.³⁹ So the whole incident fizzled out and Bratton’s well-intentioned efforts failed signally to alert anyone on Oahu to anything.

Rochefort had another interesting development on his mind. In accordance with Sarnoff’s arrangement, RCA turned over to Mayfield a batch of messages from the Japanese consulate. Most were in code and dated December 3 and 4. Mayfield immediately gave them to Rochefort’s office for decrypting and translation. Rochefort put his best men on the task, making it “a matter of paramount importance.” Within twelve hours they had translated all but two or three and, by dint of working twelve to sixteen hours daily, had broken the remainder on the night of December 10.⁴⁰ By the slender margin of a few days, the United States missed its best chance of a preattack warning on the basis of Kita’s traffic with Tokyo.

In his testimony Kimmel put his finger on one key spot: The significance of these messages was not so much the consulate’s collecting and reporting the information but “Tokyo’s anxiety to have it . . . there is no reason why they would have wanted that information unless they were going to use it on the ships while they were in the harbor.”⁴¹

This cutting down of Nagumo’s oil reserves reduced his margin of safety, so he had to think and act accordingly. It was one of the factors which kept him to a stringent schedule, with little or no room for evasive actions or unplanned high-speed runs in the event of unexpected encounters with the enemy.

In quest of current information, Yoshikawa took Mikami’s taxi to the Pearl Harbor vicinity by way of the old road which ran through Fort Shafter and past Red Hill. Kita passed along Yoshikawa’s findings to Tokyo at 1904 that day. In some respects his information was incorrect, but he hit almost on the nose in reporting that on December 5 “Lexington and five heavy cruisers departed.”

Lexington did indeed clear port at 0810, accompanied by the heavy cruisers Chicago, Portland, and Astoria with escort destroyers. Two other heavy cruisers also went out that day—Indianapolis and Minneapolis.⁴³ Evidently Lady Luck, who up to this point had beamed affectionately upon the Japanese, had decided to give the Americans a break. All three of Kimmel’s carriers were safe—Saratoga on the West Coast, Enterprise near Wake, and now Lexington steaming off toward Midway.

The Lexington task force sailed with Rear Admiral John H. Newton, commander, Cruisers, Scouting Force, flying his flag from Chicago. Unlike Halsey, Newton had no indication that his mission might run into a war. His orders being to reinforce Midway, then “return to operating area and resume normal operations,” there appeared to him “no special significance attached to it other than reenforcement.” He thought there might be some danger from submarines, so he kept to a speed of seventeen knots by day, zigzagged, and sent out scout flights to cover his advance. These were “normal operations in connection with training.” Again unlike Halsey, he “gave no special orders regarding arming of planes or making preparations for war other than had been routine.”⁴⁴

Newton had seen none of the later warning messages. But he had no complaints. He thought that he probably had received as much information as he needed, and he was by no means ignorant of the general situation. He had good radar, which he kept “manned at night, usually for exercise in the early hours of evening . . . but made frequent sweeps to make sure that our area was clear.” He believed that the majority of his fellow officers “felt that the submarine menace was our greatest menace.”⁴⁵

While the two U.S. task forces moved out, a lone B-24 bomber touched down at Hickam Field from the mainland with the mission of photographing Truk and Jaluit in accordance with Washington’s instructions to Short of November 27.^* If attacked, the crew should “use all means in their power for self-preservation.” From the Mandates they were to proceed to the Philippines. The War Department instructed Short to ensure that both their aircraft and any following would be “fully equipped with gun ammunition upon departure from Honolulu.”⁴⁷

Kimmel recalled this Army mission. It was the only time during his term as CinCPAC that Washington authorized reconnaissance of the Mandates, which Kimmel itched to scout. He had orders from the Navy Department “not to go anywhere near them . . . because the Japs might find out that we were interested.”⁴⁸

Washington’s gingerly approach to scouting the area was probably another case of bending over backward to avoid an untoward incident with Japan. Thus, this B-24 mission represented a reversal of policy. Washington had decided that the information the scout might obtain justified the risk. But this aspect of the matter apparently did not occur to either Kimmel or Short. The latter immediately noted that the B-24 had only three guns—one .30 caliber and two .50 caliber in the tail—and no ammunition. Hence it was manifestly not prepared for combat in its flight from the West Coast to Oahu.

Near Wake Island, Halsey’s task force received word from CinCUS on the morning of the fifth that an unidentified submarine had been reported in the operating area south of the Hawaiian Islands the previous night.⁵⁰ Some sharp-eyed American may well have spotted a Japanese submarine near the Islands. By December 3 the First, Second, and Third Submarine Fleets and the special attack units were within the 300-nautical-mile radius, and by the sixth they had completely encircled Hawaii. And certain submarines were considerably closer. On December 5, I-71 was hiding in Alalakeiki Channel between Maui and Kahoolawe islands; I-72 prowled in Kalohi Channel, which separates Molokai and Lanai, while I-73 lurked in Kealaikahiki Channel, the deep waters between Maui, Kahoolawe, and Lanai. They were scouting the area of Lahaina Roads and Lanai Island.⁵¹

Somewhere between 1430 and 1530 on December 5 the destroyer Selfridge made an underwater contact but lost it. Another destroyer, Ralph Talbot, picked it up about five miles off Pearl Harbor, reported it as a submarine, and asked permission to depth-charge. But Selfridge, the squadron leader, refused, informing Talbot the intruder was a blackfish. Sniffed Talbot’s skipper: “If this is a blackfish, it has a motorboat up its stern!”⁵²

More than 3,000 miles away, Ugaki aboard Nagato knew that the clock would soon take over from the calendar to strike off first the hours, then the minutes. “So far operations appear to be going smoothly,” he gloated. “Hawaii seems to be just like a rat in a trap. Let it have a dream of peace one more day.”⁵³

CHAPTER 56

“ANOTHER STRAW IN THE WIND”