Map 3. The Failure of War Plan Orange: Key Engagements
Be Careful What
You Wish For
The Plan Orange Disaster
Wade G. Dudley
Secrets abound in times of war, as does what Winston Churchill termed the “bodyguard of lies” surrounding any important military “truth.” Some sixty years ago the failure of American, British, and Russian military intelligence to penetrate Japan's secret stratagems placed the U.S. Navy on the wrong side of the greatest naval debacle in history. How and why the United States suddenly implemented a version of War Plan Orange that had been abandoned as unfeasible in the 1920s is, perhaps, even more important than the story of the proud warships gutted by its implementation.
From War Plan Orange to Rainbow 4
In the 1890s, U.S. military staffs began to consider the Pacific a potential major arena for international conflict. Initially they envisioned Europeans as the anticipated enemy—one of the earliest plans called for the destruction of a weak French Asiatic squadron in support of America's Open Door Policy in China. The joint U.S. Army and Navy Planning Boards, for the sake of secrecy and perhaps from the awareness that giving names to possible enemies tends to raise levels of international tension, soon devised a color-based system for identifying nations during planning. They designated the United States as “Blue,” the British as “Red,” the Germans as “Black,” and so forth. The acquisition of the Philippines in 1898 increased the emphasis on defensive operations in surrounding waters and necessitated giving consideration to the acquisition and protection of “stepping-stone” logistical bases from the West Coast of the United States to Manila Bay, and onward to the resources and markets of the Orient.
Map 3. The Failure of War Plan Orange: Key Engagements
In the first decade of the twentieth century, a new potential enemy emerged in the Pacific. With the Meiji Restoration, Japan had embraced Western-style industrialism and the imperialism that inevitably accompanied it. A modern Imperial Japanese Navy, modeled on the British Royal Navy (not to mention trained by that navy, and often using ships built in British shipyards), played the key role in defeating Russia in 1904–1905. The naval successes at Port Arthur and Tsushima established the UN as a force to be reckoned with. In the eyes of U.S. military planners, this impressive display earned Japan its own designation, “Orange,” and afterward actions deemed necessary to counter future Japanese aggression in the Pacific could be found in War Plan Orange.
The rapid technological shifts resulting from World War I, coupled with postwar diplomatic initiatives and the economic difficulties of a worldwide depression, dictated numerous changes in War Plan Orange between 1919 and 1939. In various guises and with the occasional twist and turn, planning moved from a determined direct defense of the Philippines by the U.S. fleet in the early 1920s, to the anticipated loss of those islands to a superbly trained well-equipped, and (thanks to its Chinese adventures) veteran Japanese military in the 1930s. By early 1939, Plan Orange called for the recapture of the Philippines after a two- to three-year methodical advance across the Central Pacific, at which time Japan's home fleet would be confronted and destroyed allowing a close blockade of the home islands (hopefully decisive without the need for an invasion). In mid-1939, with war in Europe threatening to erupt at any moment, War Plan Orange was incorporated into Rainbow 1, a unilateral defense of the Western Hemisphere against Germany, Japan, and their fascist minions.
By mid-1940 a new plan, Rainbow 4, offered a multilateral defense of the Western Hemisphere, assuming alliances with Great Britain and France. This plan forbade any Blue offensive action in the Pacific—a clear acknowledgment of Germany as the most dangerous of potential opponents. In essence, the United States would abandon the Philippines, Guam, and even Wake Island to a hopeless delaying action against superior Japanese forces. Rainbow 4 allowed Japan a free hand in Asia and the Pacific while the military assets of the United States and its eventual allies knocked Germany out of the war as quickly as possible.
Japan: Options and Planning Through 1939
The industrialization of Japan's economy may have saved the nation from direct European domination in the late 1800s, but it resulted in a quandary for Japanese leaders. The home islands simply lacked the raw materials to support massive industrialization. Thus, the history of modernized Japan became one of aggressively seeking control of Asian resources. Through 1920, military success followed military success, yet European and American diplomats more often than not managed to strip away the fruits of Japanese victory. After 1920 the Japanese government became increasingly dominated by its officer caste, the same men who had found victory to be bittersweet, at best. They knew a reckoning with their foreign tormentors could not be avoided, and the greatest threat appeared to be the United States, a nation with seemingly endless industrial might.
Japanese naval thinking fixated on victory through a single great battle.1 Before the technological changes during and following World War I, planners envisioned the U.S. fleet being brought to battle near the home islands. As had the Russians at Tsushima, the U.S. Navy (USN) would be debilitated by its extended voyage, considerably improving the odds against a numerically superior American fleet. After the technological changes, the expected interception point moved south and east, its location varying with changing plans from the coasts of the Philippines to the Marshall Islands. With the distance traveled less of a debilitative factor (speed, range, and durability had improved dramatically), the IJN planned an attritional war against the advancing USN. Submarines, land and naval airplanes, and night attacks by light surface units equipped with the superb Type 92 “Long Lance” torpedo, would deplete the American forces by as much as thirty percent before the main battle fleets clashed and decided the issue.
The timing and location of the final battle, as well as the success of the UN's strategy of attrition, depended upon which nation seized the initiative. If Japan struck first (first strike, the surprise attack, being prominent in Japanese military tradition), it could quickly seize the U.S. Pacific bases—the Philippines, Guam, Wake Island and perhaps even Midway Island and the Aleutians—forcing the USN into a protracted advance of one to two years' duration. This would allow time for the attritional strategy to work; but a danger (almost a certainty) existed that the production capacity of the United States would so far exceed that of Japan that the USN would actually be stronger, despite a thirty percent attrition of its starting forces, once it breached Japan's defensive perimeter in the Pacific. If the Americans struck first, especially with the UN scattered across the Pacific and along the coasts of Asia, disaster would result. Thus, by 1940, as the Imperial Army continued to advance in China, Europe dissolved in flames, and the American people prepared to elect a president to lead them away from or into war, the UN lacked a truly effective counter to an aggressive War Plan Orange.
Democracy at Work
The Democratic Party nominated Franklin Delano Roosevelt for a third consecutive term as president in 1940. The Republican Party opposed the highly popular Roosevelt with Wendell L. Willkie, a major player in the corporate world but not a man expected to win the heart of the common man, still suffering from the Great Depression. It may never be known exactly who leaked details of Rainbow 4 to the American press, but on October 18 newspaper headlines across the United States screamed FDR PLANS TO ABANDON OUR BOYS IN THE PHILIPPINES TO THE JAPS!2 Gen. Douglas MacArthur, caught unprepared by reporters that morning, inadvertently added fuel to the political fire: “Gentlemen, no American president has ever willingly abandoned an inch of American soil to an enemy, much less thrown away the lives of American soldiers and sailors. Our good President would be the first person to agree with me on that. In fact, I have so much faith in President Roosevelt that I would willingly leave for Manila today.”3
The Republican Party knew a possible winning gambit when they saw (or leaked) it, especially with less than a month remaining until the election. Hammered by Willkie on the only issue available, and with the polls only a week away, Roosevelt finally offered a statement to the American public via his Sunday radio chat. “I will no more abandon America's sons than I would my own children. The United States Navy is one of the most powerful forces in the world; should—and I pray it never does—war come to the Pacific, the enemy will be met and destroyed in the Philippines.”4 Somewhat reassured, voters elected their president to a third term, though not by the expected landslide.
The day after the election, three things of note occurred. In Washington, naval planners dusted off old copies of an aggressive Plan Orange to use in preparing a new multilateral war plan, Rainbow 5. In San Francisco, a vacationing Gen. Douglas MacArthur received orders to take command immediately in the Philippines. And at his office in Tokyo, Adm. Isokura Yamamoto, the man commanding the Japanese navy, smiled as he read the news from the United States.
Yamamoto and Plan Z
Isokura Yamamoto towers above the great admirals of history, despite his five-foot-three-inch height. As a young officer he paced a deck at Tsushima, sacrificing two fingers to Imperial glory. Later, he attended Harvard and served as a naval attache in Washington, gaining a firsthand understanding of the overwhelming resources and industrial capability of the United States. Throughout his life he excelled at games of skill and strategy—bridge, poker, and shogi (similar to European chess).5 And it was with great skill that he tackled the problem of defeating the American giant.
In August 1939, Yamamoto found himself at the pinnacle of his profession, commander and chief of the Combined Fleet. Two months later he observed a demonstration of naval air power from the bridge of the carrier Akagi. Turning to his chief of staff, the admiral remarked “Impressive! If I can use our fast carriers to sink the American fleet in the mud of Pearl Harbor, I shall run wild in the Pacific for a year, maybe two.” From behind the two men, the absentminded (though brilliant) Capt. Kameto Kuroshima murmured “Be careful what you wish for, Admiral.” Pressed for an explanation of his less than artful words, Kuroshima replied “The mud of Pearl is shallow. If the Americans are the industrial geniuses that you have preached about so often, then they will simply raise the ships and repair them. Far better if the mud is deep, and the victory permanent.” 6 Yamamoto agreed but lacking the ability to force the USN into a deep water engagement, he assigned Kuroshima the task of planning a preemptive strike on Pearl Harbor. The resulting plan, though offering a strong possibility of tactical success, left both men troubled because it would not force the United States to negotiate a peace treaty.
Roosevelt's commitment to defend the Philippines changed everything. The strike at Pearl scrapped Yamamoto officially unveiled “Plan Z” to the army and navy in September 1941.7The plan meshed well with the idea of a Southern Offensive then being championed by the army, one designed to secure quickly the Philippines and Malaysia as a stepping-stone to resource-laden India and the East Indies.8 Plan Z anticipated an immediate advance of the USN from Pearl following the line Midway-Wake Island-Guam-the Philippines, in order to secure American territory, avoid Japanese land-based air and light surface units in the Marshalls, and force the battle line of the IJN into a decisive engagement east or northeast of the Philippines. Without attrition of the USN, the Japanese Combined Fleet, divided as it supported the army, would face anticipated ratios of (USN:IJN) 13:9 in battleships, 20:12 in cruisers, and 60:40 in destroyers by M plus 20 (the earliest date on which the American fleet should near the Philippine coast). Only in fast carriers, 4:6, and naval air power, 400:500 planes, would ratios favor the IJN. Yamamoto, however, expected the Americans to split their light surface forces in order to support the British and Dutch, to escort troop convoys closely following their main fleet, and to cover the fleet's large logistical train.
Central to Plan Z was a daring scheme to lull the Americans into misusing their carriers. Five old merchantmen would be converted to appear as flattops—including dummy planes on the decks. These vessels, accompanied by the light carrier Ryujo, would operate west of the Philippines. If they could fix American attention, Yamamoto's Fast Strike Force of six carriers, supported by two battle cruisers and assorted lighter vessels, would have an opportunity to weaken the USN with repeated strikes once it reached Guam. The carriers would then drive the U.S. fleet through the southern approaches to Manila—either San Bernardino Strait or Surigao Strait—where Yamamoto would be waiting with a gauntlet of destroyers, cruisers, and battlewagons quickly concentrated from forces supporting the Southern Offensive. Surviving elements of the American battle fleet would undoubtedly reach Manila, where they could be pounded by land-based airplanes operating from newly captured fields on Luzon or those recently occupied in (formerly French) Indochina. To avoid a change of heart by the Americans, Guam and Wake Island would not be seized until after the defeat of the USN's main fleet.
Though the Imperial Japanese Army did not smile upon Plan Z, arguing that the fast carriers would be better used covering the invasion of Malaysia and clearing the South China Sea of Allied naval forces, they could not disagree with Yamamoto's logic: “Only the complete destruction of the American Pacific fleet and the loss of the Philippines will shock the citizens of the United States into a negotiated peace. It will take twenty years and the resources of Asia to allow our nation to achieve industrial parity with our enemy. Samurai of Japan! We must have that quick peace!”9 In the end, all present concurred that land-based aircraft and those surface units scheduled to rendezvous at Surigao Strait would suffice to cover the invasions.
In the following months, as negotiations with a U.S. government angry at continued Japanese expansion in China and obviously preparing for a showdown in the Pacific, moved toward collapse, Tokyo set December 7, 1941, as the date for its assault against Allied territories in the Pacific. Sunrise of that day found Yamamoto off the Philippine coast, aboard the hastily completed super-battleship Yamato, wondering how quickly the USN would sortie from Pearl Harbor.
Kimmel at the Helm
Roosevelt's choice of the two key officers responsible for finalizing and implementing the War Plan Orange segment of Rainbow 5 has been debated by historians almost as much as it has been lamented by Americans as a whole. It is not difficult to argue that the self-proclaimed military genius MacArthur's mouth earned him the hot seat; but the much maligned Adm. Husband Kimmel is a different story. War Plan Orange actively sought a big-gun confrontation, and Kimmel was a big-gun admiral, having served on a dozen battlewagons in his career. Though he lacked experience with naval aviation, carriers constituted a virtually untried arm of the U.S. Navy at that time. Without doubt, Kimmel was the consensus choice to implement War Plan Orange. Even Gen. George Marshall whole-heartedly supported the aggressive Kimmel for the role.
In early November 1941, Kimmel held a conference for his top officers at Pearl. There, he presented the plan that would be implemented as it happened the following month. In the Philippines, MacArthur, recently reinforced by fifty P-40 fighters and twenty-four B-17 bombers, would fight a delaying action, preserving Manila Bay as a primary fleet anchorage. A British fleet of two battleships, a carrier, and screening elements would similarly defend Singapore, the Gibraltar of the Pacific, as a secondary base for the U.S. fleet. Southward, the ABDA flotilla (a small U.S.-British-Dutch-Australian force built around two heavy cruisers) would be reinforced by the carrier Yorktown.10 It would secure a secondary supply route to the Philippines from Australia, distracting Japanese naval forces in the process.
Task Force 1—eleven battleships, three cruisers, and eighteen destroyers—under the tactical command of Kimmel, aboard the battleship Pennsylvania, would sail on M plus 2 to Wake Island via Midway, arriving on M plus 12. In case Wake had fallen, a battalion of Marines in APDs (old destroyers modified as high-speed transports) accompanied the task force. A convoy transporting a coastal defense battalion, fifty crated aircraft, and supplies for Wake, trailed the task force by approximately five days. TF 1 would sail from Wake for Guam by M plus 15. Guam, probably lost to the Japanese in the first days of the conflict, would be briefly bombarded and recaptured by the Marines. On or about M plus 21, the fleet would leave Guam for Manila, arriving off the Philippines no later than M plus 25 and taking a northern route around Luzon, hopefully forcing the IJN to give battle or face the interdiction of its forces engaged in the invasion of the Philippines. Elements of the victorious TF 1 would arrive in Manila by M plus 28, at the latest.
Task Forces 2 and 3, centered respectively, on the carriers Lexington and Saratoga, would sortie from Pearl immediately upon the opening of hostilities. The carrier groups, each protected by a screen of cruisers and destroyers, would scout ahead of the fleet (TF 2 to the north, TF 3 to the south). Through M plus 15, the task forces would operate approximately 300 miles forward of TF 1. After the relief or recapture of Guam, the carriers would be reined in, to fifty miles, allowing them to fly CAP (Combat Air Patrol) over TF 1 as Japanese naval and land-based aircraft became more of a threat.
Task Force 4, composed of the carrier Enterprise and the fast battleships North Carolina and Washington—the last-named warship rushed to commissioning as the Japanese threat loomed— would provide a diversionary force. From either Pearl or its normal cruising station southeast of the Marshalls, TF 4 would raid through the Japanese mandates; its high-speed run concluding with a daring assault on Truk, the major IJN base in the area. TF 4 would then rendezvous with TF 1 near the Philippines around M plus 22.
On M plus 30, a large convoy with men and matériel for Guam, Wake, and the Philippines, would leave the West Coast. Task Force 5, composed of cruisers and destroyers, would escort this force to the Philippines—if the Japanese had not yet sued for peace. “The Japanese will face us because they must face us—or abandon their invasion forces in the Pacific. And their battle line cannot stand against us!” Kimmel stated at the conclusion of the briefing. He was interrupted by the man who would command TF 4, William F. “Bull” Halsey: “Be careful what you wish for, Admiral!” Ordered by Kimmel to explain his outburst, the unrepentant Halsey warned, “Somewhere across that water a little yellow bastard is telling other little yellow bastards the same thing; only he's saying that our battleships cannot stand against their carriers. And until those carriers are burning, I say be damned careful what you wish for!” 11 As it turned out, both men were correct to some degree.
At 0800, December 7, an aide awakened Kimmel at his office on Oahu with the news that Japan had just invaded the Philippines. He immediately ordered War Plan Orange to be implemented and prepared to board Arizona, rather than Pennsylvania. Kimmel had placed the usual flagship of the Pacific Fleet in dry dock only three days earlier for annual servicing of its shafts, and rather than sail late, the admiral ordered it to join the M plus 30 convoy as reinforcement for his by then theoretically victorious fleet.12
An hour later Kimmel's blood pressure soared when he learned that Douglas MacArthur had somehow managed to be taken by surprise. Most of his planes had been destroyed on the ground and the Imperial Army had landed at points across the Philippines with minimal resistance. Turning to Ensign Elmo R. “Bud” Zumwalt, his newly appointed aide, Kimmel snarled, “If MacArthur loses my base before I get there, he better have died gloriously—or I will kill him myself!”13
As the U.S. fleet began its exodus from Pearl, a last telegram crossed the Pacific to Tokyo.14It read, “Hope to leave for Tokyo tomorrow. Plan to Climb Mount Niitaka next week.” Unknown to the American telegraphist, the sender, Takeo Yoshikawa, had been carefully observing the U.S. base for six months. His telegram, received at the American Desk of Japanese Naval Intelligence and forwarded immediately to Yamato, gave rise to cheers among Yamamoto's staff. Their admiral, an avid climber, had picked the phrase “Climb Mount Niitaka” as the signal that the U.S. battle fleet had entered the fray.
A Stillness on the Sea
MacArthur had, indeed, been caught unprepared despite the obviously critical place of the Philippines in War Plan Orange. Clark Field outside Manila, bloomed with fires from the prettily arrayed rows of U.S. planes pummeled by Japanese bombers. By 2000 on December 7, only thirty-one fighters, twenty-seven bombers (including five B-17s), and three seaplanes remained operational.
Though MacArthur failed to contest the landings in the Philippines, that did not mean resistance melted away. On the contrary, Americans as well as the green Filipino Constabulary fought magnificently on the ground. As early as December 9, Gen. Nasaharu Homma, commanding the Imperial Army's invasion of Luzon, sent a message to Tokyo demanding increased naval air support and additional troops. Yamamoto refused to release his carriers (now lurking west of Guam), partly out of fear that too rapid a success on the ground would cause the U.S. fleet to return to Pearl, thus evading his trap. As a result, considerable friction developed between the army and navy hierarchies. Fortunately for Japan, Yamamoto's threat to resign, following on the heels of naval successes in the South China Sea on December 8, squelched that particular internal conflict.
On December 7 a British force composed of the battleships Repulse and Prince of Wales, with the carrier Indomitable providing air cover, sortied from Singapore to disrupt Japanese amphibious landings along the Malaysian coast. On the following day, Indomitable's CAP found itself swamped by waves of Japanese fighters and bombers. The British lost all three capital ships, but not before scout planes from their carrier reported the source of their numerous attackers—six Japanese flattops, steaming just within maximum range of Clark airfield. For once, MacArthur acted with alacrity, dispatching every available plane to attack the enemy task force. The uncoordinated waves of U.S. planes began their attack as darkness fell across the South China Sea. Short on fuel and blanketed in darkness, few of the bombers and fighters managed to return to Clark, but those that did allowed MacArthur to send his historic message at 2330 that evening: “Tonight there is a stillness on the South China Sea where once the fleet of Japan roamed at will. I have avenged the brave crews of the Repulse, the Prince of Whales [sic], and the Indomitable. Five carriers of the Japanese Navy have been confirmed as destroyed by my heroic American aviators, and another is damaged and presumed sinking.”15
Thus Yamamoto won a double victory that day—three British capital ships stricken from the Royal Naval list, and MacArthur's reassurance to the world that the carrier might of Japan had been destroyed. Kimmel, steaming rapidly to Wake Island, is reported to have held a dinner party the following evening, neither the first nor the last warrior deceived into celebration while a trap waited patiently mere days ahead. Rear Adms. Wilson Brown (TF 2) and Frank Fletcher (TF 3), scouting far forward of TF 1, breathed sighs of relief. Until that moment, each man had wrestled with nightmares of their single carriers isolated and destroyed by the numerically superior IJN naval air power. Fletcher, always concerned about the fuel levels of his ships, even slowed his advance the following day to replenish.
Only aboard Enterprise, flagship of TF 4, did a senior American officer seem to have doubts concerning the veracity of MacArthur's message. A young flier overheard Halsey, then suffering from a constantly worsening skin rash, snorted, “That son of a bitch was born an egotistical liar. Even those yellow bastards aren't stupid enough to put six big carriers where his fliers could get at 'em. Doug couldn't sink an outhouse, not even if he dropped a brick one in the middle of Subic Bay. I hope to God that Wil and Frank see through this crap. 'Stillness on the sea'—shit!”16
Truk-ing
It's a military truism that no plan survives contact with the enemy, and it was certainly as applicable to Plan Z as to the illfated Plan Orange. Yamamoto faced two unexpected problems: the ABDA command reinforced by Yorktown, and TF 4 rampaging through the Marshall Islands. Both moves caught the Japanese admiral flat-footed (Yamamoto strongly believed that the USN would sensibly mass its carriers for battle) and demanded immediate attention.
Operating from secure bases in the Netherlands East Indies, the ABDA task force pushed tentatively northward on December 8, threatening to disrupt the valuable convoys supporting the invasions of the Philippines and Malaya. Two days later Yamamoto dispatched a task force centered around the slightly damaged Ryujo and the light carrier Hosho to counter the threat. On December 17, after a week of sparring, fighters and bombers from Yorktown caught the Japanese carriers in the process of launching a strike against the ABDA task force. In the face of stiff resistance from a reinforced enemy CAP (fighters were already aloft for the planned strike against Yorktown), American dive-bombers hit Hosho five times, while two torpedoes and three bombs turned Ryujo into a flaming hulk. But this victory had a stiff price—Yorktown expended seventy-three planes in the attack, including all of its torpedo bombers and over half of its fighters. Adm. Karl Doorman, aboard the cruiser De Ruyter, had little choice but to order withdrawal until the depleted air wing could be reinforced; especially after Japanese submarine 1-17 sank Langley (once designated CV 1, then redesignated AV 3, an aviation transport), ferrying replacement aircraft to Yorktown, on December 19. Nonetheless, the ABDA provided the only true victory for the Allies during the brief Pacific War.
Unless he chose to weaken his Fast Strike Force, Yamamoto lacked carriers to send against the U.S. task force raiding through the Marshalls. Still, the fleet base at Truk, an obvious target for the Americans, offered an opportunity to attrit the USN. On December 9, Yamamoto dispatched a light force led by Rear Adm. Raizo Tanaka in the cruiser Jintsu to Truk. It included two additional cruisers, Myoko and Nachi, and eight destroyers. Tanaka had orders to attempt to develop a night action if the Americans approached the base.
Slowed by a boiler failure on the hastily commissioned Washington, TF 4 did not enter strike range of Truk until December 22. Even then, Halsey hesitated to commit his dwindling air group against a possibly heavy Japanese air defense. Holding a cruiser and four destroyers back to defend Enterprise, the admiral ordered the remainder of the task force to close and bombard Truk under cover of darkness. Capt. Tameichi Hara, skippering the destroyer Amatsukaze, describes what followed:
A seaplane reported two American battleships [North Carolina and Washington], two cruisers, and six destroyers steaming directly to Truk shortly before dark on December 22. Tanaka, perhaps the best in our navy at night actions by small ships, deployed us in parallel lines, an interior of three cruisers led by two destroyers, and an exterior of six destroyers. At 1123, [destroyer] Kuroshio spotted shapes approaching the front of our column at about 48°. A cloudy night, the Americans had approached to less then 3,000 yds before being spotted! Strangely, they seemed not to see us at all, until our division unleashed 48 torpedoes and turned quickly to port for reloading. At that instant star shells burst above the enemy battleships, and the leader, the North Carolina [actually the cruiser Chicora], was hit by concentrated fire from our cruisers. I was busy for the next few seconds as shell splashes swamped my frail vessel. The Kuroshio was not so lucky—at least one large caliber shell penetrated a magazine and it seemed to lift completely from the water. Seconds later, Murata [a spotter] screamed, “Hits! Torpedo hits along the line!” My heart almost stopped before I realized that he meant the enemy line, and not ours ... By 0058, it seemed that the sea was covered in burning ships. A large American vessel, obviously out of control, bore down on us. I ordered our 5-inch guns to open fire—a mistake as an enemy cruiser quickly hit us once the flashes revealed our position, our first damage of the engagement... At 0153, Jintsu, burning and dead in the water, flashed a message to launch remaining torpedoes and disengage. It grieved us to so abandon our comrades, particularly my friend and mentor, Tanaka . . .
Clearly, our success against the vastly superior American force resulted from our constant training in night combat actions and proper use of the torpedo, aspects of war neglected by the enemy. But given time, the USN could match the training, if not the warrior spirit, of the Imperial Navy. Thus the advantage of our grossly outnumbered ships would be fleeting—I prayed to my ancestors that it would last long enough for Yamamoto to crush the enemy's main battle line...17
In the confused night action at Truk, both American battleships suffered severely. Each took two torpedoes, Washington's already slow pace dropping to fifteen knots. All three USN cruisers sank before dawn, along with three destroyers. Halsey had little option except to return to Pearl—abandoning the damaged battlewagons to join Kimmel would result in their destruction. Even then, IJN submarine 1-221 managed to penetrate TF 4's reduced ASW (antisubmarine warfare) screen and sink Washington on December 25.
Admiral Tanaka, his flagship reduced to a hulk by numerous large caliber hits, actually survived the battle, the vessel towed to Truk the following day. The other Japanese cruisers and three destroyers were not as lucky. Tanaka shifted his flag to Amatsukaze, and having effectively stripped two battleships and a carrier from the American fleet, began moving his battered survivors to join Yamamoto off Luzon for the final showdown.
What Damn Carriers?
Task Force 1 reached the vicinity of Wake Island on December 19, shortly after Kimmel received a belated notification of Yorktown's successful action against the Japanese light carriers. Though Kimmel should have been puzzled by the failure of the IJN to seize the lightly defended islands of Guam and Wake, he apparently wrote the matter off to Yamamoto's incompetence as a naval commander (perhaps understandably—Kimmel was operating under the delusion that Japan had lost as many as eight carriers). The task force tarried only briefly in the vicinity of Wake, and then only because of a torpedo hit on the old battleship Texas (screening forces sank three IJN submarines in the area, of which only one managed a torpedo attack). The battlewagon's crew quickly fixed a temporary patch over the gaping hole in its bow, allowing it to remain with the task force when the latter turned for Guam on December 20.
As TF 1 neared Guam, IJN submarine contacts increased. By December 26, when the APDs unloaded their Marines as reinforcements for Guam's defenders, screening destroyers had defeated over a dozen attacks. Despite four confirmed kills, exhaustion took its toll, and 1-214 at last managed to hit Nevada with four torpedoes before being forced to the surface and rammed by the destroyer Manley. Though valiant damage control efforts saved the battleship from sinking, its propellers and rudder had been smashed. When Kimmel began the last stage of his voyage on December 27, both Nevada and Manley remained at Guam. The APDs also stayed, to screen the damaged battleship.
Brown's Task Force 2 and Fletcher's Task Force 3 failed to find a single Japanese vessel in their rush across the Pacific, though Lexington's air group bombed and strafed the small Japanese airfield on Saipan on December 24 and 25. War Plan Orange had called for the carrier task forces to close with TF 1 on the final leg of its journey, but Kimmel, thinking the threat from enemy naval aircraft had been minimized signaled Brown and Fletcher to unite their task forces on December 29, approximately 300 miles due west of Legaspi airfield on Luzon. They would then proceed, under Fletcher's command, to the Formosa-Luzon gap, fixing the position of the IJN Combined Fleet for Kimmel's rapidly approaching TF 1.
Had the carriers united at 0800 December 29, as ordered, a thin chance existed that they could have survived the onslaught that overwhelmed them individually; but Fletcher, on December 28, had again slowed TF 3 for refueling, despite the fact that the Saratoga's tanks were well over half full. His first indication of a problem came at 0937 on the following day, while still eight full hours south of TF 2. When given a radio message from Lexington that read, “Under attack by large numbers of Japanese carrier planes. Where is TF 3? All the world wonders,” Fletcher could only exclaim, “Carrier planes! What damn carriers can they still have?”18 At last ordering the task force to full speed, Fletcher revectored his search planes and tried to contact Brown's force.
The world will never know exactly what happened to TF 2. How did Vice Adm. Chuichi Nagumo's “Ghost Fleet,” the six carriers of the Fast Strike Force, manage to surprise Wilson? Why did Nagumo continue to pound the task force after Lexington sank? And why was no effort made to rescue the thousands of survivors abandoned in the shark-infested Pacific waters? What we do know is that a carrier, three cruisers, eight destroyers, and two fast oilers succumbed to eight hours of repeated air attack. The suffering of their crews, until taken by the sharks or succumbing to dehydration, is perhaps better left unimagined.
The death of Saratoga seems almost anticlimactic after the horrors experienced by TF 2. At 1628 on December 29, one of Fletcher's scouts (before being destroyed) reported four Japanese heavy carriers approximately 250 miles west-northwest of TF 3. Fletcher quickly launched a full strike, retaining only six fighters for CAP. While getting the strike into the air, Saratoga's CAP killed a Japanese flying boat, but only after it had reported TF 3's position. Though Nagumo's fliers were exhausted after destroying TF 2, he nonetheless managed to deploy a small striking force of eight torpedo planes, twelve dive-bombers, and nine fighters (none would find their way home in the gathering darkness). These found Saratoga at 2010, quickly overwhelmed its CAP, and sank the carrier with three torpedo and at least four bomb hits. Fletcher died on his bridge. The remainder of TF 3, crowded with Saratoga's survivors, made full speed for Guam. As for the American air group, it reported sinking two carriers attempting to hide in a rapidly advancing storm front, then disappeared plane by plane as each exhausted its fuel. Though Nagumo reported 112 of his 497 available planes lost on December 29, he never mentioned a U.S. attack on his force. Ironically, the two carriers reported destroyed by Saratoga's air group may well have been the oilers attached to TF 2.
Der Tag
In the early hours of December 30, an exhausted Kimmel received word of the loss of Saratoga. With no word from Task Force 2, and every indication that Yamamoto had more carrier strength than originally thought, Kimmel was caught in a dilemma. Task Force 1 was only forty-eight hours from Luzon at top speed, and less than eighty hours from a presumed safe anchorage at Manila. To turn tail at this point would mean not only admitting the failure of War Plan Orange, but would not guarantee a safe return to Pearl for his battle line, which was mainly intact and still outnumbered the Japanese. Standing on the bridge wing of Arizona, accompanied only by his aide, Zumwalt, Kimmel talked aloud as he worked through his options. “First, Yamamoto will be waiting north of Luzon, guarding his convoys. Second he must have expended the last of his naval air today—what's he got left, Zumwalt? A couple of escort carriers? Third—well, third I'll be damned if I want to be remembered as a Scheer! You know that story, Ensign? From 1914 to 1916 the German navy waited for 'DerTag'—'the day,' when it would challenge the British fleet in one last battle, to victory or to the last ship. But the Germans never really had the advantage, and when Scheer finally had his chance at Jutland he turned and ran. I still have the advantage, Ensign! This is the most powerful battle line afloat, and I just can't see running away with it.”19
So Kimmel, wishing to avoid the condemnation of future naval historians, continued to Manila. Without air cover, however, he decided to use the most direct route to his anchorage— via Surigao Strait. Unfortunately, Kimmel and the remaining ships of TF 1—nine battleships, three cruisers, and seventeen destroyers—already stood among the damned thanks to the American public, a faulty War Plan Orange, and the genius of Yamamoto.
The Gauntlet
On December 30, shortly after being advised of the sinking of the last American carrier supporting Kimmel, Yamamoto ordered Nagumo to slowly scout southward find the USN's battle fleet, and drive it to Surigao Strait. Nagumo did just that, using December 31 to rest and reorganize his weary but jubilant air groups. At 1143 on January 1, 1942, his scouts discovered the American fleet steaming at best speed for Luzon. Through the rest of the day, amid constantly deteriorating weather conditions, Nagumo managed to launch only two waves of planes against Task Force 1. One of these never found Kimmel's fleet, and the other sank the cruiser Vincennes and two destroyers, disabled the aft turret on New Mexico, and started severe fires on Oklahoma and Tennessee. As darkness fell, Nagumo moved northwest and counted his losses: an additional seventy-two planes had fallen victim to heavy antiaircraft fire or accident, bringing his two-day losses to 184 of the 497 original aircraft. Secure in the knowledge that the fate of the American battle line now rested in the hands of his brilliant boss, Nagumo sailed for a rendezvous with invasion forces to be aimed at Guam and Wake Island.
With darkness more or less cloaking his battered TF 1 (both Oklahoma and Tennessee still flamed), Kimmel organized his fleet for a rapid advance through the relatively narrow waters of Surigao Strait. Three destroyers picketed his van of cruisers, Chicago and Augusta, followed closely by Idaho, New Mexico, and California. About a thousand yards separated the van from the remaining battleships led by Kimmel in Arizona, and trailed closely by the two burning vessels, shepherded by four destroyers. The remaining two destroyer divisions deployed 1,500 yards to port and starboard of the van. By 0130 on January 2 it appeared that TF 1, including the laggard battlewagons whose exhausted crews were at last getting the best of fires fed by prewar paint and furnishings, had negotiated the confined waters successfully.
Yamamoto had quietly gathered his Combined Fleet of six battleships—commanded by himself from the super-battleship Yamato—eight heavy cruisers, four light cruisers, and forty-two destroyers. Through the storms of January 1, his heavies, screened by a light cruiser and twelve destroyers, steamed back and forth across the west entrance to Surigao Strait. Closer to the entrance, three divisions of ten destroyers, each led by a light cruiser, waited to box the approaching task force. The weather had concerned Yamamoto, despite his commanding position and preponderance of light ships, but the front passed at midnight, and a floatplane launched from the cruiser Tone reported the Americans steaming full tilt through the narrow waters with two burning vessels trailing the main force. At 0148 on January 2, sitting firmly across the American T at a range of only 12,000 yards, Yamamoto flashed the code words, “Tora! Tora! Tora!” This signaled his destroyers, stealthily advancing along the flanks of TF 1, to launch their torpedoes at the enemy. The words of Captain Hara, whose Amatsukaze (still bearing the scars of the action at Truk) was in the division of destroyers some 4,000 yards to port of the American formation, capture the action:
Tiger! Tiger! Tiger! The moonless night and the dark shore to our rear hid us from the enemy as our division alone launched over eighty Long Lances at the enemy line. I targeted the third and fourth battleships in their second echelon. Within seconds, and long before our torpedoes would reach their targets, water spouts began to erupt among the enemy van and second echelon. Hits came quickly, the two burning ships at the rear, Oklahoma and Maryland [actually Tennessee] outlined those vessels in front of them. The Americans appeared to panic, two destroyers colliding in their port division—confusion to which we added with my gun crews' rapid fire... Then the American battle line disappeared in a wall of water and flame! Apparently the torpedoes from both our port and starboard board divisions arrived at the same time. As the mist and smoke cleared, one American battleship had simply disappeared [West Virginia], a second was turning turtle [Maryland], and a third, minus its bow to the first turret, was surrounded by burning oil and rapidly settling [California].
Later I learned that every American battleship had been struck by at least one torpedo, and quite probably one cruiser and at least five destroyers had also been lost to our opening volley. Then and there I resolved never again to ship aboard a battlewagon. After this, my second night in action, I knew that the Long Lance had ended their day of ruling the waves ... 20
What Hara had viewed as panic was instead the result of two large caliber shells, probably from Haruna, striking the bridge and flag bridge of Arizona. Every man on the bridge died immediately, and the flagship, helm untended, began a gentle turn to starboard. Though control of the rudder was restored in minutes, the damage had been done. The remaining vessels of the second echelon, as well as the destroyer division to port, apparently became confused as they tried to follow the unannounced maneuver.
Worse for TF 1, the salvo had mortally wounded Kimmel, who died within seconds, apparently after whispering his last commands to Ensign Zumwalt. Then, for the first time in history, an ensign took command of a modern battleship in combat. As flames raged through the superstructure of Arizona, Zumwalt, severely wounded himself, ordered a petty officer to send a message to the fleet ordering independent advance to Manila at best speed. Afterward, he made his way, with two ratings, to the bridge. Discovering both wheel and intership communications intact, Zumwalt took control of the battleship, conning it through Yamamoto's line and to Manila Bay while in constant danger of being roasted alive or falling unconscious from loss of vital fluids. Nor did Arizona flee without drawing Japanese blood; its surviving guns turned the cruiser Yubari into a sinking mass of scrap, and Zumwalt actually managed to ram the destroyer Shirakumo, cutting it completely in half as Arizona escaped Yamamoto's trap.21
Along with the flagship of TF 1, two destroyers and a miraculously undamaged Augusta escaped. Texas, closely following Arizona, also penetrated the Japanese battle line, but capsized an hour later when the patch that its crew had hastily installed off Wake Island gave way and added tons of water to what it had already taken on from two additional torpedo hits. If not for the heroic efforts of the van battleships, Idaho and New Mexico, none of these vessels would have escaped. With Idaho's speed reduced to half by flooded boilers, Capt. Mark Smith turned his ship to parallel Yamamoto's battlewagons rather than attempt an escape. Capt. Edward Coombs in New Mexico, despite a fourteen degree list that prevented his remaining primary guns from firing, followed. For a vital half hour the two vessels absorbed the fire of six Japanese battleships and their screen, while Smith pounded battleship Mutsu and Coombs's secondaries lashed at any enemy vessel in range. As Mutsu drifted out of control, sinking (the only Japanese capital ship lost in the action), New Mexico finally succumbed to its earlier torpedo hits and rolled onto its side at 0222. Less than a minute later, a shell from Yamato apparently penetrated the aft magazine of Idaho. It broke into two sections and sank in minutes.22
In the rear of TF 1, Oklahoma and Tennessee had never recovered from the damage inflicted the previous day by Nagumo's air strikes. With several magazines voluntarily flooded on January 1, numerous secondary casemates ravaged by fire, and additional flooding from the opening barrage of Japanese Long Lances, the battleships attempted to disengage to the west. After destroying the American van, Yamamoto pursued. By 0430 both battleships and their escorts had succumbed to a barrage of torpedoes and large caliber shells.
Dawn found the waters of Surigao Strait smothered with the detritus of battle;—oil, lingering smoke, odd bits of wreckage, and sailors both living and dead. His victory won, Yamamoto counted his losses—one battleship, one cruiser, and fourteen destroyers—and then continued the war. The Japanese made only minimal efforts to rescue American survivors, though hundreds managed to drift ashore over the next four days. Most were immediately taken prisoner by the enemy, less than a hundred reaching the steadily diminishing territory controlled by MacArthur's now demoralized army.
For the four surviving vessels of TF 1, Manila failed to provide the anticipated refuge. Their trial by fire continued. On January 4 a massive raid by Japanese land-based bombers resulted in a magazine explosion on Arizona. Sheathed in fire, it rapidly settled in the shallow mud of the harbor.23 The following day, both destroyers fell prey to torpedo bombers. Somehow, Augusta again managed to survive the carnage unscathed only to be scuttled by its crew on January 6, the day MacArthur finally abandoned the port.
A Day That Will Live in Infamy
On January 7, 1942, President Roosevelt authorized the release of information pertaining to the defeat of the American fleet in the Philippines. Panic swept through the United States, a nation that had never experienced sudden defeat on such a scale. Thousands of American families wept for the fathers and sons feared lost to enemy action. Newspapers fed panic and fear with rumors of Japanese fleets off the Hawaiian Islands and the Pacific coast. Radio commentators listed the few vessels remaining in the Pacific Fleet between their reports on Axis successes in Europe. And in Washington, Roosevelt and his advisors wrestled with one of the most difficult decisions ever faced by an American government.
They recognized that it would take months, if not years, to replace America's matériel losses. Even then, the loss of naval cadre would lead to difficulties in training recruits to man the new ships. In addition, in prewar discussions with Great Britain, Roosevelt had already committed the United States to a “Germany First” strategy. Moral issues (and many existed) aside, fascist domination of Europe would hamstring the American economy, only just recovering from the Great Depression. The Philippines and U.S. islands near Japan could not be defended without a strong navy, nor could the United States provide adequate aid to the struggling British Commonwealth in the Pacific Theater without ships. Could Japan successfully invade Hawaii? Probably. Could it invade the West Coast of the United States with Hawaii secured as a fleet base? Probably not—but the UN could eradicate American shipping in the Pacific, shipping that provided raw materials to much of U.S. industry. On the other hand, could Great Britain survive Germany's U-boats without the assistance of American shipping and the U.S. Navy? Possibly not. Would the American people fight? Could they rally from the fear and panic sweeping the nation? Absolutely! Ultimately, Roosevelt was left with one key question: Could the United States successfully lead the effort to free Europe from Axis domination while simultaneously fighting a war against Japan, a war that threatened American shores, a naval war that would drain men, matériel, and national wealth at an abominable rate?
On January 12, 1942, after a final meeting with representatives of the British government, an exhausted President Roosevelt ordered MacArthur to seek a cease-fire and, in conjunction with British representatives in the Far East, open negotiations with the Japanese government. One month later, in words now immortal, he addressed the American people: “On February 12, 1942, a day that will live in infamy, General Douglas MacArthur and representatives of our European allies signed an armistice with Japan aboard the Nevada at Guam. This peace is necessary so that we may lead the struggle against fascism in Europe; but we shall never forget Surigao!”24
War Plan Orange had failed. Japan claimed the Philippines as prize, though it allowed the United States to retain Guam and Wake Island (both demilitarized). Great Britain reluctantly agreed to a phased withdrawal from the Far East in exchange for trade concessions with India and guarantees that Australia and New Zealand would not suffer invasion. By the waning days of 1942, Japan managed to establish its Greater Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere, stretching from the Gilbert Islands to Indonesia, India, and China. With the collapse of Germany in early 1945, the world quickly polarized—Japan and its puppets arrayed against the rest of the world, led by the United States, Great Britain, and their uncomfortable communist bedfellow, the USSR. Winston Churchill's 1947 speech, in which he referred to a “Bamboo curtain descending across Asia and the Pacific,” is generally taken to mark the beginning of the brief East-West Cold War that culminated in the wave of internal revolutions led by such heroes as Mao, Gandhi, and Ho, and in the misnamed Sixty Minute War of 1953. But that, as the storyteller invariably says, is another story.25
The Reality
It is difficult to imagine any simple set of circumstances that would have allowed Japan to win any form of victory in World War II. Even Yamamoto, its premier naval strategist, knew that the industrial might of the United States must prevail in the long run. For Yamamoto, Pearl Harbor seemed the best chance in a very desperate scenario. And Pearl Harbor was little more than a bee sting on the foot of a sleeping giant, awakening both an industrial power and personal commitments to victory among Americans that eventually doomed Japan while allowing the United States to support their allies in the destruction of European fascism.
Only military rashness of an improbable nature could have offered Japan an opportunity of victory. To tie that rashness to U.S. politics seems more than reasonable in a nation where civilian guidance governs the ultimate deployment and strategy of its military forces (too often to the detriment of young, underpaid, and frequently unappreciated American servicemen). Everything following Roosevelt's decision to implement a long-abandoned and seriously flawed version of War Plan Orange is, of course, fiction. In reality, the United States closely followed its prewar plan of a gradual erosion of Japanese power, which would have culminated in the invasion of the home islands had not the atomic bomb interfered. Fortunately, the discovery of the true industrial potential of the United States accelerated the course of the Pacific War—matériel was available to maintain Europe as first priority while still overwhelming Japan with ships, planes, and bombs.
A final idea (critical to this hypothetical victory) that must be addressed is the concept of civilian morale, or the “national will” to continue a struggle. War has definite learning curves associated with it. We are familiar with those present on the field of battle; the techniques, for example, that once learned, enhance individual survival. But civilians far removed from the field of battle seem to have a learning curve as well, a process of gradual inurement to increasingly long casualty lists as well as to individual material sacrifice. In reality, Pearl Harbor was a small shock that began a process of acclimatization to war. Without small shocks to prepare them for greater losses, could the American will to resist have been temporarily weakened by the horrific losses postulated in this alternative line of history? Quite possibly; at least, that will could have been weakened enough to accept a rapidly negotiated peace—which in the end was Japan's only real hope for victory in the Pacific.
Bibliography
Edgerton, Robert B., Warriors of the Rising Sun (Harper and Row, New York, 1997).
Evans, David C, and Peattie, Mark R., Kaigun: Strategy, Tactics, and Technology in the Imperial Japanese Navy, 1887–1941 (Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, 1997).
Miller, Edward S., War Plan Orange: The U.S. Strategy to Defeat Japan, 1897–1945 (Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, 1991).
Spector, Ronald H, Eagle Against the Sun: The American War with Japan (Random House, New York, 1985).
Notes
1. Aside from the UN's institutional memory, the works of American Alfred Thayer Mahan were assigned reading for Japanese naval officers.
*2. For a brilliant indictment of the American voters' place in the Pacific debacle, see M. Palmer, The True Price of Democracy (Avalon Hill Press, 1992). The appended reading list offers several alternative histories that explore the absence of the Philippines issue from the 1940 election.
*3. New York Times, October 18, 1940.
*4. Archives, CBS. New York.
5. Yamamoto was not, as so many European historians have characterized him, a “gambler.” Random elements are common to life, much less games; and it is the “skilled” player—the person with the greatest knowledge of the game and an optimally implemented strategy—who manages to overcome that randomness and emerge victorious, whether shuffling cards or the fate of nations. See R. Snitzer, Great Naval Leaders and “ The Game”Paper Wars, 1981).
*6. R. Gowan, Kameto Kuroshima: The Man Behind Yamamoto (ECU Press, 1973), 110.
*7. Ibid., 173–85. The name given to the operational plan accentuated its critical nature. At Tsushima, Togo had sent the famous Z signal to his fleet, “On this one battle rests the fate of our nation. Let every man do his utmost.”
8. A surprise pact with the Soviets had secured the northern border for Japan, much to the consternation of Adolf Hitler.
*9. From the admiral's prepared notes, dated September 10. 1941; Yamamoto Papers, Harvard University.
*10. The secret formation of the ABDA naval command in October 1941 indicates an acknowledgment by the United States of the inevitability of war with Japan. See Admiral Karl Doorman's The One Victorious Fleet (Greenhill, 1967).
*11. Official Transcript of the Court-Martial of Admiral William F. Halsey (U.S. Government, 1943), 99–100.
*12. Note that this reduced TF 1 to ten battleships: Arizona, Nevada, Oklahoma, New Mexico, California, Tennessee, Maryland, West Virginia, Idaho, and Texas.
*13. Letter to “Dad” dated December 7, 1941; Zumwalt Presidential Papers, Annapolis. President Zumwalt was first in the accelerated Class of 1943 at the Naval Academy. In July 1941 the top ten percent of the class found themselves seconded to naval staffs as aides, releasing experiences officers for command slots.
*14. JNI to Yamamoto, 12.8.41, Yamamoto Papers, Harvard University. That civilian telegraph service still existed between Hawaii and Tokyo at 0645 on December 8 may seem shocking, but it should be remembered that the United States did not actually declare war on Japan until 1603 EST and that the civilian sector always reacts much slower to a declaration than does the military establishment.
*15. Official Transcript of the Court-Martial of General Douglas MacArthur (U.S. Government, 1943), 738.
*16. G. Bush, Truk-ing with the Bull (Yaquinto, 1988), 111. Halsey's utterance was, of course, correct. The stalking horses sank splendidly, but Ruyjo suffered only slight damage. In fact, though its planes contributed to the sinking of the Indomitable, the remaining British vessels had fallen prey to land-based aircraft.
*17. T. Hara, Red Sun Rising: A Japanese Destroyer Captain Remembers (GDW, 1961), 58–71. Hara was correct. Training in night combat, with or without torpedoes, had been minimized by order of the Department of the Navy in order to “prevent training accidents.” Such foolishness, along with the cost-cutting common to all peacetime navies, played a large part in the USN's performance in the Pacific.
*18. J. Beeler, All the World Wonders and Other Naval Blunders (U.S. Press, 1998), 31–32.
*19. H. Jones, Zumwalt at the Helm: The Reason America Used Its Secret Atomic (UA Press, 1999), 53.
*20. Hara, op cit., 126–53.
*21. Shirakumo's captain, Sataru Tenabe, would become prime minister of Japan in 1951, in great measure because of his ordeal after being rammed by Arizona and given up for dead by the Japanese navy. He heroically swam to shore with the strap of his badly burned chief engineer's life jacket clutched between his teeth, having pulled him for twelve miles despite a severe injury to his own back. See H. Shimizu, Destroyer 109 (Gei Sha Publishers, 1947).
*22. Both Smith and Coombs, though seriously wounded, survived the action. John Ford's 1942 movie, The Gauntlet of Surigao, immortalized both men. The one-armed Smith went on to write the navy's official history of World War II, The One Ocean War, while the tragic Coombs, victim of deep mental wounds, ended his days as an alcoholic blues singer in New Orleans.
*23. In 1948, Japan dedicated the Arizona Memorial, actually built above the sunken hull and inscribed with the names of the crewmen forever entombed therein as well as the names of every Japanese sailor lost in the brief Pacific War.
*24. Archives, CBS, New York.
25. I would be remiss if I did not mention that storytellers (and writers) invariably make this statement because we are compensated “by the story.”