18. The Light that Failed

Chapter Eighteen

THE LIGHT THAT FAILED

THE ARMY Operations Manual in use on December 7, 1941, makes the following pertinent observation:

From adequate and timely military intelligence the commander is able to draw logical conclusions concerning enemy lines of action. Military intelligence is thus an essential factor in the estimate of the situation and in the conduct of operations.¹

In his statement to the congressional committee, Gen. Short said,

There was a vast amount of highly significant information available in the War Department which no responsible military man could exclude from consideration in forming an estimate of the situation. The War Department was aware of the fact that I did not have this information and had already decided that I should not get this information. It was therefore their duty not only to make the estimate of the situation but to make the decision as to what military action it required, and to give me orders to go on an all-out alert instead of permitting my sabotage alert to stand. This was in line with their centralized peacetime control system.²

That Washington withheld the vital intelligence in its possession from the Hawaiian commanders was admitted by Gen. Miles. “It was not considered necessary that the commanding generals know the day-to-day diplomatic developments,” he said, “but only information which might call for military action on their part.”³

Discussing the information denied Kimmel and himself, Short said,

If this information is connected up with the knowledge gained of the definite Japanese intention to expand southward, it is clear that the War and Navy departments must have known that war was a certainty, and that they, with this exclusive intelligence, wanted to make the estimate and decision as to American military defensive action. This explains their care in ordering me not to disclose intent, alarm the population, or do anything which Japan could use as propaganda that the United States had provoked war.⁴

This policy permitted a small circle in Washington to restrict the “Magic” intelligence to themselves, to interpret it, and to issue directives to the field in the light of their evaluation. The evidence was abundant and its meaning clear. Jap spying was extensive and effective, but in the competition for information American intelligence had a great edge over the Japs. Our intelligence failure was not in acquiring the information; it was in evaluating it, and, most of all, in transmitting orders based on the known situation to the commanders who would be forced to meet the coming assault. This failure was in Washington.

The tragedy of December 7 is the measure of Washington’s failure. That failure was confessed when the Manual of Army Field Regulations was revised June 29, 1942. A section of this manual which was not in effect on December 7 reads:

In time of strained relations, the War Department must exhaust every possible source of information to keep itself and commanders of field forces advised of air, military, and naval dispositions and movements of potential enemies and of the trend of diplomatic relations.

This section, taking further cognizance of the Pearl Harbor defeat, added that field commanders must keep informed of the “possibility of a surprise attack” prior to a war declaration, and “must dispose their forces so that a sudden attack will be defeated.”⁵

Who was responsible for the failure? Gen. Miles has supplied the answer. He told the congressional committee that the Japanese code intercepts went to only nine persons: President Roosevelt, Secretary of War Stimson, Secretary of the Navy Knox, Secretary of State Hull, Chief of Staff Marshall, Chief of Naval Operations Stark, Gen. Gerow, Col. R. S. Bratton, and Miles himself.⁶

To these Capt. Alwin Kramer, the Navy’s custodian of secret material in trips to the White House, added Harry Hopkins, the President’s confidant. Kramer testified⁷ that although Hopkins was not on the official list of recipients, he regularly saw the decoded messages. Kramer’s instructions to show “Magic” to Hopkins came from Chief of Naval Operations Stark. The captain said that he even made two special trips to the naval hospital at Bethesda to deliver files of intercepts to Hopkins while the latter was a patient.

Not even the existence of the messages, Miles said, was known to Gen. Short and Adm. Kimmel in Hawaii. Miles said that Gen. Marshall’s policy was to confine knowledge that the United States was decoding Japanese communications to a very few persons in order to conceal a “military secret of incalculable value.”

“Who made the decision that these messages should not be sent to Hawaii as they were intercepted and translated, as far as the Army is concerned?” Miles was asked.

“That followed from the general policy laid down by the chief of staff that these messages and the fact of the existence of these messages or our ability to decode them should be confined to the least possible number of persons; no distribution should be made outside of Washington.”⁸

The emphasis given by Miles was to secrecy for secrecy’s sake. It was considered more important to preserve the secret that the messages were being intercepted and decoded than to make intelligent use of the information thus provided. A similar admission was made by Marshall in explaining his failure to telephone the warning of December 7 to Hawaii. As Gen. Short remarked, “There was a feeling still at that time that secrecy was more important than the time element in getting the information to us as rapidly as possible.”⁹

Miles made the astonishing statement to the congressional committee that the Army and Navy top command attached no particular significance to the intercepted messages pointing to an attack on Pearl Harbor. It was a regrettable error, he confessed, in view of what happened, but it was “perfectly normal” for the Japs to be seeking and acquiring such information at the time. Only “hindsight,” he remarked, gave the decoded messages their significance as preparations for a surprise attack.¹⁰

The naval communications intelligence division and the signal intelligence unit of the Army intercepted, decoded, and translated the messages, Miles said, and then delivered them to G-2. Col. Bratton supervised the transmission of the texts to those on the distribution list.

Gen. Miles said that the intercepts were conveyed in locked pouches to the nine persons intrusted with their contents, the copies for President Roosevelt being delivered to Maj. Gen. Edwin M. Watson, Presidential aide. After being read, the copies were returned to Army intelligence and burned, one file copy being retained.

Elaborating on his explanation of the necessity for strict secrecy in handling the code intercepts, Miles said that he was aware that in July, 1941, the Navy stopped sending summaries of the intercepts to Adm. Kimmel.

“I remember clearly,” Miles said, “that in that summer a joint policy was developed of closing in on the secret.”¹¹

Kimmel and Short were not advised of the policy, Miles said. It restricted circulation of the significant intercepted messages to a handful of high officials.

Here is conclusive evidence that Mr. Roosevelt and the little circle of Washington insiders had decreed that no one except themselves should have access to the crucial information which was coming into their hands, unknown to the Japs and to our own field commanders. In reaching that decision they could not escape the responsibility that went with it. It was their duty, and theirs alone, to evaluate the intelligence they were getting, to come to proper decisions on the basis of it, to adopt a reasonable program to defend the country and its outposts against the hostile action that was explicit in the decoded messages, and, above all, to transmit to the responsible field commanders who would be compelled to meet the coming attack such information and orders as it was absolutely essential for them to have if they were to discharge their duties.

In assuming these responsibilities, the White House circle relieved Adm. Kimmel and Gen. Short of the duty of making their own decisions. They had no information on which to do so. The commanders were as much in the dark as the public as to what was going on. They depended upon Washington for guidance and they didn’t get it.

The completeness of the failure in Washington to discharge the duties imposed by accepting “Magic” responsibility was forcibly pointed out to the congressional committee by two witnesses, Adm. Smith, chief of staff to Adm. Kimmel, and Capt. E. M. Zacharias, Navy expert on Japan. Smith said:

There was entirely too much secrecy before Pearl Harbor in all branches of government connected with national defense. I can see no reason for breaking ciphers in Washington unless some use is going to be made of the contents. Adm. Kimmel never saw those messages. I never learned of them until this committee started its inquiry. We should certainly have had this information.

I think it was generally conceded that not all the Navy’s brains were in Washington at that time. Adm. Kimmel had a competent staff, and he and his subordinates were concerned with what was happening, or what might happen, in the Pacific.¹²

Senator Ferguson, in examining Capt. Zacharias, pointed out that decoded copies of intercepted Japanese communications had been furnished “in the raw” to President Roosevelt and other high officials charged with determining the national policy, that is, without evaluation by intelligence officers. Zacharias observed that this procedure “took the responsibility away from intelligence officers.”¹³ The corollary was that Roosevelt and his amateur associates, in taking the responsibility away from specialists trained to make a proper evaluation of enemy intelligence, assumed that responsibility themselves.¹⁴ This was made clear by Zacharias in saying that the system “resulted in evaluation by persons not knowing the background of Japanese history, philosophy, and intentions.”¹⁵

These men could not read the Japanese intercepts with an undivided mind. They were preoccupied with procurement, training, and the hundred and one details of getting ready for the war into which they were rushing the country. They did not stop to take stock of the effects of their policy.

A bald judgment on the stupidity of the evaluation given the code intercepts was delivered by Maj. Gen. Cramer in one of his three secret reports to Secretary Stimson.

The most that can be said relative to the Top Secret information available in Washington is that a keener and more incisive analysis by the intelligence sections of either service of the overall picture presented by these intercepts . . . might have led to an anticipation of the possibility, at least, of an attack on Pearl Harbor at or about the time it actually occurred.¹⁶

Gen. Cramer was especially severe in discussing the shortcomings of Gen. Gerow, who was responsible for keeping Short informed. Referring to the Army Board’s criticism of Gerow, Cramer said:

But since we know in retrospect that Short was not, apparently, fully alive to an imminent outside threat and since the war plans division had received substantial information from the intelligence section, G-2, the [Army] Board argues that had this additional information been transmitted to Short it might have convinced him not only that war was imminent but that there was a real possibility of a surprise air attack on Hawaii.

In retrospect it is difficult to preceive any substantial reason for not sending Short this additional information or, in the alternative, checking to see whether Short was sufficiently alive to the danger. Gen. Gerow did neither. In my opinion Gen. Gerow showed a lack of imagination in failing to realize that had the Top Secret information been sent to Short it could not have had any other than a beneficial effect.

Gen. Gerow also showed lack of imagination in failing to make the proper deductions from the Japanese intercepts. For instance, the message of September 24 from Tokyo to Honolulu requesting reports on vessels in Pearl Harbor and dividing Pearl Harbor into various subdivisions for that purpose, coupled with the message of November 15 to Honolulu to make “the ships in harbor report” irregular, and the further message of November 29 to Honolulu asking for reports even when there were no ship movements, might readily have suggested to an imaginative person a possible Jap design on Pearl Harbor.

Failure to appreciate the significance of such messages shows a lack of the type of skill in anticipating and preparing against eventualities which we have a right to expect in an officer at the head of the war plans division. If this criticism seems harsh, it only illustrates the advisability of Gen. Gerow transmitting the Top Secret information to Short.¹⁷

Despite this castigation, coming on top of the Army Board’s finding that Gerow was guilty of signal failure in the discharge of his duties as war plans officer,¹⁸ Gerow was rewarded after Pearl Harbor with appointment as commander of the 15th Army and later was named commandant of the command and general staff school at Fort Leavenworth, the Army’s postgraduate school.

Senator Ferguson asked Gen. Short whether intelligence was not to be used for two functions: First, to determine when war might come; second, to determine where war might come. Gen. Short said that these were the duties of intelligence, but that he would add a third duty—to determine the strength that the prospective enemy might bring to bear on its adversary at the point of attack.

Ferguson then asked Short whether the five so-called warning messages which he received from the Army high command before December 7 told him when war was coming. Short replied that the message of November 27 indicated that war would be coming reasonably soon, although it left open a possibility that hostilities would be avoided.

“Did they tell you where war was coming?”

“At no time after July 8 did a War Department message directed to me ever point in any direction,” Short replied.

“Would you say that the alert of June 17, 1940, told Gen. Herron where war was coming?”

“It told him definitely that they were afraid of a trans-Pacific raid on the island of Oahu,” Short responded.

“And that was definite information?”

“Absolutely.”

“Not the date, but definite information as to where?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Did you have any such warning?” Ferguson asked.

“I did not.”¹⁹

Of all the high officials in Washington who knew the course of the Japanese-American diplomatic negotiations and were able to interpret it in the light of “Magic,” Secretary Hull alone showed some dim discernment of the outcome. On November 7 he told a cabinet meeting that relations with Japan were extremely critical and that there was “imminent possibility” that Japan might at any moment start a new military movement of conquest by force.²⁰ Again, at a meeting of the war cabinet on November 21, Hull told the President, Stimson, and Knox to be on guard lest the Japanese “stampede the hell out of our scattered forces in the Pacific.”²¹ As D-day grew closer, however, Mr. Hull’s clairvoyance diminished in proportion, so that finally, on December 7, when the intelligence of the last few days had left no question of what was coming, he professed to be shocked.²²

It is now known that it was clear to President Roosevelt on the night of December 6 that war was at hand. The story of the President’s response to the first thirteen parts of the Japanese reply to Hull’s counter-proposals of November 26 was finally told to the congressional committee on February 15, 1946, by Comdr. L. R. Schulz, assistant naval aide at the White House in the closing months of 1941.

For four years, through successive investigations, no one had ever sought out Schulz or tried to learn what went on in the White House the night before the Pearl Harbor attack. On February 12, 1946, Senator Ferguson succeeded in having Schulz called as a witness before the congressional committee. The commander was then serving on the battleship “Indiana,” which put into San Francisco and landed him in response to the congressional subpoena. Schulz boarded a plane and arrived in Washington a few hours before giving his testimony.

It developed that Capt. Kramer delivered the thirteen parts to Schulz at the White House about 9:30 P.M. on December 6. Schulz took the pouch containing the Japanese note to Roosevelt’s second-floor study, where he unlocked it with a key given him by Capt. John R. Beardall, the President’s naval aide, who had gone off duty that afternoon after telling Schulz an important message was coming from the Navy Department that Roosevelt should see at once.

The President read the message at his desk while his confidential adviser, Harry Hopkins, paced the floor. Roosevelt handed the message to Hopkins, who also read it. The President then exclaimed, “This means war!”

Hopkins agreed with Roosevelt’s statement. The President’s confidant then said, “Since war is to come at the convenience of the Japs, it is too bad we can’t strike the first blow and avert a Japanese surprise attack.”

The President nodded and said, “No, we can’t do that. We are a democracy. We are a peaceful people. We have a good record.”²³

The situation had been so managed that now America was to be attacked and perforce would be in the war. Roosevelt would then be absolved of his promises that Americans were not to be sent into foreign wars.

From Schulz’s account, it is known that Roosevelt reached for the telephone and attempted to get Adm. Stark. He was informed that the chief of operations was at the National Theater, where “The Student Prince” was playing. He decided not to have Stark paged, lest the action alarm the public. He stated that he would get the admiral later. Comdr. Schulz then left.

What went on at the White House and among the officials of the government and of the Army and Navy high command that night is a mystery which still awaits solution. The night of December 6 was the most important in the lives of the President and the men who were charged with the defense of America. It is almost inconceivable that the witnesses still alive can have forgotten what happened, but Gen. Marshall and Adm. Stark repeatedly testified under oath that they cannot remember.

These men, with everyone else who had a pipe line into Tokyo’s thinking, had absolute knowledge that war was at hand.* Yet, aware as they were that they were living in an hour of crisis, they professed not to be able to recall where they were, what they did, and whom they saw.

What Comdr. Schulz had overheard suggested that Roosevelt had the intention of calling a war conference later that night. Did he eventually bring Stark, perhaps Gen. Marshall, Hull, Secretary Knox, and Secretary Stimson to the White House?

Stark and Marshall deny it. Stark, after being informed of Schulz’s evidence that he was at the theater, professed still to be uncertain about how he had spent the evening. When he read a newspaper account of a party given by the Canadian minister the afternoon of the 6th which listed Adm. and Mrs. Stark as guests, he denied that either he or his wife had attended. He could not remember a single thing.²⁴ This crucial day in his life was a blank.

More than three months after concluding its hearings, the congressional committee reopened the record to take testimony that Stark, after returning from the theater, had received a telephone call from Roosevelt. The admiral’s recollection was refreshed to this extent by Capt. Harold D. Krick, who had been with him that night.

Krick, who was Stark’s flag lieutenant, said that when Stark returned to his quarters, he was informed that there had been a call from the White House during his absence. The admiral went to his upstairs study, where he stayed five or ten minutes.

“What, if anything, did he say to you when he came down?” Krick was asked.

“Only that conditions in the Pacific were serious—that connections with Japan were in a serious state,” Krick replied. “That was the substance of it.”

The captain said that while he did not recall Stark telling him that he had talked with Roosevelt, he had “a distinct impression” that the admiral’s conversation was with the President. He left the Stark home at 11:30 P.M.

Stark could add nothing to Krick’s information. He said he had talked frequently with Roosevelt in the days of crisis, and that there would have been nothing unusual in a conversation with the President that night. He said he could only assume that Roosevelt mentioned something to him about the Japanese note.

“I thought it was nothing that required any action from me,” he said, “and I took none. If he had said anything about the imminence of war, or anything requiring action, it would have stirred me into action.”

Stark said that he had searched his memory in an attempt to remember the conversation, but added, “I can only repeat I do not recall it.”²⁵

At 9:00 A.M. on December 7, Capt. Kramer delivered the complete fourteen-part Jap message to Stark at his office. After reading it, the admiral is supposed to have cried, “My God! This means war. I must get word to Kimmel at once.”²⁶ He did not do so. He spent two and a half hours attempting to reach Gen. Marshall, and it was not until 11:58 A.M. that they drafted the message to be sent to Short. Stark himself made no effort to communicate with Kimmel. Thus the original mystery of what he did the night of the 6th yields to the larger mystery of his inertia on the 7th.

The committee ran into the same kind of stone wall when it questioned Gen. Marshall about the night of December 6. The general said he had no recollection of having left his quarters at Fort Myer, Virginia. Mrs. Marshall, he stated, was convalescing after an illness, which, he said, made him doubly certain he had not left home.²⁷ At an earlier hearing of the committee, he said that he, or an orderly, was at home during the entire evening.²⁸ If only an orderly was there part of the time, Marshall himself was absent some of the time. In all of his accounts, however, he insisted that the first thirteen parts of Japan’s final reply were not brought to his attention on December 6.²⁹

If Marshall did not get this vital information, it was because of the strange apathy displayed by Col. (now Lieut. Gen.) Walter Bedell Smith as secretary of the general staff.

The Army Board of Inquiry which investigated Pearl Harbor makes clear in its report that Gen. Smith was indifferent or derelict in the handling of the thirteen-part Jap message the night of the 6th. Smith’s behavior was the more incomprehensible, the board emphasized, because it was utterly clear to all responsible officers of government and the services by December 6 that war was close at hand. The report states:

The record shows that from informers and other sources the War Department had complete and detailed information of Japanese intentions. Information of the evident Japanese intention to go to war in the very near future was well known to the Secretary of State, the Secretary of War, the chief of staff of the Army, the Secretary of the Navy, and the chief of naval operations. It was not a question of fact; it was only a question of time. The next few days would see the end of peace and the beginning of war.

When decoded Jap messages indicating immediate hostilities “reached G-2 of the War Department not later than 9 o’clock the evening of Dec. 6,” the report further states, it was Smith in whose hands they were placed. This intercepted information was transmitted at once to Smith by Col. Bratton with a warning as to its extreme importance. What did Smith do? He did nothing.

“Whatever was the reason of Col. Smith for not conveying this message to Gen. Marshall on the night of Dec. 6, it was unfortunate,” the report wryly remarks. “This information could have been sent to Gen. Short on the afternoon (Honolulu time) of Dec. 6.” Had that been done, Short and Kimmel, would have had clear warning of the probability of impending attack from twelve to eighteen hours in advance of the Jap carrier assault. They would have been able to go on a full alert and to make every possible preparation for defense. Instead, they were left in the dark.

The Army Board is unequivocal on this point. Its report states:

Action [by the War Department], would have been sufficient to have alerted the Hawaiian Department. It was in possession of the information which was the last clear chance to use the means available to meet an attack. It had the background of the full development of the Japanese preparation for war and its probable date.³⁰

But nothing was done.

In the light of this disastrous failure, Gen. Smith’s remarks before the British Royal Service Institution on October 10, 1945, are of more than passing curiosity. Smith said that American headquarters were “a bit short on planning” and declared that if he were organizing another headquarters again he would get “my intelligence officers and my planners from the British War Office, if they would let me have them.”³¹ The Army report concurred in by three general officers had kind words for the intelligence section which Smith disparaged in his speech.

“Within the scope of its activities,” the report said, “this division performed well. It gathered much valuable and vital data.”³²

Four years later Smith is found to have been installed in one of the top jobs of the Army as Gen. Eisenhower’s chief of staff, and given the further distinction of being assigned to a diplomatic post requiring the highest degree of judgment, tact, and ability—ambassador to Russia. Col. Bratton and a colleague, Col. Otis T. Sadtler, also on duty in the War Department in December, 1941, who displayed the same ability as Bratton to recognize a hawk from a handsaw in those crucial days, still are colonels in minor posts despite the fact that the Army Board singled them out for “interest and aggressiveness in attempting to have something done.”³³ Their conduct stands in marked contrast to that of Smith, but he has been given the promotions while they were consigned to oblivion.

There are mysteries here which shout for clarification. Was Smith promoted because he withheld the warning until the blow had fallen? The war hawks of the Roosevelt administration wanted a Pearl Harbor or something very much like it to push this country into war. “It was desired,” said they, “that the Japanese be permitted to commit the first overt act.” Smith’s conduct almost automatically insured the commission of the act.

Why were Colonels Bratton and Sadtler denied advancement when they had so faithfully and intelligently recognized their responsibilities and attempted to execute their duties? Were they on the outside, while Smith and the others later so greatly favored were the insiders in a calculated plan to invite the attack that meant war?

The tender questioning of Secretary Hull before the congressional committee failed to dispel the murk that overhung the events of the night of December 6. Testimony was incontrovertible that the thirteen-part Jap message was delivered that evening to the duty officer of the State Department, and it is inconceivable that the contents would not have been communicated to Hull at once. It was established by Capt. Kramer that the thirteen parts were delivered the night of the 6th to Secretary Knox, who “made a phone call or two, presumably including one to Secretary Hull,”³⁴ and then told Kramer to bring the Japanese note to the State Department at 10:00 A.M. the next day.

Knox is dead and Stimson, after standing up to the routine of office for five years, suddenly discovered himself ill when the congressional committee began its hearings. Not a single spoken question was addressed to him, although he was without doubt one of the most important living witnesses.

The most tantalizing suggestion of what might have gone on the night of December 6 is supplied by witnesses who talked to Knox shortly after the attack upon Pearl Harbor. Adm. Kimmel related that when Knox arrived in Hawaii the week after the attack, the first question he asked was whether Kimmel had received “our” dispatch the night before the attack.

Kimmel told Knox he had not. He then quoted Knox as saying, “Well, we sent you one—I’m sure we sent one to the commander of the Asiatic fleet [Adm. Hart].” Kimmel said he checked his files but found no record of any dispatch from Knox the night of December 6.

“If such a message ever was originated, it must have bogged down in the Navy Department,” Kimmel suggested.³⁵

Adm. Smith corroborated the story that Knox had inquired of Kimmel and his chief subordinates whether they had received the message on the night of the 6th. When told that no such message was received, Knox said, according to Smith, “That’s strange. I know the message went to Adm. Hart and I thought it was sent to Hawaii.” Smith said that he had since learned that no such warning was received by Adm. Hart.³⁶

The committee subsequently questioned Rear Adm. Frank M. Beatty, naval aide to Knox in 1941, and Maj. John H. Dillon, confidential civilian assistant to Knox in 1941, and later Marine Corps aide to the Secretary. Beatty said that he had the “impression” in late December, 1941, that there was a “midnight warning” on December 6, but that he may have confused it with the belated warning sent to Hawaii at noon the following day by Chief of Staff Marshall. Dillon gave similar testimony about the “lost” message.³⁷

The best evidence would seem to be that of Knox himself. When his recollection of events was fresh just after the attack, he made a report on Pearl Harbor to President Roosevelt on December 15, 1941. In this report Knox twice mentioned the “midnight warning” of the 6th,³⁸ but whereas he had implied to Kimmel and Smith that it had been transmitted by the Navy, he stated in the report that it was a “message of warning sent from the War Department on Saturday night at midnight, before the attack,” and that it had been directed to Gen. Short. There is no evidence that Roosevelt disputed that there was such a message.

If the warning were sent on December 6, it was undoubtedly drafted and dispatched after consultation among all of the leaders of the administration and the Army and Navy high command—Roosevelt, Hull, Stimson, Knox, Stark, and Marshall—but none still available as a witness will admit it ever existed. So little light, after three months of investigation, was the congressional committee able to shed on one of the prime mysteries of Pearl Harbor.

So events drifted toward doomsday. The next morning in Washington there still was time to have dispatched a clear warning to Hawaii. At 9 o’clock on December 7, Col. Bratton, apparently despairing of getting any action from Col. Smith, attempted himself to reach Gen. Marshall and inform him of the all-important intercepted Jap message, now complete in all fourteen parts, announcing that relations between Japan and the United States were terminated.³⁹ “It was well known that Japan’s entry into all wars of the past had been characterized by the first overt act of war coming simultaneously with the declaration.”⁴⁰

The minority report of the Joint Congressional Committee reinforces this view:

Judging by the military and naval history of Japan, high authorities in Washington and the commanders in Hawaii had good grounds for expecting that in starting war the Japanese government would make a surprise attack on the United States.

There is no evidence in the record before the committee that President Roosevelt, Secretary Hull, Secretary Stimson, and/or Secretary Knox expected at any time prior to Dec. 7 a formal declaration of war on the United States by Japan in case the diplomatic negotiations came to a break. Indeed, all the evidence bearing on expectations in Washington as to Japan’s probable methods of making war point to the belief of the administration that Japan would begin with a surprise attack.

For example, Secretary Hull on Nov. 25 and Nov. 28 at a meeting of “high officials,” when he stated that the matter of safeguarding our national security was in the hands of the Army and Navy, “expressed his judgment that any plans for our military defense would include the assumption that the Japanese might make the element of surprise a central point in their strategy, and also might attack at various points simultaneously with a view to demoralizing efforts of defense and of coordination for purposes thereof” (Peace and War, 1943, p. 144).

Speaking to Ambassador Halifax on Nov. 29, Secretary Hull said that it would be a—

“serious mistake . . . to make plans of resistance without including the possibility that Japan may move suddenly and with every possible element of surprise . . . that the Japanese recognize that their course of unlimited conquest . . . is a desperate gamble and requires the utmost boldness and risk.” (Peace and War, 1943, pp. 144-145).

Ambassador Grew reported to Hull on Nov. 3—

“Japan may resort with dangerous and dramatic suddenness to measures which might make inevitable war with the United States” (Peace and War, p. 775) .⁴¹

But the commanders in Hawaii did not have the information that war was at hand. Washington did. The duty of Washington to warn the Pacific outposts was therefore clear and immediate.

When Hull, Stimson, and Knox gathered at 10:30 in the office of the Secretary of State, they had the complete message.⁴² They knew what it meant. Stimson later admitted he was “not surprised” that the beginning of hostilities should accompany the break of relations.⁴³ But none of the three secretaries did anything.

Stimson, on December 7, noted in his diary that “everything in ‘Magic’ indicated that they [the Japanese] had been keeping the time back until now in order to accomplish something hanging in the air.” What was hanging in the air was the Japanese assault upon Oahu. “Hull,” said Stimson, “is very certain that the Japs are planning some deviltry and we are all wondering where the blow will strike.”

There is good reason to believe that Stimson knew not only that war was coming, but that he knew that it would break out at Pearl Harbor. Preparing for the State Department meeting on the morning of the 7th, he ordered on the night of the 6th that he be supplied at the conference with the following information: “Compilation of men-of-war in Far East: British, American, Japanese, Dutch, Russian; also compilation of American men-of-war in Pacific fleet, with locations, with a list of American men-of-war in the Atlantic without locations.”*⁴⁴

Admirals Stark and Ingersoll and Secretary Knox were consulted about this request. Knox directed that the information be compiled and delivered before 10 o’clock Sunday, December 7.⁴⁵ This was done. The compilation showed that practically all the major units of the Pacific fleet were in Pearl Harbor.

Representative Keefe observed:⁴⁶

At this time the information available in Washington showed that war was only hours away. Yet the two secretaries and the high command made no effort to direct any change in the dispositions of the fleet as shown in the Navy Department summary. They took no steps to furnish Adm. Kimmel the information which they possessed as to the imminence of war. Consequently they deprived him of any chance to alter his dispositions in the light of that information. I conclude that Secretaries Stimson and Knox and the high command in Washington knew that the major units of the fleet were in Pearl Harbor on December 6-7, 1941, and were satisfied with that situation.

Why were they satisfied? Because they knew that an attack upon the fleet would at last produce the long-sought overt act?

Roosevelt also knew that a break in relations meant the opening act of war. The night before, with all but one part of the final Japanese note before him, he had said, “This means war!” Now, on the morning of December 7, at 10:00 A.M., the final section was delivered to him in his bedroom by Adm. Beardall. The President looked up and said, “It looks as if the Japanese are going to break off relations.”⁴⁷ The message plainly told the President that Japan was announcing the break. The President knew that that meant a simultaneous act of war. Indeed, when Beardall delivered intercepted messages to him on December 4 and 5, the President had turned to him and asked:

“When do you think it will happen?”

“Most any time,” Beardall replied.⁴⁸

Col. Bratton, with the fourteen-part message now complete, also knew. He frantically called Gen. Marshall at his home, only to learn from an orderly that the chief of staff had picked that morning of all mornings to vanish on a leisurely two and a half-hour horseback ride.

Between 9:00 and 9:30, the “pilot” message instructing Nomura and Kurusu to hand in the fourteen-part note to Hull at 1:00 P.M., was delivered to Bratton.

“When I saw the message,” he told the congressional committee, “I dropped everything, as it meant to me that Japan planned to attack the United States at some point at or near 1 o’clock that day.”⁴⁹

Marshall did not reach his office until 11:25. The pilot message lay in the War Department for two hours and a half before any warning was dispatched to Hawaii—a warning so delayed that it might just as well have never been sent.

Two Navy officers at least partially apprehended the Japanese intention even before seeing the pilot message. They were Adm. Wilkinson and Capt. McCollum. Together they went, at about 9:15, to the office of Adm. Stark with the complete fourteen-part note.

“I pointed out to Adm. Stark the seriousness of the language,” Wilkinson related, “and advised that the Pacific fleet be notified.”

Stark tried to reach Marshall, Wilkinson said, but the general was still out on his canter, so Stark did nothing. Wilkinson left Stark’s office, returning between 10:30 and 10:40. By this time the 1:00 P.M. message was in Stark’s hands. Wilkinson said that it “indicated that the Japs planned action sooner than we expected.”⁵⁰ McCollum said that Capt. Kramer had prepared a chart showing the relative times in each overseas area, in comparison to Tokyo and Washington times, and that he gave it to the chief of operations.⁵¹ A general discussion of the time factor followed, but Stark still did nothing.

A report made to Secretary Stimson on November 25, 1944, by Maj. Gen. Cramer asserted that Kramer had been even more explicit. The report stated:

Capt. Safford testified that Comdr. Kramer told him in 1943 that when he submitted . . . the message to the Jap ambassadors to present the Japanese reply at 1:00 P.M. to Secretary Knox, he sent along with it a note saying in effect, “This means a surprise attack at Pearl Harbor today and possibly a midnight attack on Manila.”⁵²

Kramer’s report supposedly was in the hands of Knox at approximately 10:00 A.M., but the Secretary of the Navy failed to act, although in his secret report to President Roosevelt on December 15, 1941, he stated that the meaning of the 1 o’clock deadline was clearly known to the leaders of the administration. Knox said in this report:

Neither Short nor Kimmel, at the time of the attack, had any knowledge of the plain intimations of some surprise move, made clear in Washington, through the interception of Japanese instructions to Nomura, in which a surprise move of some kind was clearly indicated by the insistence upon the precise time of Nomura’s reply to Hull, at 1 o’clock on Sunday.⁵³

Although Knox immediately after the attack thus confessed that the meaning of the 1:00 P.M. delivery was clear, Kramer himself later denied that he had ever pointed out the significance of the time to Knox. He told the congressional committee that the only comment he made on the meaning of the 1:00 P.M. message was in telling Capt. McCollum and a State Department secretary that the message indicated a move toward Thailand and the Malay Peninsula.⁵⁴ It developed, however, that extraordinary pressure had been put on Kramer by the Navy Department to induce him to deny that the original estimate credited to him was ever submitted to Knox.⁵⁵

At 11:25 A.M., when Marshall finally wandered into his office, everyone in Washington who had knowledge of “Magic” was sitting around waiting for an attack known to be coming in two more hours, but not a soul was doing anything about it.⁵⁶ Roosevelt and Harry Hopkins were shortly to closet themselves in the oval study of the White House, with all incoming telephone calls shut off. The tableau could not have been more innocent—Roosevelt with his stamp collection laid out before him, Hopkins lounging in sweater and slacks on a couch, toying with Fala, the White House Scottie.

Marshall’s blunder in transmitting his last-minute warning to Hawaii by only one medium, and that the slowest available, by a round-about route, and without even assigning it a priority, was assayed by Gen. Short as follows:

It is standard staff procedure and doctrine that all important or emergency messages should be sent by all available means of communication, which in this case would have included the scrambler telephones which had been frequently used between the War Department and Fort Shafter. Col. Phillips [Short’s chief of staff] and Gen. Marshall did confer by scrambler phone later in the day on December 7. If security would be violated by sending the information by phone, then the War Department should have issued the necessary alert orders which they would have known that I would have issued at once if I had the information which they possessed.⁵⁷

Short then cited the War Department field manual on signal communication in support of his position:

Choice of the means employed in each instance depends on the situation. Exclusive reliance upon any one means is unwise because special and unforeseen circumstances may render that means inoperative when most needed. Plans of all commanders will make advance provision for prompt employment of effective and reliable alternate means; and the simultaneous operation of several means will minimize the ill effects of complete interruption in any one.⁵⁸

The Army Board criticized Marshall severely for his handling of the December 7 message. Despite Marshall’s excuse that he feared “a leak” if he used the scrambler phone to reach Short, messages by scrambler phone were made frequently between Hawaii and Washington later in the day. Col. Fielder, Short’s G-2, twice talked to Washington by this means, and himself received a call from Washington on the same phone.⁵⁹ Col. Phillips, as mentioned, communicated with Marshall by scrambler phone while the attack was in progress.

The Army Board said:

It is important to observe that only one means of communication was selected by Washington. That decision violated all rules requiring the use of multiple means of communication in emergency. In addition to the War Department telephone, there also existed the FBI radio, which was assigned a special frequency between Washington and Hawaii and over which it took 20 minutes to send a coded message from Hawaii to Washington or vice versa. . . . We find no justification for a failure to send this message by multiple secret means either through the Navy radio or FBI radio or the scrambler telephone or all three.⁶⁰

Senator Ferguson developed in examining Short that the War Department was guilty of the same laxity that characterized the handling of its December 7 warning to Hawaii in alerting American forces at the Panama Canal. If the Canal, instead of Pearl Harbor, had been the objective of the Jap attack, the results might have been equally disastrous.

On December 5 Gen. Miles drafted a message to Gen. Frank M. Andrews, commander of the Panama defenses, which stated, “U.S.–Japanese relations strained. Will inform you if and when severance of diplomatic relations imminent.” Miles failed to mark the message with a priority, so that in the normal handling of Army communications it was transmitted after all priority or urgent messages had been sent. This dispatch actually left Washington two days later, on December 7, after the fourteen-part Jap note and the 1:00 P.M. pilot message left no question of strained relations.⁶¹ In the Japanese note it was plainly stated relations were broken off, and the pilot message set the hour for the first shot of the war.

Not until December 9, the Tuesday following the Sunday of the Oahu attack, did the War Department seek to ascertain why Marshall’s December 7 warning went astray. When it finally acted, it provided a fine example of locking up the stable after the horse had been stolen. Whereas the vital December 7 message was not even stamped “Priority,” the check-up dispatch was marked “Extra Urgent.”⁶²

Marshall’s explanation that he refrained from using the scrambler telephone for fear of causing “a leak that would embarrass the State Department” is illogical for at least two reasons. The first is that if the Japs had overheard him talking to Short, they would have been left with the same two alternatives they already had in the absence of such a conversation; either to carry through the attack as planned, or to abandon it. The second is that, despite Roosevelt’s caution against committing any overt act, the War Department on November 27 had issued orders which, if carried out before December 7, would almost certainly have led to hostilities.

Intelligence had heard reports of a considerable concentration of Japanese warships at Jaluit in the Marshall Islands. These ships and submarines were, in fact, part of Adm. Shimizu’s advance expeditionary force which was to support the Pearl Harbor attack. Adm. Hart had suggested a reconnaissance over Jaluit to verify the reports that there was a Jap concentration there.⁶³ Gen. Arnold presented orders for the flight, which Secretary Stimson promptly approved.⁶⁴ Short was notified by radiogram of the project. He said,

The War Department had ordered me to equip two B-24 airplanes for a special photographic reconnaissance mission over Truk and Jaluit, with particular attention to the location of naval vessels, submarines, airfields, airplanes, barracks, and camps. If attacked, the crews were directed to use all means in their power for self-preservation. These planes were to be sent to Honolulu unarmed, but I was directed to insure that both were “fully equipped with gun ammunition upon departure.” The first of these two planes did not arrive in Hawaii until December 5. Presumably, had the War Department in the meantime decided that Hawaii was a zone of danger, they would have armed the plane before sending it to me. Gen. Martin wired back a request that the second B-24 bring necessary equipment other than the guns and ammunition which we could supply.⁶⁵

“How could the use of a telephone be considered an overt act in comparison with this flight?” Senator Ferguson asked Marshall.

“It was a matter of judgment,” Marshall replied.⁶⁶

Gen. Short was asked by Representative Keefe how long it took to get a message through normally from Honolulu to Washington by scrambler telephone.

“The times I used it,” Short said, “I would say ten or fifteen minutes. On the morning of the attack, along about 8:15, I directed Col. Phillips to call Gen. Marshall because I was going to my field command post. I believe that he got the connection at 8:22. I think it took seven minutes.”

By way of emphasizing that seven minutes is somewhat quicker than seven hours, Keefe asked, “Do I understand that that morning, right while the attack was going on, Col. Phillips called Gen. Marshall on the scrambler telephone and got a connection in about seven minutes?”

“And told him,” Short asserted, “if he would listen, he could hear the bombs.”

Keefe also observed that he had been advised by J. Edgar Hoover that Robert L. Shivers, the FBI agent in charge at Hawaii, reached him in New York by direct telephone connection in just a few minutes while the attack was going on. Hoover, Keefe said, told him the connection was so clear that over the telephone he could hear the explosion of bombs.

“Well, if you could get the telephone message while this attack was going on, in just a few minutes,” Keefe said, “there wouldn’t be any reason why the line was not clear so a message could come from the other way, from Washington to Honolulu?”

“There wouldn’t appear to be,” Short said.

Keefe then questioned Short about other means of communication between Washington and Hawaii. Short said that in addition to the Army 10-kilowatt station, the Navy had a 25-kilowatt station, the FBI had a station of about equal power, and there were also commercial radio and commercial cable. He said that the Army station was not functioning well on the morning of the attack.

“Well, do you know about the Navy or the FBI?”

“I am sure that they could have gotten through.”

Keefe then recalled that in the conference in Marshall’s office preceding the dispatch of the warning to Short, Adm. Stark offered the use of the Navy radio, but that it was refused. Short said:

The War Department, if not conscious at that time that more than one means of communication could be used, became fully conscious at the time they issued the order to relieve me. I got that order three different ways within thirty to forty minutes. I received a radiogram first. Ten or fifteen minutes later Gen. Emmons got off of a plane with a printed order. Fifteen or twenty minutes later the secretary of the general staff called Col. Phillips to ask if I had received the order.

Keefe said, “So you got it in—”

“Three different ways,” Short interjected.

“—in three different ways?”

“Yes.”

“To make sure that you got it?”

“Yes, sir.”⁶⁷

Keefe then brought up the hypothetical question of whether, if Short had been warned by Washington some time before the attack, he would have been awakened in order to act on the information. Short responded that he could have been reached within a minute or two.

“Well,” Keefe said, “the story has gone around the country that you were all drunk out there that night; that you were drunk and that Kimmel was drunk and everybody else was drunk, and that everybody was asleep out there at Pearl Harbor, sleeping off a jag. That is the way it has been told out around the country. Now, is there any truth in that, Gen. Short?”

“There is absolutely no truth in it.”⁶⁸

Short told Keefe that better radar equipment and proper interpretation of the showing on the radar screen that a large flight of planes was approaching would have made little difference in the outcome of the attack. “What we needed,” he said, “was information from Washington giving us time to go into an alert.”

“You could have done a pretty good job with the stuff you had out there if you had been on the alert and had been expecting an attack?” Keefe inquired.

“Yes, sir.”

“And the slow torpedo planes that came in there and did most of the damage to the battleships in the harbor were pretty easy targets for your fast fighters, were they not?”

“If you knew where they were coming from, they would have been very easy.”

“Now,” continued Keefe, “all during this war the element of surprise has been a thing that has been involved in almost everything that has been done on both sides out there in the Pacific, isn’t that true?”

“All over the world,” Short agreed. “It is always the most important element.”

“It is always the attempt on the part of a commander to involve his adversary in surprise, isn’t that true?”

“That is correct.”

“And as far as an air attack itself is concerned,” Keefe went on, “our experience has been that regardless of the fact whether an attack is known or not, a lot of these planes—some of them, at least—get through and cause damage, isn’t that true?”

“That is correct.”

“That was true at Okinawa, was it not?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Now, when we think of the exploits at Midway and the magnificent job that our Navy did in sinking the Jap navy, it was possible because of intelligence, was it not, and the fact that our Navy was informed and had the facts and knew what to do?”

“That is correct.”

“And when they shot down Adm. Yamamoto, that was possible because they got an intercept which put them on notice and gave them some information?”

“That is correct. Gen. Marshall and Adm. Wilkinson have pointed out that the security of our cryptanalytic ability was risked for the slight, temporary exultation of shooting down Yamamoto’s plane. Surely, then, supplying the data to me and to Adm. Kimmel would not have been inconceivably risky.”

“I refer to these two incidents,” said Keefe, “because it correctly illustrates the idea that intelligence is necessary and fundamental, is it not?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And when intelligence fails, you are likely to have serious results?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Now, your position in this case is that intelligence, so far as Washington was concerned, failed?”

“A hundred per cent.”

“And thus Pearl Harbor occurred. Is that your defense?”

“Yes, sir.”⁶⁹

* “The evidence indicated that the first thirteen parts were read on the evening of Dec. 6 by, particularly, the President, Mr. Harry Hopkins, Secretary Knox, Adm. Ingersoll, Adm. Turner, Adm. Wilkinson, Adm. Beardall, Gen. Miles, Capt. Kramer, and Col. Bratton.

“Owing to the practice of making decisions by war cabinets, councils, joint committees, and individuals, official responsibility of each man was so blurred that each man became indifferent to his own individual responsibility. A good example of this is Adm. Turner’s assumption that so long as Adm. Wilkinson, Adm. Ingersoll, and Secretary Knox had seen the thirteen-part message, ‘I did not believe it was my function to take any action.’ No one took action that night; all waited for the next day” (Min., p. 34).

* Italics inserted.