PEARL HARBOR FROM AIEA HEIGHTS, DECEMBER 7, 1941

PEARL HARBOR FROM AIEA HEIGHTS TODAY

Hawaii is one of those places that no matter where you turn your head, there is stunning natural beauty. Take a drive along H-1 and get off on one of the scenic highways that meander across the island of Oahu and you’ll suddenly find yourself in a world of stunning vistas and breathtaking overlooks. And Honolulu has one of the most extraordinary skylines in the world, set against an ocean backdrop with Diamond Head looming over it in the distance.

Couple that natural beauty with a climate that encourages relaxation and even sloth and you begin to understand why on that beautiful Sunday morning of December 7, 1941, the sailors and airmen posted on the island felt themselves the luckiest in the service.

The sailors especially must have felt themselves blessed. The Pacific Fleet was usually based in San Diego or some other west coast facility and only made it to Hawaii once a year during training cruises. But in April of 1941, the Empire of Japan was on the move and FDR made the controversial decision to relocate the fleet to Pearl. The Navy was extremely unhappy. Not only were the harbor’s dock facilities inadequate to service the Fleet’s 8 battleships but any Midshipman could tell just by looking at a map what a trap the harbor was in case of attack. Narrow and shallow with just one channel that led to the open ocean, the Navy felt that the fleet was a sitting duck – if someone could figure out how to attack it. But Roosevelt wanted to send a message to the Japanese that he was serious about blocking their plans for total East Asian hegemony.

But that didn’t matter to the thousands of ordinary seamen, airmen, their families, wives or their sweethearts on that lovely December morning. Many had spent the previous Saturday night as they normally did, attending parties or going to one of the many nightclubs that catered to servicemen in Honolulu. Peacetime military life was stupefyingly boring, filled with mind numbing routine and little chance of promotion. Kicking up one’s heels on Saturday night was about the only fun many of them had.

We know now that the Japanese never planned to attack Pearl Harbor without a formal declaration of war. But a communications snafu (gratefully intercepted by our diplomatic code breakers) meant that the timing of the attack had been blown. As it turned out, the Japanese diplomats didn’t make it to Secretary of State Cordell Hull’s office until after the attack was well underway. The attack therefore took place without any official warning although everyone in the government knew that war was imminent. The previous evening, Roosevelt sent a personal message to the Emperor of Japan pleading for peace. That message too never made it to its intended audience. Communications broke down between Washington and our embassy in Tokyo, delaying its transmission and preventing Ambassador Grew from delivering it.

Despite intercepting the message to the Japanese embassy in Washington that clearly indicated an attack was forthcoming, the military still didn’t know where the blow would fall. Some thought the Philippines would be the target (indeed, the Japanese bombed the Philippines on that day as well) while others thought Indochina was the objective. It did not occur to war planners in Washington that the Japanese would be audacious enough to steam thousands of miles across the Pacific ocean with a huge fleet of 56 ships and subs, not being detected, and creep up to within striking distance of the fleet.

The logistics of such an operation was only one reason American planners didn’t think Pearl could possibly be a target. It was also a fact that the harbor was too shallow for a torpedo plane attack, the preferred method of attacking surface ships at that time. The torpedoes would hit the bottom of the harbor before they had a chance to home in on their targets. The Japanese got around this problem by ingeniously attaching fins of wood along the axis of the torpedo that gave it enough buoyancy to prevent it from hitting bottom. They were used with deadly effect during the attacks.

Admiral Yamamoto’s huge gamble in attacking Pearl was justified by the recognition of the Navy that they could not long hold back the American Pacific Fleet once war broke out. In a long war, America would have a decisive advantage. Their only hope was to knock out the fleet in the first hours of the war and attack western possessions along the entire east Asian pacific rim, hoping to acquire enough raw materials and oil to prosecute a war that they hoped would lead to stalemate by 1943 and peace negotiations.

But on that morning, with American going about their normal Sunday routines – getting ready for church, enjoying time with their families – the Japanese fleet was targeting the symbol of American power in the Pacific. As Yamamoto’s ships came within 275 miles of Pearl, they launched a first wave of 183 bombers and fighters in the pre dawn darkness. On Oahu, the Army’s Opana Point radar station picked up the formation of Japanese planes but were told not to worry because a formation of 6 B-17’s were expected that morning and coming from the same direction. This mistake sealed the fate of our air force whose planes were lined up wingtip to wingtip on 3 separate air fields to prevent sabotage.

The result we know. Even today the figures elicit shock. Almost all of the 188 American aircraft were destroyed, including an astonishing 155 on the ground. The surprise was total and absolute. Our combined Army-Navy-Marine air forces could muster only 35 sorties during the entire attack. Little wonder bitter American sailors being strafed in the water at will by Japanese Zeroes cursed our Air Force for dereliction. For weeks after the attack, MP’s in Honolulu were kept busy as vicious fights broke out between airmen and sailors in bars and nightclubs.

Japanese losses were 29 planes (out of 340 engaged), 55 airmen – most of those in the second wave attacks that targeted ships already burning. And in wreaking havoc on the battleships of the Pacific Fleet, the Japanese gained a fleeting and, as it turned out, illusory victory. While they managed to sink 5 of our front line battleships and 13 smaller ships, damaging dozens more, by pure luck the three American aircraft carriers in the fleet had been sent out on patrol only 48 hours prior to the attack. Missing the carriers proved to be decisive because less than 7 months later at the battle of Midway, those three carriers were to deliver a massive blow against a Japanese invasion force and turn the tide to the American side for good.

In the meantime, FDR had to deal with the fact that for all practical purposes, the west coast of the United States was defenseless. He decided to downplay the extent of the damage to the fleet. In fact, it wasn’t until after the first investigation into what went wrong at Pearl had concluded its deliberations in 1943 that the American people were finally told the extent of the catastrophe. Nearly 2500 Americans lost their lives as opposed to the original false figure of 400 given by the government. The War Department also downplayed the number of ships that were damaged or sunk. In this case, the truth was just too horrible to tell.

It has become popular in the last 20 years to posit conspiracy theories regarding FDR’s foreknowledge of the Pearl Harbor Attack. Most recently, Robert Stinnet in his book Day of Deceit used FOIA requests and examined nearly 200,000 documents related to intelligence about the attack, coming to the conclusion that Roosevelt had to have known that Hawaii was the target and let the attack happen in order to bring the US into the war against not Japan but Hitler!

An immediate problem with this conspiracy theory is that there was absolutely no guarantee that Germany would declare war on America, thus foiling FDR’s “plan” to assist the British. And the idea that the US would declare war on Germany was very controversial at the time. The feeling in Congress and much of the nation was “one war at a time.” There was no hue and cry to go to war against Germany despite the attack on Pearl Harbor. Roosevelt’s “Date of Infamy” speech on December 8th never mentioned Germany, the British, Europe, or gave any hint that we planned to add the Nazis to our list of enemies.

Hitler, God bless him, solved our problem for us by, for the first time in his life, honoring his word and declaring war on America in accordance with the technical requirements of the Tri-Partite Pact on December 11.

This little nugget of information always seems to escape the conspiracy theorists who want us to believe that FDR allowed the Japanese to attack and nearly destroy the Pacific Fleet. The idea is so stupid on its face – that any American politician or military commander would stand still while the primary defense for the west coast of the United States was knocked out – that is easy to see why most historians dismiss the theory as total rubbish.

But what about all that intelligence? As it turns out, Stinnett especially either deliberately (or out of ignorance) misread much of what he was reading. Pearl Harbor historian and former cryptologist Phillip Jacobsen explains:

The book misleads the uninitiated reader by lumping the relatively simple JN-25A code and cipher system that took 14 months to read with the much more complicated JN-25B system together as “Code Book D.” Thus, the final successes of JN-25A are imputed to JN-25B even though the first significant reported decrypt of the latter much more complicated code and cipher system was in early 1942. The book omits the fact that the November and December 1941 raw intercepted messages from Corregidor, Guam and Hawaii on which so much is relied were actually enroute to Washington DC by ship and rail on 7 December 1941 and thus were not decrypted until 1945-46 and the most promising of those decrypts were translated in 1946-47 and are available in the National Archives today. Also not discussed is the fact that Station Hypo in Hawaii under Rochefort was only permitted to work on the unproductive Admiral’s code system before Pearl Harbor and was not given the go ahead to work on JN-25B until a week or so after the attack. It is claimed that unkown censors are holding back vital decrypts in the National Archives or elsewhere because certain Station Message Serial (SMS) numbers and original versions of messages appearing on Japanese naval broadcasts are missing. However, the so called “missing” messages can be attributed to the fact that less than 60 percent of Japanese naval messages were intercepted and many were originally sent by land-line, cable or visual means when tied up at docks or anchored in a Japanese harbor.

Knowing an attack was imminent is not the same as knowing where it will happen. Sound familiar? Think of the summer of 2001 and perhaps now you see why the 9/11 conspiracists are as batty as Sinnett.

It was 65 years ago today. Every year, the ranks of veterans who lived through that horrific day when the water caught fire and the harbor was choked with the bodies of the living and the dead, grows thinner. They are old men now. Their memories are still tinged with the sadness that comes from the realization that soon, they will all be gone and, like other landmarks in American history such as Gettysburg and Antietam, it will be up to the rest of us to keep the remembrances alive and never, ever forget what happened on that impossibly beautiful Sunday morning when the world turned upside down and changed all of us forever.

ON THE RIGHT, USS ARIZONA AFTER A BOMB PENETRATED TWO DECKS AND EXPLODED IN THE FORWARD MAGAZINE, KILLING MORE THAN 1100 OF HER CREW - SOME OF WHOM LIVED FOR UP TO 10 DAYS AFTER THE ATTACK TRAPPED IN THE SHIP’S SUPERSTRUCTURE.

ON THE LEFT IS THE USS WEST VIRGINIA, BURNING AS A RESULT OF 7 TORPEDO HITS.