Pearl Harbor (7 page)

 

 

A
t 9:30 p.m. on December 6, Lieutenant Lester Schulz arrived at the White House with a locked pouch containing a top-secret document. The pouch contained thirteen parts of the fourteen-part Japanese reply to the hard-line U.S. proposal that Hull had presented to Japan in November. The messages had been sent from Tokyo to the Japanese Embassy in Washington, but had been intercepted by American intelligence. The United States had cracked the Japanese diplomatic code, nicknamed “Purple,” in August 1940. American officials had been reading the messages before the diplomats received them, which meant that Roosevelt had the advantage of knowing what the Japanese government was doing and saying for the sixteen months before Pearl Harbor. They had not, however, cracked the military code,
so while the U.S. government was aware of Japan's diplomatic maneuvering, it remained in the dark about the specific movements of Tokyo's navy.

As Hopkins paced back and forth, Roosevelt read the fifteen typewritten pages carefully for about ten minutes. Most of the document outlined Japan's peaceful intentions in the region and laid blame for the rising tensions on the United States. There was still a critical fourteenth part missing, but the final section of this document announced there was no chance of reaching a diplomatic settlement with the United States “because of American attitudes.” As he finished, FDR turned to his trusted adviser. “This means war,” he said.

Despite his dramatic comment, FDR most likely did not believe that the message signaled an imminent threat to American bases in the Pacific. It meant that war would come sooner than expected, and it would likely be precipitated by a Japanese attack on British, or possibly Dutch, possessions somewhere in the region.

Hopkins agreed and suggested to FDR that perhaps the United States should launch a preemptive strike. “Since war was undoubtedly going to come at the convenience of the Japanese,” Hopkins noted, “it was too bad that we could not strike the first blow and prevent any sort of surprise.” Roosevelt, like Lincoln on the eve of the Civil War, understood the political appeal of having the enemy fire the first shot. “No,” he said, “we can't do that. We are a democracy and a peaceful people.” He raised his voice and said, “But we have a good record.” Schulz, who waited in the study until the president finished reading the document, understood Roosevelt's comments to mean that the United States would have to wait. “The impression that I got was that we would have to stand on that record, we could not make the first overt move. We would have to wait until it came.”
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Roosevelt wanted to alert the navy as quickly as possible. It was important that the navy be on alert, prepared for a possible Japanese move. He tried to reach Admiral Stark, who was attending a revival of Sigmund Romberg's
Student Prince
. Fearing that summoning the admiral
from a public theater might cause “undue alarm,” Roosevelt waited until shortly before midnight to pass along the warning.

Roosevelt may have been alarmed by the message, but his foreign policy advisers did not share his concern. Stark, who read the message after returning home from the theater, later testified before the Navy Court of Inquiry that he, too, was convinced that war was inevitable. But he believed that the commanders in Hawaii had already been sufficiently warned about the prospect of hostilities, and he saw nothing in the thirteen-part message that suggested an imminent threat to the United States. “I thought she was more likely to strike in the Philippines than elsewhere, so far as United States territory is concerned.”
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That evening, a messenger also brought the decoded thirteen-part Japanese message to Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox at his Wardman Park home on Connecticut Avenue. While Knox read the pages in silence, Mrs. Knox told the messenger that she was hoping that her exhausted husband could take the next day off and “sleep around the clock.” Knox, seeing nothing new in the message, decided to wait until the following morning to discuss it with Stimson and Hull. There was still a missing fourteenth part to the message. Knox hoped that the complete message would be available at that time and they would know Japan's intent.
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Aides to Secretary Hull and General Marshall, who also received the thirteen-part message that evening, did not see any reason to disturb their bosses with the new information on a Saturday night. An aide to Hull read the thirteen-part message and concluded it had “little military significance.” He promised to show it to the secretary in the morning.
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F
DR was still in bed on Sunday morning when he received notice that his military aide, Admiral John Beardall, would be bringing the locked pouch containing the fourteenth part of Japan's diplomatic message. Beardall delivered the pouch to the president at 10:00 a.m. and waited patiently while FDR read it. It contained the missing fourteenth
part of the message that began arriving the previous evening. It stated that the chances of achieving peace in the Pacific “through cooperation of the American Government” had “been lost.”

The pouch likely also contained a second message that instructed the Japanese ambassador to destroy the code machines at their Washington embassy and to deliver the message to the secretary of state at one o'clock. But if these instructions were included in the package that FDR read, he apparently was not alarmed. After reading the materials, the president turned to the admiral and said, “It looks as though they are breaking off negotiations.” It was obvious to FDR that the Japanese were planning to strike, but when? And where? There was nothing that suggested to him that an American installation would be a target.
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Roosevelt confronted a dilemma: The Japanese response made clear they were breaking off diplomatic relations and were likely to strike Allied possessions in the Pacific. He assumed that the likely target would be either British Malaya or the Dutch East Indies. Without American intervention, the Japanese could control a vast area that was rich in natural resources that stretched from the Aleutian Islands to India. This aggression would strengthen the Japanese war machine and make them a more formidable enemy for the United States. It would also weaken the British, forcing them to expend precious resources to protect their colonial possessions that could be better used to fight Hitler.

Although a Japanese offensive against British possessions would present a long-term danger to the United States, FDR doubted if he could motivate the nation to go to war to save British imperial land in the Pacific. Congress had only reluctantly agreed to support FDR's efforts to defend Britain. As Sherwood noted, “Why, then, should Americans die for Thailand, or for such outposts of British imperialism as Singapore or Hong Kong or of Dutch imperialism in the East Indies, or for Communism in Vladivostok?”
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Even if the president were to muster all of his political skills, a congressional debate over war could drag on for weeks. FDR had been warning the American people about the danger in the Atlantic and the
need to support Britain. How could he now convince them to go to war in the Pacific? Much of his rhetoric had been focused on convincing Americans to supply aid to Britain so that American soldiers would not have to fight and die in another foreign war. He was reluctant to abandon that message or to remove the focus from the war in Europe.
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The hawkish Stimson and Hull were pondering the same question on Sunday morning at their 10:00 a.m. meeting. “Hull is very certain that the Japs are planning some deviltry and we are all wondering where the blow will strike,” Stimson noted in his diary. Like Roosevelt, they were convinced that the likely target would be British, not American. One question persisted: What should the United States do if the Japanese attacked Singapore, Malaysia, or Thailand? Stimson and Hull were convinced that the United States needed to join the British if a fight erupted. But they clearly wondered whether Roosevelt would agree.

The possibility that Japan would strike America or its possessions seemed remote to all. The day before, while holding his daily briefing with civilian aides and military chiefs, Knox had reviewed all the intelligence information. Reports claimed that a large Japanese task force was at sea, apparently headed along the south coast of Indochina. “Gentlemen,” Knox asked, “are they going to hit us?'” His advisers were unanimous in their response. “No, Mr. Secretary,” declared Admiral Richmond Kelly Turner, who was in charge of war planning for the navy. “They are going to attack the British. They are not ready for us yet.” As a naval aide noted, “There was no dissenting voice. Turner's concise statement apparently represented the thinking of the Navy Department.”
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And so in the hours before the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, FDR's main foreign policy advisers were busy developing a strategy for getting him to declare war against Japan if it attacked either a British or a Dutch possession. Knox dictated a memorandum that urged the president to recognize that “any threat to any one of the three of us is a threat to all of us.” As Knox later told a congressional committee investigating the attack, his goal was to convince Roosevelt to state that
the United States would respond by force if the Japanese attacked Thailand or “British, Dutch, United States, Free French, or Portuguese territory in the Pacific area.”
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t the Munitions Building on Independence Avenue in Washington, Colonel Rufus Bratton, an intelligence aide to General Marshall, was not alarmed by the official fourteen-part Japanese response. He was, however, stunned when he read the second cable instructing Japan's ambassadors to present the message to the secretary of state at precisely 1:00 p.m. and to destroy their code machines. He believed that it was an “activating” intercept. The 1:00 p.m. message convinced him that the Japanese were planning to strike near dawn somewhere in the Pacific.
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Bratton urgently tried reaching General Marshall, who was out riding his horse. Bratton had to settle for leaving a message with Marshall's orderly. “Please go out at once, get assistance if necessary, and find General Marshall,” he pleaded.
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Marshall returned to his office at 11:25 a.m. and began carefully poring over the entire fourteen-part message. After finishing, he looked up at his aides and asked whether they saw any significance in the instruction to present the message at 1:00. Bratton said he “thought it probable that the Japanese line of action would be into Thailand but that it might be into any one or more of a number of other areas.” Marshall's aides recommended that all American outposts in the Pacific and on the West Coast be notified before the 1:00 p.m. deadline.
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General Marshall then called Admiral Stark and told him that he was planning to send a warning message to army posts in the Pacific and the Panama Canal region and asked whether he planned to send one to the navy. Stark told him that he felt that the navy had already been provided sufficient warning of a possible attack, and he felt no reason to send a new one. Marshall then started scribbling out his message: “Japanese are presenting at one pm eastern standard time today what amounts to an
ultimatum. Also, they are under orders to destroy their code machine immediately. Just what significance the hour set may have we do not know but be on alert accordingly.” While he was writing the message, Stark had a change of mind and called Marshall back, agreeing that naval authorities should be sent the same message. Marshall added to his message: “Inform naval authorities of this communication.”
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Marshall delivered his handwritten message to Bratton and ordered that it be sent for immediate transmission with top priority given to the Philippines. Since the message had to be typed, it was not sent until 11:58 a.m. The Army Signals Center sent the message first to the Caribbean Defense Command in the Panama Canal Zone. The message to Manila went out at 12:06 and a few minutes later to the Presidio in San Francisco. Because of atmospheric interference, it was not possible to send a message to Hawaii. So the Signal Center opted for a direct teletype through Western Union. The message was clocked at 12:17 p.m. in Washington. The RCA bicycle man picked up General Marshall's message in Honolulu at 7:33 a.m. Since the package was not marked “urgent,” the messenger tucked it in his bag for regular delivery. It was not delivered until after the bombs started falling.

 

 

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oosevelt's first scheduled appointment on Sunday, December 7, was with the Chinese ambassador, Dr. Hu Shih, at 12.30 p.m. The ambassador had taken the midnight train down from New York for the meeting. They met in the Oval Study. Roosevelt wanted to let the ambassador know that he had sent a private appeal to the Japanese emperor. He read portions of the letter to Dr. Shih and explained that he planned to release the text on Tuesday. As the president read the letter, he highlighted phrases that he deemed especially clever. “I got him there,” he said, clearly pleased with himself. “That was a fine, telling phrase. That will be fine for the record.” He assured the ambassador that if the emperor did not intervene and restrain the military, war between the United States and Japan would be inevitable. “I think,” FDR
said, “that something nasty will develop in Burma, or the Dutch East Indies, or possibly even in the Philippines.”
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After China's ambassador left at 1:10 p.m., Roosevelt and Hopkins sat together eating lunch. Afterward, FDR looked over his stamp collection while Hopkins lounged on the sofa. By this point, Roosevelt suspected that Japan was going to strike, but he was still convinced it would avoid a direct confrontation with the United States and instead nibble around the edges of the European empires in the Pacific. Hopkins recalled numerous conversations with FDR about the subject. He claimed that FDR “really thought that the tactics of the Japanese would be to avoid a conflict with us; that they would not attack either the Philippines or Hawaii but would move on Thailand, French Indo-China, make further inroads on China itself and attack the Malay Straits.”
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