The Second World War (48 page)

The military leaders had outwardly accepted the preference of the Emperor and the prime minister Prince Konoe Fumimaro to seek a diplomatic solution with the United States, but they never had any intention of accepting a deal which involved significant concessions. The Imperial Army was resolutely opposed to any withdrawal from China. Although in many cases fatalistic about their prospects, especially if the war dragged on, Japan’s military commanders preferred the risk of national suicide to a loss of face.

Roosevelt had been convinced that a firm line was the best policy, even though he did not want war at that stage. Both General Marshall and Admiral Harold R. Stark, the army and navy chiefs of staff, had warned
him clearly that the United States was not yet sufficiently prepared. But his secretary of state, Cordell Hull, while negotiating with a Japanese envoy, was outraged when he heard on 25 November of a massive convoy of warships and troop transports heading through the South China Sea. He responded with a series of demands which was seen in Tokyo as tantamount to an ultimatum.

Hull’s ‘Ten Points’ document insisted among other things that the Japanese should withdraw from Indochina and China, as well as renounce the Tripartite Pact with Germany. This stern reaction had been encouraged by the Chinese Nationalists and the British. Only a complete and immediate climbdown by the United States and Britain might have averted conflict at that stage. Yet such a sign of western weakness would probably have encouraged Japanese aggression.

Hull’s intransigence convinced the Japanese military leaders that their preparations for war were vindicated. Delay would only weaken them and postponement of the war would reduce Japan, as T
j
had said at the crucial conference on 5 November, to a ‘
third-class nation
’. In any case, Yamamoto’s carrier fleet had just set forth from the Kurile Islands in the northern Pacific with Pearl Harbor as its objective. Zero hour had already been set for 08.00 hours on 8 December (Tokyo time).

The Japanese plan aimed to secure a perimeter around the western Pacific and the South China Sea. Five armies would seize the five main objectives. The 25th Army would attack down the Malay Peninsula to take the British naval base of Singapore. The 23rd Army in southern China would seize Hong Kong. The 14th Army would land in the Philippines, where General Douglas MacArthur, American commander-in-chief and pro-consul, had his headquarters. The 15th Army would invade Thailand and southern Burma. The 16th Army would secure the Dutch East Indies (modern Indonesia) with the oilfields so vital to the Japanese war effort. Against the severe doubts of his colleagues in the Imperial Japanese Navy, Admiral Yamamoto had insisted that some of these operations, especially the attack on the Philippines, would be at risk unless he first sent his carrier force to destroy the US fleet.

Yamamoto’s navy pilots had been practising torpedo and bombing attacks for several months in preparation. Intelligence on their targets was provided by the Japanese consul-general in Honolulu, who had been watching the movements of the US warships. They were always in harbour at the weekend. The pre-emptive strike was fixed for just after dawn on Sunday, 8 December, which would still be 7 December Washington time. At dawn on 26 November, the carrier force, led by the flagship
Akagi
, sailed under strict radio silence from the Kurile Islands in the northern Pacific.

In Hawaii, Admiral Husband E. Kimmel, the commander-in-chief of the Pacific Fleet, had been deeply concerned that his intelligence staff had no knowledge of the position of the carriers from the Japanese First and Second Fleets. ‘
Do you mean to say
’, he retorted on 2 December when told of this, ‘that they could be rounding Diamond Head [near the entrance to Pearl Harbor] and you wouldn’t know it?’ Yet even Kimmel could not imagine an attack on Hawaii out in the middle of the Pacific. Like the naval and army staffs in Washington, he believed a Japanese attack was much more likely to take place around the South China Sea, against Malaya, Thailand or the Philippines. So the peacetime routine had continued, with officers in their white tropical uniforms, and sailors looking forward to a weekend of beer and relaxing on Waikiki Beach with local girls. Many ships were manned with little more than skeleton crews at the weekend.

At 06.05 hours on Sunday, 8 December, a green lamp was waved on the flight deck of the
Akagi
. Pilots adjusted their
hachimaki
, a white headband with a red rising-sun symbol on the forehead, which indicated that they had promised to die for the Emperor. A cheer of ‘Banzai!’ arose from the ground crews as each aircraft took off. Despite the heavy swell, the six carriers in the task force launched a first wave of 183 aircraft including Zero fighters, Nakajima bombers, torpedo planes and Aichi dive-bombers. The island of Oahu lay 370 kilometres to their south.

The aircraft circled over the carrier fleet, then set off in formation towards their objective. Flying above the cloud as dawn came up it was hard to check their drift, so the bomber leader, Commander Fuchida Mitsuo, tuned into the American radio station on Honolulu. It was playing dance music. He then switched on his direction-finder. He corrected their course by five degrees. The music was interrupted by a weather report. He was relieved to hear that visibility over the islands was improving, with breaks in the cloud.

An hour and a half after take-off the leading pilots spotted the northern tip of the island. The reconnaissance plane which had gone ahead reported that the Americans appeared to be unaware of their presence. Fuchida fired a ‘black dragon’ flare from his cockpit to signal that they could still follow the plan for a surprise attack. The reconnaissance plane then reported the presence of ten battleships, a heavy cruiser and ten light cruisers. As they came in sight of Pearl Harbor, Fuchida studied the anchorage through binoculars. At 07.49 hours he gave the order to proceed, then passed back to the Japanese carrier fleet the signal ‘Tora, tora, tora!’ The codeword, meaning Tiger, signified that complete surprise had been achieved.

Two dive-bomber groups with fifty-three aircraft sheered off to attack
the three nearby airfields. The torpedo planes went straight into low-level runs against the seven capital ships in ‘Battleship Row’. Honolulu radio was still playing music. Fuchida could already see waterspouts exploding alongside the battleships. He ordered his pilot to bank as the signal for his ten squadrons to make their bomb-run in line ahead. ‘
A gorgeous formation
,’ he noted. But, as they went in, American anti-aircraft guns opened fire. Dark-grey bursts exploded all around them, making the aircraft shudder. The first torpedoes struck the battleship USS
Oklahoma
, which slowly rolled over. More than 400 men died, trapped beneath the hull.

Fuchida was taken aback by the speed of the American response as his aircraft headed for the USS
Nevada
at 3,000 metres. He now regretted having decided to attack in line ahead. They were buffeted as the USS
Arizona
blew up in a massive explosion, killing more than a thousand men on board. The black smoke from blazing oil was so thick that many aircraft overshot their bombing point and had to return for a second run.

Part of Fuchida’s force of dive-bombers and fighters had peeled off to attack the US Army Air Corps bases at Wheeler Field and Hickam Field and the Naval Air Station on Ford Island. Ground crews and pilots were at breakfast when the strike came in. The first man to fight back at Hickam Field was an army chaplain, who had been outside preparing his altar for an open-air mass. He seized a nearby machine gun and, resting it on his altar, began firing at the swooping enemy planes. But at both fields the aircraft lined up neatly beside the runway made an easy target for the Japanese pilots.

Almost exactly an hour after the first aircraft had sighted their targets a second wave of Japanese attackers arrived, but their task was more difficult with the thick smoke and the volume of fire coming up at them. Even five-inch naval guns were firing at the aircraft. Some of their shells are said to have landed in the town of Honolulu, killing civilians.

Suddenly, the sky was empty. The Japanese pilots had turned back to the north to catch up with their carriers, already steaming for home. As well as the battleships
Arizona
and
Oklahoma
, the US Navy at Pearl Harbor had lost two destroyers. Another three battleships were sunk or beached but later refloated and repaired, and three more were damaged. The Army Air Corps and navy lost 188 aircraft destroyed and 159 damaged. Altogether 2,335 American servicemen were killed and 1,143 wounded. Only twenty-nine Japanese aircraft had been destroyed; but the Imperial Navy also lost an ocean-going submarine and five midget submarines, all of which were supposed to have provided a diversion.

Despite the shock of the attack, many sailors and Hawaiian shipyard workers promptly dived into the water to save those blown off the ships. Most of those struggling in the harbour were covered in oil and had to
have their skin cleaned with cotton-waste. Small parties with oxyacetylene cutters started to cut through bulkheads and even hulls to rescue trapped comrades. All around were damaged warships wreathed in black smoke, twisted and tangled dockside cranes, and port buildings riddled with holes. It would take two weeks to put the last of the fires out. Anger drove everyone in their task to restore the fighting power of the US Pacific Fleet. They had at least one important consolation. None of the aircraft carriers had been in port. For they were to provide the only means to hit back in a naval war which had changed for ever.

Pearl Harbor was far from the only target. Bombers of the Imperial Air Fleet had been waiting to take off from the island of Formosa (Taiwan) to attack American airfields on the Philippines–but a thick fog had kept them grounded.

General
MacArthur
had been woken in his suite at a Manila hotel with news of the attack on Pearl Harbor. He immediately called a staff conference at his headquarters. Major General Lewis Brereton, chief of the Far East Air Force, asked for permission to send his B-17 Flying Fortresses against the airfields on Formosa. But MacArthur hesitated. He had been told that the Japanese bombers based there did not have the range to attack the Philippines. Brereton was unconvinced. He sent his B-17s up, with fighter escorts, so that they would not be caught on the ground. MacArthur finally gave permission for a reconnaissance flight over Formosa, to be followed by a bombing raid the next day. Brereton ordered his bombers to return to Clark Field to refuel, some ninety kilometres from Manila, and the fighters to land at their base near Iba to the north-west.

At 12.20 hours local time, while the crews were having lunch, the Japanese raiders arrived overhead. They could not believe their luck in finding that their targets were all lined up for them. Altogether eighteen B-17 bombers and fifty-three P-40 fighters were destroyed. Half of the Far East Air Force had been destroyed on the first day. The Americans had received no warning because their radar set had not yet been installed. Other Japanese bombers attacked the capital, Manila. Philippine civilians had no idea what to do. An American marine saw ‘
Women clustered under
the acacia trees in the park. A few of them had opened their umbrellas for additional protection.’

Wake Island, halfway between Hawaii and the Mariana Islands, was also attacked by Japanese aircraft on 8 December, but the Americans were ready. Major James Devereux, the commander of the 427 US marines there, had ordered his bugler to sound ‘Call to Arms’ as soon as he heard of the attack on Pearl Harbor. Four marine pilots in Grumman Wildcats managed to shoot down six Zero fighters after the other eight Wildcats
had been destroyed or damaged on the ground. On 11 December, Japanese warships arrived offshore to land troops, but the marines’ five-inch guns sank two destroyers and damaged the cruiser
Yubari
. The Japanese force withdrew without even attempting to land its marines.

Although elated by their extraordinary achievement, the US marines on Wake knew that the Japanese would be back in even greater numbers. On 23 December a much larger task force appeared, this time with two aircraft carriers and six cruisers. The marines fought back courageously against odds of five to one, supported by a massive naval artillery bombardment and air attacks. Although they managed to inflict heavy losses, the Americans were forced to surrender to avoid heavy civilian casualties on the island.