The World at War (29 page)

COMMANDER MITSUO FUCHIDA

Japanese naval airman, strike leader at Pearl Harbor

The most difficult problem was torpedo launching in shallow water. The lesson of the British in attacking the Italian Fleet at Taranto, 1 owe it very much the solution in the shallow-water launching.

COMMANDER GENDA

I am asked that question very often, whether we received any hints from the British Taranto operation. But we did not.

PRIVATE GEORGE ELLIOTT

Radar operator, Hawaii

It was shortly after seven in the morning that we picked up this large flight of planes and fellow radar operator Lockhart at that moment thought that the machine was out of kilter because of the large blip we were receiving from a hundred and thirty-nine miles out. After verifying the equipment and the information it was showing we decided it was a flight of planes coming in and we sent the information to Private MacDonald, who was the switchboard operator at the Information Centre, and of course it being after seven everybody had left because our problem – the malfunction Lockhart and Elliott were sent to resolve – had been over. MacDonald said that there was nobody there that could do anything about it and I left word to see if he could find somebody who would know what to do, and to call us back. A little later this Lieutenant Tyler called back and Lockhart answered the phone and in essence was told to forget it. I might add that at that particular time we were expecting a flight of our own B-17s from Marchfield, California, to reinforce Hawaii and whether this influenced his decision I don't know. They came in fully armed but with no ammunition on board and those that weren't shot down were forced out to sea where they ran out of gas.

LIEUTENANT KEN MURRAY

Staff Officer, Pacific Fleet Command

My first knowledge of the
attack was when I was awakened by the sound of bombs dropping and the roaring of aircraft all around us. I ran out and saw immediately that they were Japanese planes and there was this fellow standing next to me who said, 'Boy, it certainly looks real, doesn't it?' And I said, 'I'm afraid it is,' and I went back in, dressed and went over to my office. I happened to be standing next to the Commander-in-Chief, Admiral Kimmel, and we were glumly watching the havoc that was going on. Suddenly he reached up and tore off his four-star shoulder boards, which indicated his rank and title as Commander-in-Chief of the Pacific Fleet, stepped into his adjacent office and when he came out, realising that he was going to lose his command, he had donned two-star Rear-Admiral shoulder boards.

GUNNER'S MATE TOM COMBS

Heavy cruiser USS
New Orleans

We were taking power and steam from the dock since we were alongside for repairs and somebody in the confusion had cut our power and steam lines, so everything had to be operated on manual. We had only one battery that we could use, which was the port five-inch battery, so we started using it on the aircraft as they came in. The low-flying torpedo planes all came over the hill and down towards battleship row so we were able to get some pretty good shots at them even though we were in manual. We had to pass ammunition by hand, and we had a young chaplain on board, at the time he'd been aboard less than two months. His name was William Maguire and as far as a battle station was concerned he didn't have one; he was primarily concerned with crew morale. So he was marching up and down the gun-deck saying, 'Praise God and pass the ammunition.' This has been credited to song writers but Chaplain Maguire actually said it that day, a day of confusion and terror for most of us.

MARINE RICHARD FISKE

Battleship USS
West Virginia

He had a real thick moustache and as he flew over he kind of smiled and looked at the ship and flew over towards the hangar over there and laid his bombs. The second group of aeroplanes peeled off and one came at us. They were torpedo bombers and one of them hit us and blew me over towards the other side of the ship. My battle station was up on the bridge with the captain so I went up there and as I looked around I saw the
Arizona
blow up and she just sort of rained sailors. I wasn't very scared at this particular time because I couldn't imagine that this was happening to us: it just wasn't real; it seemed like a nightmare. I didn't really comprehend the impact of it until afterwards when I swam ashore and then I realised, my God we're at war.

LIEUTENANT MURRAY

During the
attack itself I had no sense of fear. It didn't appear it was real and they weren't shooting at me. I was not frightened until that night when the
USS
Enterprise
planes came in and all hell broke loose when we let go with everything we had around here. Of course during the daytime you couldn't see the display, but at night with the tracers and the shells bursting, that was when I became frightened.

COMMANDER GENDA

If we had been able to locate any American carriers we would have sunk them all. There was no mistake about it: our biggest target was the
aircraft carriers and the fact that we were not able to locate any carriers was most fortunate for the United States. I don't know how much confidence Admiral Nagumo had. I can say that he was very concerned, but that's because he was not from the Air Arm, he was a torpedo man, therefore he was an amateur as far as air operations were concerned. Admiral Nagumo is dead now; I don't know whether he is in hell or heaven, but it's not possible to go there and ask him.

AMBASSADOR HARRIMAN

I was in England in December and Churchill asked my daughter and myself to Chequers. It was my daughter's birthday, we were having dinner, it was entirely a family party. Every evening at nine o'clock the Prime Minister wanted to hear the BBC news. The butler brought in a small radio which Harry Hopkins
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had given him and there was some rather unimportant news: the battle was not going very well in the Middle East, and other things of little importance. Suddenly there was a stop and the announcer said a dispatch had come in: the Japanese have attacked Pearl Harbor. And then he went on and said, 'The something band will play Thursday night at the Savoy Hotel.' And I was startled. Commander Thompson, the Naval Aide to the Prime Minister, said, 'Oh, no, Pearl River,' and I said, 'No, Pearl Harbor.' The Prime Minister had been rather quiet all evening and suddenly slammed the top of this little radio down and jumped to his feet. As he went towards the door John Martin, his Private Secretary, came into the room and said the Admiralty was on the wire. I went with him to the room and it was true. Churchill immediately called up Roosevelt on the telephone and got a description of what went on. Roosevelt said, 'Now we're in the same boat together,' and Churchill said, 'Yes, I will go to the House of Commons tomorrow and declare
war on Japan.' President Roosevelt acted more slowly because Hitler was in his mind the main enemy and if he declared war on Japan the concentration of all our energies would have been against Japan, and the American people were naturally aroused. For some unexplained reason Hitler declared war on the United States, which relieved Roosevelt of all his difficulties and then he made up his mind that the defeat of Hitler was by far the most important to achieve first. He was the most dangerous of enemies, and Roosevelt was very skilful in keeping American public opinion directed towards Europe, although we did have a very major operation in Japan and a very successful operation after we recovered from the tremendous blow of the loss of a very substantial part of our navy at Pearl Harbor.

JOHN McCLOY

The morning after Pearl Harbor the nation was at war in a sense of great determination, 'Let's go, who do they think we are' sort of attitude, but it was a long way before we began to get really industrially organised to the point we later reached and there were a good many headaches and a good many bungles that we made during that period. An intense warlike attitude was developed very rapidly and it wasn't very long before we were really ticking in terms of munitions output. Early on, thanks I suppose to the shock that Pearl Harbor gave us, this was truly a nation at war immediately after that disaster took place. There was stepped up activity and there was a tension in the air that hadn't existed before, but generally speaking the methods and the manner of government of Mr Roosevelt didn't change greatly. I was always in the military side, the War Department, and there were many things the White House was interested in. Mr Roosevelt's tendency was to let the professionals handle the conduct of the war. On very broad matters of strategy of course he had views, but he was much less apt to interfere or to cast his influence on the generals and so I don't think there was a marked difference in the atmosphere or the general method of conducting business in the White House after Pearl Harbor.

GEORGE BALL

Associate General Counsel for the Lend-Lease programme

All doubts were resolved overnight not by Pearl Harbor so much as by the very curious and quite stupid decision of Hitler two or three days later to declare war on the United States. I can tell you that if Hitler had not made this decision, if he had simply done nothing, there would have been an enormous sentiment in many parts of the United States that the Pacific war was now our war and the European war was for the Europeans and we should concentrate all our efforts on the Japanese. Let me say that in those first two or three days it was a terrible anxiety for those of us who felt very keenly that what was happening in Europe was the affair of the United States as well as the Europeans and that we really had to intervene.

REAR-ADMIRAL LORD LOUIS MOUNTBATTEN

Chief of Combined Operations

Within a week of Pearl Harbor, Churchill went to see Roosevelt, to discuss future Allied plans. Subsequently General Marshall and later General Eisenhower came over to see the British Chiefs of Staff. They wished to get their troops ashore: they had this large army, they knew I was planning the invasion and they wanted to take part as soon as they possibly could. I tried to point out it would take time but they were very impatient and General Marshall kept saying, 'If you can't find room first, we shall end up by being drawn into the Pacific'

DR JOHN KENNETH GALBRAITH

Deputy Head of the US Office of Price Administration

I was having a sleep Sunday afternoon and one was always tired in those days, hoping always to get over the fatigue of the day and the week. I was awakened by one of my colleagues saying the news has just come over the radio that the Japanese have attacked Pearl Harbor, and I got up and went to a meeting and I found that my superior, who was in charge of all the civilian operations of the War Office, was away so I was sent to the great meeting of the wartime leaders that convened in Washington on the night of Pearl Harbor. I remember my sense of mission going to that meeting – we had seen the war coming, it was today and here was the hour and here was I attending the meeting with the other great men who were in charge of the nation at this critical hour. All these phrases went through my mind. Then we got to the meeting and it was one hell of a disappointment because nobody could think of anything to say or do. Somebody invented a phrase – this is going to make raw materials east of Suez very scarce – and Donald Nelson, who was later put in charge of the war effort, he got somebody to come up with a great book of strategic raw materials and it seemed like a good idea to go over that and see what materials were threatened by the Japanese. Everybody was coming in during the course of this summons in sport jackets and some had tennis shoes on, and it became terribly evident that nobody had any real information as to where these strategic commodities came from and eventually the whole discussion boiled down on the question of kapok. It was clearly listed as a strategic material, it evidently came from that part of the world but nobody could think, for God's sake, what this stuff was used for. The whole evening left me with a sense of grave disappointment, and I have never expected since then that I would ever be hands-on with history.

PROFESSOR VANNEVAR BUSH

Chairman of the US National Defense Research Committee

In twenty-four hours, no problems were involved, the country turned around absolutely. Before that time this country was pretty divided and there was a pretty hot argument whether we needed to get into it, whether we should, whether our interests were really involved and so forth. After Pearl Harbor all opposition disappeared overnight. I think Roosevelt was convinced for a long time before Pearl Harbor that we needed to get in. He did everything he could, but he didn't have a united country behind him till Pearl Harbor – then he did.

JOHN McCLOY

Internment of the Japanese wasn't only War Secretary Stimson's decision. It was Mr Roosevelt's decision pressed to a large degree by Earl Warren, who later became the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court and who was then Governor of California, and West Coast Commander General John DeWitt, who felt that after Pearl Harbor, with tensions such as they were on the West Coast, that it would be very awkward indeed to permit the Japanese to remain as they were, not only because of the danger of sabotage or espionage, but because of the high state of feeling against the Japanese at that point. There was a very important element of protection in this and there was a good bit of legal argument at the time as to the justification for doing it, particularly in respect of American citizens. There was an old English law on this subject, which rather influenced some of the decisions, and the thought was that for their own protection and for the general good – as barn burnings had already taken place – they had better be picked up and put into a safer community. I have a feeling that we probably exaggerated the likelihood of riots or destruction. Very shortly after they were picked up and put into these camps, they relocated and out of it came the organisation of those Japanese units which served so well in the Western theatre that the sentiment of antagonism towards the local Japanese entirely disappeared.