Gordon W. Prange - December 7, 1941: The Day the Japanese Attacked Pearl Harbor

December 7, 1941

The Day the Japanese Attacked Pearl Harbor

Gordon W. Prange with Donald M. Goldstein and Katherine V. Dillon

CHAPTER 1

Time Was Running Out

Saturday December 6, 1941, was just another welcome break in routine for workers and schoolchildren in the Washington, D.C. area, a reminder to housewives that Christmas was only seventeen shopping days away. Despite the date, for the past week the thermometer had flatly contradicted the calendar. Much of the United States basked in unseasonably warm weather. Florists delightedly reported abundant supplies of late-blooming roses, and from New England came word that the pussy willow, which usually doesnt appear until March, was budding in time to be worked into Christmas wreaths.

The chilling wind from the west was symbolic of the rapidly deteriorating relations with Japan which had kept many in the executive branch of the government tied to their desks. Congress, however, saw no reason to remain in session and had adjourned on Thursday December 4 for a long weekend. because, as a Republican, he was unlikely to be bolstering the administrations image.

The Japanese liner Tatsuta Maru, the last of three ships authorized to bring Americans back to the United States from Japan and to return Japanese from the United States to their homeland, was in her fourth day at sea. Yet she carried only twenty-three Americans. And back in Tokyo women members of the American Club looked forward to December 8 (Tokyo time), when they would attend a lecture on antique Japanese combs.

As indicated by the headlines that crossed the front pages of the Washington Post, the Japanese were up to something: JAPANESE PLEA OF SELF-DEFENSE COLDLY RECEIVED; TOKYO SAYS TROOPS ARE BEINC MASSED MERELY TO COUNTER THREAT BY CHINESE. To this, the Posts editorial page snapped: if the Japanese expect Americans to believe such a story, they have a poor opinion of American mentality Thus all the circumstances conspire to show that the Japanese are preparing for another snatch in their career of Asian conquest.

That is why Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson decided to stay in town that day. He had hoped to escape from this infernal hellhole they call Washington long enough to spend the night with his wife, Mabel, at their Long Island home, Highhold. However, as the morning wore on, the news got worse and worse and the atmosphere indicated that something was going to happen. Stimson held frequent conferences with Chief of Staff General George C. Marshall; Brig. Gen. Sherman Miles, acting assistant chief of staff, Intelligence (G-2); and Brig. Gen. Leonard T. Gerow, chief, War Plans Division. We are mainly concerned with the supplies which are on the way to the Philippines and the additional big bombers which we are trying to fly over there and which are to start today, Stimson explained in his diary.

High-level attention in Washington centered on Japans aggressive intentions toward Southeast Asia. At 1040, the State Department received a message from Ambassador John G. Winant in London, marked TRIPLE PRIORITY AND MOST URGENT: British Admiralty reports that at 3 a.m. London time this morning two parties seen off Cambodia Point, sailing slowly westward toward Kra 11 hours distant in time. First party 25 transports, 6 cruisers, 10 destroyers. Second party 10 transports, 2 cruisers, 10 destroyers.

Capt. Roscoe E. Pinky Schuirmann, the Navys liaison officer with the State Department, added in a secret memorandum to State:

Following report has been received from the Commander in Chief Asiatic Fleet dated December 6th:

British Commander in Chief China reports a twenty-five ship convoy escorted by 6 cruisers and 10 destroyers in Lat. 0800 N. Long. 10600 East at 0316 Greenwich time today. A convoy of ten ships with two cruisers and 10 destroyers were in Lat. 0840 North Long. 10620 East two hours later. All on course west. Three additional ships in Lat. 0751 North Long 10500 East at 0442 course 310 This indicates all forces will make for Kohtron in Lat. 1001 Long. 104 East.

Commander in Chief Asiatic Admiral [Thomas C.] Harts Scouting Force has sighted 30 ships and one large cruiser anchored in Camranh Bay.

Information copies of Harts message went to the commander in chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet (Adm. Husband E. Kimmel) at Pearl Harbor, as well as to the commandants of the Sixteenth Naval District at Manila and the Fourteenth Naval District at Pearl Harbor.

The records of the White House switchboard and those kept by Secretary of State Cordell Hulls office reveal calls flying back and forth between Hull, Stimson, Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox, Marshall, Schuirmann, Chief of Naval Operations Harold R. Betty Stark, and other officials.

Hull did not remember the details of all his telephone conversations and other conferences held during that day; however, the Japanese large-scale military movement from the jumping-off place in Southern Indochina was very much in the minds of all of us who were called upon to consider that situation.

The implicit threat to the Philippines, then under the American flag, particularly worried these officials. Stimson and Marshall discussed whether thirteen B-17s scheduled to begin their long flight from Hamilton Field in California to Manila might be attacked over the Pacific. After careful consideration, Marshall authorized their departure that evening. He had sent Maj. Gen. Henry H. Hap Arnold,

In the Security Section of the Navys Communications Division (Op-20-G), tension had never been higher. JN-25, the Japanese Navys operational code, as yet unbroken, was under attack by the first team of the Navys code breakersMrs. Agnes Meyer, Miss Aggie Driscoll, Ens. Prescott H. Wimpy Currier, and Mr. Philip Cate. Those working on material encoded in a high-level Japanese diplomatic code, J-19, were, in the words of the sections chief, Cmdr. Laurence F. Safford, batting their brains out trying to achieve solutions with minimum volume in any one key. The Americans had broken J-19, but the keys changed daily, and it was plenty tough to break them without a certain amount of material to work with.

Those concerned with Japans top diplomatic code, Purple, had a technically less challenging task, thanks to the amazing mechanical system known as Magic. But the sheer volume was daunting. The very fact that the Japanese used Purple to encode a dispatch meant that it was important, and the Japanese used the code worldwide. As Safford explained, the Purple team had varied duties. It had to code and decode messages exchanged with London and Corregidor, plot direction-finder bearings of German submarines operating in the Atlantic, and process messages coming in from other parts of the world, as well as handle Purple exchanges between Tokyo and Washington.

General Miles of G-2 also felt a sense of urgency that day as he said goodbye to an old naval friend, RADM Thomas C. Kinkaid, Kimmels brother-in-law. Kinkaid was leaving to command a cruiser division. Miles told him that he hoped he would hurry; otherwise he did not know whether he would make it or not. By this time Miles rated quite highly the probability of an involvement immediately, or certainly in the fairly near future, of a Japanese-American war.