3. The Rising Sun

Chapter Three

THE RISING SUN

ON WEDNESDAY, December 3, the carrier “Enterprise,” commanded by Vice-Adm. William F. Halsey, Jr., was some 1,900 miles west of Pearl Harbor. She was the flagship of a task force consisting of three heavy cruisers and nine destroyers. The force had left Pearl Harbor November 28 to deliver a dozen Marine fighter pilots in Grumman Wildcats to Wake Island. The pilots had received such short notice of their departure that some had reported aboard with only the clothes they were wearing.

Adm. Halsey had enjoined radio silence and sailed with his ships darkened. Not until the second day out did the task force learn that its destination was Wake. On December 3 the Marines went into Wake and the “Enterprise” turned and headed back toward Pearl Harbor. Navy pilots aboard the carrier were flying scouting missions in all directions from the ship. A young officer aboard the “Enterprise” who was keeping an unofficial log noted: “Vogt says he saw a large fleet at the end of his scouting leg, but it was hazy and his tanks were low, so he isn’t sure. Some imagination!”¹

Whatever Pilot Ensign John H. L. Vogt, Jr., saw through the overcast will never be known. He may have sighted the main Jap striking force en route to Pearl Harbor. If so, it was far off its charted course. He may have seen part of Adm. Shimizu’s advance expeditionary force, although that seems equally unlikely. He may have seen other Jap fleet units advancing for the attack on Wake. Because of radio silence, no report of Vogt’s statement was sent to Pearl Harbor. At dawn on December 7 Vogt took off from the “Enterprise” and flew into a formation of enemy planes attacking Pearl Harbor. He was killed.

There were other portents that something was afoot. The cruiser “Boise,” convoying American merchantmen 3,400 miles from Pearl Harbor, to the northeast of Guam, sighted a darkened ship at about 16,000 yards on the night of November 27. The “Boise” challenged, but received no reply. On the following night the cruiser again sighted a darkened ship, hull down, at 5:33 P.M. “She appeared to be ‘Atago’ type [a class of Jap cruiser],” the log stated.

Battle stations were manned and the “Boise’s” speed and course changed on each occasion, but the identity of the strange ships was never confirmed, nor was any other action taken. The vessels sighted were 1,400 miles off the reported course taken by the Jap task force bound for Pearl Harbor. No report was radioed to the fleet base.²

On the night of December 6 the aircraft tender “Wright” sighted another unidentified ship without lights west of Hawaii, but again made no report because of orders to keep radio silence. The “Wright,” a unit of Halsey’s task force, challenged the strange vessel between 8:00 P.M. and midnight, but the ship did not respond and slipped out of sight. It was later surmised that the vessel may have been a Japanese submarine.³

Navy department records provide another mystery. On December 5, an American patrol ship was operating north of Hawaii directly in the path of the Jap striking force. The Navy’s chart of ship locations for the following day omitted the patrol ship and no accounting has ever been made for its “disappearance.”⁴

While all of these incidents together might have suggested some event out of the ordinary, they were not reported to Pearl Harbor before the attack. Other contacts made by naval ships in the fleet-operating area about Pearl Harbor in the early morning hours of December 7 were reported.

The first of these was made at 3:58 A.M., when the minesweeper “Condor” flashed a blinker signal to the destroyer “Ward” that a suspicious object, believed to be a submarine, had been detected in the darkness westward of her sweep area.⁵ Lieut. William W. Outer-bridge, commanding the “Ward,” sounded general quarters and combed a wide pattern for nearly an hour, but found nothing. Outerbridge returned to his bunk and Lieut, (j.g.) O. W. Goepner, a reservist from the Northwestern University Naval R. O. T. C., took over as officer of the deck.

At 6:37 A.M. Goepner awakened Outerbridge and pointed out a submarine conning tower between the “Ward” and the target ship “Antares,” towing her raft to Pearl Harbor. A Navy PBY, returning from patrol, dropped a smoke bomb to mark the submarine’s location. The silhouette of the conning tower was unfamiliar, and for a good reason. This was one of Adm. Shimizu’s midget subs.

At 6:45 the “Ward,” on Goepner’s order, opened fire from its number 1 gun in the bow. Number 3 gun from the waist then opened up and, at point-blank range of 75 yards, scored with its first shot, striking the conning tower. The “Ward” followed up with four depth charges dropped in pattern, but the number 3 gun had done for the sub.

At 6:51 it was adjudged sunk, and Outerbridge radioed Pearl Harbor, “We have dropped depth charges upon sub operating in defensive area.” In order to underscore this startling intelligence, Outerbridge two minutes later sent a second message: “We have attacked, fired upon, and dropped depth charges upon a submarine operating in the defensive area.” The operator at Bishop’s Point naval radio station acknowledged receipt.⁶

This was a full hour before the Japanese air attack on Pearl Harbor. Two messages which should have warned the forces ashore had already been dispatched, and a third report was now radioed by the PBY flying boat which had circled overhead. This message was received by Comdr. Knefler McGinnis, commander of patrol wing 1 at Kaneohe Naval Air Station. Alarmed lest an American submarine had been sunk, McGinnis was still checking up an hour later when planes bearing the Rising Sun insignia came in and shot up every one of his flying boats in the bay or on the ramps. Only three patrol planes still in the air escaped this first attack, and one was badly shot up in landing.⁷

Outerbridge’s message was received at 7:12 A.M. or earlier by the Pearl Harbor base watch officer, who immediately notified his chief of staff. No change to a higher condition of readiness, however, was ordered as a result of the report. The Army Board of Inquiry which investigated the disaster in 1944 observed, “This was one of the most important of a succession of mistakes made during this fateful morning. The Navy admits that it did not advise Gen. Short as it should have done.”⁸

Meanwhile, the “Ward,” inbound to Pearl Harbor, sighted a motor-driven sampan which had no business in the restricted area. As the destroyer charged down upon this craft, three Japanese came to the rail, two with their hands in the air and the third waving a white flag. These were the attitudes of surrender. They suggested war. The sampan was taken in tow by a Coast Guard cutter, but no further warning was dispatched to shore.⁹

There was at least one other episode at sea which justified an all-out alert if word had been passed to the base. While the “Enterprise” was still 200 miles from Pearl Harbor, it launched its planes to fly into Oahu. One of the flyers who took off was Ensign Manuel Gonzalez, of bombing squadron 6. Somewhere the fringe of the flight intercepted the course of the Japanese attacking formation. Back on the carrier listeners heard the cry of Gonzalez over the radio, “Don’t shoot! This is an American plane.” That was all. He was shot down. Again no warning was radioed to the fleet base.¹⁰

Ashore there was a still more inexplicable failure. The Army radar aircraft warning system had been operating between 4:00 and 7:00 A.M., the hour when the stations were to shut down on December 7. Two privates, Joseph E. Elliott and Joseph L. Lockard, were manning the station at Opana, on Kahuku Point, clear across Oahu from Pearl Harbor, at the extreme north of the island. Lockard was operating the detector and Elliott was plotting the information.

Between 6:45 and 6:59 A.M. Lockard and Elliott spotted ten or more unidentified planes northeast of Hawaii and 100 miles or less distant. Elliott’s recollection four years later was that these planes had been reported to the Army Information Center,¹¹ which that morning was in charge of Lieut. Kermit A. Tyler, an Air Corps pursuit officer, but if they were no action was taken.

When it was time for the two privates to go off duty, Elliott asked that the station be kept open for further operation after 7:00 A.M., so that he might learn to operate the detector. Lockard acquiesced and, while adjusting the machine to begin the instruction, noticed on the radar screen an unusual formation, suggesting the approach of a large number of planes. These unknown planes, picked up at 7:02 A.M., were 137 miles distant and approaching Oahu from 3 degrees east of north.¹²

Lockard reported the discovery within seven minutes to the Information Center. Tyler was absent at the moment, but the switchboard operator located him, and Tyler, within two or three minutes, was listening to Lockard’s report. “Tyler’s answer,” the Army Board report stated, “was disastrous. He said, in substance, ‘Forget it.’ Tyler’s position is indefensible in his action, for he says that he was merely there for training and had no knowledge upon which to base any action; yet he assumed to give directions instead of seeking someone competent to make a decision.”¹³

Not only did Tyler fail to act, but the Army neglected until two days after the attack to inform Adm. Kimmel of recording the approach of the attacking force by radar. This threw Navy search planes completely off the track when they attempted to trail the Jap striking force. The search planes made their sweeps to the south and southwest, not knowing that the enemy planes had come in from the north.¹⁴

Meanwhile, Lockard and Elliott continued to follow and plot the approaching aircraft until they came within 20 miles of Oahu at about 7:35 A.M., when radar reception failed. From fifteen to twenty minutes later the first enemy planes appeared over Hawaiian air fields and burst through the clouds upon the Pearl Harbor base.

Tyler’s subsequent explanation was that he believed that Lockard and Elliott had picked up a flight of 12 B-17’s which he knew were coming in from Hamilton Field, California.¹⁵ Some of these planes did, in fact, arrive during the attack and were destroyed by the Japanese, but Tyler’s defense took no account of the fact that if these had been the planes spotted by the two privates, they would have been flying 200 miles off their course at the time the formation was reported from Opana.

The greatest error of all, however, was that the Army garrison and fleet base had not been alerted properly against attack. The Army on November 27 had put into effect its alert number 1—defense against sabotage and uprisings; no threat from without. This was farthest removed from an all-out war footing of any of its three degrees of alert.¹⁶ The Navy had instituted its number 3 condition of readiness, providing a means of opening fire with a portion of the anti-aircraft and secondary batteries in case of surprise encounter. This was the minimum degree of readiness possible under its three standing classifications.¹⁷

These limited conditions of readiness were in response to orders from higher authority in Washington and represented what the field commanders thought was required of them, but neither the Army nor Navy in Hawaii was prepared on December 7 to cope with a determined surprise attack in force. The Army’s preparations against sabotage, in particular, played into the hands of the Japs. All of its planes, with a few exceptions, were lined up wing to wing, in order that they might be more easily guarded by a cordon of sentries. They presented a perfect target for bombs and machine gun bullets.

The situation prevailing December 7 under the conditions of readiness in effect was thus summarized by the Army Board:

No distant reconnaissance was being conducted by the Navy; the usual four or five PBY’s were not out; the anti-aircraft artillery was not out on its usual Sunday maneuvers with the fleet air arm; the naval carriers with their planes were at a distance from Oahu on that Sunday; the aircraft were on the ground, were parked, both Army and Navy, closely adjacent to one another; the fleet was in the harbor with the exception of task forces 9 and 12, which included some cruisers, destroyers, and the two carriers “Lexington” and “Enterprise.”

Ammunition for the Army was, with the exception of that near the fixed anti-aircraft guns, in ordnance storehouses, and the two combat divisions as well as the anti-aircraft artillery were in their permanent quarters and not in battle positions. Everything was concentrated in close confines by reason of the [Army’s] anti-sabotage alert number 1. This made of them easy targets for an air attack. In short, everything that was done made the situation perfect for an air attack and the Japanese took full advantage of it.¹⁸

In addition to sending reconnaissance planes over Pearl Harbor one hour before the arrival of their attacking planes, the Japanese resorted to submarine reconnaissance for last-minute information. The log of a Japanese two-man submarine showed that the craft entered the harbor and made a complete run around Ford Island. Entry apparently was effected about 4:10 A.M., when the submarine net across the harbor mouth was open to permit a garbage scow to leave the harbor.

The submarine commander roughed in the ships at their berths as well as he could in the uncertain pre-dawn light, but he failed to identify a single vessel correctly. He completed the circuit of the harbor at 4:30 and turned down the channel for the open sea. The submarine net had been opened again at 4:58 to permit the entrance of two minesweepers and remained open until 8:40, when it was closed by order as a result of the attack; so the submarine had no difficulty in getting out of the harbor.¹⁹

Because the plottings of fleet units in harbor and the positions they occupied, as shown on the map of the submarine commander, varied considerably from the ships actually in harbor December 7 and their true locations, there has been disagreement as to whether the submarine made its run in the hours directly preceding the attack, or on some day before December 7.²⁰ Rear Adm. T. B. Inglis, chief of naval intelligence, doubted in 1945 that the submarine ever entered the harbor. He said “there was confusion in translating the Japanese present and future tenses,” and that the log may have shown what the Jap commander intended to do, rather than what he had done.²¹

The admiral’s statement, however, fails to explain why the Jap officer, if he never made the harbor circuit, wrote at one point on his chart, “I saw it with my own eyes!” when he thought he had located the aircraft carrier “Saratoga.”²² The “carrier” which he had erroneously identified was in reality the old battleship “Utah,” which had been stripped and converted into a target ship. The fact that it later received special attention from Jap raiding planes suggests that the enemy submarine not only did tour the harbor, but communicated its findings by radio to the attacking force.

Another Japanese sub was indisputably in Pearl Harbor on December 7. It entered sometime after the anti-submarine net was opened at 4:58. At 8:35 A.M., 40 minutes after the attack had begun, it came up for a look. Half a dozen ships opened fire on the conning tower, and the craft was finished off when it was rammed and depth charged by the destroyer “Monaghan” after surfacing under her bows. Later, the submarine, with its crew of two still inside, was used as part of the fill-in for a new landside pier at the Pearl Harbor submarine base.²³

The submarine believed to have made the circuit of Ford Island later ran on a reef in the open sea near Bellows Field, southeast of Kaneohe Bay. While it was stuck on the reef, a bomb dropped from a Navy plane knocked the submarine over to the other side of the reef. Gen. Short later said that Army troops threw a rope around the craft and pulled it ashore, capturing both members of the crew,²⁴ but Army intelligence four years after the attack acknowledged the capture only of the commander, Sub-Lieut. Kazuo Sakamaki.²⁵

The remainder of the five enemy midget craft all were lost, as was confirmed by a subsequent Japanese citation granting “posthumous” promotion to all ten men of the crews.²⁶

Sunrise was at 6:26 A.M. on December 7 at Pearl Harbor.²⁷ At least three civilian planes were in the air early. Roy Vitousek, a lawyer, suddenly found himself in formation with strange planes. Cornelia Fort, a civilian instructor, was aloft with a student. James Duncan, member of a flying club, was taking a lesson from Thomas Pomerlin, a commercial pilot. All three planes got down safely under pelting Jap machine gun fire.

The attacking force made three approaches. One group from the north came directly across the island, attacking the Army’s Wheeler Field on its way to assault Pearl Harbor. A second force from the east attacked the Navy’s Kaneohe Bay flying boat base, the Bellows Field Army airdrome, and Pearl Harbor. The third Japanese force made its approach from the south, attacking Pearl Harbor and Hickam Field, the adjacent Army air field. The Marine air base at Ewa Plantation was destroyed, apparently by the force which darted in from the east on Kaneohe air station.

The enemy opened fire at Kaneohe about 7:50 A.M.²⁸ Five minutes later the attack hit Pearl Harbor. At Kaneohe the Japs knocked out twenty-seven flying boats and an observation plane. At Ford Island Naval Air Station twenty-six planes were destroyed on the ground—nineteen patrol bombers, three scout bombers, and four fighters. Only three planes were later able to take to the air from Ford Island. At Ewa, the Marine air base, nine fighters, eighteen scout bombers, three utility planes, two transports, and one training plane—thirty-three—were destroyed.²⁹

At Hickam Field the Japs destroyed four B-17 bombers, twelve B-18 bombers, and two A-20 light bombers—eighteen planes. Forty pursuit and two observation planes were destroyed at Wheeler Field, and an observation plane and two pursuit aircraft at Bellows Field. Eleven planes of scouting squadron 8 which had flown in from the “Enterprise” were shot down over Pearl Harbor, and of eighteen dive bombers which left the carrier and flew into the attack five were lost. Ten of the sixteen carrier planes lost were believed to have been shot down or forced to crash by anti-aircraft fire from American guns.³⁰

The Hawaiian air fields were hit first in order to eliminate any possible interference in the air. The attack was concentrated on the aprons where the planes were parked, upon hangars, and upon repair shops. Almost two hundred American aircraft were lost.³¹

Only a few fighter aircraft at the Army’s remote Haleiwa Field, which was apparently unknown to the Japs, escaped the enemy attack. A squadron was practicing short landings there on Sunday morning.³² Two flights, each consisting of four P-40’s and one obsolescent P-36, got into the air from this field to engage the Japs in combat. Maj. (then Second Lieut.) George S. Welch and his wing man, Second Lieut. Kenneth M. Taylor, both got their planes off the ground from Haleiwa, Welch shooting down four enemy planes and Taylor two.

Enemy planes appeared over the Pearl Harbor fleet base at 7:55 A.M., just as the morning signal flag was being broken out from the signal tower atop the Navy Yard water tank, calling for morning colors to rise in five minutes. From the tower all of Pearl Harbor was spread out before the signalmen. That morning there were ninety-four ships in harbor: eight battleships, two heavy cruisers, six light cruisers, twenty-nine destroyers, five submarines, one gunboat, eight destroyer minelayers, one minelayer, four destroyer minesweepers, six minesweepers, and twenty-four auxiliaries.³³

The battleship “Pennsylvania” was in drydock number 1 with the destroyers “Cassin” and “Downes.” To the left, in drydock number 2, was the destroyer “Shaw.” The light cruiser “Helena” was moored alongside 10-10 dock, with the minelayer “Oglala” moored outboard of her. The light cruiser “Honolulu” was in one of the yard berths to the northeast of the “Helena.”

In Battleship Row, on the south side of Ford Island, were drawn up in order the “California,” then “Neosho,” a 21,000-ton oiler; the “Oklahoma” and “Maryland,” tied up in a pair; the “West Virginia” and “Tennessee,” also paired; the “Arizona” and 9,400-ton repair ship “Vestal,” with the “Arizona” inboard, and, finally, the “Nevada.” On the north side of the island were moored the light cruiser “Raleigh” and the target ship “Utah,” with the seaplane tender “Curtiss” across from the “Utah,” off Peninsula Point.

Of these nineteen ships, only the “Neosho” came through the Japanese attack unscathed.

Most of the damage, both to aircraft and ships, was done in the first few minutes of the attack, which was over in one hour and fifty minutes. The attack developed in the following rough phases: I. 7:55–8:25 A.M. Combined torpedo plane and dive bomber attack. II. 8:25–8:40. Comparative lull. III. 8:40–9:15. Horizontal bomber attack. IV. 9:15–9:45 Dive bomber attacks. V. 9:45. Waning of attack and completion of raid.³⁴

Twenty-one planes took part in the initial torpedo attack, covered by thirty dive bombers and fifteen high-level bombers. The Japanese torpedo planes had been assigned definite targets among the heavy fleet units and had been provided with torpedoes particularly adapted to the shallow waters of Pearl Harbor. The torpedoes were fitted with wooden vanes so that they would not sink too deeply when launched from the planes, while detonators had been designed to operate after a short run so that they would be effective in the limited confines of the harbor.³⁵ The warheads of the Japanese torpedoes at that time were larger and more powerful than in any torpedoes in use by other navies of the world.

All of the battleships moored outboard in Battleship Row were torpedoed, while one torpedo passed underneath the “Oglala” and exploded against the “Helena,” the blast caving in the side plates of the “Oglala,” which capsized an hour later. On the north side of Ford Island the “Raleigh” was struck by one torpedo and the “Utah” turned turtle after taking two. All of these attacks were made by planes which came in at a height of 100 feet or less above the water and launched their torpedoes at very short distances.

In the simultaneous dive-bombing runs, one Jap pilot put a bomb down a stack of the “Arizona,” whose forward boilers and magazine blew up. Other successful attacks were made on the “Pennsylvania,” “California,” “West Virginia,” “Tennessee,” “Helena,” “Shaw,” “Curtiss,” and “Oglala.” High-level bombers scored on the “California,” “Utah,” “Shaw,” and Navy Yard docks. During the comparative lull between 8:25 and 8:40 an estimated fifteen planes continued divebomber attacks, directed against the “Pennsylvania,” “Oklahoma,” “Maryland,” “Nevada,” “Honolulu,” “Helena,” “Cassin,” “Downes,” “Shaw,” and “Oglala.”

The horizontal bomber attacks which followed were centered on the “Pennsylvania,” “West Virginia,” “California,” “Helena,” “Oglala,” and the three destroyers in drydock. About thirty planes participated in these attacks, with eighteen dive bombers also in action. The dive bombers registered hits on drydocks numbers 1 and 2, “Tennessee,” “West Virginia,” “Nevada,” and the three destroyers.

In the fourth phase, between 9:15 and 9:45, the three destroyers were again attacked, as was the “Raleigh.” Bombs also fell on installations on Ford Island, the battleships on the south side of the island, and destroyers and other ships moored north of the island. Twenty-seven dive bombers were estimated to have participated in this closing phase. All enemy planes had retired by 9:45.

In addition to the specially fitted torpedo, the enemy force was provided with another novel weapon which produced unexpectedly good results. This was a large armor piercing shell of 15 or 16 inches, fitted for use by high-level bombers. Hits were scored with these improvised bombs on the battleships “California” and “Tennessee” and the light cruiser “Raleigh.”³⁶

One of these shells penetrated to the “California’s” second deck, where a large part of the ship’s company was assembled. Many of the men were killed and the explosion resulted in a raging fire between-decks. Two more of these projectiles each struck main turrets of the “Tennessee.” One of the shells exploded and a fragment from it mortally wounded Capt. Mervyn S. Bennion, commander of the nearby “West Virginia.” The other blew out its base plug and its detonating charge burned out on the deck without exploding. Despite these hits, only five men aboard the “Tennessee” were killed. The “Raleigh” was struck on the port side aft by a projectile which went through several decks and came out through the side of the ship to explode 50 feet away.

The defenders, although surprised and off balance, fought the Japanese attack with great courage, but losses were high. The attack cost the lives of 2,326 officers and men. The Navy’s losses were 2,086 dead and 749 wounded, while the Army suffered 240 dead and 360 wounded. Total casualties thus were 3,435.³⁷ Of fifteen congressional medals of honor for heroism during the attack, eleven were posthumous awards.

The damage to the fleet consisted of:

Sunk: Five battleships, the “Arizona,” “Oklahoma,” “West Virginia,” “California,” and “Nevada”; three destroyers, the “Cassin,” “Downes,” and “Shaw”; the target ship “Utah,” the repair ship “Vestal,” the minelayer “Oglala,” and floating drydock number 2.

Damaged but afloat: Three battleships, the “Pennsylvania,” “Maryland,” and “Tennessee”; three light cruisers, the “Helena,” “Honolulu,” and “Raleigh,” and the seaplane tender “Curtiss.”*

After the attack the Japanese estimated they had sunk four battleships and damaged four others and that they had wrecked about half of the 900 planes they estimated to be on Oahu.³⁹ They were conservative in estimating warship losses but exaggerated the number of American planes destroyed.

*Damage to these vessels individually is given in Appendix.³⁸