The Charlotte News

Saturday, November 29, 1941

FIVE EDITORIALS

"V for Vulgarity" brings to mind, for reasons which you will have to fathom, the line from Julius Caesar: "'Tis three o'clock; and, Romans, yet ere night/ We shall try fortune in a second fight." The time planned for attack on X-Day, even if in fact it would arrive five to seven minutes earlier than anticipated, was indeed three o'clock--that is by the clocks out in Newfoundland, where in August Churchill had met Roosevelt and formed the Atlantic Charter. It was 1:30 in Washington; it was 12:30 in Dallas.

Raymond Clapper discusses Hull's Ten Points offered up to Ambassador Nomura on the 26th, premised on the principles enunciated in July, 1937 at the beginning proper of the war in China, six years after the occupation of Manchukuo in 1931. That would be followed by the President's October, 1937 Chicago speech, warning Japan and the Nazis against further aggression, though not naming them, hinting at a quarantine in response--the quarantine which, once implemented in late July, 1941 with respect to Japan, was now, from the perspective of the Japanese, the very heart of the issue stultifying resolution of the crisis "peacefully".

The question arises from this patient policy, followed by the attack at Pearl Harbor, as to whether, in light of the history of Vietnam and the history of the Iraq war, the United States still follows consistently the principles enunciated in the Hull policy of the Roosevelt years, as stated in the Clapper piece. With respect to most of the world, clearly the answer is yes; but with respect to rogue states, especially those of the Middle East and Southeast Asia, the answer is that there is variance in the policy, a distrust and itchy trigger finger, rightly or wrongly, growing out of the experience of Pearl Harbor.

The piece from the Baltimore Evening Sun raises the topic of conscientious objection to the war, centering on a southern California man, Henry Welty Kuhns, raised as a Baptist, supported by the Methodists after his case became a cause célèbre when he pleaded nolo contendere to a charge in Federal court of willful draft evasion, after his c.o. status had been denied by the local draft board. Now, the U.S. Attorney was calling upon the FBI to investigate the Methodists for possible criminal violations by advocating publicly the young man's position as being correct and criticizing the draft board policy which denied him c.o. status, despite its being sincerely held.

Clearly, this latter course, had it gone anywhere, would have violated the Methodists' freedom of speech as nothing they said advocated violence or the immediate overthrow of the government or constituted a clear and present danger of inciting such violence. Anyone has the right to advocate passive violation of the law.

So, on these principles, it would appear that Mr. Kuhns, had he pleaded instead not guilty to the charge, had a trial, been convicted and then appealed the conviction, might have succeeded in overturning his denial of c.o. status and avoided jail. Certainly, there was no indication that his objection was anything less than a sincerely held belief based on his Baptist teachings.

The Japanese Task Force was now some 1,500 miles along on its journey to Hawaii, over one-third the distance to the goal line. It moved along a route seldom used by United States or Russian merchant or military traffic, in that area which the U.S. military commanders called "the vacant sea", an area of which they were aware as a possible approach to Hawaii, through which ships could pass undetected.

Now, that sea was no longer vacant but quite disturbed by the presence of the plodding Task Force, steadily advancing at a pace of 14 knots, presently aided even further in its invisibility at night by dense fog.

Various radio communications from Japan were being intercepted in Hawaii, in San Francisco, in Seattle, in Australia, which fooled American intelligence into believing, through the use of deceptive call signals, that the ships in the Task Force were either still in home waters or a part of the southward moving Task Force. Call signs were heard on November 30 from the Akagi, the command ship which was headquarters to Nagumo, which had it communicating with oil tankers. This message made it all the way up to Admiral Kimmel, who dismissed it as nothing important.

Similarly, on November 29, a message was intercepted which showed the Hiei, part of the First Air Fleet Task Force headed to Hawaii, sending signals to the Chief of Staff of the Third Fleet.

Both ships were of course maintaining strict radio silence and so these messages were merely arranged via false call signals.

Believing an attack imminent, Cordell Hull this date telephoned the President in Warm Springs, Georgia at the Little White House, asking that he cut his visit short; the President agreed to return on December 1. Secretary of War Henry Stimson and Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox, both Republicans, attended the traditional Army-Navy football game in Philadelphia.

A message sent this date from Tokyo, to be intercepted by U.S. intelligence and translated on December 5, stated to Nagao Kita, Consul General for the Japanese Embassy in Honolulu: "We have been receiving reports from you on ship movements, but in future will you also report even when there are no movements."

But this message, even with two days before the attack to review and circulate it among the brass, still did not clue intelligence resources that an attack at Pearl Harbor was likely in the offing; the concern remained focused on sabotage attempts to be accomplished locally in Hawaii, or on the belief that the ship monitoring was to determine the likelihood of U.S. ships at sea in the area thought vulnerable to attack, the Philippines, the East Indies, Singapore, Thailand. Of course, these were reasonable conclusions to make, with the only known Task Force headed south, well away from Hawaii--except with hindsight plentifully in store. No one thought even the Japanese were so outrageously suicidal to attempt the mission now at sea. Indeed, even the Japanese commanders themselves believed the mission to be foolhardy and of doubtful success.

Commander Minoru Genda, original author of the "vacant sea" approach plan, now on board the Task Force headed for Hawaii, this date drew up several alternative proposals to offer Vice-Admiral Nagumo as to return routes, after the initial two-wave attack, as planned from the outset. Genda wanted repeated sorties, as the carriers remained 200 miles north of Oahu for several days, insuring maximum destruction of ships and planes at Pearl Harbor. His alternatives varied the extreme northern route of return planned by Nagumo, replacing it either with a less extreme northern return, or one along the Hawaiian islands and just north of Midway, to enable attack of U.S. fleets in the area, or a southern route whereby the fleet would sail past Oahu and then west to the Marshall Islands, enabling a second two-wave attack on Pearl Harbor, later on X-Day, and then more attacks during the ensuing three days. Genda favored this latter plan more than the others as it promised full annihilation of the U.S. Fleet and the potential even for capturing Hawaii itself, obviously a decisive moral and strategic blow to U.S. interests in such event.

The original hit-and-run plan, however, after a quick two-wave assault by air, escaping north toward the Aleutians, would not be altered by Nagumo in response.

The mood remained tense in the Task Force, fearful of being spotted by either U.S. or Russian merchant ships, clueing the defenses to the approaching danger, triggering a sea battle.

Of course, this was consistent with Hitler's policy of distraction and division of the U.S. Navy with Pacific concerns, a plan talked about in the press now for weeks, taking the attention of the Navy from the convoying of aid to Britain in the Atlantic, cutting off Pacific avenues of aid as well to Russia, and directly opening much needed supply lines of rubber, tin, and oil from the East Indies and Malaysia.

Indeed, with the war at a stalemate in Russia because of the early winter, and, yet unknown, a major assault of a million and a half men led by Russian General Georgi Zhukov of von Kluge's forces entrenched near Moscow about to take place on December 6, the attack on Pearl was key to continuing the war by Hitler for very much longer, the Russian invasion having overstayed its welcome on its original planning board now by several months. Oil reserves were running out for both Japan and Germany, as Secretary of Treasury Morgenthau would shortly report directly to FDR in a memo.

So whether this bit of diplomatic tête à tête between Japan and Germany was real, in the sense that it was genuinely necessary, or merely staged performance to provide the appearance of arm's length bargaining between the two Axis partners, while at once the whole operation was in fact planned by Hitler and orchestrated from his network of overseers present in Japan by mid-1941, is a question which carries its probable answer from examination of the fingerprints of all such major Hitler-orchestrated military offensives, each characterized by the sneak blitzkrieg, just as with Poland, just as with Russia, just as with Pearl Harbor.

Hitler thrived on doing not only the unexpected, but doing the unexpected which was in fact completely nuts and completely counter-intuitive. That aspect of Hitler's mind, the completely unanticipated act of lunacy, and indeed of his counterpart in Japan, Tojo, is sometimes mistakenly thought to be hallmark of "military genius". It is instead indicative only of paranoid schizophrenia, in short, madness, as the results of every such military scheme in history plundering deep into enemy territory for one fatally decisive strike, Napoleon in Russia, Lee at Gettysburg, consistently demonstrate. There is no genius in walking into a lion's cage and placing one's head repeatedly in the mouth of the lion to prove that the lion is a weak coward--just stupidity.

And we don't think that Samuel Taylor Coleridge had in mind Humble Oil when he uttered the quote of the day, but, unwittingly, he might have.

Also, on this date, as well as the previous day, the winds codes were transmitted by the Foreign Ministry in Tokyo to Ambassador Nomura in Washington. The wind execute message, meaning war was imminent, would occur by repetition of the key phrase during weather broadcasts on the Japanese language shortwave frequencies. "HIGASHI NO KAZEAME", meaning "East wind rain", indicated that war with the United States was imminent. With the other two alternatives, war with Russia, "KITANOKAZE KUMORI", "north wind cloudy", or war with the Dutch and Great Britain, "NISHI NO KAZE HARE", "west wind clear", only one message carried with it the prospect of foul weather. Only one point of the compass was omitted. Instructions accompanying the winds message were to relay it to Japanese consulates in Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro, Mexico City, and San Francisco. A-B-C. For whatever reason, Santiago was not mentioned.

American intelligence sources intercepted this message the same day and then began dutifully listening for the execute message, which they never heard.

More obfuscation and misdirection? Or, was it an attempt by the Japanese to assuage conscience over a sneak attack, as well to alert Nomura, as Togo had sought permission to do and been denied the day before, of the very fact of the invasion at Pearl? That is, was the message itself the execute message, packed with not only the fact of war with the U.S., something which everyone understood was likely anyway, but also with the fact of the location of attack, and the very day of it, staring ONI right in the face? We have extensively covered that aspect of the winds messages before, in the article on Cash's death, and so refer you there.