The Second World War Read online

  The minister of war General Tj Hideki acknowledged that to take on the United States, with its industrial might, was a terrible gamble. And Yamamoto, who also feared the consequences of a prolonged war with the United States, felt that their only chance of survival was to get in first with a massive attack. ‘In the first six to twelve months of a war with the United States and Britain, I will run wild and win victory after victory,’ he predicted with considerable accuracy. ‘After that… I have no expectation of success.’

  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 Tj 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 th
eir 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.

  On 10 December, 5,400 Japanese marines landed on Guam, in the Mariana Islands, some 2,500 kilometres east of Manila. The small and lightly armed garrison of US Marines did not stand a chance.

  The British in Hong Kong and Malaya had been expecting a Japanese invasion since the end of November. Malaya was a rich prize with its tin mines and vast rubber plantations. The governor, Sir Shenton Thomas, had described the country as the ‘dollar arsenal of the Empire’. Malaya thus represented almost as high a priority for the Japanese as the oilfields of the Dutch East Indies. A state of emergency was declared in Singapore on 1 December, but the British were still woefully ill prepared. The colonial authorities feared that an overreaction might unsettle the native population.

  The appalling complacency of colonial society had produced a self-deception largely based on arrogance. A fatal underestimation of their attackers included the idea that all Japanese soldiers were very shortsighted and inherently inferior to western troops. In fact they were immeasurably tougher and had been brainwashed into believing that there was no greater glory than to give their lives for their Emperor. Their commanders, imbued with a sense of racial superiority and convinced of Japan’s right to rule over East Asia, remained impervious to the fundamental contradiction that their war was supposed to free the region from western tyranny.

  The Royal Navy had a vast and modern naval base on the northeast corner of Singapore island. Powerful coastal batteries covered the approaches, ready to destroy an amphibious attack, but this magnificent complex which had cost a large part of the naval budget was almost empty. The original plan had been that a fleet could be sent out there from Britain in the event of war. But because of naval commitments in the Atlantic and the Mediterranean and the need to protect Arctic convoys to Murmansk taking supplies to the Russians, the British had no battle fleet in the Far East. Churchill’s promise to aid the Soviet Union also meant that the Far East Command lacked modern aircraft and tanks, as well as a range of other equipment. The only fighter available–the Brewster Buffalo, known as the ‘flying beer barrel’ because of its tubby shape and sluggish handling–stood no chance against Japanese Zeros.

  The British commander in Malaya was Lieutenant General Arthur Percival, a very tall, thin man with a military moustache which failed to divert attention from his buck teeth and weak chin. Although Percival had acquired a perhaps undeserved reputation for ruthlessness with IRA prisoners during the Troubles in Ireland, he had the obstinacy of a faint-hearted man when it came to dealing with subordinate commanders. Lieutenant General Sir Lewis Heath, the commander of III Indian Corps, had no respect for Percival and bitterly resented his promotion over him. And relations between the various army and RAF commanders, as well as between them and the tempestuous and paranoid Australian commander, Major General Henry Gordon Bennett, were far from amicable. In theory, Percival commanded nearly 90,000 men, but fewer than 60,000 were front-line troops. Hardly any had experience of the jungle, and the Indian battalions and local volunteers were virtually untrained. The sorry state of British defences was well known in Tokyo. The 3,000 Japanese civilians then resident in Malaya had been passing back detailed intelligence through their consulate-general in Singapore.

  On 2 December, a Royal Navy squadron commanded by the diminutive Admiral Sir Thomas Phillips reached Singapore. It consisted of the modern battleship HMS Prince of Wales, the old battle-cruiser HMS Repulse and four destroyers. Crucially, it lacked fighter cover, because the aircraft carrier HMS Indomitable with forty-five Hurricanes had been halted for repairs. But this did not seem to worry the British in Singapore. They did not think that the Japanese would dare to launch an invasion of
Malaya now, with such powerful ships based there. General Percival, meanwhile, was refusing to construct defence lines with the argument that it reduced the offensive spirit of his soldiers.

  On Saturday, 6 December, a Royal Australian Air Force bomber, based at Kota Bahru in the far north-east of Malaya, sighted Japanese transports escorted by warships. They had sailed from the island of Hainan off the south China coast and were due to be joined by two convoys from Indochina. This force, which would split again, was headed for the southern Thai ports of Patani and Singora on the Kra Isthmus and the air base of Kota Bahru. From the Kra Isthmus, General Yamashita Tomoyuki’s 25th Army would attack both north-westwards towards southern Burma and south into Malaya.

  The British had evolved a plan, Operation Matador, to advance into southern Thailand and delay the Japanese there. But the Thai government, bowing to the inevitable and hoping to regain territory in north-west Cambodia, had virtually accepted Japanese overlordship in advance. Air Chief Marshal Sir Robert Brooke-Popham, the elderly commander-in-chief Far East, could not make up his mind whether to launch Operation Matador or not. Brooke-Popham was known as ‘Pop-off’ because of his tendency to fall asleep during meetings. General Heath was furious about the indecision, since his Indian troops were still on standby to move into Thailand when they should have been moving to Jitra in the far north-west to prepare defensive positions there. They were becoming increasingly demoralized, soaked to the skin in the monsoon rains.