DEC. 7, 1941 • NEW ACCOUNTS • PHOTOS • ARTIFACTS NEVER SEEN BEFORE
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THE DAY BEFORE: Dec. 6, Last Day of Peace
VALOR: Kaneohe Naval Air Station’s Heroes
THE GREEN COAT: A Lost Husband’s Last Gift
RESEARCH: Putting Faces on USS Arizona Dead
Winter 2016-2017
www.AmericaInWWII.com
REMEMBERED
SPECIAL ISSUE
WWII
AMERICA IN
PEARL HARBOR
75th ANNIVERSARY:
THE DAY OF
INFAMY
PEARL HARBOR REMEMBERED 1
T H E N AT I O N A L C A S H R E G I S T E R C O M PA N Y • 1 9 4 2
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A P E A R L H A R B O R R E M E M B E R E D • F L A S H B A C K A
COVER SHOT: The symbol of the shock, tragedy, and infamy of Imperial
Japan’s December 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor: the broken, sunken, burned
battleship USS Arizona (BB-39), still smoking days after the Japanese raid.
WWII VALOR IN THE PACIFIC NATIONAL MONUMENT
THIS SPREAD: On the bow of the mighty Arizona, Paxton Turner Carter
(second from left) pals around with shipmates. Carter became one of 1,177
men killed aboard the Arizona in Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.
His remains were never found. COURTESY OF KIRK DETER
SPECIAL ISSUE
WWII
AMERICA IN
PEARL HARBOR
REMEMBERED
6 The Day Before Alerted by a cryptic radio message,
US diplomats, intelligence officers, commanders, and
government officials scramble to figure out what,
if anything, is about to happen. By Jay Wertz
16 ‘A Date Which Will Live in Infamy’ One leisurely
Sunday morning, paradise became a bloody inferno when the
warplanes of a rising empire came to destroy the only power
capable of getting in its way. A Photo Essay of December 7, 1941
46 Map: The Pearl Harbor Attack, 7:55 A.M.
48 Crisis at Kaneohe The seaplane base on Kaneohe
Bay was over the mountains and 15 miles away from Pearl Harbor.
But on December 7, it was no less a target of Japan’s fiery wrath.
By Michael Wenger, Robert J. Cressman, and John Di Virgilio
62 American Pilots in the Air Japanese carrier
planes weren’t the only aircraft over Oahu on December 7.
US and civilian pilots were there, too.
FEATURES
66 Extra! There was only one news story on Americans’
minds on Monday morning, December 8, 1941. Newspapers
rushed to satisfy the nation’s hunger for more information.
72 The Missing Carriers The Pearl Harbor
raiders counted on destroying America’s mighty aircraft carriers.
But the carriers weren’t at home on December 7. They survived
to punish Japan severely. By John E. Nevola
80 “A Suitable Memorial” A quest for an accurate
listing of the names and ranks of the USS Arizona’s casualties
is uncovering the life stories of the ship’s fallen sailors
and marines. By Daniel A. Martinez
88 The Green Coat A homesick husband’s mischievous
Christmas gift becomes his wife’s lasting reminder of a love lost on
December 7. By Jim Kushlan, with information from Kirk Deter
96 Survivors Five men who lived through the
Japanese attack on Oahu’s military bases and Pearl Harbor
tell their stories of December 7, 1941.
112 Sacred Ground The history and legacy of
December 7 touch every square inch of Pearl Harbor and
its environs. These sites stand out as must-sees.
DEPARTMENTS
1, 64, 71 Flashbacks
4 Publisher’s Welcome
120 The Supreme Sacrifice
Jim Kushlan
Publisher/America in WWII magazine
Taking December 7 Personally
SHOCK SWEPT OVER THE AMERICAN SERVICEMEN on Oahu like a tsunami on Sunday,
December 7, 1941. It began at 7:48 A.M. In Pearl Harbor—and on the army, navy,
and marine bases that surrounded it—bombs, torpedoes, and machine-gun bullets
ripped into ships, hangars, buildings, cars, and planes, and into the men inside them,
who were caught completely off guard.
It was nothing personal. Japan was building a pan-Asian Pacific empire. The US
Pacific Fleet, which had moved to Hawaii in the spring of 1940, was in the way.
The men of Imperial Japan’s seaborne air forces were ready and eager to deal the
American fleet a sudden, decisive blow. Lieutenant Zenji Abe was commander of the
carrier Akagi’s 25th Squadron of three Aichi D3A dive bombers. In December 2005,
on the eve of the Pearl Harbor attack’s 64th anniversary, he reflected on that bygone
time, telling a Japan Times reporter:
“…We Japanese did not know about Americans, and they also did not know about us.
We just conducted our mission as soldiers and there was no hatred there, though the
government tried to teach us to have such feelings. It’s just that our paths of our lives
happened to cross in Pearl Harbor on that day.”
On December 7, 1941, Abe’s path crossed those of the men aboard USS West Virginia
(BB-48). Abe dropped from the sky in his D3A and sent a 550-pound delayed-fuse
bomb toward the already torpedoed battleship—a direct hit, though it failed to explode.
As a result of the attack in which Abe participated, West Virginia sank fast. When fire
engulfed her, all surviving crew abandoned ship. All who were able, that is. Not until
spring 1942 would repair workers find the 66 men trapped deep inside the ship.
A calendar with crossed-off dates revealed some had lingered alive until at least December
23, 16 days after the attack.
Some 106 men died aboard West Virginia. The total military and civilian lives lost in
Pearl Harbor and on Oahu were 2,390. For the killed and wounded and those who
cared about them, the effects of the December 7 attack were very personal indeed.
Abe himself acknowledged this when he courageously returned to Pearl Harbor in
1991, the first of a handful of visits.
Abe apologized to the survivors and the dead for the attack that, unknown to him at
the time, had come without any declaration of war. He became close with veterans such
as Richard Fiske, who in December 1941 was a 19-year-old marine bugler aboard West
Virginia. When Abe died at the age of 90 in April 2007, he had made peace with former
enemies and, say those who knew him, with himself.
The special issue before you tells stories of people who, 75 years ago, weathered the
impersonal tsunami of war and felt its impact very personally. We honor them for their
service, their resilience, and the sacrifices they made to secure peace.
PS: This issue stands apart from usual Pearl Harbor coverage. It focuses on the words
and artifacts of people who endured the attack, on key events before December 7,
and on sites beyond the harbor—all with lavish photo coverage of the raid. We hope
you enjoy it!
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EDITORIAL
EDITOR & PUBLISHER
James P. Kushlan
ART & DESIGN DIRECTOR
Jeffrey L. King
ADMINISTRATIVE ASSISTANTS
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PEARL HARBOR REMEMBERED 7
IT WAS COLD IN WASHINGTON, DC, on the sixth day of De-
cember 1941, and a westerly wind added bite to the early
December chill. But that was normal for the season. It cer-
tainly wasn’t enough to keep people home that Saturday, and the
town bustled with holiday shoppers.
Ten thousand miles to the west, the weather in Tokyo was simi-
larly cold and crisp. A Japanese radio transmission intercepted by
US intelligence operatives on December 5 said as much, describing
conditions as “north wind clear.” But that description worried
America’s civilian and military leaders. From previously decoded
Japanese intercepts, US military intelligence officers recognized that
phrase as a warning to Japan’s worldwide diplomatic missions. It
meant war. One of the non-Axis powers—the Soviet Union, Great
Britain, or the United States—was about to be attacked.
Who would be the target? It was hard to say. The Soviet Union
was already battling Japan’s Axis partner Germany; was Japan
preparing to dive in to support Nazi Germany? Of course, rela-
tions between Japan and Great Britain
were severely strained; had tensions finally
reached the tipping point? Diplomatic
negotiations between Japan and the United
States weren’t going well, either. Washing-
ton insiders familiar with Japan’s policies
saw the “weather warning” as confir-
mation that talks were poised for a
complete breakdown. But there was no
conclusive evidence to pinpoint any of
these possibilities.
For months, US Army and Navy
teams had been engaged in a code-
breaking project known as Magic. Day
after day, they deciphered Japanese messages—some encoded by
Purple, the cryptographic machine used by Japan’s Foreign Office,
and others rendered in military codes. The cryptanalysts supplement-
ed this data with information gathered from diplomatic leaks and
reports of military developments overseas. One thing was clear: Japan
was going to war. It was a foregone conclusion, considering the island
empire’s grand plan for Asia, its membership in the Axis alliance, and
the punitive trade restrictions imposed by the West.
For the Magic cryptanalysts and British military intelligence,
the “weather” codes were among a handful of clues that hinted at
Japanese intentions. But “north wind clear” didn’t follow the
code’s normal protocol; it jumbled the words from two different
code phrases.
More clues arrived, and on Saturday, December 6, the question
of when Japan would strike began to come into focus. Early that
day, London reported to Washington that two convoys of
Japanese ships were moving west in the Gulf of Siam toward the
Kra Isthmus (the narrow point of Southeast Asia’s Malay
Peninsula). It was common knowledge that the Japanese wanted
the British and Dutch possessions in southern Asia for inclusion in
the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere (Imperial Japan’s
vision of a forced union of Asian nations and colonies under
Japanese rule). But “north wind clear” didn’t seem to point to a
move in Southeast Asia. Where then?
In Washington, Congress was out of session, having begun a
long weekend on Thursday. But for many
high-ranking federal officials, the Japanese
“weather warning” turned Saturday,
December 6, into a workday. The list
included President Franklin Roosevelt,
Secretary of State Cordell Hull, army and
navy secretaries Henry Stimson and
Frank Knox, and a host of personnel in
various military departments—all
urgently trying to determine what
Japan was planning. As the day pro-
gressed, information arriving by wire
and on US leaders’ doorsteps would
lead to inevitable conclusions about
Japan’s intentions. Nothing, however, prepared Washington fully
for the events of the coming 24 hours.
14 Points from Japan
BLOCKS AWAY FROM THE WHITE HOUSE, on Embassy Row, mem-
bers of Japan’s mission to the United States were about to be
caught up in a whirlwind of their own. Special envoy Saburo
Kurusu, former ambassador to Germany and a perfect English-
THE DAYBEFORE
OPPOSITE:HAWAIIAVIATION.RIGHT:NATIONALCRYPTOLOGICMUSEUM
Opposite: GIs ham it up at the Crossroads of the Pacific sign at Honolulu’s Kau-Kau Korner restaurant. Above: Hawaii was GI paradise.
But trouble was brewing in late 1941. On December 6, the US knew Japan was going to attack somewhere, but cryptanalysts decoding
an intercepted message in Japan’s Purple diplomatic code were unsure where. The US-built console seen here was used to process Purple.
Alerted by a cryptic radio message, US diplomats, intelligence officers, commanders,
and government officials scramble to figure out what, if anything, is about to happen.
by Jay Wertz
8 PEARL HARBOR REMEMBERED
Tokyo. The ambassador was instructed to request an audience
with the emperor and present the letter that evening—December
7 Tokyo time.
Saturday in Oahu
MANY HOURS EARLIER, December 6 had dawned as a beautiful
balmy day in the Hawaiian Islands (in those days Hawaiian time
was five and a half hours ahead of clocks in Washington, DC).
Trade winds had dusted away the early morning mist as the large
speaker, had arrived in Washington in mid-November. He had
come to help Ambassador Kichisaburo Nomura, a former admiral
and a popular Washington personality, negotiate with the Amer-
icans. Not trusting the militarists in Japan’s government, Kurusu
had set to work trying various ideas to keep relations peaceful.
Earlier he had suggested through an intermediary that FDR com-
pose a personal letter to Emperor Hirohito in an effort to back the
two countries away from the brink of conflict.
At 11 o’clock on the morning of December 6, US Foreign
Service officer Ferdinand L. Mayer called on his old friend Kurusu
at the embassy. The Japanese diplomat implored Mayer to
approach Secretary Hull with a message. Kurusu believed the
attack force that was headed for the Gulf of Siam was a diversion
planned by the military high command to placate the Japanese
government’s most radical elements from planning more aggres-
sive attacks against Siberia or US interests. Kurusu was optimistic
this revelation would allow diplomatic talks between the US and
Japan to continue. Mayer vowed to deliver the message.
Soon, however, came a development that would utterly contra-
dict Kurusu’s optimistic outlook. It was a wire from Japan. First
came a pilot message, instructing the embassy staff to prepare for
transmission of a 14-part coded document. It was an official reply
to the latest official American diplomatic proposal, handed to the
Japanese on November 26. In the pilot message, Foreign Minister
Shigenori Togo ordered the Washington embassy staff to process
the 14-part reply without bringing in typists, and later gave a spe-
cific time when the document was to be presented to the US sec-
retary of state.
But the Americans wouldn’t have to wait. Even as the Japanese
diplomats set to work decoding the transmission, so did US Army
and Navy code-crackers. The naval signal station at Bainbridge
Island, Washington, had intercepted the pilot message. Alarmed
by Togo’s grave initial instructions, the US cryptanalysts set to
work immediately as the 14-part message began arriving that
Saturday afternoon. It was a coded English-language document,
and the Americans deciphered it as quickly as the Japanese
embassy did.
WHILE AMERICAN INTELLIGENCE processed the inter-
cepted message, Roosevelt decided to write the letter
to Hirohito that Kurusu had suggested. FDR didn’t
know it was Kurusu’s idea; he wrote at the urging of the Rev. Dr.
E. Stanley Jones, a trusted friend, who had made the suggestion a
few days earlier. Jones had gotten the idea from another official at
the Japanese embassy, so FDR was unaware how high up the
Japanese diplomatic chain the suggestion had originated. But he
liked the idea and penned the letter that afternoon in a frank,
man-to-man tone.
In his letter, FDR reminded Hirohito that the nations of East
Asia wouldn’t “sit on a powder keg” forever and that something
needed to be done to defuse tensions in the region. He directed
Hull to forward the letter to US Ambassador Joseph C. Grew in
Above: Admiral Husband Kimmel takes command of the US Pacific Fleet aboard the flagship, USS Pennsylvania (BB-38), at Pearl Harbor in
February 1941. Long based on the West Coast, the fleet moved to Hawaii under orders from President Franklin Roosevelt, concerned about
Japanese aggression in the Pacific. The commander, Admiral James O. Richardson, resisted the move and was replaced with Kimmel.
THE DAY BEFORE by Jay Wertz
WWIIVALORINTHEPACIFICNATIONALMONUMENT
military establishment on Oahu began its weekend routine. This
included limited air patrols around the islands and ocean surface
patrols, all looking for enemy submarines. The threat of a
Japanese submarine attack inside Oahu’s Pearl Harbor was a hot
subject among navy personnel there.
It is a longstanding myth that Hawaii’s military leaders were
completely unprepared for a Japanese attack. The truth is,
Admiral Husband Kimmel, commander in chief of the US Pacific
Fleet; Rear Admiral Claude Bloch, 14th Naval District command-
er; and Lieutenant General Walter Short, commander of the
army’s Hawaii Department, had operated under the threat of war
for most of their short (except for Bloch) terms in their posts. But
several factors tempered their level of preparedness for enemy
PEARL HARBOR REMEMBERED 9
attack, all predicated on one guiding tenet: that a long-range
Japanese aerial attack on Pearl Harbor and Oahu was impossible.
Only a very small number of American military leaders—in
Hawaii and elsewhere—believed otherwise. And even among
those who viewed such an attack as possible, virtually none
believed it could come without warning.
On the morning of December 6 Short and Kimmel each met
with their staffs, as was their custom. In the army meeting it was
noted that a B-24 Liberator heavy bomber would be arriving from
the mainland to begin a survey of Japanese positions in the
Caroline Islands, nearly 4,000 miles southwest of Hawaii. This
was a slight departure from Washington’s policy to do nothing
that Japan might perceive as aggressive while talks continued.
And although the plane would carry no ammunition for its three
guns, the Japanese would have no way of knowing that. The army
had assured the B-24’s crew that there was no risk of enemy attack
on the way to Hawaii.
Among the topics the naval officers covered in their meeting
that morning was the procedure to follow in case of Japanese
aggression. But the plan lacked detail. Kimmel was hesitant to
send his fleet out to sea because his fuel supply was limited—and
because the fleet’s carriers were away, depriving his ships of aeri-
al protection against enemy planes. Kimmel believed his ships
were safest at their current moorings in Pearl Harbor. Besides,
only one member of Kimmel’s staff believed an attack was immi-
nent—intelligence officer Lieutenant Commander Edwin T.
Layton, whom other officers ribbed for his conviction.
AT THAT TIME ON OAHU, the eyes of American military
intelligence and civilian law enforcement were focused
intently on Japanese activities. Special FBI agents were in
Honolulu monitoring the movements of native Japanese and others
whom the government feared might be operating against US inter-
ests. They and army and navy intelligence operatives kept a close
eye on the Japanese consulate. On Saturday, December 6, naval
intelligence reported that the Japanese were burning papers inside
the consulate compound. That wasn’t unusual, except that the
Japanese were burning their codebooks. That was significant. But
when this information reached 14th Naval District Headquarters
it went no farther; Kimmel had previously downplayed the signif-
icance of such destruction of documents.
Other clues went unnoticed or even unknown on Oahu because
of fragmented and watered-down communication from Washing-
ton. An example of just how vague official communications could
be was the wording of an order to US personnel on Wake Island,
some 3,300 miles southeast of Japan, to destroy codebooks and
sensitive papers immediately. Considering Wake’s position, it was
clear that the order meant Japanese invasion was likely. But over-
cautious senior officials dutifully lined out any reference to immi-
nent war with...
