Pearl Harbor by The Associated Press

Author:The Associated Press
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Associated Press
Published: 2016-12-04T00:00:00+00:00

chapter 6

Point of No Return

On January 27, 1941, in Tokyo, the Peruvian ambassador to Japan, Dr. Ricardo Rivera Schreiber, passed along some gossip he had picked up to a friend at the U.S. Embassy. The Japanese were planning to attack Pearl Harbor.

This was only days after Yamamoto had presented his proposal to do just that, a proposal wrapped in the tightest security. The source of the leak, or even if it was a genuine one, has never been traced.

Ambassador Grew passed it on to Washington for whatever it was worth. The news found its way to ONI, which concluded: “Based on known data regarding the present disposition and employment of Japanese naval and armed forces, no move against Pearl Harbor appears imminent or planned for the foreseeable future.”

Touching all bases, however, ONI replayed the rumor to CINCPAC in Hawaii. The date was February 5, 1941, the very day Admiral Kimmel took over as commander-in-chief of the Pacific Fleet. McCollum of ONI’s Asia Section advised: “Naval Intelligence places no credence in these rumors.”

In short order, Kimmel had on his desk a report that was more than rumor. It was the work of Rear Admiral Patrick Bellinger, commander of the Navy’s patrol planes out of Oahu, in collaboration with Major General Frederick L. Martin, head of the Hawaiian Air Force. The Martin-Bellinger report was completed March 31, 1941.

Said the report: “It appears that the most likely and dangerous form of attack on Oahu would be an air attack . . . most likely launched from one or more carriers . . . probably . . . inside of three hundred miles.” Martin-Bellinger recommended patrolling a 360-degree circle out from Pearl Harbor “as far as possible to seaward.”

That was nice on paper, but Kimmel didn’t have the planes available. The long-range PBY Catalinas under Rear Admiral Claude C. Bloch, commandant of Hawaii’s Fourteenth Naval District, were needed for fleet operations, and there weren’t enough to man a round-the-clock patrol anyway. The Army Air Corps had some four-engine B-17s, the Flying Fortresses which the Army was convinced, wrongly, would answer all its prayers. But General Short’s responsibility, which he was to misinterpret, was the defense of Pearl Harbor. His planes scouted out only twenty miles. Deeper water was Bellinger’s responsibility.

The day after the Martin-Bellinger report, on April Fools Day if anyone noticed, ONI alerted all naval districts that “. . . past experience shows the Axis Powers often begin activities . . . on Saturdays, Sundays and national holidays of the country concerned . . . . Take steps on such days to see that proper watches and precautions are in effect.”

Husband Kimmel ran taut ships as a cruiser and battleship commander where anchors were weighed to the second and spit-and-polish were rubbed in generously. A graying blond of fifty-nine, he was born in Kentucky and had long dreamed of going to West Point. He had to settle for Annapolis, graduating thirteenth in his class of sixty-two in 1904, the same year Yamamoto got out of Japan’s Naval Academy.

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