The and In recognition of the new national security strategy s focus on the Asia- Pacific Region, ARMY Magazine will include articles this year on the role of land forces in the Pacific theater in peace and war. Articles will highlight the history and current presence in the region. We start with Pearl Harbor. U.S. Navy By COL Stanley L. Falk AUS retired Of the 43,000 officers and men in the s Hawaiian Department on December 7, 1941, barely a handful were awake and at work in the predawn hours of that warm, sleepy Sunday morning. Among those on duty were a few members of the Signal Aircraft Warning Company, Hawaii, manning half a dozen new mobile SCR-270 radar sets at key locations on the island of Oahu. These air warning stations, while still in a training status, had been operating for three hours daily since Thanksgiving, Above, the destroyer Shaw explodes in the floating drydock, her bow blown off by a bomb. when LTG Walter C. Short, the department commander, had issued an alert order against the probable start of war with Japan. 50 ARMY February 2013
December 7, 1941 LTG Short had acted in response to a series of warnings from the War Department that hostilities were possible at any moment. The wording of these warnings, however, had appeared to suggest sabotage and other subversive activities as posing the greatest danger to his command. The general s alert order, therefore, emphasized the dangers of saboteurs and internal unrest rather than of any overt attack on Hawaii or its great Pearl Harbor naval base. Nevertheless, to guard against the possibility of a Japanese air attack however improbable this appeared then LTG Short directed the air warning stations to operate each day from 0400 to 0700, two hours before dawn and one hour after, the most likely time for a carrier strike. At about 0645 on December 7, the three stations on Oahu s north shore began to pick up radar blips indicating a small number of aircraft approaching from the north. Since the U.S. Navy was known to be flying some sort of dawn patrol, the radar men ignored the blips and began to prepare to end their watch at 0700. In fact, however, these blips represented scout planes from the Japanese Pearl Harbor Strike Force, then less than 300 miles away and preparing to launch their attack. The Japanese task force, built around six heavy carriers with 360 aircraft, had left the Kuril Islands 12 days earlier and reached Hawaiian waters undetected. Its mission was to destroy the U.S. Pacific Fleet in the first hours of Japan s war with the West. The fleet stationed at Pearl Harbor was a powerful one and, as Japan s naval planners well understood, a major threat to Japanese military ambitions. Defense of the American warships was, of course, a naval responsibil- Above, the engine nacelle of a destroyed Army aircraft was incorporated in a hasty antiaircraft revetment at Hickham Field. Below, a fuel dump burns at Hickham, with wrecked vehicles in the foreground. February 2013 ARMY 51
Hawaiian Department artillerymen drill on an M1917A1 75 mm gun in a beach defense position during exercises in the summer of 1941. ity, but LTG Short s primary mission was also to protect the fleet. To do so, he had only limited means. On December 7, 1941, the Hawaiian Department contained two understrength infantry divisions, four antiaircraft artillery regiments, four coast artillery regiments, a single company of light tanks, supporting troops and the Hawaiian Air Force. The latter, LTG Short s primary defense against air attack or invasion, included just over 230 aircraft, half of which were obsolete. Furthermore, his aircraft warning system was far from complete, short on parts and trained personnel, incapable of differentiating friendly from hostile planes and without any mechanism for vectoring defending aircraft to intercept attackers. LTG Short had cordial relationships with the Pacific Fleet commander, Adm. Husband E. Kimmel, and with Rear Adm. Claude C. Bloch, commandant of the 14th Naval District, but there was no arrangement for close Army-Navy coordination and mutual support. Completely lacking was any effective means of developing joint plans, coordinating operations or even exchanging intelligence information. Since assuming command in February, LTG Short had concentrated on badly needed troop training, airfield development, coastal defense improvement, and replacement of obsolete or inoperable planes and equipment, yet, on the eve of the Pearl Harbor attack, his defenses were inadequate to meet precisely the kind of assault the Japanese were about to launch. COL Stanley L Falk, AUS Ret., PhD., is a military historian and author specializing in World War II in the Pacific. This article is reprinted from the December 1991 ARMY. At a few minutes before seven on the morning of December 7, the mobile radar stations on Oahu prepared to shut down. At Opana, the northernmost station on the island, PVT Joseph L. Lockard and PVT George E. Elliott decided to keep their set in operation until the truck arrived to pick them up. At exactly 0702, a large, luminous blip appeared on the set, larger than either of them had ever seen before. They soon concluded it was a mass flight of aircraft about 130 miles away and moving rapidly south. It was, indeed, the 183 bombers, fighters and torpedo planes constituting the first wave of Japanese attackers. At approximately 0720, PVT Elliott called the Aircraft Warning Information Center at Fort Shafter, several miles east of Pearl Harbor, to report the radar sighting. Just about everyone at the center had left except PVT Joseph P. Mc- Donald, still on the switchboard, and LT Kermit Tyler of the 78th Pursuit Squadron. PVT McDonald was impressed by the report, but LT Tyler told him and the two men at Opana that the sighting was merely a group of Army B-17s expected to arrive that morning from the mainland. Privates Lockard and Elliott continued to track the oncoming planes until they were obscured on their screen by the permanent echo of the surrounding mountains. Then, at 0739, when the Japanese aircraft were 20 miles from Oahu, the two men shut down their set. A quarter of an hour later, as they rode back to camp, the aerial onslaught began. The Japanese blow came in two great waves. The first, detected earlier by Privates Lockard and Elliott, struck at about 0755 and attacked repeatedly, with few lulls or pauses, for almost an hour before withdrawing. Torpedo planes, dive bombers and high-level bombers smashed at 52 ARMY February 2013
Japanese aerial photograph taken during the attack, showing ranks of burning and, as yet undamaged, Army aircraft at Wheeler Field in central Oahu. U.S. Navy the warships anchored in Pearl Harbor, while dive bombers and fighters pummeled Army and Navy airfields on Oahu. The second wave, almost as large as the first but without torpedo planes, arrived at about 0915 and followed a similar pattern of assault. By 1000 all Japanese aircraft were on their way back to their carriers. Behind them lay the smoldering wreckage of the Pacific Fleet: eight battleships sunk or crippled, more than half a dozen other warships heavily damaged and some 2,700 naval casualties. While the fleet had been the primary objective of the attack, the Japanese had placed an even heavier emphasis on hitting the Oahu airfields. Nearly 60 percent of the strike force had been targeted against the air bases in an effort to smother any American aerial resistance. At Hickham Field, on the Honolulu side of Pearl Harbor and the headquarters of Maj. Gen. Frederick L. Martin s Hawaiian Air Force, some 50 bombers of the 18th Bombardment Wing were lined up in the open. Parked close together for protection against possible sabotage, they made an easy target. The Japanese dive bombers and fighters struck repeatedly at the massed planes and at hangars, barracks and other airfield installations. There was little opposition. Antiaircraft positions were unmanned, and soldiers racing to them or frantically trying to haul ammunition from supply depots were cut down by strafing Japanese fighters or torn apart by explosions. One of the first bombs destroyed a mess hall and killed three dozen men at breakfast. Still others died seeking shelter in the vulnerable hangars. No planes got off the ground, but soldiers fired some of the aircraft guns back at their attackers. Almost simultaneously with the raid on Hickham, Japanese dive bombers struck the grounded aircraft of the 14th Pursuit Wing at Wheeler Field, in central Oahu. For 15 minutes, they wreaked havoc among the closely parked planes. One bomb tore through a dispensary in a former hangar, inflicting heavy casualties. Another left a huge crater in the 34th Engineers area at nearby Schofield Barracks. Japanese fighters followed this assault with repeated strafing attacks. Despite the ferocity of the onslaught, a number of American fighters were able to take off from Wheeler. Four old P- 36s of the 46th Pursuit Squadron even managed to shoot down two Japanese planes, while losing one of their own. Other Japanese bombers and fighters devastated the Navy and Marine Corps air bases on Ford Island, in the center of Pearl Harbor, at Ewa, 10 miles to the west, and at Kaneohe, on the east coast, yet they almost missed two other smaller Army airfields. Bellows Field, a few miles south of Kaneohe, was strafed by a single fighter and then by a flight of nine more, apparently only as a target of opportunity. The Japanese struck just as P-40s of the 44th Pursuit Squadron were trying to take off, destroying two of them as well as many still on the ground and preventing any real opposition. Only one Japanese fighter managed to find and strafe the small field at Haleiwa, on the north coast. Half a dozen planes of the 47th Pursuit Squadron took off from that field and downed four Japanese aircraft. One P-36, however, fell victim to American machine-gun fire from Schofield Barracks, where the bulk of LTG Short s troops were stationed. The Schofield gunners also managed to down a Japanese plane. February 2013 ARMY 53
The parade ground and barracks at Hickham Field, with oil fires burning fiercely in the harbor area. While the attacking Japanese were swarming about their targets or regrouping for fresh assaults, a dozen Army B-17s appeared in the skies. These were the bombers from the mainland for which LT Tyler had mistaken the first wave of Japanese planes. Stripped of guns and ammunition in order to carry more fuel for the long flight and without any warning of what awaited them, the B-17s came under fire from both Japanese fighters and American antiaircraft gunners. Almost miraculously, eight B-17s were able to get down at Hickham, while three landed with some difficulty on the shorter runways at Haleiwa and Bellows. The last of the big planes outmaneuvered the attacking fighters to put down on a golf course far to the north. Three of the B-17s were heavily shot up, however, and a fourth was destroyed on the ground. Army antiaircraft fire proved generally ineffective against the Japanese. While naval gunners were able to throw up a fairly heavy barrage at the second wave of attackers, most Army antiaircraft fire was restricted to.50-caliber machine guns and smaller arms. Few of the Hawaiian Department s mobile three-inch batteries were in proper position, and ammunition was not readily on hand. So when batteries of the 53rd Coast Artillery Brigade (AA) at Forts Weaver and Kamehameha, at the entrance to Pearl Harbor, opened fire at Japanese planes sweeping in on the fleet, most of the weapons used were of small caliber. A single fixed three-inch battery at each fort and another at Sand Island in Honolulu Harbor were the only heavier Army weapons to get into action. Elsewhere, at Schofield Barracks and Camp Molekai, on Oahu s southwest coast, antiaircraft gunners fired machine guns. There was, indeed, a great deal of small-arms fire of all sorts being thrown up at the Japanese. Soldiers, sailors and marines grabbed whatever weapon was available to them and blasted away in anger and frustration. At Schofield, 25th Division infantrymen set up machine guns on rooftops, but many individuals fired Browning automatic rifles, M1s and even sidearms from wherever they happened to be when they saw the attacking planes. It s doubtful, however, that any of this had much effect. Meanwhile, like practically everyone else on the island, LTG Short had needed a few moments to accept the fact that an attack was actually under way. Indeed, the standard reaction of most people to the initial reports and first sights and sounds of the Japanese assault was that the whole thing was some sort of bad joke or practice alert or perhaps an American military exercise. From his headquarters at Fort Shafter, the Hawaiian Department commander could not see Pearl Harbor, but the sound of the explosions and the rising smoke suggested to him that the Navy was running a surprise battle practice. Within 10 minutes of the first bomb, however, he had an accurate report and immediately put the department on its highest alert footing, prepared to resist an invasion. LTG Short s battle command post was a hardened underground position in the Aliamanu Crater, three miles west of Fort Shafter. Since spring, department engineers and civilian contractors had been laboring to develop well-protected underground tunnels and fuel and ammunition storage areas in the crater. While these improvements were in progress, however, signal corps crews had taken out the command post s switchboard and distribution cables to protect them from blasting and other construction activity. On the morning of December 7, only the hasty arrival and fast work of an alert signal corps team reestablished the command post communication system before LTG Short arrived. A similar event took place at Schofield Barracks, where the telephones and switchboards for the 98th Coast Artillery Regiment (AA) had been locked in the supply depot to prevent theft or sabotage. It took nearly half an hour for the regimental communications section to set up a switchboard and connecting lines from the command post to gun positions at Schofield Barracks and Wheeler Field. Fortunately, such incidents were not widespread; furthermore, the Japanese attack had not gone after communications centers or signal installations, so Hawaii experienced 54 ARMY February 2013
no crippling communications breakdown. Only one major cable, at Hickham Field, was put out of action by a bomb, but quick patching had all important circuits back on line in short order. Another bomb, dropped by one of the last departing attackers, severed a phone line at the Waianae radar station on the west coast. This installation, like all of the other air warning stations, had been fully manned and back in operation since about 0830. Now, with his telephone useless, the Waianae station commander somehow managed to find a radio powerful enough to restore contact with the information center at Fort Shafter. By 0845 on December 7, the battle command post at Aliamanu was in full operation, with ample communications wherever needed. LTG Short s initial alert order had already reached his major ground commands the 24th and 25th Infantry Divisions and the Hawaiian Coast Artillery Command and movement to assigned areas was under way. An infantry battalion of the 24th Division left Schofield Barracks before 0900. Other elements of the division were drawing ammunition and supplies and loading up. The whole division (less one regiment stationed on the other islands) was in planned defensive positions by late afternoon, with almost all weapons in place and ready to fire. The 25th Division moved equally rapidly. Its commander, MG Maxwell Murray, had had the forethought to issue ammunition to his infantry units several days earlier. With war in the air, he wanted no delays to slow a suddenly ordered deployment. On December 7, this early action paid off. The Coast Artillery Command had passed the alert to subordinate units almost as soon as it received it. Many of its antiaircraft units, however, were so close to the points of Japanese attack that they really needed no warning. Some of their weapons were in action within 20 minutes after the first bomb hit Pearl Harbor. Army air units under direct attack also required no special alert. Their ability to respond, however, was severely limited by the intensity and effectiveness of the sudden assault. Their heavy losses inflicted primarily by the first wave of attackers totaled about 70 aircraft destroyed and an equal number badly damaged. Repair shops and administrative offices were devastated, and wreckage covered the airfields. Army fighter pilots, nevertheless, managed to fly 25 sorties between 0830 and 0930, knocking down several Japanese planes. Navy and Marine Corps aircraft, which suffered even heavier losses, were unable to get off the ground. Not until 1100, an hour after the last Japanese aircraft had left the scene, was the 804th Aviation Engineer Battalion able to clear the Hickham runways and free MG Martin s remaining bombers to take off in search of the Japanese carriers. Engineer work continued during the day at Hickham and Wheeler, repairing broken water mains and damaged utilities, and lengthening the runway at Bellows to enable it to handle B-17s. By early afternoon, fighters and other aircraft as well as Navy search planes were aloft, but none had any luck finding the enemy. The Opana air warning station tracked some of the Japanese heading north toward their carriers, but there were also tracks seemingly leading in other directions. In the confusion, agitation and welter of mixed reports and rumors, no solid information seems to have reached anyone capable of putting it to good use. Both Army and Navy air searches looked to the southwest, and none came anywhere near a Japanese carrier. By now, the Pearl Harbor Strike Force had retrieved all of its returning planes. Only 29 Japanese aircraft had been lost during the mission plus a score more destroyed on landing when rough seas tilted their flight decks. It was a cheap price for the smashing victory. The exultant Japanese flyers pleaded to go back to Pearl Harbor to destroy the docks, machine shops, oil tank farm and other installations left practically untouched in the morning s attack. The strike force commander, however, concerned about the danger still posed to his carriers, was unwilling to risk another attack. He estimated that 50 American land-based bombers re- An infantry machine-gun team sets up its.30-caliber M1917A1 Browning water-cooled weapon during Hawaiian Department exercises in 1940. February 2013 ARMY 55
mained intact and capable of finding him. He also knew that the Pacific Fleet s three aircraft carriers had not been in Pearl Harbor and were somewhere at sea, presumably looking for him. He ordered an immediate withdrawal at top speed to safer waters. Shortly thereafter, a map retrieved from a downed Japanese plane near Fort Kamehameha indicated that the carriers might be northwest of Oahu. Army aircraft headed in that direction, but the Pearl Harbor Strike Force had left the area. Back in Hawaii, LTG Short had begun evacuating civilian dependents from the most hard-hit Army installations. At 1000, Governor Joseph B. Poindexter declared a state of emergency, and at 1515 the Hawaiian Department commander, with the approval of the governor and President Roosevelt, proclaimed martial law throughout the territory. Under this authority, the Army suspended the writ of habeas corpus, substituted military provost courts for Hawaiian civil courts, and instituted censorship of radio, the press and civilian communications leaving Hawaii. It also ordered a blackout and curfew, banned private cars from the highways, shut bars and halted liquor sales, closed schools, temporarily halted food sales pending an inventory, began gasoline rationing and converted four civilian facilities into provisional military hospitals. LTG Short s intelligence staff began a hasty roundup of enemy agents and suspicious characters. The fact that a large minority of Hawaii s population was Japanese or of Japanese descent approximately 160,000 people at least three-quarters of whom were Americans by birth had Army airmen examine the wreckage of a Japanese naval Type 0 fighter (Mitsubishi A6M2), one of only 29 attacking aircraft lost, which crashed into the ordnance machine shop building at Hickham Field. long been a source of concern for the Army as well as for many other Hawaiian residents. Nearly 500 of these individuals were taken into custody over the next few days, but there was never any credible information that the remainder of the group posed a danger. Approximately 1,300 Japanese-Americans were already serving in the 298th and 299th Infantry Regiments, two Hawaiian National Guard units called into federal service. The 299th Infantry was not on Oahu, but new draftees in the 299th Infantry at Schofield Barracks were temporarily disarmed and separated from other recruits until suspicions about their loyalty died down. In the spring, after sufficient replacements arrived in Hawaii, the Japanese-American soldiers were finally shipped to the mainland. With other nisei, they became the 100th Infantry Battalion and ultimately a part of the allnisei 442nd Regimental Combat Team. Both units earned high marks for valor, bravery and combat effectiveness in Europe. Rumors, suspicions and false reports about the Japanese-Americans were not the only wild tales circulating throughout Hawaii on December 7. Japanese paratroopers or glider troops were supposedly landing in dozens of places. Invasion fleets, submarines or mysterious sampans were close offshore. Japanese agents had poisoned the water or were signaling to enemy bombers or landing parties. Japanese troops had set up roadblocks using an armored vehicle disguised as a milk truck. Japanese aircraft, including four-engine bombers, were still overhead, some with German pilots. Given the rash of false or exaggerated stories that spread rapidly, it was no wonder that the night of December 7 was filled with unauthorized weapons firing. Army ground patrols sometimes shot at each other, and a great deal of ordnance was needlessly expended into the air at supposed enemy planes. One exploding antiaircraft shell set off more rumors that Japanese bombers were again at work. Everybody was jittery. At 0428 on December 8, the Coast Artillery Command alerted subordinate units to be ready for a dawn landing attack. Ten minutes later it reported 30 Japanese planes approaching Oahu and, in another half hour, that antiaircraft batteries at Wheeler Field were firing at dive bombers. At 0525, antiaircraft units at Schofield sent word they were shooting at other planes, which they later said were American. Just at dawn, finally, the 53rd Coast Artillery Brigade reported that the Marines or Navy were firing on Army aircraft. This sort of wild and imaginative 56 ARMY February 2013
Shattered hangars at Hickham Field in the aftermath of the attack. activity went on for several more hours before it slowly came to a halt. Orders went out to cease all promiscuous firing and to stop shooting at planes unless the planes fired first. Slowly the Hawaiian Department began to get a grip on itself. One of the first things to be done was to take care of casualties. The Japanese attack had killed and wounded almost 3,600 American service personnel. The bulk of these were Navy and Marine losses. Army casualties were nearly 700, divided almost equally between killed and wounded. Civilian casualties totaled about 100, of which about two-thirds died. Most of the civilian casualties were caused by Navy five-inch antiaircraft shells that exploded on the ground after failing to detonate in the air. Caring for the wounded was a major challenge. The Hawaiian Department surgeon had been working to build up his staff, facilities and supplies for two years, but December 7 still found the department below authorized medical levels. The main hospital, Tripler General on the Pearl Harbor side of Honolulu, Schofield Station Hospital, and smaller facilities at Hickham and elsewhere would all have to rely on civilian assistance to meet their needs. The heaviest Army casualties came at Hickham Field, quickly overwhelming doctors and nurses at the station hospital there. They could do little more than administer morphine and give other forms of first aid to the wounded before sending them on to Tripler. Most of these men had been in the shattered Hickham mess hall. They began reaching Tripler barely 10 minutes after the bombs first hit, and several hundred wounded were soon crowding the hospital, many on litters on corridor and hall floors. Military and civilian surgical teams alternated between operating rooms and the wards, working frantically to repair shattered bodies and prevent post-operative infection. A radio appeal for blood donors brought hundreds of volunteers who waited hours for busy doctors and technicians to attend them. Similar lifesaving work went on at Schofield Station Hospital, handling wounded from Wheeler Field and other nearby areas. The swift and thorough treatment of casualties at these and other medical facilities and the effectiveness of newly developed sulfa drugs kept fatalities to an impressively low level. The end of the day found forces in Hawaii wounded, shaken and confused. LTG Short, nevertheless, was already taking steps to rebuild his battered command and prepare the department for either another Japanese blow or to serve as a springboard for an American offensive. Little more than a week later, however, amidst a wave of recriminations, second-guessing and casting of blame, both the general and Adm. Kimmel were relieved of their commands. Essentially, they were accused of major errors in judgment and of failure to coordinate measures to ensure the mutual security of their forces. Neither was afforded the opportunity of a court-martial in which to defend himself, and the circumstances and fairness of their reliefs are still matters of controversy. Did Washington provide adequate warning and sufficient information to the Hawaiian commanders? Did they, in turn, act properly in light of information they actually possessed? Did they display the necessary superior judgment that the situation demanded and that would be required in exercising future command? The majority of historians and other informed observers have concluded that the reliefs were justified. Others dispute this. Whatever the ultimate verdict of history, however, no one can deny that LTG Short and his naval counterpart were the final victims of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. 58 ARMY February 2013