The keys to this secret (The attack on Pearl Harbor, a different version)

 

The attack by the Japanese Empire on December 7, 1941 on the Pearl Harbor base, its subsidiary airfields and Honolulu is a recurring -not to say obsessive- theme for me since, stranded in Patagonia due to mandatory quarantine, in March/April 2020, several times I watched the movie Tora, Tora, Tora! on an old twenty-inch TV set.

When I returned home, getting the film must have been the second or third thing I did. I began to research the subject from that point of view, circumscribing it to the political circumstances of the time, the reference to information about the ships attacked, the places and the way in which the aggression took place.

It was only when the magazine Élite published the article I wrote in December 2021, on the occasion of the eightieth anniversary of the attack, that my point of view changed radically.

It so happened that when reading this text, my friend Carlos Ure mentioned the book The Final Secret of Pearl Harbor (The Roosevelt Administration's Contribution to the Japanese Attack), by Rear Admiral Robert A. Theobald (1954) where the thesis is sustained that both the foreign policy of President Roosevelt (Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces), as well as different measures and certain practices, were aimed at inducing the attack and that it was successfully carried out so that, breaking with the isolationist position that prevailed in the United States of America, the country would enter the Second World War. Even the day and time of the attack was perfectly known, as well as the size of the force that would carry it out.

Something similar had happened in 1861, when then President Abraham Lincoln maneuvered the South to attack Confederate troops at Fort Sumter and initiate hostilities

Fiction, non-fiction

It was a sentence from that book that triggered the writing of my latest novel, The Keys to that Secret. The sentence in question was from Admiral William Standley, who was a member of the first commission that investigated the aggression: "While at my home in San Diego, California, I received at 10:00 a.m. on December 17, 1941, a telegram..." The call informed him that he would be a member of the Roberts Commission.

From that point, having read and signed the book by Theobald, who, as a destroyer captain, was in the attack, the novel burst forth and was written through me over the course of a month.

I invented a character who would be Admiral Standley's assistant, who is the narrator of the story, one who, almost from the beginning, became independent of the central events and made his own way.

The action follows the investigation: the events have already happened, but it is necessary to determine in what way and how they unfolded and to be able to answer the questions: How could it happen? And can something of that magnitude be the responsibility of only two people, the base commander and the Pacific Fleet commander?

The novel begins, then, at the end.

 

The reverse sequence

In a historical narration, the facts are usually taken from the beginning to their development and end, and in enumerating them, they are explained in a certain way, one that is taken for granted and never questioned.

Thus, the expansionism of the dictatorship of the army that ruled Japan, the occupation of territories in China and French Indochina, found a threat in the American presence in those latitudes, with the Pacific Fleet anchored in Pearl Harbor -as a deterrent- and an army in the Philippines.

In this logic, given the intention of forming an empire in Asia and opposing U.S. policy by neutralizing U.S. naval power for at least six months, this empire could be consolidated and America could be forced to negotiate with it. The best way-according to Admiral Ysoroku Yamamoto's plan-would be to carry out a surprise attack on the Pacific Fleet. The postulate was itself highly debatable, at a time when it was aircraft carriers and aircraft that would decide the battle, not battleships, the attack itself was a test of that.

This is, more or less, the official version, to which is added all the historical information about the events.

The novel begins at the end, on November 17, 1941, when all this had already happened and the Roberts Commission, the first to investigate the events at the place where they occurred and as soon as they happened, was beginning to meet.

The historical novel, or a novel with a historical theme, implies two operations: to organize dispersed facts, causal or linked to the political situation of the moment, into a narrative structure and to make them plausible and from there a new and different explanation emerges. Otherwise, such a narrative would have no greater interest than the story itself, which is already known.

This is precisely what happens in this case.

The hidden and the evident

Several things emerge clearly in the face of this rupture in the known discourse: that the first commission of inquiry was aimed at determining the responsibilities of military commanders, especially those in Hawaii, and not the authorities in Washington; that at least twice (in January and October 1941) they had been aware - by two different means - of the intentions of the Japanese, and that, since before 1941, the messages written by means of the complex "Purple Code" between the Japanese government and its embassies and diplomatic agencies had been deciphered, but that this crucial information was not forwarded to the commanders in Hawaii, neither by means of encrypted messages nor by delivery through emissaries, as was the case with those who were included in the list of deliveries drawn up by the navy and the army. In other words, they were deliberately excluded from the list of recipients.

The Pacific Fleet had been sent in April 1940, from its base in San Diego to Pearl Harbor, arguing that this would have a deterrent effect; however, while anchored in Hawaii, Japan invaded French Indochina, that is to say that the presence of the fleet had no effect on Japan's policy.

The squadron was not seaworthy for lack of the necessary supply trains; security conditions were less than minimal - as the attack showed - and this made it a decoy for the Japanese. Admiral Richardson, then commander of the fleet, insisted on these points on several occasions; he was suddenly relieved of his command.

If we were to place these circumstances at the beginning of the narration of what happened, it would not allow us to conclude that it was a surprise attack. The sense is inverted by including these facts.

The problem we face then is that of argumentation and the question would be: how do we accept as true a version that the rigor of the arguments does not allow us to arrive at?

Two instances

Although the central motif of the novel is the attack, its causes and what happened afterwards, its real theme is the truth, the possibility of accessing it and asserting it, which entails the question of the general credibility that is installed on the basis of a fallacious version.

Argumentation is the presupposition of this process aimed at ascertaining the truth; this does not consist in a version believed by consensus but in the fact that the statements of the facts coincide with what actually happened and that it is possible to explain them by the way in which an indication or an event can fit into another and lead to a conclusion.

There are two main parts, one could be called research/reflection -they take place in different sequences and places: San Diego, Oahu, Washington, in 1941, 1942 and 1951- and the other Significance/conclusion -which takes place in Provincetown, New England, 1970-.

One of the parts is coeval and contemporary to the facts. It is there where the findings are produced that allow us to reach a conclusion that is not politically correct. The other places them in the perspective of time and of what was preserved: the secret, the false version, the consensus.

The two parts are integrated into a single purpose that guides Peter Welch, the central character: to impose that truth that emerges from the facts themselves and that explains them in their totality.

It is a mechanism composed of numerous pieces, many of them unknown to those who maintained the official version: Tokyo's interest in knowing the exact location of the ships at the Pearl Harbor base, which emerges from many of the deciphered messages; the messages of the "Code of the Winds" - the one corresponding to the hostilities between Japan and the United States was "East Wind Rain" and of "The Hidden Words" - the word corresponding to the beginning of the hostilities with the United States was "Minami". From both it was clear that war would soon break out between Japan and the United States. However, the commanders in Hawaii were - systematically - kept in the dark about this information.

Coupled with the interest in knowing the location of the ships at Pearl Harbor, the possible conclusion is only one: it was well known that, once the deadline for diplomatic negotiation was over, the attack would take place. A message had warned that thereafter "things would happen automatically" but that the impression must be given that a diplomatic solution could still be found.

While the information was methodically withheld from the Hawaiian commanders, two warnings were issued to them about the imminence of hostilities, but noting that they were expected to occur in distant theaters, such as the Kra Peninsula or Borneo. These were general warnings, of an ambiguous nature, not accompanied by concrete measures of preparation and enlistment, as would have been appropriate.

On November 26, the government had intimidated Japan - by means of what is known as the Hull note, after the Secretary of State who drafted it - to withdraw from China as a requirement for unfreezing Japanese assets in the United States and lifting the embargo on supplies, in response to Japan's imperialist policy in China.

Message 901 from Tokyo to the Japanese embassy in Washington warned that the reply to the Hull note would be sent in a long message in 14 parts, 13 of which were received and decoded throughout Saturday, December 6. No sooner had the transcripts of the first 13 parts been delivered than Roosevelt said to Harry Hopkins, his secretary, "this means war," yet the government's inaction was absolute: no action was taken and no communications were sent to the Hawaiian commanders.

The fourteenth part arrived between 4 and 6 a.m. on Sunday, December 7, and was accompanied by the indication that the message should be delivered at the 13th hour to Secretary Hull and that the cipher machines and all secret documents were to be destroyed.

Three times before in history, the Japanese had initiated hostilities by timing the delivery of an ultimatum with a surprise attack. Even knowing this, neither the Army Chief of Staff, General Marshall, nor the Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Stark, alerted the Hawaiian commanders by any appropriate means or arranged for concrete readiness measures.

 

"The truth was not for public knowledge."

Such is the title of the chapter in Theobald's book that deals with the activity of the eight commissions that investigated the events.

In the case of the first one, it was hastily constituted and, despite the serious irregularities that occurred during its work and the dissidence of Admiral Stadler, it only held accountable the commanders of Hawaii, who were removed from their posts before the commission had determined whether or not they had any responsibility.

The subsequent Army and Navy commissions, on the other hand, held the Washington authorities, Army Chief of Staff General Marshall and Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Stark and other senior officers accountable. The next step was for the Secretaries of War and the Navy to set and enforce appropriate sanctions. Instead, they formed two other commissions aimed at pressuring the witnesses of the previous commissions to modify their testimonies, which finally happened.

When the Senate Bicameral Commission was formed, its authorities decided to incorporate, reaching the unmanageable figure of 40 volumes, all the documentation of the previous commissions so that the prosecution evidence, which had previously remained classified, would be diluted in this mass of paper.

The Democratic majority effectively manipulated the hearings, the Republican minority was ineffective in the interrogations and the only responsible persons were again, for the majority, Admiral Kimmel and General Short, as if a disaster of such magnitude could be the responsibility of two persons.

 In his diaries, the Secretary of War, Henry Stimson, detailed all the circumstances related to such a fateful period. However, the Bicameral Commission did not request its inclusion as a documentary annex. This, says Rear Admiral Tehobald, as well as the so-called "White House File", with all the communications between President Roosevelt, General Marschall, Admiral Stark and the highest authorities in Washington, are the keys to that secret that hides the true reasons and circumstances for which the attack took place.

 

"The day that will live in infamy."

The message from Tokyo was to be delivered precisely at 1 p.m. half an hour before the attack. It was known that because of the time chosen, the target could not be other than the Pearl Harbor base.

The length of the message, the decoding, translation and typing of the message caused the delivery to be delayed, occurring fifty minutes after the attack.

Thus, the attack was "surprise".

This and the speech of President Roosevelt pointing out that December 7, 1941 was a date that will live in infamy, installed in the public opinion the surprise character that was so useful to the government, because already in wartime, it became impossible to go back on the unjust measures taken against the commanders of Hawaii before any investigation and all the effort was warlike.

The infamy, indeed, was such, but it was not the one referred to by President Roosevelt, but it resided in a policy that cost a very high number of lives, material losses and resources, to force the entry into a war that in any case was inevitable.

 

 

 

Eduardo Balestena