August 21, 2025 • 20 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, Pearl Harbor marked America’s entry into World War II, but the road to that day was lined with warning signs. Intelligence reports pointed to Japanese aggression, yet many leaders dismissed the possibility of an attack and even the possibility that the Japanese could fly airplanes. In the twelve days leading up to December 7, flawed assessments and missed signals left the Pacific Fleet vulnerable. Steve Twomey, author of Countdown to Pearl Harbor, shares the story of those pivotal 12 days that led up to the event that would change World War II and the world. We'd like to thank the U.S. National Archives for allowing us access to this audio.
Support the show (https://www.ouramericanstories.com/donate)
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
And we continue with our American stories. Up next, the
story of the most unexpected event of the twentieth century
in a way you've never heard it told before. While
we all certainly know what happened after the Japanese attack
on Pearl Harbor, most of us don't know about the
feelings of those calling the shots on the ground and
(00:37):
what happened leading up to our terrifying entry into World
War Two. Here to share the story is Steve Toomey,
author of Countdown to Pearl Harbor. Let's start this off
the story of an individual man.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
His name is Husband Kimmel, and on the morning of
December seventh, he was supposed to go out and play golf,
but about eight am, a telephone call led him to
leave his house on a small rise above the harbor.
It was actually an extinct volcanic rim because this phone
call had told him, in effect to do so. And
(01:19):
as he did that, he was watching dozens and dozens
of Japanese warplanes pouncing on those ships in the harbor.
Those were his ships. He was the commander in chief
of the Pacific Fleet, and until that moment he had
enjoyed nearly forty absolutely spotless years of service in the Navy.
(01:41):
He had succeeded at everything he had done and risen
steadily through the ranks. If you ever see a picture
of him, he looks exactly like you'd expect an admiral
to look. Handsome, impressive, confident. Standing with him in his
yard was a neighbor, the wife of one of his officers,
who had come out of her home, and together they
(02:03):
stood there, and they could see a battleship in the harbor,
already starting to tip over. Everything that Kimmel knew about
military logic, everything he knew about the Japanese and their ability,
was being blown up before his eyes. All the decisions
he had made were being nullified. And she said that
his face was as white as the uniform he wore.
(02:28):
I think that's one of the most poignant moments in
American history. Kimmel was standing there and realized not only
was this horrific disaster happening, but it was going to
be the end of his career. As it was, you
have to remember the Navy was a bigger thing in
nineteen forty one that it is now. Newspapers routinely printed
(02:50):
stories about people being promoted and changes of command, and
people were really aware of these giant battleships with their
big guns, and in that harbor took place the most
catastrophically unexpected event in American history to that point. It
shattered the nation's sense of itself as a confident, safe, optimistic,
(03:15):
superior country, and it shattered the Navy's reputation as unbeatable.
But we have to remember that they didn't know December
seventh was a famous day. It hadn't happened yet. They
had known awareness that along with July fourth, or November
twenty second, nineteen sixty three, or September eleventh, that that
(03:39):
would be a famous date. It wasn't circled on their calendars.
And this was the age before satellites. There were no
cameras parked up there in the sky looking down snapping photos.
When thirty Japanese warships began silently sailing out of an
absolutely obscure bay, cold snowy, almost no people there. At
(04:03):
the far northern fringe of the Japanese Empire, we did
not know they had left, because we had no means
of knowing they had left. Still, during this period, clues
were building that something big was going to happen. We
tend to think of Pearl Harbor as this bolt from
the blue that the United States was minding its own
(04:25):
business and the Japanese came along and.
Speaker 3 (04:28):
Started World War Two.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
But in fact, any American paying reasonable attention to the
news knew that war with Japan was getting closer all
the time, as well as war with Germany. In the
Atlantic Ocean, we were already fighting the Germans, even though
we were technically at peace. We were escorting British convoys
to England, and Roosevelt had given orders to shoot on
(04:56):
site any German ship they encountered en route, and the
Germans were replying by shooting at our warships. They had
sunk at least two with loss of life in the Atlantic,
so people were really attuned to the idea that war
was likely to happen, including war with Japan. The Roosevelt
(05:20):
administration had been negotiating for months with the Japanese, to
put it very simply to get them to stop attacking
countries in the Far East. Japanese had been at war
with China since nineteen thirty seven. They had taken over
much of French Indo China, and in late November and
December of nineteen forty one. It was obvious from the
(05:42):
reports of consular agents, businessmen, spies, commercial ships on the ocean.
It was obvious that the Japanese were moving warships and
troop transports toward Singapore, which was a British outpost, a
naval base, toward Malaya, towards the Dutch East Indies, towards Thailand,
(06:05):
and towards the Philippines, which we owned. That move that
movement of troops and warships was so obvious that on
November twenty seventh, Washington sent a warning about the possibility
of war to all of its army and navy outposts
(06:25):
in the Pacific, and that said war was imminent. In
the matter of days, the Army was suddenly out on
the streets of Honolulu guarding against sabotage by some of
the residents of Hawaii of Japanese descent. There was something
else that happened. We listened to what the Japanese navy
(06:48):
was saying to itself. We could hear them talking ship
to ship to shore, shore to ship, and there were dozens.
Speaker 3 (06:56):
Of people whose job was to do that.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
You'd sit there all day with headphones on listening to
the Japanese talking to themselves. We didn't know what they
were saying because they were speaking in a form of code.
It wasn't that it was Japanese. It was coded Japanese.
But it's remarkable how just by hearing who is talking
to who, you can figure out who's in charge and
(07:19):
who is moving where, and you might even be able
to identify certain ships simply because every ship had an address,
a phone number, if you will, called a radio call signal,
and so if you got enough of those assembled, you
could figure out that something might be going on by
the volume of talking and who.
Speaker 3 (07:40):
Was in charge.
Speaker 2 (07:41):
The Japanese knew we listened to them, and in order
to confuse the other side, you routinely changed everybody's address,
usually every six months. And on November one, right on schedule,
the Japanese Navy changed all of its radio call signals.
Then on November thirtieth, something extraordinary happened. All the Navy
(08:06):
listeners in Hawaii and also in the Philippines suddenly realized
the Japanese had changed their radio call signals again, only
a month after they had done it before.
Speaker 3 (08:19):
They had never done that, and that was read immediately
as a desire by.
Speaker 2 (08:25):
The Japanese to really confuse us about something they were
about to do. War was extremely close and we knew it.
And not only that we knew that Pearl Harbor. We
had discussed for months that Pearl Harbor might be the
subject of a surprise attack before a declaration of war.
(08:49):
And to understand that, I want to introduce you to
Patrick Bellinger, Naval air Pilot number four, as that suggests
he had been around.
Speaker 3 (08:59):
At the birth of naval aviation back in the teams.
Speaker 1 (09:02):
And you've been listening to Steve Toomey, author of Countdown
to Pearl Harbor. And of course we learned that the
Japanese were changing up patterns, changing up signals, and this
was not a total surprise that the Japanese, well, they
were looking to strike at America. When we come back
more of the story of Pearl Harbor, the events leading
(09:25):
up to it. Here on our American story, and we
continue with our American stories and with the story of
what happened before bombs and torpedoes dropped at Pearl Harbor
(09:47):
on December seventh, nineteen forty one, the day of infamy.
When we last left off, Steve Toomey was about to
share the story of Patrick Bellinger, one of America's earliest airmen.
Let's return to the story.
Speaker 2 (10:02):
He really knew flying, and in March of nineteen forty one,
Bellinger had co authored a report.
Speaker 3 (10:10):
And it's sort of like Michael J.
Speaker 2 (10:13):
Fox getting into the Dolorean and taking off for the future.
He said that when times are tense and we're not
getting along with Japan, it's possible the Japanese would attempt
to move what he called a fast rating force of
one or more aircraft carriers into Hawaiian waters, and they
(10:35):
would be able to do that without our knowing, and
at about three hundred miles away from O Wahoo, they
would launch their planes and those planes would arrive over
Pearl Harbor, perhaps at dawn, and they would catch the
fleet in the harbor, and if that happened, the results
would be disastrous. He wrote that again in March of
nineteen forty one. On November thirtieth, had no knowledge of
(11:02):
the war warnings because no one had told him. No
one would tell him in the next few days either
that the Navy listeners now couldn't find four of Japan's
aircraft carriers, so the man who had forecast a raid
under tense circumstances, didn't know carriers were missing, and didn't
know the times were that tense, Which brings me to
(11:24):
the third person I'd like you to meet. His name
is Arthur McCollum. Arthur was the chief of the Far
Eastern Section of Naval Intelligence, and he was a most
unusual American because he had been born in Japan. His
parents were missionaries, He spoke Japanese, he had served in
Japan twice as a naval officer. McCollum and even taught
(11:47):
the emperor how to dance American style. So the Japanese
respected McCollum, and he respected them. That, however, was not
the common opinion of most Americans.
Speaker 3 (11:59):
In nia teen forty one.
Speaker 2 (12:01):
Americans tended to think of the Japanese as almost amusingly
curious little people who were not particularly creative or innovative.
Their weapons were thought to be not too good, their
ability with things mechanical was thought to be not too great.
They were even thought to have physiological defects that made
them lousy flyers. In nineteen thirty nine, an author by
(12:25):
the name of Fletcher Pratt, a pretty well known author
had written this, the Japanese as a race have defects
of the inner ear, just as they generally are myopic.
Put them in an airplane, they're going to crash. McCollum
tried to convince people that no, no, you've got it
all wrong.
Speaker 3 (12:44):
They're actually quite good at what they do, but he later.
Speaker 2 (12:48):
Said it was impossible to penetrate this mindset because of
what he called quote the constant daily drum fire from
our press that they are militarily amusing. In the same vein,
there was also a belief that there was an attribute
of Pearl Harbor that worked in their favor when it
came to defending the island and defending the fleet, and
(13:11):
that our attribute was the depth of the harbor. When
you drop a torpedo from an airplane, they're very heavy things,
and they plunge quite deeply into the water. If there
isn't enough water, they simply go into the bottom. Our
own torpedoes needed considerably more depth than was available.
Speaker 3 (13:34):
In Pearl Harbor.
Speaker 2 (13:35):
Pearl Harbor was about forty five feet, and we had
concluded therefore the ships in the harbor were safe and
didn't need nets strung around them that might catch torpedoes.
It never seems to have occurred to anyone that the Japanese,
who also knew the depth of Pearl Harbor, rather than
(13:57):
simply accepting that as a reality of life, would seek
to solve the problem. But they did solve the problem
by adding fins to torpedoes, Which brings me to the
final person I'd like you to meet, Sidawo Chugusa. On
November thirtieth, he was aboard one of those thirty warships
(14:18):
powing silently across the North Pacific. It wasn't until a
few days before they left that Chigusa not only found
out who the enemy was, but where they were going.
It's really remarkable how much debate there was within the
Imperial Navy about conducting this attack. Many of the admirals
(14:40):
and officers within the Imperial Navy didn't want to attack
the Pacific Fleet. They felt, if the Americans challenge us
after we do all these other things, let them sail
towards us. Let's not sail towards them. But the commander
in chief of the Imperial Navy, a man whose name
was Issiroko Yamamoto, insisted that the way to win the war,
(15:03):
or at least have a chance to win the war
was to eliminate the only threat to the Imperial Navy
that existed in the Pacific, and to do it before
the war started in total surprise, hoping to destroy American morale.
The objections to that idea, though, were this, how was
it possible to keep secret the movement of thirty warships
(15:25):
across the Pacific on a mission that would take twelve days.
They could be seen at any moment by a commercial ship,
an American plane. And the worst part of that is
that if they were spotted.
Speaker 3 (15:37):
They might not know it.
Speaker 2 (15:38):
They might continue sailing directly into an ambush that the
Americans had prepared for them.
Speaker 3 (15:44):
Rather than the other way around.
Speaker 2 (15:47):
And the final objection, or a objection I should say
to the attack was there was no guarantee the Pacific
Fleet was going to be there when they got there. Again,
it's the age before satellites. When they set out, they
had no way of knowing whether their target would even
be there. So when Chigusa found out, Oh, you're going
(16:09):
to Hawaii, he thought that was the end of his life.
Speaker 3 (16:13):
He said he.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
Would die quote off Hawaii in the greatest and most
desperate battle in our history. He sent a letter to
his parents bidding them farewell. He cut a snippet of
his hair, stuck it in an envelope, and sent it
to his wife and his children. He was not alone
among those men, so when they arrived in the early
(16:34):
morning darkness on December seventh, they were almost as surprised
as the Americans were about to be that they had
not been found. They had seen no one, No one
had seen them. Chagusa wrote in his diary that it was,
in effect a miracle. I really couldn't find any other
better expression of our good fortune than the words the
(16:57):
grace of heaven and the.
Speaker 3 (16:58):
Help of God. They had succeeded.
Speaker 2 (17:02):
Because they had been underestimated. In closing, I'd like to
share the moment when all of those problems, when the
assumptions that the Americans had made were being eviscerated, and
when it became apparent that the Japanese had pulled off
this thing that the Americans had thought they couldn't do.
It was a moment late on December seventh, in Washington
(17:26):
at the Old Navy Department, and a man placed the
telephone call.
Speaker 3 (17:31):
The man was named Harold R. Stark.
Speaker 2 (17:33):
The highest ranking uniformed officer in the Navy. Even the
government was having trouble understanding the extent of the damage.
And Harold Stark called Pearl Harbor, and he reached an
admiral named Claude Block. Stark did have in his hands
the first official report sent by Admiral Kimmel, and I'll
(17:57):
briefly tell you what Kimball said. He said, surprise attack
by Japanese damaged all battleships except Maryland. He said the
Arizona was a total wreck, the cruisers Honolulu, Helena and
Raleigh unfit for sea. The destroyers Shaw, Cassen and Downs.
Speaker 3 (18:17):
Were a complete loss. But he said.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
Personnel behaving magnificently in face of furious surprise. I don't
know if you caught it. But twice in that note
Kimmel referred to surprise as if he needed Washington to understand.
This wasn't incompetence, it was treachery.
Speaker 3 (18:38):
So Stark had that.
Speaker 2 (18:39):
Information, but he wanted more, and so he called and
reached Admiral Block. Now, all this time since the warning
he had sent out, Stark had been under the assumption
that the Pacific Fleet had gone to sort of defensive
measures and was searching to make sure it wasn't being
approached by the Japanese. And here's what he said to Block.
Speaker 3 (19:02):
Did our patrol.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
Planes get them before they hit us? No, Block said,
and he began to ramble about another topic. But Stark
wasn't going to let this topic go. He asked again,
can you tell me how many and how far out
the search planes were scouting?
Speaker 3 (19:21):
No? I cannot, said Block. Do you know how many
were out?
Speaker 2 (19:26):
No?
Speaker 3 (19:28):
What sectors they were in? No? I don't. Kimmel knows that.
Speaker 2 (19:33):
Well, tell Kimmel, I will be asking him these questions
that I want to know how far out they were
and in what sectors. Actually, Block had a pretty good
idea about the patrol planes, because he finally confessed to
Stark the answers will be sad, very unsatisfactory.
Speaker 3 (19:54):
They caught us flat foot.
Speaker 1 (19:55):
A special thanks to Steve too me also a special
thanks to the US National Archives for allowing us to
access this audio. The story of Pearl Harbor and the
days and months leading up to it. Here on our
American Stories
And we continue with our American stories. Up next, the
story of the most unexpected event of the twentieth century
in a way you've never heard it told before. While
we all certainly know what happened after the Japanese attack
on Pearl Harbor, most of us don't know about the
feelings of those calling the shots on the ground and
(00:37):
what happened leading up to our terrifying entry into World
War Two. Here to share the story is Steve Toomey,
author of Countdown to Pearl Harbor. Let's start this off
the story of an individual man.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
His name is Husband Kimmel, and on the morning of
December seventh, he was supposed to go out and play golf,
but about eight am, a telephone call led him to
leave his house on a small rise above the harbor.
It was actually an extinct volcanic rim because this phone
call had told him, in effect to do so. And
(01:19):
as he did that, he was watching dozens and dozens
of Japanese warplanes pouncing on those ships in the harbor.
Those were his ships. He was the commander in chief
of the Pacific Fleet, and until that moment he had
enjoyed nearly forty absolutely spotless years of service in the Navy.
(01:41):
He had succeeded at everything he had done and risen
steadily through the ranks. If you ever see a picture
of him, he looks exactly like you'd expect an admiral
to look. Handsome, impressive, confident. Standing with him in his
yard was a neighbor, the wife of one of his officers,
who had come out of her home, and together they
(02:03):
stood there, and they could see a battleship in the harbor,
already starting to tip over. Everything that Kimmel knew about
military logic, everything he knew about the Japanese and their ability,
was being blown up before his eyes. All the decisions
he had made were being nullified. And she said that
his face was as white as the uniform he wore.
(02:28):
I think that's one of the most poignant moments in
American history. Kimmel was standing there and realized not only
was this horrific disaster happening, but it was going to
be the end of his career. As it was, you
have to remember the Navy was a bigger thing in
nineteen forty one that it is now. Newspapers routinely printed
(02:50):
stories about people being promoted and changes of command, and
people were really aware of these giant battleships with their
big guns, and in that harbor took place the most
catastrophically unexpected event in American history to that point. It
shattered the nation's sense of itself as a confident, safe, optimistic,
(03:15):
superior country, and it shattered the Navy's reputation as unbeatable.
But we have to remember that they didn't know December
seventh was a famous day. It hadn't happened yet. They
had known awareness that along with July fourth, or November
twenty second, nineteen sixty three, or September eleventh, that that
(03:39):
would be a famous date. It wasn't circled on their calendars.
And this was the age before satellites. There were no
cameras parked up there in the sky looking down snapping photos.
When thirty Japanese warships began silently sailing out of an
absolutely obscure bay, cold snowy, almost no people there. At
(04:03):
the far northern fringe of the Japanese Empire, we did
not know they had left, because we had no means
of knowing they had left. Still, during this period, clues
were building that something big was going to happen. We
tend to think of Pearl Harbor as this bolt from
the blue that the United States was minding its own
(04:25):
business and the Japanese came along and.
Speaker 3 (04:28):
Started World War Two.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
But in fact, any American paying reasonable attention to the
news knew that war with Japan was getting closer all
the time, as well as war with Germany. In the
Atlantic Ocean, we were already fighting the Germans, even though
we were technically at peace. We were escorting British convoys
to England, and Roosevelt had given orders to shoot on
(04:56):
site any German ship they encountered en route, and the
Germans were replying by shooting at our warships. They had
sunk at least two with loss of life in the Atlantic,
so people were really attuned to the idea that war
was likely to happen, including war with Japan. The Roosevelt
(05:20):
administration had been negotiating for months with the Japanese, to
put it very simply to get them to stop attacking
countries in the Far East. Japanese had been at war
with China since nineteen thirty seven. They had taken over
much of French Indo China, and in late November and
December of nineteen forty one. It was obvious from the
(05:42):
reports of consular agents, businessmen, spies, commercial ships on the ocean.
It was obvious that the Japanese were moving warships and
troop transports toward Singapore, which was a British outpost, a
naval base, toward Malaya, towards the Dutch East Indies, towards Thailand,
(06:05):
and towards the Philippines, which we owned. That move that
movement of troops and warships was so obvious that on
November twenty seventh, Washington sent a warning about the possibility
of war to all of its army and navy outposts
(06:25):
in the Pacific, and that said war was imminent. In
the matter of days, the Army was suddenly out on
the streets of Honolulu guarding against sabotage by some of
the residents of Hawaii of Japanese descent. There was something
else that happened. We listened to what the Japanese navy
(06:48):
was saying to itself. We could hear them talking ship
to ship to shore, shore to ship, and there were dozens.
Speaker 3 (06:56):
Of people whose job was to do that.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
You'd sit there all day with headphones on listening to
the Japanese talking to themselves. We didn't know what they
were saying because they were speaking in a form of code.
It wasn't that it was Japanese. It was coded Japanese.
But it's remarkable how just by hearing who is talking
to who, you can figure out who's in charge and
(07:19):
who is moving where, and you might even be able
to identify certain ships simply because every ship had an address,
a phone number, if you will, called a radio call signal,
and so if you got enough of those assembled, you
could figure out that something might be going on by
the volume of talking and who.
Speaker 3 (07:40):
Was in charge.
Speaker 2 (07:41):
The Japanese knew we listened to them, and in order
to confuse the other side, you routinely changed everybody's address,
usually every six months. And on November one, right on schedule,
the Japanese Navy changed all of its radio call signals.
Then on November thirtieth, something extraordinary happened. All the Navy
(08:06):
listeners in Hawaii and also in the Philippines suddenly realized
the Japanese had changed their radio call signals again, only
a month after they had done it before.
Speaker 3 (08:19):
They had never done that, and that was read immediately
as a desire by.
Speaker 2 (08:25):
The Japanese to really confuse us about something they were
about to do. War was extremely close and we knew it.
And not only that we knew that Pearl Harbor. We
had discussed for months that Pearl Harbor might be the
subject of a surprise attack before a declaration of war.
(08:49):
And to understand that, I want to introduce you to
Patrick Bellinger, Naval air Pilot number four, as that suggests
he had been around.
Speaker 3 (08:59):
At the birth of naval aviation back in the teams.
Speaker 1 (09:02):
And you've been listening to Steve Toomey, author of Countdown
to Pearl Harbor. And of course we learned that the
Japanese were changing up patterns, changing up signals, and this
was not a total surprise that the Japanese, well, they
were looking to strike at America. When we come back
more of the story of Pearl Harbor, the events leading
(09:25):
up to it. Here on our American story, and we
continue with our American stories and with the story of
what happened before bombs and torpedoes dropped at Pearl Harbor
(09:47):
on December seventh, nineteen forty one, the day of infamy.
When we last left off, Steve Toomey was about to
share the story of Patrick Bellinger, one of America's earliest airmen.
Let's return to the story.
Speaker 2 (10:02):
He really knew flying, and in March of nineteen forty one,
Bellinger had co authored a report.
Speaker 3 (10:10):
And it's sort of like Michael J.
Speaker 2 (10:13):
Fox getting into the Dolorean and taking off for the future.
He said that when times are tense and we're not
getting along with Japan, it's possible the Japanese would attempt
to move what he called a fast rating force of
one or more aircraft carriers into Hawaiian waters, and they
(10:35):
would be able to do that without our knowing, and
at about three hundred miles away from O Wahoo, they
would launch their planes and those planes would arrive over
Pearl Harbor, perhaps at dawn, and they would catch the
fleet in the harbor, and if that happened, the results
would be disastrous. He wrote that again in March of
nineteen forty one. On November thirtieth, had no knowledge of
(11:02):
the war warnings because no one had told him. No
one would tell him in the next few days either
that the Navy listeners now couldn't find four of Japan's
aircraft carriers, so the man who had forecast a raid
under tense circumstances, didn't know carriers were missing, and didn't
know the times were that tense, Which brings me to
(11:24):
the third person I'd like you to meet. His name
is Arthur McCollum. Arthur was the chief of the Far
Eastern Section of Naval Intelligence, and he was a most
unusual American because he had been born in Japan. His
parents were missionaries, He spoke Japanese, he had served in
Japan twice as a naval officer. McCollum and even taught
(11:47):
the emperor how to dance American style. So the Japanese
respected McCollum, and he respected them. That, however, was not
the common opinion of most Americans.
Speaker 3 (11:59):
In nia teen forty one.
Speaker 2 (12:01):
Americans tended to think of the Japanese as almost amusingly
curious little people who were not particularly creative or innovative.
Their weapons were thought to be not too good, their
ability with things mechanical was thought to be not too great.
They were even thought to have physiological defects that made
them lousy flyers. In nineteen thirty nine, an author by
(12:25):
the name of Fletcher Pratt, a pretty well known author
had written this, the Japanese as a race have defects
of the inner ear, just as they generally are myopic.
Put them in an airplane, they're going to crash. McCollum
tried to convince people that no, no, you've got it
all wrong.
Speaker 3 (12:44):
They're actually quite good at what they do, but he later.
Speaker 2 (12:48):
Said it was impossible to penetrate this mindset because of
what he called quote the constant daily drum fire from
our press that they are militarily amusing. In the same vein,
there was also a belief that there was an attribute
of Pearl Harbor that worked in their favor when it
came to defending the island and defending the fleet, and
(13:11):
that our attribute was the depth of the harbor. When
you drop a torpedo from an airplane, they're very heavy things,
and they plunge quite deeply into the water. If there
isn't enough water, they simply go into the bottom. Our
own torpedoes needed considerably more depth than was available.
Speaker 3 (13:34):
In Pearl Harbor.
Speaker 2 (13:35):
Pearl Harbor was about forty five feet, and we had
concluded therefore the ships in the harbor were safe and
didn't need nets strung around them that might catch torpedoes.
It never seems to have occurred to anyone that the Japanese,
who also knew the depth of Pearl Harbor, rather than
(13:57):
simply accepting that as a reality of life, would seek
to solve the problem. But they did solve the problem
by adding fins to torpedoes, Which brings me to the
final person I'd like you to meet, Sidawo Chugusa. On
November thirtieth, he was aboard one of those thirty warships
(14:18):
powing silently across the North Pacific. It wasn't until a
few days before they left that Chigusa not only found
out who the enemy was, but where they were going.
It's really remarkable how much debate there was within the
Imperial Navy about conducting this attack. Many of the admirals
(14:40):
and officers within the Imperial Navy didn't want to attack
the Pacific Fleet. They felt, if the Americans challenge us
after we do all these other things, let them sail
towards us. Let's not sail towards them. But the commander
in chief of the Imperial Navy, a man whose name
was Issiroko Yamamoto, insisted that the way to win the war,
(15:03):
or at least have a chance to win the war
was to eliminate the only threat to the Imperial Navy
that existed in the Pacific, and to do it before
the war started in total surprise, hoping to destroy American morale.
The objections to that idea, though, were this, how was
it possible to keep secret the movement of thirty warships
(15:25):
across the Pacific on a mission that would take twelve days.
They could be seen at any moment by a commercial ship,
an American plane. And the worst part of that is
that if they were spotted.
Speaker 3 (15:37):
They might not know it.
Speaker 2 (15:38):
They might continue sailing directly into an ambush that the
Americans had prepared for them.
Speaker 3 (15:44):
Rather than the other way around.
Speaker 2 (15:47):
And the final objection, or a objection I should say
to the attack was there was no guarantee the Pacific
Fleet was going to be there when they got there. Again,
it's the age before satellites. When they set out, they
had no way of knowing whether their target would even
be there. So when Chigusa found out, Oh, you're going
(16:09):
to Hawaii, he thought that was the end of his life.
Speaker 3 (16:13):
He said he.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
Would die quote off Hawaii in the greatest and most
desperate battle in our history. He sent a letter to
his parents bidding them farewell. He cut a snippet of
his hair, stuck it in an envelope, and sent it
to his wife and his children. He was not alone
among those men, so when they arrived in the early
(16:34):
morning darkness on December seventh, they were almost as surprised
as the Americans were about to be that they had
not been found. They had seen no one, No one
had seen them. Chagusa wrote in his diary that it was,
in effect a miracle. I really couldn't find any other
better expression of our good fortune than the words the
(16:57):
grace of heaven and the.
Speaker 3 (16:58):
Help of God. They had succeeded.
Speaker 2 (17:02):
Because they had been underestimated. In closing, I'd like to
share the moment when all of those problems, when the
assumptions that the Americans had made were being eviscerated, and
when it became apparent that the Japanese had pulled off
this thing that the Americans had thought they couldn't do.
It was a moment late on December seventh, in Washington
(17:26):
at the Old Navy Department, and a man placed the
telephone call.
Speaker 3 (17:31):
The man was named Harold R. Stark.
Speaker 2 (17:33):
The highest ranking uniformed officer in the Navy. Even the
government was having trouble understanding the extent of the damage.
And Harold Stark called Pearl Harbor, and he reached an
admiral named Claude Block. Stark did have in his hands
the first official report sent by Admiral Kimmel, and I'll
(17:57):
briefly tell you what Kimball said. He said, surprise attack
by Japanese damaged all battleships except Maryland. He said the
Arizona was a total wreck, the cruisers Honolulu, Helena and
Raleigh unfit for sea. The destroyers Shaw, Cassen and Downs.
Speaker 3 (18:17):
Were a complete loss. But he said.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
Personnel behaving magnificently in face of furious surprise. I don't
know if you caught it. But twice in that note
Kimmel referred to surprise as if he needed Washington to understand.
This wasn't incompetence, it was treachery.
Speaker 3 (18:38):
So Stark had that.
Speaker 2 (18:39):
Information, but he wanted more, and so he called and
reached Admiral Block. Now, all this time since the warning
he had sent out, Stark had been under the assumption
that the Pacific Fleet had gone to sort of defensive
measures and was searching to make sure it wasn't being
approached by the Japanese. And here's what he said to Block.
Speaker 3 (19:02):
Did our patrol.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
Planes get them before they hit us? No, Block said,
and he began to ramble about another topic. But Stark
wasn't going to let this topic go. He asked again,
can you tell me how many and how far out
the search planes were scouting?
Speaker 3 (19:21):
No? I cannot, said Block. Do you know how many
were out?
Speaker 2 (19:26):
No?
Speaker 3 (19:28):
What sectors they were in? No? I don't. Kimmel knows that.
Speaker 2 (19:33):
Well, tell Kimmel, I will be asking him these questions
that I want to know how far out they were
and in what sectors. Actually, Block had a pretty good
idea about the patrol planes, because he finally confessed to
Stark the answers will be sad, very unsatisfactory.
Speaker 3 (19:54):
They caught us flat foot.
Speaker 1 (19:55):
A special thanks to Steve too me also a special
thanks to the US National Archives for allowing us to
access this audio. The story of Pearl Harbor and the
days and months leading up to it. Here on our
American Stories
Host
Lee Habeeb
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
My Favorite Murder is a true crime comedy podcast hosted by Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark. Each week, Karen and Georgia share compelling true crimes and hometown stories from friends and listeners. Since MFM launched in January of 2016, Karen and Georgia have shared their lifelong interest in true crime and have covered stories of infamous serial killers like the Night Stalker, mysterious cold cases, captivating cults, incredible survivor stories and important events from history like the Tulsa race massacre of 1921. My Favorite Murder is part of the Exactly Right podcast network that provides a platform for bold, creative voices to bring to life provocative, entertaining and relatable stories for audiences everywhere. The Exactly Right roster of podcasts covers a variety of topics including historic true crime, comedic interviews and news, science, pop culture and more. Podcasts on the network include Buried Bones with Kate Winkler Dawson and Paul Holes, That's Messed Up: An SVU Podcast, This Podcast Will Kill You, Bananas and more.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.