(Left Coast Guy and I did some exploring when we were back at Pearl Harbor last year. The anonymous door in the middle of the picture holds stairs that lead down to what had been The Dungeon in the war years, and where the analysts of Station Hypo broke the Japanese Codes. Photo Socotra)
We are lurching toward the 75th Anniversary of the Day of Infamy. Things were already in motion on this day, the one before the bombs fell on Battleship Row. A Japanese I-Boat was trailing fleet units returning to Pearl Harbor. Mini-submarines were ponderously plowing their way toward the mouth of Pearl Harbor, and the If you have followed the course of this history, the letters “AF” have a pivotal role in the events of the last century, and the largest armed conflict in mankind’s storied annals. So far, anyway.
Mac arrived in Honolulu in February of 1942, just weeks after the Fleet was pulverized at their anchorage. The controversy about who was responsible still rages, though perhaps not with the same fervor as it once did. I think it is clear what actually happened. The Brits had tried to warn the Americans about what was going to happen. No, check that. They had warned us on multiple occasions, and those warnings were quite unambiguous. There was another imperative, though. The American public strongly resisted the notion that we had to enter the war on anyone’s side. Franklin Roosevelt needed a causa belli, one as unambiguous as the British warnings that the Imperial Japanese Fleet was headed for the mid-Pacific.
Perhaps taking a page from James Buchanan’s play-book, FDR wanted the Japanese to throw the first punch. As one of the last acts of his administration before Abraham Lincoln took the oath of office, Buchanan had dispatched the steamer Star of the West to provide humanitarian supplies to the Federal garrison at Fort Sumpter in Charleston Harbor. The Palmetto defenders decided that starving the Yankees was worth shelling the ship. Mr. Lincoln got his first punch, and justification for the most bloody conflict in American history. In the case of FDR, the warnings from the Brits were not so much mis-interpretted as deliberately ignored.
One way or another, I have always been a believer that the Radio Wars was at the root of the strategic surprise that became the most humiliating defeat in American naval history. Of late, though, I have begun to understand that all who were thrown under history’s yellow schoolbus were patsies: Admiral Husband Kimmel, Lieutenant General Walter Short, Joe Rochefort, all of them. We wanted the Japanese to sucker-punch us. It was a calculated move, and the fact that the right cross was so devastatingly effective could have made the attack an even bigger and cynical issue than it already was, should anyone realize that 3,000 people died for the greater political good of getting us into the war.
The famous quip about the Pearl Harbor attack still rings true. “The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor severely crippled the Pacific Fleet. In order to confuse them, we immediately landed troops in North Africa.”
It is still controversial, and there are still gate guards on documents and files. But it is actually a lot simpler than the conspiracy theories and wild speculation that have echoed down the years. We wanted an excuse to go to war, and we got one. That innocent sailors had to die to make it so was a regrettable sacrifice, and certainly one that we would not want to talk about later.
Mac was part of one of the most astonishing turn-arounds in history.
Just nine months later, after an inconclusive engagement in the Coral Sea, a massive Japanese invasion force was headed for an objective that the codebreakers in The Dungeon could not identify: “Alpha Foxtrot” was what the Japanese called it in their enciphered communications. The identity of the target was uncertain. The significance of the letters is that they represented the target of the vast Japanese fleet- the Kido Butai- steaming east across the Pacific. identification of “AF” could permit a massing of force by the Americans. The popular story in history is that the code-breakers who labored in the Dungeon below the Headquarters of the 14th Naval District confirmed the identity of the target through a clever ruse. Mac told me that it happened right next to his desk. His boss, retired submariner and author Jasper Holmes, came up with the concept. The garrison at Midway Island had a submarine cable for secure communications. Jasper proposed that it be used to instruct them to broadcast that their fresh water supply was compromised in a manner that was sure to be intercepted by the Japanese.
Sure enough, enciphered radio traffic shortly indicated that “AF” was having water problems. The target was confirmed. It was going to be Midway.
Admiral Chester Nimitz believed the intelligence gleaned by the men of Station Hypo, and committed everything to respond to the point of attack. On 4 June, 1942, due to the poor reconnaissance efforts and tactical mistakes of Vice Admiral Chuichi Nagumo, US Navy dive bombers were able to surprise the Japanese carrier force and destroy three carriers (Akagi, Kaga and Sōryū). At the time of the attack the Japanese carriers were in the process of preparing to launch an air strike against the US carriers and their hangars were full of loaded aircraft, bombs and aviation fuel which decisively contributed to their destruction. That day the Japanese lost four aircraft carriers and much of their experienced aircrew. While the US lost the carrier Yorktown (CV-5), it is said that before the battle at Midway, the Japanese never lost a battle. After Midway, they never were victorious again.
So, that brought me around to looking through some of the artifacts that came to me from Mac’s family after his passing. One of them was a curious envelope in the little white binder that Mac had kept with his various historical projects, the greatest of which was the signal victory at Midway that removed much of the onus of the ignominious defeat at Pearl Harbor that 7th of December, 1941. The great victory provoked an astonishing event. The man responsible for running the organization that unraveled the puzzle- Joe Rochefort- was dismissed and sent into exile. He was a classic example of what happens if you prove Washington wrong, and knew what was true and what wasn’t about the beginning of the American phase of the war.
Station HYPO was correct and Washington was not. But of course it was not just Joe’s genius: it was the hard work of men like Joe Finngan, and Jasper Holmes and Mac Showers who all contributed bits to the solution of the decryption. It was with wonder that I read a hand-written note from Jasper to Mac, penned after he suffered a stroke, and in the twilight of his life. I thought I would share his words with you on the eve of the 75th anniversary of the attack:
It is all quite overwhelming to hold this history in my hands. I will get around to transcribing this, some day, but I thought you would want to see it in the original, written by the man who figured it out.
Copyright 2016 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com