The Evening Post WELLINGTON, SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 1945. WARNINGS THAT DO NOT WARN

Evening Post, Volume CXL, Issue 54, 1 September 1945, Page 6

The Evening Post

WELLINGTON, SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 1945.

WARNINGS THAT DO NOT WARN

According to legend, Rome was saved by the cackling of geese. The Romans read into the cackle a possible enemy attack; but hundreds of words of "war warnings" transmitted from Washington to army and navy heads in Hawaii did not sufficiently forewarn the local command, because every possibility was read into the warnings | except the most serious possibility of all —that which proved to be the fact, the blow at Pearl Harbour. Consider, for instance, the dispatch sent specifically as a "war warning" to Admiral Kimmel in Hawaii by the U.S. Navy Board on November 2, 1941, more than a month before the Japanese attack of December 7. "An aggressive move by Japan" was then expected (on November 2) "within the next few days"; and the Navy Board added that the scene of the move might be the Philippine Islands, certain parts of South-east Asia, or "possibly Borneo." This dispatch was surely a complete warning of imminent war, loaded with incorrect guesses as to location; can any plea by local commands that the Washington guesses were distracting be regarded as a set-off against the positive terms of the warning itself? '"A similar warning," the Navy Board stated in the same dispatch, "is being sent by the War Department to continental districts." So apparently both the Navy Board and the War Department warned from Washington, on or about November 2, that a move by Japan was coming somewhere, but nobody was able —beyond guessing—to say where. One of the questions raised by the investigation in America is whether both these Washington authorities, having in their possession diplomatic information emphasising the danger of a Japanese surprise attack, impressed sufficiently on the local military commands the meaning of this diplomatic phase of the crisis. Is it expedient that diplomacy and military defence be kept in watertight compartments? It was part of the duties of the Washington authorities to ascertain continuously the Japanese military and naval dispositions, and if possible to deduce therefrom Japan's aggressive plans, her objective, the probable time of the attack, its strength, etc. In the Navy Board's dispatch this duty is accepted, for the board states that "the number and equipment of Japanese troops and also the organisation of naval task forces indicate an amphibious expedition . . ." But the rest of the sentence proceeds to name Asia (or near Asia) objectives as indicated above, not Pearl Harbour. How much did the U.S. Navy Board really know of Japanese naval task forces in November, 1941? According to the report of the investigation, just released by Washington, "the Japanese began training for the attack [on Pearl Harbour] in home waters in July or August [1941], and left singly for a rendezvous at an isolated spot off northern Japan. The task force, consisting of six aircraft-carriers, two battleships, three cruisers, destroyers, and submarines, sailed on November 27, taking a northerly route south of the Aleutian Islands to avoid being sighted by shipping. Captured orders and prisoners' information showed that the task force was instructed to destroy without trace any vessels, including Russian, within 600 miles of their destination. The Japanese moved due east to north of Oahu, and then south under forced draught to 300 miles from land and launched 300 out of the 424 available aeroplanes." It was these aeroplanes that succeeded in a few minutes in striking the U.S. navy in Pearl Harbour a staggering blow and in cramping American strategy for many months. The U.S. Navy Board's continuous watch on Japan's dispositions of troops and task forces thus failed to account for a task force of six aircraft-carriers, two battleships, three cruisers, and other ships, and failed to locate it as coming down from the misty north against Pearl Harbour along the route by which American strategists in peacetime had considered Pearl Harbour to be vulnerable. This seems to be a clear deduction from the report of the investigation. But can the absence of a Washington specific warning concerning this Japanese task force be regarded as excusing in any way the Pearl Harbour failure to be ready for any attack, from any quarter, at any time? The importance of discussing questions raised by the investigation is—so far as non-American nations are concerned —a matter of the future, not of the dead past. Once in the Pacific Japan has effected a deadly surprise; and all Pacific nations should study the circumstances, lest in the unpredictable future something similar might happen to them. Therefore it is important to take note of all points in the discussion of what constitutes a sufficient alert to a local command; what steps a central command should take to ascertain whether the local command has been sufficiently alerted; and what branch of the supreme command carries the overhead responsibility for the defence of an outlying bastion of vital importance. In this case, the U.S. Navy Board "considers that the defence of Pearl Harbour was the army's direct responsibility and the defence should have been such as to function effectively independently of the fleet, in view of the fundamental requirement that the fleet's strategic freedom of action must be assured." The assumption that the army defence of Pearl Harbour should have been able to function without the fleet seems to carry with it the assumption that the defence should also be prepared for any blow whatever, without suspecting its when, where, or how. Considering the British naval defeat (loss of Prince of Wales and Repulse) that preceded the fall of Singapore, the relation of fleet and garrison Is a subject of perennial importance. Judging by results, the Prince of Wales and the Repulse and their attendant ships were physically unable to resist the enemy at sea; and the American investigation's report suggests that even the greater fleet in Pearl Harbour, had it been alerted and sent to sea, would have been defeated for the same reason—air power disparity. Its 180 aeroplanes would have failed against the 300 aeroplanes of the Japanese task force, which had 124 aeroplanes in reserve. In short, air superiority reinsured Japan's : initial surprise thrust at Pearl Harbour, and later on (reversed) re-

insured the American trans-oceanic thrust at Japan. Another point is that the gunfire superiority of the American fleet ! caught sitting at Pearl Harbour would not have availed (according to this report) if the fleet had met the Japanese task force at sea because the American battleships were too slow in a sea action "to bring the Japanese ships under gunfire." But if the American fleet had known of the enemy's move in time to get to sea, some units might have escaped from the enemy aeroplanes by dispersion and smoke tactics, if not by tactical defensive handling. By rotating the in-port periods of naval ships, the Hawaiian command, in the opinion of Admiral King, might have prevented the Japanese from knowing when they would catch the bulk of the Pearl Harbour ships in port, and almost as helpless as eggs in a basket. This opinion indirectly emphasises the tremendous importance in wartime of shrouding ports in secrecy and of preventing idle gossip as well as espionage. The aged Secretary of War, Mr. H. L. Stimson, veteran Republican, and a conspicuous survivor of the Roosevelt Cabinet, which President Truman has so drastically overhauled, thinks that the underlying cause of the surprising of the army at Pearl Harbour is General Short's assumption that Japan would not dare to assault the American lion in his lair. And yet such an assumption seems to sin against the ancient maxim that you must always expect a full-blooded enemy to do the unexpected.