And being able to discern “signals and indicators’ is exactly what Sun Tzu would expect of a competent commander of troops. Both Kimmel and Short failed in this regard. Kimmel failed most notably in his inability to recognize the fact that the ordering of Japanese diplomats in the world by Tokyo to destroy their codes and code machines is a major indicator of the fact that Japan is preparing to go to war. Although Kimmel received this warning on the 3rd of December, 1941, a full four days before the attack, he did not initiate any action because, in his own words, “I didn’t consider that (as) being of vital importance when I received it.” Short also fell short of Sun Tzu’s demands in this respect. The most unforgivable case against Short in this regard was made by Henry C. Clausen in that even if Short has no spies available to him, he should have been able to sense the change in the wind by reading the newspapers in Hawaii which documented in detail the diplomatic proceedings between Washington and Tokyo and even Japanese military actions. Another instance where Short was not able to recognize the significance of intelligence received was the dismissal of a report received on the 6th of December that a person in Tokyo has been inquiring of a suspected Japanese agent then living in Honolulu about the exact location of military assets in Hawaii.
Short also was not up to the standard of another of Sun Tzu’s expectations, which is that an able commander should be able to choose a good spy. When Short was taking over the command of the Hawaiian Department from Maj. Gen. Charles D. Herron during the February of 1941, Herron told his successor that a competent man that should be appointed to the position of G2 (Intelligence), would be Col. George W. Bicknell. However, Short promoted another person, Brig. Gen. Kendall J. Fielder, an officer who proved to be both ill-suited to the job of intelligence gathering and interpretation. Fielder was ill-suited because of both professional and personal traits. Professionally, Fielder had no prior intelligence training and was not cleared to read Top-Secret intelligence. As a person, Fielder was extremely irresponsible, being “more interested in his magic tricks, and his next golf game, than in trying to figure out the Japanese and what they might be doing.”. These two facets of Fielder, professional and otherwise, combined to produce an intelligence officer that Roberta Wohlstetter described as “not especially concerned about trying to read beyond the obvious meaning of any given communication that came under his eye.” In contrast, Bicknell has been doing intelligence work for longer and is better suited for the job because of his active initiative. His potential for having alerted Short to the dangers that are imminent if he had only been given the post of G2 is significant. It was therefore likely that Short would have been better warned and therefore better prepared for the Japanese attack if he had had the wisdom to make Bicknell his G2.
Kimmel and Short however, would not be the only one Sun Tzu would criticize for the failure of intelligence at Pearl Harbor. There are many entities that ran foul of the crucial Sun Tzu maxim, that “If ignorant of both your enemy and yourself, you are certain in every battle to be in peril.” One major culprit that failed to know itself is the United States military leaders. The United States was operating an intelligence system so plagued with inter-service rivalry and excess internal security that frequently intelligence received could not be utilized. Inter-service rivalry meant that the Navy and Army had the incentive to withhold information from each other, making, for example, the intelligence procured by the Navy of no use to the Army. Excess security meant that a lot of intelligence that is available to the United States military is not made available to all the people who needs to know it, such as in the tragic example of Col Fielder, who as head of intelligence of the Hawaiian Department, was not even cleared to read Magic. The fact that the United States was not aware of this fact points to the fact that she does not know herself. It could thus safely be said that if the United States have been aware of this organizational weakness, they could have corrected it, possibly by setting up an agency such as the Central Intelligence Agency and thus be able to better make sense of the relevant information in regards to Pearl Harbor and possibly avoid the disaster.
Although there are many other factors, such as bad luck and the indecisiveness of President Roosevelt that led to the United States being surprised at Pearl Harbor, it does not detract from the fact that the factors outlined in the preceding passages are the major bottlenecks that prevented the United States from mounting an effective defense. Bad luck may cause the dissemination of information to be incomplete, but a commander able to read the ‘signals and indicators’ of the times would still be able to be forewarned. The commander may be deceived by false signals put forth by the enemy, but if the commanders have knew that they were suffering from poor internal communications and rectified the problem, they would be able to better separate the signal from the noise by conferring together. And of course, by appointing able men to intelligence processing, commanders would be able to make sure that the chances of recognizing the correct signal and understanding its significance would be much higher. This paper would therefore advance that if all these problems have been addressed according to Sun Tzu’s recommendations, it would very likely have meant that American losses at Pearl Harbor would be dramatically reduced while at the same time costing the Japanese a much higher price for whatever gains they procured in Pearl Harbor.
This fact birthed many a conspiracy theory, even one that went as far as to suggest that United States President Roosevelt knew about the attack and deliberately allowed it to happen in order to galvanize the country to enter the Second World War. Gailey, Pg 71
Wohlstetter, Roberta (1962) and Clausen, Henry C. et al (1992) both gave detailed descriptions of the chain of events that led up to the attack on Pearl Harbor. Although both submitted slightly different interpretation on whom and what was to blame, there is general agreement that the United States has acquired sufficient information prior to the attack to possibly not be surprised on the ground.
“The (Japanese) task force had lost only twenty-nine planes, one large submarine, and five midget submarines. Only fifty-five fliers has been killed” This compared to the US Navy’s 18 sunk or damaged ships, 2008 deaths and 710 wounded. Gailey, pg 96
Then Secretary of War, Henry Stimson’s diary has this entry, “The question was how we should maneuver them (the Japanese) into the position of firing the first shot without allowing too much danger to ourselves.” Wohlstetter, pg 240
Sun Tzu expressed this in that commanders in his age were supposed to watch for signs such as “Dust spurting upward in high straight columns” which would indicate “the approach of chariots”. Likewise, there are certain signs during the period of the Second World War that indicate when war may be imminent. Handel, pg 234
An excerpt from the message received by Kimmel from Naval Intelligence in Washington goes thus, “Highly reliable information has been received that categoric and urgent instructions were sent yesterday to Japanese Diplomatic and consular posts at Hong Kong, Singapore,……to destroy most of their codes and ciphers at once.” Clausen, Pg 234
Illuminating headlines include “US-Japan Talks broken off as Hull rejects Appeasement-Full surrender demanded in US statement” and “Japan gives two weeks more to negotiations-prepares for action in event of failure” Clausen pg 155
“And therefore, only the enlightened sovereign and the worthy general who are able to use the most intelligent people as agents are certain to achieve great things.” Sun Tzu in Art of War, quoted by Handel. Handel, pg 149
What is most significant was that Fielder was not cleared to read the Japanese decrypts. Ibid, pg 302
“Fielder had been on the job four months at the time of the Pearl Harbor attack….Bicknell had begun his assignment under General Herron’s command…and so had had approximately fourteen months of experience before Pearl Harbor.” Ibid, pg 30
“”Bicknell also made other sources of information available to himself, such as material from the local FCC intercept station…..In other words, Bicknell is what Fielder was not: a pro.” Clausen, pg 95
Although the top military leaders tried to correct the problem of inter-service friction by ordering that there should be cooperation between the Navy and Army at Hawaii, they were not aware that their orders have been largely ignored in the field of intelligence. In Stimson’s report to congress on Pearl Harbor, there would be a paragraph that stated that “It was the rule that all such information (intelligence from Washington to Hawaii) would be exchanged between the Army and the Navy at Pearl Harbor, and the War Department had a right to believe that this information communicated to Adm. Kimmel was also available to Gen. Short.” Clausen, pg 227
Sun Tzu might find himself hard pressed to explain this since he did advocate that, “He (a capable commander) should be capable of keeping his officers and men in ignorance of his plans” Clausen, Pg 235. However, the crux here is that the United States Military has carried intelligence security to excess.
This was particularly true of Kimmel, where he withheld at least eleven pieces of vital intelligence from Short prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor, information that could have enabled Short to better prepare for the attack. Clausen, pg 231
Magic is the generic codename given by the United States to all intelligence decrypted and translated from interceptions of encrypted Japanese diplomatic communications.
Clausen thought that Roosevelt failed in the sense that he “…failed to take prompt and effective action to bring his subordinates together to achieve a decision about what should be done.” Clausen pg 309
Two US Air force pilots who managed to get their planes into the sky during the Japanese attack managed to shoot down seven Japanese planes. Gailey commented that “Their success serves as an indicator of what might have occurred had General Short not been so preoccupied with sabotage (and not prepared for a aerial attack).” Gailey, pg 95.
