Back at FE I encountered a hushed, frantic search of records—had we passed to the military all of the messages from the Embassy at Tokyo that might have warned us of the attack? Two were of importance. One in mid-November was a general reminder that the Japanese were accustomed to strike first and then declare war. The other, earlier, relayed a report from the Peruvian Ambassador in Tokyo that an inebriated Japanese naval officer had told a member of his staff that should war come, it would begin with a Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. FE had not been remiss, as I recall, in keeping the military informed.
Responsibility for the United States being caught napping went, of course, beyond slighting unverifiable warnings from the American Embassy in Tokyo. The disaster of Pearl Harbor occurred because American officials, civilian and military, and the American people did not sense the desperate daring of the Japanese, underestimated Japanese power, assumed near-invulnerability, and thought that if Japan expanded its China war into a Pacific war, it would strike only southward to Malaysia and the Dutch Indies.
Stimson, then Secretary of War, and Frank Knox, Secretary of the Navy, belittled the danger from Japan. And ten days before Pearl Harbor, Hornbeck offered five to one odds that Japan would not be at war with the United States by December 15. General Douglas MacArthur in the Philippines earlier in 1941 had assured Washington that he could defend the islands. The Army persuaded itself that the newly developed B-17 bombers could not only rout any attack on the Philippines but even interdict an attempt by the Japanese to advance southward toward the Indies.
Although American deciphering of Japanese cables revealed to the very few at the pinnacle of American authority that after November 29 Tokyo would abandon attempts to find peaceful accommodations, the President and his high command did not interpret this ominous intelligence as indicating that the powerful American military complex in mid-Pacific was under threat of imminent attack. To suggest that a Japanese task force might venture undetected halfway across the Pacific, with a surprise attack cripple the American fleet and air units in the Hawaiian bastion, and then get away with slight losses—such a scenario, if presented before December 7, would have been dismissed as preposterous.
CHAPTER V
TO ASIA WITH STILWELL
Almost a year before Pearl Harbor, Stilwell wrote to me on New Year’s Eve wishing me a happy 1941, and passed on a message from Pinky Dorn: “if you can get us sent to China you can come along.”
Well, things did not work out quite that way. Stilwell, a Major General in command of the Seventh Division at Fort Ord, California, when he wrote to me, and seven months later Commander of the III Corps, was called to Washington a fortnight after the Japanese attack. Pinky accompanied him as aide de camp. At the War Department Stilwell learned that he was to lead what was then planned as the first American offensive, a landing somewhere in French West Africa, code-named GYMNAST.
I was unaware of this when the General, Pinky, and I dined together shortly after Christmas. They intimated that they would be going overseas, but not to China. After dinner I asked Dorn if, even though they were not sent to China, I could come along.
Pinky said that he thought this could be arranged. I had suggested that my role might be something like a diplomatic attaché to the General, a mirror role to that of a military attaché to an Ambassador.
Early in January the American high command began to doubt the timing and feasibility of GYMNAST and frantically conceived alternatives to it. Meanwhile Roosevelt and Stimson, now Secretary of War, felt a pressing need to exhibit American military support of China. In impotent disarray from Hawaii to the Philippines to the Java Sea, the United States was not in a position to dispatch either troops or significant quantities of materiel to China. The best that could be done was to present Chiang Kai-shek with a high-ranking American military officer as adviser, representative of the American high command, and an earnest of large support to come.
General George C. Marshall, Chief of Staff of the Army, with whom Stilwell had served in China in 1926, asked Stilwell on January 1, 1942 to recommend someone for the China assignment. Although Stilwell himself was an obvious possible choice, he was then immersed in evaluating GYMNAST and, in any event, was rated as one of the best combat commanders in the Army. Lieutenant General Hugh A. Drum was Stilwell’s recommendation because, as he observed in his diary, Drum was pompous and of high rank. As for himself in the China role, “No thank you.” The Chinese “remember me as a small-fry colonel . . . Drum by all means.” Stilwell’s predilection of course, was for a fighting rather than a representational and administrative command.
Drum regarded the China assignment as vague and not worthy of a general of his pretensions. And he made a poor impression on Stimson and Marshall. They turned to Stilwell. Would he take the China mission? “I’ll go where I’m sent,” Stilwell characteristically replied.
Stilwell viewed the plum proffered him not without misgivings. From his considerable experience in China he had few illusions about the quality of the Chinese military leadership. And the current reports from China of an American military mission headed by the urbane and discerning Brigadier General John Magruder supported what he knew—that the Chinese Army lacked aggressive fighting spirit and that the materiel demanded by the Chinese National Government was not for fighting the Japanese but for ensuring Chiang’s domestic ascendancy against internal rivals after the defeat of Japan.
At the same time, China had an insidious lure for Stilwell, as it did for many China hands. And Stimson, who had been emotionally involved as Secretary of State in trying to defend China in the early 1930s against Japan in Manchuria, envisioned the command offered to Stilwell as charged with keeping China in the war and securing it as a base, initially for limited operations and eventually for a counteroffensive, possibly by Chinese forces. By mid-January the concept of the China assignment had expanded to embrace a nebulous position as chief of the Generalissimo’s nonexistent allied staff. In addition to controlling the distribution of lend-lease supplies, Stilwell was told he would train Chinese troops and even command them.
How many, where and under what circumstances was undefined—until the Japanese surged out of Thailand into Burma, intent on cutting China’s only remaining line of surface communications with the West, stretching from the port of Rangoon half the length of Burma to the Yunnan border. Thereupon the Chinese indicated that an American lieutenant general, but not Magruder (who knew them so well), would be granted “executive control” of Chinese forces dispatched to Burma. Whether the Generalissimo would permit an American to command Chinese troops was, Stilwell thought, a test of Chiang’s willingness to allow him to function effectively.
The exchange between Washington and Chungking regarding the appointment of an American commander in China passed through T. V. Soong, Madame Chiang Kai-shek’s Americanized, clever, brazen, and ambitious brother. He was Chinese Foreign Minister and resident in Washington, where he acted as the Generalissimo’s alter ego, interpreting and editing communications between the American Government and Chiang.
Through one or more of his many highly placed sources of information in Washington, Soong learned that Stilwell was the probable choice for China. So he made inquiries about the General and was satisfied with what he had learned. Subsequently, the Generalissimo declared that Stilwell would be “most welcome.”
With “executive control” promised Stilwell and a welcome to him from Chiang and Soong, Marshall asked Stilwell on January 23, “Will you go?” Again, “I’ll go where I’m sent.” But with feelings far from undiluted elation—“the blow fell,” he wrote that night in his diary.
The War Department orders to Stilwell, dated February 2, designated him as Chief of Staff of the Supreme Commander of the Chinese Theater (Chiang Kai-shek) and Commanding General of the American forces (initially headquarters staff, liaison officers and technicians) in China-Burma-India. Soong confirmed that Stilwell was to act as Chief of Staff for