Chapter 6 Chapter Two We Should Occupy Midway

One day in late December 1941, a man in the uniform of an admiral stood at his desk aboard the battleship Nagato moored near the western end of the Seto Inland Sea in Japan.He is not tall, with broad shoulders and thick back, a pair of quick-witted, intelligent eyes reflect his straightforward and taciturn, resolute and sensitive personality.High nose, expressive lips, sharp wrinkles have been engraved from the corners of the mouth to the chin, just like a great captain of the Elizabethan era who was a sailor and a poet, a pirate and a politician, a patriot and a careerist. He is Yamamoto Fifty-Six, commander of the Japanese Combined Fleet.He stood there, staring at the report of the bombing of Pearl Harbor.This report was compiled based on information from the US side, and the US side made no cover up for the losses it suffered.He turned to face Lieutenant Admiral Arima Koyasu, who was in charge of the submarine affairs and was also his youngest staff officer, punched the desk hard and shouted: Amazing!Americans have suffered such heavy losses, yet they still have the courage to tell the truth.For such an opponent, he should be beaten severely! [Note: Interview with Lieutenant Admiral Arima Koyasu, November 21, 1948. 】

Yamamoto knew better than anyone that his opponent was strong and resourceful.He had studied at Harvard University in the United States, served as a naval attache in Washington, and traveled all over the United States. In the Japanese Navy, he knew as much about the American situation as anyone else.As such, he has long opposed war with the United States.However, he is also a Japanese nationalist through and through.When the Japanese government was clearly determined to go to war against the United States, he broke the Japanese navy's tradition of fighting defensive warfare in the inland sea, and drew up a bold battle plan for the transoceanic air attack on Pearl Harbor.Since Japan and the United States are at war, of course he must go all out.

During December 1941, Yamamoto had been considering the next step of the navy's strategy.Although the results of the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor exceeded all expectations, and the ships of the Combined Fleet were swaggering in the Western Pacific, Yamamoto realized that Uncle Sam's combat force based on Oahu still had a large force. Potential, they are eager for revenge, to clear the shame and humiliation.Therefore, he ordered the chief of staff, Rear Admiral Ugaki, and his staff to immediately formulate the second phase of the strategic plan. [Note: Interview with Yasuji Watanabe, September 25, 1964. 】

Throughout the Battle of Midway, the Japanese Navy did many things too late, and this order from Yamamoto was the first.Yamamoto should have drawn up a second-step strategic plan with the Operations Department of the Naval Command long ago, so that it could be implemented immediately after Nagumo's mobile force returned from Pearl Harbor. Ugaki is very beautiful, tall among Japanese, very intelligent and eloquent.He is strong, aggressive, excitable, and has a lot of ideas in his slightly bald head.At about nine o'clock every night, he would write down his thoughts and what happened that day, thus providing a very valuable war diary for future generations.

Ugaki is known as one of Japan's best military officers and enjoys a reputation as the strategic authority of the Japanese Navy.Since Yamamoto asked for an expert who is familiar with the situation of the highest authority of the Tokyo Navy and has a down-to-earth style and a shrewd ability as an assistant, Ugaki joined the Combined Fleet in late August 1941.Since boarding the Nagato, he has served Yamamoto faithfully and effectively. After receiving Yamamoto's order, Ugaki began to draw up the plan with his usual enthusiasm and earnestness.After a preliminary investigation, from January 11th to 14th, he compiled his opinions on future operations into a document.At that time, he jotted down a summary in his diary: after June this year, we should capture Midway, Johnston and Palmyra, send the air force to the island, send the combined fleet offensive force to capture Hawaii, and at the same time push the enemy fleet and I will fight. [Note: Interview with Watanabe, January 7, 1965.Watanabe provided some excerpts from Ugaki's diary. 】The Japanese believe that these islands are very important to the United States, and the United States will definitely fight back or attempt to retake these islands.In this way, the decisive battle of the Japan-US fleet that the Japanese have been looking for for a long time will come. [Note: Bard's interview with Watanabe, June 3 | 4, 1966. 】

On January 25th, Ugaki gave the written research results to Chief Admiral Kuroshima Kameto Naval Commander, and asked him to make a research decision together.Kuroshima is very smart, but his behavior is weird, even if he is doing things for Yamamoto, he is slow.On the ship, he always got up late, drank heavily, smoked cigarette after cigarette, and waited for the inspiration from the god of war. [Note: Interview with Watanabe, September 26, 1964. ] Yuyuan was very annoyed by this, and expressed his anxiety in his diary: If you delay for one day now, you will regret it for a hundred days in the future. [Note: Same as above, January 7, 1965. 】

Hei Dao has his reasons for being so procrastinating.He didn't think Nimitz would send ships to defend Midway, Johnston, and Palmyra while the Japanese would be stuck on the three untenable islands. [Note: Bard's interview with Watanabe, June 3 | 4, 1966. ] He suggested that the strategic direction of the Japanese Navy move westward, turning to India and Burma.Ugaki temporarily accepts this suggestion. [Note: Interview with Watanabe, January 7, 1965. 】 While discussing the strategic plan, Yamamoto moved the command position from the Nagato to the super battleship Yamato, which had just been launched from Kure Port in December.In order to deal with the five: five: three ratio of capital ships stipulated by the Washington Naval Conference in 1921, [Translator's Note: The treaty signed by the conference stipulates that the ratio of standard displacement to gross tonnage of capital ships of the United States, Britain, and Japan is five: five. :three. 】Designed four giant ships, Yamato was the first.Japan hopes to use this method to strengthen the strike force of a single ship instead of building more ships.At the London Naval Conference in 1935, Japan announced that it would not extend the existing treaty.In building the Yamato and its sister ship, the Musashi, Japan encountered great technical, financial, and security difficulties.At present, the Musashi has not yet been completed in Nagasaki, but the new flagship Yamato has finally been completed and launched.

The Yamato is 863 feet long, with 16-inch-thick armor on both sides, and a full-load displacement of about 70,000 tons; Each turret is the size of a destroyer. [Note: A.J. Watts and B.G. Gordon, Imperial Japanese Navy, pp. 68 | 72. 】The Japanese intend to use this as the beginning of the era of super battleships, but the era of battleships has passed, and Yamato has actually become the last ship of this era, as if a sea dinosaur was born in the age of mammals. Yamamoto sat in his new naval command, commanding the rest of the main force that gave him an overwhelming advantage in conventional ships, anchored in the Seto Inland Sea.At this time, Nagumo's aircraft carrier force was cruising around in the South Pacific, almost doing whatever they wanted.However, after all, it is not like when he led six aircraft carriers to attack Pearl Harbor.Sometimes he led Carrier Squadron 2 and Carrier Squadron 5 at other times, but his core of command was always the flagship Akagi and her accompanying Kaga.On January 20 and 21 he bombed Rabaul, Kavieng, and New Guinea, and on February 19 he bombed the port of Darwin.The pilots of Nagumo commented on the Hashirashima Fleet anchored in the country [J Note: The Imperial Japanese Navy’s First Fleet, which mainly consisted of warships, had very few opportunities to go to sea in the Pacific War. Fleet] sarcasm, said witty words.Naval Admiral Mitsuo Fuchida, who led the attack on Pearl Harbor, and other scrappy pilots felt that Yamamoto was actually waiting for the United States to repair the ships his men had decimated on Oahu. [Note: Interview with Mitsuo Fuchida, March 1, 1964. 】

As Nagumo left Darwin and advanced towards Java, Lieutenant Yasuji Watanabe studied the feasibility of operations in the Indian Ocean.Watanabe was the staff officer in charge of logistics, in charge of gunnery and Marine Corps affairs, but he was often very favorable to the cooperation of Kuroshima fighting in the Indian Ocean.On February 20th｜22nd, the exercise on the map was carried out on the Yamato, and some officers from the Army Staff Headquarters were also present.In the end, Prime Minister Hideki Tojo, who also served as the Minister of the Army, rejected this plan out of more political considerations than military considerations.There will be a general election in March, and Tojo needs to reduce his war spending.

Then, the United Fleet proposed to attack China with all its strength, and finally took Chongqing.Tojo again vetoed it.In his view, Japan is overreaching in doing so. Since it was impossible for the army and navy to agree on the goal of a coordinated attack, Yamamoto's staff decided to draw up an operational plan that the navy could accomplish independently.By mid-March, after almost a full circle, they returned to the plan proposed by Ugaki in January.Everyone's contemplative eyes fell on the two needle-sized land that made up Midway Island.The proposed plan stipulated two objectives of the Battle of Midway Island: 1. To occupy Midway Island and transform it into a Japanese air force base and the starting point for attacking Hawaii; Bad fight, kill it.The implementation of this option can ensure the security of Japan's eastern sea frontier as it uses the resources of the Greater East Asia region to strengthen its presence. [Note: Interview with Watanabe, September 25, 1964; Bard interview with Watanabe, June 3|4, 1966. 】

Therefore, the staff of the Combined Fleet focused on determining the next major combat operation against the United States.At Pearl Harbor, Nimitz and his assistants were also working tirelessly, trying to predict the Japanese army's goal in this campaign in order to outwit them.In this regard, Lieutenant Commander Joseph Rochford has had the hardest time.Rochford is the director of the Combat Intelligence Bureau (code-named OP2002), commonly known as HYPO.He was thin, less than six feet tall, surprisingly fair, with frank and friendly eyes.He was a veteran of the intelligence business. Technically speaking, Combat Intelligence is not part of Nimitz.Operationally, it was under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Lawrence F. Safford, Director of Naval Communications Security Intelligence in Washington, and administratively, it was attached to the Fourteenth Naval Command headquartered in Pearl Harbor. Safford has worked with Rochford for many years and is an old friend of Rochford. [Note: Interview with Vice Admiral Joseph Rochford, August 26, 1964. 】He is a mathematical genius and a chess fan.He is the founder of the Cipher Section of the Navy's intelligence department, and at the same time he is very aware of the unreliability of code words and codes.Therefore, he worked tirelessly, constantly using complex means to prevent leaks. [Note: Interview with Admiral Dundas P. Tucker, August 22, 1964. 】 There were very few cryptography experts in the U.S. Army or Navy at the time, and they served in the military, but they didn't belong entirely to them.No one knew exactly which department they belonged to, neither the intelligence department in the south nor the communications department in the north. [Note: Interview with Rochford, September 1, 1964. 】Doing this job well requires a special kind of intelligence that is far beyond ordinary people, a near-mathematical genius IQ, and an infinite ability to accommodate difficult details.He should have a real passion for the work and maintain the detachment of a scholar.He cannot have the ambitions of an ordinary man.Because the possibility of putting a star on his shoulder is as remote as being elected president of the United States.It is rare for him to win awards and honors. Cryptographers spend all day in an absolutely safe secret room where there is no sunlight, pondering over a large number of letters and numbers, and constantly editing and arranging them.Visitors to their home often saw the owner playing chess or ciphers in his downtime, like a postman, and taking long walks on holidays.They never dabble in things other than their majors.So, these goals, like-minded, rare people in the world dedicated to the cause of encryption are familiar with each other through many years of work.Each service has established a small team of experts, everyone in the group is unknown, but it works extremely well. One such team worked for Combat Intelligence Rochford.They work in the basement of the old administration building not far from Pier 1010 at Pearl Harbor.The team leader was Navy Lieutenant Commander Thomas H. Dale. Rochford said he was the best cryptographer in the Navy. He could work continuously for three or four days without sleep as long as he took a few pills.Dale had people like Lieutenant Commander Joseph Finnegan, the translator.Rochford praised Finnegan as a genius!It is clearly a blank sheet of paper, but he can translate it, just like a real magician can conjure things out of thin air.Also in this powerful underground group was Jasper Holmes, a mathematics professor seconded from the University of Hawaii.He was in charge of determining the positions of the Japanese fleet and marking them out. [Note: Interview with Rochford, August 25, 1964. 】 Much of the data on the Japanese Navy came out of this group and was presented to Admiral Nimitz by Captain Edwin Layton, director of intelligence for the Pacific Fleet.Rochford sent out daily intelligence bulletins and estimates of the situation, one at a time to Leighton and one at a time to Naval Headquarters in Washington.Combat Intelligence's main day-to-day job was to decipher the radio call signals of the Japanese fleet, and Rochford tried to include these call signs in his briefings. Over the past eighteen years, the U.S. Navy has developed a high-level radio team of sergeant majors and privates.They were the backbone of the extremely intricate intelligence warfare of the time.The complexity of the work can be imagined only by the fact that each naval command concerned has ten or twenty networks, each with its own call signal group.For example, a certain network is responsible for the liaison between the Japanese Navy Command and the Combined Fleet.Between Yamamoto and its subordinate headquarters, between each headquarters and its subordinate troops, down to each destroyer, and each remotest shore station are responsible for the network. Sorting out and interpreting such a multitude of call signals requires long-term experience, a wealth of knowledge and a keen sense.Rochford's team has all these qualities.By the spring of 1942, their skills were more sophisticated, and they could even identify which Japanese operator was from the habitual speed of sending a report, whether it was fast, slow, or medium, and whether the fingering was heavy, light, or neither. Sending a report.For example, they knew that the operator of the Akagi had a heavy finger, like jumping on an electric key, and no one of them could make a mistake when they heard such a signal. By March 1, 1942, Rochford had the positions of most of the Japanese ships within three or four hundred nautical miles.He kept Leiden up to date with his daily intelligence bulletins.If there were special circumstances, he would contact Layton himself, as he would report to Rear Admiral Bullock.Layton sometimes doubled down on Rochford's estimates.If Rochford said there were four Japanese aircraft carriers, Leighton reported six. [Note: Interview with Rochford, August 25, 1964. ] This made Rochford very angry. But Leighton has learned the hard way in doing so.He knew that the common belief among operational officers was that intelligence personnel always panicked and exaggerated the enemy's situation.At noon the day before Pearl Harbor, the words of a fellow diner often echoed in Layton's ears: Ah, Layton is here.It's Saturday, what's the emergency? [Note: Interview with Admiral Edwin T. Layton, July 22, 1964. ] Rochford therefore estimated that there were four Japanese aircraft carriers in operation, and Leighton said there were six.When the officers subtracted one-third of the inflated intelligence reports, it was exactly the same as the original figure. Of course Layton knew what the Pacific Fleet would do after receiving information from Rochford, but Rochford knew nothing about it.He also didn't want to know this, so as not to affect his opinion and prevent him from objectively analyzing the intelligence of the Japanese army's activities intercepted by his subordinates. [Note: Interview with Rochford, August 26, 1964. 】 The Combat Intelligence Bureau is specializing in the JN25 cipher system used by the Japanese Navy.The system includes three numbers.The first type has about 45,000 five-digit numbers, which represent different words or phrases, and the number of the second type is even larger than that of the first type. It is arbitrarily compiled, and the sender can choose to add it to the message at will. , making it difficult for the enemy to decipher, and there is also a set of special numbers, which are used to tell the receiving personnel where the camouflage has been applied in the message, so that the receiving party can decipher and read it.Of course, there are constantly newly compiled digital books for operators to use. [Note: See Nimitz, page 64; interview with Rochford, September 1, 1964. 】 Therefore, if someone casually talks about deciphering the Japanese Navy's cipher, he should not imagine the deciphering process as easy as translating a Russian telegram into English: first replace Cyrian letters with Roman characters, and then translate them into English will do.This deciphering effort is much like the original identification of the Rosetta Inscription. Three kinds of words.The discovery of the stele provided the key to deciphering ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics. 】In this way, there are some materials for comparison here, and some speculations and assumptions there. Although there are occasional breakthroughs, there are still many sentences that cannot be deciphered. Machines had entered the field of code-breaking before and during World War II, and indeed since then computers have been used in both encoding and decoding [Note: Interview with Tucker, 19 August 22, 1964. 】However, Rochford had neither a decoding machine nor a Japanese cipher book at that time.However, by March and April of 1942, the Combat Intelligence Bureau was able to decipher a group of three or four code groups in each encrypted message.This is not the credit of any one person, but the result of the joint efforts and perseverance of the whole group, and each deciphering group makes the deciphering work of the next group easier.They put these bits and pieces into the intercepted messages and studied them in the hope of eliciting a meaningful pattern.Another valuable asset of Combat Intelligence is Rochford's extraordinary memory.He can remember things he saw and heard days or even weeks before.Rochford admits that he has done a poor job of organization and file work, but I have all the materials in my head. [Note: Interview with Rochford, September 1, 1964. 】 When Nimitz first arrived at Pearl Harbor, he didn't pay much attention to the Combat Intelligence Bureau and doubted its value.If the information obtained from the interception was really so useful, then how could the Japanese succeed in their sneak attack on December 7, 1941?Leighton later explained to him that if the Japanese had used radios at Pearl Harbor, they must have used codes that the Americans had not deciphered, and that, besides, the Nagumo Forces had kept their radios silent. [Note: Walter Lord, "Astonishing Victory", pp. 22 | 23; "Nimitz", pp. 64 | 65. 】 After Nimitz realized the importance of interception and deciphering, he became very cooperative and considerate.Rochford also needed some cooperation and understanding, as certain agencies at Naval Headquarters in Washington at the time were still cool about their work.But Nimitz was a thoughtful leader, a true intellectual who understood the psychology of intelligence officers.Realizing the value of intelligence work, he insisted that Rochford be given complete freedom to carry out his important, if unconventional, activities.You should tell us what the Japanese army is going to do, he said to Rochford, let me judge whether the information is beneficial to us, and then act accordingly. [Note: Interview with Rochford, August 26, 1964. 】