56 MINUTES BEFORE PEARL HARBOR
By Hugh Russell Fraser
My task was to investigate the 56 minutes of warning we had of the
Jap air attack on Perl Harbor, Dec. 7, 1941. What I learned amazed me. I
reported every detail to the Assistant Chief Signal Officer--specifically,
Maj. Gen. James A. Code.
Now, nearly seventeen years later, I can tell that story. The
facts, incredible as they are, became a part of my history of the U.S
Signal Corps in World War II. To most Americans who know merely that we
had some radar warning of the sneak Jap attack on the 'Day of Infamy," the
history of those 56 minutes will come as a shock.
Radar could, and did, detect the approach of the Jap air fleet. But
not, of course, as it should have been detected, and not as it would have
been detected if authorized radar equipment had been installed. Actually,
the island of Oahu was to have been ringed with permanent radar-warning
installations. It was not. As early as November of the year before, the
Corps of Engineers was directed to install six permanent radar-warning
sets to be operated round the clock beginning July 1, 1941.
These sets were not installed by July 1, They were not installed by
December, nor by December 7. Four mobile radar warning units, mounted in
trucks were provided in their place. Regarded generally by the men
assigned to them as toys to experiment with, they were in operation only
from 4 A.M. to 7 A.M. Why were these hours chosen? Probably in was
because those were the three hours out of the 24 when the enemy--any
enemy--was most likely to attack. If this was the theory, then it came
very close to being 100% right!
The Opana mobile radar set, manned by Privates Joseph Lockard and
George Elliott, was the one that detected the approach of the Jap air
armada. Singularly enough, it was supposed to be shut down promptly at
seven o'clock on the morning of December 7, but, by one of those
fortunate accidents of history, the truck coming at that time to take the
two men back to base camp and to breakfast was late. So Lockard and
Elliott decided to leave the set on until it arrived.
Thus, after 7 A.M., the Opana unit was the only radar unit on the
island operating. The other mobile sets, also mounted in trucks had shut
down promptly. One was located at Punaluu on Kahana Bay, 20 miles to the
southeast; another on the extreme west side of the island near Makua, and
the fourth near Waipahu7 on the south-west coast, 11 miles west of Perl
Harbor itself.
The Opana unit, which made history, was located about 22 miles
due nort of Perl Harbor and about 28 miles northwest of the city of
Honolulu. In other words, it was north of the mountains on the island of
Oahu, which itself is about 43 miles long and 30 miles wide.
As the seconds after seven o'clock ticked off. Lockard--who kept
his eye idly on the machine, noted nothing unusual until, suddenly, at
7:02 A.M., there appeared what he later described as "huge blip of
light--bigger than anything I had ever seen before on the set--moving
slowly from the extreme left side of the scope to the right. It was, you
call it, a pillar of light. It startled me, for the flight of one plane
is represented by a mere dot, several planes a collection of white dots,
but here was something different. The whole left side of the scope
suddenly took on light!
"My natural reaction," he continued, "was to infer the radar unit
was out of order. So I asked the mechanic, Elliott, to check it. He did
so in a couple of minutes and reported it was working all right. By then
it was 7:04 A.M. Something unusual, I knew, was before my eyes. Elliott
thought so, too, although neither of us could imagine what it might be.
"Quickly we plotted it. The calculations were easily made, and
it appeared to be definitely a large flight of planes approaching from due
North, three points East and about 137 miles away.
"We looked at each other, and Elliott was the first to reach for
the phone. At first he couldn't get anybody at the Army Information
Center at Fort Shafter. The line was dead. Then he tried another line.
It was open, and soon Private Joseph McDonald at the switchboard answered.
Tersely, Elliott told him what we were seeing on the scope. McDonald's
answer was : 'Well, what do you expect me to do about it? There's nobody
around here but me.' Elliott told him to find somebody and then hung up.
"What happened, I learned later, was that there was an officer
reading a book in the next room. McDonald had supposed he had gone. He
was Lt. Kermit Tyler. McDonald told him what Elliott had reported.
Lieutenant Tyler looked up from his book, thought awhile as if to take it
all in, then said: 'It's all right, never mind.'
"Joe McDonald then called back and I answered the phone. He told
me what Tyler had said. I thereupon insisted on talking to the officer
myself. I was a little excited and puzzled and didn't want to let the
matter end with McDonald. Joe then asked the lieutenant if he would be
good enough to talk to me. The officer then came on the phone and said,
'What is it?'
"I made my reply as brief as possible. 'The scope,'' I said,
'indicates a large flight of planes approaching Oahu from due North, three
points East, about 137 miles away at the last reckoning.'
"There was a pause for a few seconds, then Tyler said, 'That is
probably our B-17s coming in from San Francisco.' I knew there was such a
flight coming in, but I knew also those planes would hardly be approaching
us from due North.
"At once I made this point clear, and he replied, 'Well, there is
nothing to worry about. That is all.' The last words he said with some
emphasis and I judged he didn't want to hear anything further about it. so
I said: 'All right, sir,' and hung up.
"Meanwhile somewhat startled by the whole business, although not
alarmed, as now the matter was out of my hands, I continued to watch the
set. The pillar of light, or 'blip,' as I call it, continued to move
steadily from left to right and the truck still had not arrived. At 7:25
A.M. we made a quick computation and the flight of planes, whatever it
consisted of was 62 miles out. At 7:39 A.M., just as we heard the truck
arriving outside, I made my last computation and the flight was 22 miles
away!
"It was at 7:39 A.M that we closed down the radar unit and
climbed into the truck for a long ride back to base. I was still turning
over in my mind what we had seen on the scope as the truck bounced over
the badly rutted road. I said nothing to the driver about it, nor did
Elliott--not because we were alarmed but because I knew that what didn't
make sense to us would hardly make sense to him.
"After we had been driving about twenty minutess, the driver
called our attention to a heavy black pall of smoke that lay on the Perl
Harbor horizon to the South. 'Looks like oil smoke,' he commented. Soon
we were hearing what sounded like explosions and even anti-air-craft fire.
It was all very puzzling and somebody suggested it was a practice raid on
Perl Harbor.
"However, on we went over the rugged road. Actually, it was only
twenty miles back to base camp, but because of the road it took almost
forty minutes. As we hove into view of the camp and the truck slowed
down, we saw a lot soldiers running towards us, shouting questions the
words of which I couldn't quite at first make out. Finally, it was plain
they were asking, 'What happened?' 'Did you report it?' and the like. I
never saw a camp so collectively excited.
"As we started to get out of the truck, a major came elbowing his
way through the group of men surrounding us and said, sharply, to us:
'Shut up! Don't say a word! I'll talk to you.'
"With that he took us off to his office and questioned us for
fifteen minutes. It was not until then I realized the Japs were at that
very moment attacking Perl Harbor, and that what we had seen on the screen
was the Jap air fleet approaching.
"Now, as I look back, the position of the flight, the vast number
of planes, made sense. I learned later the enemy aircraft carriers had
sailed far to the North so that when the planes took the air they would be
coming in from an unexpected direction."
Lockard at one point told me that except for the brief questioning
by the major on the island of Oahyu on the morning of December 7, 1941, I
was the first to interrogate him in detail as to those 56 minutes--namely
from 7:04 A.M when Elliott reported the set was not out of of order, to
the time the first bomb fell on Perl Harbor.
The tracing of history of these 56 minutes, however, led me into a
further investigation of why the permanent radar sets had not been
installed on the island offf Oahu by July 1, Here I ran into a curious
and amazing story which I tried in vain to have the Congressional
Investigating Committee explore.
My investigation disclosed that the colonel in the Corps of
Engineers, who was charged with the duty of having these permanent radar
sets installed and operated around the clock by July 1, 1941, had spent
most of his time in the summer of 1941 drinking. His entire record
demonstrates incredible negligence of duty. Not only did he fall down on
the job but the toll in lives and ships that we had to pay for his failure
was heartbreaking.
I tried to bring my evidence before the committee. To that end I
prepared a long memorandum, setting forth the facts as I saw them. I
requested that this colonel be summoned and he be cross examined under
oath.
To my surprise, the Democratic members of the committee, whom I
knew personally and regarded highly, handled my request--made in my
capacity as a citizen--as if it was a "hot potato." They not ony refused
to act on it in any way, or request that he be summoned, but they told me
in essence "to forget it"!
Amazed that members of my own party would take this view, I
turned to the Republicans. I knew only one personally. He was
Representative "Bud" Gearhart of California. Mr. Gearhart read my
memorandum carefully and promised to do his best to get the colonel
summoned. Later he reported back he had failed, but he had tried his
best.
"Why won't they go into this question of radar units?" I asked.
"Surely, you know their importance!"
"Yes," he said, "of course. My opinion is that somebody failed
and failed terribly, but I ran up against a stone wall. The chairman
flatly refused me, and when I asked one of my Democratic friends what was
the real reason for what I thought, and still think, was an obvious
run-around, he said, 'Look, Bud, you can do what you please and maybe you
can get somewhere, but don't forget I'm a Democrat and a loyal one, and I
take my orders from my Commander-in-Chief, and my Commander-in-Chief
happens to be President of the United States.'"
Originally published in American Mercury, August 1957, pp. 80-85
