The Battle of Midway (Pivotal Moments in American History) (75 page)

A NOTE ON SOURCES

Though the historical significance of the Battle of Midway was evident almost from the moment of the battle, there have been a number of milestone studies in the seventy years since that have further illuminated the story. The declassification of intelligence files in the 1960s and ’70s exposed the crucial role of code breaking in the Pacific War, and especially at Midway, and thereby added a whole new perspective to the understanding of what happened there. Memoirs by Edwin Layton, Jasper Holmes, and others spawned a cottage industry in rewriting the history of the Battle of Midway. The story about how the cryptanalysts at Hypo duped the Japanese into revealing the meaning of “AF” became a classic and is now part of every account of the battle. Indeed, in many cases there has been a tendency to exaggerate the level of detail that was gleaned by the cryptanalysts, and to suggest that the Americans had a full blueprint of the Japanese plan for the Midway operation. Such a suggestion is a disservice to the American operational commanders, for as important as code breaking was to eventual victory, the decision makers did not have a complete copy of the enemy’s playbook in their hands and therefore had to make a number of crucial decisions based on other factors (see
appendix E
).

Another critical element of the struggle that was long overlooked was the Japanese side of the story. The logs of the Japanese ships and other primary-source materials went down with the carriers of the Kidō Butai. In addition, most Western scholars did not read Japanese and relied on translated documents and memoirs to flesh out the Japanese side of the narrative. Both Walter Lord and Gordon Prange conducted a number of interviews with Japanese survivors of the battle (often using intermediaries) and incorporated their views in their excellent histories. But among the sources in translation, the most influential was a memoir by Mitsuo Fuchida (with Masatake Okumiya) published in America as
Midway: The Battle that Doomed Japan, the Japanese Navy’s Story
(Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1955). Fuchida, a naval aviator who had led the attack on Pearl Harbor, was also to have led the air attack on Midway, and would have done so but for an untimely attack of appendicitis. Because of that, he was instead an interested and knowledgeable spectator on the bridge of the flagship
Akagi
during the battle. Because of the dearth of Japanese sources, and because of the persuasiveness of Fuchida’s firsthand account, it had a tremendous influence on Western narratives of the battle. Alas, as Jonathan Parshall and Anthony Tully demonstrate in their book
Shattered Sword: The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway
(Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 2005), Fuchida had an agenda of his own, which was to suggest just how close the Japanese had come to delivering a coup de grâce against the Americans, and as a result, not everything in his book can be taken at face value. Parshall has charged that “it is doubtful that any one person has had a more deleterious long-term impact on the study of the Pacific War than Mitsuo Fuchida.” (Parshall, “Reflecting on Fuchida, or ‘A Tale of Three Whoppers,’”
Naval War College Review
63, no. 2 (Spring 2010) 127–38.) Whatever the merits of that statement, Parshall and Tully made an immeasurable contribution to the historiography of the Battle of Midway by delving into the Japanese accounts and analyzing the battle from the perspective of the Imperial Japanese Navy.

Another individual who helped illuminate the Japanese side of the story is Dallas Woodbury Isom in his 2007 book
Midway Inquest: Why the Japanese Lost the Battle of Midway
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007). An attorney, Isom conducted his investigation like a trial lawyer (hence the title) and renders a “not guilty” verdict for Vice Admiral Nagumo, who is blamed by many in both Japan and America for poor leadership decisions at Midway. Isom concludes that Nagumo’s decisions were entirely logical on the morning of June 4, and that the principal blame for Japanese failure belongs to Yamamoto.

The official sources for the Battle of Midway are voluminous, but two are especially important. The first is the secret and confidential naval message traffic between Ernest King and Chester Nimitz, and between Nimitz and his commanders. It is included in the papers of FADM Chester W. Nimitz in the Operational Archives at the Naval History and Heritage Command (NHHC) in the Washington Navy Yard in Washington, D.C. These messages, along with a “Running Summary” of daily events kept by Nimitz’s staff, and occasional “Situation Reports,” were all bound together in a series of eight thick volumes. These volumes make up boxes 1–8 of the Nimitz Papers. Volume 1 covers the period between December 7, 1941, and the end of June 1942; volume 8 is a collection of messages pertinent to the Battle of Midway and duplicates some of the material in volume 1. Over the years, scholars have often referred to this source as the “Gray Book” (even though the binding is navy blue) and cited it that way in their footnotes. In 2010, the American Naval Records Society scanned these volumes and made them available electronically at
http://www.ibiblio.org/anrs/graybook.html
. This version was not available as I prepared this book. I therefore cited these letters and documents as part of the FADM Chester W. Nimitz Papers. In the footnotes, I indicate author, recipient, date, and the box number (there is one volume in each box) and page number where the letter may be found. In Volume 8, the page numbers begin at 500 and then stop at 550. Then, after several hundred unnumbered pages, the numbers begin again at 1. For messages on the unnumbered pages, I cited the date/time group—a six-digit code in which the first two numbers indicate the date and the last four the time (in twenty-four-hour military time).

The other official source of special note is the microfilmed collection of after-action reports from combatants in the field. Throughout the war, every unit commander was required to submit a postaction report. This included not only the fleet and ship commanders but squadron commanders as well. These were collected and microfilmed after the war, and the entire sixteen-reel collection is available from University Microfilms. Most of the reports from the Battle of Midway are on reel 3. This source is largely complete, with one notable exception. One of the great mysteries of the Battle of Midway is what happened to the after-action reports of the air group commander and the squadron commanders on the USS
Hornet
for the action on June 4. Marc Mitscher submitted various enclosures with his own report (a list of casualties, recommendations for awards, etc.) but the only squadron commander report was the one from John S. “Jimmy” Thach (VF-3) who flew off the
Yorktown
, not the
Hornet
, on June 4. The requirement to produce such reports makes it extraordinary that none of the other squadron commanders, nor the CHAG (commander,
Hornet
air group) submitted a report. For a discussion of this, see
appendix F
.

In constructing the combat narratives for this book, I relied heavily on the oral histories and interviews of the participants. Such accounts are often rich with detail, but of course they are also subject to fading (or enhanced) memory. No doubt a few of the survivors were like Tolstoy’s Nikolai Rostov in
War and Peace
, who “set out with every intention of describing exactly what had occurred, but imperceptibly, unconsciously, and inevitably, he drifted into falsehood” (Leo Tolstoy,
War and Peace
, trans. Anthony Briggs [New York: Penguin, 1005], 257). As one veteran of the battle wrote candidly to Walter Lord in 1967: “The more I think about what happened, the less I am sure about what happened” (V L. Micheel to Walter Lord, March 2, 1967, Walter Lord Collection, NHHC, box 18). Still, by including the widest possible number of such personal memories, and using a historian’s judgment about which ones to trust, a kind of pointillist image eventually emerges. In reconstructing the Battle of Midway, and the six months preceding it, I occasionally privileged oral memory over the documentary record. This is particularly true of the so-called Flight to Nowhere on June 4, where the collective memories of the participants conflict dramatically with the official published record. As noted above, a fuller discussion of this is in
appendix F
.

There are five collections of interviews and oral histories that are particularly rich. The most extensive and detailed interviews are those that were conducted as part of the U.S. Naval Institute’s Oral History Program, run for many years by Paul Stilwell. Bound copies of these are available at a few sites; the ones I used are in the Special Collections of the Nimitz Library at the U.S. Naval Academy, and they are listed below. Another source is the collection of nine interviews conducted by Major Bowen Weisheit, a retired Marine officer and aeronautical specialist whose friend, Ensign C. Markland Kelly, was killed in the battle. In seeking to learn how and why his friend Kelly lost his life, Weisheit sought to unravel that long-standing mystery. His interviews of the surviving members of VF-8 proved crucial in helping to expose the history of the
Hornet
air group on June 4. A valuable and underutilized source of oral histories is the Archive at the National Museum of the Pacific War (NMPW) in Fredericksburg, Texas, and these, too, are listed below. Both Walter Lord and Gordon Prange conducted their own interviews while working on their histories of the battle. These are not listed individually below but can be found in their respective collections at the Navy History and Heritage Command at the Washington Navy Yard (Lord), and the Maryland Room at the Hornbake Library at the University of Maryland (Prange). Finally, Stuart D. Ludlum conducted many interviews with veterans from USS
Yorktown
and included them in his book
They Turned the War Around at Coral Sea and Midway: Going to War with Yorktown’s Air Group Five
(Bennington, VT: Merriam, 2000).

All history is the product of human action, and biographies of the major players can offer invaluable insight into their motivations. Between them, Thomas B. Buell and E. B. “Ned” Potter wrote biographies of four of the principal decision makers at Midway. In the interest of full disclosure, I need to report that both men were personal friends. I served with Tom Buell when we were both in the Navy, and a few years ago I undertook to complete a project he had begun just before he died, the result of which is my book
Decision at Sea: Five Naval Battles that Shaped American History
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2005). Ned Potter was a colleague and friend in the History Department at the Naval Academy for more than twenty years. Buell wrote
Master of Sea Power: A Biography of Fleet Admiral Ernest J. King
(Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1980) and
The Quiet Warrior: A Biography of Admiral Raymond A. Spruance
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1974), both excellent books. Potter’s
Nimitz
(Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1976) is a model of the historian’s art, save for the frustrating fact that in lieu of footnotes Potter appended short paragraphs summarizing the sources of information for each chapter. Potter is also the author of the best book on William Halsey,
Bull Halsey
(Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1985), though Halsey’s own autobiography (with J. Bryan III),
Admiral Halsey’s Story
(New York: Whittlesey House, 1947), is not to be missed. Frank Jack Fletcher, long dismissed as a secondary figure in the American victory, did not get his proper due until John B. Lundstrom’s detailed and authoritative
Black Shoe Carrier Admiral: Frank Jack Fletcher at Coral Sea, Midway, and Guadalcanal
(Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2006). On the Japanese side, Hiroyuki Agawa’s biography of Yamamoto (Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1969), which was distributed in the United States by Harper & Row as
The Reluctant Admiral
(1979), is especially noteworthy.

The Internet has made available, at the click of a mouse, a wide variety of sources that scholars and students would otherwise have to travel long distances to read. Many veterans as well as students of the Battle of Midway are contributors to the website “The Battle of Midway Roundtable” (
http://www.midway42.org
), founded by William Price and now run by Ronald W. Russell, both of them knowledgeable and authoritative students of the battle in their own right. On this website, veterans and students of the battle share questions and recollections with one another. Many of these firsthand accounts are as fresh today as when they were first recalled, or for that matter, when their narrators participated in the most consequential naval battle of the twentieth century.

In addition, the following sites are also valuable: “Naval History and Heritage Command,” at
http://www.history.navy.mil/
; and “HyperWar,” at
http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar
. These contain many of the original after-action reports (some in facsimile format) and other original and secondary sources. When possible, notes indicate both the archival source and also the Internet address for the online source.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Manuscript Sources

American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming, Laramie

Frank Jack Fletcher Papers

Husband Kimmel Papers

Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, New York

Map Room Files

National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C.

CINCPAC Files, Record Group 38

Record Group 457

Naval War College, Newport, Rhode Island

Richard W. Bates Papers

Ernest J. King Papers

Edwin T. Layton Papers

Raymond A. Spruance Papers

Operational Archives, Naval History and Heritage Command, Washington Navy Yard, Washington, D.C.

Ernest J. King Papers

Walter Lord Collection

Marc A. Mitscher Papers

Chester W. Nimitz Diary #1 [Serial letters to Mrs. Nimitz], Dec. 20, 1941–May 7, 1945

Papers of FADM Chester W. Nimitz [“Gray Book”]

Raymond A. Spruance Papers

University of Maryland, Hornbake Library, College Park

Gordon Prange Papers

Oral Histories and Interviews

National Museum of the Pacific War, Fredericksburg, Texas

Richard H. Best Interview (Aug. 11, 1995)

Judson Brodie Interview (March 13, 2007)

Richard Byram Interview (April 14, 2005)

Richard E. Cole Interview (Aug. 8, 2000)

Eugene Conklin Interview (March 17, 2007)

Douglas C. Davis Interview (Oct. 1, 2000)

Albert Earnest Interview (July 20, 2003)

Kaname Harada Interview (Oct. 7, 2007)

Byron K. Henry Interview (June 13, 2002)

John V. Hillard Interview (Feb. 28, 2002)

Henry Hise Interview (Sept. 30, 2000)

Lewis R. Hopkins Interview (Jan 15, 2004)

Jack Kleiss Interview (Sept. 29, 2000)

Sam Laser Interview (April 9, 2003)

Edwin T. Layton Interview (n.d.)

James H. Macia Interview (July 21, 2000)

Gilbert Martin and Paul McKay Interview (Sept. 2000)

Willard “Robbie” Robinson Interview (July 20, 2003)

William G. Roy Interview (June 6, 2003)

Ellis Skidmore Interview (June 3, 2005)

Floyd Thorn Interview (Aug. 14, 2000)

Richard Toler Interview (Nov. 11, 2003)

John E. Underwood Interview (Feb. 8, 2007)

Naval War College, Newport, Rhode Island

Charles F. Barber Interview (March 1, 1996)

Francis Fabian Interview (Feb. 6, 2009)

Peter E. Karetka Interview (May 26, 2010)

Hugh Moure Interview (July 30, 2008)

John C. Powell Interview (Oct. 8 and 15, 2008)

Operational Archives, Naval History and Heritage Command

Noel Gayler Interview (Feb. 15, 2002)

U.S. Naval Institute Oral History Collection, Naval Academy, Nimitz Library (Special Collections), Annapolis, MD

Slade Cutter Oral History (June 17, 1985)

John F. Davidson Oral History (Sept. 4, 1985)

James Doolittle Oral History (Aug. 3, 1987)

Thomas Dyer Oral History (Sept. 14, 1983)

Earnest Eller Oral History (Aug. 25, 1977)

Stephen Jurika Oral History (1973)

Edwin Layton Oral History (May 30 and 31, 1970)

Henry “Hank” Miller Oral History (May 23, 1973)

Joseph Rochefort Oral History (Aug. 14, Sept. 21, and Oct. 5, 1969)

Paul Stroop Oral History (Sept. 13 and 14, 1969)

John S. Thach Oral History (Nov. 6, 1970)

Joseph M. Worthington Oral History (June 7, 1972)

“The Battle of Midway: Transcripts of Recorded Interviews” by Major Bowen P. Weisheit, USMCR (Ret.), Nimitz Library, USNA.

Ben Tappan Interview (1981)

Samuel G. Mitchell Interview (1981)

Richard Gray Interview (1981)

Johnny A. Talbot Interview (March 31, 1981)

Humphrey L. Tallman Interview (April 4, 1982)

John E. McInerny Interview (1982)

Walter Rodee Interview (1982)

T. T. Guillory Interview (March 14, 23, and 24, 1983)

Jerry Crawford Interview (Aug. 28, 1984)

Interviews conducted by the author

John C. “Jack” Crawford Interview (May 5, 2005)

William D. Houser Interview (May 5, 2005)

William Price Interview (May 4, 2010)

Donald “Mac” Showers Interview (May 4, 2010)

Official Records and Published Collections

Goldstein, Donald M., and Katherine V. Dillon, eds.
The Pacific War Papers: Japanese Documents of World War II
. Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 2004.

———, eds.
The Pearl Harbor Papers: Inside the Japanese Plans
. Washington, DC: Brassey’s, 1993.

Kimball, Warren F., ed.
Churchill and Roosevelt: The Complete Correspondence
. 3 vols. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984.

Loewenheim, Francis L., Harold D. Langley, and Manfred Jonas, eds.
Roosevelt and Churchill, Their Secret Wartime Correspondence
. London: Barrie & Jenkins, 1975.

Office of Naval Intelligence,
Combat Narrative: The Battle of the Coral
Sea. Washington, DC: Office of Naval Intelligence, United States Navy, 1943.

OP-20G File of CINCPAC Intelligence Bulletins (March 16–June 1, 1942), Special Collections, Nimitz Library, U.S. Naval Academy.

Spector, Ronald H., ed.
Listening to the Enemy: Key Documents on the Role of Communications Intelligence in the War with Japan
. Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 1988.

Traffic Intelligence Summaries, Combat Intelligence Unit, Fourteenth Naval District (July 16, 1941–June 30, 1942). 3 vols. Special Collections, Nimitz Library, U.S. Naval Academy.

U.S. Congress. Senate. Committee on Naval Affairs.
Hearings before the Committee on Naval Affairs on the Nomination of William Franklin Knox to be Secretary of the Navy
. 76th Cong., 3rd sess., 1940.

———. Joint Committee on the Investigation of the Pearl Harbor Attack,
Pearl Harbor Attack: Hearings before the Joint Committee on the Investigation of the Pearl Harbor Attack
. 79th Cong., 1st sess., 1945.

U.S. Navy Action and Operational Reports from World War II, Pacific Theater, Part I: CINCPAC (16 microfilm reels). Bethesda, MD: University Publications of America.

U.S. Navy, Office of Naval Intelligence.
The Japanese Story of the Battle of Midway
. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1947. (Translation of “CINC First Air Fleet Detailed Battle Report No. 6.” Published in
ONI Review
5 (May 1947).

Primary Sources and Memoirs

Bates, Richard W.
The Battle of the Coral Sea, May 1 to May 11 Inclusive, 1942: Strategical and Tactical Views
. Newport, RI: Naval War College, 1947.

———.
The Battle of Midway Including the Aleutian Phase, June 3 to June 14, 1942: Strategical and Tactical Analysis
. Newport, RI: U.S. Naval War College, 1948.

Buell, Harold L.
Dauntless Helldivers: A Dive-Bomber Pilot’s Epic Story of the Carrier Battles
. New York: Orion Books, 1991.

Clark, J. J., with Clark G. Reynolds.
Carrier Admiral
. New York: McKay, 1967.

Doolittle, James H. “Jimmy,” with Carroll V. Glines.
I Could Never Be So Lucky Again: An Autobiography
. New York: Bantam Books, 1991.

Evans, David C., ed.
The Japanese Navy in World War II: In the Words of Former Japanese Naval Officers
. Translated by David C. Evans. 2nd ed. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1986.

Fisher, Clayton E.
Hooked: Tales and Adventures of a Tailhook Warrior
. Denver: Outskirts, 2009.

Forrestel, E. P.
Admiral Raymond A. Spruance, USN: A Study in Command
. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1966.

Fuchida, Mitsuo, and Masatake Okumiya.
Midway: The Battle That Doomed Japan, the Japanese Navy’s Story
. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1955, 1992.

Gay, George.
Sole Survivor: The Battle of Midway and Its Effects on his Life
. Naples, FL: Naples Ad/Graphics, 1979.

Halsey, William F., and J. Bryan III.
Admiral Halsey’s Story
. New York: Whittlesey House, 1947.

Holmes, W. J.
Double-Edged Secrets: U.S. Naval Intelligence Operations in the Pacific during World War II
. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1979.

Ickes, Harold L.
The Secret Diary of Harold L. Ickes
. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1953–54.

Ito, Masanori, and Roger Pineau.
The End of the Imperial Japanese Navy
. Translated by Andrew Y. Kuroda and Roger Pineau. New York: Norton, 1962.

King, Ernest J., and Walter Muir Whitehill.
Fleet Admiral King: A Naval Record
. New York: Norton, 1952.

Layton, Edwin T., with Roger Pineau and John Costello.
“And I was there”: Pearl Harbor and Midway—Breaking the Secrets
. New York: Morrow, 1985.

Ludlum, Stuart D.
They Turned the War Around at Coral Sea and Midway: Going to War with Yorktown’s Air Group Five
. Bennington, VT: Merriam, 2000.

Mears, Frederick.
Carrier Combat
. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Doran, 1944.

Robert R. Rea.
Wings of Gold: An Account of Naval Aviation Training in World War II; The Correspondence of Aviation Cadet/Ensign Robert R. Rea
. Edited by Wesley Phillips Newton and Robert R. Rea. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1987.

Rowland, Buford, and William B. Boyd.
U.S. Navy Bureau of Ordnance in World War II
. Washington, DC: Bureau of Ordnance, Department of the Navy, 1953.

Russell, Ronald W.
No Right to Win: A Continuing Dialogue with Veterans of the Battle of Midway
. New York: iUniverse, 2006.

Sherman, Frederick C.
Combat Command: The American Aircraft Carriers in the Pacific War
. New York: Dutton, 1950.

Sherwood, Robert E.
Roosevelt and Hopkins: An Intimate History
. Rev. ed. New York: Harper, 1950. Reprint, New York: Enigma Books, 2001.

Stimson, Henry L., and McGeorge Bundy.
On Active Service in Peace and War
. New York: Harper, 1948.

Stover, E. T., and Clark G. Reynolds.
The Saga of Smokey Stover
. Charleston, SC: Tradd Street, 1978.

Ugaki, Matome.
Fading Victory: The Diary of Admiral Matome Ugaki, 1941–1945
. Edited by Donald M. Goldstein and Katherine V. Dillon. Translated by Masataka Chihaya. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1991.

Books

Agawa, Hiroyuki.
The Reluctant Admiral: Yamamoto and the Imperial Navy
. Translated by John Bester. Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1979.

Asada, Sadao.
From Mahan to Pearl Harbor: The Imperial Japanese Navy and the United States
. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2006.

Astor, Gerald.
Wings of Gold: The U.S. Naval Air Campaign in World War II
. New York: Ballantine Books, 2004.

Barde, Robert E. “The Battle of Midway: A Study in Command.” Ph.D. diss., University of Maryland, 1971.

Belote, James H., and William M. Belote.
Titans of the Seas: The Development and Operations of Japanese and American Carrier Task Forces during World War II
. New York: Harper & Row, 1975.

Brown, Louis.
A Radar History of World War II: Technical and Military Imperatives
. Bristol, UK: Institute of Physics, 1999.

Buell, Thomas B.
Master of Sea Power: A Biography of Fleet Admiral Ernest J. King
. Boston: Little, Brown, 1980.

———.
The Quiet Warrior: A Biography of Admiral Raymond A. Spruance
. Boston: Little, Brown, 1974.