65 years later, his questions linger (saw Japanese fleet before Pearl Harbor)

The Gazette ^ | 12/06/06 | Ed Sealover

[loreldan]

Around this time every year, Joe Fenton’s mind wanders back to the preview he had of the destruction that would be unleashed on Pearl Harbor.

Just 17 years old and six months removed from boot camp, Fenton was an oiler on the USS Boise as it escorted five merchant ships carrying air base construction materials across the Pacific to the Philippines. After midnight on the morning of Nov. 28, 1941, the light cruiser’s loudspeakers blared with orders for crew members to man their battle stations.

Fenton scrambled to the deck and saw two dozen ships of unknown origin about 3 miles away on the horizon, heading east. They were

silhouetted by moonlight that would have blinded the fleet to the Boise’s presence.

Greatly outnumbered and under orders to maintain radio silence, the Boise did not fire and did not alert anyone for days to what it had seen.

When the Boise reached Manila, officers alerted members of Gen. Douglas Mac-Arthur’s staff of their find, Fenton said. Their reaction, as he recalled, was: “They’ve got as much right to be in the water as we do.”

It was only when word came down Dec. 7 about the Pearl Harbor attack that Fenton and his shipmates realized they had seen the fleet that brought America into World War II. While the Boise hid by a remote Pacific island after the attack and awaited orders, talk buzzed about what its crew could have done.

That conversation has dimmed today; most crew members have passed away. But Fenton, a retired Colorado Springs plumbing company owner, replays the talk to himself.

“I always think that perhaps we could have prevented the whole thing . . . if we had got the alarm off,” the 82-year-old said last week in his kitchen. “I always think: ‘Maybe I could have prevented this.’ I get real sad about it.”

But he said that thought is followed quickly by the realization that if the Boise had made any move that could have alerted the Japanese it had seen them, the fleet would bombarded it into the pages of history.

“I think the whole picture of World War II would have changed if we had just gotten a radio off,” he added. “But it would have cost my life.”

Memorial events across the country will mark the 65th anniversary today of the early morning raid that killed about 2,500 Americans. Some people will head to Hawaii to honor the occasion; others will gather at local monuments.

Fenton will be in Colorado Springs, surrounded by newspaper clips and medals that mark his Navy service and, later, the Army. His thoughts, though, will be on what he saw in the middle of the ocean.

No one present forgot that moment, which has been little recorded in history. Melvin Howard, a former crewman and current Philadelphia resident who once chaired reunions for the Boise, remembered that everyone on the ship was ready to fire if ordered.

“We never got the word to fire,” Howard said. “And it’s a good thing we didn’t, because they would have blown us out of the water.”

Once America entered the war, the Boise made 14 landings in the Pacific and in Europe, fought in the Battle of Guadalcanal and served as a scout vessel before the famed Doolittle Raid on Tokyo.

The Boise earned its greatest accolades by sinking six Japanese ships in 27 minutes off Cape Esperance in 1942. Despite a shell crashing through a part of the ship in which he was working, Fenton, who fed oil into boilers and later was a ship engineer, remembers staying calm.

His mother, who raised him in Denver, saved newspaper articles about the ship and gave them to him in a scrapbook when he returned. Fenton also kept a diary during his service, and he typed it up in recent years to preserve it.

“Did not know what was going on, we were not at war, the ships all stopped and our gun turrets all trained to our port side,” he wrote of the November 1941 sighting. “That makes you wish you had gone to the bathroom a little earlier.”

After being transferred to the Army and serving a short stint in Asia during the Korean War, Fenton started a business in Colorado Springs. He ran Fenton Plumbing and Heating until retirement in 1982, when he passed the company on to his son.

He stops there for coffee every once in a while, and he carves wood figures for his family and friends. Twice widowed, the decorated veteran spends every Friday night dining and dancing at the Veterans of Foreign Wars post with his girlfriend.

Late 1941 is not that far away, though. Any mention of Pearl Harbor sparks thoughts of that day, and any thought about what he saw leads him to think even more about what could have occurred.

“They made no hostile moves to us,” Fenton said. “It was like two strangers passing in the night. We weren’t going to initiate the firing. There was no way we could have survived that.”

[pepsionice]

We could pause for a minute and consider the change in history...had leadership acted.

A warned fleet would have had recon aircraft up in the air, and repositioned their fleet right outside the harbor. The Japanese arriving on that morning...would have found a somewhat prepared fleet ready to do battle. An interesting battle would have taken place in the midst of Hawaiian waters. The US may have still lost a couple of vessels but so would have the Japanese. A damaged Japanese fleet would sail away, and some Japanese leadership would ponder if they were truly ready to do battle against the US. The attack upon the Philippines might have been delayed months and a more prepared US military would have been ready for them.

But again...this only works if leadership allows for changes in their view...which the US government failed to do in the 1990s and eventually 9-11 had to occur. It is a lesson learned in history...but if you don't learn it...then you repeat it.

[SunkenCiv]

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Day Of Deceit: The Truth About FDR and Pearl Harbor by Robert Stinnett

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[SunkenCiv]

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Days of Infamy: Macarthur, Roosevelt, Churchill -- The Shocking Truth Revealed: How Their Secret Deals and Strategic Blunders Caused Disasters at Pearl Harbor and the Philippines by John Costello

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[WorkingClassFilth]

Speculation is interesting, but only so useful. Certainly, conservatives see parallels in many historic incidents and modern events, but our voice is always trumped by those who claim that they are avoiding historic disasters by changing policy, ideals, meanings, language, institutions, etc., etc., etc. That's the way the dialectic works - by mutating out of something into something more compliant to the precepts of Marxism. In fact, I think that's the original concept behind Santayana's remark. The notion that repetition in history is rooted in systemic disorders and, thus, we can correct human ills and the snares of conflict if we only change the system.

I think that Santayana's quotation has another, more insightful, interpretation. The central problem with history is not a systemic problem. It is not a distribution problem. It is not any sort of problem that long term memory (cultural or otherwise) can correct. The problem with humanity is that we are corrupted. That is, we a flawed from the get go. Like children that seek to pretend to be adults, we tragically ape what we believe to be wise policies without the knowledge or omniscience of our Creator God. As a result, the inevitable disease of pride and corruption seep into our most altruistic efforts and poison every movement of history. Contrast the reigning idealism of an age with competitive ideologies of nationalism, or conquest and you have the clock-spring of history. Never fully just, never complete and never stable. Even if our institutions and leaders were to fully remember the precise conditions or order of events that leads to any bad outcome and guard against it, the ensuing regime and policies would become onerous and tyrannical. I believe a more rational interpretation of history would accept the imperfection of humanity and the inevitability of war. Taking a page from history, then, we could also realize that a free people, girded with the highest morality, are the surest safeguard of peace and stability. Not without conflict or the need for armed power to ensure safety, however. The Founder who said that the tree of liberty needs to be watered with the blood of patriots and tyrants was insightful in recognizing that the inescapable reality of war was necessary to ensure the fragile and temporary peace accorded by resolve in a corrupt world.

How this bears on 12/7/41 will never be known. What I would draw, however, is that Americans were soundly asleep. Like any person after a day of leisure and a full meal, the lure of rest and sleep is hard to shake off. Fortunately, the attack on Pearl awoke our nation, then. Tragically, 911 seems to be forgotten and lost on the willful indolence and ignorance of too many American people of our age.

[CDHart]

"America, for it's part, would have snored on in the stupor of peace "

Exactly as we are doing now. Our Pearl Harbor has come and gone, and we are still trying to appease the enemy. What a bunch of complacent idiots we are.

Carolyn

[BluH2o]

That fleet (Pearl Harbor attack force) consisted of approximately 33 ships, including 6 carriers, and two battleships. They traveled across the northern Pacific top avoid normal shipping lanes.

The Boise would not have been anywhere close to the Japanese attack force heading for Pearl ... assuming the Boise was following the normal shipping lane from Hawaii to Manila. Had to be another Japanese task force ...

[Rb ver. 2.0]

"Today is Dec. 7, 1941. We have detected the Japanese fleet approaching Pearl Harbor"

[Leto]

They didn't see the fleet headed to Pearl, however the Japanese had deployed other fleets to attack Malaysia and the Phillipines , they may have seen one of these other fleets.

[LZ_Bayonet]

"Greatly outnumbered and under orders to maintain radio silence, the Boise did not fire and did not alert anyone for days to what it had seen.

When the Boise reached Manila, officers alerted members of Gen. Douglas Mac-Arthur’s staff of their find, Fenton said. Their reaction, as he recalled, was: “They’ve got as much right to be in the water as we do.”

This guy was an "oiler", a low ranking enlisted man. I can accept what he relates he personally saw. But my experience in the military is that enlisted personnel are not informed of ANYTHING, unless there is a specific need, and that manages to get screwed up so often you can count on it. I doubt the ship's Captain said , "Oiler Fenton and I are going to see MacArthur's staff about those ships we saw."

[Tallguy]

Given the level of US proficiency in both aerial sea patrols and bombing (as with B17's) at that time, I don't think they had much to worry about.

Good comments!

Level bombing of maneuvering ships (from B17's) was never that effective. Still, the B17 was originally developed as a maritime patrol bomber before its range/payload made it a natural for the strategic bomber role. It would have been hard for the Japanese to handicap its effectiveness before the first shots of the war were fired. I think that they would have had to respect the theoretical capability.

[Joe 6-pack]

"It is possible that we have no conception of how vile the world might become in the future."

The forces of evil have already gathered in this world. We're simply whistling Dixie while allowing them to arm and prepare.

[Tallguy]

A warned fleet would have had recon aircraft up in the air, and repositioned their fleet right outside the harbor. The Japanese arriving on that morning...would have found a somewhat prepared fleet ready to do battle. An interesting battle would have taken place in the midst of Hawaiian waters.

Consider this: All but 2 of the Pearl Harbor battlewagons were raised from the shallow waters of the harbor & fought again (within 2 years). If the fleet had sortied, as they surely would have if adequate warning was received, it's entirely likely that we would have lost those ship in DEEP water. Salvage would have been impossible.

We had fast battleships coming on line but they were basically designed to escort the carriers & supplement the fleet AAA cover. Without the old battlewagons those ships would have had to pull shore bombardment duty leaving the carriers without the safety margin that their 16"/50 cal guns provided. Plus there wouldn't have been enough broadside weight to go round on the gunline.

I don't think it would have affected the outcome of the War, but you never know.

[johnny7]

The Jap fleet struck Pearl from the northwest... where was this 'fleet' sighted on the Boise’s route to the Philippines? Maybe Sealover's been 'at sea' too long...

[tanknetter]

A warned fleet would have had recon aircraft up in the air, and repositioned their fleet right outside the harbor. The Japanese arriving on that morning...would have found a somewhat prepared fleet ready to do battle. An interesting battle would have taken place in the midst of Hawaiian waters. The US may have still lost a couple of vessels but so would have the Japanese. A damaged Japanese fleet would sail away, and some Japanese leadership would ponder if they were truly ready to do battle against the US. The attack upon the Philippines might have been delayed months and a more prepared US military would have been ready for them.

To add to what tallguy has said, consider the fates of the HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Repulse only a few days later.

A scenario where the battleships were able to sortie from Pearl in advance of the attack would have been a disaster, one magnitudes worse than what actually occured, just waiting to happen. Prior to Pearl Harbor US intelligence had consistantly underrated the capabilities of the Japanese and overrated US capabilities. Yes the US would have had land-based aircover (the most advanced pursuit aircraft on the Islands at the time were P-40s ... but there were still a substantial number of P-36s and even some P-26s in frontline service) plus some land-based striking power (limited numbers of B-17s, plus some shorter-ranged B-18s and A-20s). But if you look at the performance of those capabilities in the early days of the war, it becomes apparent that the advantage would have been on the IJN's side.

Additionally you'd have Halsey charging in with Enterprise like John Wayne on a vengence mission, with Lexington just a bit behind her. IIRC at the time of Pearl Harbor Lex's fighter complement was still made up of Brewster Buffaloes. And even if I'm wrong and she was carrying F4Fs, both ships would head into battle with inferior top cover and pilots that hadn't yet benefited from the invaluable lessons the months after Pearl would yield (the Thatch Weave hadn't been developed yet, for instance).

In such a scenario the best outcome the US could hope for is the somewhat skittish Naguomo getting spooked (worse case is a strategic victory for the Japanese resulting in a large portion of the US fleet - including one or both carriers - sunk and unsavagable). That's a definite possibility ... but it also sets up a scenario where the US decides to execute Orange and sail the fleet across the Pacific to relieve MacArthur in the Philippines - which would again raise the scenario of an open-ocean confrontation that would decidedly favor the Japanese (possibly 8 IJN carriers vs 3 US, plus a Japanese battleline that was, at the time, superior to the US's.)

[Robert A Cook PE]

Airplanes shot down maybe, not ships?

But Cape Esperance was night surface action.

Concur. The sentence was wrong.

[Robert A Cook PE]

There were Japanese invasion fleets headed SOUTH towards their landings in Malaysia, Indonesia, and Vietnam that had left port well before the Dec 8 landings.

[Robert A Cook PE]

The Jap fleet coming from Japan to the NW of HI traveled (for much of the way) behind a storm front that shielded it from US patrol planes. So that fleet was in north Pacific waters the whole time it was at sea. Not near Philippine waters.

Another point that this story can't reconcile.

[norton]

"I think that they would have had to respect the theoretical capability."

True, it was unknown/unproven although there was some record of level bombing from the European theater.

However, main point lies in the numbers of bombers available to the Pacific and west of Hawaii at the time and I assume they had a fairly good handle on that.

[ThanhPhero]

The situation is not unlike the situation today with Iran and Jihad.The signs are all there that something serious has to be done. And we are trying hard to avoid the subject.

[Old Professer]

Roosevelt set us up the bomb.