Ellis Zacharias

Ellis M. Zacharias (1890-1972) was a U.S. Navy rear admiral whose duties included communications intelligence, cruiser command including on the Doolittle Raid, and psychological operations to encourage a Japanese surrender.

He was first assigned, for language study, to Japan in 1920. He recognized that many Japanese military men regarded the United States as a potential enemy, that the United States intelligence effort towards Japan was inadequate, and developed insights ito Japanese behavior. In particular, he gained insight from the Yokohama earthquake of 1923. Watching the scene from the harbor,

From the first moment of crisis and horror it was the foreigners among the crowd who recovered from panic and started rescue efforts. The Japanese were captives of an amazing psychic inertia, completely incapable of grasping the situation. They seemed struck to absolute helplessness.

The Japanese, after the immediate shock, showed "an impassive indifference in the face of the destruction" around them. He applied these lessons as expectations of denial of the damage from U.S. attack, when he made broadcasts to Japan in 1945, attempting to contact the peace faction.

Returning to Washington in 1926, he spent his first six-month assignment in communications intelligence, and then, in 1927, as an intelligence officer on the Asiatic Station, operating the first mobile radio intercept and analysis team on the cruiser USS Marblehead.

"In November 1928, Zacharias began the first of a pair of two-year tours as head of the Far East Division of the Office of Naval Intelligence in Washington. The available intelligence resources were modest—initially the entire division consisted of Zacharias and a secretary. Later, however, the staff increased as tensions rose following the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931. After three years at sea duty and a term teaching at the Naval War College, Zacharias returned to Washington in 1934 as head of the Far East Division.

Edwin Layton believed that Zacharias cultivated contacts, with the eventual "ambition to be director of naval intelligence." "The highlight of this period was the controversial Yamaguchi incident. In July 1935, Ellis and his wife, Claire, gave a dinner party for Japanese naval attaché Capt. Tamon Yamaguchi and his staff at their home in Washington. Zacharias claimed to have interfered with the Japanese espionage activities of which Yamaguchi was aware.

"Just before finishing his tour of duty as District Intelligence Officer at the 11th Naval District in San Diego, California, Zacharias learned from a confidential informant of a Japanese scheme for a suicide air raid on an American naval base scheduled for October 17, 1940. The goal was to destroy at least four capital ships so as to create a more equitable ratio with the Japanese fleet. It was determined that the target ships were anchored at San Pedro, California, and they were immediately alerted to the danger. The incident did not occur, but it was becoming increasingly clear to Zacharias that Japan was moving vigorously toward a wartime stance as a result of the recent signing of the Tripartite Pact with Germany and Italy. The U.S. battleship force in the Pacific, in particular, was being regarded more and more as the chief hindrance to their plans for expansion.

He became increasingly suspicious of Japanese plans to attack American vessels, receiving, as intelligence officer for the Eleventh Naval District in San Diego, a 17 October 1940 warning of a suicide air raid on ships there. While that threat never materialized, he saw increased danger with the signing of the Tripartite Pact. Knowing that the leadership of the Imperial Japanese Navy, with the significant exception of Isoroku Yamamoto, saw the battleship as the dominant force in naval warfare, he saw an increasing threat to the battle fleet. After a February 7, 1941, conversation with Adm. Kichisaburo Nomura, who was the ambassador-designate to the U.S. and an old friend of Zacharias from his 1920 days, "During what Zacharias termed an "amazingly frank" discussion with Nomura, the ambassador appeared to be deeply fearful of the growing power concentrated in the hands of the Japanese war extremists. Nomura believed that a conflict with the United States would ruin or destroy the Japanese empire, but he appeared resigned that such a war appeared to be inevitable, especially now after the signing of the Axis Pact."

"Sometime between March 26 and 30, 1941, according to his later testimony at the hearings held by the Congressional Joint Committee on the Investigation of the Pearl Harbor Attack, Captain Zacharias called on Admiral Husband Kimmel, commander in chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, at his headquarters in Hawaii. In the course of their conversation, Zacharias testified, he told the admiral that if the Japanese decided to go to war,

it would begin with an air attack on our fleet on a weekend and probably on a Sunday morning; [also] the attack would be for the purpose of disabling four battleships.

He added that the probable method of attack would be by aircraft flown from carriers, and it would emanate from north of the Hawaiian Islands because of the direction of the prevailing winds. When Kimmel asked him how he could be prevented, Zacharias said the only way to do so was a daily air patrol that searched the ocean up to 500 miles from Hawaii. When Kimmel said he did not have the resources, Zacharias said "Well, Admiral, you better get them because that is what is coming." Kimmel, at subsequent hearings, did not remember the discussion, and Captain W.W. "Poco" Smith, who did remember it, said Zacharias did not warn of air attack.

It also turns out that Zacharias was not the only one who predicted a Japanese surprise attack. The air defense officers of the Army and Navy, Maj. Gen. Frederick Martin and Rear Adm. Patrick Bellinger, in a report dated March 31, predicted the likelihood of a surprise dawn attack on Oahu, probably on a Saturday or Sunday

"Zacharias's attempted indictment of Kimmel at the Pearl Harbor hearings for dereliction of duty or at least errors in judgment did nothing to enhance his popularity within the closed ranks in the Navy. It was another instance where his outspoken method of presenting his novel opinions and ideas branded him as an outcast in the Navy. He considered one of the greatest frustrations of his career to be his failure to convince his superiors of the inevitability of a Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

"Zacharias repeated his warning about the attack in November of 1941 to Curtis B. Munson, an emissary of Adm. Harold Stark, chief of naval operations. Zacharias was then in command of the cruiser USS Salt Lake City, stationed at Pearl Harbor. Munson, who arrived in Hawaii with instructions to investigate the possibility of armed uprisings by Japanese agents on the West Coast and Hawaii in the event of war, sought out Zacharias because of his knowledge of Japan and its intelligence apparatus. Zacharias advised Munson that he could eliminate any fears of uprisings of Japanese residents in either locality. The first act of war would come as a surprise air attack, and the utmost secrecy necessary for its success would prevent any advance warning to the local Japanese populace. Besides, "the attack would conform to their (the Japanese) historical procedure, that of hitting before war was declared." Indeed, Japan had done that in 1894 and 1904.

Zacharias repeated his warning yet again at a dinner with Lorrin Thurston, editor of the Honolulu Advertiser and radio station KGU, on November 27. Ironically, unbeknownst to him, the Japanese strike force moved out on November 26. Zacharias added that, based upon historical Japanese decision-making procedures, when a third envoy arrived in Washington, "you can look for things to break immediately one way or another." As it turned out, a third peace envoy arrived in Washington on December 3.

Start of war

When the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor occurred, Salt Lake City was in company with a task force returning to Hawaii after delivering fighter planes to marines on Wake Island. Zacharias got his chance to retaliate when on February 1, 1942, the Navy went on the offensive for the first time in the war with a series of raids on the Gilbert and Marshall Islands. Salt Lake City, with Zacharias in command, played a prominent part in the bombardment of the island of Wotje in the Marshalls, and for this action he received a letter of commendation. Later in that month, Salt Lake City shelled Wake Island. In April, she was one of the vessels protecting the aircraft carrier Hornet when the ship launched the Doolittle raid on Tokyo.