Ellis Zacharias

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

Early study of Japan

After the required five years of sea duty following his graduation from the United States Naval Academy, his request for language training was granted, and he was 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.

Intelligence operations

As a language student, Zacharias was forbidden to engage in specific intelligence collection, although he certainly obtained background. 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.

Threat to the U.S. Fleet

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."

Pearl Harbor warning?

"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.

Capital ship command

From September 1943 to October 1944, under Zacharias's command, the battleship USS New Mexico participated in the recapture of the Gilbert and Marshall Islands. In June and July 1944, the battleship bombarded Tinian and Guam in the Mariana Islands. Zacharias was awarded a Gold Star in lieu of conferral of a second Legion of Merit for his outstanding performance in the Marianas. Zacharias's superiors at this time gave him outstanding fitness reports and recommended his promotion to admiral. Interestingly, the consensus of opinion among Zacharias's seagoing commanders was that Zach was a "brilliant ship driver" (ship captain) who only fancied himself as an excellent intelligence officer. It was his superiors who did not hold him in higher regard as an intelligence officer.

His sea tour over, Zacharias was assigned to the post of chief of staff to the commandant of the 11th Naval District from October 1944 to April 1945.

Psychological warfare

In March 1945, while still in San Diego, Zacharias submitted a plan for psychological warfare against Japan to Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal. The proposal was based on his years studying the Japanese psyche (particularly during the 1923 earthquake), the information gained through formation of a psychological warfare branch in ONI during his tour as assistant director in 1942, and his observation of the increasing war weariness of Japan as evidenced by the appointment of known moderate Adm. Kantaro Suzuki as premier.

The plan proposed to render unnecessary an opposed American landing on the Japanese main islands by beaming radio broadcasts at Tokyo to weaken the will of Japan's high command and strengthening the hand of the peace party under the new premier. The goal was to bring about an unconditional surrender with the least possible loss of life. Zacharias believed that the Japanese wanted to "know the meaning of unconditional surrender and the fate we planned for Japan after its defeat" and might prove more compliant about conceding defeat. As expected, Zacharias's plan ran counter to the prevailing view among American military and political leaders that the Japanese were fanatically determined to fight to the finish and that their morale was practically unbreakable.

Secretary Forrestal approved the plan on March 19, entrusting Zacharias with the task of translating the program into action. Zacharias thought this assignment would be the culmination of his distinguished Navy career. He assembled a small group of Navy Japanese linguists, prepared the scripts, and recorded the broadcasts using the facilities of the Office of War Information and the Department of the Interior in Washington, D.C. The recordings were then sent by wire or airplane to San Francisco, from where they were beamed to Japan via shortwave radio so that Radio Tokyo could pick them up.

On May 8, shortly after President Harry Truman's announcement of the end of the war in Europe, Zacharias, identifying himself as the "official spokesman of the U.S. Government," delivered the first in a series of 18 radio broadcasts to the Japanese leadership explaining the concept of unconditional surrender. Zacharias emphasized that unconditional surrender was a military term signifying "the cessation of resistance and the yielding of arms." In his view, unconditional surrender meant the capitulation of the Japanese armed forces and not (necessarily) the end of the Japanese way of life. Zacharias proposed a lenient interpretation of the unconditional surrender doctrine in the hope that the Japanese would be persuaded to end hostilities promptly. He recalled his past associations with many of Japan's top leaders and their families in order to build their trust in his version of the consequences of unconditional surrender. But, of course, Zacharias was not in a position to execute policy, a fact undoubtedly not lost on his Japanese acquaintances.

Thereafter, top officials in the Office of War Information observed that "these messages produced much positive reaction in the general population of Japan and in several instances exhortations warning the Japanese people against the broadcasts have been intercepted by the Federal Communications Commission."

A later report stated that Prince Takamatsu, brother of the emperor, and other top Japanese officials believed that the broadcasts "provided the ammunition needed by the peace party to win out against those who wanted to continue the war to the bitter end." Here was evidence that the Zacharias broadcasts were reaching their targets.

Despite the seemingly positive Japanese reaction to Zacharias's interpretation of unconditional surrender, the President rejected it in early July, and Zacharias was ordered not to state on the air that the emperor would be retained. There was as yet little agreement in the President's cabinet as to a solid position to take regarding the status of the emperor or as to the proper time to make such a statement. Once again, Zacharias had been overruled, this time by the highest authority.

Undaunted, Zacharias was so convinced of his position that he sought to circumvent this rejection by writing an anonymous letter addressed to Premier Suzuki, which was printed in the Washington Post on July 21. In this letter, he suggested that the Japanese government formally request clarification of American intentions regarding the emperor. In a follow-up broadcast, Zacharias reminded the Japanese of their choices: virtual destruction and a dictated peace or unconditional surrender according to the Atlantic Charter, which maintained that Japan would receive not only "peace with honor" but preservation of the original Japanese empire and all its institutions, including the emperor. Zacharias, at this point, had clearly overstepped his bounds. By suggesting that the Japanese could obtain surrender terms according to the Atlantic Charter, he had ignored the President's order not to state that the emperor would be retained.

Almost immediately, the Navy forbade Zacharias from making any further broadcasts to Japan unless he was detailed to the Office of War Information, which was done. The official reason for Zacharias's transfer to OWI was that his mission had become more diplomatic than military in character. By July 26, he had been stripped of his "official spokesman" status and reassigned to OWI.

Meanwhile, according to Zacharias, his overture to the Japanese met with a hopeful response. On July 24, Dr. Kiyoshi Inouye, an outstanding authority on international relations who had been selected to give the Japanese response to his July 7 broadcast, indicated that Japan was willing to surrender unconditionally "provided that there were certain changes in the unconditional surrender formula" such as being assured that the Atlantic Charter applied to her." Inouye's language was important; rather than addressing it to the conventional "Zacharias-san", or the polite "Mr. Zacharias", or "Zacharias-taisa", "Captain Zacharias", he used "Zacharias-kun", suggesting friend and wise counselor.

Zacharias took this as a signal that the Japanese wanted to begin negotiations, since it was delivered on the eve of the Potsdam Declaration, where the terms of unconditional surrender were clearly defined. Inouye's remarks apparently also reflected the opinion of Foreign Minister Shigenori Togo. However, the official history prepared by Japan's Self Defense Agency states unequivocally that "while the Zacharias broadcasts attracted attention within the cloisters of the Foreign Ministry, which had no legal and little persuasive power to secure peace, they had no impact at all on the Imperial Army, the dominant political force in Japan."

Inouye's statements occurred two days before the Potsdam Declaration was signed on July 26 and 13 days before the first atomic bomb was dropped on August 7. However, the President and the secretary of state believed that the July 24 message was a smoke screen to cover preparations for Operation Ketsu-Go, the Japanese plan for the defense of the home islands. Despite his abrupt reassignment, Zacharias was awarded another Gold Star in lieu of a third Legion of Merit for his Japanese broadcasts.