By the early 1930s, the U.S. State Department, under the leadership of its director of the Far Eastern Division, Stanley K. Hornbeck, began to warn of the danger Japan could pose to U.S. interests in Asia. In 1937, after becoming the Far Eastern Advisor to Secretary of State Cordell Hull, Hornbeck transmitted his concern to the entire State Department and President Franklin Roosevelt, causing the administration to view Japan with greater suspicion.1 The task of developing contingency plans to deal with Japan was given to the Navy. Ironically, just as increased demands were being made on the military’s resources, restrictions were being placed on its budgets throughout these years. Moreover, a strong non-interventionist lobby on the Hill and the onset of the Great Depression made the question of how to procure sufficient funds for military needs more problematic.
As naval strategists searched for ways to overcome these limitations and increase their knowledge of Japanese activities, some planners recognized that an indirect method— one that could circumvent congressional suspicions—would have to be tried. During this same period, commercial aviation—barely out of its infancy—awoke to the possibility of developing international routes. Pan American Airways, led by its energetic, restless, and adventurous president, Juan T. Trippe, made the first successful U.S. attempt to establish air travel across the Pacific. The Navy and Pan Am found that they had common interests and together produced an important and fruitful partnership in the years prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor.
Even before U.S. entry into World War I, a few farsighted members of the U.S. military establishment viewed the Pacific region with apprehension. As early as 1916, naval planners concluded that it would be impossible to protect the nation’s sea-lanes to Asia, should the Imperial Japaanese Navy become hostile to U.S. interests.2 A year later, Rear Admiral Albert P. Niblack, commander of the U.S. naval forces at Gibraltar, wrote the Secretary of the Navy regarding the disposition of Pacific guano islands:
It is not a question of fortifying, but of providing stepping stones, and lines of communication which may, in case of war, turn out to be the lines of operations or which can be converted into such. . . . Not all need to be developed, but one of the main considerations is not to leave islands lying around loose. Further generations will not thank us for any carelessness. . . . Our future lies in the Pacific.3
But Niblack’s warnings were ignored. Following the Treaty of Versailles, Congress (weary of President Woodrow Wilson’s crusades) failed to legislate adequate appropriations for defense in the Pacific, preferring to rely on diplomatic settlements such as the 1921-22 Washington Naval Conference.4
A 1923 report by Army General Billy Mitchell about the growing Japanese threat confirmed previous Army and Navy fears that they would not be prepared to fulfill their mission of defending the U.S. frontier in the Pacific without sufficient appropriations.5 Non-interventionists in Congress such as Republican Senators Hiram Johnson of California and William E. Borah of Idaho, along with their Democratic colleagues Bennett “Champ” Clark of Missouri and Robert Reynolds of North Carolina, used their power and influence to deny the military the funding necessary for maintaining sufficient forces in the Pacific.6 Soldiers like Mitchell were court-martialed for their outspoken criticisms of the prevailing anti-military biases in Congress. The message seemed clear to those charged with protecting the country: Less direct methods of promoting defense would have to be used.
The beginning of a collaborative venture occurred in 1934, when Trippe announced to a surprised Pan Am board of directors that he had applied for landing rights in Hawaii and points west. Five months later, on 3 October 1934, Trippe sent a letter to Secretary of the Navy Claude Swanson outlining his goal of building an air route from San Francisco to Honolulu, and then on to Midway, Wake, Guam, and Manila. The airline would build new facilities on both Midway and Wake Islands, so passengers could stay overnight in comfortable hotel-like buildings before continuing on their journey the next day. Pan Am also would clear lagoons of all obstacles so seaplanes could land safely.8
Why would Trippe propose such an expensive and arduous task for an airline that only recently had pioneered flying island to island in the Caribbean to reach the large cities of South America? First, the markets of the Southern Hemisphere were nearly saturated, according to Trippe. Second, he was blocked from flying across the Atlantic by landing disputes with European nations. Three years earlier, when Trippe had considered expanding into the Pacific, he had attempted to develop a route through Alaska and Soviet Siberia, down the Japanese-held Kurile chain to Tokyo, and then across the East-South China Seas to British Hong Kong. A survey flight by Charles and Anne Morrow Lindbergh proved the feasibility of such a venture, but the Soviet Union—possessive of its air space and land invasion routes—refused to grant a permit.9 With that avenue closed to his commercial empire, Trippe next had to consider a route through Hawaii. This meant developing long-range four-engined aircraft, training competent crews, and convincing paying passengers to participate in this new experiment. It also meant acquiring refueling stations for his planes.
Pan Am’s decision to cross the Pacific coincided with the Navy’s new directive to change the status of some atolls in that ocean. Only two days before receiving Trippe’s letter to Secretary Swanson, Acting Chief of Naval Operations Rear Admiral J. K. Taussig extended Navy control to Baker, Howland, and Jarvis Islands—all claimed by Washington since the 19th century. Trippe would be allowed to use these stepping stones, although Taussig ignored the fact that some of these central Pacific coral specks were claimed by Great Britain as well. The main concern of the naval strategists, however, was not London’s reaction, but rather Tokyo’s attitude to a U.S. presence creeping closer to its empire.10 As a Newsweek reporter wrote in the section concerned with Asian affairs: “Tokyo’s feelings were not soothed by Secretary of the Navy Swanson. He frankly admitted that Pan American had agreed to turn over the future built bases of its 8,500 mile air highway to Asia to the government upon request.”11
Nonetheless, even with Japan’s suspicions and a later British announcement that His Majesty’s government did not favor the idea, the administration encouraged Trippe to proceed with his project. On 16 October 1935, in a confidential memorandum to Secretary of State Hull, Roosevelt endorsed the leasing of government territory to Pan Am and requested more information as to British and Japanese intentions in the region. The State Department offered no obstacles to the Trippe-Navy proposals.12 Following these written exchanges, the President sent William Miller, the Commerce Department’s Superintendent of Airways, to establish communication facilities on Baker, Jarvis, and Howland Islands.11 The mission was accomplished under the guise of a commercial venture, but it inaugurated in effect a naval program that eventually would create a military communication network throughout the whole central and south Pacific regions.
It did not take long before protests from Tokyo began filtering into the State Department.14 The concerns expressed by the Imperial government were noted duly in Washington. Captain S. C. Hooper of the Navy’s Department of Communications defended the Navy’s position in a statement to the Chief of Naval Operations. “From the Navy’s point of view,” he wrote, “it is highly desirable to have adequate direction-finding service for airplanes established in the Pacific, and to train Navy Personnel in the operating of such direction finders for both peace and wartime.”15
Hooper later communicated to Chief of Naval Operations Taussig that the United States did not have to justify its operations in the Pacific to satisfy Japanese fears. He recommended instead that Washington should file protests against Tokyo for violating its agreements regarding the Pacific islands gained at Versailles in 1919.16 While the Roosevelt administration filed no official protests, the President was willing to accept the civilian- military plan. In 1935 he transferred uninhabited Wake Island from the Interior Department to Navy control and leased space in Hawaii, Midway, Wake, Guam, and the Philippines to Pan Am.1' Initially, the Navy would have preferred that Pan Am not use the military facilities at Pearl Harbor. The military, however, finally consented to the privilege, thus allowing the entire route structure to be completed more rapidly. Rear Admiral Harry Yamell, Commandant of the 14th Naval District—which included the Hawaiian Islands—defended Pan Am’s use of Pearl Harbor facilities. He believed that the company’s entire Pacific network soon would prove of great benefit to the Navy.18
Admiral Yarnell’s support for the Pan Am project found an ally in the Chief of the Bureau of Naval Aeronautics and future CNO, Rear Admiral Ernest J. King. Admiral King also recognized the benefits of the commercial venture for the military, arguing that “the requirement of Pan American Airways for a seaplane operating area is practically identical with the Navy requirement for an auxiliary operating area. The two developments should go hand in hand.”19 Curiously, the harsh official protests expected from Japan never materialized. Instead, Tokyo expressed its displeasure with Pan Am’s projected goals through the use of newspaper editorials rather than the traditional diplomatic pouch—for a very good reason.20 Had the Imperial government complained through official channels, Tokyo would have opened itself to U.S. counter-protests—since Japan was using Nanyo Kohasta Kaisha (the South Seas Development Corporation) as a front for its Imperial Navy in a manner similar to the way the United States was using Pan Am. There the issue rested in 1935, with both nations using commercial ventures to cloak military preparedness. Thus, endorsed by the President, encouraged by the State Department, and enlivened with the potential for profit, Trippe moved rapidly.21
The building of the installations on the Pacific islands progressed quickly throughout 1935. By the following year, Pan Am initiated survey flights to Honolulu and onward to Manila. Whatever technical advances in navigation, meteorology, radio direction-finding equipment, and aircraft frame/engine reliability Pan Am developed were passed directly on to Washington for future use.22 The relationship to the Navy was so close that flight-crew members wore navy blue uniforms with gold braid, resembling an officer’s formal dress attire. Officers were referred to as captain, first officer, second officer, and steward—all Navy appellations. Later, the planes even would be painted in a light navy blue with a white background similar to ocean swells. Flying personnel served a watch while on duty, time was marked in bells, and the aircraft took the name of “clipper”—conjuring a romantic past of beautifully masted sailing vessels, sleek and swift, plying the waters to China a century earlier.2’
The successes of this partnership between Pan Am and the Navy, however, cannot be credited to Juan Trippe alone, but also to his chief surveyor—the Tasmanian-born Harold Gatty. An ambitious explorer-engineer-surveyor, Gatty came to prominence flying the Pacific with Harold Bromley in 1930, and circumnavigating the world with Wiley Post from 23 June-1 July 1931. His official title was impressive—Chief Pan American World Airways Surveyor of the South Seas Commercial Company—but in reality he was Trippe’s front man, looking for Pacific landing zones even if they were located near the Japanese mandated islands.24
The South Seas Commercial Company had been formed in the early 1930s by the well-known aircraft builder Donald Douglas, but when Douglas became a board member of Pan Am, Trippe bought the surveying rights.25 As Gatty gained Trippe’s confidence, both men talked of flights to the south and southwest Pacific. Recognizing that British- and French-owned colonies could block the way, Gatty began to explore little-known atolls that did not even appear on some contemporary maps. This project was so new that geography had not yet caught up with ambition. While Gatty surveyed the new areas, he also gave the Navy updates for their strategic needs. In particular, Gatty reported to Trippe and the Navy that Johnston Island, southwest of Hawaii, was a perfect refueling base. Moreover, he explored Howland, Baker, and Canton Islands south of Hawaii, recommending them as well. All but a few of these atolls had been claimed by the United States in the 1850s. Great Britain had sought sovereignty over Canton in the Phoenix Group, but in 1939, both London and Washington signed a condominium agreement jointly occupying the island peacefully.26 In addition, Gatty reported that the Line Islands, stretching from Kingman Reef- Palmyra through the Washington-Fanning-Christmas Islands, could serve both Pan Am’s and the Navy’s needs. Farther to the southwest lay the beautiful yet treacherous lagoon at Pago Pago in American Samoa, the gateway to the southwest Pacific, New Zealand, and Australia.
Even if some atolls could not accommodate passenger traffic, Gatty was convinced the Navy could use them as navigational stations for overflying aircraft. Gatty recognized no restraints in his global quests, suggesting that rather than bilateral negotiations between Washington and European nations with Pacific empires, Pan Am should be allowed to sign agreements with colonial authorities in French Polynesia, New Caledonia in the Loyalty Group, and British Fiji. He liked particularly the harbors in Papeete, Tahiti, and the magnificent bay at Suva in Fiji. Gatty also recommended that if these governments balked at Pan Am and the Navy’s objectives, then Roosevelt should promise to liquidate the French and British war debts if leaseholds could be acquired.27
Before Trippe and the Navy planners could digest all of these ideas, Gatty sent his bombshell: direct air service was possible from Honolulu to Tokyo via Marcus Island northwest of Wake. Trippe was intrigued by this novel idea to use Marcus (or Minami Tori Shima in Japanese) to serve as a hub of northern Pacific traffic. Aircraft flying to Marcus also could overfly Japanese defense installations in the mandated islands—in particular, the Marshall and Mariana groups—although the planes would have to deviate from a direct course. Nonetheless, Gatty’s idea was feasible, and the overflights would appear far more innocent than naval surveys.28
What sounded like a good idea to Gatty and Trippe met with a quick and emphatic negative response from ranking U.S. naval officials and the administration. If Pan Am served Marcus, the argument went, then Tokyo would request reciprocity landing rights in Hawaii, the Panama Canal Zone, perhaps even California. Gatty countered that no reciprocity rights had to be granted, since no airline technically would be flying to another nation’s territory. He seemed truly dismayed in his correspondence when Tokyo and Washington refused. The suggestion did create a unique set of circumstances: it probably was one of the few times both governments agreed with each other in the 1930s. Nonetheless, Gatty’s proposal no doubt haunted Japan’s militarists.29
Gatty was not deterred. He recommended service to Batavia (Jakarta) in the Netherlands East Indies (Indonesia), with connections to Singapore and Hong Kong. As the route structure at last became a reality, Trippe next had other problems to face—one of which involved various incidents of sabotage against Pan Am personnel and equipment from 1935 to 1938.30 On 22 November 1935, as the China Clipper was prepared for the inaugural flight from San Francisco to Honolulu, two Japanese were caught tampering with the plane’s direction finder—which could have resulted in a catastrophe if set incorrectly. A year later pylons just beneath the surface were found in San Francisco Bay damaging the underside of the same plane as it prepared for takeoff. In both cases Japanese nationals were arrested, and even though Pan Am, the FBI, and the Navy conducted inquiries, no public trials were held, and the affairs disappeared quietly.31 The most serious and mystifying episode occurred on 29 July 1938, when the Hawaiian Clipper bound from Guam to Manila vanished. Nothing ever was found of either the crew or the passengers, nor was any debris located by rescue vessels. That last fact baffled investigators, and speculation persisted for years that Japanese agents commandeered the plane and flew it to Koror in the Japanese Palau Islands. Shortly thereafter, a Japanese version of the Martin M-130 flying boat appeared, later code-named Mavis by U.S. naval planners.32
Even with the difficulties and losses Pan Am encountered by the end of the 1930s, most of Trippe’s objectives had been achieved in the Pacific. The airline had established a route system stretching from San Francisco through the mid-Pacific to Hong Kong while building comfortable accommodations for its passengers. Furthermore, Pan Am had pioneered the aerial mapping of the ocean and installed radio direction-finding equipment that guided aircraft across the vastness of the Pacific. Trippe’s innovative employees also had discovered wind velocities heretofore unknown to weather forecasters, thus allowing pilots to avoid treacherous storm patterns. In addition, the creation of durable airframes and reliable engines revolutionized the technology of flying, and later Pan Am developed rescue devices to find downed aircraft.33
While Pan Am was building its civilian enterprise, the Navy reaped the benefits of these innovations, as information flowed from Trippe’s headquarters in the Chrysler Building in New York to Washington. Learning from Pan Am’s breakthroughs enabled the Navy to redesign aircraft and engine requirements for wartime use, improve its meteorological forecasts and navigational techniques, as well as devise equipment to find downed airmen. There was one aspect of this cooperative venture that failed to achieve total success—the area of intelligence gathering. This was especially important after Japan signed the Tripartite Agreement with Germany and Italy in September 1940, aimed specifically against U.S. strategic interests in both Europe and Asia. The hopes that Pan Am clippers might catch a glimpse of Japanese activities proved a disappointment, but by late 1940 U.S. cryptographers had broken the Japanese military and diplomatic codes, diminishing the need for such services.34 The Navy had for years also recognized the vulnerability of naval routes throughout the mid-Pacific, creating the need for a more southerly sea passage beyond Japan’s capabilities to attack. Pan Am assisted the Navy in that issue as well by inaugurating service to New Zealand, Australia, and Singapore in 1940-1941—thus completing the mapping and navigational facilities throughout the entire Pacific area.35
Following the Japanese attack of 7 December 1941, all Pan Am installations were transferred to the Navy, marking the end of an important phase in civilian-military cooperation. The joint venture proved successful. Pan Am and the Navy, in pursuit of their own interests, had benefited from a nearly ten-year association and enhanced U.S. defense interests in the Pacific.
EDITOR’S Note: Footnotes available upon request.
