part0009

For Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, December 7, 1941 was a mixed blessing; the stupendous triumph of the Japanese Navy in bringing the American naval base at Pearl Harbor to ruins was certainly a military triumph for a nation with ambitions of becoming the dominant power in the Pacific. Yet, even as the Japanese planes left the smoldering hulks of ships behind, Yamamoto was concerned. In September 1941, he had expressed misgivings about attacking the neutral nation. “For a while we’ll have everything our own way, stretching out in every direction like an octopus spreading its tentacles. But it’ll last for a year and a half at the most.”

When Winston Churchill received the news that the United States had entered the war following the attack on Pearl Harbor, his response was not at all ambiguous. In writing his history of the war, Churchill’s response to the news was that he “went to bed and slept the sleep of the saved” that night. He wasted no time in traveling to the United States to meet with American generals to devise a combined strategy for fighting the enemy. The United States and Great Britain would join forces to save the world from the evils of Japanese militarism and German Nazism. But not in that order. Churchill convinced President Roosevelt that the battle against the Nazis had to come first. Pearl Harbor was the reason that the Americans entered the war, but once they were in it, they were part of the global conflict.

The United States, although caught unawares by the Japanese attack, had not been entirely clueless about the strategic importance of its Hawaiian base or of the ambitions of the Japanese. Like the rest of the world, the Japanese economy had been crushed by the global depression of 1929. As some nations sought to relieve their economic woes by seeking military expansion, Japan was also looking for a way to increase its power. In need of land and resources, Japan took control of Chinese Manchuria and made it a vassal state of the Japanese in 1932. As the decade went on and Germany added to its lands without interference from the West, Japan realized that the European colonial powers could not defend the territories that they controlled in the South Pacific and Southeast Asia. Those territories with their resources but without the protection of their European powers seemed like low-hanging fruit to the Empire of Japan.

By 1940, with so much of Europe already under Nazi control, Japan saw a way forward. First, the Japanese pressured the Vichy government of France for French Indochina. Japan began to build up its military force in preparation for an invasion of Southeast Asia. With limited resources, Japan needed the riches of the East Indies in order to fulfill its intentions to be a Pacific power, but time was critical. Although the U.S. was still neutral, the nation had begun to build up its military resources and that would limit Japan’s ability to expand. By attacking the navies of the Americans, British, and Dutch, the Japanese knew they could conquer their territories in the Pacific. That would not only give them the resources of the territories, but also establish a circle of islands to shield the home island of Japan from enemy invasion. This six-month plan was to be implemented before the U.S. was in a position to strike back, a movement which would be even further delayed by an attack on the American Pacific fleet. After that, the Japanese would negotiate with the weakened powers in order to keep what they had taken.

American authorities were aware that Japan was a threat, but they expected the Japanese to strike against European colonies and not Pearl Harbor, which was 4,000 miles away from Japan. The fleet, and the hundreds of planes in the airfields nearby, were undefended. The attack got underway at 7:48 am Hawaiian time. The first wave sent 353 planes to Oahu, with torpedo bombers striking the battleships while dive bombers hit Hickam Field and Wheeler Field. For the second wave, 171 planes struck the Army Air Force Base at Ford Island and Bellows Field. When the word went out, “Air Raid Pearl Harbor. This is not a drill!” the sailors found out that their ammunition lockers were locked and the guns were unmanned.

After 90 minutes, the carnage was almost incalculable: 2,008 sailors dead; 218 soldiers and airmen dead; 109 marines dead, and 68 civilians dead; 18 ships sunk or run aground; 188 aircraft destroyed; 159 aircraft damaged. The battleship USS Arizona was destroyed, USS Oklahoma had capsized, and USS California , West Virginia, and Nevada were sunk in shallow water. It looked as though the Japanese had achieved their goal of bringing the American Pacific Fleet to its demise, but luckily three U.S. aircraft carriers had not been at Pearl Harbor and would be able to serve in the battles to come.

As for the predictions made by the two enemies regarding the attack on Pearl Harbor, they would both come true. Winston Churchill, going to bed and sleeping the sleep of the saved, was correct: the entrance of the United States in World War II would indeed be the transfusion of military might that would help to alter the course of the war toward an Allied victory. Admiral Yamamoto, too, was accurate in his prediction: Japan would have its moment of triumph, but within six months, the Allies would achieve victory at the Battle of Midway and, although it would take time for Japan to surrender, the Pacific Ocean would not fly under the flag of the Rising Sun forever.