Though Pearl Harbor was a victorious surprise attack
for Japan, they missed their most vital targets.
Ascent Of An Empire
The Pearl Harbor attack, a day in which thousands of lives were tragically lost, will continue to ‘live
in infamy’ within the hearts and minds of many citizens of the United States.
The attack’s position of high notoriety has only recently been usurped by the
horrendous terrorist attacks of 9/11. Like the al-Qaeda atrocity, the attack on
Pearl Harbor first shocked the American population, and when their minds were
cleared of the immediate grief, quickly unified the United States for war.
(Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in Hawaii on December 7, 1941, just as
the USS Shaw exploded, owned by the US government, [Public Domain-US] via
Creative Commons)
Looking back, it is easy to see that the United States and Japan were already heading toward war in the 20th century, decades before the Pearl Harbor attack. From the time Japan began its unprecedented sprint to modernization during the second half of the 19th century, the island country hatched an ambitious dream to become the next great imperialist nation. Rather than try to find its own way to success, Japan adopted the systems of other great and successful nations. Japan used Britain as a model for its navy, and the Japanese army heavily studied the formidable forces of Germany. Previously an isolationist country, Japan ascended to become a major world player.
By the start of the 20th
century, Japan had already defeated both China and Russia in consecutive wars,
and had spread its influence into Korea. When the First World War broke out,
Japan joined on the winning side, but the Japanese leadership felt
unappreciated by the Allies—one of the reasons that led Japan to eventually
join the Axis Powers during WWII.
Between the World Wars, Japan
dove headfirst into its imperial ambitions. It spread into Manchuria in 1931,
fabricated a war against China in 1937 and by 1941, Japan prepared to move into
Indochina and the islands of Southeast Asia.
(A Nakajima B5N2 torpedo plane takes off from the Japanese aircraft
carrier Shokaku or Zuikaku to attack Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on 7 December 1941,
owned by the US government, [Public Domain] via Creative Commons)
The United States visibly and
vocally disapproved of Japan’s aggressive actions, and the more Japan expanded,
the worse the tensions became. The United States was only willing to impose
sanctions and embargos, but for Japan, imported resources, especially fuel,
were the lifeblood of their newly acquired empire. The United States was
willing to end the embargo, but only on the condition that Japan would
relinquish virtually all of its conquered territory—a deal that Japan quickly
resolved to decline.
A Last Hope For An Empire; An Infamous Attack
With Japan’s imperial
ambitions as high as ever and the empire’s fuel reserves plummeting, Admiral
Yamamoto hatched a plot to severely cripple the United States’ Pacific
capabilities. He hoped to delay the U.S.’s military response by destroying its
Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor. Some bright Americans had already predicted that
a Japanese attack would occur, but few would have thought the Hawaiian base of
Pearl Harbor would be the first target on Japan’s radar.
The Japanese fleet that
sailed toward Hawaii at the end of 1941 was state-of-the-art. Japan had not
only modernized its training and equipment, it had also surpassed some of the
technologies of Europe and the United States. Japan had some of the most talented
pilots of WWII, its navy was trained to fight at night, and the design of the
torpedo was revolutionized under Japanese research and development. Unfortunately,
U.S. sailors stationed at Pearl Harbor would have a chance to witness Japan’s
advances up close and personal.
(Aircraft prepare to depart the Imperial Japanese Navy aircraft carrier
Shokaku for the first wave of strikes on the US naval base at Pearl Harbor,
Hawaii on December 7, 1941. Owned by the Japanese governemtn, [Public Domain]
via Creative Commons)
Around 8:00 AM Sunday morning,
on the 7th of December, 1941, approximately 350 Japanese aircraft
entered the airspace of Pearl Harbor. For the Japanese, the harbor could not
have been arranged any better—the U.S. battle fleet was anchored and
stationary, and in a stroke of luck for Japan, the American aircraft were
outside, parked in straight lines like birds on a wire. To seal Pearl Harbor’s
doom, there were very few active defenses protecting the harbor, and the
response time of the shocked base was dismal. In two waves, during a two-hour
attack, the Japanese massacred the United States Pacific Fleet stationed at
Pearl Harbor.
(The USS Arizona (BB-39) burning after the Japanese attack on Pearl
Harbor, 7 December 1941, owned by the US government, [Public Domain] via
Creative Commons)
Japan struck Pearl Harbor
with a combination of bombers, fighters and miniature submarines. Torpedoes
from the submarines and bombers devastated nearly twenty ships anchored in the
harbor. The Japanese fighters set their sights on the unsheltered American
airplanes, destroying or damaging around 300 of the machines.
The casualties caused by the
attack were enormous. More than 2,400 men stationed at Pearl Harbor died, and
more than one thousand extra were wounded. The Japanese took losses too, but
less than a hundred lost their lives.
(Japanese Zero BII-120, c. December 17, 1941, photograph owned by the
US government, [Public Domain] via Creative Commons)
When the waves of enemy
fighters and bombers had withdrawn from Pearl Harbor, photographers grabbed
their cameras to document the wreckage, and captured grisly images of burned,
sinking ships and the visages of dead, dying and wounded soldiers. The images
and news of the United States’ astounding defeat at Pearl Harbor outraged the
U.S. population. There had never been such a defeat of an American force on
American soil by the hands of a foreign power since the battles of American
Revolutionary War. Immediately after the attack, the U.S. government launched
investigations to find negligent leaders responsible for Pearl Harbor’s lack of
preparation, or at least scapegoats on which to blame the disaster. Admiral
Kimmel and General Short (the leaders of Pearl Harbor) both were relieved of
their commands and were simultaneously subjected to public scrutiny and
government inquiry.
(Small craft standing by the U.S. Navy battleship USS West Virginia
(BB-48), shortly after the end of the Japanese air raid, December 7, 1941,
photograph owned by the US government, [Public Domain] via Creative Commons)
Even though the attack
targeted the U.S. position in Hawaii, Pearl Harbor was not designed to be an
isolated attack. The main purpose for destroying United States’ Pacific Fleet
was for distraction and delay. While the U.S. was occupied in Pearl Harbor,
Japan pounced on the resource-rich islands of Southeast Asia. Japanese forces
moved into Malaya and took the strategic city of Singapore. The U.S. General
MacArthur was forced out of the Philippines and ordered to retreat by President
Roosevelt. The Japanese continued south from the Philippines into Borneo and
Indonesia, capturing more oil-rich lands. Under cover of Pearl Harbor, Japan
succeeded in seizing enough resource-laden territories to ensure their
self-sufficiency, and they also crippled the U.S. Pacific Fleet with one
devastating blow. While that must have sounded promising for the Japanese, they
soon realized that the attack on Pearl Harbor was not as successful as they had
hoped.
The Successful Failure of Pearl Harbor
Even though the Japanese
destroyed the U.S. Pacific Fleet and seized a large swath of territory, the
Pearl Harbor attack turned out to be a failure for Japan’s strategic goals. As
a destructive distraction, Pearl Harbor could not have gone better for Japan.
As a delaying tactic and a means to bring the United States into a deal-making
attitude, however, the attack on Pearl Harbor fell well short of Japan’s hopes.
While death is tragic, and
lost lives are irreplaceable, the United States was surprisingly able to quickly
repair or salvage almost all of the damaged ships from Pearl Harbor—excluding
the U.S.S. Arizona and Oklahoma, the most severely damaged of
the U.S. battleships. Furthermore, the Pacific Fleet’s aircraft carriers (the
most important ships in the Pacific War) were all away from Pearl Harbor at the
time of the attack and were spared the fate of the other ships lost in the
harbor. The greatest blessing, however, for the United States, and equally the
greatest curse suffered by the Japanese, was the targets that were left
untouched during the Pearl Harbor attack.
(Photograph of salvage operations at Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard taken
by the shipyard during the period following the Japanese attack on Pearl
Harbor, owned by the US government, [Public Domain] via Creative Commons)
The greatest failure of the
Japanese attack, especially if they wanted to cripple and delay the United
States Pacific Fleet, was the survival of the U.S. repair depots and the huge
fuel reserves that were left untouched by the Japanese bombers and fighters. Though
thousands of American lives were lost and the whole fleet was damaged, Pearl
Harbor’s dockyards and repair equipment were left intact. More miraculous,
however, was the survival of the fuel that was stored at the harbor—an
incredibly huge, but undefended, amount of fuel. More than a million tons of
fuel was stored at Pearl Harbor and all of it survived. To put it into
perspective, enough fuel survived the attack to keep the entire Pacific fleet
running for nearly a year without being replenished.
With their attack on Pearl
Harbor, the Japanese destroyed the priceless lives of soldiers living at the
base, and knocked the U.S. Pacific Fleet off its proverbial feet. Japan even
conquered much of Southeast Asia during the immediate aftermath of Pearl
Harbor. Yet, even with all that Japan gained from the attack, the less talked
about failures of Pearl Harbor would prove to be overwhelming. Instead of Japan
pressuring the United States into a deal, the U.S. responded with a full-scale
war. Instead of crippling the United States’ Pacific Fleet, the U.S. marched
into a wartime economy where they could mass-produce battleships and aircraft
carriers monthly. The thousands of deaths caused by the Japanese attack
inspired a patriotic fervor that caused a wave of outraged Americans to enlist
in the military, and more would later be drafted.
The strike against Pearl
Harbor, and the Japanese invasions of Southeast Asia in the weeks following the
attack, would be the end of Japan’s major strategic offensive operations during
the Pacific War. With the forces of the United States joining the Allies in the
Pacific, Japan was quickly forced into a defensive posture. Instead of preserving
their empire, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor doomed their imperial
ambitions to failure.
(REMEMBER PEARL HARBOR - WORK - FIGHT- SACRIFICE!!" _ "WE'LL
REMEMBER - AND BY GOD, YOU WONT FORGET!!, c. 1943 by Charles Henry Alston
(1907-1977) and owned by the US government, [Public Domain-US] via Creative
Commons)
Written by C. Keith Hansley
thehistorianshut.com
Sources:
- Warfare in the Western World: Military Operations since 1871 by Robert A. Doughty and Ira D. Gruber et al. Massachusetts: D. C. Heath and Company, 1996.
- http://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/pearl-harbor
- http://www.historynet.com/pearl-harbor
- https://www.britannica.com/event/Pearl-Harbor-attack
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