PEARL HARBOUR

THE UNITED STATES GOES TO WAR

If Hitler's assault on Russia had, in mid 1941, taken the Second World War beyond its European boundaries, then it was the infamous attack by Japan upon the US naval base at Pearl Harbour, on Oahu in the Hawaiian Islands, that finally made the war global in scale. For the devastating Japanese raid was the first roll of the dice in a mighty strategy which encompassed the whole of South-East Asia, and which almost succeeded.

The background to Japan's assault upon Pearl Harbour and the Pacific stretched back into the Thirties to the beginning of her protracted war with China. In that conflict, her troops had gained experience, her pilots had seen active service, her aircraft had gained in reliability. As Germany launched the Second World War in Europe, with a not dissimilar background of experience in the Spanish Civil War behind her, Japan saw clearly the triumphs that could be won by sheer brute force and military skill allied with audacity, surprise and speed. The lesson of Blitzkrieg was not lost on the subjects of Hirohito. Suddenly the world of the East seemed open to Japan, and she resolved to take her opportunity, and the wealth it could bring. Only the United States of America stood in the way, for America was neutral, and, unlike Britain, was not already irrevocably locked in European combat. Even Russia did not count as a threat for, although Russia had the manpower to fight on several fronts, Japan and Russia had signed a mutual non-aggression pact which, uncharacteristically, both Japan and Russia honoured until the very last days of the war.

The plan was first to destroy the American Fleet, then, while the USA was unable to put to sea with its armies, to overrun the whole of South-East Asia at a pace reminiscent of German Blitzrieg , seizing in concurrent assaults Thailand, Burma, Malaya and Singapore, plus the Philippines and Dutch East Indies archipelagoes. Once the Pacific and Indian Ocean nations between Burma in the West, New Guinea in the South, and the Aleutians and the Gilbert Islands in the North and East were under the Rising Sun, Japan planned to throw a defensive perimeter around the newly-won territories, and exploit the mineral, natural and human resources of a vast area of the earth upon which the rest of the world had until then relied heavily. This ambitious programme was ratified by the Japanese government at a Supreme War Council held on September 6th 1941, not eleven months after the near-murder of Prime Minister Prince Funimaro Konoye, who had urged restraint and compromise with the USA. Konoye resigned on 16th October 1941, and was replaced by the warlike General Hideki Tojo, who was bent on war as a means for Japanese expansion.

In April 1941, five months before the Japanese made their irrevocable decision to wage war, an allied plan known as ABC-1 for the defence of South-East Asia had been agreed between the British and the Americans in Washington. Believing that the recently appointed Far East Commander, General Douglas MacArthur, would be able to retain control of the Philippines in the event of an attack by the Japanese, the planners agreed on a concentration of force against Germany, and a relatively low-key holding operation against Japan. Despite the fact that, as early as January 1941, US Ambassador Joseph Grew had reported from Tokyo the belief that the Japanese might attempt a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, no allowance was made in the plan for an attack on the US Navy in the Hawaiian Islands. As late as November 1941, American aircraft were still parked undispersed and wing to wing on Hawaiian airfields, a perfect target for bombers.

The detailed plan for the attack from the air that was to give the world its first truly global war was worked out by a naval staff under the gifted Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, Commander in Chief of the Japanese Navy. He had six aircraft carriers, with a strong force of 14 protective surface ships and three submarines, plus a total of 432 bombers, torpedo bombers and fighter aircraft with which to carry out the surprise assault. In November, Yamamoto announced the plan to his assembled officers on board the old 30,000 ton battleship Nagato . He told them not to underestimate the American armed services, and assured them that Japan needed a great victory if she was to be seen as a great power. Soon after, on November 25th, the task force under Vice-Admiral Nagumo left the Kurile Islands, and on December 2nd the signal `Climb Mount Niitaka' gave the fleet the irreversible order to proceed with the attack; Operational Order No.1 was to be put into effect.

Incredible as it seems to us now with the benefit of hindsight, Admiral Kimmel and General Short, the US commanders at Hawaii, were warned of the likelihood of imminent war on November 27th, but did virtually nothing to improve the security of the fleet, most of which was at anchor in Pearl Harbour, nor to protect the aircraft parked undispersed on the ground. There was a total failure to accept or recognise the possibility that an attack might be directed against Hawaii. Maybe it just seemed too nice a place.

When, at just before eight o'clock on the morning on December 7th, the 214 aircraft of the first of two waves came speeding in from the Pacific to the attack, the entire establishment was enjoying a typical peacetime Sunday. The formation of aircraft had been spotted at 7.15am on radar, but the young Air Force officer to whom it was reported did nothing with the report because he was expecting a formation of B17 Flying Fortresses at the same time and place. If he had raised the alarm, the eight battleships and the other 86 vessels around them in Pearl Harbour would have had half an hour to recover their crews from their weekend ashore. As it was, they had only their watches on board. The aircraft were not armed. Even the anti-aircraft guns were not fully manned; their ammunition boxes were locked; the crews did not have the keys.

The next two hours were mayhem. Although the defenders reached their posts as quickly as they could in the circumstances, and put up a good fight, the damage was already done. A 1,760 pound bomb blew up the forward magazine of the USS Arizona , which quickly sank with 1,106 of her crew plus Rear-Admiral Isaac C. Kidd, and is still on the bottom of Pearl Harbour today. The Nevada was hit by two bombs and a torpedo, but maintained a magnificent fight despite being in desperate straits. Oklahoma capsized after being hit by five torpedoes, trappingwithin the hull 415 of her crew. Some of them were still alive, though doomed to die, seventeen days later on Christmas Eve. West Virginia and California were also hit, as were Tennessee and Maryland , although these last two were far less severely damaged. Three cruisers and three destroyers were also partially disabled by the ferocity of the first attack.

One hour after the first wave, giving almost no opportunity for the defenders of Pearl Harbour to regroup, the second wave of aircraft attacked. The 54 bombers, 80 divebombers and 36 fighters continued the destruction of the pride of the US Navy, then turned on the air force bases at Wheeler and Hickham Fields, the flying boat station at Kaneohe and the naval installations on Ford Island. A total of 65 aircraft were destroyed.

By 10am the attack was over. In all, 2,403 Americans had died, and 1,178 had been wounded. The Japanese had lost just 29 aircraft and 55 airmen, a relatively small price for inflicting a significant blow on the ability of the US Navy to strike back. It would, however, be unwise to adopt the view, often set out in books discussing the attack on Pearl Harbour, that the damage to the US fleet and its strategic capability was as significant as Yamamoto had hoped. The plain fact is that the loss of two battleships, and the disabling of six others, did not leave the US Navy without teeth. The fleet's three aircraft carriers had not been in port and were intact. Experience was to show that their destruction would have been infinitely more beneficial to the Japanese strategy. No less than 20 cruisers and 65 destroyers were undamaged and ready to fight. Almost as, or perhaps even more, important was the failure of the Japanese to attack the oil storage depots on the Hawaiian Islands, without which the US Navy would have been immobilised for months.

Interestingly, Admiral Chester Nimitz offered in his postwar memoirs an analysis of the losses of Pearl Harbour which actually argued that the element of surprise had worked to the advantage of the USA. He wrote:

"No one regrets more than I our 3,000 dead .... But if Admiral Husband Kimmel .... had had information of the attack 24 hours in advance, he would have sent off all our forces to meet the Japanese."

"We had not one aircraft carrier capable of opposing Admiral Nagumo's aircraft carrier formation, and the Japanese would have sunk all our ships on the High Seas. We would have lost 6,000 men and almost all our Pacific fleet."

The greatest single effect of the Pearl Harbour incident was the almost total polarisation of world opinion that it brought about, the consequences of which were colossal. The United States formally declared war on Japan on December 8th, and on the same day Britain honoured Churchill's pledge to join the USA in war with Japan if the USA were obliged to declare it. Germany and Italy rashly declared war on the United States on December 11th, thereby signing the death warrant of the Axis in Europe. Throughout the next week, nation after nation fell into place on one side or the other; virtually all of Latin America fell in behind the United States and declared war on, or broke off diplomatic relations with, Japan. Before Christmas, thirty-eight nations of the world, representing half the population of the earth, were at war.0

This more than any other factor made the attack on Pearl Harbour, while a military success, a strategic blunder. More than any other single event of the war, it mobilised opinion and diverted effort to the defeat of the Axis.