70 years ago today, on December 7, 1941, Imperial Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in Hawaii:
“In the first six to twelve months of a war with the United States and Great Britain I will run wild and win victory upon victory. But then, if the war continues after that, I have no expectation of success.” — Admiral Yamamoto
Related:
- The USS Arizona Memorial
- The USS Missouri, on the decks of which Japan surrendered nearly 4 years later. It is now docked very near to the aforementioned memorial
- A partial glimpse into what resulted from the Pearl Harbor attack
It also worth noting where things are today:
A record 82 percent of Japanese report having friendly feelings toward the United States, according to results of an annual government poll
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/05/world/asia/japanese-poll-finds-a-rush-of-good-will-for-us.html?_r=2&ref=world
IMHO I think there are three factors behind that “record 82 percent”: 1.) unstable sabre-rattling NKorea, 2.) earthquake-tsunami relief/aid, and 3.) the redeployment of US forces from Okinawa to Australia.
… although I may have contradicted myself on points 1 and 3.
I had a history teacher who said the Japanese understood warrior culture and war in general. They understood they lost and dealt with it and didn’t deny their role.
Its amazing to think that from Pearl Harbour to VJ day was only four years, when it has been 10 years since 9-11. In that time the US went from a relatively tiny armed forces to having something like 12 million men under arms on two fronts on opposite sides of the world. They built a fleet of 20 odd fleet carriers and dozens of smaller carriers and thousands of other war ships, tens of thousands of aircraft from the drawing board to the front line, hundreds of thousands of armoured vehicles, the Manhatten project etc etc. God bless them all.
watching the documentary ‘The Prize’.
apparently the war was about oil. The Japs for instance had their eyes on the holdings of Royal Dutch in Indonesia.
we’ve got lots of the stuff now; WW III will be about water.
oh, and the Manhattan thing?
that’s what gave the Jap civilian authorities the ‘opportunity’ to step in in that moment of confusion and shock on the part of the military and sign on the line. it averted at least 1,000,000 casualties including huge swaths of Jap citizens.
tell that to your grandkids before the ‘culturally sensitive’ educators take over.
My mother worked at Oak Ridge Tenn. 1944-1947.
She helped build the first atomic bomb,
even though at the time she didn’t realize she had helped build the first atomic bombs.
I felt some guilt over the war in Vietnam and asked her if she felt any guilt helping kill hundreds of thousands of Japanese.
Without blinking she said:
“Son our work saved the lives of millions of Japanese and hundreds of thousands of allied troops”
“Before the Atomic bomb approximately 5 million people died in wars around the globe,
after the Atomic bomb only about 1 million per year have died.
Our research has saved 160,000,000 lives..”
–
Put that in their socialist-leftists-hair-headed peace pipes and smoke it..
Don’t forget about the cartoons I suffered through because of this.
I truly like Americans but think they were either incredibly stupid or arrogant to NOT have had better defenses manned against possible attack. I have also read that FDR knew about this attack but allowed it to go ahead in order to bring the US into the war. Would any of our military historians like to weight in on this comment?
God bless the United States. Our American friends are going through a rough time right now, what with the financial situation created by overspending, the resultant selling out of their purse strings to China and the effort by the Obama cabal to turn the country away from being a liberal democracy to being a Marxist state.
December 7, 1941 was repaired after four years of tough slugging, but 9/11/01 seems to be an illusive goal. The will to survive disappeared with the trauma of Vietnam and the undermining of the left.
If you ever go to Oahu, go to the memorials. You won’t regret it. The feeling is…odd. For myself, it was a bit creepy, but humbling. If, by being on-site, seeing how it unfolded, reading the names of the fallen while standing above them, if you remain unmoved, you’ll never understand.
I was there almost 3 years ago, and it still affects me, moreso today.
If you must fight a war, fight to win by the destruction of your enemies. This is the lesson people keep forgetting that gets brought home for me every year on this day.
3 of my 4 grandparents were Americans. Hopefully some of their spirit still runs through me. All of them were well established in Canada by the time WW II broke out. While my grandfathers had already passed I never forget my mild Granma referring to the Japanese as those “damn Japs”! I didn’t realize that she lost family during the war in the Pacific.
A few years back I was in Manilla and visited the USA military cemetary. A beautiful place. At the top of a rise they have hugh granite slabs standing in a circle. All the dead had their names engraved with where they enlisted. There were two Messingers, one of witch had my grandfather’s middle name. When I returned to Canada I reported this to my grandmother and she explained that he was from Tacoma, Wa and was my grandfather’s nephew. He had snuck away to California to enlist because he was to young and his parents wouldn’t let him do it in Wa.
Canada was certainly no slouch during the war and did more with less than most every other country. There has never been any doubt in my mind that the USA saved the world with her tremendous capacity to produce the men and equipment that turned the tide. We should never forget and always give thanks.
Had the American aircraft carriers been in Pearl Harbour that day, the outcome of the war may very well have been different. A massive stroke of good luck.
Had the left been in power in the U.S. as they are today, no declaration of war would have been issued until the Japanese were firmly entrenched in Australia and Japanese troop ships were anchored off Los Angeles.
From everything I’ve read, Yamamoto strikes me as a smart, decent man. He didn’t want to fight the Americans because he didn’t buy the idea that they’d fold (that quote being a case in point), but did it out of duty to the Emperor.
He was an enemy that, even with the surprise attack, I can respect.
But I am extremely grateful that his side lost, and shooting his plane down was the right thing to do.
…and Sasha and Malia are having a nice lunch of Japanese food at their school day.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/reliable-source/post/sidwell-friendss-surprising-pearl-harbor-day-menu/2011/12/06/gIQAAJ0IaO_blog.html
Interesting choice.
Another Calgary Marc. We were there this last March, I read every name on the list and you are right, it still affects me.
“I have also read that FDR knew about this attack but allowed it to go ahead in order to bring the US into the war. ”
Yeah,that’s a theory I’ve heard more of the farther away from that Day we get.
Whatever,thank God the Americans came into it full bore,we (British Empire) weren’t doing too well.
My Dad fought alongside American troops in WW2,said they were “good soldiers”, his ultimate compliment,and way better equipped than our boys.
During the Vietnam war, many draft dodgers who ran the American Forces down were loudly and profanely told to F*** off by Dad.
Dec 7,1941 is a Day in history my generation always will remember,the younger folks,not so much.
Interesting historical fact; the U.S. Congress backed the declaration of War 388-1. The lone dissenting vote was from Rep. Jeannette Rankin (Republican) of Montana.She was the first woman elected to Congress.
Rankin’s father was a rancher who had immigrated to the U.S. from Canada.
She voted against entering WW 1 and WW 2,and supported Prohibition.
She would have fit in with today’s activists quite nicely, a woman before her time.
My first living memory. Probably re-enforced by talking to my Dad about it but nonetheless I can close my eyes and be 2 1/2 again sitting on the front steps of our duplex watching my Dad and the upstairs neighbor clean up some storm debris and seeing our next door neighbor come flying out her front door screaming “The Japs have attacked Pearl Harbor, the Japs have attacked Pearl Harbor”.
wyatt ironbridge
“They understood they lost and dealt with it and didn’t deny their role.”
What you were exposed to with that history teacher was a revisionist fool.
The emperor, directed them to endure the unendurable…defeat. Officially and on an individual basis, the Japanese do still deny there role.
In the days after the atomic attacks, the surrender was a close run thing as powerful, implacable elements refused to consider surrender…indeed several violent attempts were made to stop the process including an attempt to take the emperor hostage.
When the process reached to point of no return many prominent individuals commetted suicide rather than surrender.
Despite war crimes trials, the Japanese are still in denial of the atrocities committed against civilian chinese and Allied POWs.
Johanne
You must consider this is not surprising for the navy of a country, which was extremely isolationist and had been subjected to leftist propaganda to keep the US from “interfering”.
It is not unexpected that a nation in peacetime would have the AAA unmanned and unarmed on a sunday morning…..what is surprising is a nation at war with terrorist entities to have it’s personel unarmed at a major military base…Fort Hood.
The Fort Hood situation is preposterous and negligent while the unprepared nature of Pearl Harbour Dec 7, 1941 is not unreasonable.
Various elements in US intelligence had warned of attacks without warning, because it was not unusual historically for the Japanese…
Remember FDR was a DemoncRAT….
biffjr.
And IF the radar warnings had been heeded, things would have been signifigantly different.
Despite complete and total surprise the Japanese lost nearly half (200 out of 300+)
of their aircraft….consider the losses IF the USAAA had been manned/primed ab initio and IF the US
fighters had been air-bourne rather than parked in the open like ducks in a shooting gallery…the Fleet underway at sea. Or IF Halsey’s carriers had intercepted the IJN carriers…..
The Winnipeg Grenadiers and the Royal Rifles of Canada, an English speaking Quebec City regiment held out at Hong Kong until they surrendered on Christmas Day.
Correction Japanese lost 29 aircraft…
But Yamamoto and Nagumo were having kittens because the US carriers were absent.
Nagumo called off the 3rd wave to “get outa Dodge” fast.
The rest of my IF’s stand.
Joanne
I have come across that allegation in a book, “Operation JB”. written by Michael Chrighten (not the fiction writer). He claims to have been with MI-5 and a colleague of Ian Fleming. He also claimed that Dieppe was a sacrificial enterprise (Germans were tipped off) to establish his double agent spy credentials. That makes sense when you consider that the Royal Navy wouldn’t even offer-up as much as a Cruiser for softening up the landing while the mostly Canadians on the beach were slaughtered or captured.
A little known fact about those (4) Iowa Class Battle Ships was that a couple of them were in service during the Vietnam war but were not allowed (ROE) to sail North of the DMZ despite that 85% of North Vietnam being within range of their 16″ guns. North Vietnam, particularly the Hanoi area had the highest concentration of SAM sites in history and had the US polity wanted a military victory could have blockaded or obliterated Hanoi with impunity using primarily their Battle ships. Instead they chose to lose thousands of men and planes.
John, here’s an interesting photo for you, a color shot of the USS Iowa firing a full broadside. I recall reading a fascinating article once on naval experts’ theoretical musings of an engagement of the most advanced battleships ever. The “combatants” were 1. any of the American Iowa class; 2. either of the German Bismark class; 3. either of the Japanese Yamato class; 4. any of the British Queen Elizabeth class. The consensus was that the Iowa class battleships were the theoretical winners against any of the others, based on their most advanced gun design, their most advanced radar, mated up with their fire control analog computers.
I think my mother-in-law, a survivor of Hiroshima, had it right. “At least the war was over.” The blame is kind of pointless now – you can cite colonialism and the Oriental Exclusion act or the invasion of China and Pearl Harbor, or the USS Panay or Perry’s Black Ships, but the Mongols were doing unto others whatever they could well before we Westerners showed up.
I’ve seen Pearl Harbor and Peace Park in Hiroshima. My uncles and father survived the war – which might not be true had it continued. My wife’s uncle returned to Japan in 1949, after having been a prisoner of the Russians far past the end of the war… War sucks. Losing sucks worse.
At least it’s over.
“War sucks. Losing sucks worse.
At least it’s over.” And at least the Allies won, thereby saving Western Civilization and preventing a new Dark Ages caused by Axis fascist domination of the whole world.
Thanks for posting, Robert.
Dave in Pa
Yeah we saved it all right. Look around. We saved it for the Totalitarian left.
Revnant Dream- not if we do something about it. Imagine how things looked, right up until Midway. By then the Japs had kicked every Western force they encountered, and Australia was under attack (Darwin). We are in a much better position now, than the entire Western world was in 1941.
sasquatch – Isolationism explains it ( and the fact that FDR had reduced US forces so far that new recruits in’41 drilled with wooden ” rifles ” .
If it had been the Swiss defending, however, every one of those planes would have been stitched with a variety of bofors, oerlikon, and other assorted AA guns.
This attack permanently ( at least until Obama) made American defense planning center around preventing the possibility of any more ” Pearl Harbors “; sneak attacks.
“The Winnipeg Grenadiers and the Royal Rifles of Canada, an English speaking Quebec City regiment held out at Hong Kong until they surrendered on Christmas Day.”
A classmate of my Mom’s was in the Winnipeg Grenadiers. When he was about to ship out in 1941,,he told her, “they say we’ll be home by Christmas”.
When he returned in 1945,after all those years a Jap POW, he ruefully remarked to Mom,” well,they were right,I made it home for Christmas.They just didn’t say what year”.