The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and American response

Japan and WWII

The Japanese naval attack on Pearl Harbor in the Hawaiian Islands was a devastating loss for the United States, both in terms of the loss of vessels and lives in the U.S. Pacific Fleet and in terms of the political and psychological shock waves that the surprise attack caused. But notwithstanding that tremendous blow to American military might, and notwithstanding the territories in the South Pacific that the Japanese had control over, the Americans found the will and the wherewithal to defeat Japan. This paper recounts the events leading up to the attack on Pearl Harbor, the attack itself, and the way in which the United States went about the task of bringing Japan to its knees.

The Attack on Pearl Harbor

"In one stroke, the Japanese navy scored a brilliant success -- and assured their ultimate defeat"

(www.pearlharbor.org).

There were important events prior to December 7, 1941 -- the day that President Franklin Roosevelt called "A day that shall live in infamy" -- that can be seen in hindsight that showed the world Japan was becoming militarily arrogant and dangerous. Also, there were events that apparently led Japan to believe it needed to attack the United States. First, in the Naval History & Heritage website (NHH) (a project of the U.S. Navy) the authors explain that Japan had conquered Manchuria in 1931 as part of its expansion into China and Indochina. By 1940 Japan had basically conquered all of Indochina and had allied itself with Nazi Germany, which raised red flags of great concern in countries all over the world, including Western Europe and the United States.

In response to the aggression Japan had shown in Asia, America cut off the sale of oil and other raw materials to Japan, and also, America sent aid to China to help it fend off Japan's ceaseless attacks. Japan had no oil reserves of its own, and otherwise is lacking in natural resources, so when the U.S. cut off the flow of oil, it angered Japan and it caused Japan to resolve to "…seize the resource-rich territories of Southeast Asia," including the Philippines, an territory affiliated with the United States (NHH). And in order to make sure they could conquer territories in Southeast Asia, Japan's military strategists decided to attack Pearl Harbor in order to "immobilize the U.S. Pacific Fleet" (NHH). The attack would need to use "meticulous preparation" on an "unprecedented scale," and certainly the precise training and planning paid off for Japan.

On the 7th of December, 1941, Japanese Vice Admiral Chuichi Nagumo led a force of 6 heavy aircraft carriers (accompanied by 24 other vessels in support of the carriers) to within 200 miles of Pearl Harbor. This massive armada of ships and planes had apparently not been detected by the American forces (there were no satellites in space allowing real-time visual images of activities on land or in the sea) and the first wave of 181 planes took off heading for Pearl Harbor (NHH). The attack planes included "…torpedo bombers, dive bombers, horizontal bombers and fighters"; and while the U.S. Navy had seen and had sunk a Japanese submarine just outside the entrance to Pearl Harbor, no one apparently suspected that a huge attack was on the way (NHH).

At about 8:00 A.M. On December 7, the first wave of Japanese planes attacked the military airfields simultaneously with the destruction of vessels in the harbor. About 8:30 the first attack ended and about 9:00 A.M. The second wave arrived (170 planes) and continued hammering vessels and military installations. The Americans were caught by surprise and they paid a very heavy price. In fact 21 ships were sunk or severely damaged, and those included 8 battleships, 3 cruisers and other ships including 3 destroyers.

The USS Arizona was "…mortally wounded," and the explosion that was caused when the Japanese "…armor-piercing bomb ignited the ship's forward ammunition magazine" killed 1,177 crewmen on that battleship (NHH, p. 2). Japan only lost 29 planes, about ten percent of the total number of planes that were sent to attack Pearl Harbor. The only reason that the U.S. aircraft carriers were unscathed is that they were not in port; the U.S.S. Enterprise was delivering planes to Wake Island; the U.S.S. Lexington was delivering bombers to Midway Island; and the U.S.S. Saratoga was on its way to the west coast for maintenance and repairs (NHH). The Japanese attack did not damage the "…shore-side facilities at Pearl Harbor Naval Base," which the Navy's website claimed played a "…important role in the Allied victory in World War II" (page 2).

The U.S. was able to raise and repair every ship that was sunk except for three; and moreover, what the attack on Pearl Harbor really accomplished was to unite a previously divided nation, which translated into a "…wholehearted commitment to victory in WWII" (NHH).

Japanese -- American Rivalry in the Pacific

An article in www.History.co.uk. Explains that Japanese "imperial ambitions had been evident from as early as 1931," following the conquest of Manchuria. Japan needed the raw natural resources from Manchuria to continue expansion plans into the region; Japan was referring to this ambition as the "Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere"; and the U.S. And other nations clearly could see Japan's aggression when it went into an all-out war with China in 1937.

In 1941 Japan occupied French Indochina but President Roosevelt preferred to avoid a direct confrontation with Japan, although after the U.S. stopped shipping oil to Japan, as mentioned earlier in this paper, there was justification in the minds of Japan's military leaders to go after America in Pearl Harbor. Indeed, though Pearl Harbor was a mighty big success for Japan, what it also did was "strategically catastrophic" (www.history.co.uk). "The sleeping giant had been awoken, and in America, a sense of fury now accompanied the mobilization for war of the world's most powerful economy" (www.history.co.uk). The rage Americans felt towards Japan was used "…to take a terrible vengeance on Japan" (www.history.co.uk).

The Japanese Strategy that Failed

Robert W. Coakley writes in the Army history website and he explains that Japan's goal was to occupy and use raw natural resources from the following territories: Malaya, the Netherlands Indies, the Philippines, Wake Island, Guam, the Gilbert Islands, Thailand and Burma" (Coakley, 2001, p. 502). Ultimately, Japan planned to create a "defensive perimeter stretching from the Kurile Islands…to New Guinea" and would also include Thailand and Burma, Coakley writes (502). The Japanese figured that the Allies would "wear themselves out in fruitless frontal assaults" to take back those territories -- and eventually the U.S. would sign a peace treaty giving Japan those properties (Coakley, 502).

Coakley writes that the Japanese expected the U.S. To fight a "limited war" -- not a total war -- and that was one of the key Japanese miscalculations. A once-divided nation had become totally united in anger over the devastation in Hawaii and Americans backed a total, all-out effort to take the war to the Japanese. The U.S. was not about to give Japan what it wanted, a "negotiated peace" which would allow Japan to keep some of its seized territories. The U.S. And Allies (including Australia) wanted nothing less than a total defeat of Japan. The Allies began beefing up their "…line of communications across the southern Pacific to Australia" and America also strengthened bases in Alaska, Hawaii, and India, which could become launching points for "counter-offences" against the Japanese (Coakley, 503)..

It was not an easy task, as Japanese fighters were dug in deep in Guadalcanal and the southern Solomon Islands and it took the 1st Marine Division and the 2nd Marine Division (plus Army divisions) to take over Guadalcanal, where they then built air and logistics bases. Coakley goes into great detail as his report continues with specifics of each battle and each point of resistance by Japan. Every troop movement, every battle fought by the newer and faster destroyers and aircraft carriers, every new strategy carried out by the Air Force, the Marines, the Navy and the Army are presented in precise detail by Coakley.

For example, the marines, after landing at Iwo Jima in February, 1945, with the 4th and 5th Marine Division, had to "…overcome fanatic resistance from firmly entrenched Japanese, who held what was probably the strongest defensive system American forces encountered during the Pacific War" (Coakley, 522). Indeed, it took a month of "bloody fighting to secure the island" but it was worth it because within a short time the Allies engineers had built a "heavy bomber field and another fighter base on the island" (Coakley, 521).

In April, 1945, a huge number of Marine divisions assaulted Okinawa, the island quite close to Japan; Japanese fighters allowed the Marines to land on the beaches but they fell back and prepared elaborate "cave and tunnel defenses on inland hills" (Coakley, 521). It took until June, 1945, for American marines to take control of Okinawa, and they were helped by "…great concentrations of naval, air, and artillery bombardment" (Coakley, 522). In the summer of 1945, the Allied forces (including enormously effective Australian units) had begun to bomb Japan ceaselessly. Planes from U.S. aircraft carriers, planes from American bases that had been set up in Iwo Jima, Okinawa, the Marianas and elsewhere hit Japan hard, including Japan's east coast, Coakley writes (525). Even the British got into the act; Germany had surrendered in May, 1945, so troops and planes were transferred to the Pacific Theatre to help destroy Japan; a British carrier was part of the Allied attack in July.

Some 150,000 American troops were sent to the Pacific Theatre when Germany surrendered; the idea was to get ready to launch an invasion of Japan on November 1. But that was not necessary after President Truman authorized the use of the atomic bomb on August 6 (Hiroshima) and on August 9 on Nagasaki. The bombs would not have been necessary if Japan had agreed to surrender after the Potsdam Declaration in July, 1945, demanded that Japan surrender "promptly" (Coakley, 526).

The Aftermath

By the end of the war, what Japan had started with its stunning, brilliantly executed attack on Pearl Harbor, the Allies succeeded in ending in a cloud of radioactive smoke and a hideously toxic device that killed hundreds of thousands of civilians in the two cities mentioned in the paragraph above. Coakley writes (527) that the "…great arbiter of the Pacific war had been American industrial power, which produced a mighty war machine." The Japanese had figured that the vastness of the Pacific Ocean would be to their defensive advantage, however American technology and industrial might built fast carriers and destroyers that could carry the war "…deep into Japanese territory" (Coakley, 527).

Coakley calls the U.S. Pacific Fleet one of the "…greatest logistical developments of the war" and he alludes to the development and employment of amphibious assault techniques" a very important component of the victory over Japan.

In conclusion, the ability of Americans to "produce war goods" and the fact that Japan only had 10% of America's economic might and that Japan was "…very short of basic and vital minerals especially iron and oil" gave a tremendous advantage to the U.S. (History Learning Site). Moreover, American submarines targeted Japanese merchant ships that had been transporting goods from the mainland in Asia to Japan; indeed, American submarines sank about "…55% of the 8.9 million tons of shipping" that Japan depended upon for the war (History Learning Site). How could Japan actually believe they could win a war against America? That question will be asked in generations from now, but the answer isn't easy to present in any logical, reasonable way; chalk it up to fanaticism and arrogance, and the belief that the Japanese were superior people and hence superior fighters.