At dawn we slept while the U.S. Navy’s Pacific Fleet, stationed at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, was poised to protect American interests in the Pacific Ocean as World War II raged through out Europe and London faced nightly bombings. The Japanese were saber rattling to be sure, but our threat was Adolph Hitler. On December 7, 1941, America slept on pins and needles wondering how soon it would be before we had no choice but to join the Allies effort. Diplomats scurried about engaging the Japanese while all the while cutting off oil and other goods, Japan depended on. Yes, it was half a world away, but Japan was advancing through out the Far East, and we weren’t paying attention. It was over there, way over there. How much of the U.S. population was still east of the Mississippi River, Americans just couldn’t perceive an Asian threat, and apparently those who should have known in the diplomatic, intelligence, and military operations didn’t either. While many look to the infamous “We have peace in our time” statement from British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain as proof the allies did not take Hitler seriously and essentially appeased him through a series of concessions, was not our working with the Japanese in the fall of 1941 the same thing?
As day broke on that December morn, the Hawaiian skies just northwest of Honolulu were swarming with Japanese over 350 aircraft. Stunned and confused, the United States Navy, supposedly the most powerful in the world, could barely respond. The scope of the damage was unimaginable. Entire runways of aircraft were wiped out, a total of 188 planes. Four battleships sank and four more seriously damaged. Three cruisers, three destroyers, and one minelayer were also impacted. Physical facilities at the base also sustained serious damage. Most damaging of all was the cost in American lives, 2,402 killed and 1,282 injured.
Without provocation and little warning, the United States of America were thrust into World War II initially unprepared for the conflict that followed. Years of isolationism and feeling secured by mighty oceans on either side, our government did not take national defense seriously as if the Monroe doctrine meant anything in the hands of tyrants in the 20th century.
The fight in the Pacific was particularly vicious. What happened to American servicemen who surrendered or were captured by the Japanese in the Philippines was especially cruel where torture, abuse, and starvation eclipsed the unthinkable. Many others were murdered. Through out the Pacific tales of the barbaric and sadistic behavior of the Japanese military was revealed. The Japanese introduced a new element to warfare, the kamikaze, suicide bombers where Japanese airmen would pilot aircraft loaded with explosives into American ships attempting to destroy them.
By 1945, the tide of war had shifted and clearly the allies were headed toward victory. Once Hitler had fallen that spring in Germany, the force of the world was on Japan and America’s technology had quickly become second to none. As the Asian mainland states and Pacific islands were liberated one by one, the task of vanquishing the fighting forces on the Japanese mainland would be a mission that could have drawn perhaps a million casualties if a D-Day style attack were attempted.
Less than four years from the Pearl Harbor invasion, on August 6, 1945 on Hiroshima and August 9, 1945 on Nagasaki, the United States dropped single atom bombs on these two Japanese cities creating such widespread death and damage that six days later on August 15th, the Japanese surrendered.
While so much focus extends to the drastic and horrible measures the United States undertook to end World War Two, to chastise President Harry Truman’s decision to resort to such overwhelming destruction to promptly finish the war cannot be separated from the context that created the need in the first place.
The Japanese horrors extended far beyond their attack on the Hawaiian naval base. The Philippines, mainland China, Southeast Asia, Korea, New Guinea and through out the South Pacific endured some of the most barbaric warfare at the hands of the Japanese. Any attempt to create a sense of moral equivalency between what the Japanese did in their conquest of the Pacific Ocean and what the United States felt compelled to do to end the war simply misses the point.
Now, for decades the Japanese have been one of the United States’ strongest allies. The Japanese and American economies have worked together for years developing powerful corporations marketing billions of dollars in valuable products every year. The Japanese are a well educated, productive, peace loving people. Their history as a people is generally that of a noble society.
How could a nation become so easily taken in by the desires of such a genocidal imperialistic government is hard to comprehend. Many parallels between the worst of Imperial Japan and radical Islam today are hard to avoid.
That our country does not take the threats of Global Terrorism seriously showed us so helpless and unprepared on September 11, 2001 just as we were not prepared for the morning of December 7, 1941. In both cases, WAR CHOSE US, WE DID NOT CHOSE WAR.
The “great” generation made tremendous sacrifice knowing nothing short of absolute victory, the total defeat of the Axis powers could ever be acceptable. They fought selflessly with commitment and love for community and country until the ultimate goal was achieved. In the wake of all that has happened in the last eight plus years in response to our new enemy, how can we not seriously doubt today’s Americans’ resolve to be absolute victors over the forces of terrorism?
Rest assured, the war on terror is far from over. In fact, it might have only just started despite two wars, Iraq and Afghanistan. We can also be certain that there will be future attacks when we least expect them how we least expect them. It’s hard not to believe the next one, if played out according to plan, will deal us a far worse blow than our new millennium’s “Day of Infamy.”
In the meantime, we still have the wisdom of survivors from World War II, our fathers and uncles who served in the military and the countless efforts of those who remained behind to support the war effort. Nature not war is taking thousands of them from us each day. Let us use the remembrance of the tragedy of Pearl Harbor to remind us to benefit from their wisdom in the little time we have left to appreciate that their sacrifices made our world possible.
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