That attitude changed after the events of December 7th, This is why Franklin D. Roosevelt obsessed over fine-tuning his response to the attack, writing three drafts of his speech before the next day. Making the Japanese attack appear random and unprovoked was an issue of extreme importance to Roosevelt and his government.
American officials sought to portray themselves as completely unaware, victims of an unpredictable act of Japanese violence. Historians Paul S. Roosevelt and a small circle of advisors had been following Japanese policy through radio intercepts. Incriminating coded messages had been translated by American cryptographers, and were delivered to the Secretary of State prior to the attack.
These factors serve as a reminder for individuals, and American citizens in particular, not to accept any given statement at face value. For an individual to benefit from the Historical discipline, they must be willing to acknowledge the bias present within every source, including their own country.
Koshu, Itabashi. Howard, Keith. London, Kennedy, Ross A. Accessed November 20, Mueller, John. Japanese soldiers creeping in front of wrecked Soviet armored cars, July Call it what you will, the effects of Nomonhan were dramatic. The Soviets had employed modern technology, tanks, aircraft, modern guns; the Japanese had a handful of tanks and little air power. Instead, they had relied on the superior morale and fighting spirit of their infantry.
We should beware of taking any of these Japanese claims too literally. The Soviets certainly took Japanese prisoners at Khalkhin-Gol. Indeed, such claims were a form of propaganda, designed by Japanese commanders and tailored to a force that they knew was lacking in modern weapons and equipment. With the northern strategy discredited, Japan eventually decided to turn south. Certainly, there was logic here. With the western powers tied down by their war versus Hitler, their Asian colonies were vulnerable.
Japan saw a huge, once-in-a-century opportunity to seize the resources it needed: rubber from French Indochina, tin from British Malaya; the vast oil fields of the Dutch East Indies. Japan would finally have what it needed to end the China War. Logical perhaps, but also the only real strategy left. Standing in the way of this new southern strategy was the US Navy, still getting settled into its new homeport in Pearl Harbor. Japanese strategic thinking ran something like this.
Open the war with a lightning blow against the Americans, knocking the US fleet out of the picture temporarily. With the United States licking its wounds, launch a vast campaign of conquest in the South Pacific, and fortify the new conquests against the inevitable US counterattack. No US President in his right mind, Japanese planners believed, would try to reconquer the entire Pacific Ocean, island by island. Losses would be too high, and at any rate, Americans lacked the stomach for such a long, drawn-out war.
They were too soft. The summer of was the critical time. The dictators were clearly on the march. The next month, the Japanese occupied the southern half of Indochina. It was a clear sign that they were aiming south, towards the western colonies in Asia. He froze all Japanese assets in the United States, a bold step that made it nearly impossible for Japan to purchase the most precious natural resource of all: oil.
Prosecuting the war in China would be impossible. In October , a new Prime Minister came to power. Hideki Tojo was already the War Minister, and his appointment as political leader made it clear that military concerns would now be uppermost in Japanese considerations. While their military prepared for war, however, the Japanese also opened talks with Washington. The positions of the two countries were diametrically opposed, however, too far apart to be smoothed over by diplomatic talk.
The crisis intensified. Japan saw the note as an ultimatum which it had no intention of obeying, and besides, it had already laid its plans.
In command was Admiral Chuichi Nagumo. His operational target: Pearl Harbor. Perhaps it was inevitable, this clash for mastery of the Pacific. The turn to terror in China—a substitute for having enough troops to patrol the countryside and protect supply lines during a difficult campaign—was a colossal example of blowback.
The Chinese people chose to die on their feet rather than live on their knees as slaves to Imperial Japan. And finally, taking on a country whose economy was nearly 10 times the size of your own is rarely a good idea in any universe. But Washington, too, had its share of misjudgments.
The first six months of the Pacific War showed that Americans, too, had their share of misconceptions about the Japanese enemy: that he was too short, too weak, and too nearsighted to stand up to modern combat on land, sea, and air.
War has a way of stripping bare a lot of silly ideas, and this war definitely did. Yamamoto was a very sentimental guy, a bit of a romanticist. He also was, at heart, a gambler. He liked to tell people that if he had another life, he would live in Monaco and play the gaming tables. He pushed the plan for Pearl Harbor against the objections of many within the Imperial Navy.
Kimmel was very much a disciplinarian, a by-the-book, laser-focused guy who tolerated no deviation from rules and regulations. He was obsessed with taking the offense as soon as war broke out, which in a way is a good thing. He wanted to go attack somebody. He wanted to use them for his grand offense as soon as the war broke out. Kimmel did not think a surprise attack was a possibility. Aircraft carriers were only about 20 years old as a weapon.
It was hard to imagine how much damage could be inflicted if planes suddenly arrived from the sea, because that had never happened before.
Nobody had put together a fleet with so many aircraft carriers at one time as the Japanese did on December 7. We have to remember that in that day and age there were no satellites peering down, revealing all. So when the Japanese set sail on November 26, , we did not know that. In their journey 3, miles across the Pacific, they never encountered a commercial ship, a search plane, a warship, and were never seen from above. It was the essential ingredient of their plan. They had to achieve surprise.
We can have a Pearl Harbor these days, but it will be pulled off by independent actors, such as on September 11, And those kinds of surprise attacks will probably always occur. I would offer this difference. As soon as the attack became news in , Americans knew they were immediately in the midst of a giant world war and that their sons, brothers, husbands, and fathers were going to be going off to war in faraway places.
America had been sitting out the war while France, Britain, Russia, and others were at war with Germany. Pearl Harbor changed that overnight. One of the most remarkable things about Pearl Harbor is that the nature and scope of the attack were exactly forecast only a few months before it happened by an admiral and a general. The admiral was on Oahu in the days before the attack. That may be happening right now because we cannot find the location of most of the Japanese aircraft carriers.
He was ignorant—until the bombs started falling. Simon Worrall curates Book Talk. Follow him on Twitter or at simonworrallauthor. All rights reserved. Share Tweet Email.
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