The Attack on Pearl Harbor

The Attack on Pearl Harbor

Prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor, Japan had already suffered with numerous sanctions being placed on them by the Americans and the British. This was due to their expansion into the rest of Asia and French Indochina, which was seen as highly aggressive. The biggest sanction for Japan came when Britain and America cut off exporting their oil supplies, which immediately threw Japan into a crisis. Considering that 90% of their oil supply was suddenly cut off, Japan had two options.

The first was to capitulate and agree to the demands of the Americans and the rest of the Allies, and rescind all the territories they had taken from the rest of Asia. This was generally considered an “Out of the question” kind of decision, and to do such a thing would’ve been considered extremely dishonorable.

The Second option was what happened historically. I need to interject and say I personally feel that Pearl Harbor was not a mistake. It was probably the best option the Japanese had at the time. The act of attacking the Americans and drawing them into the war was the mistake.

Pearl Harbor was the best way for the Japanese to wage war against a country they couldn’t defeat. It must be noted that the Japanese were fully aware that they were never going to be able to defeat the Americans in an all out war.

The Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in the hopes that they would be able to avoid an all out war, and keep their military conquests. This primarily came from the sanctions that were placed on them, most notably the banning of oil exports that effectively crippled the nation.

The Japanese gambled on the hope that the attack on Pearl Harbor would’ve crippled the American fleet and forced the Americans to negotiate a peace agreement. This would’ve allowed the Japanese to keep their military conquests and maintain their expanded empire. It was also hoped that the attack would prevent American interference in the Pacific, and also give time for the Japanese to consolidate their naval power.

However, as we all know, the gamble didn’t pay off and the Attack on Pearl Harbor royally pissed off the Americans, which led to them entering the war and their eventual defeat of the Japanese.

The United States had excellent intelligence about Japan. It broke the “Purple” code that Japan used to communicate with its embassies. And it did this so well using electrical equipment that the Americans got to read Japan’s most secret documents before the Japanese did.

Thus they found out that somebody at the Japanese consulate in Honolulu was sending Japan detailed information about fleet movements in and out of Pearl Harbor.

On the theory that nobody was crazy enough to attack the “very strong” United States, the messages were ignored — as were messages from foreign intelligence agencies including that of Great Britain. They also ignored reports that small Japanese vessels seemed to be tailing American ships all over the Pacific.

To conduct the attack, the Japanese came up with an innovation that all the carrier navies would use in World War II; the carrier strike force.

At Taranto and other previous air operations, only one carrier was involved.

For the Hawaiian Operation (as the Japanese called the Pearl Harbor attack) the Imperial Navy massed six carriers, the biggest air striking force it ever used against one target.

It was called the First Air Fleet. It included other fleet units because the Japanese prepared for the US Pacific Fleet to sail out of Pearl Harbor. So there were also battleships, cruisers and destroyers.

The Japanese First Air Fleet assembled at Hittokapu Bay in northern Japan and set sail for 

Hawaii on November 26, 1941.

During the twelve sailing days, Japan continued to negotiate with the United States. The idea was that it would be a complete surprise.

Only it wasn’t. The codebreakers in Washington could tell something was going on but couldn’t pinpoint it. They sent a “war warning” to Admiral Kimmel, who promptly sent his three aircraft carriers out to look for a Japanese fleet.

However, they looked west of Hawaii. The Japanese fleet approached from the north. It ran in just long enough to launch and later retrieve all of the strike aircraft, then departed swiftly.

The surprise to the ships in the harbor was complete. Instead of being on a full alert, they were in a kind of lazy Sunday mode when the Japanese struck in two waves around 8 AM local time. There were fighters who mostly shot out Army Air Force planes on the ground at the air bases. There were torpedo bombers. Some were armed with special torpedoes designed to run at shallow depth in the harbor. The rest were armed with bombs made from naval armor piercing heavy artillery shells, dropped from a high enough altitude to penetrate the decks of whatever ships they hit.

The effects were devastating. The harbor held the US Navy’s largest concentration of battleships, which were thought to be the most important warships of the day. Out of eight, two never sailed again and three were seriously damaged. Three more were lightly damaged, but even they sustained casualties. The attack also damaged cruisers and destroyers. Most of the Army aircraft that were supposed to defend the fleet instead were completely destroyed on the ground with the Japanese strafing. Only a few got to fight.

Like many surprise airstrikes, this was an important tactical victory for Japan. For the United States, it was a humiliating and tragic defeat. However there were three silver linings. The depth of the defeat and its surprise enraged the American public much like 9/11 would almost sixty years later. The loss of battleships turned out to be less important than the deaths of 2403 servicemen and 1178 wounded.

don’t think the United States would have declared on war on Japan had it not attacked Pearl Harbor, the Philippines, Wake Island, and Guam on or about December 7, 1941, and limited its attack to British colonies in the Pacific and the Dutch East Indies.

Roosevelt would have probably cut diplomatic relations with Japan and threatened war due to their attacking the British colonies and the DEI, but the American public was far less enthusiastic about entering an Asian war than they were in entering an European war, and they dead set against intervening in Europe. The more I look at Pearl Harbor, the more I am convinced Japan did not have to attack Pearl Harbor.

However, the open question is would the United States entered the European war had Pearl Harbor not occurred and Hitler not first declared war on the U.S.?

There is, after all, the undeclared war around Iceland and Greenland. What would happen if a U-boat sunk the USS Yorktown, which was not transferred to the Pacific until after Pearl Harbor, or the battleships USS Texas or USS Mississippi?

Would that change American public opinion enough for Congress to declare war on Germany? What if Hitler does not respond to American military provocations and refuses to declare war on the United States?

Roosevelt was doing all he could to aid the British Empire, but, as President, the Constitution did not give him the authority to declare war on Germany. As long as there was a strong anti-war movement in the United States, a movement not only caused by a large German-American population, but also born of a long tradition of isolationism and very recent memories of World War I, FDR was not going to be able to drive the US fighting and kicking into a second European war.

However, with the forces so close in the North Atlantic, could a sinking of a carrier or battleship cause war? Or, would such a loss result in harsh criticism of FDR for putting Americans in harms way?

Unless something major happens that switches American public opinion towards intervening in Europe, the United States does not get involved in an European war.