No, Pearl Harbor is not ancient
history. It’s part of my history and many others who were alive at the time. I
was just an infant, but the Japanese sneak attack on our Hawaii naval base led
to early memories of being on trains filled with young soldiers, many of whom
did not live to return home.
The attack was on December 7, 1941
and a day later in a speech to Congress, Franklin Delano Roosevelt called it a
“date that will live in infamy.” War was declared on Japan and on Germany. Four
years later both enemy nations were conquered, largely due to America’s
capacity to gear up to provide everything our armed forces needed. It was won,
too, because it was a war to protect freedom from authoritarian, anti-Democracy
enemies.
A new book, “Blinders, Blunders, and Wars: What America and China Can
Learn”, has been published by the Rand Corporation that describes
itself as a “research organization that develops solutions to public policy
challenges to make communities throughout the world safer and more secure,
health and more prosperous.” It was formed after World War II to connect
military planning with research and development decisions. It is an
independent, non-profit organization. The study looks at eight strategic
blunders.
As David C. Gompert, the lead author
of the book and senior fellow at Rand, said, “Leaders who blunder into war tend
to have unwarranted confidence in their ability to script the future and
control events. They favor information, analysis, and advisors that confirm
their beliefs over those that contradict them. In essence, blinders cause
blunders.”
While Americans are still debating
whether we should have gone to war in Iraq in 2003 or whether our troops should
have been withdrawn by 2011, the cold fact of Islamic aggression has seen
President Obama reintroduce and increase our “boots on the ground.” Enemies
cannot be ignored. At best they can be “contained” until, like the former
Soviet Union, they collapse or change in some fashion. Assuming, as our current
negotiations with Iran suggest, that they do not harbor extremely dangerous
intentions can be fatal.
The authors of the Rand study call
Japan’s decision to bomb Pearl Harbor “a blunder of the highest order.” It
followed a succession of decisions the Japanese leadership, largely military,
had made to invade China and southern Indonesia in the quest to secure the oil
and raw materials it needed for its industrial sector. They saw themselves as a
people superior to others in Asia and the world. As Herbert Feis, the author of
“The Road to Pearl Harbor” wrote, “The Japanese people came to believe that the
extension of their control over this vast region was both natural and
destined.”
World War II had its roots in the
sanctions meted out to Japan and Germany after World War I. In Japan’s case,
its invasion of Manchuria in 1931 and China in 1937 put the U.S. on guard and
produced sanctions that included halting exports of scrap iron, steel, and
aviation fuel, as well as arms, ammunition, and critical raw materials. The
U.S. began to build up its naval forces as well. It was a good decision.
The attack on Pearl Harbor sealed
Japan’s fate. “On December 7, 1941, Yamamoto, commander of the carrier task
force north of Hawaii, order the attack. Two waves of Japanese aircraft, 353 in
total, damaged all eight battleships in Pearl Harbor. Four were sunk, two of
which were raised eventually. Six of the eight returned to service later in the
war.”
“Significantly, the three U.S.
aircraft carriers were at sea on routine maneuvers. No U.S. submarines were
destroyed. A third wave of attack was not ordered by Yamamoto due to fuel
shortage; consequently, facilities such as dry docks, ammunition dumps, power
stations, and fuel storage facilities were not destroyed…Despite the tragic
losses, Pearl Harbor and most of its fleet were able to recover fairly
quickly.”
The Japanese leaders had seriously
misunderstood Americans. “America instantly took a war footing. Six months
later, at Midway, Japan sought to finish off the American carriers. Instead,
aided by code breaking and some luck, planes from three U.S. carriers sank four
of the six Japanese carriers that had struck Pearl Harbor.”
The arrogance and miscalculations of
the Japanese leadership led to the loss of 2.3 million of their people, the
firebombing of its major cities, the invasion of Okinawa, and the destruction
of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by atomic bombs.
The Rand study has lessons for
America today. “Japan saw the United States as having weak will and capability.
The U.S. military had been allowed to deteriorate over a twenty-year period;
isolationism and neutrality reflected America’s interwar mood.”
Today, our military is as small or
smaller than it was at the beginning of World War II. A President elected on
the promise to remove our troops from Iraq and Afghanistan is having second
thoughts, but is emptying out our detention center in Guantanamo, returning its
inmates to the battlefield in the Middle East. After six years in office, he is
about to appoint his fourth Secretary of Defense.
We have been in a state of war with
Islamic fascists since even before September 11, 2001. They have even declared
themselves to be the Islamic State.
There have been three generations of
Americans born since the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 and that is time enough
for many of them to either never have learned or to have forgotten the lessons
of that event. The Obama administration has done everything in its power to
deflect any anger toward the Muslim fanatics killing people in the name of
their holy war. We are constantly warned against “Islamophobia.”
To avoid a sneak attack, you have to
know who your enemy is and why. Despite a previous attack on the World Trade
Center in 1993, we let down our guard. We cannot do that again for a very long
time to come.
© Alan Caruba, 2014
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Alan has a daily blog called Warning
Signs.
Alan can be reached at acaruba@aol.com
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