Innholdsfortegnelse for The Story of Pearl Harbor i History of War

War in Europe had been coming for some time. Throughout the 1930s, the Nazi Party, led by Adolf Hitler, had come to control Germany ever more tightly, and the country’s ambitions were being laid bare with the remilitarisation of the Rhineland, the incorporation of Austria (Anschluss) and the partition of Czechoslovakia. Britain was certainly aware of the potential consequences as Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain sought an agreement with Hitler, prematurely declaring “peace for our time” on 30 September 1938. The United States, however, was officially neutral. It had chosen a path of isolationism, with American politicians loathe to directly intervene. World War I had proven costly for America and the despair of the Great Depression, which had begun in 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s, was all too fresh…

Pearl Harbor will always be remembered for the events of 1941, but its history stretches back many decades before that fateful and devastating turning point. Indeed, you could go back to Captain James Cook, who was the first Westerner to set eyes on the island of Oahu, Hawaii, when he visited the region in 1778. But way before his explorations, native Hawaiians knew the area as Pu’uloa, which means ‘long hill’, and the area was steeped in legend. Oahu, and the bay especially, was said to have been home to two protective sharks: Ka’ahupahau and her brother Kahi’uka. They sought to protect the island, with Pu’uloa believed to be the scene of one of the most fierce battles. It involved heroic Ka’ahupahau turning herself into a net to capture a…

“THE RISE OR FALL OF THE EMPIRE DEPENDS ON THIS BATTLE. EVERYONE WILL DO HIS DUTY TO THE UTMOST”– ADMIRAL ISOROKU YAMAMOTO, COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF OF THE COMBINED FLEET Just before sunrise on Sunday 7 December 1941, six aircraft carriers of the Imperial Japanese Navy’s First Air Fleet under the command of Vice Admiral Chuichi Nagumo turned into the wind, ready to launch a powerful striking force of 353 aircraft. Nagumo’s flagship, Akagi, and her consorts, Kaga, Soryu, Hiryu, Shokaku and Zuikaku, set in motion the marauding strike force that would plunge the Pacific into World War II. Its target was the US Navy’s Pacific Fleet, which was anchored at Pearl Harbor on the island of Oahu in the territory of Hawaii. Other US Navy and Army installations on the island, Hickam…

The British Royal Navy pioneered many aspects of the development of naval aviation in the early 20th century and Japanese naval observers also recognised its potential. Intent on emulating the Royal Navy’s successes, the Japanese received a British mission headed by Captain William Sempill in the autumn of 1921. Sempill led 29 air operations instructors charged with assisting the development of the Japanese naval aviation program. By 1922, the Japanese had also constructed the Hosho, the world’s first aircraft carrier purpose-built, rather than converted from another ship type. Sempill, who was later exposed as a spy for the Japanese, hoped to secure substantial sales of British arms to Japan in exchange for valuable expertise and advice. His team brought the blueprints of the most advanced British carrier designs, protocols involving…

FIRST ATTACK 49 HIGH-LEVEL BOMBERS 51 DIVE-BOMBERS 40 TORPEDO BOMBERS 43 FIGHTERS SECOND ATTACK 54 HIGH-LEVEL BOMBERS 78 DIVE-BOMBERS 36 FIGHTERS PEARL HARBOR AICHI D3A ‘VAL’ DIVE BOMBER Of the 441 aircraft in Japan’s task force, 153 were ‘Val’ dive-bombers. Thought to be obsolete by the Allies, they were used to devastating effect at Pearl Harbor. With a 250-kilogram bomb strapped to its fuselage, the Val went on to sink more Allied warships than any other Axis aircraft during the entire conflict. NAKAJIMA B5N ‘KATE’ TORPEDO BOMBER In 1941, the ‘Kate’ was considered the best carrier-borne torpedo bomber in the world. Dubbed Kate by the Allies who identified Japanese aircraft with Western-sounding names, there were 162 of them on the raid. Armed with an 800-kilogram torpedo or 250-kilogram bomb, Kate…

The day after Japan had attacked the US at Pearl Harbor, the nation once again found itself reluctantly drawn into a global war. President Roosevelt addressed both the House and the Senate, telling them that while relations between the two Pacific nations had once been positive, now was the time to act against their aggressors, because US interests were in peril. “Japan has, therefore, undertaken a surprise offensive extending throughout the Pacific area,” he said. Claiming that he had the bulk of public opinion behind him, Roosevelt went on to assure the government that “the American people in their righteous might will win through to absolute victory”. War was officially declared on Japan half an hour after Roosevelt’s speech.…

At around 12pm on Saturday 6 December 1941, the Japanese Government in Tokyo instructed its ambassador to the USA, Kichisaburo Nomura, to stand by for a 14-part message. He was ordered to present it to the secretary of state at 1pm the following day, after which he was to destroy the coding machine the message was received on. Given that it was a weekend, Nomura’s Technical Support staff were away, so he and a fellow diplomat had to decode and transcribe the message themselves. The end result was a message that amounted to a Japanese declaration of war, and was delivered after the planned attack on Pearl Harbor, where more than 2,000 sailors were killed and 18 ships were destroyed. The delays in the delivery of the message meant all…

They expected a routine mission. Japanese planes owned the skies over China, but the pilots and crewmen who boarded the ten Mitsubishi Ki-21 twin-engine bombers on the morning of 20 December 1941, intended to cover the 300 air miles from their base at Hanoi to the Chinese city of Kunming, drop their incendiaries and 500-pound bombs, and return unscathed. There was no need for a fighter escort. For a decade the armed forces of Imperial Japan had been at war on the Asian continent. They staged the Mukden Incident in 1931 as a pretext to seizing the northern province of Manchuria from China, and another so-called ‘incident’ in 1937 at the Marco Polo Bridge, near the city of Peking, to escalate the simmering conflict into what became known as the…

On 5 May 1945, the Oregon pastor Archie Mitchell took his pregnant wife, Elsie, and a few local children (students from the local Sunday School) on a picnic outing. They came across a curious object, which turned out to be an unexploded Japanese balloon bomb. Despite Archie’s calls to keep clear, Elsie and the children investigated, the bomb detonated, and six lives were lost. The US described the Japanese balloon project as “scattered and aimless”: it was a fair adjudication but this provided little consolation on Gearhart Mountain, outside the town of Bly on that sad spring day. 9,000 balloons were launched with perhaps 1,000 reaching American shores: they were being discovered in coastal waters by early November 1944 and had reached as far as Wyoming by the sixth of…

The April 1942 Doolittle Raid, conducted by a mere 16 medium bombers, did scant harm to Japan, but it achieved results far greater than the number of bombs it dropped would suggest. It overjoyed Roosevelt, who was eager to demonstrate that the United States was hitting back and hitting back hard. Coming just four months after the US Navy’s Pacific Fleet had been pummelled at Pearl Harbor, the mission boosted American morale after a long winter in which it seemed that everything had been going Japan’s way. The bombing mission also showed that the Empire of Japan was not invincible. It was among the Japanese themselves that the psychological shock of the raid was most profound. Senior Japanese military officers were mortified that the American airmen had slipped through their…

Japan entered World War II with the finest combat aircraft in Asia. The problem was that the USA could build more of its own fighters. Japanese planes also had weaker engines, less armour protection, and couldn’t match the altitude of US heavy bombers. For the Tokko Tai, however, the type of aircraft wasn’t always important. The plan, drawn up at Tachiarai Joint Service Flight School outside Chiran as well as in other nearby airfields, was to deploy as many Special Attack formations as possible. In 1945, there was still enough A6M Zeros left for use in kamikaze missions. Hundreds of the older A5M fighters were co-opted for the missions as well. Designed by the inventor and engineer Jiro Horikoshi in the late 1930s, the Zero was a lightweight marvel with…

As early as 1943, the Aeronautical Research Laboratory was tasked with developing a rocket-powered ‘flying bomb’. In or before August 1944, Warrant Officer Shoichi Ota told a befuddled Lieutenant Commander Tadanao Miki that in lieu of a guidance system, his team should just install a cockpit on the MXY7 Ohka, the primitive cruise missile they referred to as cherry blossom. The suggestion launched the Divine Thunder God Corps, the IJN’s newest elite unit and the original Tokko Tais. The Thunder Gods were supposed to steer their missile, which was packed with 2,600 pounds of explosive, to a target after being dropped in mid-air by a ‘mother ship’ – a bomber. There was precious little time to organise, train and equip the Thunder Gods for their deployment. The first batch of…

Only a peculiar madness could inspire the aspiration to carve up East Asia. For Japan’s generals and statesmen, however, this was imperative to create their world empire, even when it was totally unfeasible. How far within a hostile country could an army of occupation travel before it became bogged down? How many soldiers, bullets, tanks, ships and planes would it take? What about the untold millions to be checked by a permanent garrison? And what of the risk of sanctions, of Western interference? None of these quibbles seems to have shaken the Imperial Japanese Army’s resolve as it set about fulfilling an ancient dream, but where this dream originated is hard to discern. What historians now refer to as the Second Sino-Japanese War is commonly overshadowed by the events after…

Until the Japanese attack of 7 December 1941, the United States had declared a public policy of neutrality. Mindful of the First World War, which American troops had entered in April 1917 and suffered over 116,000 military deaths (from all causes), a growing call for isolationism resulted in strict laws being created to prevent involvement in any new conflict. The so-called Neutrality Acts of the 1930s severely curtailed American participation in any external conflicts. However, after the outbreak of European war in 1939, various political compromises were reached and aspects of the act repealed to allow the Lend-Lease supply of military equipment and aid to the Allies. The growing cooperation between the United States and Great Britain was further underlined during August 1941, when Churchill and Roosevelt signed what became…

The six Imperial Japanese Navy aircraft carriers and their escorting ships of the First Air Fleet departed the friendly waters of the Kurile Islands on 26 November 1941, sailing a northern route well away from standard merchant shipping lanes and maintaining strict radio silence. Rough seas and intermittent heavy rain cloaked the warships at times as they turned southeast towards a point 370 kilometres north of Oahu to launch the aerial strike force that devastated Pearl Harbor on 7 December.…

Although Chief Ordnanceman John William Finn was looking forward to a hard-earned Sunday off duty, he and his wife were stirred from their bed by the sound of machine guns. Amid the chaos, he leapt into his car and throttled towards Kaneohe Airfield. Boasting 15 years of service under his belt, Finn was responsible for Kaneohe’s machine guns, and rather than fearful, he was enraged by the attack. Defiantly, as he reached the hangars, he set up a pair of machine guns, a .30-cal and a .50-cal, in the middle of a parking ramp and began shooting furiously at the enemy planes – predominantly with the .50-cal. As sailors handed him a steady stream of ammunition, Finn unleashed endless rounds on the enemy, firing for two and a half hours,…

By 10am, the first Japanese aircraft began arriving back at their carriers, now lying just 300 kilometres north of Oahu, with the second wave of planes following closely behind. Despite insistent pleas from Commander Fushida – who had led the first wave – to launch the third part of the assault, Admiral Nagumo decided against it. Unsure of the location of the American aircraft carriers, he was unwilling to risk it for fear of being spotted and attacked from the air, so he withdrew. The Japanese fleet retreated back into the vast blue expanse from which it had appeared just hours earlier. On Hawaii, however, the local population were steeling themselves for an invasion as rumours of Japanese paratroop assaults and amphibious landings spread. At 12.30pm, the Honolulu Police Department…

If you were in the business of inflicting devastating blows on the Allies, of securing your homeland with a formidable territorial perimeter, and of seizing much-needed economic assets, then an attack on far-distant Hawaii did not quite fulfil all of your requirements. Targets closer to home also had to be considered. This is precisely what Japan did, often at the very moment when its forces were headed for Pearl Harbor. The campaign proved to be remarkably successful. GUAM AND WAKE Everyone knew what was likely to happen to Guam if Japan and the United States ever went to war. This isolated American outpost had suffered from neglect during the 1930s but it could still claim strategic value and Japan would be only too pleased to seize it if – let’s…

Japanese-American families arrive at Heart Mountain Relocation Center in Park County, Wyoming. In the wake of the attack on Pearl Harbor many Americans immediately became suspicious of the second-and third-generation Japanese-Americans living in the US, most of whom were located on the West Coast. Following a suggestion from Lieutenant General John L DeWitt, President Roosevelt ordered the internment of Japanese families residing in America. Between 19 February 1942 and 20 March 1946, between 110,000 and 122,000 Japanese-Americans were forcibly relocated and incarcerated in ten concentration camps. As a result, many children spent their first years within the confines of these encampments.…

American submarines enjoyed spectacular successes against Japanese merchant shipping, sinking over 1,300 vessels, totalling about 5.3 million tons. This prodigious achievement came despite early troubles with American torpedoes, whose defects were not resolved until late 1943. The noose that the submarines tightened around Japan reduced its imports of raw materials from more than 16 million tons in 1943 to just 10 million in 1944. By war’s end, the Japanese merchant navy was a pale shadow of its former self. The sinkings by US Navy subs, together with the hammer blows being delivered by American B-29 bombers, brought the Japanese economy to the brink of collapse. American submariners’ successes came not only against Japan’s merchantmen. They also scored some impressive victories over Japanese warships, including Shinano, Japan’s newest aircraft carrier. The…

For thousands of American sailors and pilots, thwarting the incoming kamikaze was a living nightmare. Surviving the experience naturally inspired a curious regard for the Japanese who seemed so eager to vanquish them. Soon after the war’s end, a story ran in Yank, the US Army’s weekly news magazine, about the experiences of a genuine kamikaze pilot. Contrasting the often one-dimensional and racist depiction of Japanese servicemen, the profile of Norio Okamoto tackles its subject matter with a little humour. Okamoto fit the profile for a Tokko Tai candidate. A 23-year-old flight instructor wanting to avenge a brother killed on Formosa, he volunteered with grim enthusiasm. Okamoto then revealed a rare courtesy extended to Tokko Tai pilots. Before their deployment, they were allowed to write a short letter home. He…

The attack on Pearl Harbor also produced the very first TV news bulletins. In 1941, TV broadcasting was in its infancy in America, with the number of televisions barely into the thousands. Most of these were in and around New York. At the time, there was only one station, WNBT, that broadcast on Sunday. The station’s schedule had a film, Millionaire Playboy, playing when news of the attack broke. Stopping the movie, the station announcer, Ray Forrest, announced the attack. Later on the same day, WNBT brought on experts to speak about what had happened, employing maps to show the viewers (however many of them there were) the location of events while a teletype machine in the studio relayed the latest news. The other New York station, WCBW, although not…

REAL TIMELINE 1895 Japan creates the puppet state of Manchukuo After the 1931 invasion of Manchuria, and believing that all of Asia should be unified under the rule of Emperor Hirohito, Japan creates a new state, Manchukuo, located in inner (Chinese) Mongolia. 15 September 1932 Japan creates the puppet state of Manchukuo After the 1931 invasion of Manchuria, and believing that all of Asia should be unified under the rule of Emperor Hirohito, Japan creates a new state, Manchukuo, located in inner (Chinese) Mongolia. 15 September 1932 REAL TIMELINE Pearl Harbor is struck A surprise attack on the naval base in Hawaii, an attempt to cripple the US Navy and halt supplies, gives the White House full public support to enter World War II – in Asia and Europe. 7…

Eager to secure their control over Manchuria, Japan’s militarist clique planned to invade the mainland and force Chiang Kai-shek from power. The first domino to fall would be Shanghai. The problem was the only Japanese forces stationed in Shanghai were a detachment of naval infantry, and sending more would arouse suspicion. There needed to be a reason for the arrival of Japanese troops. Taking their cue from the Mukden Incident and the outbreak of the Philippine-American War in 1899, it was decided that a single ambiguous crisis would launch the war. After Chinese sentries allegedly gunned down a lone Japanese officer in Shanghai, one clash led to another and by 13 August, thousands of Chinese and Japanese troops were already fighting within the city. Lasting for three months, from 13…

TRAINING By 1928, Chiang Kai-shek had unified the crumbling Chinese state with the massive National Revolutionary Army at his disposal. Millions strong, an elite corps of 300,000 officers and soldiers trained by German advisors were ready for a showdown with Japan by 1937. EFFECTIVENESS The most effective divisions of the Chinese army perished during the Second Battle for Shanghai in 1937. Others became bogged down suppressing the communists in the interior provinces. If the Chinese had one advantage, it was sheer manpower. The record of the Republic of China’s armed forces is an ignominious one. Though successful in almost quashing the nascent communists, it was completely ineffective against the IJA. Even when Chinese generals were often very competent, their loyalties and motivations were highly questionable. STRUCTURE This depended wholly on…

During 1940, Churchill’s government ordered 60 Ocean-class merchant ships from American shipyards to help replace those lost to U-boats. Cheap and quick to construct, the first was launched during August 1941. Inspired by the relatively simplistic model, American designers improved the engine and replaced riveted construction with more cost-effective welding. They also instituted the prefabrication of sections that could be transported by rail across the United States and then welded together to form a complete vessel, in the style of assembly-line construction. These American ships were designated Type EC2-S-C1, the ‘EC’ standing for ‘Emergency Cargo’, as they were considered a stopgap measure to produce large numbers of replaceable ships. Roughly standardised to a displacement of approximately 10,000 tons, the first of the EC ships was SS Patrick Henry, which hit…

During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the island nation of Japan undergoes a swift transformation from a feudal society to an industrialised military and economic power. Its burgeoning ambitions to achieve hegemony in Asia and the Pacific, fuelled in part by the need to obtain natural resources for its military machine and arable land to feed a growing population, place the country on a collision course with American and European interests in the Far East. Sporadically at war with China since 1931, the Japanese Army controls the province of Manchuria and other Chinese lands. By 1941, France capitulates to Nazi Germany, and Japanese troops occupy French Indochina, placing them perilously close to the oil fields and other natural resources of the Dutch East Indies. President Franklin Roosevelt orders…

MITSUBISHI A6M ZERO FIGHTER For a time, the Mitsubishi Zero reigned supreme as the finest carrier-based fighter aircraft in the Pacific. Developed in the 1930s, it was already reputed as a highly manoeuvrable, heavily armed and deadly opponent by the time of the Pearl Harbor attack. However, the Zero was also vulnerable. Its design sacrificed armour and self-sealing gasoline tanks to achieve remarkable performance. MIDGET SUBMARINE Two-man Japanese midget submarines were developed to provide stealthy offensive capability. Amid cramped quarters, crewmen manoeuvred their craft, armed with a pair of torpedoes, into position to fire on enemy ships. At Pearl Harbor, all five midget submarines were lost. One was captured intact after it beached and its commander became the first prisoner of the Americans during World War II. AIRCRAFT CARRIERS At…

Reckoning that America would not have the resolve to wage a protracted and bloody war thousands of miles from home, Japan took a huge gamble by launching its surprise aerial attack on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941. However, the plan was not without its detractors, with many senior Japanese commanders wary of risking so much so far from home. Ultimately, the decision to strike the United States would have horrific consequences for Japan, with over 2.5 million military losses and upwards of 1 million civilians killed.…

IN NUMBERS 3,581 Number of US casualties at Pearl Harbor 68 civilians were killed in the raid 347 US aircraft were destroyed or damaged during the raid 29 Japanese planes were destroyed in the attack 32 out of the 461 sailors trapped in the hull of the capsized Oklahoma were saved 1 Just one Japanese prisoner was taken The attack lasted 90 minutes 19 US warships and auxiliary ships were destroyed or damaged during the attacks 5 Japanese mini-subs also participated in the attack. Four were destroyed and one captured…

When the nurses at Sternberg Hospital, Manila, were woken from their slumbers by the shocking news of Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, they knew what was coming next. Sure enough, the bombs began to fall on the capital city within ten hours and the casualties – both military and civilian – flooded in. It would be 10 December, in the wake of the destruction of the Cavite naval base, that would prove to be a particularly harrowing day. There was little time for triage and nurses handed out medicine without time to consult doctors. “It was a shocking scene,” Dorothy Danner recalled, while Peggy Nash was always haunted by the memory of an injured child asking for a glass of water: “By the time I got back, he was dead.…

There was a name for them. Under a law passed in 1798, immigrants from Japan, Germany and Italy became ‘alien enemies’ following the United States’ declaration of war against those countries. The Alien Enemies Act gives the president the power to deport or imprison the citizens of countries with which the United States finds itself at war. The question that faced President Roosevelt in the early months of 1942 was how far he should exercise this power. It was a question that had arisen 25 years earlier, when the United States entered World War I. In the 19th and early 20th centuries there had been over 1,000 German-language newspapers in America, but, faced with a stark question of loyalty in the wake of America’s entry into World War I, the…

In March 1942, the readership of Life magazine was treated to a digest of ways in which the Axis powers might launch an invasion of the United States. It was only a few months since the attack on Pearl Harbor and the Japanese had already made excellent progress in the Pacific theatre, so American paranoia was running high. In one scenario, Life explained, the Germans would storm across the Atlantic while the Japanese fleet would take a northerly route via Alaska and down the Canadian coast before striking at cities including Seattle, San Francisco and Los Angeles. It was predicted that obliging fifth-columnists inside the USA would rally to the Axis cause and carnage would ensue. Other theories suggested that the Japanese might opt for a route via Hawaii and…

They called it the Pacific War. Barely three years after the spectacular success at Pearl Harbor, the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) was on its last legs. From Midway to Palau, Japan suffered losses – carriers, cruisers, submarines, planes and men – that couldn’t be replaced even with the utmost effort to maximise industrial production. In the last quarter of 1944, any remaining hope for victory over the Allies was brutally quashed. On 12 October, US Army aircraft clashed with the Japanese planes stationed on Formosa, and more than 300 Japanese planes were lost, denying air cover for the garrisons in the Philippine Islands. The latest intel revealed that a vast American armada was steaming towards Leyte Gulf unopposed. There weren’t enough combat aircraft to block an amphibious landing, and it…

What would have happened if Japan had not struck Pearl Harbor? History would have turned out very differently. For a start, it would mean Japan was not going to expand its empire into Southeast Asia – because that is what provoked Pearl Harbor. Instead, they would have been concentrating their war efforts solely in China, which was a conflict that began in 1937. Now, China proved to be more than Japan could chew in diplomatic and military terms. Plus, the USA had its own interests in China and that was what, ultimately, set them to war with Japan. The USA had imposed a trade and financial embargo against Japan. As a result, Japanese financial assets in the USA had been frozen and they did not have the means to buy…

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