Japanese Attack on Pearl Harbor

The rising sun, Japan's ensign, appeared over Pearl Harbor on the wings of hostile aircraft on the morning of December 7, 1941, and bombing with devastating precision, the enemy proceeded to cripple the U.S. battle fleet, damage the base, and kill 2,403 Americans.

The attack can never be adequately explained, because it was an irrational response to a miscalculated provocation--or, more accurately, a series of provocations. The first step in the long process which ended that disastrous Sunday had been taken nearly two years earlier when Congress, at the urging of Senator Arthur H. Vandenburg, ended the U.S.-Japanese trade agreement of 1911. Secretary of State Cordell Hull then informed Tokyo that future trade between the two nations would be on a day-to-day basis. This not only put the United States in a position of challenging a great power, but also it opened the way to a chain of diplomatic moves which made the Japanese nervous, and deprived them of vital imports, including toward the end, the lifeblood of their armed forces--oil (Jensen 12-21).

All that is clear now. It was not so obvious at the time. The administration was too busy following developments on the Atlantic to give the Pacific more than a

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which stated that negotiations with the Japanese had come to a standstill. He was told that hostile activities might ensue, and that subversive activities were to be expected. Short concluded that this was a reference to Japanese civilians on Oahu. Therefore he ordered all aircraft lined up in the middle of their fields, wing tip to wing tip--where they could be instantly destroyed by enemy warplanes. He and Admiral Husband E. Kimmel, Hawaii's naval commander, decided not to execute a war plan. Put on constant alert, they felt, the men would become exhausted. In fact, officers and men were given their customary Saturday evening liberty. No special guards were mounted on the U.S. Pacific Fleet--94 ships, including eight battleships and nine cruisers--the only force-in-being which could prevent further Japanese invasions (Chiles 174-204). All this is baffling. Short and Kimmel later testified that neither had considered an attack on Pearl Harbor a possibility. Yet it is difficult to think of many moves in military history which had been predicted more often. Confronting one another across the Pacific, each nation had long pondered the strategy of a surprise raid on the base. The U.S. naval maneuvers around Pearl Harbor
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Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)

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