December 7, 1941: Japan Uses Element of Surprise

World War II began without warning for the United States on December 7, 1941.  A surprise attack from the Empire of Japan started the war during a beautiful Sunday morning on the Hawaiian island of Oahu, the home of the U.S. Pacific Fleet in Pearl Harbor.

A clear sky with a warm day looming made it promising to spend time outside on a golf course or a tennis court.  Instead of providing for a day of leisure, the weather gave perfect conditions for a flight of fighter airplanes to find their way from an aircraft carrier hundreds of miles off shore.

Minutes before 8 a.m., Japanese fighter planes began dropping specially designed torpedoes into the harbor. The torpedoes were set to run only 35 feet deep to be effective in the shallow water.  Delivered with deadly accuracy, the underwater, powered bombs were fired from the first wave of 83 aircraft sent from one of six aircraft carriers.

An armada of 30 warships including the carriers traveled undetected for thousands of miles from the Land of the Rising Sun.  An attack force of 423 fighter/bomber planes rested on top of the carriers and remained undetected during the attack that lasted less than two hours. The fighters had to fly almost 90 minutes from the carriers to reach Pearl Harbor.

The element of surprise worked perfectly for the Japanese. Their fighters were able to cross several miles of ocean, follow the terrain of the island and find the harbor without any resistance from the Americans.

Ironically, one Army private saw the first wave of planes crossing Oahu. He and another soldier were manning a remote radar station. It was used to give advanced warning to the U.S. Fleet of possible enemy planes. When he saw the large flight of planes on the radar screen, he called in the sighting. The radar intelligence office instructed the soldier to ignore them. The radar blips, the officer said, were a flight of B-17 bombers that were expected to fly into Hawaii that morning.

Eight U.S. battleships were stationed in the harbor.  All of them were damaged by torpedoes.  The Arizona and the Oklahoma were destroyed.  Six battleships eventually returned to service after repairs.

The Arizona sank with 1,000 men on board. A memorial of a white concrete and steel structure spans the hull of the sunken ship. It was dedicated on May 30, 1962, to honor the Americans who died in the attacks in 1941.

More than 180 American aircraft were destroyed. Few American planes left the ground. Clustered in tight groups on the airfield, they were sitting ducks for Japanese bombs and machine guns.

The second wave of planes left the attacking carriers with the intent of damaging other ships and shipyard facilities.  Storage tanks holding thousands of gallons of fuel were targeted by the invading planes, but the precious gasoline was not destroyed.

The prime targets wanted by the Japanese consisted of the three Pacific Fleet carriers—the Lexington, Enterprise and Saratoga.  Fortunately, the U.S. aircraft carriers were on maneuvers, many miles from Pearl Harbor. They were safe from the invasion.

By 9:45 a.m., the Japanese inflicted enough damage to cripple the U.S. fleet.  The attackers’ original plan was to send in a third wave of planes to finish off the remaining equipment and the vital fuel supply on Pearl Harbor. The Japanese admirals argued about continuing the attack, because they didn’t know how close the missing American aircraft carriers were to Hawaii. The Japanese had plenty of airplanes and ammunition to complete the attack against the U.S., but the admirals made a mistake in leaving without finishing the job.

The United States government and the government of Great Britain declared war against Imperial Japan the next day.  On December 8, 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt made the announcement to a joint session of Congress that the United States was going to war. 

The war would surely have lasted longer if the Japanese had taken their element of surprise to the next level and wiped out Pearl Harbor. Most historians agree that the end of the war would have taken longer but still have the same results even if the attack on Pearl Harbor had been more destructive.

One leader of the Japanese Navy, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, was the main officer in the attack on Pearl Harbor.  While the armada retreated from American waters he described the situation best in facing the United States entering the new war:

“I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.”

Thank you for reading this blog. Visit this site again in December for another interesting subject. Look for my website, www.joevlatino.com, for information about my book “The Device.” A sample short story can be read there.