Pearl Harbor

Perhaps once or twice in a century, a nation undergoes an event so unexpected, so shocking, so traumatic that the event becomes a turning point in history. One such event was the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941. In the perspective of history, the span of sixty-plus years is only a flash, but it is a long time in the life of an individual. Those people who remember Pearl Harbor as a direct experience have reached senior-citizen status, yet the subject continues to fascinate them and their descendants. Why?

No doubt one reason is the irrational but undeniable glamour of defeat; the people of the United States are winners, but they remember and sympathize with their losers. Another reason is the puzzle aspect. The merciful years have erased much of the pain and anger, but the subject remains an eternal doublecrostic puzzle in which the clues help fill in the story, and the story helps provide the clues. However, instead of clarifying the subject, the years have compounded it.

How could it have happened? How could the Japanese have sailed more than 4,800 kilometers across the Pacific without being seen? How could they have developed a torpedo that would not sink in the mud of Pearl Harbor (which was less than 10 meters deep)? How could they have developed a bomb weighing 780 kilograms that would penetrate the deck of a battleship? How could they have refueled three times in the cold northern Pacific on the way to their target? How could they have avoided air detection when they came within 400 kilometers of their target? How could the Japanese have caught the U.S. fleet napping at Pearl Harbor, the Gibraltar of Asia, and sink or damage 8 battleships, kill more than 2,400 men, wound 1,178, destroy almost 300 aircraft and damage another 128 but not get caught? Their losses were only 29 aircraft, 129 men, 1 major submarine, and 5 midget submarines.

Where were the U.S. carriers? What about radar? How much did President Franklin D. Roosevelt know? What about the Japanese submarines caught in the harbor? Was there a third wave? Why did the Japanese not finish off the U.S. fleet when they could have? How about the breaking of the Japanese code? Could it happen again? These and other questions are still being asked and studied more than six decades later.

The myth that still exists today sprang from these questions: that the Japanese could not have bombed Pearl Harbor without outside help; that leaders in Washington had access to the Japanese secret code and, led by President Roosevelt, knew about the impending attack but allowed it to happen because they needed an excuse to get the Unites States into World War II.

However, none of that myth has ever been proven, and the debate continues. After more than sixty years, most historians have concluded that Japan's success was due to its excellent leadership and that the U.S. failures were due to poor leadership. The Japanese were simply better at the operational level.

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