Determination vs. Complacency
7 DECEMBER 1941
DETERMINATION vs. COMPLACENCY
Japan emerged from the First World War as a bona fide naval power, a rival to US primacy in the Pacific. And as early as 1918, Imperial Defense Policy identified the United States as her foremost potential enemy. The mandates of the 1922 Washington Disarmament Conference caused further dissention; Japan (correctly) perceiving that the US-backed formula for capital warship limitation was structured to insure American parity, if not dominance in the Pacific. She reacted with a naval policy which acquiesced to US strength in numbers but emphasized ships of greater firepower. Imperial naval cadets were indoctrinated with hostility toward America. A decade later even the Japanese citizenry sensed the eventuality of war with the United States. It was not a surprise then, when Japan vacated the continuing arms limitation talks in 1936. The next year Japan began to solidify her western Pacific empire by inciting a war with China.
Meanwhile many US planners remained complacent, secure in a misplaced confidence in our strength and Japan’s weakness. Unruffled US attitudes are reflected even days before the Pearl Harbor attack:
“Nobody now fears that a Japanese fleet could deal an unexpected blow on our Pacific possessions…Radio makes surprise impossible.” Josephus Daniels, former Secretary of the Navy, 16 Oct 1922.
“War between Japan and the United States is not within the realm of reasonable possibility…A Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor is a strategic impossibility.” MAJ George Fielding Eliot, USA, military scientist, Sep 1938.
“The Hawaiian Islands are over-protected; the entire Japanese fleet and air force could not seriously threaten Oahu.” CAPT William T. Pulleston, Chief of Naval Intelligence, Aug 1941.
“No matter what happens, the U.S. Navy is not going to be caught napping.” Frank Knox, Secretary of the Navy, 4 Dec 1941.
“Well, don’t worry about it…it’s nothing.” LT Kermit Tyler, Ft. Shafter Duty Officer after being told the newly installed RADAR had picked up what appeared to be incoming aircraft, 7 Dec 1941.
Not until Japan invaded Indochina in July 1941 did we embargo oil and steel. Historians credit that oil embargo as the final impetus inciting Japan to strike at the US Fleet.
Continued tomorrow…
CAPT James Bloom, Ret.
Cerf, Christopher and Victor Navasky. The Experts Speak: The Definitive Compendium of Authoritative Misinformation. Pantheon Books, New York, NY, pp.115-16, 1984.
Fuchida, Mitsuo and Masatake Okumiya. Midway: The Battle that Doomed Japan. USNI Press, Annapolis, MD, pp. 25-32, 1955.
Prange, Gordon W. At Dawn We Slept: The Untold Story of Pearl Harbor. Penguin Books, New York, NY, pp. 3-8, 1981.
ADDITIONAL NOTES: The anti-American sentiments in Japan in the decades before WWII are well described in Fuchida’s book above. In fact, believing the United States to be her eventual enemy, Japan began in the 1920s to rotate the elite of her young naval officers through diplomatic or training duty in America. By the late 1930s, the Imperial Navy had a core of senior officers familiar with American traditions, attitudes, and motivations. Among these was Combined Fleet commander-in-chief ADM Isoroku Yamamoto, the architect of the Pearl Harbor attack.
Some historians have criticized the Pearl Harbor attack this day for failing to destroy the shore facilities and even for failing to invade the Hawaiian Islands. But Japan’s intentions were to impede the United States’ ability to intervene in the western Pacific long enough for Japan to secure an empire. They targeted what they perceived to be the center of gravity of our seapower, the ships of our US Fleet–not the Pearl Harbor base nor the Hawaiian Islands. Ironically, in the minds of US planners of that day our bases were the potential targets. The presence of a strong fleet in port, it was reasoned, would cause a would-be aggressor to think twice. Thus, following scheduled exercises in the Fall of 1941, the US Fleet normally homeported at San Pedro was held in Hawaii as a deterrent.
It could be argued that the Japanese assessment that our fleet was our center of gravity was flawed. The ships could be replaced, but the forward bases essential to their operation in the Philippines, Guam, Wake and Shanghai proved difficult and costly to recover.