80 years ago, lots of lessons, lots of luck

Eighty years ago today--on December 7, 1941--carrier aircraft of the Japanese Imperial Navy staged a tactically brilliant surprise attack on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor.

Today, with virtually no American schools teaching real history--I wanted to explain that event to today's students, who would otherwise never learn anything from it.  Adults will be stunned that it's necessary to explain such basic things, but in my 35 years of working with college students I've found that they know virtually nothing about history after the Civil War.

It's said that those who fail to learn from the lessons of history are doomed to repeat it.

Few students today realize that when the Japanese attacked Pearl, the war in Europe--allies Germany and Italy against mainly British and a few French troops--had been raging for over two years.  The U.S. hadn't entered that war, and popular sentiment was against getting involved.

The attack on Pearl Harbor--which killed 2,300 Americans and sank or badly damaged *every one* of our battleships--changed that.  In a single day most Americans were mad as hell, ready to kick ass.  The president declared that "a state of war" now existed with Japan.

Adolf Hitler was delighted, because with America fighting Japan there would be less chance of the U.S. having weapons and ships to spare to enter the war in Europe.  But astonishingly, instead of saying nothing, or even sending honest condolences, Hitler made a huge mistake:  He declared war on the United States.

It's no exaggeration to say that the attack on Pearl would eventually lead to Hitler's defeat, as well as Japan's.

Had the Japanese not attacked Pearl Harbor, and simply consolidated its hold on oil-rich Indonesia and the rest of southeast Asia it would have been extremely hard for U.S. politicians to have persuaded the American public to support war against Japan.  But Japan, by far the biggest power in the region, was confident of its ability.  

This led the Japanese military to make a stunning mistake:  They believed that if they could sink much of the U.S. pacific fleet, the Americans wouldn't go to war but would instead lick their wounds and sue for peace.

The Sunday morning attack on Pearl Harbor was quickly followed with bombing and invasions of the Philippines and British-controlled Malaya, Singapore, and Hong Kong, and some Pacific Islands.  Within a day, Germany and Italy declared war on America, prompting the American president to push congress to declare war on those nations as well.

In other words, Pearl was the trigger that brought the U.S. into the fight, on two fronts, on opposite sides of the world.  We went from peace to a two-front war in four days.

For those not familiar with war, fighting on two fronts is usually a guaranteed loss.  Military men with any knowledge would try to avoid it.  But the wrenching newsreels of seven burning U.S. battleships at anchor made war with Japan unavoidable, and Hitler's declaration of war on the U.S. took away our option to sit out the war in Europe.

Years after the war some historians claim to have been mystified as to why Japan made what in hindsight turned out to be disastrous decision to attack the U.S.  But at the time, there were several reasons for the Japanese to believe the U.S. wouldn't retaliate.  First, the Japanese navy had more, larger and newer ships than the U.S., and far better carrier aircraft--a fact known to the American military.  

Japan's military also saw that after Hitler invaded western Europe in the fall of 1939, the U.S. hadn't intervened, in large part because newspapers were against it.  This understandably led the Japanese planners to believe the U.S. was unlikely to retaliate if they attacked.  In other words the *perception* that we wouldn't retaliate encouraged the attack.  

There's a huge lesson there.  And those who refuse to learn the lessons of history...

Again, the erroneous Japanese *perception* that the U.S. wouldn't retaliate encouraged Japan to attack.

Rounding out the list is that the Japanese--an ancient civilization that had mastered modern technology--believed they were a superior race.

Tokyo had no inkling that the anemic, Depression-era American economy was capable of rapid growth.  By 1944 the American gross natural product would outpace all five economies of the major combatants—Germany, Italy, Japan, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union—combined.

Of course today, having shipped most of our manufacturing overseas, it seems unlikely that we could duplicate that rapid expansion.

So at sunrise on a Sunday morning two waves of carrier-based torpedo and dive bombers sank five American battleships and seriously damaged four others.  At a time when the battleship was the most sophisticated, powerful war machine on the planet, this was devastating.

What saved us was that on that Sunday America's three Pacific fleet aircraft carriers based at Pearl—Enterprise, Lexington, and Saratoga—were at sea conducting training, so were untouched.  Just six months later Lexington’s dive bombers would help sink a Japanese carrier and damage others in the Battle of Coral Sea.  Enterprise and Saratoga would take part in several key battles and survive the war.

So by attacking Pearl the Japanese made an enemy of the one global power with the capability to defeat them.  And also got the U.S. to enter the war in Europe.

Had Japan ignored Pearl Harbor and the Philippines there would have been little likelihood of the United States going to war in either theater.

Admiral Yamamoto, the architect of the attack on Pearl Harbor, is often portrayed as an almost reluctant warrior who supposedly that the attack would "awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve."  But in fact Yamamoto himself pushed for the surprise Pearl Harbor attack, even threatening to resign if a skeptical General Tojo and Emperor Hirohito refused.

In sum, the attack on Pearl Harbor was a tactical masterpiece, but ultimately proved to be a strategic disaster for Japan.  But in fairness, no one would have believed that a relatively vulnerable and isolationist United States, still reeling from the Great Depression, would be able to fight simultaneously across the Pacific and in Europe, assembling a military of 12 million people.

It's worthwhile to ask if anyone thinks we could do the same thing today, no matter how grave the provocation.  To begin with, our total military now consists of 1,347,000 active-duty personnel.

When an adversary is considering whether to attack, his perception of our ability and willingness to retaliate is crucial.  It's a lesson nations learn at great cost.