80 years later: An Analysis of Pearl Harbor

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This article sums up the traditional view of Japan's failures at Pearl Harbor: not just the miss of the US carrier fleet, but the failure to attack fuel stores and repair facilities.

in my opinion the author is guilty of two misses. First: of relevance is Japan's desperation in late 1941 as a result of the Anglo-American embargos. Japan had to build an empire that could provide it with the resources it needed to self-sustain, and it had to do so in a hurry. Desperate times call for desperate measures, and Japan was in desperate straits in November of 1941.

Second, the author analyzes the attack on PH in strategic and tactical terms. I contend that this is a mistake. Whatever hopes the Japanese may have had of achieving a tactical advantage, I think a (if not the) primary aim was psychological - shock and awe - defeat by dispiritment. That doesn't change the fact that it was a colossal miscalculation - but I think the psychological misfire was far greater than the strategic. Japan DID in fact achieve the tactical victories it originally aimed for in the months afterward, and the element of surprise did succeed in overthrowing British and French power in the region. There was simply no way to account for an economic behemoth like the US, the likes of which had no historical precedent. They hoped that the shock of PH would cow the Americans into acquiescence (aided, incidentally, by some far-fetched notions of racial superiority over the white man).
 
My maternal grandfather was a Pearl Harbor survivor. He didn't talk about it much.

I understand that Japan's biggest mistake was its inability to fly all the way to the West Coast and bomb the Navy bases in either Long Beach or San Diego. Their inability to do that helped the US power up, so to speak, to get in the war in the Pacific quickly.
 
When you visit Pear Harbor, and I encourage you to do so, you will see for yourself how obvious and unprotected the fuel farm for the entire Pacific Fleet sat near the attack. The Japanese brass blundered by leaving it out of the mission objectives, but if just one Japanese pilot had the ability to improvise they could have taken the whole thing out with one bomb. But the Japanese culture wiped their soldiers clean of any ingenuity or improvisation. Such was good for kamikaze attacks, but bad for taking advantage of opportunities.
 
My maternal grandfather was a Pearl Harbor survivor. He didn't talk about it much.

I understand that Japan's biggest mistake was its inability to fly all the way to the West Coast and bomb the Navy bases in either Long Beach or San Diego. Their inability to do that helped the US power up, so to speak, to get in the war in the Pacific quickly.

That's interesting because many in the US viewed Pearl Harbor as the first step that would be followed by attacks on the west coast.

Here's an odd bit of history: Forest Service fire towers in the coast ranges (normally only manned during the summer) were staffed overwinter to watch for Japanese aircraft through perhaps 1942. In the end, the Japanese only managed to send a few incendiary devices onto the coast, though they did get a toehold in the Aleutians.
 

This article sums up the traditional view of Japan's failures at Pearl Harbor: not just the miss of the US carrier fleet, but the failure to attack fuel stores and repair facilities.

in my opinion the author is guilty of two misses. First: of relevance is Japan's desperation in late 1941 as a result of the Anglo-American embargos. Japan had to build an empire that could provide it with the resources it needed to self-sustain, and it had to do so in a hurry. Desperate times call for desperate measures, and Japan was in desperate straits in November of 1941.

Second, the author analyzes the attack on PH in strategic and tactical terms. I contend that this is a mistake. Whatever hopes the Japanese may have had of achieving a tactical advantage, I think a (if not the) primary aim was psychological - shock and awe - defeat by dispiritment. That doesn't change the fact that it was a colossal miscalculation - but I think the psychological misfire was far greater than the strategic. Japan DID in fact achieve the tactical victories it originally aimed for in the months afterward, and the element of surprise did succeed in overthrowing British and French power in the region. There was simply no way to account for an economic behemoth like the US, the likes of which had no historical precedent. They hoped that the shock of PH would cow the Americans into acquiescence (aided, incidentally, by some far-fetched notions of racial superiority over the white man).
I don't think you understand things from a military perspective. The author is correct to analyze things in both strategic and tactical terms because that is basically how militaries plan, though the US military adds a middle level: operational. (So in US planning there is Strategic, operational, and tactical.)

Psychological aims were part of the strategic vision of the Japanese. They figured that a crushing defeat delivered to the US would demoralize and further ensconce anti-involvement sentiment. Obviously they figured wrong! Instead, as has been famously noted, they did nothing but awaken a sleeping giant.

Thus it is common to note that tactically it was obviously a Japanese victory. Operationally, it was a draw - the carriers weren't hit and neither were the fuel and repair hubs... but strategically it was a big mistake to attack Pearl Harbor and thus their loss was almost ensured from the moment the first bomb impacted.
 
I don't think you understand things from a military perspective. The author is correct to analyze things in both strategic and tactical terms because that is basically how militaries plan, though the US military adds a middle level: operational. (So in US planning there is Strategic, operational, and tactical.)

Psychological aims were part of the strategic vision of the Japanese. They figured that a crushing defeat delivered to the US would demoralize and further ensconce anti-involvement sentiment. Obviously they figured wrong! Instead, as has been famously noted, they did nothing but awaken a sleeping giant.

Thus it is common to note that tactically it was obviously a Japanese victory. Operationally, it was a draw - the carriers weren't hit and neither were the fuel and repair hubs... but strategically it was a big mistake to attack Pearl Harbor and thus their loss was almost ensured from the moment the first bomb impacted.
The article refers to Pearl Harbor as strategic imbecility. I disagree. Japan was in a very unfavorable position and knew they needed some way to gain an advantage. So they gambled on an attempt to gain an edge, and gambled wrong. Once war with the US became inevitable Japan had no really great strategic options. If the war had started with the attacks on the Philippines and other Allied possessions in the west Pacific Japan would not have done better than they did in actuality, and I think they knew that eventually the Americans would overwhelm them in a straight fight.

The tactical mistakes were, I think, inexcusable and stupid. But the decision to attack Pearl Harbor, as a whole, makes some sense if you put yourself in Japanese shoes in November '41. They were facing imminent, and crippling, resource shortages. There was no way for them to gain an economic edge so they opted for psychological warfare. It might have worked, against another nation or in another time. It didn't in 1941.
 
That's interesting because many in the US viewed Pearl Harbor as the first step that would be followed by attacks on the west coast.

Here's an odd bit of history: Forest Service fire towers in the coast ranges (normally only manned during the summer) were staffed overwinter to watch for Japanese aircraft through perhaps 1942. In the end, the Japanese only managed to send a few incendiary devices onto the coast, though they did get a toehold in the Aleutians.

That's interesting, Jean, because we really didn't know what the Japanese were capable of that early in the war. So, using fire towers that way made sense at the time. After Pearl Harbor, my grandmother did not know whether her husband was dead or alive for a week or more. Eventually, he was allowed to send a telegram saying, "I am alright." He wanted to say "we," but was not allowed to, for security reasons. My grandmother had a friend down the block whose husband was also in the Navy at Pearl. One day, she called her friend on the phone and said, "I'm going on vacation to San Francisco. Would you like to come along?" That meant that both their husbands were coming home and docking in SF. My grandmother framed it that way on the phone because, again, no one knew, that early, if the Japanese were capable of tapping the phone lines. My grandmother's friend knew exactly what she meant, and the two of them left immediately, driving from Long Beach to San Francisco, a trip of about 400 miles on surface streets (no freeways yet!).
 
That's interesting, Jean, because we really didn't know what the Japanese were capable of that early in the war. So, using fire towers that way made sense at the time. After Pearl Harbor, my grandmother did not know whether her husband was dead or alive for a week or more. Eventually, he was allowed to send a telegram saying, "I am alright." He wanted to say "we," but was not allowed to, for security reasons. My grandmother had a friend down the block whose husband was also in the Navy at Pearl. One day, she called her friend on the phone and said, "I'm going on vacation to San Francisco. Would you like to come along?" That meant that both their husbands were coming home and docking in SF. My grandmother framed it that way on the phone because, again, no one knew, that early, if the Japanese were capable of tapping the phone lines. My grandmother's friend knew exactly what she meant, and the two of them left immediately, driving from Long Beach to San Francisco, a trip of about 400 miles on surface streets (no freeways yet!).
I always appreciate hearing real life stories of this sort!

It is interesting to me that on both coasts we took the Axis threat very seriously (lights-out orders on the eastern seaboard for instance), just because my generation doesn't ever think about that sort of thing. Ultimately any serious invasion attempt was far beyond the logistical capabilities of either Japan or Germany - I think Japan sent a couple of hot air balloons our way and some other stuff, and U-boats were spotted off of Florida and various other places. But ultimately the distance was just too great and once American began to gain an edge in the air and at sea it was just a question of timing. PH was the farthest Japan could stretch its arms. That said, had Japan destroyed the dry docks and torched the fuel facilities, I wonder what they could have done with the extra time that bought them.
 
I always appreciate hearing real life stories of this sort!

It is interesting to me that on both coasts we took the Axis threat very seriously (lights-out orders on the eastern seaboard for instance), just because my generation doesn't ever think about that sort of thing. Ultimately any serious invasion attempt was far beyond the logistical capabilities of either Japan or Germany - I think Japan sent a couple of hot air balloons our way and some other stuff, and U-boats were spotted off of Florida and various other places. But ultimately the distance was just too great and once American began to gain an edge in the air and at sea it was just a question of timing. PH was the farthest Japan could stretch its arms. That said, had Japan destroyed the dry docks and torched the fuel facilities, I wonder what they could have done with the extra time that bought them.
I appreciate these real-life stories too. My father spent many of the war years in Florida, and he recalled German navy activity and even flotsam showing up on the beaches. He felt the rest of the nation had no idea how closely the enemy was working.
 
I read recently James Bradley's book The China Mirage. It is a fascinating take by a son of one of the four Marines who lifted the flag on Iwo-Jima. In it, he argues that WWII was avoidable, as was the Korean War and the Vietnam War, if only we had understood China. We believed Chiang Kai-shek when he said China wanted to become Westernized and Christianized. As a result, the US had an entire organization of people dedicated to pro-China policies. Kai-shek was after money, really to fight Mao, not Japan (which is why we thought we were giving the money). As a result, we didn't really understand Japan, either. Roosevelt didn't want to go to war with Japan, which is why he was still selling oil to Japan. However, the committee that held the money to release to Japan to buy the oil was composed of pro-China folks, who decided to give Japan the run-around, contrary to Roosevelt's wishes (he had gone on vacation). As a result, the Japanese oil tankers sat in San Francisco for over a month with no oil forthcoming. The only other oil available was in the Dutch East Indies. In order to get that oil, Japan would have to take out the American navy. It was either that or back down from their pride-filled visions of grandeur. Since we didn't understand China, we didn't understand the somewhat different flavor of nationalistic communism that wound up being Mao's vision (as well as the Korean and Vietnamese versions). As a result, we thought they were bent on world domination at the time (though it must be admitted that they are now!). This is his argument. It is interesting to me, and in the main a compelling argument. However, I have also been reading Victor Hanson's history of WWII, and he has a rather different take on it, though I haven't seen his sources, so it is difficult to evaluate which of these two (or maybe some other) arguments best explains why Japan hit PH.
 
There was a great deal of misunderstanding in the beginning of the war. The French misunderstood the value of their incomplete Maginot line. The Allies misunderstood the indignation of the German people toward the conditions of the Armistice. The Japanese misunderstood American ingenuity as lack of discipline. The Russians, misunderstood Hitler's megalomania. Hitler misunderstood basic European military history. And everyone misunderstood the importance of Battleships in the age of aviation.

Churchill seemed to be the only one who actually knew what was going on.
 
There was a great deal of misunderstanding in the beginning of the war. The French misunderstood the value of their incomplete Maginot line. The Allies misunderstood the indignation of the German people toward the conditions of the Armistice. The Japanese misunderstood American ingenuity as lack of discipline. The Russians, misunderstood Hitler's megalomania. Hitler misunderstood basic European military history. And everyone misunderstood the importance of Battleships in the age of aviation.

Churchill seemed to be the only one who actually knew what was going on.
Unless you buy into all the PH conspiracy theories, in which case whoever made sure our carriers were out to sea on 12/7 also knew what was going on. :banana:
 
There was a great deal of misunderstanding in the beginning of the war. The French misunderstood the value of their incomplete Maginot line. The Allies misunderstood the indignation of the German people toward the conditions of the Armistice. The Japanese misunderstood American ingenuity as lack of discipline. The Russians, misunderstood Hitler's megalomania. Hitler misunderstood basic European military history. And everyone misunderstood the importance of Battleships in the age of aviation.

Churchill seemed to be the only one who actually knew what was going on.
Patton rightly railed against the false security of man-made fortifications. France feel so quickly because it trusted in a defensive strategy that could not adapt to the German blitzkrieg.
 
Unless you buy into all the PH conspiracy theories, in which case whoever made sure our carriers were out to sea on 12/7 also knew what was going on.
The former Secretary of the Navy bought into naval arrogance that the battleships would survive (ignoring Taranto). Something had to be done to drag the US into war. US troops were already in-route to what is now Indonesia to serve as a tripwire if the Japanese wouldn't attack US territory.
 
Patton rightly railed against the false security of man-made fortifications.
Well designed fortifications stopped Patton in his tracks at Metz for almost 3 months. (Having his fuel diverted to the British didn't give him much in the way of options). And La Rochelle held out about 8 months against the Americans. Lorient even longer.
 
The former Secretary of the Navy bought into naval arrogance that the battleships would survive (ignoring Taranto). Something had to be done to drag the US into war. US troops were already in-route to what is now Indonesia to serve as a tripwire if the Japanese wouldn't attack US territory.
Key information and intelligence were overlooked or ignored. Whether or not it adds up to a conspiracy, I don't know, but the naval arrogance could be extreme. If you read about the development of submarine rescue technology in the 1930s you'll find the upper brass totally resistant to innovation even if needed to rescue crews.
 
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