The Super Summary of World History (70 page)

The Western Democracies were unprepared for modern war. They were lacking the men, equipment, training, and the hard attitudes necessary for victory. Peace movements following World War I are partly to blame. Peace movements argued anything was better than war. The US only slowly awoke to the fact that some things are worse than war. Slavery and murder at the hands of power-mad dictators for example, but it took time for the average person to see the truth. War or slavery was the choice. War it would be, but a war the Western Democracies were ill prepared to fight.

Pearl Harbor was
not
the main objective of the overall Japanese offensive. Japan’s main goal was capturing the oil and resource-rich areas to the south of the Philippines, including Dutch Borneo, Sumatra, and Malaya. The attack on Pearl Harbor was aimed at crippling the striking power of the US Fleet long enough for the Japanese to seize their new empire and establish a defensive parameter. Japan needed to take key South and Central Pacific islands, build airfields, and fortify their positions against the eventual assault by the United States Navy.

Pearl Harbor

On Sunday morning,
December
7,
1941
, at about 7:50 AM, 353 Japanese aircraft, flying in two waves, struck the US Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.
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The US Pacific Fleet was smashed in one of the most successful attacks in history. The United States was at peace when the attack struck. Japanese diplomats in Washington DC were required to deliver a declaration cutting off all negotiations about thirty minutes before the attack. This message substituted for a formal declaration of war; however, Japan’s Washington Embassy did not have a good typist that day (it was Sunday and the secretaries were gone) so translating and typing the document took too much time. The result was the critical message telling America that Japan was breaking off diplomatic relations (going to war) arrived over an
hour
late
. By then Pearl Harbor blazed with the wreckage of the US Fleet, and over 2,400 Americans lay dead from the assault.

The late delivery of this crucial message was a political blunder of the highest order—right up there with the Zimmerman Telegram of WWI. This was now a sneak attack. Admiral Yamamoto himself stated,
“I
can
think
of
nothing
that
would
infuriate
the
Americans
more
 . . .” He knew America well, and realized a sneak attack would drive the United States to crush Japan. After Pearl Harbor no terms were possible. Another result of Pearl Harbor was unintended; the sneak attack completely united the heretofore deeply divided nation. Prior to the raid, the United States was split between the isolationist and those wanting to enter the European war. Roosevelt promised in a speech for his unprecedented third term that he would not send US troops into a European war. Now that Hitler was conquering Europe the promise looked increasingly dumb; however, the Japanese attack coupled with
Hitler’s
declaration
of
war
on the USA freed Roosevelt and Congress from any restraints.

Figure 56 Pearl Harbor Air Raid, December 7, 1941

The Pearl Harbor raid destroyed the mighty US battleships, but ships at sea dodged destruction and three US aircraft carriers, the raid’s main target, were at sea.
This
was
blind
luck
and
nothing
else
. Japan’s bad luck should include the fact that the Japanese took several precautions to ensure the carriers were at Pearl before the attack, but every one of the precautions failed. Providence dispensed two vital breaks to the United States of America: the first was an attack coupled with a political blunder that united the nation as nothing else could, and second was the miraculous deliverance of
all
its most vital aircraft carriers.

Admiral Nagumo, the leader of the strike force hitting Pearl Harbor, decided to forgo the third wave attack on Pearl Harbor aimed at the construction yards, dry docks, and oil facilities. Because of this decision, made over the objections of the officers on his bridge, the United States was to have critical dry dock and oil facilities throughout the coming months when the Japanese had the edge in the Pacific. It was a poor decision, but Nagumo’s reasoning contained a bit of logic. He knew his force of six aircraft carriers were essential for the main thrust into the Southern Pacific. Nagumo also realized his main targets were not at Pearl Harbor, and he did not know where they were. If a US carrier surprised him he might have one or more of his carriers lost or heavily damaged. Nagumo stated it was going to be a long war (a different attitude from some of his superiors) and the aircraft, pilots, and ships would be needed. He did not want to lose them on a mission to tidy up the attack on Pearl Harbor. Nagumo’s first wave had lost 9 aircraft, but his second wave lost 20. A third wave assault might cost a lot more. In addition, waiting around for a third wave to return would take hours, and every hour exposed his fleet to assault by US submarines or carriers. His objective, crippling the US Fleet, was attained, so why incur additional risks?

Looking back over sixty years Nagumo’s error appears appalling; however, we should try to put ourselves into the situation at the time of the attack and realize Nagumo focused on a broader picture that included the South Pacific. What really hurts Nagumo, from a historian’s point of view, is all his fellow officers were in favor of the third wave assault. None-the-less, Nagumo’s strike force sunk the US Fleet at a cost of 29 aircraft lost. A cheap victory.

Japans’ Southern Offensive

1941
&
1942

Japan’s southern offensive was superlative. The closely planned attacks went off precisely and professionally with spectacular results. Everywhere Japan was ascendant. On most islands, such as Dutch Borneo, there was virtually no resistance, although Dutch engineers set the oil fields on fire, and the Japanese beheaded them for their trouble. Hong Kong, after light resistance, surrendered on Christmas Day 1941. There were two keys to the region: Singapore at the end of the Malay Peninsula (British), and Manila Bay in the Philippines (American). In both cases troops were available in sufficient numbers to put up a good fight, but in both cases, Japanese commanders utterly out generaled the Allied commanders, while inflicting appalling troop losses on the ill prepared Dutch, British, and US forces.
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Singapore

From Singapore the British could control the oil rich areas of the South Pacific. If this bastion held the Japanese would have trouble getting their merchant shipping back to Japan. When analyzing the defensive position at Singapore the English calculated an assault would most likely come from the sea. Of course, the British knew an assault could come down the Malaya Peninsula, but they assumed any such attack through the dense jungle would take months, giving them time to react. Unfortunately for the British the key to the area was no longer Singapore harbor, it was air power. The British long ago pulled most of their first line aircraft out of Malaya, and the remaining planes needed maintenance. The Japanese spotted the few completed air bases and quickly destroyed the sparse numbers of English aircraft. Japan easily gained total air supremacy.
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Even though resources were scarce, Churchill sent two of Britain’s most powerful ships to defend the Asian fortress: the
Prince
of
Whales
(a battleship) and the
Repulse
(a battle cruiser) along with four destroyers. When Admiral Sir Tom Phillips, commander of this striking force, gained intelligence of Japanese landings underway on the Malaya Peninsula he was determined to strike. He called for air cover from land-based aircraft, and he counted on darkness and poor weather to keep his ships invisible until he was on the Japanese transports, but luck had abandoned the striking force. On December 10, 1941, the weather cleared, no air cover appeared, and a Japanese submarine found the two large ships and reported their position. An all-out air attack sunk both ships in
minutes
.

The sinking of these two capital ships was an important moment in history. Never before had capital ships under power at sea and ready for battle been destroyed by aircraft. For a decade, the battleship admirals had claimed aircraft could not sink a battleship underway and ready for action—at least not easily. Aircraft had easily sunk battleships moored in port with surprise attacks, but this time fully manned and ready battleships swiftly slid beneath the waves after an air attack at sea. About 300 years of history also slid beneath the waves as aircraft now ruled the seas, and ships carrying those aircraft became the capital ships of the fleet.
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The British in Singapore were now without air cover or naval assets. Still, it seemed they should be able to significantly delay or stop a Japanese attack down the peninsula. In this they failed. British troops were not sufficiently trained in jungle warfare, did not possess the right equipment, and their commanders were unable to get a handle on how to stop the rapid Japanese advance. The Japanese were experienced jungle fighters and quickly outflanked defensive lines placed by the British. Consistently forced back, the British set up one defensive position after another, but flanking attacks, infiltration or landings from the sea jeopardized each site. Simple equipment, like the bicycle, hastened the Japanese advance leaving the British defenders reeling. Moreover, the Japanese brought tanks. British commanders thought the jungle was much too dense for tanks; nevertheless, like the Ardennes forest in Belgium, the Allies were mistaken once again. With tanks and bicycles the Japanese advanced rapidly keeping the English defenders off balance and preventing the construction of adequate lines of defense. By January 1942, the Japanese stood at the northern gates of Singapore.

Figure 57 Japanese Advance on Singapore

Singapore is an island, and the recently reinforced British forces should have held out against the exhausted Japanese force for months. Instead, Singapore was immediately subjected to artillery bombardment and aircraft attacks. The Japanese rapidly crossed to the island and captured the fortress in February of 1942. Approximately
130,000
men
surrendered.
It was a great defeat and the largest surrender in English history. Very few of these men ever saw Britain again. They would die of starvation and physical abuse in Japanese slave labor camps. The privates paid a high price for the ineffectiveness of their generals, as usual.

This disaster falls completely upon the British commanders for failing to prepare the peninsula for defense through properly training and equipping their men, preparing dug in defensive positions well ahead of time, and properly positioning their lines. Another general was displaying similar incompetence in the Philippines, only this commander was American.

The Philippines

General
Douglas
MacArthur
(1880-1964), an American icon lionized by the nation during and after World War II, was the man in charge of defending the Philippines and the vital harbor at Manila Bay. In this he utterly failed, causing thousands of men to die needlessly or suffer horribly at the hands of the merciless Japanese.

Prior to World War II the United States, as nations always do, planned for a war with Japan.
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The planners assumed Japan would invade the Philippines at the outset of war.
War
Plan
Orange
(the code name for the plan; orange being the code word for Japan) called for a retreat to the Bataan Peninsula and the small island of Corregidor guarding the entrance to Manila Bay, the best harbor in the region.
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The Japanese would have to take Bataan to control the Philippines. MacArthur was to fall back to fully
prepared
positions on Bataan and Corregidor then hold out until the United States could send help. In fact, Washington knew help was impossible to send in a timely manner; as a result, the men on Bataan and Corregidor were doomed in all but the most favorable circumstances. The point of the defense was to prolong the conquest and remain a thorn in Japan’s side for as long as possible.