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Introduction
World War 2 begun even before U.S got involved. It started back in 1931 when Japan
attacked north-eastern China. By 1939, Japan was the ruler of much of China. The war in
Europe was also instigated in August of 1939 when Germany attacked Poland (Dower). Even
while all this was happening half way around the world, America was not involved. The
sleeping giant would lay in wait until December 7th of 1941, when Pearl Harbour was
attacked. The enthusiasts in Japan thought that with such a robust attack they could defeat
America. Hirohito for instance was confident that the attack on America could quickly lead to
a peace policy from them not knowing that the worst was yet to come.
It was the Japanese belief that America would honourably pull out, just as was the case for
Russia. It was an idea that America would experience huge losses and get tired of fighting
and quit the war with a peace treaty. During this time, Japan desperately needed access the
resources found in Malaya but Britain occupied the area. Malaya was around 90 minutes
away from Pearl Harbour, and Japan knew that a war with America would be a direct
provocation to Britain and Europe at large as they had always been allies (Maddison).
However with the warrior tradition in Japanese soldiers and the fact that they were had
already attacked the British in Kota and won they must had the confidence of winning the
war against America too. On the American perspective, questions tend to come up when on
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asks how a country like America could have been missing early warning systems. Was it that
the country was too naïve to prepare itself for an attack or it underestimated its enemies? In
educational institutions, people are told that Pearl Harbour was simply but a surprise attack,
since history says so.
In a speech soon after the attacks President, Franklin D. Roosevelt, stated that the nation was
completely taken by surprise, however, this was just but false information. From the word go
Roosevelt was in fact directly responsible for the surprise attack on Pearl Harbour. With the
amount of military intelligence that the US had it was easy to prevent all the attacks by
defending all the weak points in the American air space, but that was ignored. Roosevelt
knew of Japan’s intentions of attacking Pearl Harbour well before it occurred, but he wanted
them to carry on according to their plans so that the United States could enter the war. That
was because the United States had been for a long time been a neutral state and had been
hesitant to lending a helping hand to European countries.
Roosevelt was compassionate about France and Britain and wanted to stop Germany from
winning the war at all costs. All the through to 1941, Roosevelt was frantically trying to come
up with a convincing rationale for stepping into the European fight. After the German attack
on Soviet Union and the preceding events in North Atlantic between two American ships and
German submarines, the destroyer Greer and the freighter Robin Moor Roosevelt instructed
the Navy to escort American convoys. He later instructed the Allied ships to shoot Italian and
German warships on sight (Morison).
At this point, he assumed that he would get hold of a public consensus in favour of war but
only if the country were attacked or threatened by a foreign power (Dower).He adamantly
went after obtaining such a consensus by frustrating the Japanese into the attack on Pearl
Harbour. Many historians believe that President Roosevelt intentionally raised the tensions
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between Tokyo and Washington by introducing multiple embargoes in 1940 on petroleum
materials and scrap metals that Japan relied on for its war machines.
By the start of 1941, American scholars as well as the policymakers were convinced that
Japan would attack the American fleet in Hawaii in the notion that the United States would
then go after an agreement in the Pacific, thereby allowing Japan to form an East Asian Coprosperity domain. Even though Roosevelt knew that the previous outcome was imminent he
did not tip off the military, as he knew that a surprise attack would lead to uproar; and as a
result giving him the much needed reason to United States into the war (Maddison). The
commander in chief of the Japanese Fleet was Isoruku Yamamoto (Maddison). He was an
important figure in the country and played an important role in the attack. He was the same
person that had put together the attacks in Hawaii. He launched his plans for the attack in
April 1942 this was the same period when America was reorganizing the Atlantic Fleet
(Morison).
Yamamoto called in the services of the First Air Fleet in his planned attack with the
commander of the fleet being Chuichi Nagumo. There was a slight problem with the military
command as Yamamoto did no favour Nagumo to lead the attack on this mission. Reason
being that he had little experience in fighting with planes (Dower). The man favoured for the
attack was Commander Minora Genda, who was described as being a smart and young
military man. He immediately came up with great ideas for the attack that would be executed
by the First Naval Air Wing. One thing that he knew was that the attack had to take place
very early in the morning so as to surprise their enemies (Dower).
He was sure that if his invasion plans worked then the Japanese would have full control the
Pacific. Besides this, they would have control the world. As a result, the invasion meant
everything to these soldiers. After long hours of planning parts of his dreams were shattered
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as his attack plans were not taken, and instead the Japanese decided to go with Yamamoto’s
plan. Genda had some bitter taste about this plans but in the end he was still loyal to his
country and proceeded as instructed by his superiors (Dower).
On 7th December 1941 at around 8’oclok in the morning, Japan launched its first attack on
America at Pearl Harbour. The first surge of Japans airplane attack included 40 torpedo
planes, 49 high altitude bombers and 43 fighters’ planes (Maddison). Mitsuo Fuchido
commanded this attack. Amongst the first people to realize that there was a bombing
operation going on was Comdr. Logan C. Ramsay (Maddison). He immediately rushed to the
radio room and had people there send out uncoded messages to all ships and bases that there
was an air raid on Pearl harbour, and it was not a drill.
Japan initiated their attacks with three dive bombers hitting the Army Air Forces’ Wheeler
Field, north of Hickam Field and Pearl Harbour near Ford Island’s Battleship Row (Morison).
The motive behind this was that they could be able to destroy American Air war planes. On
that fateful day, there were 223 army aircrafts stationed in Hawaii. The Japanese were able to
destroy 82 of them while the other 77 were war ready (Morison). In a bid to retaliate and
defend the country American airplanes were scrambled, and they were said to have taken
down 15 out of the 29 Japanese fighter planes that were destroyed.
While this was taking place, Japan had given the green light for high altitude bomber planes
that were to attack the Arizona. After a timespan of around nine minutes, the Arizona was
sent to the ocean floor killing 1,177 men (Dower). Nearly an hour later a second wave of
airplanes attacked, this comprised of 78 dive-bombers, 35 fighters and 54 high altitude
bombers (Dower). At the time, Pearl Harbour had 21 ships that had docked in this included: 8
battleships, 2 cruisers, 1 minelayer, 4 destroyers and 5 auxiliaries. From the 8 battleships, 4
were damaged while 4 were sunk. All the cruisers and destroyers were either destroyed, or
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severely damaged. The one minelayer was sunk, but it was later on resurfaced and repaired.
The five auxiliaries were either sank or got severely damaged. Only 2 out of the three
auxiliaries that got sank were resurfaced and restored (Morison). With the exception of the
Arizona, Oklahoma, Utah, all the other ships were repaired and then returned to sea.
According to the combatants on the ground, the attack was a devastation that had come out of
nowhere. The aftermath of the bombing tested the American medical response as many
people had been left wounded. A lot of lives got lost due to loss of blood or the lack of
medical attention (Maddison). Some people were not able to access proper treatment because
it was not available to them. The magnitude and degree of wounded were unbelievable. Some
people were horribly burned while shrapnel and bullets riddled others. All the usable space in
the hospitals was filled and in most cases all what the nurses could do was to treat the injured
and dying men with morphine. All the trucks and vehicles that were close to the site were
either turned into ambulances or hearses while the death total hit 2,390 (Morison).
The following morning a meeting was called at the U. S. Capital where President Franklin D.
Roosevelt tabled a moving speech. Which he began by requesting for the declaration of war:
Yesterday, December 7th of 1941 is a date that will live in the history of the United States of
America and it was suddenly and deliberately backed by the naval and air forces of the
Empire of Japan (Maddison). The war declaration on Japan was unanimously voted in by 388
to 1. Representative Jeannette from Montana stood out by voting against it just as he had on
different declaration of war in 1917 (Morison). In the following 44 months of the war, the U.
S. Navy sank all Japanese aircraft battleships, carriers and cruisers that it could come across.
In the February of 1945 first strike of invasion against Japan the U. S used b-29s bombs in
Tokyo, destroying half of the city. That attack accounted for the deaths of around 80,000
people. The second attack with brought the whole deal to an end was the use of the atomic
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bomb. On August 6th of 1945 America used one atomic bomb in Hiroshima and on the
following day, the second was dropped on Nagasaki. The two bombings left 100,000 people
dead on August 14th, 1945 Japan surrendered and a document was signed on 2nd September
aboard the U. S. S. Missouri to signify the end of the war at the Tokyo Harbour (Maddison).
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Works Cited
Dower, John W. Embracing Defeat: Japan in the wake of World War II. WW. New York:
Norton & Company, 2000. Document.
Maddison, Angus. The world economy Volume 1: A millennial perspective Volume 2:
Historical statistics. New York: Academic Foundation, 2007. Document.
Morison, Samuel Eliot. History of United States Naval Operations in World War II: SicilySalerno-Anzio, January 1943-June, 1944. Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 2001.
Document.