The Day of Infamy—How Japan’s Hollow Victory Spelt the End for Hitler

Seventy years ago, on December 7, 1941, Japan launched a surprise attack on the United States.  In just two hours it crippled a large part of the U.S. fleet docked in Pearl Harbor and, in one swift stroke, forever destroyed U.S. isolationism, unified the country for war, and made the conflicts raging in Europe, Asia, and Africa one truly global war.

The U.S. may have been expecting war but the attack on Pearl Harbor took it by surprise.  Yet eleven months before, one voice predicted such a possibility.  On January 27, 1941, the U.S. ambassador in Japan, Joseph Grew, cabled the White House warning that the Japanese might “attempt a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor using all their military facilities.”

As 1941 wore on, the likelihood of war became more apparent but the U.S. ignored Grew’s prediction, believing that conflict, if it came, would either start in the U.S.-controlled Philippines or the Dutch or British possessions in Southeast Asia.

Certainly President Franklin D. Roosevelt believed war was a distinct possibility—“They [the Japanese] hate us,” he said privately, “sooner or later, they’re going to come after us.”  He also feared what would happen to the U.S. if Japan crippled Britain’s possessions in Southeast Asia—“If Great Britain goes down,” Roosevelt said, "all of us in all the Americas would be living at the point of a gun.”

On October 17 the threat of war became practically inevitable—Japan’s prime minister, Fumimaro Konoye, known for his restraint and sense of compromise, was replaced by the more aggressive Hideki Tōjō.  Within a month, Tōjō had finalized plans to cripple the U.S. fleet and invade much of Southeast Asia to secure for Japan its supply of natural resources.  Japan had long wanted to rid the area of Western imperialists and rule Asia on behalf of its neighbors (and itself)—“Asia for the Asians” became its war cry.

On November 26, Tōjō’s plan went into action—a Japanese fleet commanded by Admiral Chūichi Nagumo, operating under a plan concocted by the commander in chief of the Imperial Japanese Navy, set sail. The fleet consisted of six aircraft carriers, two battleships and assorted other craft.  The Americans had broken Japanese codes but in the event this gave them no advantage as the fleet maintained strict radio silence.  Meanwhile, in Washington, the U.S. and Japan were negotiating Japan’s withdrawal from China.  (Japan and China had been at war intermittently since 1931, with full-scale war breaking out in 1937.)  Japan had no intention of withdrawing but was happy to negotiate to delay the outbreak of hostilities to a time and place of its own choosing.  It was all part of the ruse.

With the Japanese fleet 275 miles north of the Hawaiian island of Oahu, the first wave of fighters took off, commander by Lieutenant Commander Mitsuo Fuchida (twenty-five years later, having converted to Christianity, Fuchida became a U.S. citizen).  It took them one and a half hours to reach Oahu.  At one point dense cloud obscured their route but at the most opportune moment, the clouds parted, and there below them, was Pearl Harbor.

It was approaching 7:00 a.m. on Sunday morning when the radar station on Oahu first reported to its HQ a number of aircraft on its screen.  The reply came back:  “Don't worry about it.”  HQ was expecting a squadron of American B-17 bombers from California to be arriving that same morning.  But these were Japanese planes (bombers, dive-bombers and fighters), 181 of them, intent on ripping out the heart of the U.S. fleet quietly moored on this Pacific island, 3,400 miles away from Japan.

Neatly and conveniently lined up along “Battleship Row,” were eight of the U.S. Pacific’s battleships plus nearly a hundred other ships.  Fuchida, knowing he couldn’t fail, dispatched the pre-arranged victory signal, Tora, tora, tora (Tiger, tiger, tiger).  Torpedoes and bombs rained down.  The general alarm sounded, “Man your battle stations—THIS IS NO DRILL!”  Within minutes, several of the ships had been hit.  Men jumped overboard and tried to swim to safety. The previously calm waters of the harbor, now glazed with a layer of oil, erupted into a wall of flame, killing many of those in the water.

The nearby airfields were also targeted.  Row upon row of perfectly-lined aircraft were destroyed.  American sailors, lining up for breakfast and unable to comprehend what was happening, were mowed down as they waited their turn.

At 8:40 am, the second Japanese wave attacked.  The Americans, now employing their anti-aircraft guns, managed to hit a few of the incoming planes, but the Japanese fighters inflicted yet more damage.

By 10:00 am it was all over—four of the eight American battleships had been sunk and four seriously damaged; many other vessels were destroyed, almost 2,400 Americans died and over 1,000 were wounded. The Japanese lost 29 planes and 100 pilots.

At the same time, Japanese forces had attacked the Philippines and the British colony of Hong Kong and violated neutral Thailand.  The Pacific islands of Wake and Midway also fell victim to attack, as well as British-controlled Malaya. Singapore, on the southern tip of Malaya, was bombed. Without an official declaration of war, Japan, in just a matter of hours, had secured control of the skies and seas of a quarter of the world’s surface.  As Winston Churchill described in his war memoirs, “Over all this vast expanse of waters Japan was supreme, and we everywhere were weak and naked.”

But as successful as the operation may have appeared, its triumph was short-lived—a third wave, which was to target the fuel depot and the Navy arsenal, was cancelled due to fear of an American counterattack, and the battleships, having been sunk only in the shallow waters of the harbor, were all repaired and fully operational before the end of the war.  None of America’s aircraft carriers had been hit, nor had its submarine capabilities been seriously damaged.  While Japan celebrated its temporary victory, Yamamoto knew that in the long term he had failed—“a military man can scarcely pride himself on having smitten a sleeping enemy.”

The following day, in his address to Congress, Roosevelt declared, “Yesterday, December 7, 1941, a date which will live in infamy, the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.”  Congress accordingly voted 470 to 1 to go to war (the one dissenter being a pacifist from Montana).

Churchill was delighted.  “To have the United States at our side” (he later wrote), “was to me the greatest joy.”

But Hitler too was pleased, the teetotaler breaking with habit and toasting the Honorary Aryans, as he called the Japanese, with a small glass of champagne.  “Now it is impossible for us to lose the war,” he announced with glee.  On December 11, less than six months since invading the Soviet Union, Germany declared war on the United States.  Hitler had not been obliged to—the Tripartite Pact, signed by Germany, Italy and Japan in September 1940, had only stipulated that Germany would declare war if Japan was the victim of aggression.  But Hitler wanted to pre-empt the possibility of the U.S. declaring war on Germany.  After all, as his foreign minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop, explained, “A great power does not allow itself to be declared war upon; it declares war on others.”  Hitler, always hostile to America, with its racially diverse and therefore inferior population, believed Germany had nothing to fear, predicting that the U.S. would not be ready for war until at least 1970.

The invasion of the Soviet Union and the declaration of war against the U.S., stand up as Hitler’s two greatest blunders.  Germany’s fate was sealed and the conflict that had started in Europe twenty-seven months before was now truly global.