Attacking Pearl Harbor

In 1941, it seemed to many in Japan that war against the United States was inevitable.

Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, commander-in-chief of the Combined Fleet, had opposed Japan’s alliance with Germany and Italy and its invasion of China.

He had also traveled and studied throughout the United States, and understood that Japan’s island empire could not hope to defeat the Americans' vast resources and industrial capacity in a prolonged war.

Despite his reservations, the pro-war political climate ultimately forced Yamamoto to devise a plan to strike the United States.

To that end, he concluded that Japan’s only hope was to smash American morale with a brutal surprise attack on the Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, crippling their naval strength and hopefully forcing them into negotiations quickly.

On Nov. 26, a naval group unlike any ever assembled set out from Japan and began sneaking across the North Pacific.

The secret fleet included nine destroyers, two battleships, three cruisers, three submarines, seven fuel tankers — and six aircraft carriers laden with more than 400 planes, the greatest aerial attack force ever launched from sea.

Many in the fleet feared that the two-week crossing would be impossible to execute without alerting the Americans, potentially turning their surprise attack into a disastrous trap.

Yet when the ships reached position 230 miles north of Oahu in the early hours of Dec. 7, they remained undetected. Japanese subs lurking outside the mouth of Pearl Harbor on the south side of the island deployed five two-man midget submarines into the harbor.

At 6:00 a.m., the first wave of 183 fighters and bombers began spinning up and taking off. 

At 7:40 a.m., the leader of the first wave, Commander Mitsuo Fuchida, spotted the military installations at Pearl Harbor. Seeing no activity, he gave the order to attack, and then transmitted the codewords “Tora! Tora! Tora!” back to the fleet — the signal that total surprise had been achieved.

Torpedo bombers angled in and dropped specially-modified torpedoes which raced through the shallow harbor and punctured the hulls of the ships anchored on Battleship Row.

The USS Arizona was struck by a bomb near its ammunition magazines, causing a cataclysmic blast which killed nearly 1,200 sailors.

Dive bombers and fighters strafed the rows of parked aircraft at Wheeler Field, Bellows Field and Hickam Field (where my grandfather Earle Leavitt, a 20-year-old engineer and rear gunner, burst from his barracks in his skivvies and scrambled for cover).

Despite the utter surprise, the Americans began to organize and return fire in minutes, filling the skies with anti-aircraft flak and small-arms fire by the time the second wave of 171 planes arrived at 9:00 a.m.

At 9:45 a.m., just two hours after the start of the attack, it was over. The Japanese pilots returned to their carriers and sailed away in triumph.

2,403 American service members and civilians had been killed. The Japanese had successfully sunk or damaged 19 ships, destroyed 188 aircraft and damaged many more, with only 29 aircraft shot down, 64 men killed and one submarine crewman captured.

Ultimately, however, the attack failed in its strategic goals.

Though it was a stunning blow, the Japanese failed to take out fuel depots, dry docks and other facilities which were critical to the American war effort. The loss of a few battleships would prove less consequential than expected in a conflict increasingly fought from the decks of aircraft carriers many miles apart.

Rather than cow the Americans into submission, the attack — which came before any official declaration of war — had them howling for revenge and uninterested in negotiations.

When Yamamoto, the architect of the raid, learned that the declaration of war had not been delivered until after the attack, he is rumored to have said, “I fear all we have done today is to awaken a great, sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve."