A Day Which Will Live in Infamy

The America with which we are familiar was not born on July 4, 1776, but on December 7, 1941. On a quiet Sunday morning in the American naval base at Pearl Harnor, Oahu, Hawaii, as the band was playing The Star Spangled Banner during the flag raising ceremony on American battleships, an armada of 354 Japanese war planes launched from six carruers suddenly appeared and for two hours rained bombs down on the Ameican fleet and military installations. The attack was a complete surprise, though some conspiravy theorists say that President Franklin Roosevelt knew and let it happen to bring isolationist America into the war. This charge has never been proven

On the following day, Roosevelt in a famous speech to a joint session of Congress referred to the Japanese sneak attack as a “day which will live in infamy” and asked Congress to declare war on Japan, which they did.

Many people don’t know that Roosevelt, who had contracted polio in 1921, was completely paralyzed from the waist down. That did not deter him from pursuing a political career. He was a master persuader and was elected to four terms (the Constitution was subsequently changed to limit presidents to two terms). Roosevelt had an agreement with the press never to show him as a cripple.

The Japanese attack shocked the nation, but trouble had been brewing for a long time. America had cut Japan off from the natural resources that she needed and put her in a tight corner. Persons in the know expected war, but no one knew where the Japanese would strike.

Japan’s attack was a tactical success but a strategic failure. Most of America’s fleet was sunk or badly damaged, except for three carriers that were at sea and that six months later would exact revenge in the battle of Midway.

Two thousand five hundred American servicemen died in the attack, which ironically, are fewer than died in Mohammad Atta’s attack on the World trade Center in New York City. So much has been written about Pearl Harbor that it is impossible to add anything new.

Nonetheless, a few thoughts come to mind worth pondering.

Why did the Japanese start a war that they could not win? America’s industrial potential was just too huge.

The answer lies in social psychology. The Japanese misread the American mind. They thought that the attack and Japanese conquests of the Philippines and in South East Asia would dishearten America and that a negotiated peace would be arranged.

Instead, America was infuriated and mobilized all of its vast resources. A bloody war of nearly four-years ‘duration ensued.

America, for its part, also misread the Japanese mind. The Americans dismissed the Japanese as semi=-barbarians, from whom they had nothing to fear. The Americans feared Hitler but not Tojo, as they referred to the Japanese. They were dismissive of Japanese military technology and thought that Japanese planes were made of wood and canvas.

The truth is that the Japanese Zero (shown in this blog) was the finest fighter during the first two years of the war.

One of the lessons from Pearl Harbor is that hubris comes at a very great cost. Hubris is a fatal personality flaw of a person (nation) that causes him to feel superior to others and to lose touch with reality.

Sophocles’s Oedipus and Milton’s Satan (“better to reign in Hell than to serve in Heaven”) both suffer from hubris.

Admiral Yamamoto, planner of the attack (who died in 1943 when American fighters shot down his plane), summed up the attack by saying, We have awakened a sleeping giant.

America entered upon the world stage as a major player. Henceforth no important decisions would take place without America’s direct or indirect involvement.

America’s World War Two generation, which has nearly died out, has been called the “Great Generation.”

When you read their stories, they were great. One example is John F. Kennedy’s heroism as commander of PT-109 (patrol boat) during World War Two. Sunk by a Japanese destroyer, he helped his men swim to safety on a near-by island.

His exploits branded him as a leader and launched his career in politics.

He is famous for the saying, Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.

In contrast to the Great Generation, when USC students were asked if the love the U.S., many of them said that America is “trash.” Hate for America appears to be a growing trend among graduates of a school system afflicted with political correctness and contempt for the values of Western civilization (referring to great scientists and philosophers contemptuously as “dead white men”). Sad, isn’t it?

For persons who wish to read more about Pearl Harbor, the background, the event and its aftermath, a good book is Craig Nelson’s Pearl Harbor: From Infamy to Greatness. Simon and Shuster 2016.