The
warnings of a Japanese attack were sounded long before
the first bombs rocked Pearl Harbor. No one was listening.
In January 1941, months before the invasion, U.S. ambassador to Japan Joseph
Grew received a tip that the Japanese were planning an attack on Pearl
Harbor.
Hours before the attack, one submarine was spotted outside the harbor, another
sub was sunk, and a "huge number of planes" appeared on the new
radar installation on Oahu's north coast.
Many U.S. offcials believed a Japanese assault was imminent. But they thought
it would take place in the Philippines; not on an island 5,000 miles from Tokyo.
So, when the rising sun awoke Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the U.S. Pacific
Fleet was prepared only for another sleepy Sunday.
As dawn touched the horizon, the first wave of Japanese planes were launched
from carriers in choppy waters 200 miles north of Pearl Harbor. Flying over
fleecy clouds, pilots homed in on the soft music broadcast by Honolulu radio
station KGMB. The Japanese objective was revealed as "God's hand pulled
aside the clouds," strike leader Lieutenant Commander Mitsuo Fuchida recalled.
It was a raiding pilot's dream. U.S. Army planes at Hickam, Bellows and Wheeler
fields were bunched together on the tarmac, wingtip to wingtip, for protection
against saboteurs. Ninety-four vessels were anchored in Pearl Harbor, including
seven battleships obligingly moored in a double row beside Ford Island.
At 07:53, Lieutenant Commander Fuchida radioed the coded message, "Tora!
Tora! Tora!". Complete surprise had been achieved.
Two groups of Japanese planes approached the island from either side, then
split into smaller groups and closed in on their waiting targets. Aichi-99 "Val" dive
bombers began the charge, raining their 550-pound explosives on airfields and
hangars. Nakajima-97 "Kates" swooped low toward the battleships and
launched torpedoes, newly modified with wooden fins for the shallow waters
of Pearl Harbor.
Within minutes, torpedoes found their marks. The USS
California took two quick hits and began spilling
oil like a wounded beast. The West Virginia shuddered
from blast after blast. Alert officers counterflooded the ship, keeping her
upright as she settled to the harbor bottom. Three torpedoes ripped the Oklahoma
and she rolled over, her bottom rising until her superstructure hit the mud
25 feet below. Men climbed to safety aboard the overturned hull, only to
be gunned down by enemy planes. On the Nevada,
a 23-man band had just struck up the "Star-Spangled Banner" when the invaders descended. The band
hastily finished the tune and scrambled for their battle stations.
Throughout
the harbor, groggy sailors awoke to explosions, some angry
at the brass for staging a drill so early in the morning.
Many leapt to their stations, quickly manning antiaircraft
guns. The U.S. forces responded faster than Japanese troops
might have, one of the invading Japanese pilots observed.
But it was too little, too late.
Mitsubishi Zeroes soared high and low, controlling the
air and strafing the ground. Horizontal bombers, each
carrying one 1 ,760 lb. armorpiercing bomb, struck at
ships the torpedoes hadn't found.
Two bombs hit the repair ship Vestal. One penetrated all seven decks and the
hull, then buried itself unexploded in the mud below. The other exploded in
a storage room, twisting sreel bars like pretzels.
A bomb found its way into the Arizona's fuel storage area. Black powder had
been stored there, contrary to naval regulations, and the ship erupted like
a volcano. Flames shot 500 feet in the air. Fuchida's plane, almost 10,000
feet above the cataclysm, rocked from the explosion, then dropped from the
suction of the afterblast. "I knew then", he said, "that our
mission would be a success".
When the Arizona exploded, a grisly rain of pipe fittings, valves, bodies and
body parts showered down on nearby ships. Burning debris from the blast lit
fires on the Tennessee, causing more damage than the Japanese bombs. The intense
concussion snuffed out fires on the Vestal as if they were birthday candles.The
waters around Battleship Row blazed with oozing oil and the thick, suffocating
smoke turned day to night. So swift was the attack
that only a few U.S. planes got off the ground to do battle. Men on ship and
shore fought back with whatever they had: machine guns, rifles, pistols. More
than a quarter-million rounds were fired at the Japanese, bringing down 29
of their planes.
By 10 o'clock, the airstrike was over. The last waves of Japanese intruders
returned to their carriers and U.S. ships and planes searched for them in vain.
The damage was considerable: 18 ships, 177 planes, and 2,403 human casualities,
no less than 1,100 of them on the Arizona alone. But for all its destruction,
the raid was merely a limited success for the Japanese.
In actuality, only five U.S. ships were destroyed beyond repair: the battleships
Arizona and Oklahoma, the target ship Utah, and the destroyers Cassin and Downes.
The Japanese had missed the huge fuel tanks, submarine pens, ship repair facilities,
and, most important, the Pacific Fleet's carriers. All three were out to sea
during the attack.
Commander
Fuchida urged a second invasion to strike the missed
targets. But Admiral Chuichi Nagumo, commander of the
First Air Fleet, would have none of it.Japan had crippled
the U.S. Fleet, he reasoned. The mission was accomplished.
That decision may have been Nagumo's first major error for the U.S. Fleet
would rise again, sooner than expected and stronger than
ever.
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