I Haven't Forgotten

Caption: Pearl Harbor in October, 1941, two months before the Japanese attack that left much of the fleet there damaged or sunk. Two airfields, Hickam Army Air Field and Ford Island Naval Air Station are clearly visible. (Click on the image to enlarge.)

Image credit: Wikimedia Commons/U.S. Dept. of Defense

I haven't forgotten that today is Pearl Harbor Day.

Pearl Harbor, as most folks remember, was once the U.S. Navy's major base in the Pacific. It was surrounded by defensive installations, including airfields hosting scores of fighter aircraft. It had some of the most advanced radar sets of the time. Yet it was attacked rather easily. The Japanese lost a small number of planes in an attack that destroyed much of the United States' sea power.

The attack succeeded largely because the base's commander and others in higher government positions didn't think that Japan would attack us so audaciously. They failed to learn the lessons of the Battle of Taranto a year earlier, which is that an attack using a comparatively small air force can do tremendous damage to a fleet at anchor.

Had U.S. forces been prepared that day, the Japanese attack might have been defeated. Damage to the fleet certainly would have been mitigated.

There were other failures, as well. The Japanese diplomatic dispatches were being intercepted and decrypted by American code breakers.They had decrypted the Japanese government's instructions to its U.S. embassy that day long before the Japanese managed, yet word of its contents didn't reach American military leaders until after the attack.

We Americans seem to have taken as the major lesson of Pearl Harbor that it is better to attack than to be attacked. Yet the many failures, both at the base and in Washington, DC, show that the real lesson is that without wise leadership and informed, smart, and motivated workers, all the military force in the world isn't enough to prevent failure.

This is a lesson we keep refusing to learn.