A Day of Infamy. pearl harbour

and occupy the areas in Southeast Asia that had lots of resources (Infamy). Top Japanese officials felt that war with the United States was inevitable, but with a large American fleet in the Pacific stationed at Pearl Harbor on the island of Oahu, war was going to be difficult if Japan was on the defensive. It would have been to Japan’s advantage if they were the ones to pick the time and place of battle, as they went on to do. Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto came up with the idea of annihilating the entire American pacific fleet in one single blow (Essential Pearl Harbor).      Beginning in the early months of 1941, Japanese aircraft carrier pilots began training for a Top Secret mission involving an air raid on a fleet of ships using tactics that met two major criteria. The attack was to use a huge amount of naval aviation forces, and it was to achieve complete surprise on its enemy. Japanese leaders felt that if the attack met that criterion, Japan would dominate the Pacific Ocean and have control over all of the Far East. As the training continued, the plan became more and more detailed. In the latter part of February 1940, Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto gave Comdr. Minoru Genda, the Japanese Prime Minister, a detailed official report on the plan of the attack. It contained ten main proposals: It must be a surprise attack; U.S. carriers are the main objective; U.S. aircraft on the Island of Oahu are an objective; every available Japanese Carrier should take part in the operation; all types of attack aircraft should be used; Japanese fighters should play an active role in the attack; the attack should be early in the morning; refueling vessels at sea is necessary; all planning must be kept secret; and finally, it will be a full scale invasion. Yamamoto, who was one of the main contributors to the plan, wanted only to cripple the American pacific fleet while Genda wanted to obliterate it (Essential Pearl Harbor).      In October of 1941, Commander Minotu Genda gave the final go ahead to Yamamoto’s plan, which was to be commanded by Admiral Chuichi Naguro. Six Imperial Japanese Navy carriers were to be used: The Akagi, Kaga, Soryu, Hiru, Zuikaku, and the Shokaku. Twenty-four other vessels were to be present for support. A separate fleet of submarines was to destroy any American ships that managed to escape the harbor.      On November 26, 1941, the large Japanese fleet left the Kurile Islands near Japan for Hawaii (The Day the Japanese Attacked Pearl Harbor). To achieve a complete element of surprise, the fleet sailed under radio silence and took a northerly route to avoid coming in contact with any civil or merchant ships. By dawn of December 7th, 1941, the entire Japanese fleet reached their destination of a point 200 miles from Oahu undetected. Many people claim to have had a bad feeling on that fateful morning. That might have stemmed from the previous day when U.S. officials intercepted a message sent from Japan to various embassies around the world ordering them to destroy all decoders and secret documents. While the Japanese fleet was silently waiting for dawn off the coast of Oahu, some American officials played any the chance of an attack on Pearl Harbor, which had been rumored. Officials said it would be impossible to torpedo the fleet because the water was too shallow. Officials also said that the new, untested radar system that had just been installed would easily pick up an oncoming threat miles before it reached the island. There had been such rigorous training and preparation for the attack that the Japanese had already taken care of the problems. Japanese engineers invented an attachable wooden fin device that made it possible for torpedoes to be effective in shallow water. They had connections and intelligence from Oahu that contained detailed maps and diagrams of the harbor and its contents. Unfortunately, America was always one step behind the Japanese. The first wave of the attack was launched at approximately 6:00 AM on December 7th, 1941. It was made up of 183 aircraft, including dive bombers, horizontal bombers, torpedo bombers, and fighters that were to fly in from the north and around the western side of the island to attack Pearl Harbor. The aircraft first arrived at the island at around 7:00 AM and was reported. Officials to whom the report was sent passed off the report as an expected group of American planes that were to arrive that morning. Pearl Harbor, which contained approximately 100 ships from the U.S. Navy at the time, was attacked at 7:55 AM. Over half the Pacific fleet was out to sea at the time, including all of the carriers, which were a main Japanese goal. At around 7:15 am, the second wave was launched which was made up by 170 more aircraft. The second wave reached Pearl Harbor at around 8:54 AM and flew from the north around the eastern side of the island. Out of all of the ships that were in Pearl Harbor at the time, eight battleships that were docked side by side on Battleship Row were the main targets. Literally 5 minutes into the attack, seven of the battleships had taken torpedo or bomb hit. At around 10:00 AM, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor ended. Twenty-nine ships were either sunk or damaged. Three hundred forty-seven planes were either destroyed or damaged. Two thousand four hundred and three American citizens lost their lives, and another eleven hundred people were wounded. Out of the three hundred eighty-three planes, only twenty-nine didn’t return to their carriers (Essential Pearl Harbor).      There was a third wave of force that was planned in the attack, but was aborted at the last minute. Yamamoto called off the third wave minutes before it was to launch because he felt that the Japanese didn’t have the element of surprise anymore, so the attack would not be as successful. Many scholars agree that had Yamamoto not aborted the third wave, the American fleet in the pacific would have been obliterated and Japan would have gained control of the pacific. This would have greatly changed history. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor might have caused lots of damage, but it wasn’t complete at its task. All seven American aircraft carriers were out to sea at the time of the attack. The airborne attack failed to destroy facilities at Pearl Harbor Naval Base, which contained crucial supplies and fuel that helped America to repair and fuel its Pacific fleet.      Was the bombing of Pearl Harbor really a success? This question has many answers for differing views on the attack. Some claim that it was a huge success for Japan because it caused so much death and destruction at Pearl Harbor, but others say that it was a miserable failure. In the long run, the attack did little good for Japan. The attack on Pearl Harbor along with Hitler declaring war on the United States brought us in to the war, which created much better conditions for the Allies. Some claim that Winston Churchill and F. D. Roosevelt devised the Pearl Harbor attack for their own interests. If that was true, and the attack was a strategy for the Allies, then it was a huge success. Churchill wanted to bring the United States into the war the help ease the burden of such a terrible war, and this attack did exactly that. For Roosevelt, the attack brought a politically divided America together behind him, and allowed him to pursue the plan of action against the Axis that he wanted supported (Infamy). Others claim that in the long run, the attack was a success for Japan. The retaliation against Japan after the attack freed it from its dictatorial and corrupt past (Essential Pearl Harbor).      As said by F.D.R., the day that will live in infamy forever remains a bitter reminder of the destructive machine called war. America would never be the same after that day, and there wasn’t a happy ending to the story. Only more violence, death, and destruction took place. With Germany and Italy declaring war on America, the United States was in store for a long, bloody war that the whole world was tangled up in. Had it not been for this single attack, the course that the war would have taken might have been completely different, and the status of superpower could have been achieved by different nations than ones that did.