The Inevitability of Pearl Harbour

Just last week, Channel 5 showed the movie "Pearl Harbour", a fictitious romance story using the setting of the infamous Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbour, base of the American Pacific Fleet on the fateful Sunday of 7 Dec 1941. While the movie story was interesting, albeit a bit draggy, with good cinematography, a moving soundtrack and a good re-creation of the aerial attack on Pearl Harbour, I find the real story behind Pearl Harbour much more fascinating. The attack on Pearl Harbour was definitely a turning point in history and yet there was something inevitable about it, not unlike a Greek tragedy.

The interesting thing about this whole episode was that Japan felt that it had no choice but to sneak attack Pearl Harbour. By 1941, Japan had realised that the war with China has become a quagmire, sucking all its resources and yet without seemingly a chance for a secure victory. Though the Japanese controlled almost all major Chinese cities and the fertile coastal regions, the inlands still belonged to the Chinese Nationalists and Communists who stubbornly refused to be broken by the Japanese despite Japanese superiority in basically everything and despite their the Nationalists and Communists in-fighting. With the American embargo on oil, rubber and other products necessary to conduct a war, the Japanese war machinery was in risk of grinding to a halt. The only solution was to acquire alternative resources and all these lie in colonial Southeast Asia, a jewel unguarded by its colonial masters struggling to survive Hitler's onslaught in Europe. The only wild card was the US. Though the US has thus far been prevented to join the war by its Congress, the Japanese were certain that they would not sit by idly if they helped themselves to Southeast Asia. Hence the attack on Pearl Harbour was conceived, a surprise attack to neutralize the only force that could stop Japanese annexation of Southeast Asia. The Japanese felt that they had no choice and thus it seemed fated that US would enter the war, but we would never know for sure if the Japanese reasoning was right..

It was said that the Japanese were ironically great fans of the "Sun Tzu's Art of War", a treatise from the very people they held so much in contempt. And the attack on Pearl Habour was indeed a masterstroke. It achieved total tactical surprise, severely damaged the Pacific Fleet and concurrent with the attack, the invasion of Malaya began. This co-ordinated attack on Pearl Harbour and Malaya on the other side of the Pacific Ocean was perhaps in terms of geographical scope, the grandest military operations in history.

However despite its brilliance, as the Japanese Admiral in the movie said, the feat did nothing more than awaken a sleeping giant. The attack was not as damaging as initially thought because the aircraft carriers were not in the harbour during the attack and hence escaped unscathed all due to faulty Japanese intelligence. In addition, thanks to American's industrial might, the US took much less time than estimated to recover from the attack, so much so that by mid 1942, the Japanese Imperial Navy was already decisively defeated twice in Coral Sea and Midway. American productivity was such that near the end of the War, Americans were probably producing more ships and aircraft than the Japanese could destroy. All these meant that the attack on Pearl Harbour had a double significance in military history. As a tactical move, it was one of the most brilliant attacks in history but from a grand strategy perspective or the big picture, it was one of the biggest blunder made by the Axis powers. It dragged the industrial might of the US into the War and turned the tide decisively. Worth mentioning here was also Hitler's stupidity. When the US declared war on Japan, Hitler true to his word as Japan's ally declared war on the Americans. This must be one of the greatest mystery in history. Hitler held as much honour for promises as he did for Jews. It was beyond comprehension that he would drag US into the War just to honour his words to the Japanese. This was another turning point, for before his declaration of war, as much as Roosevelt wanted to, he still couldn't send troops to Europe as it was Japan not Germany that attacked America. Hitler's stupidity in declaring war on top of his blunder in USSR must have been a godsend to Churchill. And so it was that because of the Japanese General Staff's perception that Pearl Harbour must be attacked that the fate of the Japanese Empire and the Third Reich was sealed and with it setting into motion everything that we know of as history....

There is one possible final twist to this story. There is a conspiracy theory that the White House let "Pearl Harbour" happened. There was simply too many "clues" missed to make some people not suspicious, for example, the successful intercepting of Japanese communications prior to the attack. If so the real genius would be the President and his advisors, for (to borrow a Chinese phrase) "pushing the boat in the flow of the water" so that America has a legitimate reason to enter the War.........