Was it uncertainty or just a conspiracy to allow an attack on a major US Naval base to provoke a war that military intelligence saw as an inevitability? What was the answer, isolationism, the Lend Lease Act while remaining out of direct combat, or military intervention? These questions still loom even today. Some have even theorized that WWII was simply an answer to ending the Great Depression, as FDR’s policies only led to massive bank failures, the confiscation of personal gold ownership, civil infrastructure that led to deficit spending, and the establishment of Social Security, which over the years, Democrats took separate trust accounts and put them in the general fund so that they could be drained by a federal government unconcerned over fiscal accountability. The fact that Admiral Stark in Washington DC failed to notify Admiral Husband E. Kimmel at Pearl Harbor that an attack was imminent, has fed many a conspiratorial allegation that war was premeditated.

One thing is for certain for all of the conspiracy theorists. Japan had 10 Aircraft Carrier groups in the Pacific. America, at the start of the World War II only had three Aircraft Carriers! One had been dedicated to the Doolittle Raid over the Japanese mainland shortly after the Pearl Harbor attack. Meanwhile off the Atlantic coast, German U-Boats were exacting a heavy toll on US merchant shipping. At night Americans could see burning ships off the Florida coast and along the north to the Eastern Seaboard. America was at a severe disadvantage at the beginning for the war, and to have planned on spoiling for a fight with the Japanese would have been foolhardy. The US Navy was fighting a two-ocean war with a peace time sized ship force.

After a devastating attack on Pearl, considered to be the greatest surprise attack of a waring nation in modern human history, as a string of Japanese victories in Singapore, the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, New Guinea, and other island groups cost the Allies valuable battle ships, cruisers, destroyers, and troops as the onslaught had been planned and executed like clockwork. If this had been a plan with US military strategists to allow Japan to simply start a war, especially, when US Naval intelligence had just broken the diplomatic code of the Japanese, it would seem to have been an extremely ambitious calculation given the slim odds that existed for the Americans.

The fact that America would end up losing the aircraft carriers Langley, Lexington, Wasp, and Yorktown in1942 alone to the Japanese is a testament to the desperate sea battles that were taking place at the time. However, thanks to a productive and robust US industrial capability 27 Essex Class Aircraft Carriers were underway in US Naval shipyards and scheduled for deployment. Miraculously, the dry docks and fuel storage were left untouched by the Japanese fighters and bombers allowing for a rapid recovery of the battleships lost at Pearl.  

In 1942 alone the US Navy would retaliate by sinking 5 Japanese Air Craft Carriers and severely damaging another in the battles of the Coral Sea and Midway, which severely limited the Japanese airpower and coverage of the Pacific, putting them on a defensive posture they would never recover from. Landing of US troops on the islands of Guadalcanal and New Guinea, weeks later would ensure that the Allied Island-hopping campaign would begin in earnest, and the long road back having to invade island fortresses established by the Japanese Imperial Navy and Army since the 1920’s would have to be secured at the cost of many American lives.

However, this was not all in the complex dynamics of a war that easily could have gone the other way as in the Middle east, North Africa, the Mediterranean, and the North Atlantic, the British Royal Navy and Royal Air Force had their hands full with the Germans capturing Europe and running wild in North Africa as the German wolf pack of U-boat submarines sunk millions of tons of supplies intended to aid the UK and Russia from across the Atlantic.

What was the major objective that could have decided World War II for either side had America not entered the war when it had? With the undertaking of the Manhattan Project in the late 1930’s, the American atomic bomb development in Los Alamos, New Mexico and the drastic atomic experiments by the Nazis along with advanced rocket and jet aircraft at Peenemunde could easily have turned the war in favor of Hitler’s Germany had America remained isolationistic much longer.

The ultimate lesson here concerning the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor is that unfortunately, we can never take for granted the intentions of our enemies even in peace time as plans will be drawn, and any opportunity, technologically, strategically, or politically will be pursued by foreign nations against American interests. We know today that China has infiltrated the US via, open borders, and even legal green cards, and student visas. The Chinese and Iran have ignited violent protests on college campuses, and donated money to leftist political factions to shift US policy.

Vaccine mandates and LGBTQ acceptance in the US military caused massive resignations of much needed veterans like sergeants and petty officers thus weakening of US combat readiness through social behavior that did not prepare our fighting men for the harsh reality of military readiness. With a Democrat Party willing to weaken our forces emboldening foreign threats is an example of the enemy from within being traitors who will sell out the nation and their own countrymen in order for personal gain. Under the Biden Administration, we had the makings of a state of unreadiness that could have made the Pearl Harbor disaster look like a cake walk had China, North Korea, Iran, and Russia had their way.

Thomas Jefferson once warned that the cost of peace would never be cheap, and his words are prophetic as they could never be disavowed.