If nothing else when it comes to history we know that short sighted human behavior leads to the convenient memory loss that occurs over events that could have been avoided in the future with proper preparedness. Yet, just as we are doomed to suffer repeating the mistakes of history when we don’t heed the warnings, the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor by the Japanese 7^th December 1941 will always live as an important reminder that no matter how mighty we think America is, with enough negligence and denial we can easily see it happen again only next time there won’t be enough capability to delay a devastating series of wartime losses and have the time to recover. That capability of mass manufacture has long been gone thanks to overseas relocation of factory jobs to places like China, who at the same time, plot against us.

While Japan spend the 1920’s in long preparation for a war with the US building fortified islands across the Pacific, America was struggling with the great Depression and Stock Market Crash of 1929. Thus, the nation was not prepared for a war time footing. Is there a parallel today as China expands their navy and builds artificial islands all across the South China Sea that can target the world’s shipping lanes and launch missiles and jet fighters against the US Navy?

By 2008 the Communist Chinese already had 800 missiles pointed at Taiwan, the Number One microprocessor chip manufacturer in the world and the US buys 80% of those in order to fill the need for cars, appliances, and electronics like cell phones. Is Taiwan, a strategic partner of the US, were to fall, American production would grind to a standstill. This would be an existential threat as even US fighter jets depend on Taiwan semiconductors!

Still, the noose around the throat of world peace grows tighter as the Ukraine War with Russia enters into a new deadly phase with threats from Vladimir Putin of nuclear hypersonic missiles being used against the west if escalation continues. Some 50 thousand North Korean troops are being conscripted to fight against Ukraine by the Russian federation now. Add to this that 5 or 6 Iranian assassination teams are on US soil thanks to the Open Borders invasion of illegal aliens allowed by the Democrats. They are just waiting for an opportunity to take out soon to be President Trump. So, America is threatened from out as well as from within much like in 1941 before the Pearl Harbor attack when Europe and North Africa were under siege by the Nazis as the Japanese ravaged China and Manchuria!

The winds of war are not some hallucination of the paranoid mind. They are very real and just as a wild fire waiting to ignite, are just waiting for the type of incident that can set an entire conflagration into motion that will cost lives unheard of before. America can never allow its guard down, but under the Democrats with millions of enlistment aged foreign men from many countries already here, with thousands of experienced military resigned thanks to Biden’s mandatory vaccine requirements, and the low enlistment quotas that are not repopulating the ranks of the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, and Coast Guard, the US is on alert but thinly supplied. Since the Obama administration the waters of Alaska have been violated by both Russian and Chinese flotillas and bomber formations with no retaliatory response. This lax approach to defense could lead to costly losses of life and strategic disaster!

Just as the early morning sinking of a Japanese mini sub at the entrance to Pearl Harbor by the Destroyer USS Ward that went unreported up the chain of command for hours until the first wave of Japanese military aircraft already had arrived in mass over the Island of Oahu. The Japanese aircrafts used at Pearl Harbor were specifically 131 strong of the Aichi 3A2, Val Type 99, single-engine dive bombers, 79 of the Mitsubishi A6M2 Zeke or Zero Model 11 Carrier-borne fighter, and 143 NakajimaB5N2 Kate Type 97, Model 12 Single-engine torpedo bombers.

The level of unpreparedness made itself painfully obvious as ammunition for machine guns and anti-aircraft were under lock and key only delaying response, aircraft had been parked very close to one another to make guarding them close by sentries would be made easier in the event of saboteurs, but easy targets. The island’s only radar unit had spotted the incoming Japanese squadrons but thought they were an expected flight of B-17’s scheduled to arrive from the mainland, as the enemy intruded upon a lazy Sunday morning. In full dress, on the deck, and executing roll call, as Mitsubishi Zero’s flew by the startled sailors and officers, the surprise attack was in full swing!

As the Japanese fighters and bombers zoomed into the harbor children out playing baseball and mothers hanging laundry on the clotheslines gazed into the cockpit glass to see the toothy grins of the enemy pilots assured of their unanticipated approach for the attack. Time seems to have stood still for those first few astonishing moments before the military personnel of Pearl realized that this was no drill and minutes later as the ships and sailors on the ground were strafed and bombed, word came from the loud speaker system, “Man your battle stations! We are under attack! No shit!”

As bad as it all seemed, the Japanese were amazed that within less than 15 minutes an umbrella of anti-aircraft fire was already reaching out to the sky which accounted for the loss of 29 of their aircraft, but hardly a slap on the wrist for the 452 planes that attacked in two separate waves! A third intended wave was to have launched, but, Admiral Nagumo Chuichi, commander of the task force relented as to him the element of surprise had expired and without knowing where the two known American aircraft carriers were, he feared being blindsided by those US carrier forces. So, with the third wave withdrawn the Japanese headed on a full speed course from their location north of the Hawaiian Islands.

The most astonishingly successful surprise attack in human history, Pearl Harbor will live as the bloody reminder of just how oversight can cost national security dearly along with the lives of so many. With all major battleships either sunk or badly damaged, with the USS Arizona practically blown in half and resting on the bottom of the harbor bed where 900 sailors and officer were disintegrated instantly by one high level bomb that hit the magazine (Ammo storage), more than 100 P-40 Warhawks fighter planes shot into burning scraps of metal, hangars bombed and destroyed, and at least 2500 men lost, the US Naval Pacific Fleet suffered a humiliating defeat! The torpedo bombers were devastatingly effective in knocking out ships that were all too vulnerable that deadly Sunday morning.

In all this there were moments of heroism by defiant sailors and US Marines shooting at the planes and saving the lives of the wounded. However, what allowed CINCPAC to recover so rapidly and get ships back into running order was the fact that the dry docks where all the repair would take place had been left intact. Had the Japanese decided to bomb the repair facilities it would have taken crucial months longer to get damaged ships back into commission and the US Navy back into the offensive against a ruthless and determined enemy.