On December 7, 1941 the Imperial Japanese Navy made a fatal and totally unnecessary mistake by attacking the major American naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii with
the goal of putting the U.S. Pacific Fleet out of action and thus rendering it unable to steam to the relief of the Philippine Islands. Several hours later, on December 8 American installations in the Philippine Islands were attacked by air, a prelude to amphibious invasions designed to seize and hold the islands, removing them as a threat to Japanese invasions of Malaya, Borneo, and the Netherlands East Indies. The second attack was also a major blunder.
The attack on Pearl Harbor brought the United States, up to that point a politically divided nation, fully and wholeheartedly into the war – determined to destroy Japan. Neither attack was necessary.
Although the Philippine Islands provided American naval and air forces with a potential base for military operations against the sea lines of communication between South East Asia and Japan proper, such operations were highly unlikely because of the political climate in the United States. Thus, the attack on the Philippines was a fundamental strategic error.
The attack on the U.S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor was designed to crush it and prevent it from executing a long planned movement westward to relieve the Philippines in the event of a Japanese invasion of those islands. However, in December 1941 the U.S. Pacific Fleet was incapable of a significant westward movement in less than one year because of a shortage of auxiliary type ships, which made up what was then called the “Fleet Train.” Both factors were knowable at the highest levels of the Japanese government, through its routine information and intelligence gathering apparatus, and should have strongly influenced its decision making process.
If Japan carried out its plans to invade Malaya, Borneo, and the Netherlands East Indies, in order to ensure its oil supply and obtain other vital war materials for continued war time operations in China, it is highly unlikely that the United States would have taken any offensive military action. President Roosevelt was not inclined to ask for a declaration of war to protect British and Dutch colonial empires nor was the Congress likely to declare war solely on their account.
The United States had previously imposed a moral embargo on shipments to Japan, and subsequently officially embargoed scrap metal and aviation gasoline sales because of Japan’s aggressive behavior in China. In July 1941, after Japanese forces moved into southern French Indochina, the U.S. froze Japan’s financial assets in the United States and ended all oil shipments to Japan. Great Britain and the Netherlands followed suit. Japan, with almost no oil sources left available, faced a future with ever- dwindling oil reserves. It would be unable to continue the Army- led conquest of China, a goal dear to the hearts of Japanese imperialists, who planned to establish a “Greater East Asia Co- Prosperity Sphere”, which would leave Japan dominant in the Far East, and European nations and the United States on the outside looking-in.
The Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) was the foremost proponent of a southward movement, into South East Asia, to secure sufficient oil supplies for its fleet and for continued Army operations in China. The IJN, like the United States Navy, had long looked across the Pacific Ocean and viewed its distant neighbor as a potential enemy. Each Navy selected the other as a potential antagonist and war-gamed imaginary campaigns and battles. The United States developed a series of contingency war plans with Japan as the ostensible enemy, called War Plan Orange.1 War Plan Orange was modified during the 1920s and 1930s as different fleet commanders and their war planners considered strategic realities and developing capabilities, including air and submarine. Basically, the plan assumed a Japanese invasion of the Philippines, and a subsequent U. S. Army retreat and attempt to hold the Manila Bay area until the U.S. Fleet could move westward to assist. The IJN assumed the same and its plans called for submarine and air action to reduce the strength of the U.S. Fleet during its westward progress, and a final definitive sea battle (perhaps in the Philippine Sea) where Japanese guns and torpedoes would be triumphant, similar to the Tsushima Strait Battle of 1905 against the Russian fleet.2
Very early versions of War Plan Orange assumed that the Army would have to hold the Manila area for three to four months, during which period the Pacific Fleet would cross the Pacific and raise the siege. Later, after Japan acquired the Marshalls and Caroline islands as part of the Treaty of Versailles in 1919, that estimate increased to nine months.3 By 1933 a Naval War College strategist predicted that Phase I of the existing War Plan Orange, establishment of a first base in the Caroline Islands, might take several years. The head of the Naval War College Research Department suggested that the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations plan on a four-year war against Japan.4 During 1934, War Plan Orange was revised to provide for seizure of a number of island bases to furnish stepping stones for movement of the fleet towards the Philippines.5
In 1931 Japan’s Kwangtung Army, driven by right-wing expansionist theories, began its takeover of Manchuria. The central government in Tokyo acquiesced in that action. The League of Nations protested and appointed a Commission to investigate. The Lytton Commission Report of 2 October 1932 called upon Japan to withdraw from Manchuria.
Japan’s response was to officially withdraw from the League of Nations, and to announce that she would end compliance with existing arms limitation treaties in 1936.6 The major western nations: France, Great Britain, and the United States, took no action beyond uttering diplomatic protests over Japan’s behavior.
In 1937 the Japanese took advantage of a minor night time clash in Shanghai between Chinese and Japanese troops and began a war with China. The world looked on as Japanese aircraft bombed relatively defenseless Chinese cities, and Japanese troops ran amok in the interior. The Rape of Nanking in December 1937 in which at least several hundred thousand noncombatant Chinese citizens were raped and butchered, drew increasing condemnation but little response otherwise.7 On 12 December 1937 attacks on individual American citizens in China escalated into an air attack by IJN aircraft on USS PANAY, a gunboat operating on the Yangtze River. Several naval personnel were killed and others wounded, although the small ship was clearly identified with American markings. The Japanese government rapidly apologized and paid reparations and American public uproar over the incident subsided. In the second week of January 1938 a Gallup poll indicated that 70% of U.S. voters favored complete U. S. withdrawal from China: the Asiatic Fleet, Marines, missionaries, etc.8
On 26 July 1939, the United States denounced the 1911 Treaty of Commerce with Japan. Accordingly, after 26 January 1940 the President and Congress could dictate the terms of trade allowed with Japan. This action grew out of anger over attacks on U.S. citizens in China, the Panay incident, and other Japanese outrages in China.9 However diplomatic and economic action against Japan was not matched by military preparations in the western Pacific. On 23 February 1939, the House of Representatives had defeated a proposed bill authorizing $5 million to dredge Apra Harbor, Guam for a Submarine Base. The vote was 205 to 168.10
Japanese attacks on China elicited a great deal of sympathy for the Chinese people by the United States but no popular movement to go to war to assist them. During the 1930s the United States was in the throes of isolationism, fueled by hearings of the Senate Nye Committee in 1934 which led many to believe that the United States had been led by the nose into World War I by the perfidious British and French, and profit-hungry American munitions manufacturers. A series of Neutrality Acts were passed by Congress in 1935, 1936, and 1939 to keep the United States from becoming involved in another European War that seemed to be brewing.
In 1936 Germany moved into the neutralized Rhineland in clear violation of the Versailles Treaty. France dithered and, unsupported by Great Britain, failed to take any military action. German generals, who expected and feared a fast French military response and were prepared to rapidly extract the small, brigade- size force sent into the Rhineland, were astonished, Adolph Hitler’s political intuition as to what France and Great Britain would do, or would not do, was proven correct. Emboldened, in March 1938 German forces marched into independent Austria and forcibly incorporated her into the German nation. Later in 1938 Germany threatened war over the Sudetenland, a largely ethnic- German part of Czechoslovakia. At Munich, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain of Great Britain and French Premier Edouard Daladier gave in to Germany lest another large scale European war erupt. Germany subsequently occupied all of Czechoslovakia. The war was delayed, but for only one year.
On 1 September 1939 Germany, having just signed a secret pact with the Soviet Union agreeing to share the spoils, invaded Poland. On 3 September, France and Great Britain declared war on Germany in accordance with pledges made the previous year to support her against German aggression.
The war did not go well for the Allies. After the rapid Polish conquest, Hitler intended to attack France in the fall of 1939. However, bad weather delayed the attack until May 1940. It was startlingly successful and forced France to surrender in June 1940. Italy had also declared war on France and Great Britain. Great Britain was left with no European allies, and the threat of a German cross-channel invasion. In September 1940, Japan signed the Tripartite Pact with Germany and Italy, promising to assist the others if they were attacked (presumably by the United States).11
In 1933 newly elected President Franklin D. Roosevelt began rebuilding the U.S. Fleet, which had been sharply reduced as a result of the Naval Arms Limitation Conference in Washington in 1922. That conference not only put a ten-year holiday in effect on building new capital ships (battleships, cruisers and aircraft carriers) but it restricted the United States from strengthening any of its bases west of Pearl Harbor. The National Industrial Recovery Act of 16 June 1933, primarily aimed at restoring U.S. industry from the depression, included a large amount of naval ship construction.12 That construction included combat ships, but no auxiliary vessels. On 1 July 1939, just two months before World War II began; the Navy had only two transports (AP), three cargo ships (AK), three fleet oilers (AO), and one ammunition ship (AE) in commission.13 The Fleet Train, a vital support component of any projected fleet move westward from Pearl Harbor in support of War Plan Orange, was almost non-existent.
In July 1940 the Congress passed an “Act to expedite strengthening of the National Defense,” authorizing the President to prohibit or control export of military equipment or munitions when necessary in the interest of national defense. This allowed him to deny war material to Japan. Subsequently sales of the following were banned:
• 5 July 1940 – Strategic minerals and chemicals, aircraft engines, parts and equipment
• 28 July 1940 – Aviation motor fuel and lubricating oil, some classes of iron and steel scrap
• 30 September 1940 – All classes of iron and steel scrap
A Gallup poll at the time showed 96% public approval, and that 90% favored a complete embargo on war materials. Between December 1940 and January 1941 additional embargoes were imposed on specific metals, ores and manufactures.14
With events in Europe encouraging greater U. S. readiness for war, on 14 June 1940 President Roosevelt had signed a massive naval expansion bill. Three days later the Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Harold Stark, asked the Congress for four billion more dollars for a two-ocean Navy, and got it. However, again most of the new funds went for combatant ship construction. Longer construction times for warships dictated laying their keels down before work started on auxiliary vessels.
On 12 November 1940, a week after President Roosevelt’s unprecedented re-election to a third term, Admiral Stark sent him a memorandum regarding proposed U. S. strategy in the event of a war involving Germany, Italy and Japan as opponents. Stark outlined the threat presented by each enemy nation, dismissing Italy as only significant in the Mediterranean area. However, both Germany and Japan presented serious threats to the United States. Of the two threats, Germany’s was the most severe. If Germany defeated Great Britain, and acquired the warships of the Royal Navy as part of a surrender negotiation, the newly enlarged German Navy could conduct trans-Atlantic operations against U.S. interests. Japan presented a much more limited threat to U.S. interests, primarily to invade the Philippines. Stark’s memo listed possible courses of action, and under paragraph “D”, recommend- ed that in the event of a war, the U.S. focus on defeating Germany first, and fight a strategic defensive battle in the Pacific against Japan.15 The Army Chief of Staff, General George Marshall, agreed with its proposal. President Roosevelt indicated informally that he would follow Stark’s advice.16
The Plan D initiative on the part of the U.S. Navy and Army, led to combined staff talks with Great Britain in Washington in March 1941. Representatives of the U.S., British and Canadian armed services discussed strategy for dealing with the Axis powers. The hard pressed British were delighted with the American plan to adopt a defensive posture in the Far East and to concentrate on offensive action in the Atlantic and European theaters.17 One of the consequences of the newly formulated U.S. posture was the subsequent transfer of significant numbers of warships and auxiliaries from the Pacific to the Atlantic. From April through June 1941 battleships USS IDAHO, USS MISSISSIPPI, and USS NEW MEXICO were transferred, along with aircraft carrier USS YORKTOWN. Four light cruisers accompanied them (USS BROOKLYN, USS NASHVILLE, USS PHILADELPHIA, and USS SAVANNAH).18 Two squadrons of destroyers were also sent. By mid-summer, fleet oilers USS CIMARRON, USS SANGAMON, and USS SANTEE were also
transferred, as were three troop transports and a few other auxiliary ships. The net result was to reduce Pacific Fleet strength by 20%.19 The move also served as a precaution against a British collapse and subsequent surrender of the Royal Navy to Germa- ny.20
As events in Europe moved towards open warfare in 1939, Japan continued its aggressive moves into China. She took advantage of the French surrender in 1940 to press the new French Vichy government for concessions in French Indochina. Her intentions were to close the Burma Road over which a trickle of American and British war material made its way to Chinese forces, and to position her air arms for future strikes into Malaya.
On 16 September 1940, the United States Congress passed the Selective Service and Training Act, the first ever peacetime draft of young men. The term of mandatory service was one year, but implementation was slow since barracks had to be constructed to house all the new recruits. Although patriotic citizens were appalled at German and Japanese aggression in Europe and Asia and ready to defend the United States if directly attacked, they were very reluctant to get involved in another European war and even less likely to go to war to defend China.
In March 1941 a Gallup poll indicated that only a bare majori- ty of U.S. voters were willing to risk war in order to preclude Japan from seizing Singapore and the Netherlands East Indies.21 Whether or not it was even a majority is arguable – 40% were in favor of risking war, 39% were against risking war, and 21% had no opinion; thus 60% of the respondents were either opposed or undecided at best.
On 23 July 1941 the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs informed American Ambassador Joseph Grew that the Vichy government of unoccupied France had consented to a joint French- Japanese Protectorate of French Indochina. In response, on 26 July the United States embargoed all oil shipments to Japan and froze all Japanese financial assets in the United States. Although the Dutch had a contract to deliver oil to Japan it was sold only for cash – and that cash was now frozen in the U.S.22
In August 1941 the Selective Service and Training Act came up for renewal in Congress. Soldiers were chalking OHIO on their barracks walls, which translated as “Over the Hill in October.” It was not a threat to desert but rather them looking forward to the end of their one year obligated service. At that time Nazi Germany controlled almost all of Europe and had invaded the USSR in late June. Japan was running amok in the Far East. Despite these threats, the House of Representatives (HR) only extended the Selective Service Act by one vote (203 to 202). The HR, its members elected every two years, represented very mixed American public opinion regarding the wars in Europe and the Far East and a very strong desire on the part of many Americans to stay out of either war. A rider was attached to the Selective Service bill, which prohibited sending draftees overseas without Congressional authorization.
One of the tasks of the Japanese Embassy in Washington, and particularly its political councilor, was to monitor American public opinion as it reflected American-Japanese relations and to report on the subject to the Japanese Foreign Ministry in Tokyo. Another fundamental task, which fell to the Japanese naval attaché, was to monitor and report on the order of battle of the U.S. Navy. This includes numbers of significant warships, such as battleships, aircraft carriers, cruisers and destroyers, and their armaments and readiness. If the Japanese Naval General Staff in Tokyo was doing its job correctly, it should have also specified a need for information on vital auxiliary vessels, those necessary for the U.S. Fleet to carry out a westward fleet movement towards the Philippines. Both types of information were freely available: American political sentiment through published Gallup polls; and information pertaining to fleet units from open publications, the press and a study of Congressional authorizations and appropria- tions.23
In mid to late 1941 the United States Army beefed up its defenses in the Philippines both as a deterrent against a Japanese attack, and a defense if an attack took place. Secretary of War Henry Stimson authorized the delivery of 272 B-17s. General Marshall promised to double the number of Army troops in the Philippines by the end of 1941. General Hap Arnold, Chief of the Army Air Forces, scheduled 360 heavy bombers and 260 pursuit planes to arrive in the Philippines not later than April 1942. By 7 December 1941 about 10% of the bombers, 40% of the pursuit planes, and half the troops had arrived.24
As events progressed Great Britain, the Netherlands and the United States were well aware that a Japanese military offensive into Southeast Asia was likely. The Netherlands East Indies (current day Indonesia) was a prime target, primarily its oil fields. In the Far East local talks between Australian, British, Dutch and American military officers were held to discuss coordination in the event of a Japanese attack. What was not clear was whether the United States would enter a war against Japan if the Philippines were not attacked, or whether Great Britain and the Netherlands would declare war against Japan if only the Philippines were attacked. Those were questions that the military commanders could not answer. They could make assumptions but they were tenuous. Coordination was discussed but concrete plans were impossible.
On 7 November 1941 President Roosevelt queried his Cabinet officers about their opinions as to whether Congress would support a declaration of war if the Japanese attacked Malaya, Borneo and the Netherlands East Indies but left the Philippines alone. They responded unanimously that Congress would declare war.25 That probably reflected the level of support for the President’s unpublicized policies by the Cabinet officers involved, but not necessarily the reality of public opinion and its Congres- sional reflection.
Time magazine, in its 10 November 1941 edition in discussing current world affairs, noted, “no declaration of war (against Germany) would pass Congress.”26 This was at a time when the American public perceived Nazi Germany as a much more serious threat to American interests than that posed by Japan. Morison states that President Roosevelt was unsure if he could get a declaration of war from Congress if Japan attacked British, Dutch or French possessions.27
The reality was that the President and his administration had taken action in July 1941 to push Japan’s leaders into an untenable internal political position by cutting off Japan’s oil supply. Most of the American public thought that action was appropriate, given Japan’s behavior. A 7 September Gallup poll thought that the United States should take steps to restrain Japan (in the Far East) even if it risks war (70% agreed).
What the public did not know was that Japan’s response to the complete oil embargo would almost certainly involve a war against the United States, Great Britain and the Netherlands. Senior civil officials in the U.S. government knew it, as did senior Army and Navy officers. They expected Japan would go to war to seize the resources in South East Asia but hoped that an attack would be delayed until early 1942. If the public and the Congress had been presented with the proposition that the U.S. should cut off Japan’s oil supply, and oh by the way, that will inevitably lead to a war with Japan – the public response might have been somewhat different.
Japan’s senior leadership, mostly but not entirely military, should have been aware of several critical points: first – an attack on Malaya, Borneo and the Netherlands East Indies would not necessarily bring about a declaration of war by the United States if the Philippines were left alone. American public opinion would probably not have allowed a declaration of war under those circumstances. The small U.S. Asiatic Fleet did not represent a serious threat to Japanese movements in South East Asia. The U.S. Pacific Fleet, based at Pearl Harbor, was not capable of steaming west to relieve the Philippines in less than one year, ample time in which to consolidate Japanese conquests in Southeast Asia and to prepare defenses. In War Plan Orange, Edward S. Miller’s comprehensive treatise on the plan, he notes that in 1941 the War Department historian observed that the Army thought it might take two years for the Navy to fight its way back across the Pacific.28
In discussing the Pearl Harbor attack in The Two Ocean War, distinguished naval historian Samuel Eliot Morison states “In view of the weakness of that Fleet (of which they were well appraised), and the length of time that it would take to reach Philippine waters it is unaccountable that (Admiral) Yamamoto thought its destruction necessary before war fairly began.”29 He goes on to state “The decision for a man of Yamamoto’s intelligence was strange; for a strategy it was not only wrong but disastrous.”
A little later in the same volume Morison discusses the matter of a possible Congressional declaration of war in the event of a Japanese attack on non-American possessions. He writes “And it is doubtful whether Congress would have considered as a causus belli a Japanese move into Thailand, British Malaya or the Netherlands East Indies.”30
In late 1941 the U.S. Pacific Fleet had only four fleet oilers equipped for refueling warships underway, but needed a total of
25 for projected extended operations.31 In that same period, Admiral Husband Kimmel, the Pacific Fleet commander, responded to correspondence from Admiral Stark, who was needling him about long range contingency plans to seize the Japanese naval base at Truk (Base Two in War Plan Orange documents). Kimmel retorted that he had only one troop transport available but would need some 30-40 troop transports, and that he had scarcely any other auxiliary craft.32
Actually on 7 December 1941, the Pacific Fleet Train consist- ed of eleven fleet oilers (AO), six of which had been commis- sioned in 1922 or earlier. Those were capable of only 14 knots at best. Of the five modern, high-speed oilers (design speed of 18 knots); two were in Mare Island Naval Shipyard in Vallejo, California for repairs and modification. In addition, the Train included two ammunition ships (AE). The older one dated to 1920 (design speed 13 knots) and the other was commissioned in 1940 (design speed 15 knots). The Train also included five general cargo ships (AK), four provision ships (AFS) and two general stores ships (AKS). In addition, there were ten transports (AP), and three repair ships (AR). These types of ships in adequate numbers were absolutely necessary for a fleet movement into the western Pacific Ocean.
War Plan Orange had been officially disestablished on 17 December 1940, and replaced by Joint Plan Rainbow Five. The plan called for the Pacific Fleet to capture “Base One”, somewhere in the Caroline Islands by M+180 (180 days after the start of war), and to have the base completed by M+180 to M+360, nearly a year later. Base Two (probably Truk) was to be captured from “Indefinite to M+360”, and completed in “unspecified years.”33 Once completed, Base Two would serve as a springboard for the fleet to proceed to the Philippines. It was obvious to American naval war planners that fighting their way back across the Pacific to the Philippines in the face of Imperial Japanese Navy opposition would involve a great deal of effort and time. That same limitation should have been clearly apparent to Japanese naval war planners and senior admirals.
On 7 December 1941, in the immediate aftermath of the Pearl Harbor attack, Admiral Stark directed execution of the war plan, which included the capture of the Caroline and Marshall Islands; and subsequently the capture of Truk. He modified his directive to tell Kimmel to defend the Hawaiian Islands, Johnson Island, Wake Island and Palmyra Island; and to protect the sea lines of communications from the west coast to Hawaii; and to prevent Japanese excursions into the western hemisphere.34
Admiral Nagano Osami, the Chief of the Japanese Naval General Staff, was first exposed to the Pearl Harbor attack plan in August 1941, at a war game held in Tokyo at the Naval War College, sponsored by Admiral Yamamoto, the Commander Combined Fleet. Admiral Nagano apparently considered the Pearl Harbor attack “a strategic necessity.”35 It is hard to imagine why he thought so. The U.S. Pacific Fleet was not equipped with adequate support ships to undertake a rapid movement to relieve the Philippines Islands. Both the Combined Fleet staff and the Naval General Staff in Tokyo should have been well aware of that fact through basic naval order of battle reporting by Japan’s naval attaché in Washington, and their own analysis.
During pre-attack discussions Admiral Yamamoto emphasized that if Pearl Harbor were not attacked; the U.S. fleet might advance across the Pacific and attack Japan while Imperial Navy forces were occupied in Southeast Asia.36 Not all Navy General Staff personnel agreed that the U.S. fleet would be a problem; some felt that the U.S. fleet could not advance rapidly across the Pacific, perhaps a reflection of more careful analysis of U.S. fleet capabilities and limitations.37
In 1944 Captain Vincent R. Murphy, who had been assistant war plans officer to Admiral Kimmel, testified at the Admiral Thomas Hart Inquiry, that the Rainbow Five war plan called for capture of Japanese bases in the Caroline and Marshall islands, and then Truk, before moving west to the Philippines.38 Murphy stated that prewar estimates were at least six to nine months to get moving. He also noted that American naval planners assumed that Japanese naval planners had the sense to realize what the timing must be. He said that the Department of State presumed that there was enough political wisdom in the Government of Japan to avoid unqualified aggression that would bring the United States, angry and united, into the war. Referring to the Pearl Harbor attack, he stated, “On a strategic level it was idiotic. On the high political level it was disastrous.”39
The war began with Japanese air attacks on Pearl Harbor and the Philippines on 7 and 8 December respectively. A large portion of Pacific Fleet battleships were sunk at their moorings at Pearl, and half of General Douglas MacArthur’s B-17 bomber force was destroyed at Clark Air Base in the Philippines. Japanese amphibious and naval forces rapidly pushed into Malaya, Borneo, the Netherlands East Indies, and the Philippines, overrunning hastily cobbled-together allied forces. It was not until November 1943, nearly two years after the Pearl Harbor attack that the United States Navy was ready to attempt an amphibious assault on the Caroline Islands, to seize “Base One”, the first step back towards the Philippines.
Morison’s Volume 7, Aleutians, Gilberts and Marshalls, Appendix II provides a detailed breakdown of the task forces and groups involved in the invasion of the Carolines. The Fleet Train vessels included 17 transports (AP), four cargo ships (AK), two Landing Ship Docks (LSD), 14 fleet oilers (AO), two hospital ships, (AH) and two repair ships (AR). In addition, there were a variety of fleet tugs and salvage ships involved.40
The size of the Fleet Train in 1943 clearly emphasizes the point that the Pacific Fleet was incapable of such westward movement in December 1941. It could not have relieved the Philippines under any circumstances in less than one year and thus presented no threat to planned Japanese operations in Southeast Asia in late 1941. Thus, the attacks on the Philippines and Pearl Harbor were grave mistakes.
ENDNOTES
1 The color used identified the country targeted. Japan was Orange, Germany – Black, and Great Britain – Red.
2 Samuel Eliot Morison, The Rising Sun in the Pacific, 82
3 Samuel Eliot Morison, The Two Ocean War, 18
4 Edward S. Miller, War Plan Orange, pp. 168-169. The first Central Pacific advance began two years after the Pearl Harbor attack.
5 John Prados, Combined Fleet Decoded, 87. Afterwards, Prados.
6 Samuel Eliot Morison, The Two Ocean War, 19.
7 Iris Chang, The Rape of Nanking, 4
8 Samuel Eliot Morison, The Rising Sun in the Pacific, 18
9 Ibid., 39
10 Ibid., 33-34
11 Samuel Eliot Morison, The Two Ocean War, 29
12 Ibid., 19
13 Samuel Eliot Morison, The Rising Sun in the Pacific, 31
14 Ibid., 59-60
15 The memorandum became known as “Plan Dog.” “Dog” was the phonetic pronunciation of the letter ‘D’ at that time.
16 Edward S. Miller, War Plan Orange, 269-270.
17 Samuel Eliot Morison, The Rising Sun in the Pacific, 51
18 Light cruisers carried 6-inch guns, while heavy cruisers were armed with 8- inch guns.
19 Samuel Eliot Morison, 57
20 Edward S. Miller, War Plan Orange, 268-269
21 Samuel Eliot Morison, The Rising Sun in the Pacific, 61-62.
22 Ibid., 61-62
23 The author served as Defense and Naval Attaché in Toyo 1978-1981 and was familiar with the process of collecting information on another nation’s armed forces. While information about Japanese naval rearmament in the late 1930s was very difficult to obtain, that was not true in the United States. Fahey’s Ships and Aircraft of the U.S. Fleet began publication in 1939.
24 Edward S. Miller, War Plan Orange, 61-62
25 Samuel Eliot Morison, The Rising Sun in the Pacific, 72-73
26 A November 22 Gallup poll indicated that 63% of respondents opposed a declaration of war against Germany (at that time).
27 Samuel Eliot Morison, The Rising Sun in the Pacific, 54.
28 Edward S. Miller, War Plan Orange, 62
29 Samuel Eliot Morison, The Rising Sun in the Pacific, 40
30 Ibid, 45
31 Edward S. Miller, War Plan Orange, 308
32 Ibid., 283
33 Ibid., 279
34 Samuel Eliot Morison, The Rising Sun in the Pacific, 219-220
35 Ibid., 82
36 John Prados, Combined Fleet Decoded, 141
37 Ibid., 143.
38 The Admiral Hart Inquiry was convened by the Secretary of the Navy. It sat from 15 February 1944 to 15 June 1944 to ensure that important evidence would not be lost.
39 Samuel Eliot Morison, The Rising Sun in the Pacific, 132n
40 Samuel Eliot Morison, Aleutians, Gilberts and Marshalls, Appendix II, 336- 342
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