At the end of the epic movie Tora, Tora, Tora, (1970), Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, the head of the combined Japanese fleet, after the successful attack on Pearl Harbor, refuses to join in the elation of his staff, and makes this haunting observation: “I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.” The line is almost certainly apocryphal. The director of the film, Elmo Williams, claimed that Larry Forester, the film’s screenwriter, had found the line in a 1943 letter written by Yamamoto. However, he has been unable to produce the letter, and there is no other evidence that such a letter exists.
However, there is no doubt that Yamamoto would fully have endorsed the sentiment that the line contained. He had studied at Harvard in 1919-1921, and served two tours as a naval attache at the Japanese embassy in Washington DC. He spoke fluent English, and his stays in the US had convinced him of that nation’s vast wealth and industrial power. He had also developed a fondness for both America and Americans.
In the 1930’s Yamamoto spoke out against Japan allying with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, fearing that such an alliance would lead inevitably to a war with the US that Japan would lose. He received frequent death threats as a result from fanatical Japanese nationalists. These were not idle threats, as such nationalists did assassinate a fair number of Japanese politicians and military men during the Thirties who were against war with the US. Yamamoto ignored the threats with studied contempt, viewing it as his duty to the Emperor and Japan to speak out against a disastrous course. Yamamoto wrote in a letter to one nationalist:
Should hostilities once break out between Japan and the United States, it would not be enough that we take Guam and the Philippines, nor even Hawaii and San Francisco. To make victory certain, we would have to march into Washington and dictate the terms of peace in the White House. I wonder if our politicians (who speak so lightly of a Japanese-American war) have confidence as to the final outcome and are prepared to make the necessary sacrifices.
After war came, and his warnings were ignored, Yamamoto fought to win it for Japan, until he died at the hands of an American P-38 Lightning raid, specifically targeting the plane he was flying in, the US eager to have their brilliant adversary no longer at the helm of the Japanese navy. In the aftermath of the Pearl Harbor raid, on January 9, 1942, when Japan was riding high on a wave of rapid conquest throughout the Pacific, Yamamoto made the following comment which indicated both his moral qualms as to the Pearl Harbor raid, and his fears as to the ultimate outcome:
“A military man can scarcely pride himself on having ‘smitten a sleeping enemy’; it is more a matter of shame, simply, for the one smitten. I would rather you made your appraisal after seeing what the enemy does, since it is certain that, angered and outraged, he will soon launch a determined counterattack.”
On the other side of the globe from Admiral Yamamoto, in Paris, Illinois, my father, Donald Dean McClarey, was an eight year old boy. He would recount to me in later years how he remembered the day after Pearl Harbor, seeing long lines of men and teen-age boys waiting patiently in the early morning for the recruiting offices in Paris to open up, so they could join up to fight. My father, I am certain, if he had been old enough to do so, would have been standing in one of those lines himself, since that is precisely what he did during the Korean War, shortly after his eighteenth birthday, when he joined the Air Force. (My late father-in-law joined the Navy after Pearl Harbor, receiving his parent’s permission to do so since he was 17.) Similar scenes were replicated throughout the US on the day after the date which will live in infamy.
In London, Winston Churchill, sharing Admiral Yamamoto’s fondness and appreciation for America and Americans, (Churchill’s mother having been American), grasped immediately what Pearl Harbor meant:
No American will think it wrong of me if I proclaim that to have the United States at our side was to me the greatest joy. I could not foretell the course of events. I do not pretend to have measured accurately the martial might of Japan, but now at this very moment I knew the United States was in the war, up to the neck and in to the death. So we had won after all! Yes, after Dunkirk; after the fall of France; after the horrible episode of Oran; after the threat of invasion, when, apart from the Air and the Navy, we were an almost unarmed people; after the deadly struggle of the U-boat war — the first Battle of the Atlantic, gained by a hand’s breadth; after seventeen months of lonely fighting and nineteen months of my responsibility in dire stress, we had won the war. England would live; Britain would live; the Commonwealth of Nations and the Empire would live. How long the war would last or in what fashion it would end, no man could tell, nor did I at this moment care. Once again in our long Island history we should emerge, however mauled or mutilated, safe and victorious. We should not be wiped out. Our history would not come to an end. We might not even have to die as individuals. Hitler’s fate was sealed. Mussolini’s fate was sealed. As for the Japanese, they would be ground to powder. All the rest was merely the proper application of overwhelming force. The British Empire, the Soviet Union, and now the United States, bound together with every scrap of their life and strength, were, according to my lights, twice or even thrice the force of their antagonists. No doubt it would take a long time. I expected terrible forfeits in the East; but all this would be merely a passing phase. United we could subdue everybody else in the world. Many disasters, immeasurable cost and tribulation lay ahead, but there was no more doubt about the end.
Silly people — and there were many, not only in enemy countries — might discount the force of the United States. Some said they were soft, others that they would never be united. They would fool around at a distance. They would never come to grips. They would never stand blood-letting. Their democracy and system of recurrent elections would paralyze their war effort. They would be just a vague blur on the horizon to friend or foe. Now we should see the weakness of this numerous but remote, wealthy, and talkative people. But I had studied the American Civil War, fought out to the last desperate inch. American blood flowed in my veins. I thought of a remark which Edward Grey had made to me more than thirty years before — that the United States is like “a gigantic boiler. Once the fire is lighted under it there is no limit to the power it can generate.” Being saturated and satiated with emotion and sensation, I went to bed and slept the sleep of the saved and thankful.”
Pearl Harbor was a tactical defeat for the US, but a strategic defeat of epic proportion for the enemies of the US, something understood seventy-nine years ago today by a Japanese admiral, a British prime minister, and an eight year old boy in Paris, Illinois.
People united freely in purpose are far more dangerous than any amount of slaves forced to serve.
My father was roughly 13, and not quite old enough to fake his way into the military or he might have tried to do so. He was the youngest son, so they might not have taken him anyway. One brother was in the European theatre, and the other in the Pacific on a sub (On a side note, that uncle participated in nuclear bomb testing and went into the power industry. I think he and LCQ would have had some very interesting conversations.)
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My dad did not hate anybody; he was not capable of that. But any time the subject of the morality of the bombing Hiroshima came, Dad was absolutely for it. He worked with his father (an electrician) on repairing the damaged ships from Pearl Harbor. Some were taken to Port Angeles/Seattle for repairs. He said the damaged ships were eerie.
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He was on the cusp of being drafted when the bomb fell and Japan surrendered.
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I lived in Japan for a bit. Great people, excellent rice (mediocre veggies, though). Before I went to Japan, I supported the bombing because of my father’s experience. After, because of my own. All cultures have a flaw–the Japanese is that they just don’t know when to quit, when to say “Forget this stuff” and have a beer. The bombing spared hundreds of thousands of lives on both sides.
All cultures have a flaw–the Japanese is that they just don’t know when to quit, when to say “Forget this stuff” and have a beer. The bombing spared hundreds of thousands of lives on both sides.
/amen
It’s a strength… but also a flaw.
Do not meekly put on your chains.
What they did last November 3 was as great a threat to our Republic as Pearl Harbor.
My Uncle Bob was a machinist mate on US Liberty ships. He would offer to fight anybody that said the bombs were bad. He survived the war ONLY because he was AWOL [late returning from Leave to attend his brother’s wedding] and missed his ship’s sailing – it was carrying munitions and blew up in Manila Bay with no survivors. The Captain’s Mast, lost stripe, and $50 fine were worth it He was honorably discharged having served on other ships in the Pacific War. .
Hopefully, the criminal enterprise also known as the Democrat Party’s serial election larcenies – the flu d’état – awakened a sleeping giant with terrible resolve.
My Dad was 11 when the attack happened. His two older brothers enlisted. One flew in B-17s over Europe, the other served with Patton in the Ardennes (among other places). My Mom’s oldest brother served in New Guinea and the S. Pacific (his was the group that intercepted Yamamoto). My parents also had uncles and cousins who served. My Mom’s other brother lost a lung as a child so couldn’t serve, and that bothered him. But then it bothered Dad that he was too young, so he and his next younger brother joined during Korea (serving stateside). His youngest brother by a large stretch served in Vietnam, as did my Mom’s oldest nephew (one army, one marines). In fact, almost all healthy males in my family served in a war the last century, many in combat, until me.
My maternal grandfather went into the USAAF and was a bomber mechanic. He was always proud of his service, even if he didn’t see action. I think that describes almost all of the millions who wore the uniform back then.
I recall reading the account of an Englishman who was in Chicago on December 8, 1941. He was in the central railway station for the city, and he was awed by how silent it was, despite the crowds of people. He could feel the rage under the silence.
My oldest paternal uncle, Chuck “Junior” McClarey, fought his way across the Pacific as a Marine. My Uncle Bill Taylor, who married my aunt Betty, served in the Navy in the Pacific, and was present in Tokyo Bay when the Japanese surrendered. Both gone now. Growing up I took the World War II generation for granted, and now they are almost all departed.
I should have mentioned that my Mom’s oldest brother was also at the Battle of Midway, on Midway itself.
My bride has the distinction of being one of the very few people born on Midway. In 1958 when my late Father-in-law was still in the Navy.
“Growing up I took the World War II generation for granted, and now they are almost all departed.” This is the problem. The younger generations are NOT hearing about these wars in the same manner (if at all) like we did from the lips of those who fought and watched their friends die in battle. When I look at those who want to tear down this country today, without any experience of or knowing the horror of a civil war and without ever knowing real want / starvation, I keep remembering that quote from Red Dawn about forgetting what war was like.
John, Per my sons, the common assumption of many of their college peers is that WWII – like most things – was the product of American imperialism and the industrial war complex. Not that Hitler and the Nazis were bad, but they weren’t any worse than our nation. But rather than stop him, we chose to run blocker for them so that the world would plunge into the war that the US and its industry could then profit by. Japan is simply the result of misunderstandings and our racism.
of many of their college peers
Stupidity and raw ignorance that intense must require quite a bit of blindness to maintain. Bluto was a genius in comparison:
This statement by Yamamoto, “…nor is it enough that we should take Hawaii and San Francisco..” Actually confirms what my World War II-officer Pacific- theater-father had said. As an officer in the “pineapple pentagon” at Oahu, Before he passed away in 2011 he spoke about military intelligence from decrypted Imperial Japanese naval communications and plans.
One of those plans that few people know today is that there was a serious Japanese plan to land sappers after Pearl Harbor and the taking of the Philippines on the San Francisco peninsula near a town called Davenport California, move swiftly and light armored vehicles up the skyline Boulevard and in place howitzers on the hills overlooking San Francisco from the Skyline and from the San Bruno mountains, and cannonade San Francisco into submission and extract an early US surrender, if possible. The Japanese felt that they had air superiority with their 6 to 8 state of the art aircraft carriers and they certainly had the most outstanding fighter pilots enable aviators in the world at that time. He saw communications regarding the Japanese setting up a military commandancy of San Francisco. No resident of San Francisco likely knows this fact today.
The day after Pearl Harbor he and his artillery unit moved up from Ft. Ord and placed at key positions their 37-mm howitzers—the best quickly moveable mobile artillery they had at that time—trained on the Skyline Boulevard, in case such an action should happen.
And say what you will but that was the reason for the mass removal of Japanese Americans, and that hyper alert environment of December 1941 and following. After all Japanese naval spies were working in Oahu and Pearl Harbor and the Japanese community leading up to December 7.
“No resident of San Francisco likely knows this fact today.”
Amazing story. God bless your dad.
Trying to imagine that placement of mobile artillery overlooking the bay, quite unsettling. Thank God for those brave men, the greatest generation. I won’t retell the long story, however the best five day road trip was in 2010 with a bus of WWII vets heading to DC for memorial day weekend. My wife and I chaperoned the group.
Great men and women.