A monumental error with a terrible cost

7 December. It’s a date I tend not to forget because it’s the birthday of a schoolfriend of my sons'. Ironically, he’s half Japanese.

That’s an irony because it’s also the date of the Empire of Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. That has to be one of the greatest cockups in history. And it reflects a problem that’s with us again, in some strength, today: excessive admiration of patriotism. My country right or wrong, and all that. 

Well, the Japanese who went to war with the Americans that day tended to subscribe to that kind of patriotism. And on that occasion, it was their country deeply wrong.

Aftermath of the raid on Pearl Harbor

The fundamental mistake was to think that Japan had the power and the men to defeat, or at least fatally weaken, the US in a single blow. They had, after all, become seemingly unstoppable in their invasions of Korea and China. A similar mistake would be made in Europe by Adolf Hitler when, made overconfident by his lightning advances (Blitzkrieg literally means lightning war) against Poland, and France, he threw the German armies against Soviet Union, expecting a victory as complete and rapid there.

But at Pearl Harbor, Japan did a lot of damage, but nothing that the US could not recover from. None of the US Pacific Fleet’s aircraft carriers had been in harbour that day, so they escaped damage. But the Japanese had made a far more serious error still: they had failed to understand the sheer depth of industrial and financial muscle of America, and its resolve to fight back against attack. When the US switched much of its industry to war production, it could outbuild the Japanese in such critical equipment as warplanes, ships and tanks, many times over.

What I find far more telling, however, is the difference between the two nations in the assessment of simple, human manpower. The US could turn out planes quickly, but it could took a long time to train a pilot. So they rightly valued their pilots far more than the planes they flew. 

The most stirring example of that attitude was given on 20 June 1944, when US planes were sent against Japanese ships in late afternoon, and at extreme range. Everyone knew that this means that surviving pilots would be returning at night and with their fuel practically spent. 

In one of the more moving moments of the Second World War, Admiral Marc Mitscher ordered all the fleet’s lights turned on. On the face of it, that’s a crazy decision: any Japanese submarine in the neighbourhood would see the lights and close in for some easy wins. 

But Mitscher wanted to do anything he could to save his airmen.

Even so, 100 planes were lost, as many as 80 trying to land back on their carriers. But because many of the planes that had to ditch got close to the fleet before they went down, destroyers searching the area next morning picked up a lot of men from the water. 

Overall, despite losing 100 planes out of the 200 sent on the mission, the US fleet lost only 16 pilots and 33 crewmen, most of them in the battle itself. The planes could be replaced relatively easily, the men couldn’t.

Japan had a profoundly different view. The culture saw it as honourable to die in battle. Men were supposed to put their loyalty to the Emperor above the preservation of their lives.

At the time of Pearl Harbor, Japan probably had the most skilled air force pilots in the world. Over the next year or so, they lost them with extravagance, as though they could be replaced with ease. By the end of the war, they were sending barely trained pilots into action, with the obvious results.

By then, of course, they couldn’t replace their lost planes any more either, with all their ports blockaded and their convoys of vital raw materials, most of which had to be imported, sunk by US naval action. So it no longer made any difference. But the casual loss of their people was always a mistake in any case and certainly helped destroy their war effort.

The Japanese had relied on their cultural traditions and their deepseated views of man and Empire, and both traditions and views had failed them. Other nations ought to learn that lesson. The British or Americans are inclined to be a little lazy in expressing pride in country and certainty that their underlying characteristics will ensure their success. 

That kind of attitude led Japan to its crushing defeat.

Curiously, if we come back to that fateful day, 7 December 1941, one extremely well-placed figure on the Japanese side, had it entirely right. Isoroku Yamamoto was the Japanese admiral in overall command of the fleet that launched the attack on Pearl Harbor. He said of it:

I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.

He was right. Indeed, that giant got him before the end of the fighting. He died when US fighters, guided to the right point at the right time by codebreakers, intercepted a plane he was travelling in and shot it down.

His country got it wrong, and he paid a heavy price for that error.