A thorough and dispassionate look at the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7th, 1941, and the events leading up to it. Introduced by David McCullough, whose matter-of-fact intonations took us through the horrors of Ken Burns' "The Civil War." It's narrated by Jason Robards, who happened to be a Navy radioman at Pearl Harbor who copied the original message: "Air raid Pearl Harbor. This is no drill."
This isn't the usual sketch of the attack. It's more thorough that that, and includes some uncommon footage. There are clips from an accurate Japanese propaganda film describing the skillful deployment of the Pearl Harbor strike force. And where else can you watch the Macy's Thanksgiving day Parade while the Andrews Sisters sing "Japanese Sandman"?
It's good that there are at last enough years between the present and 1941 that we can look at the perspective of both sides. Japan had come out of World War I in relatively good shape, feeling nationalistic. Twenty years earlier they had been victorious in a war with Russia. But their population was exploding. Japan itself had no natural resources, so were compelled to import them and convert them into commercial and military products.
The Great Depression blunted the economy too. One of the few avenues for advancement for young men was the military. Only the most resolute completed their education at the academies. The cadets were routinely beaten with sticks, inculcating the notion of strict obedience and severe punishment for losers.
One solution to the raw-material problem seemed to be an outright occupation of neighboring Manchuria, which gave them immediate access to raw materials. And, since no one was in a position to interfere, why not China too? The invasion was exceptionally brutal. The cosmopolitan port of Shanghai was bombarded and is only now beginning to resemble the sophisticated center of commerce and trade that it once was.
In 1936 Japan signed a pact with Germany, ostensibly to protect each other from an attack by Russia. Their only real rival in the Pacific was the United States, whose demands and embargoes were all that stood between the home islands and the resource-rich European colonies of Southeast Asia. To the Japanese it seemed the US was strangling a nation fighting for its survival. The civilian government had been able to do nothing, so power was now in the hands of the military cabinet, led by Prime Minister Tojo. Emperor Hirohito, as usual, remained a mysterious, distant figure, too divine to interfere in worldly affairs.
At the same time, in the late 1930s and all of 1940, the US was doing quite well selling arms to Great Britain. Everyone was enthralled by Joe DiMaggio's unbroken string of hits for the New York Yankees. Despite the strong isolationist sentiment in the United States, President Roosevelt realized that war was likely, but Nazi Germany was considered the greater threat.
There were indications of war with Japan but clues suggested an attack on American colonies in the western Pacific, like the Phillipine Islands. The commanding general at Pearl Harbor was Walter Short, who deemed the Japanese population of Hawaii a threat, and so ordered his airplanes to be neatly lined up instead of dispersed, ready for destruction from the air, as it were. The admiral in charge was Husband Kimmel. Neither the Army nor the Navy received any direct warnings, nevertheless both heads rolled after the attack.
Of particular interest to me, as a behavioral scientist and not a military historian, is the description of the rumors that seemed to run like wildfire through Hawaii and the rest of the United States following the attack. The Japanese population of Honolulu had sabotaged American facilities. They'd poisoned the water. They'd bombed the residential areas of Honolulu, although the damage to the city, extensive as it was, was caused by falling fragments from American anti-aircraft guns. Medals were awarded wholesale, even to those who had done only what their duties demanded.
The fear led to a hysterical response near Los Angeles when a Japanese submarine was supposed to have been sighted. And before the attack, stereotypes influenced the postures of both sides. Americans considered the Japanese to be short, near sighted, buck-toothed, and lacking in a sense of balance due to their having been bounced around as babies on their mothers' backs, a nation fit for making cheap toys. The Americans, on the other hand, were lazy, undisciplined, and weak willed, and they would sue for peace after the destruction of their fleet.
As is usual after a cataclysmic event, conspiracy theories emerged, built on hypothetical connections between randomly placed and far-flung dots. There was at the time -- and still is, in some circles -- a conviction that President Roosevelt was complicit in the Japanese attack because he wanted a war to start. Human thinking might be improved if it could just grasp the simple fact that any act has multiple determinants. And sometimes, the most horrible or the most felicitous events are the result of an improbable juxtaposition of circumstances. As detectives say in the movies, "I suspect no one and I suspect everyone."
If the upright dominoes just happen to be lined up perfectly, when one topples, a cascade follows.
This isn't the usual sketch of the attack. It's more thorough that that, and includes some uncommon footage. There are clips from an accurate Japanese propaganda film describing the skillful deployment of the Pearl Harbor strike force. And where else can you watch the Macy's Thanksgiving day Parade while the Andrews Sisters sing "Japanese Sandman"?
It's good that there are at last enough years between the present and 1941 that we can look at the perspective of both sides. Japan had come out of World War I in relatively good shape, feeling nationalistic. Twenty years earlier they had been victorious in a war with Russia. But their population was exploding. Japan itself had no natural resources, so were compelled to import them and convert them into commercial and military products.
The Great Depression blunted the economy too. One of the few avenues for advancement for young men was the military. Only the most resolute completed their education at the academies. The cadets were routinely beaten with sticks, inculcating the notion of strict obedience and severe punishment for losers.
One solution to the raw-material problem seemed to be an outright occupation of neighboring Manchuria, which gave them immediate access to raw materials. And, since no one was in a position to interfere, why not China too? The invasion was exceptionally brutal. The cosmopolitan port of Shanghai was bombarded and is only now beginning to resemble the sophisticated center of commerce and trade that it once was.
In 1936 Japan signed a pact with Germany, ostensibly to protect each other from an attack by Russia. Their only real rival in the Pacific was the United States, whose demands and embargoes were all that stood between the home islands and the resource-rich European colonies of Southeast Asia. To the Japanese it seemed the US was strangling a nation fighting for its survival. The civilian government had been able to do nothing, so power was now in the hands of the military cabinet, led by Prime Minister Tojo. Emperor Hirohito, as usual, remained a mysterious, distant figure, too divine to interfere in worldly affairs.
At the same time, in the late 1930s and all of 1940, the US was doing quite well selling arms to Great Britain. Everyone was enthralled by Joe DiMaggio's unbroken string of hits for the New York Yankees. Despite the strong isolationist sentiment in the United States, President Roosevelt realized that war was likely, but Nazi Germany was considered the greater threat.
There were indications of war with Japan but clues suggested an attack on American colonies in the western Pacific, like the Phillipine Islands. The commanding general at Pearl Harbor was Walter Short, who deemed the Japanese population of Hawaii a threat, and so ordered his airplanes to be neatly lined up instead of dispersed, ready for destruction from the air, as it were. The admiral in charge was Husband Kimmel. Neither the Army nor the Navy received any direct warnings, nevertheless both heads rolled after the attack.
Of particular interest to me, as a behavioral scientist and not a military historian, is the description of the rumors that seemed to run like wildfire through Hawaii and the rest of the United States following the attack. The Japanese population of Honolulu had sabotaged American facilities. They'd poisoned the water. They'd bombed the residential areas of Honolulu, although the damage to the city, extensive as it was, was caused by falling fragments from American anti-aircraft guns. Medals were awarded wholesale, even to those who had done only what their duties demanded.
The fear led to a hysterical response near Los Angeles when a Japanese submarine was supposed to have been sighted. And before the attack, stereotypes influenced the postures of both sides. Americans considered the Japanese to be short, near sighted, buck-toothed, and lacking in a sense of balance due to their having been bounced around as babies on their mothers' backs, a nation fit for making cheap toys. The Americans, on the other hand, were lazy, undisciplined, and weak willed, and they would sue for peace after the destruction of their fleet.
As is usual after a cataclysmic event, conspiracy theories emerged, built on hypothetical connections between randomly placed and far-flung dots. There was at the time -- and still is, in some circles -- a conviction that President Roosevelt was complicit in the Japanese attack because he wanted a war to start. Human thinking might be improved if it could just grasp the simple fact that any act has multiple determinants. And sometimes, the most horrible or the most felicitous events are the result of an improbable juxtaposition of circumstances. As detectives say in the movies, "I suspect no one and I suspect everyone."
If the upright dominoes just happen to be lined up perfectly, when one topples, a cascade follows.
