Speaking of history, I wanted to point a few things out about the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. I just finished watching From Here to Eternity which may have motivated this post.
The Japanese attacked with a strike force of 353 aircraft. Of those almost all survived. Only 29 aircraft were downed by some combination of anti-aircraft guns on battleships, cruisers, destroyers, and airfields and small arms fire.
The attack was very nearly a complete tactical success while also being a catastrophic strategic failure as Admiral Yamamoto had warned. While he probably never said the more poetic “sleeping giant” quote with which he has been credited he did say
If ordered to do it, we can fight hard for six months — but I have no confidence if it lasts two or three years.
One more thing. To the best of my knowledge no Japanese national or Japanese-American was executed for espionage during World War II. One German was condemned to death for espionage for activities leading to the attack on Pearl Harbor. His sentence was later commuted. In 1942 six Germans were condemned by a military tribunal and executed for espionage.
You might also like “The Thin Red Line” and “Some Came Running.” They make a kind of trilogy.
I, too, have read “From Here to Eternity”, and I remain stupefied as to how it ever got published. I do not believe it could get published today. The movie version is excellent. The movie version of “Thin Red Line” is far too politically correct and sappy to bear watching more than once, or even partially.
People often confuse Charleston Heston and Burt Lancaster, but Lancaster was a very fine actor. Sinatra also was a fine actor.
My father landed on Normandy the second day, and survived the Battle of the Bulge. He must have covered some of the same territory my grandfather (mother’s side) did a quarter century earlier. Both came home uninjured.
Looking at the EU’s and UK’s deep dives into totalitarianism and militarism, today the two crusades seem pointless
The US was very lucky. In some sense even on the tactical level the Japanese missed. The Japanese didn’t damage any US carriers because they were out to sea, and decided not to damage any on-shore facilities. .
If either had happened, it would be far more difficult to defeat Japan; through maybe not much longer, considering the atom bomb.
If the attack had been followed by an invasion in force, it would have been far more difficult to defeat Japan. Absent that it would have made little difference. If the Enola Gay had set out from the continental U. S. it would never had made it to Japan.
In other words our base in Hawaii made the Pacific campaign possible and the Pacific campaign made defeating Japan possible.