The Pearl Harbor Attack - Essay Example

The Americans never thought that Japan was capable of performing such an act. However, rumors of Japan’s surprise mass attack had been reported but were not taken seriously. (Conn, Engelman, and Fairchild, 2000)

The answer I think was the former, though the strategy was a good one it had completely gone wrong. Now you may ask why? The Japanese had developed the technology, attack strategy, and skills to successfully accomplish the impossible as they had been planning this for at least six months prior to the main attack. The Japanese had good defensive plans against the US. Such as fortifying individual islands with troops, reinforcing air squadrons, and also they kept a large fleet to retaliate in case the US attacked. So what went wrong? It's simple, the Japanese became overconfident and they changed their plans instead of implementing this defensive plan, they went further to attack the US Midway. It turned into a big disaster and the Japanese lost a huge number of their carriers thus with their naval and air forces which were in a weak situation now, they could not resist the American troops and they reached the Japanese air space itself.  Another factor of this raid going wrong was that the commander of the Japanese fleet became nervous and he aborted the third strike attack of the two which had already taken place, which was aimed at the oil supplies and repair facilities of the US fleet. If this had taken place then the US would have had a difficult time retaliating. The attack plan of the Japanese would require the loss of one–third the attacking force of the planes and two carriers. Another problem was of refueling the planes over the pacific and also fixing wooden fins on naval torpedoes so as to stabilize them in shallow waters. (Conn, Engelman, and Fairchild, 2000)

Many messages were dispatched about the movements of the Japanese fleet but the Americans ignored them as they thought a formal war declaration would be given. The Japanese had thought of everything when they launched this war. Their spies at Oahu gave them the exact data about the location and quantity of vessels of each type at the harbor. However, there weren’t as many battleships and aircraft carriers as the Japanese had hoped. The Japanese could only accomplish a part of its goal they had planned to hit the US hard which they did but it was not strong enough and the Japanese had to pay a dear price for this movement as the US came back with a vengeance. (Conn, Engelman, and Fairchild, 2000)

In the end, we can say that the Japanese had planned this attack carefully but it was an act of sheer foolishness though brilliantly planned. Though they achieved a part of their goal they failed to defeat the US completely. This is why they had to pay the price dearly because they had awakened a sleeping giant. If only the Japanese did not become overconfident and had stuck to their defensive strategy then they would have gone to a long-drawn battle with the US and perhaps would have had the US negotiate a peace which would have left the Japanese in control but well that’s a different story.