The Start of World War II in the Pacific Theater: The History of the Attack on Pearl Harbor, the Doolittle Raid, and the Philippines Campaign of 1941-42

The Start of World War II in the Pacific Theater: The History of the Attack on Pearl Harbor, the Doolittle Raid, and the Philippines Campaign of 1941-42

By Charles River Editors

Photograph from a Japanese plane of Battleship Row at the beginning of the attack. The explosion in the center is a torpedo strike on the USS Oklahoma.

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Introduction

The Attack on Pearl Harbor (December 7, 1941)

The USS Arizona

We won a great tactical victory at Pearl Harbor and thereby lost the war. – Admiral Hara Tadaichi

All Americans are familiar with the day that will live in infamy. At 9:30 a.m. on Sunday, December 7, 1941, Pearl Harbor, the advanced base of the United States Navy’s Pacific Fleet, was ablaze. It had been smashed by aircraft launched by the carriers of the Imperial Japanese Navy. All eight battleships had been sunk or badly damaged, 350 aircraft had been knocked out, and over 2,000 Americans lay dead. Indelible images of the USS Arizona exploding and the USS Oklahoma capsizing and floating upside down have been ingrained in the American conscience ever since. In less than an hour and a half the Japanese had almost wiped out America’s entire naval presence in the Pacific.

Less than 24 hours earlier, Japanese and American negotiators had been continuing their diplomatic efforts to stave off conflict in the region, but as they did, President Roosevelt and his inner circle had seen intelligence reports strongly suggesting an imminent attack - though they did not know where. The U.S. rightly believed that Japan would take action to prevent the Americans from interfering with their military activities in Southeast Asia, and American military forces in the Philippines were already bracing for a potential attack. However, as the negotiations were ongoing, the powerful Japanese carrier fleet had been surging southwards through the Pacific while maintaining radio silence, preparing to strike the blow that would ignite war in an area spanning half the globe. Navy Commander-in-Chief Isoroku Yamamoto, whose code of honor demanded that the Japanese only engage enemies after a formal declaration of war, had been given assurances that his nation would be formally at war with the United States prior to the arrival of his planes over Pearl Harbor.

As it turned out, those assurances were worth nothing, and Yamamoto had been misled by extremists in his government just as the Americans were misled. In fact, the Japanese would infamously deliver documents formally cutting off negotiations with the American government after the attack on Pearl Harbor had already been conducted. Far from a formal declaration of war, America was attacked without warning, plunging the world’s largest democracy into history’s deadliest conflict.

Pearl Harbor was unquestionably one of the seminal events in American history, and given the nature of the surprise attack, the entry of the U.S. into the war, and the lingering controversies and conspiracy theories, the attack on Pearl Harbor continues to be a highly charged and heavily debated event.

The 1941-42 Philippines Campaign

A Japanese tank crew during the campaign

Those who had decoded and seen the Japanese communications in early December 1941 would not be surprised when they heard about an attack on December 7, 1941. They would, however, be astonished when they heard where that attack took place. Posted on the other side of the world, it was early on the morning of December 8 in the Philippines when American general Douglas MacArthur received news of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor hours earlier. With that, it could only be a matter of time before the Japanese attacked the Philippines.

Although MacArthur and Allied forces tried to hold out, they could only fight a delaying action, and the Japanese managed to subdue all resistance by the spring of 1942. However, in the aftermath of Japan’s successful invasion, as the nation’s military strategists began preparations for the next phase of military actions in the theater, their forces had to deal with a critical logistical problem they had not foreseen. The Japanese had to deal with large numbers of Filipino and American soldiers who had surrendered after a lengthy defense in the Bataan peninsula, but they were not prepared for so many prisoners of war because their own military philosophy emphasized rigid discipline and fighting until the end. They could not imagine a situation in which Japanese soldiers would willingly surrender, so they assumed that no other combatants would do so either.

On the night of March 12, 1942, MacArthur, his family and closest advisors were smuggled out of Corregidor on PT boats. From there they surged across the black ocean to Mindanao and were picked up by American B-17 bombers. They stealthily flew to northern Australia, a dangerous flight over Japanese-held territory, during which MacArthur casually remarked to General Sutherland, It was close; but that's the way it is in war. You win or lose, live or die, and the difference is just an eyelash. At Adelaide on March 18, 1942, MacArthur met the assembled press and told them, I came through and I shall return. The words would go down in history, and MacArthur would eventually fulfill the vow.

The Doolittle Raid (April 18, 1942)

A B-25B Mitchell shortly before taking off on the raid

The Japanese people had been told they were invulnerable ... An attack on the Japanese homeland would cause confusion in the minds of the Japanese people and sow doubt about the reliability of their leaders. There was a second, and equally important, psychological reason for this attack ... Americans badly needed a morale boost. – Jimmy Doolittle

The Americans would turn the war in the Pacific around in the middle of 1942, but in the wake of Pearl Harbor and the Japanese invasion of the Philippines, the country was in desperate need of a morale boost, and it would come in the form of the Doolittle Raid. In part to show that the Japanese were not invincible, and in part to reassure the American public that the nation would not lose the war, the Doolittle Raid included both Army and Navy units that launched 16 land-based medium bombers from an aircraft carrier, a feat that was the first of its kind but also one involving a great deal of risk. Getting the bombers and carriers in place to execute the mission involved much strategic planning and cooperation within the American military, and had it failed, it could have dealt a serious blow to the Americans’ Pacific presence due to the nation’s limited resources in that theater.

As if getting in position wasn’t challenging enough, the raid was never designed to include a round trip back to the carrier. Given the size of the bombers, the planes were unable to land back on the USS Hornet, so the plan was to have them fly over Japan and ditch in China after bombing Tokyo. While most of the crew would survive the mission, a few died during the raid, all of the planes were lost, and Japanese search parties eventually captured a number of Americans and executed three of them. One of the crews landed in the Soviet Union and would end up being interned there for a year.

From a tactical standpoint, the raid accomplished nothing of note, and Doolittle actually thought he would be punished for the results, but the Doolittle Raid served its purpose of boosting American resolve and demonstrating to the Japanese that they could be attacked at home as well. Furthermore, the Doolittle Raid showed the importance of air power in the war. It helped convince military planners of the power of a strong air force that could not only shift the balance of battles but could also hit military-industrial areas from long-range and thus cripple a nation’s war-making abilities. The Japanese would take the capabilities of airplanes into account when formulating how to defend their empire, and it would help compel their leaders to make decisions such as the ones that led to the decisive Battle of Midway later in 1942.

The Start of World War II in the Pacific Theater: The History of the Attack on Pearl Harbor, the Doolittle Raid, and the Philippines Campaign of 1941-42 chronicles the seminal events that began the war in the Pacific Theater. Along with pictures of important people, places, and events, you will learn about the start of the war in the Pacific like never before.

The Start of World War II in the Pacific Theater: The History of the Attack on Pearl Harbor, the Doolittle Raid, and the Philippines Campaign of 1941-42

About Charles River Editors

Introduction

Pearl Harbor

Chapter 1: The Start of World War II

Chapter 2: Outlook in the Pacific

Chapter 3: Comparing the Two Navies

Chapter 4: Bracing for War

Chapter 5: November 26-December 6, 1941

Chapter 6: December 7, 1941

Chapter 7: The Aftermath

The Philippines Campaign

Chapter 1: MacArthur in the Philippines

Chapter 2: Disaster in the Air

Chapter 3: The Japanese Landings

Chapter 4: Bataan

Chapter 5: The End of Bataan

Chapter 6: The End of the Campaign

Chapter 7: The Bataan Death March

Chapter 8: The Aftermath of the Campaign

The Doolittle Raid

Chapter 1: Planning the Retaliation

Chapter 2: Moving Into Position

Chapter 3: The Raid

Chapter 4: Landing the Bombers

Chapter 5: Back in the United States

Bibliography

Pearl Harbor

Pearl Harbor before the attack, October 1941

Chapter 1: The Start of World War II

When the history of World War II is discussed, the narratives often begin with World War I and the effects of the Treaty of Versailles on bringing Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime to power in Germany. Although the Treaty of Versailles that ended the First World War had placed limits on German rearmament, those provisions were routinely being ignored by the Germans, and European powers thus sensed their own rearmament was a priority. Hitler was a looming concern for Britain and France in the west and Stalin’s Soviet Union in the east, so much so that the Soviet premiere began putting out feelers among other European countries about forming an alliance years before the war. His offer was met with skepticism by Britain’s Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, who personally disliked Stalin and would have nothing to do his offers.

It was Chamberlain who infamously returned to Britain on September 30 1938, promising peace for our time while waving a copy of the agreement he had signed with Hitler and Benito Mussolini in Munich the day before. Of course, Chamberlain and Munich have become synonymous with appeasement, a word that has since taken on very negative connotations, and war would explode across the continent exactly 11 months later.

When Chamberlain visited Hitler in September, Stalin became convinced that England was planning a secret pact with Germany against the Soviet Union. Thus, he decided to try to beat them to the punch. He contacted Hitler and proposed that they form an alliance, going as far as to fire his Commissar of Foreign Affairs, Maxim Litinov, a Jew who was an unacceptable ambassador to Hitler’s government. Litinov’s replacement met the following month with German foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop and on August 28, 1939 they signed the Nazi-Soviet Pact in which both sides promised to remain neutral in any future war.

From 1936-1939, Hitler took a series of steps in further violation of the Treaty of Versailles, but Europe still refused to confront him. The appeasement of Hitler by France and Great Britain before World War II is now roundly condemned, a fact Chamberlain himself came to understand in 1939, noting, Everything that I have worked for, everything that I have believed in during my public life, has crashed into ruins. Before World War II, however, everyone still had to deal with the haunting specter of the First World War. Thus, most British people were jubilant when Chamberlain returned from Munich in September 1938. Meanwhile, during the months and years immediately before the outbreak of war, President Roosevelt reiterated America’s neutral stance. In May of 1937, another Neutrality Act was passed, now requiring belligerents to pay for non-military U.S. goods in cash and carry them in their own ships. Congress also prohibited the government from loaning money to foreign governments at war.

On September 1, 1939, the world was changed forever. Despite several attempts by the French and British to appease Hitler’s Nazi regime to avoid war, most notably allowing Hitler to annex the Sudetenland, Germany invaded Poland on that day, officially starting the deadliest conflict in human history. For the French and British, the Nazi invasion of Poland promised war, and by September 3 both countries declared war on Germany. Meanwhile, the Soviet Union, fresh off a nonaggression pact with Hitler, invaded the Baltic. France and the United Kingdom, treating the Soviet attack on Finland as tantamount to entering the war on the side of the Germans, responded to the Soviet invasion by supporting the USSR's expulsion from the League of Nations.

The outbreak of World War II also shook Roosevelt away from his embrace of neutrality. As Assistant Secretary of the Navy in World War I, Roosevelt had wanted the U.S. to involve itself earlier, and he didn't feel any differently this time around. Roosevelt thus got to work convincing Americans of the need to support Great Britain in war.

Though Germany was technically Russia’s ally, Stalin had no delusions that they were friends. Instead, he used this time to build up his forces for what he saw as an inevitable invasion. First, on the heels of the German invasion of Poland in September 1939, Stalin had his troops invade and reclaim the land Russia had lost in World War I. Next he turned his attention to Finland, which was only 100 miles from the newly named Leningrad. He initially tried to negotiate with the Finnish government for some sort of treaty of mutual support. When this failed he simply invaded. While the giant Russian army ultimately won, the fact that little Finland held them off