Page 104 - NS-2 Textbook

WORLD WAR II: THE PACIFIC WAR 97

Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, just before the Japanese attack of 7 December 1941. Ford Island lies in the center of the harbor. Hickam Field is off
toward the upper left on the main shore. Battleship Row lies along the left side of Ford Island.

submarines launched for the attack. HO"wevel~ as far as begin their successful push toward the great British base
is known, none of the midgets reached then" targets, at Singapore. They took TIlaiiand without resistance.
and the other submarines were never able to success- TI,eir planes bombed u.s. air bases in the Philippines,
fully interdict the sea-lanes beh\'een California and Pearl and troops landed on the U.S. territories of Wake Island
Harbor. Second, rather than deilloralize their American and Guam and at British Hong Kong. All these would
enemy, as had the sneak attacks on their Chinese foes in fall to the Japanese by year's end.
1894 and the Russians in 1904, the attack on Pearl Harbor Into the confusion of successive defeats in the Pacific
roused and infuriated the American public in general, came the new commander in chief of the Pacific Fleet,
and the u.s. Navy in particular, as nothing else could Admiral Chester W. Nimitz. He arrived at Pearl Harbor
have. Third, and perhaps most important, the attack forci- on Clu'istmas Day and assumed command in a brief cer-
bly altered the mind-set of the senior American naval emony aboard a submarine on 31 December. It was up to
leadership, which had until then believed that the domi- him to win the biggest naval war the United States had
nant ships in naval warfare would be battleships. After ever faced. Nimitz was quiet and lmruffled, inspiring
Pearl Harbor, the u.s. and its allies had no choice but to confidence. TIlere \vas no question who was rtllming the
build their offense in the Pacific around the aircraft car- show. Nimitz was to prove equal to the momunental task
rier. The Japanese held to a belief in the superiority of a he had been assig11ed.
battleship-centered strategy lmtil the end. HistOlY would Admiral King's first instructions to Nimitz were
show that the carrier, not the battleship, would be the clear: (1) cover and hold the Hawaii-Midway line and
dominant naval weapon in the Pacific in World War II, as maintain comnumications ·with the U.S. West Coast and
it has been in all the major navies of the ,vorId ever since. (2) maintain conununications between the West Coast
With the American fleet crippled in Pearl Harbor, the and Australia by holding a line drawn north to south
other parts of the Japanese master plan SWlIng into ac- from Dutch Harbor in the Aleutian Islands of Alaska,
tion. Japanese forces landed on the Malay Peninsula to through Midway to Samoa, then southwest to New Cale-