The Army Air Forces in World War II, Vol. 1 (archived PDF)

C H A P T E R 7
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EST ABLZSH M E N T OF
THE FUNDAMENTAL BASES
OF STRATEGY
RILLIANTLY executed though they were, the Japanese
attacks of 7 December against Oahu and Luzon appear in retro-
B spect as a colossal blunder. The perfection of those operationsgave evidence of meticulous planning a t the tactical level, but not of
sound thinking along broader military and political lines. In fact, an
analysis of postwar interrogations of high-ranking military and gov-
ernmental leaders in Japan suggests that they had precipitated a major
war without formulating for it an over-all strategy. Hopelessly out-
matched in actual and potential industrial capacity, the Japanese had
attacked with no firm pattern of operations in view and with no con-
cept of how the war might be brought to a successful conclusion.
There was some hope that if a formidable chain of island defenses
could be thrown around the Inner Empire, American preoccupation
with Germany and discomfiture over initial defeats might bring a
negotiated peace, with Japan in uncontested control of the Greater
East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere. Such a hope was, of course, based
upon a most erroneous interpretation of American psychology.
Before Pearl Harbor the administration’s foreign policy had been
bitterly opposed by a highly vocal minority in the United States.
This lack of agreement, perfectly consonant with our democratic
process, might easily have been exaggerated by the misunderstanding
of totalitarian leaders until it appeared as a paralyzing disunity. But
among many of the isolationists the prospects of war with Japan
had been less distasteful than that of war in Europe, and the very
means by which the Japanese chose to open hostilities served tempo-
rarily to still dissident factions. When on I I December Germany and
Italy joined their Axis partner, the new U.S. unity was cemented; the
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