War in the Pacific: Eagle Against the Sun

December 7th, 1941. Just before dawn, 270 miles northwest of Oahu, Hawaii, 181 Japanese fighters and bombers prepared to take off from six aircraft carriers. They were the first wave in what would be a massive and devastating surprise attack on the United States Pacific Fleet moored at Pearl Harbor.

Though they had not delivered the finishing stroke at Pearl Harbor, the Japanese had put the Americans and the British on their heels in the Pacific. The Japanese Navy had been at war constantly since 1937, and it was in prime condition for war.

Japanese admirals stuck rigidly to the view that submarines were first and foremost an adjunct to the battle fleet. Even when they were forced to use the boats to move soldiers and supplies during the Pacific Campaign they still held to this outdated view. This abdication by the Japanese submarine arm was a prime example of a lack of flexibility in Japanese strategic and tactical planning.

Even though Japanese war plans were habitually best-case and not worst-case, the military junta on the home island were so surprised by the scale and speed of its successes in the first four months of the war in the Pacific, that it was wondering what to do for an encore. What was thought in advanced to require six months had only needed three.

After the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Japanese were victorious in their endeavor to control as much of the western Pacific area and Southeast Asia as possible. They met little effective resistance as they seized islands from Wake to the Philippines. For six months, the Japanese were unstoppable, until the Coral Sea. Although tactically a draw, the battle proved a strategic defeat for Japan.

The Americans were now ready to go on the offensive in the Pacific, but where? Early in the summer of 1942, the interception of a radio transmission to Tokyo revealed that the Japanese were constructing an airfield on Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands. That signal triggered a demand for offensive action in the South Pacific.

The Japanese war machine, checked and forced to change its plans for the first time at Coral Sea and decisively repelled at Midway, was now forced to go in reverse by its failure on Guadalcanal. From now on it was the United States and its allies who were on the strategic offensive.

In December 1941, within hours of the destruction of the United States battle fleet at Pearl Harbor, Japanese forces began their assault on the Philippines. By April 1942, the Bataan Peninsula fell. And in May, General Wainwright and the bulk of the remaining U.S. and Filipino forces, were forced to surrender at Corregidor.

By the fall of 1944, the harsh reality of the war in the Pacific became apparent to the Japanese high command. Finally, what remained of the Navy was practically destroyed in the Battle of Leyte Gulf which occurred in October of 1944. After the smoke had cleared from the Battle of Leyte Gulf, one thing was certain. The once might Japanese navy was all but obliterated.