Regarding Pearl Harbor

January 4
In a small pamphlet written by Admiral Chester Nimitz, he made the following observations regarding strategic errors made by the Japanese when they attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Here are his comments:

REGARDING PEARL HARBOR

Mistake number one : the Japanese attacked on Sunday morning. Nine out of every ten crewmen of those ships were ashore on leave. If those same ships had been lured to sea and been sunk--we would have lost 38,000 men instead of 3,800.

Mistake number two : when the Japanese saw all those battleships lined in a row, they got so carried away sinking those battleships, they never once bombed our dry docks opposite those ships. If they had destroyed our dry docks, we would have had to tow every one of those ships to America to be repaired. As it is now, the ships are in shallow water and can be raised. One tug can pull them over to the dry docks, and we can have them repaired and at sea by the time we could have towed them to America. And I already have crews ashore who are eager to man those ships.

Mistake number three: Every drop of fuel in the Pacific theater of war is in top-of-the-ground storage tanks five miles away over that hill. One attack plane could have strafed those tanks and destroyed our fuel supply. That's why I say the Japanese made three of the biggest mistakes an attack force could make—or God was taking care of America .

That little book is still an inspiration to all who read it for it brings to mind I John 1:3 which says, “We announce to you all that we have seen and heard because we want you to have fellowship with us for our fellowship is with God the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ.” Admiral Nimitz had a faith in his own military prowess that enabled him to see a silver lining in the situation where everyone else saw only defeat. We need a leader today who will help us to see beyond the gloom of our circumstances to the hope of the promises we have in Christ. There is a reason our national motto is, IN GOD WE TRUST. Why have we forgotten?

As an aside to the above, let me tell you that when I lived in Saudi Arabia, I had in my class a little boy who was the great-grandnephew of Admiral Chester Nimitz. I cannot remember the little boy’s name, but I will always be proud to have been the teacher of a ‘child’ of a hero.