japanese
It takes many different kinds of soldiers, foot soldiers, seamen, and airmen, to win a war. One group supports the others, and without all of them, winning a war in modern times would be next to impossible. Partly because my dad fought in World War II, I find myself most interested in that war. I am very proud of the part my dad played in shooting down enemy aircraft from his position as top turret gunner, and along with his crewmembers, providing air support for ground missions. Of course, many of the heroes who are remembered in a war, are the men in the little fighter planes. The fighting they do is very dramatic, and watching movies or documentaries about the planes they shoot down is exciting. We know of the dangers they face every time they take off, and that adds to the amazement when they are successful.
During World War II, to acquire Ace status, a fighter had to shoot down five enemy planes. On February 20, 1942, the United States received it’s first Flying Ace of World War II. His name was Lieutenant Edward O’Hare. O’Hare was a US Navy fighter pilot with the Fighting Squadron 3, aboard the USS Lexington. The Lexington, sailed into the Coral Sea in mid-February, 1942. Then on February 20th, as the Lexington neared Rabaul, Japanese radar picked up the ship. Japanese bombers headed straight for it. O’Hare and his team went into action. They were piloting F4F Wildcats. In just four minutes, O’Hare shot down five Japanese G4M1 Betty bombers. This ended the Japanese attack and O’Hare became an Ace. It also ended the planned raid, because the element of surprise was gone. O’Hare was awarded the first naval Medal of Honor awarded in World War II. He was a great shot, but on November 26, 1943, his luck ran out. His plane was shot down during a nighttime fighter attack near the Gilbert Islands. It was never found. In 1945, the Navy named a destroyer the USS O’Hare after him. Later, Chicago’s Orchard Depot Airport was renamed, O’Hare international Airport after him.
O’Hare was the first ace of World War II, but he was not the Ace with the most kills in World War II…that honor belongs to a man born in the same town I was…Superior, Wisconsin. Richard Bong shot down 40 enemy aircraft before he was killed on August 6, 1945 over North Hollywood, California, while testing a P-80A jet. The plane exploded causing Major Bong’s death. The flying aces of World War II were many…too many to name here, but among the notables are Edward O’Hare, Richard Bong, and Chuck Yeager. All the aces were heroes.
It seems that whenever something goes wrong in our world, someone must be to blame, and I believe that is often the case. The problem with playing The Blame Game, is that all too often, the person where the real blame should go is not the one who ends up taking the fall. Scapegoats have been around since Bible times, when the sins of the people were placed on a goat and it was sent into the windernesss. That isn’t the type of scapegoat that we see today, however.
Don’t get me wrong, we all play The Blame Game, but politicians seem to be particularly adept at it. A good example is the forced retirement of Rear Admiral Husband E Kimmel, who was relieved of his command of the United States Pacific Fleet on December 17, 1941, just ten days after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. I don’t say that he bore no blame at all, but in reality, he had no more reason to think that an attack on Pearl Harbor was imminent, than anyone else had. And in reality, the blame needed to fall on our President at the time, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, because he was soft on the Japanese, and basically asked us to trust them, when they were not at all 
trustworthy. President Roosevelt’s actions…or lack thereof, left us sitting ducks when the Japanese made their move.
Basically, Rear Admiral Kimmel was chosen to take the blame because of his lack of imagination…or so it was said. Kimmel was a creature of habit, and he had expected an attack on Midway Island or Wake Island, and even went so far as to request extra antiaircraft artillery be sent there. None could be spared, and so was not sent. It never occurred to him that the Japanese might attack Pearl Harbor, and therefore he took no special action there. Unfortunately, Kimmel was an easy read by the Japanese, and when he chose not to protect Pearl Harbor, that was where the Japanese made their attack. But, as I said, he had no more reason to expect an attack at Pearl Harbor than anyone else had, and for that reason he should not have born the brunt of the blame.
Kimmel could have faced court martial…a second and even more severe injustice…but in the end, when he requested early retirement, his request was granted. The American people were outraged at this breach in 
security, so someone had to take the blame. I really find that to be an unfair way to handle this situation, but it was how it was done anyway. When Admiral Kimmel’s Story, which was an “as told to” autobiography, was published in 1955, the admiral made it clear that he believed President Roosevelt sacrificed him, and his career, to take suspicion off himself. Although there was no evidence to prove it, Kimmel believed Roosevelt knew Pearl Harbor was going to be bombed. I’m not sure Roosevelt could have known that either, but I think he was just as much or more to blame than Kimmel was. There always seems to be enough blame to go around, but in reality, trusting our enemies will always bring bad results. We need to be watchful and strong in military might to keep this nation safe.
The Japanese navy in 1942 was a power that seemed impossible to beat. They had not lost a battle since their defeat the Battle of Shimonoseki Straits in 1863. It was the goal of the Japanese operation to eliminate the United States as a strategic power in the Pacific…the same reason the attack on Pearl Harbor was important to them. On June 4, 1942, Japanese Admiral Chuichi Nagumo, commander of the fleet that attacked Pearl Harbor, launched a raid on Midway Island with almost the entire Japanese navy. It was to be a decisive battle. Their plan was to make another power grab that that would widen their sphere of influence and conquest. They set their sights on Midway, an island group in the central Pacific, as well as on the Aleutians, off the coast of Alaska. The United States Navy was badly wounded, and the Japanese were determined to finish it off.
The Americans were weakened, that was true, but the Japanese sorely misjudged the determination of the American warrior. The Yorktown had been damaged, and there would only be three days to get her repaired and ready for battle. She would be used, along with the Enterprise and the Hornet for this battle. They were all that was left of the aircraft carriers after the attack on Pearl Harbor. The question on the minds of everyone…would it be enough? Only time would tell. And there was no more time. The battle had begun.
The attack came in the morning, on June 4th. Admiral Nagumo wanted to lure the United States aircraft carriers into a trap. He launched his first strike with 108 aircraft…bringing significant damage to the US installations at Midway. The Americans struck back over and over, but accomplished little, losing 65 of their aircraft in those first attempts. The Japanese admiral was sure that his plan had worked. He could almost taste victory, but he had underestimated the tenacity and determination of Admiral Chester Nimitz and Admiral Raymond Spruance, the commanders of the American forces. Admiral Nagumo ordered a second wave of bombers to finish off what he thought was only a remnant of American resistance. This was when he found out just how wrong he had been, and how badly he had misjudged the Americans. The American Admirals had anticipated the attack on Midway, and they managed to conceal their position because of good reconnaissance, which gave them sufficient opportunity to rearm.
The Americans sent in 55 US dive-bombers to take full advantage of Admiral Nagumo’s confusion. He honestly thought this battle would be a simple, but decisive win for the Japanese, but his world came crashing down when the Americans sunk three of the four Japanese carriers, all of them cluttered with aircraft and fuel, ready to launch another attack. The realization came to Admiral Nagumo after it was too late. The Americans had a much larger naval force that he had expected. The Japanese carrier, the Hiryu was crippled, but not before it finished off the American carrier Yorktown.
The attack on Midway was a complete disaster for the Japanese. In all, they lost 322 aircraft and 3,500 men. 
They were forced to withdraw from the area before even attempting a landing on the island that had been their goal for the attack. Midway was safe, and the Japanese went away with a major lesson learned. The Battle of Midway took place roughly at the middle of World War II, and things went downhill from that point on for the Japanese. They would not win this war, but rather would surrender on September 2, 1945. They took away a new understanding of the American war machine after World War II. The United States was a formidable foe, and one that refused to give up to evil nations.
In a war, secrecy is vital. The different sides must take whatever steps necessary to inform their troops and allies of their next step, without revealing the plan to the enemy. In World War II, America and her allies were having trouble with the level of secrecy they were able to achieve. It seemed that no matter what code they used, it was broken almost immediately. It did not help matters that many of the Japanese cryptographers had been educated in the United States. They spoke very good English, and they were very amazingly adept at breaking top secret military codes. For America and her allies, coming up with newer and more complicated codes was becoming more and more difficult, and the Japanese cryptographers seemed to break the new codes almost as quickly as they were developed. They were in real trouble. Then someone remembered a type of code that had been used in World War I, and things began to look up a little for America and the allies. The code was the use of Code Talkers from the Choctaw tribe.
That someone was war analyst Philip Johnston. Phillip, an American who fought in World War I, stationed in France, was too old to fight in World War II, but he wanted to aid in the effort anyway. As a boy, he spent time 
on the Navajo Indian Reservation, where his parents were Protestant missionaries. He learned to speak the Navajo language with his playmates. Suddenly, the idea of a secret military code based on the Navajo language made perfect sense to him.
In mid-April of 1942, Marine recruiting personnel went to the Navajo Reservation, and presented their plan. They enlisted thirty volunteers from the agency schools at Fort Wingate and Shiprock, New Mexico and Fort Defiance, Arizona. It would be a tall order for these volunteers. Each one had to be fluent in Navajo and English, but they also had to be physically fit, because they would be messengers in a combat zone. They were told that they would be specialists in the United States as well as over seas. Some of them were underage, but birth records on the Reservation were not well kept, so it was easy for volunteers to lie about or just not know their true age, and so they could participate. Carl Gorman, a 36-year-old Navajo from Fort Defiance, was too old to be considered by the Marines, so he lied about his age in order to be accepted.
Because the Navajo language was complicated, and due to the many different dialects, the Japanese could 
never crack the code. They even captured a Navajo soldier and made him listen to the talk for hours, but because he had not been trained, he was still unable to crack the code. By 1945, there were about 540 Navajos who served in the Marines, and of those 375 to 420 were trained as code talkers. The rest served in other capacities. The code talkers payed an instrumental part in the success of the war effort. On June 4, 2014, Chester Nez, the last living original code talker, passed away. Once, in an interview he said, “My first transmission—one that did not involve coordinates—was one I will always remember: Beh-na-ali-tsosie a-knah-as-donih ah-toh nish-na-jih-goh dah-di-kad ah-deel-tahi, which translates to: Enemy machine gun nest on your right flank. Destroy.” These were great men, and our nation owes them a debt it can never repay.
As the 73rd anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor dawns, I have to wonder why it is that the United States always feels that the other side must attack us first, and only then can we attack them. I know this is not always the case, but it seems like that is often the case. We try to be the peacemakers, and going to war is never something that we take lightly. Killing people is a horrible step to take. So, we always give warning after warning before we finally move, and even then it is usually too late to be the first to strike. I understand that the one who strikes first often looks like the bad guy, but it also seems like so often we are given much advance warning that a strike is eminent, and yet we wait…usually until after the attack happened and many people are dead, and the rest of us, while really angry, are too busy picking up the pieces to think about an immediate retaliatory strike.
That was exactly where the United States found itself on December 7, 1941. We had warned Japan over and over, and with the Hull Note came the final warning. Even the fact that we knew that they would not comply, and we were in essence declaring war on Japan, we trusted them to move slowly…hoping for them to have a change of heart or something. They, on the other hand, acted almost immediately…or at least as immediate as they could back in 1941. They sent their strike force toward Pearl Harbor, while also sending a decoy strike force toward Thailand, in an effort to throw us off. Convinced that Japan was planning an attack on Thailand, President Roosevelt sent Emperor Hirohito a telegram, requesting that “for the sake of humanity,” the emperor intervene “to prevent further death and destruction in the world.” We were trying to be the peacemakers.
After sending the telegram, President Roosevelt was enjoying his stamp collection with his personal advisor, Harry Hopkins, and they were discussing the Japanese refusal to honor the Hull Note. Hopkins suggested that America should strike first, but President Roosevelt insisted that we could not do that. In reality, it was already to late for us to strike first. The Japanese were already on their way to attack Pearl Harbor, and a significant portion of the Pacific Fleet was there, anchored like sitting ducks, waiting for the attack. The ambush would take out 18 U.S. ships. Those destroyed, sunk, or capsized were the Arizona, Virginia, California, Nevada, and West Virginia. More than 180 planes were destroyed on the ground and another 150 were damaged, leaving only 43 planes operational. The American casualties totaled more than 3,400, with more than 2,400 killed…1,000 on the Arizona alone. The Japanese lost fewer than 100 men.
It seems to me that it is so often the side that strikes first…swiftly and with the element of surprise…that fares the best in the end. The side who was unaware, or didn’t heed the warning signs was slaughtered. We have one of the greatest military forces on the face of the earth here in America, so should we really ever be taken by surprise like that? I don’t think we should. I believe that if the strongman gets so sure of his might that he forgets the need to be watchful and wise, then when he least expects it, the strongman is caught unaware, and can be taken…even if his might should have prevented it. The United States has long been that strongman, and yet it seems that because of our hesitation to strike first, we are attacked over and over without warning. Then and only then, it seems, will we attack them in retaliation.
It is a dilemma I suppose, and maybe that was where President Roosevelt was coming from. We are the bad 
guys with the world if we attack first, and we are the bad guys with our own nation if we do not attack first. And, to top it off our intelligence isn’t always as reliable as it needs to be, so sometimes, such as on December the 7th, 1941, we are caught off guard, and completely by surprise, when we trusted an enemy to be as honorable as we try to be, and they feel no such obligation to honor. I guess that while we don’t like it when we are attacked without provocation, we must nevertheless, do the honorable thing, and not attack just because we anticipate an attack on us. If we were to do that, we would be no different than the nations we have to go to war with because they have invaded some other nation. Still, it is so hard to always be the nation that does the right thing, when we really don’t trust our enemies…because we know better.
