Philippine Navy Quotes

Pearl Harbor Address to the Nation Delivered on December 8, 1941 Mr. Vice President, Mr. Speaker, Members of the Senate, and of the House of Representatives: Yesterday, December 7th, 1941 -- a date which will live in infamy -- the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan. The United States was at peace with that nation and, at the solicitation of Japan, was still in conversation with its government and its emperor looking toward the maintenance of peace in the Pacific. Indeed, one hour after Japanese air squadrons had commenced bombing in the American island of Oahu, the Japanese ambassador to the United States and his colleague delivered to our Secretary of State a formal reply to a recent American message. And while this reply stated that it seemed useless to continue the existing diplomatic negotiations, it contained no threat or hint of war or of armed attack. It will be recorded that the distance of Hawaii from Japan makes it obvious that the attack was deliberately planned many days or even weeks ago. During the intervening time, the Japanese government has deliberately sought to deceive the United States by false statements and expressions of hope for continued peace. The attack yesterday on the Hawaiian islands has caused severe damage to American naval and military forces. I regret to tell you that very many American lives have been lost. In addition, American ships have been reported torpedoed on the high seas between San Francisco and Honolulu. Yesterday, the Japanese government also launched an attack against Malaya. Last night, Japanese forces attacked Hong Kong. Last night, Japanese forces attacked Guam. Last night, Japanese forces attacked the Philippine Islands. Last night, the Japanese attacked Wake Island. And this morning, the Japanese attacked Midway Island. Japan has, therefore, undertaken a surprise offensive extending throughout the Pacific area. The facts of yesterday and today speak for themselves. The people of the United States have already formed their opinions and well understand the implications to the very life and safety of our nation. As commander in chief of the Army and Navy, I have directed that all measures be taken for our defense. But always will our whole nation remember the character of the onslaught against us. No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion, the American people in their righteous might will win through to absolute victory. I believe that I interpret the will of the Congress and of the people when I assert that we will not only defend ourselves to the uttermost, but will make it very certain that this form of treachery shall never again endanger us. Hostilities exist. There is no blinking at the fact that our people, our territory, and our interests are in grave danger. With confidence in our armed forces, with the unbounding determination of our people, we will gain the inevitable triumph -- so help us God. I ask that the Congress declare that since the unprovoked and dastardly attack by Japan on Sunday, December 7th, 1941, a state of war has existed between the United States and the Japanese empire.

Geopolitics is ultimately the study of the balance between options and lim­itations. A country's geography determines in large part what vulnerabilities it faces and what tools it holds. "Countries with flat tracks of land -- think Poland or Russia -- find building infrastructure easier and so become rich faster, but also find them­selves on the receiving end of invasions. This necessitates substantial stand­ing armies, but the very act of attempting to gain a bit of security automat­ically triggers angst and paranoia in the neighbors. "Countries with navigable rivers -- France and Argentina being premier examples -- start the game with some 'infrastructure' already baked in. Such ease of internal transport not only makes these countries socially uni­fied, wealthy, and cosmopolitan, but also more than a touch self-important. They show a distressing habit of becoming overimpressed with themselves -- and so tend to overreach. "Island nations enjoy security -- think the United Kingdom and Japan -- in part because of the physical separation from rivals, but also because they have no choice but to develop navies that help them keep others away from their shores. Armed with such tools, they find themselves actively meddling in the affairs of countries not just within arm's reach, but half a world away. "In contrast, mountain countries -- Kyrgyzstan and Bolivia, to pick a pair -- are so capital-poor they find even securing the basics difficult, mak­ing them largely subject to the whims of their less-mountainous neighbors. "It's the balance of these restrictions and empowerments that determine both possibilities and constraints, which from my point of view makes it straightforward to predict what most countries will do: · The Philippines' archipelagic nature gives it the physical stand-off of is­lands without the navy, so in the face of a threat from a superior country it will prostrate itself before any naval power that might come to its aid. · Chile's population center is in a single valley surrounded by mountains. Breaching those mountains is so difficult that the Chileans often find it easier to turn their back on the South American continent and interact economically with nations much further afield. · The Netherlands benefits from a huge portion of European trade because it controls the mouth of the Rhine, so it will seek to unite the Continent economically to maximize its economic gain while bringing in an exter­nal security guarantor to minimize threats to its independence. · Uzbekistan sits in the middle of a flat, arid pancake and so will try to expand like syrup until it reaches a barrier it cannot pass. The lack of local competition combined with regional water shortages adds a sharp, brutal aspect to its foreign policy. · New Zealand is a temperate zone country with a huge maritime frontage beyond the edge of the world, making it both wealthy and secure -- how could the Kiwis not be in a good mood every day? "But then there is the United States. It has the fiat lands of Australia with the climate and land quality of France, the riverine characteristics of Germany with the strategic exposure of New Zealand, and the island fea­tures of Japan but with oceanic moats -- and all on a scale that is quite lit­erally continental. Such landscapes not only make it rich and secure beyond peer, but also enable its navy to be so powerful that America dominates the global oceans.

Ghormley wary about the threat of espionage. No doubt mindful of the role that spies played in the surprise attacks at Pearl Harbor and the Philippines, Ghormley wrote his staff, “Loose talk is a stupid habit.… Some would risk the lives of their friends by a silly effort to impress others in public places.

The Japanese navy had first drafted a contingency plan for war with the United States in 1907. Japan’s basic strategy called for luring the American fleet westward from its West Coast or Hawaii bases, sniping at it with submarines as it approached until ambushing it with overwhelming force as it neared the Home Islands. America’s counter-strategy, embodied in a series of Plans Orange, finally stipulated a series of land fortresses across the Pacific to Guam and the Philippines bound together by a fleet always superior to Japan’s.

The fourth member of the Colorado-class was never completed because the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922 brought new battleship construction worldwide to a halt. The World War I victors agreed to limit capital ship construction and scrap certain existing vessels to result in a 5:5:3 ratio among the three major naval powers of the United States, Great Britain, and Japan. Signatories pledged to honor a ten-year moratorium on capital ship construction and guarantee ships would not exceed thirty-five thousand tons or carry armaments larger than sixteen-inch guns. The treaty also contained a non-fortification clause aimed at American and Japanese intentions across the broad reaches of the Pacific. Beyond what the United States might undertake in Hawaii or what Japan might do in its home islands, the signatories agreed not to fortify bases on their island possessions, including Japan’s Caroline and Marshall Islands, recently won from Germany, and such American outposts as Wake, Guam, and most important, the Philippines. Whether Japan would honor this commitment was a matter of considerable debate. Franklin Roosevelt, out of the public eye while recovering from polio, asked in an article, “Shall We Trust Japan?” Citing Japan’s participation in the Washington Naval Treaty and noting there was “enough commercial room” in the Pacific “for both Japan and us well into the indefinite future,” Roosevelt answered with an optimistic yes.7 The end result was that America honored its treaty commitment and built no new battleships between commissioning the West Virginia in 1923 and the North Carolina (BB-55) in 1941. This left the Arizona and its sisters the undisputed, though aging, queens of the seas on the American side during the latter 1920s and throughout the 1930s. But even queens require an occasional facelift, and from May 1929 to March 1931, Arizona underwent a twenty-two-month modernization at the Norfolk Navy Yard.

In time, no doubt, the inevitable memorial committee would form, and solemn scholars would comb his works for quotations suitable to chisel in stone. Statute books and official histories would celebrate his administrative achievements: the Monroe Doctrine reaffirmed, the Old World banished from the New World, the great Canal being cut; peace established in the Far East; the Open Door swinging freely in Manchuria and Morocco; Cuba liberated (and returned to self-government just in time for his departure); the Philippines pacified; the Navy hugely strengthened, known literally around the world; the Army, shorn of its old deadwood generals, feeling the green sap of younger replacements; capital and labor balanced off, the lynch rate declining, the gospel

It is little remembered that there was a second Pearl Harbor. Ten hours after being alerted to the first, Japanese planes struck Clark Field in the Philippines, destroying one hundred and two planes, including all but three of General Brereton’s B-17s. He had pleaded with MacArthur to attack Japanese air bases in Formosa. MacArthur replied through his aide, Major General Richard K. Sutherland, that he had been ordered not to make “the first overt act.” What was Pearl Harbor if not an overt act? Brereton demanded. While the debate went on, the Japanese, at first delayed by fog, hit near high noon, finding MacArthur’s planes nearly lined up in rows like the shooting gallery it was. “What the hell!” roared Air Corps chief Hap Arnold when he heard about it. • • • • • At 1458 in Honolulu, Tadeo Fuchikami finally made his delivery of Marshall’s alert to the “Commanding General” at Fort Shafter. It was thrown in a wastebasket without carrying out the request to pass it on to the Navy. “For a while I thought the Day of Infamy had been my fault,” Fuchikami mused many years later. Then I realized I was just one of the sands of time.” The Pearl Harbor attack had left eighteen warships sunk or damaged, including five battleships, and one hundred and eighty-eight planes destroyed. The raid killed two thousand four hundred and three Americans. The Japanese lost twenty-nine planes and fifty-five fliers. Kido butai returned home with three hundred and twenty-four surviving planes.

Beyond the deprivations, degradations, and tortures these prisoners endured, each man often recounts how he got to the camps Weller visited. These conflicts, and all they implied, would have been instantly recognizable to the 1945 public. Many of the Dutch and the British, the Australians and Canadians, were taken in the defeats of Singapore (130,000), Java (32,000), and Hong Kong (14,000). Many of the Americans got captured on Guam or Wake; or in the Philippines (75,000), to then endure the Bataan death march, on which one in four died. Some built the Siam-Burma railroad, which claimed yet another 15,000 lives, same ratio. Nearly everywhere, in a hurry, the Japanese won and the Allies lost. The United States saw its navy smashed at Pearl Harbor and its Pacific air forces wiped out in Manila, just before MacArthur got himself safely out to Australia. This litany of early military disasters added up to astonishing numbers. In a mere six months the Japanese, at a cost of only 15,000 of their own men (deaths and casualties), took 320,000 Allied soldiers out of the war, either as deaths, casualties, or prisoners; over half these were Asiatic. White prisoners, about 140,000 total over the course of the conflict, became slave labor across the growing Japanese empire. (Asiatic prisoners were often turned loose, as good propaganda among the subjugated peoples.) Japan had not signed the 1929 Geneva Conventions regarding treatment of prisoners of war, and a Japanese soldier would sooner be killed than captured: thus every enemy soldier who surrendered was a coward, a cur, a thing. Any notion of “inhumane treatment” toward a surrendered Chinese, much less a white man, was incomprehensible. White men were the foe, so their role was to work, then die. Whether their deaths proved painful did not matter to the Japanese. Unlike the Nazi POW camps, there were few escape attempts, for it was obvious to any Allied POW in Asia that a white face was an immediate giveaway even had he succeeded, and the Japanese made it clear that they would execute ten men for every man who escaped. Statistically it was seven times healthier to be a POW under the Nazis than under the Japanese. By war’s end, one out of every three white prisoners had died as their captives—“starved to death, worked to death, beaten to death, dead of loathsome epidemic diseases that the Japanese would not treat,” as Daws puts it. Another year of war and there would have been no POWs still alive. (A Japan War Ministry directive of August 1944 iterated that “the aim is to annihilate them all, and not to leave any traces.”)

Midway was merely a convenient target chosen by Yamamoto to draw the Americans out, and both sides’ objectives were attritional attempts to degrade their opponents’ carrier units. Nevertheless, the result created space for the Americans to begin their cautious advance back across the Pacific. This started with Guadalcanal and proceeded along two axes. Nimitz would command the larger and predominantly naval effort across the central Pacific, and island fortresses such as Saipan and Iwo Jima would soon go down in military legend. To the south, General Douglas MacArthur led a campaign across New Guinea and the Philippines, with a more land-based focus. Notwithstanding that, it was off Leyte Gulf in the Philippines in October 1944 that the Imperial Japanese Navy suffered a fatal blow in the largest naval battle in history, during which four carriers and three battleships were lost.