History of Sorts

Just 10 words, but with such significance. A hurried dispatch from the ranking United States naval officer in Pearl Harbor, Admiral Husband Edward Kimmel, Commander in Chief of the United States Pacific Fleet, to all major navy commands and fleet units provided the first official word of the attack at the ill-prepared Pearl Harbor base. It said simply: AIR RAID ON PEARL HARBOR X THIS IS NOT DRILL.

One aspect, often forgotten fact, was submarines were also involved in the attack, although not so much in combatant capacity.

Fleet submarines I-16, I-18, I-20, I-22, and I-24 each embarked a Type A midget submarine for transport to the waters off Oahu.

The five I-boats left Kure Naval District on November 25, 1941. On December 6, they came within 10 mi (19 km; 12 mi) of the mouth of Pearl Harbor and launched their midget subs at about 01:00 local time on December 7. At 03:42 Hawaiian time, the minesweeper Condor spotted a midget submarine periscope southwest of the Pearl Harbor entrance buoy and alerted the destroyer, Ward. The midget may have entered Pearl Harbor. However, Ward sank another midget submarine at 06:3 in the first American shots in the Pacific Theater. A midget submarine on the north side of Ford Island missed the seaplane tender Curtiss with her first torpedo and missed the attacking destroyer Monaghan with her other one before being sunk by Monaghan at 08:43.

A third midget submarine, Ha-19, grounded twice, once outside the harbour entrance and again on the east side of Oahu, where it was captured on December 8. Ensign Kazuo Sakamaki swam ashore and was captured by Hawaii National Guard Corporal David Akui, becoming the first Japanese prisoner of war.

A fourth had been damaged by a depth charge attack and was abandoned by its crew before it could fire its torpedoes. It was found outside the harbour in 1960. Japanese forces received a radio message from a midget submarine at 00:41 on December 8, claiming damage to one or more large warships inside Pearl Harbor.

Also, on December 8, in an address to a joint session of Congress, President Franklin Roosevelt called December 7, 1941, “…a date which will live in infamy…” Congress then declared war on Japan, abandoning the nation’s isolationism policy and ushering the United States into World War II. Within days, Japan’s allies, Germany and Italy, declared war on the United States, and the country began a rapid transition to a wartime economy by building up armaments in support of military campaigns in the Pacific, North Africa, and Europe.

Isoroku Yamamoto was a Marshal Admiral of the Imperial Japanese Navy and the commander-in-chief of the Combined Fleet during World War II. He believed Japan could not win a protracted war with the United States. Moreover, later he seemed to believe that the Pearl Harbor attack had been a blunder strategically, morally, and politically, even though he was the person who originated the idea of a surprise attack on the military installation. He is often misquoted as having said, “I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.”

But a sleeping giant did they awake out of a slumber.

Sources

https://www.loc.gov/item/today-in-history/december-07

https://laststandonzombieisland.com/tag/kazuo-sakamaki/

https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/topics/pearl-harbor-december-7-1941