a425couple
2019-11-03 19:21:01 UTC
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PermalinkJames L. Holly
October 25 at 5:41 PM
I have a Master’s Degree in History and I did not know this.
John Guy writes: "What God did at Pearl Harbor that day is interesting
and I never knew this little bit of history.
Tour boats ferry people out to the USS Arizona Memorial in Hawaii every
thirty minutes. We just missed a ferry and had to wait thirty minutes. I
went into a small gift shop to kill time.
In the gift shop, I purchased a small book entitled, "Reflections on
Pearl Harbor" by Admiral Chester Nimitz.
Sunday, December 7th, 1941— Admiral Chester Nimitz was attending a
concert in Washington, DC. He was paged and told there was a phone call
for him. When he answered the phone, it was President Franklin Delano
Roosevelt on the phone.
He told Admiral Nimitz that he (Nimitz) would now be the Commander of
the Pacific Fleet. Admiral Nimitz flew to Hawaii to assume command of
the Pacific Fleet. He landed at Pearl Harbor on Christmas Eve, 1941.
There was such a spirit of despair, dejection and defeat--you would have
thought the Japanese had already won the war.
On Christmas Day, 1941, Adm. Nimitz was given a boat tour of the
destruction wrought on Pearl Harbor by the Japanese. Big sunken
battleships and navy vessels cluttered the waters everywhere you looked.
As the tour boat returned to dock, the young helmsman of the boat asked,
"Well Admiral, what do you think after seeing all this destruction?"
Admiral Nimitz's reply shocked everyone within the sound of his voice.
Admiral Nimitz said, "The Japanese made three of the biggest mistakes an
attack force could ever make, or God was taking care of America. Which
do you think it was?"
Shocked and surprised, the young helmsman asked, "What do mean by saying
the Japanese made the three biggest mistakes an attack force ever made?
Nimitz explained:
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 anxious 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.
I've never forgotten what I read in that little book. It is still an
inspiration as I reflect upon it. In jest, I might suggest that because
Admiral Nimitz was a Texan, born and raised in Fredericksburg, Texas --
he was a born optimist.
But any way you look at it -- Admiral Nimitz was able to see a silver
lining in a situation and circumstance where everyone else saw only
despair and defeatism.
President Roosevelt had chosen the right man for the right job. We
desperately needed a leader that could see silver lining in the midst of
the clouds of dejection, despair and defeat.
There is a reason that our national motto is, IN GOD WE TRUST.
Why have we forgotten? PRAY FOR OUR COUNTRY! IN GOD WE TRUST."
also
James Maedgen They made an additional mistake, our aircraft carriers
were at sea. Carriers, the pilots that flew from them, and the US
Marines were the deciding factors in the Pacific theatre .
S.F!
Jim