Attack on Pearl Harbor 1941

If you are in the San Francisco Bay Area, the “Eye of Diablo” lighting ceremony is today at 3 pm. The commercial air beacon atop Mt Diablo was extinguished December 8, 1941 so the Japs were denied navigation aids to the US mainland. The light was relit by Admiral Nimitz in 1964. The light was restored in 2013.

It is lit at 5 pm every Pearl Harbor Day and only on that day and night.

Pearl Harbor Day Beacon Lighting Ceremony

Correct you are, "what if" benefits from hindsight, but it's still fun. Victor Davis Hanson makes an interesting point in The Second World Wars - by December 1941 Japan could have achieved all her immediate strategic aims without starting a war with either the U.S. or Great Britain, her two principal naval rivals in the world. Simply do what they did end up doing: marching down and capturing the Dutch East Indies' oil fields but without attacking Pearl Harbor, the Philippines, or Singapore. Done deal - it took them about three months. The Dutch could not have stopped them since they had been under Nazi occupation for a year and a half by then. Would the "Europe first" Roosevelt and the understandably Europe-first Churchill have declared war in reply given that none of their assets were attacked and that they were focused on the other side of the world? Highly doubtful.

The problem, of course, is that broad Japanese strategic planning had a far more ambitious objective: the formation of a Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere with the Philippines especially anchoring the defense perimeter. This set of plans was both elaborate and very inflexible, too bad for Japan since the world had changed radically since September 1939.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.