The Imperial Japanese military attack on Pearl Harbor and the assault on the Pacific theater that brought the United States into World War II has been the subject of many different interpretations and conspiracy theories.
The history has mostly been told in the US. A book published this past year dives into previously untranslated primary source material from the Japanese perspective.
Dr. Takuma Melber, a modern Japanese historian and lecturer at Heidelberg Centre for Transcultural Studies in Germany, spoke with Military Times about his new book, "Pearl Harbor" and how tenuous the launch and success of the operation was and how Japan's ultimate doom was possibly written in
Melber wrote his PhD thesis on the actions of the Imperial Japanese military in Malaysia and Singapore before he wrote his recent volume on Pearl Harbor.
The below Q&A has been edited for clarity.
What drew you to Pearl Harbor?
I am the son of a Japanese and German mother. My Japanese grandfather served in the war. I didn't have an opportunity to talk with him about that time. There is a lot of information about the attacks, but very little that is translated from Japanese to English. I started looking at secondary sources, monographs, books and memoirs written by Japanese people involved with planning, decision making and conducting the attack more than five years ago.
The Japanese Minister of Foreign Affairs, Yosuke Matsuoka, who was in office leading up to the attacks, wrote a lengthy memoir detailing the internal struggles, resistance and conflicts within the wartime government. It hadn't been translated as recently as five years ago.
Readers should know what led to the attacks on the Japanese side.
A: After an oil embargo and a stalemate in negotiations over Japan's territorial claims in China, some government leaders and members of the military believed that a strike on the United States would determine the survival of the Japanese empire. In the summer of 1941, most leadership wanted to avoid a fight with the United States. The United States had a lot of resources and could win a long war with Japan.
Some of the top leaders opposed a war with the United States.
The Imperial Congress was told that a war with small prospects for success should not be waged.
A decision to go to war has been made that is not in line with my attitude as an individual. His duty to his government and emperor was unquestioned. He wrote that he should regard it as his destiny.
Yamamoto had many friends in the United States, but he was somewhat of an anglophile. He told the leadership that he didn't think Japan could match the United States' industrial might for wartime production and that resources shortages were a major obstacle to Japan's success.
The U.S. diplomats and officials were steadfast in their stance on Japan relinquishing the territories they had taken in their war with China. The British embassy in Tokyo was warned by a member of the embassy that the Japanese government could not give up the territory that many of their sons had only recently died for.
Dr. Takuma Melber is a Japanese history professor.
A: This was a large-scale operation. How was the Japanese military able to plan and execute the attack in secret?
The warships were in the Tankan Bay area on Nov. 22, 1941. A force of six aircraft carriers, two battleships, three cruisers, and nine destroy escort will leave for Hawaii on November 26. They were told to sink any enemy ships that they spotted.
The entire mobile fleet was silent. The Japanese coast was used to transmit false radio signals.
Even though the fleet was in place, the Japanese government decided to attack Pearl Harbor in 1941.
The plans to attack at night were changed when pilots found problems forming squadrons in dark. Model II torpedoes released from the air sank to 65 feet in the water, meaning their explosions would be useless in the harbor, which was 40 feet deep at most points.
They had to fit the torpedoes with wooden fins to keep them from sinking. The torpedoes were delivered to the fleet on November 17.
Japanese spies in Hawaii were very valuable. That is how the military knew to attack. The leaders learned that the U.S. ships were not protected by torpedo nets and that they went on maneuvers during the week but returned to harbor on the weekends.
The commander of the Pearl Harbor attack was against going to war with the United States. He was killed in the conflict. Polity Publishing.
What mistakes or missed opportunities were there on the U.S. side as the attack began?
The minesweepers spotted a submarine periscope a few miles south of the Pearl Harbor entrance. The alarm was canceled after the commander searched the area and found nothing. The net was lowered to allow the patrol boats and minesweepers to return to the harbor.
The alarm sounded when a submarine appeared to be entering the harbor in the wake of a ship. At least one of the four depth charges was dropped by the Ward. The commander in chief of the Pacific fleet and his staff didn't give the report much attention because similar reports had shown to be false alarms.
The reports were written off as unrealistic a decade after the attacks. A research team discovered the sunken Japanese sub and its dead crew in 2002.
The north coast of Oahu was the location of an Army radar station when Japanese pilots were halfway to Pearl Harbor. The two radar operators assumed a huge fleet of aircraft were approaching and immediately reported it to headquarters.
A young lieutenant on duty at Fort Shafter misinterpreted the radar operators report and thought it was a B-17 squadron that was about to arrive in Hawaii.
There were missed opportunities for the Japanese despite the attack.
Japanese military planners prepared for a possible American attack after the first wave. They wanted to protect their aircraft carriers the most. They missed the chance to destroy oil tanks and shipyards in Pearl Harbor, which allowed the U.S. fleet to recover much quicker than expected.
How was the attack viewed by the Japanese military and people over time?
They saw it as a huge success until the Battle of Midway. The majority of Japanese learned of the news through propaganda. Many people didn't believe that Japan could win a war against China. Pearl Harbor was kind of a booster for the soldiers and the whole Japanese society, because many famous voices were calling to stop the war with China.
Most people think the attack is a mistake, but they still don't know why politicians made it. It must have been clear to all of the Japanese that they can not win this war. Japan is the United State's closest ally. The nations had a partnership before the war. We gave up this friendship in the 1940s because of the Pearl Harbor attack.
What should U.S. readers take away from your work on Pearl Harbor?
After the war, American historians came to the conclusion that the Japanese had tricked us, but it was our fault. The Japanese had no ability to plan such an attack because of racism and cultural superiority. Conspiracy theories say that President Franklin D. Roosevelt allowed the attacks to happen because he wanted to enter the war. I hope American readers understand the other side. It is easy to blame culture and other people, but there were also human beings involved in those decisions.
