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.
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