Thoughts from Hawaii
in World War II |
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Elder
Hulan Bass |
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, D.C. 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: “Either 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 Fredricksburg, Texas
--he was a born optimist. But anyway 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 linings in the midst of the clouds of dejection,
despair, and defeat. There surely is a reason that our
national motto is, IN GOD WE TRUST.
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