Halsey and "Enterprise" slipped back into Pearl Harbor on the evening of December 8. Surveying the wreckage of the Pacific Fleet, he remarked, "Before we're through with them, the Japanese language will be spoken only in hell." Halsey was an aggressive commander. Above all else, he was an energetic and demanding leader who had the ability to invigorate the U.S. Navy's fighting spirit when most required. In the early months of the war, as the nation was rocked by the fall of one western bastion after another, Halsey looked to take the fight to the enemy. Serving as commander, Carrier Division 2, aboard his flagship "Enterprise", Halsey led a series of hit-and-run raids against the Japanese, striking the Gilbert and Marshall islands in February, Wake Island in March, and carrying out the Doolittle Raid in April 1942 against the Japanese capital Tokyo and other places on Japan's largest and most populous island Honshu, the first air raid to strike the Japanese Home Islands, providing an important boost to American morale. Halsey's slogan, "Hit hard, hit fast, hit often," soon became a byword for the Navy.