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By Fleet Admiral CHESTER W. NIMITZ, USll 

A surprising revelation by the_ man who took command of owr Pacific fleet after the great disaster 

s AD THOUGH THE LOSS of life was at 

Pearl Harbor -17 years ago today - and terrible 

though the destruction, the consequences of the 

Japanese attack could very easily have been devastatingly greater. 

Had our commands received timely warnings 

of the approach of the enemy, there is no doubt in 

my mind whatever that our fleet would have been 

at ~ea maneuvering to intercept the attacking force 

and striving to bring about a fleet action. 

In such a case, our battle line-slower by at 

least two knots---could never have closed to ranges 

where we might have exploited our skill in gunnery. 

Our one old carrier probably would have been 

hopelessly overwhelmed by the six Japanese carriers that accompanied the attacking force. Our 

battleships and cruisers would have come under 

heavy air attack by greatly superior forces and 

might have been sunk in deep water with 100 per 

cent loss of life. Our destroyers would have made 

heroic efforts to torpedo the enemy carriers but, 

with inadequate air cover, would have suffered 

great losses. 

Such an action probably would have occupied 

most of the day of December 7, 1941. 

Our' forces ashore would have had ample information of the course of the battle at sea and 

could have taken steps to prepare for the blows to 

be expectep the following day. Some of the Army 

Air Corps planes might even have joined the sea 

battle if the Japanese commander had chosen to 

accept battle within the range of Oahu's shorebased planes. Despite this, the greatly superior 

Japanese fleet could have returned on December 8 

to complete the destruction of all American air 

strength and then, methodically and leisurely, proceeded to destroy the. repair facilities of the naval 

base and to burn-with explosive machine-gun fire 

-;-4,500,000 barrels of fuel oil stored in a completely 

exposed tank farm. 

What a shocking loss that would have been! 

The destruction of the repair facilities would have 

forced our Navy all the way back to the West 

Coast of the United States. 

The loss of that great fuel supply would have 

been well-nigh irreparable. The campaigns against 

the Japanese would have been so much delayed 

that they might have established themselves so 

strongly in the Western Pacific that years of effort 

would be needed for their expulsion. 

We might be fighting out there to this day! 

What happened instead was perhaps the greatest 

boon and good luck to our Navy to come out of our 

misfortune at Pearl Harbor. _Because we were 

caught by surprise, our fleet was in a relatively 

shallow port. This fact enabled us to salvage most 

of our outdated shii>s and greatly reduce the loss 

of our trained officers and men. 

Fortunately, too, for the Allied cause, a great 

underground bomb-proof fuel storage was nearing 

completion in the hills behind Pearl Harbor. Into 

this va8t storage, rushed to completion in 1942, was 

dumped· our precious reserve of fuel. This important storage-to this day, and for the predictable future-is per~aps our greatest strength factor_ 

in the Eastern Pacific. Atomic power may replace 

in a small way our dependence on petroleum fuels, 

but such will not be the case for many decades. 

Another such underground bomb-proof fuel 

storage in the Western Pacific-in Guam, which we -" 

control-would so strengthen American control of 

the Pacific for years t1> come that it is sur~ 

that such is not now under construction. 

The object ·of the Japanese attack on Pearl 

Harbor was to inflict sufficient damage to our 

naval strength to give their navy a free hand to 

expand and consolidate its holdings. For this pur~ 

pose, they could have chosen better targets at Pearl 

Harbor-the destruction of our fuel! 

The Japanese attack left our submarine base at 

Pearl virtually untouched. Its destruction by 

bombs would have been easy and it would ~ 

greatly hampered our most effective-;--and onlyavailable weapon, our subm!U'ine foree, which, incidentally, was the only force we had which could 

operate unsupported in Japanese waters from the 

earliest days of the war. The effectiveness of those 

submarines, in cutting down Japanese naval strength 

and their merchant marine, ia too well known to 

require retelling. 

lust why the Japanese Navy failed to 

complete the havoc and destruction at Pearl Harbor, which was easily in their power, must be left 

to another story. · 

But the .attack shocked our country out of its 

apathy about the World War already under way in 

Europe. All the arguments for and against entering the conflict ended and America, as one man, 

joined the fight against aggression. 

Can anyone doubt that, during those momentous 

years of World War II, an all-seeing Divine Providence was guiding and protecting our nation as, 

indeed, it had from the days of our Revolution? ~