To what?  Since what?

WWII veterans may find it tough to come to grips with this fact, but the majority of Americans alive today – the huge majority – were not yet born on December 7, 1941 when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.  Most of us, of course, know this part of American history. I wonder, though, if Pearl Harbor is really a part of history education in our government schools today.

There’s a book by Admiral Chester Nimitz named "Reflections on Pearl Harbor."  Roosevelt made Nimitz the Commander of the Pacific Fleet immediately upon learning of the attack.  by Admiral Chester Nimitz.  Nimitz got the word while he was attending a concert in Washington DC. 

Nimitz arrived in Hawaii on December 24^th.  On Christmas day he toured the destruction.  When asked by seaman what he thought of the destruction visited by the Japanese, Nimitz said that “The Japanese three of the biggest mistakes an attack force could ever make or God was taking care of America,” and asked “Which do you think it was?"  The seaman asked for an explanation .. and here’s what he heard from Nimitz:

“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.”

Do we have leaders, military or civilian, like this around today?  We can only hope.