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 every where 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 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
is a reason that our national motto is, IN GOD WE TRUST .