{"id":434,"date":"2011-09-01T20:59:55","date_gmt":"2011-09-01T20:59:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/americainuniform\/?p=434"},"modified":"2011-09-01T21:01:41","modified_gmt":"2011-09-01T21:01:41","slug":"a-little-history-that-i-did-not-know","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/americainuniform\/2011\/09\/a-little-history-that-i-did-not-know.html","title":{"rendered":"A Little History That I Did Not Know"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here\u2019s a submission from a subscriber:<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>A Little History That I Did Not Know<\/strong><\/p>\n

Tour boats ferry people out to the USS Arizona Memorial in Hawaii every thirty minutes.\u00a0 We just missed a ferry and had to wait thirty minutes.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

Sunday, December 7th, 1941–Admiral Chester Nimitz was attending a concert in Washington D.C.\u00a0 He was paged and told there was a phone call for him.\u00a0 When he answered the phone, it was President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.\u00a0 He told Admiral Nimitz that he (Nimitz) would now be the Commander of the Pacific Fleet.<\/p>\n

Admiral Nimitz flew to Hawaii to assume command of the Pacific Fleet.\u00a0 He landed at Pearl Harbor on Christmas Eve, 1941.\u00a0 There was such a spirit of despair, dejection and defeat–you would have thought the Japanese had already won the war.<\/p>\n

On Christmas Day, 1941, Adm. Nimitz was given a boat tour of the destruction wrought on Pearl Harbor by the Japanese.\u00a0 Big sunken battleships and navy vessels cluttered the waters everywhere you looked.\u00a0 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?”<\/p>\n

Admiral Nimitz’s reply shocked everyone within the sound of his voice.<\/p>\n

Admiral Nimitz said, “The Japanese made three of the biggest mistakes an attack force could ever make, or God was taking care of America.\u00a0 Which do you think it was?”<\/p>\n

Shocked and surprised, the young helmsman asked, “What do mean by saying the Japanese made the three biggest mistakes an attack force ever made?”<\/p>\n

Nimitz explained:<\/p>\n

Mistake number one: the Japanese attacked on Sunday morning.\u00a0 Nine out of every ten crewmen of those ships were ashore on leave.\u00a0 If those same ships had been lured to sea and been sunk–we would have lost 38,000 men instead of 3,800.<\/p>\n

Mistake number two:\u00a0 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.\u00a0 If they had destroyed our dry docks, we would have had to tow every one of those ships to America to be repaired.\u00a0 As it is now, the ships are in shallow water and can be raised.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 And I already have crews ashore anxious to man those ships.<\/p>\n

Mistake number three:\u00a0 Every drop of fuel in the Pacific theater of war is on top of the ground in storage tanks five miles away over that hill.\u00a0 One attack plane could have strafed those tanks and destroyed our fuel supply.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

I’ve never forgotten what I read in that little book.<\/p>\n

It is still an inspiration as I reflect upon it.<\/p>\n

In jest, I might suggest that because Admiral Nimitz was a Texan, born and raised in Fredricksburg, Texas — he was a born optimist.\u00a0 But any way 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.\u00a0 President Roosevelt had chosen the right man for the right job.\u00a0 We desperately needed a leader that could see silver linings in the midst of the clouds of dejection, despair and defeat.<\/p>\n

There is a reason that our national motto is, “IN GOD WE TRUST.”<\/p>\n

\n

Loyal Subscribers!\u00a0 We need some help.\u00a0 The purpose of our “Heart” section is to publish stories of the experiences, contributions and sacrifices of our military (Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines and Coast Guard) and public service personnel (police officers, fire fighters, EMS, merchant marines and others in the public sector) as well as stories of their families.\u00a0 Please search your memory and computer for a few and\u00a0send them to Bill\u00a0(CPT Otis) O’Quin at boquin@ix.netcom.com<\/a><\/strong> for possible publication. \u00a0Thanks!<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

Important links for updated military\/defense information:
\nThe Daily News Briefing<\/a><\/strong>:<\/a> Today’s News for the U.S. Military, their families and friends.
\n The Military Trivia Challenge:<\/a><\/strong> Register and test your knowledge about military history.
\n U.S. Department of Defense:<\/a><\/strong> Military Defense News.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here\u2019s a submission from a subscriber: A Little History That I Did Not Know Tour boats ferry people out to the USS Arizona Memorial in Hawaii every thirty minutes.\u00a0 We just missed a ferry and had to wait thirty minutes.\u00a0 I went into a small gift shop to kill time. In the gift shop, I…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":442,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-434","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-interesting-stories"],"yoast_head":"\nA Little History That I Did Not Know - America in Uniform<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/americainuniform\/2011\/09\/a-little-history-that-i-did-not-know.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"A Little History That I Did Not Know - America in Uniform\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Here\u2019s a submission from a subscriber: A Little History That I Did Not Know Tour boats ferry people out to the USS Arizona Memorial in Hawaii every thirty minutes.\u00a0 We just missed a ferry and had to wait thirty minutes.\u00a0 I went into a small gift shop to kill time. 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