Dan Snow's History Hit - Pearl Harbor: 80th Anniversary

Episode Date: December 7, 2021

On December 7, 1941, the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service launched a surprise military strike upon the United States against the naval base at Pearl Harbor in Honolulu, Territory of Hawaii. Just before 8 a.m., the base was attacked by 353 Imperial Japanese aircraft as fighters, level, dive bombers, and torpedo bombers descended on the base in two waves. More than 2,400 Americans died in the attack, including civilians, and another 1,000 people were wounded. The following day, President Franklin D. Roosevelt addressed the United States, and Congress declared war against Japan. Three days later, Germany and Italy declared war on the United States. The previously reluctant U.S. entered the Second World War.Join Dan as he walks through the details of the Attack on Pearl Harbor, explainer style. Later in the episode, Dan welcomes Michael “Mickey” Ganitch, Pearl Harbor survivor to the podcast. Mickey served on the USS Pennsylvania and was on-board when the Japanese attacked, he served the rest of the war on the USS Pennsylvania, including when she was torpedoed just before the Japanese surrender. Now 102-years-old, Mickey continues to share his story.A special thanks to Mickey and Barbara Ganitch, as well as the National Archives and Records Administration of the United States for the detail that we were able to include in this episode.Please vote for Dan Snow's History Hit in the 'informative' category at this year's Podbible awards - POD BIBLE POLL WINNERS 2021 – VOTE NOW!

Hi everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. 80 years ago today, on the 7th of December 1941, the Japanese struck Pearl Harbor, the base of the American Pacific Fleet on the Hawaiian island of Oahu. It's one of the great turning points of modern history. It's the moment at which the United States was dragged into war against Japan, and within days it would find itself at war with Germany and its allies in Europe as well. This is a heck of an anniversary, folks. Particularly so given that the last remaining veterans are now so few in number. It's been my great honor to meet many Pearl Harbor veterans over the years, and so few are left.

In this podcast, I tell you the story of Pearl Harbor, explain what happened that fateful day, that day that will live on in infamy. I also get the extraordinary opportunity to meet one of the veterans, Mickey Gannett. He served on USS Pennsylvania. He was on board. He wasn't just on board. He was high in the superstructure. He had the perfect view of the attack as it was unfolding all around him. And Mickey talks to me about the people that he saw wounded and killed. And that reminds us that Pearl Harbor, in fact, there were two bloodiest days for the USA during the Second World War.

Two days which had the highest body count. And that was D-Day and Pearl Harbor. Very grateful to Mickey for joining me on the podcast. Also, huge special thanks for this episode goes to the National Archives and Records Administration of the United States. We've used audio from their extraordinary collection and we are very grateful as ever to them for their custodianship of such wonderful archive. If you are interested in Pearl Harbor,

please head over to History Hit TV. We've got our documentary produced by our American team with Don Wildman, great broadcaster, a well-known TV host in the States who tells us his family's story of Pearl harbour and what happened next so please head over to historyhit.tv works anywhere in the world historyhit.tv and you'll be hearing from don wildman i'm really really proud of this documentary and it's a very special thing that the team have managed to do battling with various things we've managed to get the special pearl harbour anniversary show out i'm very proud of the whole team i'm very grateful for don wildman a legend for joining the ranks of History Hit TV. In the meantime, before you go and

watch the legend that is Don Wildman, here's a podcast on Pearl Harbour. Mr. Vice President, Mr. Speaker, members of the Senate, of the House of Representatives, yesterday, December 7, 1941, a date which will live in infamy. in infamy, the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan. Japan was building itself an empire in China. As I talked about in the outbreak of the Second World War podcast I did a few months ago, the First World War had taught Japan not to avoid conflict at all costs, but a rather different lesson. That empire, the spoils of war, would only fall to them if they took matters into their own hands. It would not do for them to act as willing junior allies to European powers. If they wanted

to fulfil what they saw as their imperial destiny, if they wanted to achieve economic autarky, to control the minerals, the trade markets, the populations that would make them wealthy, they need to seize them by force. Just like Italy in North and East Africa, like Germany in Europe, Japan wanted to carve out an empire in Asia. But empire building on the ground proved a lot more costly than the generals had promised their meek politicians back in Tokyo. Japan found itself embroiled in unimaginable costly wars and occupation in northern China. They insisted on calling it the China Incident to make light of it, but they were actually involved by the 1930s in a gigantic campaign of conquest that was enormously costly. The USA was allied to China. It fed supplies to

the Chinese government and issued warning after warning to the Japanese to stop their imperial actions. In 1938, following an appeal by President Roosevelt, US companies stopped providing Japan with war materials. In 1940, the United States halted shipments of Avgas aviation gasoline to Japan. When Japan took advantage of its German allies' success in Europe and occupied French colonies in Indochina in the first half of 1941, the USA finally stopped all oil exports to Japan in July. This was an existential threat to the Japanese imperial project and the Japanese economy. The US, Britain and other nations also leant on the Dutch government in exile, and the Dutch ceased the export of oil from its colonies in Indonesia, in the Dutch East Indies, to Japan in August. So by the summer of 1941, Japan had just 18 months of oil left. Without oil, they wouldn't be able to keep their industries going,

to continue feeding the vehicles that were required to keep the war going in China to run its industries, it would be the end of the Japanese dreams of empire. And given that the Japanese were not prepared to countenance the end of those dreams, there was only one other option. Nanshin Ron, the southern expansion doctrine. There was oil in Southeast Asia, there was oil in the Dutch East Indies, Sarawak and Borneo, Palembang and Sumatra. If it was no longer to be exported, traded with the Japanese, they would have to invade and secure it for themselves. They knew, Japan knew, America had made it very clear that the Americans would not tolerate this expansion. The only way this could happen, the only way that Japan could seize

the oil of Southeast Asia, was to precipitate a war with the USA. So to fight a war in China, they'd have to start another with the USA, one of the world's most populous countries, and a global economic leader. Decision-making in Japan had been taken over entirely by the military. Civilian leadership had been sidelined. The emperor was regarded as a god. He was around 40 years old. He had no particular interest in military expansion, but he knew that his position depended on the military keeping him in that position, and he put up no particular argument to their aggressive plans for expansion. General Tojo, a man who would become wartime prime minister, likened war to America as a great leap of faith that meant either certain death or an ascent to

heaven. This is the spirit in which Japan started plotting its war with America. To seize control over Southeast Asia, they had to remove the chief obstacle to that, and that was the US Pacific Fleet. It had been based in San Diego on the Pacific coast of California. Roosevelt had moved it to Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, so it would be nearer the East Indies. And the Japanese came up with a plan to neutralize that fleet. In retrospect, it feels like the desperate act of a madman. The idea was to hit the Americans hard, attack their naval base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. That would deter the Americans for wanting to intervene in the East Indies. A chastened America would make peace and let Japan act out its imperial fantasies in Asia. The code name for this insane operation was I.E. It's a particular kind of sword strike

in Japan. As you take the sword out of the scabbard, rather than salute the enemy as a mark of respect, as you're taking it out of the scabbard, you strike hard. You hit the enemy's waist and try and cut the enemy from the waist to the shoulder. There's no ritual. It's a devastating surprise attack. Japanese naval pilots were certain they had to do it as soon as possible. In 1941, the Japanese Navy was 70% the size of the US Navy, albeit the US Navy was split between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. But the US was building ships fast. By 1944, it was clear that the Imperial Japanese Navy would be only 30% the size of the US Navy. The Japanese fell headlong into that age-old trap. War is inevitable, so let's start a war. It's exactly what Austrian and German planners had done in 1914. It's why

Hitler had invaded the Soviet Union when he did, and we're very, very lucky that the Soviet and American administrations during the Cold War, though they were tempted to do it, never did so. There was also a Japanese tradition of ambush, of starting wars without warning. At the Battle of Pungdo in 1894, the Japanese attacked a Chinese convoy in Korean waters, but beginning the first Sino-Japanese war for control of Korea. The Chinese suffered grievous losses and complained bitterly of a Japanese lack of decorum. The rest of the world didn't learn their lesson. In February 1904, the night of the 8th to 9th of February 1904, the Japanese launched a brutal surprise attack on the Russian fleet in Port Arthur in Manchuria. Japanese destroyer squadrons darted in to attack the ships of a fleet from a nation with whom they

were not at war. They were at war by the time the sun rose. Russia was infuriated by this attack and would send its European navy around to Pacific theatre where it was crushed in a great naval battle by the big guns of Japanese battleships. Before anyone thinks I'm being dismissive of the Japanese tactic of a sneak attack, I want to say it actually makes sense. I've always found the formal declaration of war toward the enemy or coming slightly bizarre. And in fact, Britain did it on several occasions. In the 18th century, British naval vessels attacked a French convoy taking reinforcements to Canada before the official declaration of war in the Seven Years' War. And actually,

Drake did it against the Spanish in 1587 when he sailed into the harbour at Cadiz and singed the King of Spain's beard. It's an ancient, tried and tested tactic. It's amazing the Japanese managed to get away with it three times against the Chinese, Russians and then the Americans. The Japanese went to great lengths to disguise their approach to Hawaii. Rather than just come from the west, they maintained strict radio silence. They went far north, almost reaching Alaska, into dreadful weather and high latitudes of the northern hemisphere. Then through a surveillance gap, they approached Hawaii from the north. At 6am, the first air fleet of the Imperial Japanese Navy, known as Kidō Butai, or Mobile

Force, was around 250 miles north of Oahu in the Hawaii archipelago. Kidai-Butai contained Japan's six largest aircraft carriers, including the Kaga, which at 38,000 tons was the world's largest aircraft carrier, with hangars containing around 90 aircraft, and a Kagi coming at 36,000 tons with 70-odd planes on board, as well as the six carriers. There were over 60 ships, two battleships, three cruisers, some destroyers, tankers, 23 submarines, and some midget submarines play a small but important part in the coming raid. This naval battle group was the single most powerful

concentration of naval air power in the history of the world. It was a mind-blowingly powerful combination of naval air power, but given they were trying to achieve the impossible, it would need to be. Japanese naval doctrine meant that the carriers were about 7,000 metres apart, and as the aircraft started their engines on the flight decks, the weather was poor. There was a pre-dawn mist, low clouds, enough of a rolling sea to cause the decks to pitch heavily. The bows rose and fell. A mistimed attempt to get airborne could be disastrous for the landing gear for the aircraft that was trying to take off.

The southeast horizon showed a strip of light where the sunrise was illuminated under the heavy clouds. Mitsuo Fushida had been born on the 3rd of December 1902. He was a star pilot. He would now command the strike on Pearl Harbour. He sat in the centre seat in the cockpit of his Nakajima B-5N2. At just past six o'clock on the 7th of December, the first aircraft to take off from the Japanese flight decks were the fighters, the Zero fighters. Following them came the bombers like Fushidas. They were carrying

torpedoes but also armour-piercing bombs. They needed more of the deck to take off. Once the fighters had left there was a bit more runway. Fushida's pilot went full throttle and his aircraft lumbered along the flight deck, dipped dangerously as it flew off the end and then climbed into the sky. He began marshalling the assault. It was the first time in history that a force of six aircraft carriers had launched six airstrikes simultaneously. 183 planes formed up into a single strike group. Only six planes failed to launch because of technical difficulties. The first wave headed south towards Oahu and the American fleet. Meanwhile, at 6.30 in the morning in Pearl Harbor, Seaman First class Donald Stratton was aboard USS Arizona. It was one of 185 ships of the US Pacific Fleet moored in Pearl Harbor that day.

Arizona was one of the battleships, powerful, big-gunned battleships, which were thought by everyone before the war to be the decisive unit of war at sea. He remembers eating breakfast that lazy Sunday morning. Powdered eggs, ketchup, fried spam and pancakes. There were eight battleships like the Arizona tied up alongside in Pearl Harbour. Two heavy cruisers, slightly smaller ships and smaller than that, six light cruisers, 29 destroyers and many other ships like tankers and a hospital ship. There were no aircraft carriers present at Pearl Harbour. One was off in the mainland having a refit. The other two had gone to deliver aircraft to forward bases

in the Pacific. It was extraordinary luck for the Americans. They were not present in Pearl Harbour that day. 15 minutes after Donald Stratton was called to breakfast, at 6.45am there was an extraordinary event in the entrance to Pearl Harbour. The USS Ward, a small American ship, a destroyer, fired upon an unidentified submarine. It sank and the destroyer finished her off with depth charges. The Ward reported the subs sinking to the authorities at Pearl Harbour, but the report was passed on so slowly that no alert was given to any other naval units in the harbour. Minutes later, shortly after 7am, on the north tip of Oahu's north shore, Army Privates Joseph Lockhart and George Elliott were completing a shift at a radar installation. The equipment had been installed only weeks before

and it was still very much in the process of being worked up. They were due for breakfast, but they stayed for some additional tinkering and training on the new equipment. A large blip appeared on the screen. Lockhart immediately assumed it was a formation of planes approaching Oahu. They passed the information up the chain of command, but they were told that the relevant personnel had gone for breakfast. On Lockhart's radar screen, the blip was 100 miles north of Oahu and closing. At 20 past seven, a superior officer told him the squadron of American aircraft was arriving at Pearl Harbor that morning, and the blip was probably them. At around this time, the Japanese carriers launched a second wave. Just under 80 dive bombers, around 40 fighters, and just over 50 horizontal bombers that dropped

their bombs from altitude. The operation was well underway, and had the Americans trusted their senses, they'd have known what was coming. At 7.40am, Mitsuo Fushida arrived at the North Shore. Some of his aircraft went inland, below ridgetop height, through the spectacular scenery of Oahu. The rest circled round the western edge of the island to converge on Pearl Harbour itself. At 7.49am, Fushida later reported, I lifted the curtain of warfare by dispatching that cursed Order No. 1. Whole squadron, plunge into attack. My heart was ablaze with joy for my success in getting the whole the main force of the American Pacific Fleet in hand and I put my whole effort into the war that followed it with a

strong hatred towards America. It was a moment that he would come to regret with all his heart. At 7.51 Japanese fighters attacked the aircraft, the hangars, the buildings on the airstrip of Wheeler Field, the airfield that was supposed to provide air cover for the fleet, the hangars, the buildings on the airstrip of Wheeler Field, the airfield that was supposed to provide air cover for the fleet in the harbour. At 7.53am, with the attack now underway, Fushida radioed Tora, Tora, Tora, which effectively means lightning attack. It was his code to alert his superiors that surprise had been achieved. He headed towards Battleship Row at Pearl Harbour. One, two, three, four.

Hello, NBC. Hello, NBC. This is KPU in Honolulu, Hawaii. We have witnessed this morning a distant view, a great battle of Pearl Harbour and a severe bombing of Pearl Harbor by enemy planes, undoubtedly Japanese. The city of Honolulu has also been attacked and considerable damage done.

This battle has been going on for nearly three hours. One of the bombs dropped within 50 feet of KPU Tower. It is no joke, it is a real war. The Japanese aircraft began their pre-assigned tasks. The slower, more vulnerable torpedo bombers were at the very vanguard of the first wave. They're vulnerable because there's no mystery to what torpedo bombers are going to do. They have to go very, very low, in this case, almost wave top heights, 30 feet or so above the surface of the water, then fly in a dead straight line to release their torpedo in a good steady fashion. So it hits the water and heads towards the intended target. It was thought the Pearl Harbor was too shallow for torpedoes and anti-torpedo

measures hadn't been taken by the US military. The Japanese had modified torpedoes, made sure that they floated higher in the water if you like, and they were used with deadly effects, slamming into the sides of ships, causing catastrophic holes in the hull. Other bombers, like dive bombers, screamed down from the sky and used the angle of their dive to aim the bombs, released at the last minute before pulling up out of that dive and sending a heavy bomb, often with pinpoint accuracy, through the armoured decks of the ships below. Another category of bombers flew high in the sky, horizontally, and used accurate bomb-aiming sights to drop their bombs on targets below.

A swarm of fighters surrounded all these bombers, keeping away any enemy aircraft that took to the skies and pouncing on targets of opportunity on the ground, strafing the ground with machine gun fire. I've been to the hards at Pearl Harbor Naval Base. I've seen the scars in the concrete from that Japanese strafing. The Japanese aircraft didn't just attack ships, they were attacking Hickam Field, Wheeler Field, the US Army air bases on Oahu, making sure that American planes couldn't take to the sky and try and interrupt the bombing. They were very successful in that. Only a handful of US fighters got airborne. Meanwhile, back on the Arizona,

let's rejoin Seaman First Class Donald Stratton. He was below decks. After his breakfast, he remembered stepping out into the sunshine of the fo' Vauxhall and he heard the drone of aircraft engines and then what he thought were bombs exploding on a nearby island, Ford Island. They ran up to bows and they were astonished to see the seaplanes on the hard, I just mentioned in fact, bursting into flame. They saw a water tower toppling over. They then saw the aircraft responsible for this. They saw silver planes flashing past, flying low, with what he describes as red meatballs on the side, the rising sun of Japan. He realised at that moment that America was under attack from the Japanese Empire. He particularly remembers the fighters. He said they flew in figure of eights like birds of prey.

He ran to his battle station. He had to get up the steel ladders. One of the reasons that we have his testimony is he was not below deck he was positioned high in the superstructure of his ship he had to climb up all these steel ladders to get to his station and as he was climbing he felt the ship's hull being walloped and muffled explosions his action station was on the sky control platform if you think about a world war one world war two battleship they've got this extraordinary sort of superstructure towering above the great guns and the bridge and that's where people with sharp eyes manned fire control systems, a mixture of human and machine technology in order to improve the accuracy of gunfire. And he was up there

giving an extraordinary view as the attack unfolded, just like the veteran that I'll be speaking to later in this podcast. He remembers 1-0 bearing down, sending machine gun rounds into the deck, splinters flying. He could see the pilot taunting him with a smirk and a wave. From his extraordinary position, he watched Tennessee and West Virginia take hits. He saw Oklahoma lurch to one side, roll over and sink. And he saw a giant fireball over the dry dock where Pennsylvania was. He talks about the black smoke that was eating up the

blue sky. Torpedoes were slamming against the hull of Arizona. Great geysers of water, columns of water being lifted far into the air, the ship shuddering as it was battered to death. Gradually, the entire harbour seemed to be in flames. He could smell the burning fuel. He could smell the exploding gunpowder. It's worth remembering at this stage that ships couldn't quickly nip out to sea. It took hours and hours for a battleship to fire up, basically, for the boilers to get hot enough to power the engines. Also, as we'll hear later, it was quite lucky that many of them sank in the shallow waters of Pearl Harbor because these ships could be recovered.

But we'll come to that at the end. At about ten past 8 the Arizona terribly wounded finally received its death blow. An armor-piercing bomb weighing 800 kilos or so just less than a ton dropped from 10,000 feet crashed through four steel decks of the Arizona. It landed in the ammunition magazine. Something like 500 tons of explosives were instantly detonated. Witnesses say that the fireball went 500-600 feet into the air, engulfing nearly everybody on the ship. The blast showered nearby battleships with grotesque shards of metal and human body parts. The only reason Donald Stratton survived was his very elevated position high above the rest of the hull. By chance, he survived the blast,

but he never forgot the sights that followed. Humans, his crewmates, crawled out of the devastating hole in the hull, some of them on fire. He describes them like human torches. Others jumped into the water, and when they did, you could hear them sizzle. James Corey, who was a US Marine on board, says these people were zombies in essence. They were burned completely white. Their skin was just as white as if you'd taken a bucket of whitewash and painted it white. Hair burned off, eyebrows burned off, arms held away from their bodies as they stumped along the decks. Donald and five comrades desperately sought for a way to escape the doomed ship. On the neighbouring USS Vestal, Petty Officer First Class Joseph Leon George, 26 years old, spotted them and threw them

a line. In spite of an order, they lashed the line to the superstructure and attempted to crawl along it. Officers on board the Vestal ordered the line to the superstructure and attempted to crawl along it. Officers on board the Vestal ordered the line to be cut because they were terrified the Arizona would sink and drag the Vestal down with it. But the men disobeyed, and climbing hand over hand, all six sailors made it across alive. One would die later from his injuries, but five, including Donald, survived. He had burns to more than 65% of his body. Donald actually spent 10 months in hospital and was medically discharged from the Navy

at the end of that process, but re-enlisted in 1943 and served as a gunner's mate on USS Stack in the Pacific. The wreckage of Arizona slipped beneath the surface, taking with it desperate crewmen who hammered at watertight bulkheads, tried to open doors that had been twisted in the blast. As the lights went off, the oxygen ran low and the water level slowly rose.

Cecil Camp was on USS Utah. He'd just been relieved of his watch in the engine room and that fact saved his life. A torpedo hit the port side of the ship. He said he ran up the ladder to the third deck. He got to his sleeping quarters but water was already rushing over his bunk. A torpedo hit the port side of the ship. He said he ran up the ladder to the third deck. He got to his sleeping quarters, but water was already rushing over his bunk. He charged immediately to the second deck, to the locker room where men were trying to secure their valuables before abandoning ship. One man asked if he should take his dress blue uniform with him, and Cecil told him he wouldn't be needing that for a while. Cecil grabbed a pair of dungarees, a carton of cigarettes, obviously, and went up onto the top deck. Utah was listing so badly, he simply sat on the side of the ship and slid into the water, and he swam to the shore

where he was picked up and taken to safety. Having dropped their bombs, the first wave of bombers headed back to their carriers. More ships were attacked, sunk, blown up, disabled, and after 90 minutes in all, it was over. Fushida returned to the carrier with the second wave. With huge pride he told his commanding officer that the US battleship fleet had been

destroyed. He looked at his aircraft and discovered no fewer than 21 flak holes in it the main control wires holding together by threads. Aboard the Japanese carriers there was then something of a debate. Some of the more warlike junior officers, like Fushida, begged their admiral to send a third strike

in order to destroy Pearl Harbor's infrastructure, particularly the oil storage facility and maintenance yards, torpedo storage, dry dock facilities, things like that. Nagumo took one of the most important decisions made that day. He decided not to send a third wave. He was worried about the increasing readiness of the American anti-aircraft fire. There would be no surprise this time, of course. He was very worried about the location of these mystery US carriers that he'd now been told were not in Pearl Harbor. Where was the US carrier fleet and would they stumble across him and launch devastating strikes on his own fleet while their aircraft were away? Also, they were getting short of fuel and recovering aircraft at night was a highly

specialized activity that really only the British Royal Navy could do at that point of the war. And he was worried about his aircraft returning after dusk. So no third wave was sent. The essential American dockside facilities, including the hut where the intelligence was being done, where Japanese codes were being broken, including the massive fuel supplies, the arsenals, the dry docks, they were left, thankfully for the Americans, pretty much unharmed. The Japanese had lost 29 aircraft, around 64 aviators, although 74 other aircraft had been damaged by anti-aircraft fire from the ground. As for the United States military, 2,404 US military and civilians were killed.

In the Arizona alone, over a thousand men died terrible deaths. In the end, four American battleships were sunk. The Arizona, which had been hit by four-arm piercing bombs, was at the bottom and would never be recovered. It's a very, very moving place to visit today. The Oklahoma was hit by five torpedoes. It capsized, and it was also never recovered. The West Virginia and California were sunk, but they would be lifted by the US Navy and returned to service by 1944.

Nevada was terribly badly damaged, but for various reasons the crew were able to get some power to the engines, and she was beached, meaning she could return to service in 1942. Pennsylvania, as we'll hear in a second from the wonderful veteran I get to talk to, was in dry dock at the time. It was badly damaged, but it returned to service. The Tennessee and Maryland, damaged but both returned to service by early 1942. The Japanese did manage to sink another former battleship, the Utah. It capsized but it was an obsolete battleship by that time and no great loss to the US Pacific fleet. Some 11 other cruisers, destroyers and auxiliary vessels were sunk or seriously damaged. Around 188 American aircraft

were destroyed and 159 damaged. But these were, well, by definition, pre-war aircraft and they would not be missed in the gigantic military effort and rearmament that was to come. It should be remembered that the attack wasn't just on Pearl Harbor. It was only part of an extraordinarily ambitious general offensive of the Japanese across the Pacific and Southeast Asia. They attacked the Philippines only hours later. Three days after the attack on Pearl Harbour, Britain's navy experienced its nemesis as the Prince of Wales and repulsed two mighty battleships were attacked, set upon by swarms of Japanese aircraft, fought valiantly, but eventually succumbed to torpedoes. They were sunk off the coast of Malaya whilst the Japanese invasion

of British colonies in Southeast Asia commenced. Churchill later recalled, In all the war I never had a more direct shock. As I turned and twisted in bed the full horror of the news sank in upon me. There were no British or American capital ships in the Indian Ocean or the Pacific, except the American survivors of Pearl Harbor, who were hastening back to California. Over this vast expanse of waters, Japan was supreme, and we everywhere, when weak and naked. Churchill, as you might expect, is exaggerating at this point. The American fleet was not slinking back to California, and there were capital ships left in the Pacific. There were US aircraft carriers, and these carriers, with their crews and their aviators, would soon

exact a brutal revenge for Pearl Harbor. The elimination of their battleship force left the US Navy with essentially no choice but to rely on those carriers and submarines. And they were the weapons with which the US Navy would halt and quite quickly reverse the Japanese advance. The Japanese, though, they celebrated a win. They'd managed to rip the heart out of the US battleship fleet, and that's particularly the time when battleships were still thought to be the most important component of a fleet at sea. It was celebrated. However, we can also say in retrospect, it was a monumental blunder.

That Japanese Prime Minister Tojo, who was thinking about that leap of faith, down to a certain death or up to heaven, definitely ended up with the former. The American monster was wakened from its slumbers. The American monster was wakened from its slumbers. The gigantic industrial might of the Midwest was transformed from producing its civilian consumer goods for a peacetime economy into churning out weapons on a hitherto unimaginable scale. Ships, aircraft, guns, bombs.

While American and Allied nuclear physicists were given everything they needed to get to work on the most potent weapon system the world had ever known. Roosevelt addressed both houses of Congress. Obviously, he declared war against Japan. I ask that the Congress declare that since the unprovoked and dastardly attacked by Japan on Sunday, December 7th, 1941, a state of war has existed between the United States and the Japanese Empire. But perhaps more importantly than the famous words spoken by Roosevelt that day is the naval building program that was undertaken by the US as a result of Pearl Harbor. In the four years that followed, the United States Navy added 1,200 major combat ships, including 99 aircraft carriers and 18 big battleships.

As America swept back across the Pacific seeking revenge for Pearl Harbor, it would do so with the greatest concentration of naval might ever assembled. Japanese Admiral Harada Daichi summed up Pearl Harbor years later by saying, We won a great tactical victory at Pearl Harbour, and thereby lost the war. You're listening to Dan Snow's History Hit. I'm talking about Pearl Harbour. More coming up after this,

including our interview with the wonderful veteran, Mickey Gannage. I'm Matt Lewis. And I'm Dr. Eleanor Yonaga. Gannic. kings, Normans, kings and popes, who were rarely the best of friends, murder, rebellions, and crusades. Find out who we really were by subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. Mickey, thanks very much for coming on. How did you end up in the Navy? I hear you didn't want to join the Army. I didn't want to go in the Army.

They called me a draft doctor. I joined the Navy. I figured it was a better life than the Army. They say the Army sleeps outside there and cold food there. That wasn't for me. So I'm draft out there. I joined the Navy. And how did you find life in the Navy just in the build up to Pearl Harbor? Did you enjoy living aboard ship, living in Hawaii? Oh yeah, I was on the ship. First after boot camp I went to quartermaster and signal school because they told me, how do you like to steer a ship? And I said, that's for me.

And they said, that's one of the jobs a quartermaster does there. And so I requested being in the quartermaster gang there. And that's where I was at when I joined the ship in August 15th of 1941. And what ship did you join, sir? USS Pennsylvania. At that time, you join, sir? USS Pennsylvania. At that time, all battleships were named after states. And I joined the battleship Pennsylvania there as a flagship of the fleet there.

Whenever we came in and poured, we tied up at a dock there. The other people would maybe tie up way out and ride a boat for 10, 15 minutes to get ashore when they went ashore. And I always had an admiral aboard, and an admiral liked to just walk the ship. So rank as it's free, we just, so whenever we came in a port, we were always tied up at a dock. And so at Pearl Harbor, you were alongside, were you? You were tied up. Well, normally, but two days before that, we had propeller trouble.

And so they put us in a dry dock with two other destroyers that were casting in the downs and get us inside this enclosure. And there's a block set in place there and close the gate there and pump the water out. That way you can work on the dry instead of working underwater. So that's why they called it dried out because there's no water underneath you. Did you feel that you were heading towards war at that time?

Well, we figured that we'd be in a war, but it'd be someplace else. They wouldn't be close to us. And if there's any problem, especially with Japan, it'd be in the Philippines. I figured that's where the problem would be. I figured it'd be no problem whatsoever with us at Hawaii or in the United States. But you guys felt you'd be training

and that your ship might soon be called into battle. Oh, yeah, we all did. We trained during the week there. We'd go out to sea and fire our guns there and practice maneuvering around and all, getting ready just in case we were needed there. And so we wouldn't be just fumbling around there. We would kind of know what we're doing, how to operate with other ships instead of just being by ourselves. And what was the feeling like? Did you enjoy being on board?

Was it a happy ship? Oh, yeah, it was a happy ship. We had 1,500 people on there. So we had a lot of people you didn't know. Most of the people you didn't know any names there. You maybe spoke to them, but you usually didn't even know their names there. That's a little too many. That's a small community.

As soon as I came on the ship, I said, I support Schmeiner there. As soon as I got on the ship, I joined the ship's football team. I wanted to play football with their team. I understand they had a good team, and I wanted to join it there. I got on the squad and made the squad there, and we'd get ready to play the USS Arizona for the Fleet Football Championship at 1 o'clock December 7, 1941. That was going to be the Super Bowl of the Navy.

We were going to get ready for a big moment there. In fact, we was going to leave the ship at eight o'clock in the morning there, do a little scrimmaging with our padding on, because there's no place to change clothes close to the field. And so we had all our padding on there to leave the ship at eight o'clock. And about seven minutes to eight, the phone rang. I picked up a phone. That's a phone just for on the ship where one of the guys says that Japanese attacking Pearl Harbor. I said, oh, come on there.

Let's not joke about something like that there because we'd been talking about it for months whether we're going to get in a war or not there. But we've heard it. We're safe there. It didn't matter there. And about that time there, the ship shuttered. Evidently, some of the guys saw what was going on, went to the gun, started shooting there before the people below decks knew what

was going on. About that time, general quarters went. All hands, man your battle station. You don't have time to change clothes or anything. I had all my padding on there, my battle station up in the coals, and it's about 60, 70 feet up in the air. That's my battle station up in the cozeness about 60 70 feet up in the air as my battle station i was a lookout so it's a kind of a tight squeeze there because a little trap door to get up where i pull myself through with all my padding on and get up there to see what was going on there and report anything there that whether you're at sea or you're in port, whatever it is, your job is to look out. Report anything of importance there should be reported. That was my job.

You had a perfect, almost a bird's eye view of the entire Pearl Harbor attack. Yeah, I was higher up than some of those planes flying around. Japanese planes flying around there. They'd come in low drop a torpedo and then go back up I'm higher up than they are just momentarily there so I really had a bird's eye view what was going on by the time I got up there buildings were burning ships were burning here just in a couple minutes time it took me three four minutes there to get from where it was the living compartment

of quartermasters back by the propeller way back in the bottom part of the ship it took me a few minutes to get up there by the time i got up there everything was burning well not everything was burning but a lot of the things were burning there and the war was on there and so you do your duty and my job was to look out. And were you reporting back everything you were seeing? You must have been on the communications the whole time. See, I'm up there high. There were some buildings, you know, in there close by.

And I looked over there and I see a plane coming from over across the buildings. I reported on my phone. We have sound power phones there that you can talk and make your reports and your communications between the different parts of the ship. I reported a plane coming over. They trained the guns over in that area there. When the plane comes in that direction there, the guns couldn't see it.

First, by the time the plane got over there, the guns were trained in that direction. We shot them down. That's the only plane we shot down that day. So I thought I accomplished something. I reported that plane coming because you have to train the guns there. When the plane's over there, it'd be too late because the guns, so they had had the guns trained in that direction. And so when it did get inside over the top of the buildings there, we got him. So that made me feel pretty good.

I'll bet. Do you remember seeing Arizona, the team you were going to play that day? Do you remember seeing her go up and well in sync? No, no. I heard it there and I happened to be looking in a different direction there. In fact, we're across the channel from Arizona itself, and I understand pieces of that Arizona came on our ship, because there's pieces blown all over the area there when that Arizona got hit there. And what about your ship? It sustained damage, didn't it, Pennsylvania? Well, we weren't in a normal place there. So the first attack we were not hit because we weren't in a normal place.

In fact, the two ships, the USS Helena and the Ogallala, moved in a place where we normally would tie up. But we weren't there. We were in dry dock. So two planes were instructed to hit the Pennsylvania at the normal place, but we weren't there, so we didn't get hit. So evidently, the Japanese pilots reported there that there's a big ship in dry dock there

with two of the destroyers there. So the second attack is when they hit us with a 500-pound. They couldn't hit us with a torpedo because we got a lot of concrete around us there. But they did hit us with a 500-pound bomb. It was armor-piercing bomb. It went two flimsy decks there,

went two decks down, and that's when it exploded when they hit the main deck there. If it exploded on contact, I wouldn't be talking to you but it exploded armor piercing exploded way below me there's kind of scary see a big hole alongside of you the same time we got hit there the castan got hit there and started burning and started rolling on it on the downs because two japanese planes were ordered to hit the pennsylvania once they found out that we were in dry doctor so one of them hit us one hit the destroyer the destroyer started burning here rolled over on the downs

there as it flooded got that for the god okay it flooded the dry dock, flood the dry dock, okay? It flooded the dry dock. Only bad thing is oil from the destroyer came on top of the water, caught fire and made flames all around us because oil and water don't mix there. But that was the only damage that we got there for that attack itself. The two other ships you referred to, the two destroyers that were in the dry dock with you, right? They were terribly badly damaged. Well, the casting was hit and started burning.

The downs wasn't hit. The downs got hit there with the destroyer rolling over on it. That was the only damage, and it started burning, and they figured it set fire to that destroyer too. So that's why they wanted to flood the dry dock, put out the fire, not realizing that the oil would come out the dry dock, put out the fire, not realizing there that the oil would come on top of the water and catch fire. Mickey, did you have time to be scared? Or were you just watching this gigantic scene

in front of you? We didn't have time to think. You do what you're trained to do. I was trained to go up and report anything of importance there, and I did my duty. We were all trained to do our jobs there, and that's what we did. We never had time to really think about it. You thought about it afterwards. I looked at the ladder I climbed up there to get to the ladder there. It had machine gun nicks on it there.

It was a nicks there. It was everyone. While I was going up there? After I went up there? Before I went up there? I don't know, but it didn't get me. That's kind of scary. I could have been there, but God was looking out for me there, and I wasn't

there when the Bullets got in that area. So, you're just trained to do what you're supposed to do. And you lost your first crewmates. Did you lose friends, members of the football team or anything? David Morgan Oh yeah, none of the football team got hit because evidently they weren't that particular. We lost 23 men that day, got injured a bunch of

people. But none of my football team and none of the people that I knew personally got killed that day. It was just the people, the gunners that were close to that area and anybody else that was close to that area where the bomb hit. Will Barron- Were you angry? Was it personal now or did you- Well, you think about it, we were attacked. We were united. We were attacked, so we got to fight back there. We got to see what we can do to fight back there. That's why when Franklin Delano Roosevelt got Congress to declare war on Japan

because we were attacked, the country is united. We had blocks of long people lined up. Everyone was going to various services. We were attacked there, and they wanted to get revenge. They wanted to do what has to be done to protect themselves, protect others, protect their country. So you're trained to do what you're supposed to do. So what happened is up to that point.

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The women stayed home, take care of the kids and take care of the family. Now they hear the men were gone. So what happened? The women stepped in. They started building planes, tanks, guns, ships, anything we needed. They made for us. You've seen the sign there? We did it, and they did do it.

They furnished us with all we needed. Everything that needed to be done there, the women stepped in and do it. After that time, the women did nothing. That's how the women got in the workforce. After that time, the women did nothing. That's how the women got in the workforce. Between the fact that they furnished us with what we needed, and there was no third attack.

The third attack was going to be the aircraft carriers there, the oil tanks there, and the repair facilities. That was going to be the third attack. Now, the aircraft carriers were not in the fort. They were supposed to be in the fort. Japan knew they were supposed to be in port there. But Admiral Halsey and his aircraft carrier group, the Lexington Enterprise, were taking planes to Midway and Wake Island. They were taken there. They were supposed to be back.

They were delayed 12 hours due to bad weather. They were not in port. They were delayed 12 hours due to bad weather. They were not in port. So Admiral Nagumo of the Japanese fleet says, if we don't know where the aircraft carriers were, we better leave. He said, we'll not have a third attack. That made a lot of his aides unhappy about it because they wanted to have a third attack.

But due to the fact there was no third attack, the women stepped in and made what we needed there. We won the war. It's that simple. Otherwise, it would have been a disaster. And, Mickey, just quickly tell me, you were at the Battle of Midway, but in 1942, your ship fired its guns in anger. For the rest of the war, were you still up in the crow's nest there, spotting? Was that your job across the Pacific?

The first job that the people in my gang do when they first came and joined the gang was a lookout. I was a new man on the ship. In fact, I just got on there in August. I was only on there a couple of months there before the war started. That's where my first job was there. But later on, I become a different thing. In fact, I got to steer in the ship there.

One of my jobs was steering the ship in outer port i thought that's pretty good for a farm boy i'm from a farm boy from ohio never saw anything up close in the ferry boat there i was trained there to steer that battleship in and out of port there i'm not sure how many times that steered it in and out of port, I thought that was pretty good for a farm boy. I had various things there. Another one of my jobs was to help a navigator to find out where the ship was at by sun, moon, and stars. We didn't have GPS in World War II. We had to use the sun, moon, and stars, the old-fashioned way of finding out where the ship was at out at sea there.

Plot the course and different things there. So navigation was the main specialty. Steering the ship was one of the jobs I did there, but that was just during battle stations. You had regular crew members there would steer the ship for hours out at sea there. So there's just a variety of different jobs, but mainly navigation was the specialty of my gang itself.

And you saw many other campaigns, Philippines, elsewhere. What sticks in the memory? Just give me one memory for the rest of the war. My ship was an old ship commissioned in 1915 there. We could do 15 knots downhills, the tailwind. We didn't have the speed, so they used us for fire support, not shooting at enemy ships. We'd shoot at enemy troops on land, supporting

our troops that were on land. That was our job there. That's why my ship was an invasion. We had two Kiska, Macon, Kwajalein, and we took Saipan, Guam, and Philippines. All those invasions. We were in every invasion in the North Pacific.

It was the September, it was Jim on Okinawa. We were there for an invasion there, supporting our troops there. So we did what we can. We stayed away from South Pacific where you needed speed. But we didn't have the speed there. So we used it where we do the most good, and that was fire support. We got pretty good at it too. And now you retired.

You left the Navy after 22 years in the 60s, but I heard you offered to go back and give them a hand. Yeah, that's right. I was over 60 years old at that time. They needed somebody at my rate. They needed a senior chief quartermaster. I retired as senior chief quartermaster, E-8 there. They wanted somebody.

They said, you'd have to serve two years. They wanted somebody to go on the battleship on the USS Iowa there, which was in the Eastern War. I don't remember now whatever it was called. They needed somebody. I told the wife, I said, I'm thinking about going in. She said, well, you were in. I said, well, if I could stay in two years there with a new rate and all,

I'd get so much more month to month of my retirement. So she agreed. So I was sending the papers and all, it came back that you got somebody a little bit younger, I guess, to do it. But I was ready to go because I was trained on the battleship and go on another battleship. And of course, the newer battleship, I was all for it and only had to serve two years and the new pay rate is well worth it. My wife agreed with me. But the way it turned out, they didn't need me. I was ready to go.

It was the invasion of Kuwait, wasn't it, in 1991? And you were 70 years old, sir, at the time. Oh, yeah. Well, then I was past the regular age there, but I was ready to go. You still got it. And listen, you're 102 now. You look like you're about 60. Just tell us what's the secret before you go.

Keep breathing. Keep breathing because the alternative from not breathing isn't so good there. So keep breathing there and stay out of the bars and stay out of trouble there. And of course, with all my grandchildren grandchildren great-grandchildren all that because right now i have four children 13 grandchildren 21 great-grandchildren and nine great great-grandchildren there don't ask me names i'm just going for numbers sir it's easier to remember numbers than these names. But some of them I don't even know the names of. Will Barron

And can you believe that Pearl Harbor was 80 years ago? Tom Clancy Well, it happened there, but it's just something that sticks in your mind there. But I remember we had enemies before. They're our friends now. So I don't have no animosity whatsoever at all. To me, it's like a game, like a football game that we never played there. Your enemy's on the field. Maybe you'll go out to supper that night there. Your enemy's for a while, and then your friends are.

Don't think about what happened before. You can't change what happened before. Think about what you can do for the future. They're our friends now. Let's be friends there. That's the most important thing, to have friends. Mickey, thank you so much for joining us and sharing some of that wisdom.

Thank you. All the very best. Thank you. Thank you, Connie. It's my honour to do so. All the very best. Thank you. Thank you, Kenny. It's my honour to do so. I feel we have the history on our shoulders. All this tradition of ours, our school history, our songs, this part of the history of our country, all were gone and finished. Thank you for making it to the end of this episode of Dan Snow's History. I really appreciate listening to this podcast.

I love doing these podcasts. It's a highlight of my career. It's the best thing I've ever done. And your support, your listening is obviously crucial for that project. If you did feel like doing me a favor, if you go to wherever you get your podcasts and give it a review, give it a rating, obviously a good one, ideally, then that would be fantastic. And feel free to share it. We obviously depend on listeners, depend on more and more people finding out about it, depend on good reviews to keep the listeners coming in. Really appreciate it. Thank you. you