Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - December 8, 1941

Episode Date: December 8, 2021

Most people are probably aware of the events which took place on December 7, 1941. As Franklin Roosevelt said, “it was a day that would live in infamy.” However, the events of December 7 weren’t limited to Hawaii, and they weren’t even limited to December 7. It was part of a much larger operation, the other elements of which are often overlooked today. Learn more about the events of December 8, 1941, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Most people are probably aware of the events which took place on December 7, 1941. As Franklin Roosevelt said, it was a day that would live in infamy. However, the events of December 7th weren't limited to Hawaii, and they weren't even limited to December 7th. It was part of a much larger operation, the other elements of which are often overlooked today. Learn more about the events of December 8th, 1941, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

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been missing. You can listen to Nothing Much Happens wherever you get your podcasts. Episodes are every Monday and Thursday. The date December 7th, 1941, has been burned into the minds of Americans, just like a September 1st, 1939, has been burned into the minds of many Europeans. Most of you have probably heard the story, at least at some level. Just before 8 a.m. local time on Sunday, Sunday, December 7th, the U.S. naval facility at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii was the subject of a surprise attack by the Imperial Japanese Navy. A armada of six aircraft carriers, two battleships, and 535 airplanes secretly crossed the Pacific in an attempt to knock out the American Pacific Fleet. Their hope was to cripple the Americans such that it would take them years to recover.

This episode is not about that attack. This episode is about the rest of the operation surrounding the attack on Pearl Harbor. While the attack on Pearl Harbor was the lynchpin and most important part of the Japanese operation, it was far from the only event and not even the largest. Which brings me to December 8th. When I talk of the events of December 8th, I'm not talking about what the Japanese military did the day after. I'm talking about what they did at the exact same time as the attack on Pearl Harbor. So a discussion of December 8th is really an acknowledgement that the Japanese operation straddled the international date line.

The only part of the operation, which was east of the dateline, was the attack on Hawaii. Everything else took place west of the dateline on islands in the Pacific and in Asia. The attack on Pearl Harbor was just one prong in a multi-prong attack on American and British territories. So the Japanese strategy was basically the end of every Godfather movie when all the family's enemies get killed at the same time. So what else was going on while Pearl Harbor was being attacked? Answer? A lot. Taking out the American fleet in Hawaii was paramount, but the United States had other assets in the region that Japan sought to eliminate at the same time. Going east to west, the next island which housed American forces was Wake Island.

Wake is a coral atoll in the middle of the Pacific. On the island were 450 U.S. Marines, 68 Navy personnel, and approximately 1,200 civilians. Wake Island was a major refueling stop for Pan Am flights crossing the Pacific, and most civilians either worked for Pan Am or were involved in the construction project. on the island. The attack on Wake began on Monday morning, December 8th, about an hour after the Pearl Harbor attack when they received word by radio. Wake was besieged for 15 days before finally falling to the Japanese. Forty-nine Marines and 70 civilians were killed. Everyone else was captured and placed in internment camps. Wake remained in Japanese control until their surrender in 1945. The U.S. bombed the island, but there was never a concerted effort to retake it. The next

part of Japan's December 8th plan was the island of Guam. Guam had been a U.S. territory since the Spanish-American War. While much larger than Wake Island, the military contingent on the island wasn't much larger with only 547 Marines and sailors. However, there was a civilian population of about 23,000 people. The governor of Guam was notified of the attack on Pearl Harbor at 445 a.m. Monday, December 8th. At 8.30 a.m., a Japanese plane launched from the nearby island of Saipan began attacking military positions on the island. Saipan had been under Japanese control since World War I. Guam only held out for two days.

The island was simply too big for the small number of soldiers who had to defend it. American losses were 17 killed and 35 wounded. Again, everyone else was captured and interned. Guam was retaken on August 10, 1944. The other U.S. territory in Asia was the Philippines. The Philippines was a totally different beast than either Wake Island or Guam. The invasion of the Philippines was vastly larger than what happened at Pearl Harbor. The Philippines had a population of tens of millions of people, and the Japanese saw it as a major element of the Japanese Empire.

The combined American Filipino forces numbered about 150,000. News of the Pearl Harbor invasion reached Manila at 220 a.m. on December 8th. That morning, the invasion began with Japanese ground forces which sailed from the island of Formosa, now knows the island of Taiwan, which was Japanese territory at the time. They landed on the northern end of the island of Luzon. The first American conflict with Japanese was with the USS William B. Preston, who encountered Japanese vessels in Davao Bay. The Philippines campaign was one of the bloodiest of the war.

25,000 Americans and 100,000 Filipino soldiers were killed, and it's considered by many to be the worst American defeat in history. The Japanese invasion lasted through May of 1942, and the country wasn't taken back in full until the surrender of Japan in 1945. Estimates of the number of civilians killed in the Philippines during the war range from 100,000 to 240,000. Many of the stories from the Philippines during the war, such as the Baton Death March and the Battle of Manila, will be topics of future episodes. I should also note that an American military riverboat in the Yangtze River, the USS Wake, was also captured on December 8th. These December 8th attacks were not the only ones that the Japanese conducted on that date.

They were really busy. When Japan declared war on the United States, it also declared war on the United States. it also declared war on the United Kingdom. Both nations were listed in the same declaration of war. This meant that the Japanese also attacked British assets in Asia as well. In Hong Kong, the British had some advanced warning. The Japanese had been assembling across the Chamchung River, which is the border between Hong Kong and China for the previous week.

The British knew that an invasion was likely, so they had some preparations in place. Notice of hostilities was received at 4.45 a.m., and at 5 a.m., they detonated explosives that were placed on bridges that could be used in invasion routes. The land invasion began at 6 a.m. and the bombing of the Hong Kong airport commenced at 8 a.m. The British had approximately 15,000 troops and the Japanese had about double that. The British held out for a little over two weeks and surrendered on Christmas Day. The Japanese held Hong Kong until their surrender in 1945. The invasion of Malaya also began on December 8th. Malaya was the name given to the British colony before the independence of Malaysia,

and it also included Singapore. The Japanese began the invasion at midnight on December 8th, which was actually just ahead of the Pearl Harbor attack. They landed at Kodabaru, which is the northeasternmost part of Malaysia near the Thai border and on the Gulf of Thailand. The amphibious forces came from the island of Hainan in China. At 4 a.m., Japanese bombers also attacked Singapore. They quickly established a beathead at Kodabaru and then spent the next several weeks and months working their way down the peninsula until Singapore fell on February 15th. The fall of Singapore was the largest surrender of British forces in history. The Japanese also invaded Thailand on December 8th, but it only lasted for five hours

before an armistice was signed. Thailand agreed to allow Japanese troops to pass through for the invasion of Burma, and it ended up becoming a quasi-puppet of Japan throughout the war, even declaring war on the U.S. and the U.K. The other thing that happened on a very busy December 8th, 1941, is that the Netherlands preemptively declared war on Japan. The shocking thing about this is that the Declaration of War was announced before they got news of Pearl Harbor. The Japanese didn't return the favor until January 11th. In hindsight, from a very short-term perspective, the Japanese plan actually worked amazingly well. Everything they attacked and their night of the long knives was taken. The Americans were unable to respond or assist the defenders

on Wake, Guam, and the Philippines. Likewise, the British were too far away and had too much on their plate at home to do anything about their colonies in Asia. For six months, the Japanese were able to act without much resistance taking the Dutch East Indies, New Guinea, and many other Pacific Islands. Of course, from a long-term perspective, the decision to bring the United States into the war was foolish. The United States was the world's largest economy, had the largest industrial capacity of any country on earth, and was the largest producer of most strategic resources needed during that period, in particular, oil, and iron. The Japanese had spread themselves very thin, very quickly. More grandiose plans of invading India, Australia, or Hawaii were impossible.

given the amount of manpower required to hold what they had, let alone the issues with oil and other resources. The war planners in Tokyo thought it would be years before the United States could fight back. Admiral Yamamoto, the head of the Japanese combined fleet who had studied in the U.S., thought that it would only give them six months. Yamamoto was almost exactly right. The Battle of Midway, which turned the tide of the war in the Pacific, was in June of 1942. December 7th is the day that most Americans at least remember. FDR was right that December 7th was a day that would live in infamy. However, we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that the attack on Pearl Harbor was just one part of a much larger campaign,

the rest of which all took part on the other side of the international date line on December 8, 1941. The associate producers of Everything Everywhere Daily are Peter Bennett and Thor Thompson. If you'd like to support the show, please join the list of patrons over at patreon.com. And also remember, if you leave a review or send me a question, you too can have it read on the show.