The Other Pearl Harbor

32Historically Speaking · November 2003 The Other Pearl Harbor William H. Bartsch Each year on December 7 we are reminded of "the day that wiU Uve in infamy," as President Franklin Roosevelt termed itfallowing theJapanese sneak attack on our Pacific Fleet naval base at Pearl Harbor on that day in 1941. Since then we have been delugedwith books—and even two movies (including the recentPearlHarbor)— about the traumatic event that plunged the United States into World War ?. But how many of us know that just ten hours after that disastrous air raid another Japanese aerial attack occurred 5,500 miles west of Pearl Harbor which was even more devastatingtoAmerican arms? On the northern Philippines island of Luzon—at Clark and Iba air fields—it was 12:35 p.m. on December 8 (December 7 in the U.S. on the other side of the international date line) when 191 Japanese Navy bombers and Zero fighters, on a round-trip mission from Formosa 500 miles to the north, began systematically destroying the largest force offour-engine B-17 "Flying Fortress" bombers outside the United States and their protective P-40 pursuit planes, the only effective air power thatstood between the Japanese and their conquest of southern Asia initiated on that day. The Philippines was American territory, a commonwealth slated for independence in 1946 but for whose defense until that date the United States was responsible. Deliberately kept weak during the prewar years for political, military, and budgetary reasons, U.S. Army forces in the PhiUppines in lateJuly 1941 became the beneficiaryofa sudden change in American policywhenPresident Rooseveltreacted strongly to the latestaggressive act oftheJapanese that month—an incursion into southern French Indochina—and decided to "get tough" with their leaders. In addition to freezing aUJapanese assets in the U.S. (effectivelyembargoing all furtherJapanese imports of oil when the British and Dutch also joined in), Roosevelt approved his War Department's decision to expand dramaticaUyAmerican defense forces in the PhiUppines, under a newly estabUshed Army command to be headed by former Army Chief of Staff Douglas MacArthur, since 1935 miUtary advisor to the Commonwealth . The PhiUppines was nowto serve as the base for implementing a new deterrent strategypredicated on the threatofbombing attacks onJapan by the new B-17 and B-24 bombers from air fields in die PhiUppines. As Army ChiefofStaffGeorge C. MarshaU told a group of press correspondents in a secret conference in mid-November 1941, in the event ofwar with Japan, "Flying Fortresses will be dispatched immediately to set the paper cities ofJapan on fire."1 But Japanese Imperial General Headquarters inTokyo months earUerhad decided on "Southern Operations" to seize the resource-rich colonies of the British and Dutch in Malaya and the East Indies and would not be intimidated by the threat ofthe new heavy bombers whose presence in the PhiUppineswas known to them. Yetthe buildup ofAmerican air power in the Islands during the second halfof 1941 ensured that the Japanese would initially strike air bases on Luzon, whose bombers posed a strategic threat to its operations southward, including in support ofthe British and Dutch as agreed in secret negotiations. Already by early November, thirty-five of the new B-17 bombers were based at Clark Field and an additional 130 B-17s and B-24s were slated for transfer to the PhiUppines byApril 1942 under War Department plans. For striking invasion forces, fifty-two A-24 dive bombers were heading for the PhiUppines . To interceptJapanese bombers andfighters, ninetyone P-40 fighters—the latest pursuit ships in the American arsenal at the time—were deployed on fields at Clark, Iba to the west, and Nichols Field outside Manila, with another 135 scheduled for delivery by the end of 1941. Marshall at the War Department in Washington and MacArthur in Manila were basing their plans on the expectation that any attack on the Philippines would not be launched before April 1942, by which time the aerial reinforcement ofthe PhiUppines would have been completed to planned levels and in their view constitute a formidable deterrent to any furtherJapanese aggression southward. Unfortunatelyfor them, following stalled diplomatic negotiations that had begun in March 1941, the Japanese timetable for starting war against the U.S., Great...