A Year Ago at Pearl Harbour
On the eve of the anniversary of the entry of the United States into the war the Navy Department in Washington issued a report on the military event which opened it—the treacherous and deadly attack at Pearl Harbour, which caught the American Navy and Air Force unprepared. At the time it was obviously impossible to make known the full extent of the disaster—to have done so would have been to give valuable information to the enemy. It was announced, quite correctly, that two battleships and two only had been sunk= Arizona' and 'Oklahoma '—but ru.mour was busy with tales of other losses ; and it is now reported that, in fact, three other battleships were completely disabled, and three others -damaged te--en--extent that put them temporarily otg of action. Three of the seven cruisers present were also temporarily out of action. Thus at one blow, before the immediacy of war was fully realised, the American Pacific fleet suffered crippling losses in capital ships which for the moment gave the Japanese that superiority at sea without which their lightning successes in Malaya, Java, the Philippines and elsewhere could not have been gained. But the very magnitude of the losses produced by this sudden act of treachery was not without its compensations, in that it brought home to the Americans the full meaning of the war, and steeled them in the resolve to throw the whole of their energy into pro- viding the means for victory. What is scarcely less surprising than Pearl Harbour itself is the rapidity with which the United States has repaired the situation. Three of the damaged battleships and the three damaged cruisers returned to service months ago, and, in addition, new ships under construction have been completed The United States has been steadily and swiftly building up again her naval strength in the Pacific, and its weight will be increasingly felt.
