ABSTRACT
Japanese pilots faced a disconcerting sight when they returned to their ships after participating in the second wave that attacked Pearl Harbor. No other planes were preparing to take off and strike the naval base a third time. Why was there no third wave? The question cut to the core of Japan’s preemptive attack on Pearl Harbor. The aim of the attack was to destroy the American capacity to make war, but a third strike was needed to do this. The task force commander, Vice Admiral Nagumo, held a different view. The United States already had enjoyed a reprieve that day: its carriers were not present and escaped destruction. He now had to worry about a retaliatory strike from the air, not from Pearl Harbor, but from the missing carriers that might be in the vicinity. He decided to stop the attack and withdraw, believing that Japan’s preemptive strike had accomplished enough. Here lay the seeds of the Pearl Harbor attack as a Japanese setback, if an American disaster as well. But for Japan, these signs were present before the first bomb fell at Pearl Harbor. Nagumo always had opposed the attack, believing it risked too much. By pulling back prematurely before inflicting maximum damage on US war installations, he reflected the larger Japanese trepidation about fighting a war against the United States. A preemptive strike was supposed to allay these misgivings. That these doubts surfaced
country’s bleak future in a war against the United States, no matter the results on December 7, 1941.
