3 Mistakes at Peral Harbor..
[FONT='Arial','sans-serif']Tour boats ferry people out to the USS Arizona Memorial in Hawaii every thirty minutes.
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[FONT='Arial','sans-serif']We just missed a ferry and had to wait thirty minutes. I went into a small gift shop to kill time. [/FONT]
[FONT='Arial','sans-serif']In the gift shop, I purchased a small book entitled, "Reflections on Pearl Harbor" by Admiral Chester Nimitz.[/FONT]
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[FONT='Arial','sans-serif']Sunday, December 7th, 1941--Admiral Chester Nimitz was attending a concert in Washington D.C. [/FONT]
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[FONT='Arial','sans-serif']He was paged and told there was a phone call for him. When he answered the phone, [/FONT]
[FONT='Arial','sans-serif']it was President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He told Admiral Nimitz that he (Nimitz) would now be [/FONT][FONT='Arial','sans-serif']the Commander of the Pacific Fleet. [/FONT]
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[FONT='Arial','sans-serif']Admiral Nimitz flew to Hawaii to assume command of the Pacific Fleet. [/FONT]
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[FONT='Arial','sans-serif']He landed at Pearl Harbor on Christmas Eve, 1941. [/FONT]
[FONT='Arial','sans-serif']There was such a spirit of despair, dejection and defeat--you would have thought [/FONT][FONT='Arial','sans-serif']the Japanese had already won the war. [/FONT]
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[FONT='Arial','sans-serif']On Christmas Day, 1941, Adm. Nimitz was given a boat tour of the destruction wrought [/FONT][FONT='Arial','sans-serif']on Pearl Harbor by the Japanese. Big sunken battleships and navy vessels cluttered the waters [/FONT][FONT='Arial','sans-serif']every where you looked. [/FONT]
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[FONT='Arial','sans-serif']As the tour boat returned to dock, the young helmsman of the boat asked, "Well admiral, [/FONT][FONT='Arial','sans-serif']what do you think after seeing all this destruction?" [/FONT]
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[FONT='Arial','sans-serif']Admiral Nimitz's reply shocked everyone within the sound of his voice. [/FONT]
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[FONT='Arial','sans-serif']Admiral Nimitz said, "The Japanese made three of the biggest mistakes an attack force could ever make, [/FONT][FONT='Arial','sans-serif']or God was taking care of America. Which do you think it was?" [/FONT]
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[FONT='Arial','sans-serif']Shocked and surprised, the young helmsman asked, "What do mean by saying the Japanese [/FONT][FONT='Arial','sans-serif']made the three biggest mistakes an attack force ever made?" [/FONT]
[FONT='Arial','sans-serif']Nimitz explained: [/FONT]
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[FONT='Arial','sans-serif']Mistake number one: the Japanese attacked on Sunday morning. [/FONT]
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[FONT='Arial','sans-serif']Nine out of every ten crewmen of those ships were ashore on leave. [/FONT]
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[FONT='Arial','sans-serif']If those same ships had been lured to sea and been sunk--we would have lost 38,000 men [/FONT][FONT='Arial','sans-serif']instead of 3,800. [/FONT]
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[FONT='Arial','sans-serif']Mistake number two: when the Japanese saw all those battleships lined in a row, [/FONT][FONT='Arial','sans-serif']they got so carried away sinking those battleships, they never once bombed our dry docks opposite those ships. [/FONT]
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[FONT='Arial','sans-serif']If they had destroyed our dry docks, we would have had to tow everyone of those ships [/FONT][FONT='Arial','sans-serif']to America to be repaired. As it is now, the ships are in shallow water and can be raised. [/FONT]
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[FONT='Arial','sans-serif']One tug can pull them over to the dry docks, and we can have them repaired and at sea [/FONT][FONT='Arial','sans-serif']by the time we could have towed them to America . [/FONT]
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[FONT='Arial','sans-serif']And I already have crews ashore anxious to man those ships. [/FONT]
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[FONT='Arial','sans-serif']Mistake number three: Every drop of fuel in the Pacific theater of war is on top of the ground [/FONT][FONT='Arial','sans-serif']in storage tanks five miles away over that hill. [/FONT]
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[FONT='Arial','sans-serif']One attack plane could have strafed those tanks and destroyed our fuel supply. [/FONT]
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[FONT='Arial','sans-serif']That's why I say the Japanese made three of the biggest mistakes an attack force could make, [/FONT][FONT='Arial','sans-serif']or God was taking care of America .[/FONT]
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