Word: pearls
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When nearly 200 Japanese bombers finally arrived over Manila, fully 10 hours after the raid on Pearl Harbor, the pilots were amazed to find most of MacArthur's fleet of warplanes, the largest in the South Pacific, lined up like targets on the runways. They proceeded to destroy everything they...
...Pearl Harbor was a disaster for the U.S., the Japanese attack on the Philippines that same day (Dec. 8 on the far side of the international date line) was in many ways worse. American casualties were much lower -- some 80 killed in the Philippines, vs. 2,433 in Hawaii -- but the strategic losses were higher. The raids on Clark and Iba fields outside Manila wrecked 18 out of MacArthur's fledgling force of 35 B-17 bombers, 56 of his 72 P-40 fighters and 25 other planes. In returning later to pound the airfields again, the Japanese also smashed...
...Pearl Harbor represented just one small part of the Japanese master plan for the conquest of Southeast Asia. Tokyo launched attacks in that same December week not only against U.S. outposts in the Philippines, Wake Island and Guam but also against the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia) and the British colonies of Malaya, Burma and Hong Kong. The methodical Japanese had printed the currencies for their occupation of all these lands as early as the spring of 1941. And they conquered this vast sweep of territory so easily that the immediate worry was whether they would strike next...
...Marines under Major James Devereux scored four direct hits on the flagship Yubari and sank two destroyers. The force withdrew -- the first small U.S. victory in World War II and the only time in the war that defenders beat back an invasion fleet. In reporting this small triumph to Pearl Harbor, according to a story that may be apocryphal, one of Devereux's men added a bit of bravado that became a popular propaganda slogan: "Send us more Japs...
...Japanese took the Wake garrison at its word. Reinforced by two carriers homeward bound from Pearl Harbor, they struck again before dawn on Dec. 23. Devereux's Marines fought hand to hand on the beaches for more than five hours. The Stars and Stripes was shot down, then hoisted again on a water tower, but at about 8 a.m. a white bedsheet was raised next to it. Devereux's defenders had killed about 800 Japanese at a loss of 120; of the 400 Marine survivors, a couple were beheaded and the rest shipped into captivity...