The good news was that Enterprise and the newly arrived Yorktown had attacked the Marshall and Gilbert islands. Those attacks had a great effect on morale.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
We got orders to strike the Marshall and Gilbert Islands. We had a task force with the Enterprise. We had two or three cruisers and probably eight or 10 destroyers.
We made air attacks on the Japanese anchorage, sinking and damaging several vessels. However, the Japanese were alerted to the fact that American carriers were nearby.
When reflecting upon it today, that the Pearl Harbor attack should have succeeded in achieving surprise seems a blessing from Heaven. It was clear that a great American fleet had been concentrated in Pearl Harbor, and we supposed that the state of alert would be very high.
The whole purpose of those attacks was to drive those contractors out. Lots of them had to leave. They were terrified.
The 1993 Trade Center bombing was obviously frightening. It could have been much worse than it was.
Secret ops by secret forces have a nasty tendency to produce unintended, unforeseen, and completely disastrous consequences. New Yorkers will remember well the end result of clandestine U.S. support for Islamic militants against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan during the 1980s: 9/11.
I think attacks on civilians in fact boost morale.
As costly as it was in the lives of our men and women in uniform, in military assets, and in esteem and pride, Pearl Harbor was a watershed moment for America.
For weeks after 9/11 you could smell the dust and pulverised concrete in New York, and the National Guard came in, so there was a military presence on the streets. It was intense. Overwhelming. Heartbreaking.
We were very fortunate that the carriers weren't in the harbor.