The sudden treacherous attack by the Japanese on Pearl Harbor (see below) electrified the world and focused universal attention on the Hawaiian Islands. As the center of the great Pacific system of United States air, naval, and military defense, the Hawaiian Islands were in 1941 the scene of concentrated and accelerated activity. The official headquarters of the United States 14th Naval District is located at Pearl Harbor on the Island of Oahu. This district includes Wake, Midway, Palmyra, and Johnston Islands as well as the Hawaiian group.
Military Preparations and Naval Establishments.
Pearl Harbor, a deep natural inlet but eight miles from downtown district of Honolulu, is the key to the defense projects which have made the Hawaiian Islands one of the most impregnable fortresses in the world. The present establishment at Pearl Harbor represents a total expenditure of more than $82,870,000 of which more than $21,000,000 was invested during 1940. An unexpended balance for building projects as of Jan. 1, 1941, amounts to more than $41,500,000.
In addition to its functions of protection, Pearl Harbor may be described as a gigantic service station for repairing and servicing ships and replenishing fuel and food supplies.
Kaneohe, on the northeast side of Oahu, is the site of the newest and most modern Naval Air Station. It was started in the summer of 1940 and was commissioned far ahead of schedule.
The Hawaiian Department of the United States Army maintains ten posts on the Island of Oahu. Before the draft, Schofield Barracks, one of the ten, was the largest army encampment under the United States flag. The newest army post on the island is Camp Malakole, headquarters of the 251st Coast Artillery of the California National Guard.
Exclusive of its extensive construction projects, army disbursements in the Islands in 1940 exceeded $32,000,000, an increase of approximately 40 per cent over the 1939 total. Of the 1940 sum, $19,291,266.92 was spent on payroll for officers, enlisted men, and civil employees.
Hickam Field, the great army air base adjoining Pearl Harbor, and Wheeler Field, adjoining Schofield Barracks, are under command of Major General Frederick L. Martin.
Because of the dependence of the islands upon food from the Mainland, great caches of foodstuffs have been stored in the mountains to supply military needs in war. Army authorities have also laid out sites in the mountains to which civilians will be evacuated during air raids.
The constantly increasing number of defense workers from the Mainland, has made an acute housing problem. To alleviate the condition, the Federal Government has started extensive housing projects. More than 2,000 home units are being constructed at Pearl Harbor, of which 600 were completed and occupied as of August 1941. At Hickam Field 550 units have been completed.
The annual report of the Honolulu Chamber of Commerce for 1940 shows that retail business in Honolulu registered an increase of $15,000,000 over 1939, and wholesale business gained approximately $16,000,000 or 30 per cent over the preceding year. These increases are due largely to the presence of United States Army and Navy units.
United States Department of Commerce figures show that the commerce of the Territory of Hawaii with the Mainland during the calendar year 1940 was valued at $229,584,669. Of this amount shipments from the Mainland totaled $127,439,539, an increase of more than $26,000,000 over 1939.
Shipments from Hawaii to the Mainland fell off approximately $11,000,000 during 1940, due to increased local consumption. Of a total of $102,145,130 in Hawaiian products, raw and processed, shipped to the United States in 1940, sugar and pineapples accounted for $93,165,776. Hawaiian imports from foreign countries during 1940 were valued at over $8,000,000; exports to foreign countries totaled $922,835, in comparison with $1,888,911 exports in 1939.
Transpacific Clipper service greatly increased during the past year. Beginning in August 1941, three planes were scheduled each way each week between Honolulu and United States. This schedule includes the 'shuttle' trips between San Francisco and Honolulu, the bi-weekly New Zealand Clippers, and the regular transpacific planes to Manila and Singapore.
Agriculture is the mainstay of the Hawaiian Islands, and sugar continues to be the principal industry. At the end of December 1940, there were approximately 38,000 employees on the payrolls of the thirty-eight sugar plantations in the Territory. Employees and their dependents living on the plantations number about 98,600 persons, a little less than one-quarter of the total population of the Islands.
The 1940 average price for raw sugar in the New York market set a new low of 2.78 cents per pound, the cause being a greater supply of Hawaiian sugar than the market demanded. The sugar division of the Department of Agriculture established the 1941 quota at a figure slightly lower than the quantity consumed, which will reduce reserve stocks and should gradually increase the market price.
From 136,417 acres harvested on the islands in 1940, 35 mills ground out 951,411 short tons of commercial sugar valued at approximately $53,088,733.80.
Pineapples, the second product in importance, throve in 1940. Shipments of canned pineapple were valued at $45,673,035. Shipments of juice totaled 351,847,499 pounds, exceeding the previous year's shipments by more than 40,000,000 pounds.
During the year 1940-41, Punahou School in Honolulu celebrated its one hundredth anniversary. In 1841 American missionaries to the Sandwich Islands, as the Hawaiian Islands were then called, established the school to serve the desperate need of their own children, who had previously been sent around the Horn to be educated in New England. The first secondary school to be established west of the Rocky Mountains for white children, Punahou, is now the largest private preparatory school in the entire United States, exclusive of parochial and mission schools. During its centennial year, Punahou had an enrollment of 1,425 students. The school and its graduates have played an important part in the progress of the Hawaiian Islands.
The year 1940 was the warmest in thirty-six years of United States weather bureau recordings in the islands. The average temperature in the city of Honolulu was 76.2° F.; the highest temperature was 87° F., recorded Oct. 3; lowest, 60° F., Feb. 24. These temperatures may be interestingly compared with the average yearly temperature of the city which is 74.8° F. The all-time high during fifty-one years of recording, was 90° F., in October 1891; all-time low, 52° F., February 1902.
The estimated population of the Territory of Hawaii, at the end of June 1941, was 466,924, an increase of 9.4 per cent over the 1940 Federal Census figures of 423,330. The population of the city of Honolulu is 179,358; city of Hilo, 23,351. Joseph B. Poindexter is Governor of the Territory and Samuel Wilder King continues as Territorial Delegate to the Congress of the United States.
Japanese Attack on Pearl Harbor.
The War in the Pacific began Dec. 7, 1941, with Japan's unprovoked aerial attack on Pearl Harbor, while Japanese diplomats were still engaged in peace discussions with the United States Government in Washington, initiated at Japan's request. At about 7:55 in the morning of Sunday, Dec. 7, Japanese bombing planes launched from aircraft carriers in conjunction with Japanese undersea craft, attacked the great naval base at Pearl Harbor on the Island of Oahu, Hawaii. The Japanese bombers with their escort fighters came over in three waves, the last striking at about 11 in the morning.
Almost all the important military areas and installations of the island were bombed and strafed heavily and accurately, showing that there had been surprisingly effective Japanese espionage and Fifth Column activity. American casualties in the armed forces were exceptionally heavy. The Navy lost a total of 2,729 officers and men killed and 656 wounded. In the Army, 168 officers and men were killed; 213 were wounded, and 26 were missing. In equipment, both the Army and Navy, according to the report of Secretary of the Navy Knox who visited the islands directly thereafter, suffered tremendous losses of aircraft, most of the planes particularly at Hickam Field being destroyed on the ground. Six warships were sunk, and a number of others damaged. The battleship, Arizona, foundered when she received a direct bomb hit through a smokestack, and the battleship, Oklahoma, was severely damaged and capsized. The destroyers, Cassin, Downes and Shaw, the minelayer, Oglala, and the over-age battleship, Utah, then in use as a target ship, were sunk. The remainder of the fleet immediately put out to sea in search of the enemy. The known Japanese losses in this immediate engagement were 3 submarines and 41 aircraft.
The premeditated assault on the United States chief naval base and on other American outposts in the Pacific — Midway, Wake and Guam — which was designed to sever the lines of communication with the Philippines and the Far East, was followed by aimless shelling of the other Hawaiian Islands, Maui, Kauai and Hawaii, and by an attack on Johnston Island, a naval air station and seaplane base which had been commissioned Aug. 15.
The casualties and property losses to the United States were so heavy as to raise a question in the United States Congress as to the alertness of the defense forces at Hawaii. Formal investigation was, therefore, instituted by a board headed by Supreme Court Justice Owen T. Roberts. Secretary of the Navy Knox had previously testified that 'our forces were not on the alert against the surprise attack.' He maintained, moreover, that the Japanese were aided by 'the most effective Fifth Column work of the World War, except for Norway.'
The Roberts' report, made public Jan. 24, 1942, further showed that there had been at least two warnings of aircraft in the vicinity of the island 45 minutes before the main attack but they had been disregarded. A Japanese submarine also had been detected and sunk by a United States destroyer, the U.S.S. Ward, and a naval patrol plane. The chief blame and responsibility for the disaster, however, was placed on the military commander of the islands, Lt. Gen. Walter C. Short, and the naval commander, Admiral Husband E. Kimmel, whose lack of cooperation, the report asserted, had left open the harbor to attack, although they had been warned of the imminence of an attack as early as Nov. 27, 1941. The new officers in the Hawaiian sector, chosen to succeed Lt. Gen. Short and Admiral Kimmel, who were relieved of their commands, are Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, Lt. Gen. Delos C. Emmons, chosen head of the Hawaiian Department of the U.S. Army, and Maj. Gen. Frederick L. Martin, chosen commander of the Air Forces of that department. To coordinate Army and Navy services and bring both under effective unified control, Admiral Nimitz was placed in chief command of the Hawaiian sector, with Lt. Gen. Emmons second in command under him.
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