Always look for the Silver Lining
>
> Tour boats ferry people out to the USS Arizona Memorial in Hawaii
> every thirty minutes. We just missed a ferry and had to wait thirty
> minutes. I went into a small gift shop to kill time. In the gift shop,
> I purchased a small book entitled, "Reflections on Pearl Harbor " by
> Admiral Chester Nimitz.
>
> Sunday, December 7th, 1941--Admiral Chester Nimitz was attending a
> concert in Washington D.C. He was paged and told there was a phone
> call for him. When he answered the phone, it was President Franklin
> Delano Roosevelt on the phone. He told Admiral Nimitz that he (Nimitz)
> would now be the Commander of the Pacific Fleet.
>
> Admiral Nimitz flew to Hawaii to assume command of the Pacific Fleet.
> He landed at Pearl Harbor on Christmas Eve, 1941. There was such a
> spirit of despair, dejection and defeat--you would have thought the
> Japanese had already won the war. On Christmas Day, 1941, Adm. Nimitz
> was given a boat tour of the destruction wrought on Pearl Harbor by
> the Japanese. Big sunken battleships and navy vessels cluttered the
> waters every where you looked. As the tour boat returned to dock, the
> young helmsman of the boat asked, "Well Admiral, what do you think
> after seeing all this destruction?" Admiral Nimitz's reply shocked
> everyone within the sound of his voice. Admiral Nimitz said, "The
> Japanese made three of the biggest mistakes an attack force could ever
> make or God was taking care of America . Which do you think it was?"
> Shocked and surprised, the young helmsman asked, "What do mean by
> saying the Japanese made the three biggest mistakes an attack force
> ever made?"
>
> Nimitz explained. Mistake number one: the Japanese attacked on Sunday
> morning. Nine out of every ten crewmen of those ships were ashore on
> leave. If those same ships had been lured to sea and been sunk--we
> would have lost 38,000 men instead of 3,800.
>
> Mistake number two: when the Japanese saw all those battleships lined
> in a row, they got so carried away sinking those battleships, they
> never once bombed our dry docks opposite those ships. If they had
> destroyed our dry docks, we would have had to tow everyone of those
> ships to America to be repaired. As it is now, the ships are in
> shallow water and can be raised. One tug can pull them over to the dry
> docks, and we can have them repaired and at sea by the time we could
> have towed them to America . And I already have crews ashore anxious
> to man those ships.
>
> Mistake number three: every drop of fuel in the Pacific theater of war
> is in top of the ground storage tanks five miles away over that hill.
> One attack plane could have strafed those tanks and destroyed our fuel
> supply. That's why I say the Japanese made three of the biggest
> mistakes an attack force could make or God was taking care of America
> .
>
> I've never forgotten what I read in that little book. It is still an
> inspiration as I reflect upon it. In jest, I might suggest that
> because Admiral Nimitz was a Texan, born and raised in Fredricksburg ,
> Texas --he was a born optimist. But anyway you look at it--Admiral
> Nimitz was able to see a silver lining in a situation and circumstance
> where everyone else saw only despair and defeatism. President
> Roosevelt had chosen the right man for the right job. We desperately
> needed a leader that could see silver linings in the midst of the
> clouds of dejection, despair and defeat.
>
> There is a reason that our national motto is, IN GOD WE TRUST |
