Shortly after the treacherous attack on our Naval Base at Pearl Harbor, Fleet Admiral Yamamoto, who was educated in the USA in the 1930's- said this: "We have awakened a sleeping giant, and filled him with a terrible resolve. We never formally declared war on Germany or Italy, a few days after FDR's famous "Day of Infamy" speech, Hitler declared war on the US- part of the Axis Powers deal.
Alaska was not a State then, but the proximity of the Japanese Army near Alaska and their Naval presence in the Bering Straits was a great concern. We won the War in the Pacific Theater- IMO- due to our developing technology- the proximity fuze, which reduced the number of shells required to kill a Zero fighter plane from 2600 to 400, the electric torpedo with the homing device, the thermite bomb, the great Corsair F4-U (a P-51 Mustang with retractable folding wings for carrier usage- again IMO) the Norden bombsight, the Manhattan project, and the brave Marines and Sailors and other Americans who paid the ultimate price for the island victories that gave us bombing range access to Japan's mainland.
I always wanted to be a pilot- but that didn't happen. How they Japanese could cleverly re-set their torpedoes with wooden fins to run effectively in the 30-35 foot depths of Pearl Harbor, and not develop retractable landing gear or armor for their Zero fighters-strange- US pilots soon learned that to put a Japanese pilot into a tight right banking turn would cause the plane to lose control- wonder if the fixed landing gear was a factor, or just right hand torque from the prop.
Admiral Chester Nimitz said it best about the sacrifice of Iwo Jima- "Uncommon valor was a common virtue"- Just as the british under Churchill with their Home Guard would have fought to the death to repell Hitler's Wehrmacht had that lunatic decided to invade England, no doubt in my mind thousands of Japanese would have died at the 30-30's and 12 gauges of Americans had they tried to invade us-
