Un exemplu de optimism american:

How very lucky we were at Pearl  Harbor

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  everywhere 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  every one 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

Categories: Articole de interes general