PART I: PEARL HARBOR TO THE END IN THE MALAY BARRIER

With Approximately half the United States Fleet based in the Atlantic against the possibly of a submarine war with Hitler, Japan's combatant strength as of mid-1941 was greater than that of the nations she was to make her adversaries.  Against one hundred and twenty-seven warships of the United States Pacific Fleet (less the few ships, primarily destroyers and submarines, of the widely dispersed Asiatic Fleet) and fifty belonging to our allies, the British Commonwealth and the Netherlands, Japan was able to muster two hundred and thirty combatant ships of every category.  In addition to numerical superiority, Japan possessed two other priceless ingredients for starting a war--tactical position and surprise attack.  Thus, by noon of "the day that will live in infamy," the Imperial Japanese Navy held a mastery over the greatest of oceans that would last for the next six months.
     There were two United States Navy task forces at sea 7 December, 1941.  One task force, commanded by Rear Admiral John Henry Newton in the heavy cruiser Chicago, was formed around the aircraft carrier Lexington and was Midway bound on a search and battle problem; the other, under the redoubtable Vice Admiral William F. Halsey in Enterprise, was secretly steaming toward Wake Island to deliver a cargo of Marine fighter-plane reinforcements.  At sea, too, were seven heavy and light cruisers patrolling to the south and southwestward, while the main body of the United States Pacific Fleet, less carriers--eighty-four warships--was based at Pearl Harbor.
     The first shot of the war was fired at 06:45, more than an hour and a quarter after the old, four-stachk destroyer Ward had sighted the periscope of a midget submarine operating in a restricted area just outside Pearl Harbor.  Ward was under the command of Lieutenant William W. Outerbridge, and she was returning from a night's patrol when contact was made.  By the time Outerbridge had called the warship to General Quarters and had gotten up speed, the strange craft had disappeared.  Ward remained in the area, searching with her sound gear.  Seventy-five minutes later surface contact was regained and Outerbridge passed the word to his No. 1 gun, after radioing Pearl Harbor that he intended to attack.  (He quite naturally had qualms about firing on an unidentified vessel although under orders to do so since the submarine was in a restricted area.)  The first round drove the submarine down.  Simultaneously, Ward dropped a string of depth charges over the spot  where lookouts had last seen the periscope.  Thereafter, Outerbridge informed Pearl Harbor by radio that he had completed his attack.
     It was now almost 07:00.  Japan's first strike, launched by aircraft carriers Akagi, Hiryu, Kaga, Soryu, Shokaku, and Zuikaku in the predawn darkness, was nearing the coast of Oahu.
     The story of the epochal attack is here told in three parts, the first by the brilliant journalist, John Toland, whose But Not In Shame, a documented assessment of the first six months of the war in the Pacific, stands as a classic of dramatic reportage.

--S.E. Smith
From: The United States Navy in World War II
Preface to Part I Chapter I, Pearl Harbor Attack