Wed, 09/04/2024 - 4:15pm
Not Today--and Tomorrow’s Not Good Either:
The Mission of the US Army Pacific
By John Nagl
The Headquarters of the United States Army Pacific, or “USARPAC”, sits at Fort Shafter on the forward slope of a mountain on Oahu within sight of Pearl Harbor. Pearl, of course, was the site of the worst day in American military history on December 7th, 1941, when intelligence warnings of a Japanese surprise attack on the American fleet at anchor there were ignored at the cost of more than 2000 Americans killed and 1000 wounded. The Japanese attack was well planned and executed; American defenses were neither. A rudimentary Army radar installation on the north shore of Oahu picked up the incoming waves of Japanese planes and warned the Headquarters of the U.S. Army’s Hawaii Division before the strike, but the Army lieutenant who answered the phone at Fort Shafter decided that the radar signals indicated the arrival of six B-17 bombers from California. He didn’t notify the Navy.
The United States Army Pacific, and its higher headquarters the United States Indo-Pacific Command, exist to make sure that the United States is never caught flat-footed again. I was in Oahu a few weeks ago (tough duty) as part of a team from the United States Army War College, where I teach senior officers military strategy, planning, and operations; my students at USARPAC were mostly more junior, captains and majors and senior non-commissioned officers who worked at Fort Shafter and across the Indo-Pacific.
USARPAC
The course I taught is called “Theater Army”; it describes and analyzes the role of the USARPAC in “setting” the IndoPacom “Theatre”. We have five Theater Armies at present, covering North and South America, Europe/Africa, and the Middle East. Eighth Army, in Korea, fills a similar role for the command that is ready to “fight tonight” to defend South Korea against an attack from the North; one of our students was a Major from Eighth Army whose job is to coordinate the mobilization of Army National Guard and Reserve soldiers for service on the Korean peninsula.
https://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/not-today-and-tomorrows-not-good-either-mission-us-army-pacific
