NYT-1201: STATE OF THE ART A Thermostat That's Clever, Not ...

San Francisco - ON a bright Hawaiian Sunday mornin
g 70 years ago today, hundreds of Japanese warplan
es appeared suddenly over Pearl Harbor and laid wa
ste to the United States Pacific Fleet. The Americ
an people boiled over in righteous fury, and Ameri
ca plunged into World War II. The “date which will
live in infamy” was the real turning point of the
war, which had been raging for more than two year
s, and it opened an era of American internationali
sm and global security commitments that continues
to this day.
By a peculiar twist of fate, the Japanese admiral
who masterminded the attack had persistently warne
d his government not to fight the United States. H
ad his countrymen listened, the history of the 20t
h century might have turned out much differently.
Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto foresaw that the struggle wo
uld become a prolonged war of attrition that Japan
could not hope to win. For a year or so, he said,
Japan might overrun locally weak Allied forces —
but after that, its war economy would stagger and
its densely built wood-and-paper cities would suff
er ruinous air raids. Against such odds, Yamamoto
could “see little hope of success in any ordinary
strategy.” His Pearl Harbor operation, he confesse
d, was “conceived in desperation.” It would be an
all-or-nothing gambit, a throw of the dice: “We sh
ould do our best to decide the fate of the war on
the very first day.”
During the Second World War and for years afterwar
d, Americans despised Yamamoto as an archvillain,
the perpetrator of an ignoble sneak attack, a pers
onification of “Oriental treachery.” Time magazine
published his cartoon likeness on its Dec. 22, 19
41, cover — sinister, glowering, dusky yellow comp
lexion — with the headline “Japan’s Aggressor.” He
was said to have boasted that he would “dictate t
erms of peace in the White House.”