Asking Why

It's only by asking "why" that we begin to dig beneath the surface and the visible symptoms. Asking questions guides our learning, rewards us with a richer understanding of what's really happening. And this is foundational to getting the right answers

AFTER PEARL HARBOR, when the United States wanted to punish Japan, it wasn't so simple. Why? Well, the two countries were probably the geographically most apart combatants. Australia or Hawaii was more than four thousand miles away from Tokyo, in fact, there wasn't an airbase controlled by the Allies within a thousand miles of that city. Why was this important? The B-17 bomber, the Flying Fortress, the mainstay of the US Army Air Forces had a range of roughly two thousand miles - one thousand miles out and a thousand miles back. Taking the attack to Japan led to building the B-29 Superfortress, with an effective range of more than three thousand miles. It also led to the next step of capturing tiny islands, mere specks on the Pacific, the Mariana islands of Saipan, Tinian, and Guam. These islands were controlled by the Japanese and after a brutal campaign they fell to the US Army.