The Secret History of the United States by Peter Kross

Author:Peter Kross
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-939149-05-3
Publisher: SCB Distributors

Chapter 28

The Pearl Harbor Attack

On December 7, 1941, carrier-based aircraft from the approaching Japanese strike force heading for Hawaii suddenly, and without warning, attacked the American fleet based at Pearl Harbor. The attack caught the sleeping crews on their ships completely by surprise and when the raid was over, the American fleet in the Pacific had been almost completely destroyed. Eighteen ships, including eight battleships were sunk, 2,400 sailors, soldiers and airmen were killed, and another 1,100 were wounded. The only saving grace was that the main aircraft carriers were out on patrol when the attack took place.

Could the attack on Pearl Harbor have been avoided? That has been the nagging question for more than 70 years, without a positive answer. Surely there were warning signs, but they were either ignored or sloppily mishandled. In the historical prism, what was the omen that should have warned American commanders in the Pacific and the policymakers in Washington that drastic events were about to happen?

U.S.-Japanese diplomatic relations had turned for the worse over the course of the 1930s. The U.S. saw the Japanese military presence in Asia, particularly in China and Korea, as a problem that could make the area a battleground for the United States. In July 1941, the U.S. cut off the export of raw materials and scrap iron to Japan, thus creating a gaping hole in Japan’s economic lifeline.

In 1941, William Friedman had broken the Japanese crypto system called Purple, which allowed the U.S. to read all the diplomatic traffic issued from Tokyo to its outposts around the world. Besides the Purple intercepts, the Navy’s intelligence unit called OP-20-G was reading Japanese radio transmissions to and from its ships at sea, and to its agents in the embassies around the globe. The Navy was able to intercept communications from Japan to its primary agent in Hawaii, Takeo Yoshikawa, asking for the dispositions of the ships anchored at Pearl Harbor, whether or not the ships were protected by anti-torpedo nets, and if the U.S. sent aloft balloons to check the sea lanes beyond the base.

By the fall of 1941, U.S. intelligence listening posts in Pacific and on the West Coast of the U.S. spotted a huge movement of the Japanese ships from their home bases, and suspected that they were about to invade either the Philippines or Indochina (the thought that they’d attack Pearl Harbor was not even considered). American radio intercepts also noted instructions from Tokyo to the Japanese Ambassador in Washington to set a deadline of November 29, 1941, as the last day for any possible negotiations between the United States and Japan to try to avoid an outbreak of hostilities. After that, the decoded messages say in part, “things are automatically going to happen.” All these messages were made available to the aides in the Roosevelt administration, but not the commanders in Hawaii.

In the first week of December 1941, the U.S. learned that the Japanese government gave instructions to its Washington Embassy to start destroying its codes, a clear sign that diplomatic relations were about to be broken.

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