Pearl Harbor: U.S. Knowledge of the Attack

Sinking of USS Arizona

Naval photograph documenting the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii which initiated US participation in World War II. Navy's caption: The battleship USS ARIZONA sinking after being hit by Japanese air attack on Dec. 7,1941.

US Knowledge on the Attack on Pearl Harbor

By Gregory Pepper

Did the US Government really know about the attack on Pearl Harbor? And if they did, did they try to cover up the knowledge? Everyone has been taught that the attack on Pearl Harbor was a sneak attack without warning that was orchestrated by the Japanese Empire. The Japanese naval force that attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, was unobserved until it was too late and when it was finally observed it was too late. When the smoke cleared that awful Sunday morning there were 2,400 people killed, 300 aircraft damaged or destroyed, and 18 destroyed ships.[1] But what if that was not the case. What if the US government knew about the attack before it happened. Is it a little weird that the only three aircraft carriers in the entire US Navy went out on a training mission the day before the attack happened. Or that US radar picked up a mass of unknown aircraft heading towards Hawaii but was said to be an error in the radar equipment and to ignore it. How did the US government instigate the forces of Japan into attacking the US, what does the other side tell us about the attack, and how did the US government try to cover up the knowledge of the attack.

            Most acts of violence can be rooted back to an instigation that one side of the conflict did to the other side. For example, when President Lincoln was elected to be president of the United States, and then the South opened fire on Fort Sumter and the Civil War started. The US government wanted to do the same thing except this time against another country and not itself. It all started when Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson wrote sometime before the attack from the Japanese, “the question was how we should maneuver them into firing the first shot without allowing too much danger to ourselves.”[2] So, the US Government kept trying to figure out how to have it look like that Japan started the war for no reason. The answer was found with Lt. Cmdr. Arthur McCollum’s eight-point memorandum. Each point of this memorandum was designed to produce an attack from the Japanese. One part of the memorandum was to send American warships by Japanese fleet units. Another part of the memorandum was to station a vulnerable capital fleet in Pearl Harbor.[3] The months before the attack on Pearl Harbor the US Government tried to instigate the forces of Japan into attacking the US. After the peace negotiations with the Japanese government failed, the commanders of the Navy and the Army were telling its commanders in charge of US territory’s what to expect and what to do. The message that was sent to General Douglas MacArthur, who was based in Manila, Philippines and part of the message said, “Japanese future action unpredictable but hostile action possible at any moment. If hostilities cannot, repeat, cannot, be avoided the United States desires that Japan commit the first overt act.” All this happened on November 28, 1941, just nine days before the fate full day that will go down in infamy.[4] So the US instigated the Japanese into attacking Pearl Harbor, but as it is known the winners write the history of the world.

History has always had two sides to the same story. You have the winners and you have the losers. History is normally written by the winners and this is what everyone goes by, but the losers’ side of history adds something to that winners’ story and the whole picture becomes clearer. What proves that the US Government knew about the attack on Pearl Harbor comes from the Japanese themselves. Before the attacks that Japan did on December 7, 1941, Noda Mitsuharu heard, “When they emerged from the operations room after drafting that final order far the general offensive across the Pacific, I witnessed Yamamoto confirming once again: ‘Without fail, the Americans have been given notice, have they not?’”[5] So it can be noted that Admiral Yamamoto Isoroku, the person in charge of the attack, would not order the attack that would go down infamy unless the US Government had been given a forewarning to the attack. One way to make it look like the losers are lying to the world is to cover-up the whole incident.

            After the war was over there were many official investigations on the attack on Pearl Harbor, and the cover-up of Pearl Harbor started. On one such investigation, “The [Army Pearl Harbor Board] wrote that’ all expected an attack on Pearl Harbor…[but] when testifying after the Pearl Harbor attack, they did not expect it.’”[6] This statement shows that high ranking officials knew about the attack before it even happened, but with the war over these same officials would say they had no idea about the attack. The top brass went to great lengths to cover up to suppress the information on the attack, even after the war had ended.[7] Because of this, no one will ever know how much information on the knowledge of Pearl Harbor was covered up by the high-ranking officials in the armed forces and in the white house, or even how high up the command line it went

            So, the US Government did know about the attack on Pearl Harbor and it tried to cover up the knowledge of it. But let’s not forget that they did not just know about the attack from the Japanese, but that they instigated Japan into attacking the US. Did the America Government really have the right to do all this? Well America was still suffering from the Great Depression at the time and Roosevelt realized that going to war would get the US out, but no one in America wanted to go overseas to go and fight in a war that they had no part in. But this still not give them the right to put American lives in the crosshairs of the Japanese Government.

 

[1]  "Pearl Harbor." in Philip's Encyclopedia. Philip's, 2008.

[2] Victor, George. Review of “The Pearl Harbor Myth: Rethinking the Unthinkable” by Robert Higgs. The Pearl Harbor Myth: Rethinking the Unthinkable, (May 2008): 43-44

[3] Kaplan, Morton A. Review of The World & I by U.N. Why Roosevelt wanted Japan to attack Pearl Harbor (October 2000): 288-299

[4] Toland, John. “Infamy: Pearl Harbor and its Aftermath” (Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, Sep 23, 2014): 5-6

[5] Mitsuharu, Noda. “On Admiral Yamamoto’s Flagship.” in Japan at War: An Oral History, trans. Haruko Cook and Theodore Cook. (New York: The New Press, 1992): 83

[6] Victor, George. Review of “The Pearl Harbor Myth: Rethinking the Unthinkable” by Jane S. Shaw. The Pearl Harbor Problem, (October 1, 2010): 40

[7] Victor, George. Review of “The Pearl Harbor Myth: Rethinking the Unthinkable” by Jane S. Shaw. The Pearl Harbor Problem, (October 1, 2010): 41

 

Bibliography

Kaplan, Morton A. Review of The World & I by U.N. Why Roosevelt wanted Japan to attack Pearl Harbor (October 2000): 288-299 

Mitsuharu, Noda. “On Admiral Yamamoto’s Flagship.” In Japan at War: An Oral History, 81-83 Translated by Haruko Cook and Theodore Cook. New York: the New Press, 1992.

"Pearl Harbor." In Philip's Encyclopedia. Philip's, 2008. 

Victor, George. Review of “The Pearl Harbor Myth: Rethinking the Unthinkable” by Jane S. Shaw. The Pearl Harbor ProblemOctober 1, 2010, 39-44 

Victor, George. Review of “The Pearl Harbor Myth: Rethinking the Unthinkable” by Robert Higgs. The Pearl Harbor Myth: Rethinking the Unthinkable, (May 2008).

Toland, John. “Infamy: Pearl Harbor and Its Aftermath”. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, Sep 23, 2014. 

 

[1]  "Pearl Harbor." In Philip's Encyclopedia. Philip's, 2008.

[2] Victor, George. Review of “The Pearl Harbor Myth: Rethinking the Unthinkable” by Robert Higgs. The Pearl Harbor Myth: Rethinking the Unthinkable, (May 2008): 43-44

[3] Kaplan, Morton A. Review of The World & I by U.N. Why Roosevelt wanted Japan to attack Pearl Harbor (October 2000): 288-299

[4] Toland, John. “Infamy: Pearl Harbor and its Aftermath” (Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, Sep 23, 2014), 5-6

[5] Mitsuharu, Noda. “On Admiral Yamamoto’s Flagship.” In Japan at War: An Oral History. Translated by Haruko Cook and Theodore Cook. (New York: The New Press, 1992), 83

[6] Victor, George. Review of “The Pearl Harbor Myth: Rethinking the Unthinkable” by Jane S. Shaw. The Pearl Harbor Problem, (October 1, 2010): 40

[7] Victor, George. Review of “The Pearl Harbor Myth: Rethinking the Unthinkable” by Jane S. Shaw. The Pearl Harbor Problem, (October 1, 2010): 41

Oral History

Mitsuharu, Noda. “On Admiral Yamamoto’s Flagship.” In Japan at War: An Oral History. Translated by Haruko Cook and Theodore Cook. New York: the New Press, 1992. Pg. 81-83

Noda Mitsuharu was a clerk in the Japanese Navy that served under Admiral Yamamoto Isoroku on his flagship Nagato. He starts off with talking about his training cruise. He compares Pearl Harbor to the town that he is from in Japan. He goes and says that while the rest of the fleet went out to attacking position, they were in the Inland Sea waiting to give the order. After the attack, thousands of letters were sent to the admiral and Noda opened them and gave them to the admiral. Noda said that the admiral up into the night writing response to all the letters that he received. Then we are told that the admiral said that it was foolish to fight against America because of its resources that it had within its own borders. After this Noda goes and describes the admiral so that it knows what he was like as a person. We found out that he loved to gamble, he loved shogi, and that he loved women. After describing the admiral live, he goes and says that a sneak attack was not his attention. The admiral was seen living a meeting with a liaison officer asking if their message on the attack had been sent to the American Government and that the officer confirmed that it had. Once Noda found out that the attack was successful, he started to daydream about the future. He thought that Japan was going to be able to invade the United States. Then he thought he would get lucky and would get stationed in San Francisco and be put in charge of the accounting department of the garrison that was going to be established there. He finished by saying that all the soldiers wanted to go to the United States and that no one wanted to go to China.

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