Too Great a Challenge: The Mismatch of U.S. Intelligence Capabilities and Mission Prior to Pearl Harbor

On 7 December 1941, the Japan Naval fleet launched a precise and devastating bombing of Pearl Harbor, which stunned the United States. The Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor to neutralize the U.S. Pacific Naval Fleet, so they could advance into Malaya and the Dutch East Indies to access natural resources to further their war effort. However, the Pearl Harbor bombing became an everlasting memory to Americans. Two little known contributors to this event had a profound effect on the planning and execution of the attack. This paper will explore the actions of Bernard Julius Otto Kuehn and Takeo Yoshikawa, two spies who initially went undetected to collect intelligence on the U.S. Naval fleet, and how their actions affected the U.S.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF INTELLIGENCE IN THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR AND THE EFFECTS OF THE ESPIONAGE SYSTEM ON THE WAR

FRANKLIN ROOSEVELT KNEW ABOUT AND LET PEARL HARBOR HAPPEN IN ORDER TO GET AMERICA INVOLVED IN WW2

Contrary to popular belief, the art of intelligence and counterintelligence is not really all that new to the United States, but goes all the way back to the days of The American Revolution. Had it not been for the bravery of men and women alike, and the utter will to be free from the British rule, our military leaders would not have been so well prepared to engage the enemy and win in decisive battles.

The Battle at Midway was a critical turning point of the war in the Pacific during World War II. Attribution to American success is in direct relation to their ability to conduct signal collection and crypto-analysis leading to the battle. The elimination of this capability from consideration during the preparation for this battle will drastically influence the outcome. Through critical reasoning and battle analysis, this paper will determine the level of effect of the capability. The analysis will also seek to understand the change in outcome as a result of this change to history. The product of this analysis will be a thorough understanding of the importance of intelligence capability to United States success during World War II.

On December 7, 1941 Pearl Harbor Naval Base, Hawaii, was attacked by Japanese torpedo and bomber planes. This attack took the lives of 2,402 Americans and left around 1,282 people injured. The surprise attack caused outrage in the American people, news media, government and the world. The following day President Franklin D. Roosevelt addressed the nation and United States Congress, in response to the attack. In that address, the president asked Congress to declare war on Japan. Congress voted and passed the U.S. Declaration of War on Japan, that very same day. That was America`s entry into World War II. Previous to this attack Americans were reluctant to get involved in another world war, the President on the other hand been trying to convince congress to declare war. So as it turned out a “surprise attack” was exactly what was needed to get the American people to unite in supporting joining the war. This idea has led to the Pearl Harbor Advance-Knowledge conspiracy theory. The general idea of this conspiracy theory is that President Franklin D. Roosevelt and other government officials had knowledge that Japan was planning an attack before the attack happened. It even goes as far to claim that the government did somethings to encourage the attack. The reason the president did not take steps to prevent it was that he was enthusiastic in joining the war. Like with any “conspiracy theory” there is

In America, the balance between Washington politics and military strategy was poorly managed, many high level officials failed to acknowledge that an attack was likely imminent (Pearl Harbor Review - The Investigations). The Navy fleet, which had previously been stationed in San Diego, had been moved to Pearl Harbor in 1940 in an effort to de-escalate political tension with Japan (Larew). Although American politicians had engineered this move in response to Japan’s activities in China, the hope that it would reduce tension was not realized; it only served to escalate strained political communication (Chen). American politicians were right to be concerned about war with Japan. Kichisaburō Nomura, the Japanese Ambassador in Washington, worked to find peaceful language between the two countries, but it was suspected that he was, in fact, aware that war was imminent (Chen). A dire message from Japan was sent in 14 separate sections to Nomura in the days before the attack. All sections indicated the end of peaceful negotiations and the last message requested that the cipher used to translate the coded message be destroyed;

In 13 economical and clearly written chapters that rely mainly on secondary accounts and published documenta-ry collections along with some archival sources, Daigler covers the key specifc topics of the intelligence war in the broad areas of espionage, covert action, and coun-terintelligence: the Boston Mechanics spy ring and the British penetration agent in its midst, Benjamin Church; martyr-spy Nathan Hale; France’s sub rosa provision of essential military aid; Benjamin Franklin’s propaganda and other covert activities as “chief of Paris Station”; George Washington’s intuitive grasp of the intelligence business and his clever use of deception and disinforma-tion to choose the right moment to strike at while keep-ing away from the always stronger

The United States was completely unaware of the long-planned attack on them, and according to an article called Remember Pearl Harbor, because the fleet was so bottled up in the port it made it an easy target for a successful attack. The Japanese’s plan completely revolved on a surprise attack, if any ships or planes were spotted the plan would have not gone so smoothly. The Japanese planed for around 8 months what they would do and how they would do it. They had some problems, because of the shallow waters around Pearl Harbor the Japanese thought that torpedoes would not be successful so they created 16-inch battleship bombs and wooden fins on their torpedo’s to help with a more “successful” attack. Admiral Halsey thought that congress was to blame for not providing the right funding for adequate protection, like alarm systems or warring systems. Washington did not think that Pearl Harbor would be attacked, and they did not expect the Japanese because they did not really have a good or outstanding military background. So because of the complete surprise of the attack, and so much of the fleet being there that day, the Japanese were able to be so

On the seventh of December, 1941, U.S. naval base Pearl Harbor suffered the damage of a surprise attack from 100s of Japanese planes. Being twice as far a distance from Japan as it was from the U.S. mainlands, the port near Honolulu, Hawaii was the target least expected by America. Rather than protecting Pearl Harbor, America was focusing on the areas that had been expecting an attack, such as the Dutch East Indies, Singapore, and Indochina, which were all European colonies in the South Pacific. Since Pearl Harbor was both full of important American warcraft and fairly unprotected, it was the perfect target for a Japanese attack. The reasoning behind the attack was simple. After a war broke out between Japan and China, sprouting from Japan’s attempt at growth, America refused to supply Japan with

The intelligence failures at Pearl Harbor influenced the National Security Act of 1947 by showing the need for a new structure within the government. According to O’Toole (2014), as a result, the National Security Act of 1947 led to the creation of the Department of Defense which aligned all military services under the Secretary of Defense, it also created the National Security Council and created the Central Intelligence Agency as an independent agency reporting to no one other than the President. One of the most important parts was the CIA reporting directly to the President. During Pearl Harbor, the failure wasn’t in the lack of information, but the failure was in the one mindedness of the Navy. According to O’Toole (2014), they were stuck on the idea that the Japanese couldn’t attack due to the thought that their base was impenetrable.

According to the book The Pearl Harbor Myth: Rethinking the Unthinkable, the author says the President Roosevelt surprised his advisers twelve days before the attack, by saying the war on Japan was about to begin. So, if Roosevelt knew, why didn’t keep the caution in military bases or the whole country. It was also said that Henry Stimson the secretary of war, noted on his diary that President Roosevelt asked what should they do. The question was should maneuver them into the position of firing the first shot without allowing too much danger for ourselves. Many generations of scholars always disregard Stimson diary and accuse him of writing too fast, or writing about what he believed. Stimson also wrote that by long traditions, our presidents are not seen

On December 7th, 1941 Japan launched a surprise attack on the United States by attacking the pacific fleet harbored at Pearl Harbor. There was great intelligence planning that went into the attack plans by Japan, new techniques emerged, successes and failures by both sides that contributed to the attack on Pearl Harbor. Intelligence failures contributed largely to the outcome, such as the attack planes on radar dismissed as B-17s that were coming from the mainland, or the mini sub that was sank just outside the harbor that failed to raise the alarm. These few examples if avoided would have saved thousands of lives by providing warning to the fleet at Pearl Harbor. The attack on Pearl Harbor could have played out very differently, this paper will discuss that possibility and provide and alternate future to this horrific battle.

Investigations of the events on Pearl Harbor were complicated even more by revelations about the secret MAGIC decryptions. MAGIC was a code name for the information gathered from the translations and decryptions of Japanese diplomatic messages. From around June 1940 leading up to the attack, American cryptologists were able to read a large amount of extremely sensitive Japanese diplomatic messages that caused great concern for the few officials that had access to them. MAGIC was a top secret project involving Roosevelt, a few others in the White house, along with leading officers in the army and navy. The biggest emphasis of the top secret program was that of secrecy, and yet that emphasis, although understandable, possibly caused the

The writers and director of Pearl Harbor did, however, have some parts of history correct in their film. Steve Biodrowski states “that U.S. military intelligence should perhaps have done a better job of predicting the attack.” Which is very true and realistic because according to the book; Reflections of Pearl Harbor: An Oral History of December 7, 1941: “The Japanese government began transmitting a fourteen-part encoded message that reached those in charge in Washington, DC, just prior to the scheduled