Attack on Pearl Harbor
Did the American government have advance knowledge of the Pearl Harbor attack, and allow it to happen?
Filed under Conspiracies
| Skeptoid #211 June 22, 2010 Podcast transcript | Listen | Subscribe |
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By Brian Dunning, Skeptoid Podcast
Episode 211, June 22, 2010
http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4211
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Every schoolchild knows the story of December 7, 1941, "A date which will live in infamy". Japanese aircraft carriers crept to within striking distance of Hawaii and launched a morning sneak attack which struck at 7:55am. Two waves of 354 Japanese bombers, dive bombers, torpedo bombers, and fighters decimated an unprepared U.S. Pacific Fleet. They sank four battleships and two destroyers and heavily damaged eleven other ships, destroyed or damaged 343 aircraft, killed 2,459 servicemen and civilians, and injured 1,282 others. Less than 24 hours after the first bomb fell, the United States declared war on Japan. One question has plagued the conspiracy minded ever since: Was the United States truly caught by surprise, or did the government have advance knowledge of the attack and allow it to happen, as an excuse to declare war?
We should begin by establishing that the overwhelming majority of historians are not moved by this theory. It is promoted really only by a few authors and anti-government activists. However, that doesn't make it wrong. Most Americans have heard the theory suggested, usually in the context of it being an open question. It's not. The jury is not "out" on this one, despite a tiny minority of amateur historians making a majority of the noise. But as we always do on Skeptoid, we'll give the fringe their day and look at their evidence.
Perhaps the most popularly known clue is that the United States' three aircraft carriers were safely out of harm's way. They were out on maneuvers, and were not in port in Pearl Harbor with the rest of the Pacific Fleet. If the American commanders wanted the attack to happen, they would probably still choose to protect their most valuable assets.
Less well known is that a Japanese midget submarine was spotted at 3:42am, four hours before the attack began. A destroyer, the USS Ward, was called in which failed to find that sub, but did find and sink a second sub at 6:37am, still more than an hour before the air strike. The Ward radioed in "We have attacked, fired upon, and dropped depth charges on a submarine operating in defensive sea areas." Would not this action have put the Fleet on high alert, unless someone overruled it?
At 7:02am, a full 53 minutes before the first bomb fell, radar operators at Opana Point detected the incoming Japanese aircraft. They alerted their superior, Lt. Kermit Tyler, who failed to make any report, but did however take his men away from their posts and to breakfast. Tyler's lack of action has long been considered suspicious by the conspiracy theorists.
Indeed, nearly a full year before the attack, the Commander-in-chief of the Pacific Fleet, Admiral Husband Kimmel, wrote to Washington:
I feel that a surprise attack (submarine, air, or combined) on Pearl Harbor is a possibility, and we are taking immediate practical steps to minimize the damage inflicted and to ensure that the attacking force will pay.
Then, ten days before the attack, Kimmel was ordered to make just such a defensive deployment of the Fleet. And yet, on that morning, the ships were sitting ducks at their berths, the men asleep in their bunks, and most of the American aircraft were parked on the fields in plain view, packed into tight bunches, as if to deliberately make easy targets. It's also been pointed out that since the ships were sunk in the harbor, most were raised and repaired. Had they been sunk at sea they would have been lost. If you wanted to be attacked, but also wanted to be able to bounce back, this was the way to do it.
Combined with the fact that the Americans had broken the primary Japanese diplomatic code called Purple and made some progress breaking the military code JN-25, and had access to some Japanese intelligence, it seems hard to reach any conclusion other than the United States knew the attack was coming and deliberately allowed it to happen.
Or, at least, so we might conclude if we considered only the above points. But it turns out that if we examine each of these points not just with a narrow focus to see only the suspicious side, and look at the complete event in context, no good arguments for a conspiracy remain. Most of the points made by conspiracy theorists were raised by the 2000 book Day of Deceit by Robert Stinnett, who really boiled down the innuendo from the preceding 59 years and condensed it into a cohesive conspiracy. However, it should be noted that many more authors (almost all others) find him to be wrong. Chief among these is probably Pearl Harbor: Final Judgement from 1992, written by Henry Clausen. In 1944, the Secretary of War ordered Clausen, then a lawyer in the U.S. Judge Advocate's office, to conduct an independent investigation into what really happened in the days and months leading up to Pearl Harbor, and to find out who screwed up. His report remained top secret until its substance was finally published in this book.
Clausen found plenty of sloppiness, but nothing that could be characterized as a cool, smoothly-running conspiracy. Agencies operated independently, decoding Japanese transmissions and then filing them away rather than sharing them. There was plenty of knowledge that hostility was building, but no experience in how to deal with it and no specific knowledge that it was so imminent. Roosevelt knew as much as anyone, and issued warnings and ordered preparations that were poorly handled all the way down the line.
One thing that conspiracy theorists and historians agree upon is that Admiral Kimmel was unjustly made the scapegoat for Pearl Harbor. Ten days after the attack, he was reduced in rank and replaced by Admiral Nimitz. It's also agreed that he did the best he could given the limited amount of intelligence Washington shared with him, and this is one point where the conspiracy theory simultaneously kicks in and breaks down. Historians say he was held accountable for bad decisions; conspiracy theorists say he was made the scapegoat for the secret orders from Washington. But, nearly everything that happened at Pearl Harbor was on Kimmel's own orders. Let's look at some.
When Kimmel received the order to assume defensive positions ten days before the attack, viable threats at the time were from espionage and sabotage, not actual attacks. Thus the aircraft were moved out into the open and tightly packed, where they could be best guarded against saboteurs. The ships were similarly grouped in the harbor. It was the wrong interpretation of the order, but it was a reasonable one in the context of what Kimmel knew was happening.
How true is it that the three carriers were safely hidden out at sea? Not very. The carriers were not clustered safely together; they were widely scattered throughout the Pacific on separate duties. Being alone out at sea even with their carrier groups, each isolated far away and unable to support one another, was not at all considered safe. The Saratoga was just coming out of a lengthy overhaul in Seattle and was underway to Pearl Harbor via San Diego at the time of the attack, but the Enterprise and the Lexington had in fact been at Pearl and recently sent away. Why?
Kimmel had sent them, separately and on staggered schedules, to deliver Army aircraft to reinforce Midway and Wake islands. Because of the Japanese spy network on Hawaii, great caution was taken to disguise this movement of forces. The Enterprise was scheduled to return by December 5th, at which time the Lexington would leave; Kimmel wanted to make sure that Pearl had coverage from at least one carrier at all times. The Lexington left on schedule, but unfortunately, bad weather struck the Enterprise and kept its group at sea for two extra days, resulting in an unforeseeable 2-day span of no carriers in Pearl Harbor. There was never any mysterious directive from Washington to hide the carriers. Had the weather not intervened, there would have been at least one carrier in Pearl at all times, which was the maximum force available.
Even so, there's a powerful reason why the absence of carriers would not support a conspiracy theory. World War II was the first time that aircraft carriers proved themselves to be the most important assets in naval warfare. At the time of Pearl Harbor, we'd not yet learned that, and the battleship was considered the most crucial weapon. That's why the Pacific Fleet had nine battleships and only three carriers. Conspiracy theorist descriptions of the battleships as old, useless, and expendable are a misstatement of history. They were the best we had, and their perceived value was such that at the time of the Pearl Harbor attack, six new battleships of the Iowa class were under construction, and a further six of the Montana class were planned. It wasn't until the Battle of Midway in 1942 that we learned the value of carriers, and construction shifted to those.
Was the Ward's sinking of the submarine covered up to prevent an alarm? The Ward's report made it to the desk of the watch officer at 7:15. At 7:30, Kimmel and Rear Admiral Claude Bloch both received it separately by telephone. By the time the Japanese attacked, 25 minutes later, Kimmel and Bloch were still conversing to determine the significance of the sub incident. Kimmel's opinion was that this was probably one more in a long line of false reports of submarines they'd been accustomed to receiving. Five minutes before the air strike, Kimmel ordered the destroyer USS Monaghan to go and verify the Ward's story. The Monaghan never made it. Kimmel's hunch was only conclusively proven wrong in 2002, when the midget submarine's wreck was discovered.
When Opana Point picked up the Japanese attack force on radar, their station was still under construction and was not yet fully operational. It had been staffed but nobody had yet received any training. The serviceman at the scope had, in fact, never used the equipment before at all. Lt. Tyler was a fighter pilot, and this was only his second day at Opana Point, and he had not been trained yet either. When Tyler was informed of the inbound target, he assumed it to be a flight of B-17's known to be inbound on that same course, which was a pretty common event. Since nobody perceived that anything unusual was happening, Tyler famously said "Don't worry about it," and they did in fact all go to breakfast. But once the attack began, they ran on foot back to the radar station and helped as best they could. A 1942 court of inquiry cleared Tyler of any blame, and he went on to have an exceptional career in the Air Force.
Now of course, all this only pertains to what happened at Pearl Harbor on the day of the attack. It doesn't address the much larger question of what President Roosevelt might have known or wanted to happen, or other people in Washington. The reason I don't go into that is that it doesn't matter. Even if this presumed conspiracy to allow the attack did exist, it failed to have any effect where the rubber meets the road. No orders from Washington altered the state of readiness at Pearl Harbor. Obviously the attack ultimately did play into the hands of anyone who wanted war with Japan; every tragedy somehow benefits somebody. That doesn't make every tragedy a conspiracy.
© 2010 Skeptoid Media, Inc.
References & Further Reading
Borch, F., Martinez, D. Kimmel, Short, and Pearl Harbor: The Final Report Revealed. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2005. 66.
Brewer, B. "The Missing Carriers of Pearl Harbor." Times-Herald. 28 Sep. 1944, Newspaper.
CIA. "Intelligence at Pearl Harbor." FOIA Electronic Reading Room. Central Intelligence Agency, 22 Aug. 1946. Web. 6 Jun. 2010. <http://www.foia.cia.gov/docs/DOC_0000188601/0000188601_0009.gif>
Clausen, H., Lee, B. Pearl Harbor: Final Judgement. New York: Crown, 1992.
Outerbridge, W. "USS Ward, Report of Pearl Harbor Attack." Naval Historical Center. United States Navy, 13 Dec. 1941. Web. 11 Jun. 2010. <http://www.history.navy.mil/docs/wwii/pearl/ph97.htm>
Stinnett, R. Day of Deceit: The Truth About FDR and Pearl Harbor. New York: Free Press, 2000.
Various. "USS Ward Crew: In Their Own Words." USS Ward DD-139. SpecWarNet, 16 Nov. 2002. Web. 10 Jun. 2010. <http://www.specwarnet.net/USSWard/crew.htm>
Wilford, T. "Decoding Pearl Harbor: USN Cryptanalysis and the Challenge of JN-25B in 1941." The Northern Mariner. 1 Jan. 2002, Volume 12, Number 1: 18.
Reference this article:
Dunning, B.
"Attack on Pearl Harbor." Skeptoid Podcast. Skeptoid Media, Inc.,
22 Jun 2010. Web.
22 May 2013. <http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4211>
Discuss!
10 most recent comments | Show all 81 comments
Oops, sorry for my mental hiccup here
"It would also increase four-fold the distance required to travel there and back, not a small consideration re fuel."
In fact, had the IJN Fleet travelled directly from Japan to San Diego, they would most likely have taken a great circle route and the total distance there and back would have been less than twice that of a round trip from Japan to Pearl Harbour.
Nevertheless, with the increased risk of detection, which would have spoiled any surprise attack, and retaliation from US coast patrols including submarines, it would be safe to say that had the Pacific Fleet remained in San Diego, there would have been no attack by the IJN.
With all Roosevelt's naval experience and familiarity with things navy, including personally attending a 1938 naval exercise during which another successful surprise mock attack was carried out on Pearl Harbour, plus his naval staff's resistance (particularly J.O.Richardson) one can only draw two conclusions from Roosevelt's insistence on persoanally ordering the Pacific Fleet to Pearl Harbour bearth.
Either he was a complete fool, or there was some other motive behind his decision.
Roosevelt was no fool, that is certain.
The reason for his apparent military blunder was evident the next day after the attack, when in the space of hours, most if not all public resistance to all-out war had evaporated, and Roosevelt had the mandate and support of the American people to declare war on Japan.
Macky, Auckland
February 16, 2013 6:40pm
If the battleship was so important and valuable, why didn't the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor with battleships? Answer? Because they are indeed useless! I do believe half the story.. the Japanese attacked by submarine - we knew when they would as we had broken the code.and they could easily get there undetected.... but the air show I'm not too certain about..now that would be a conspiracy, eh?
Hans Geiger, Sydney
March 04, 2013 2:25am
Well Hans, when it comes down to it, I have really not put forward such a far-fetched conspiracy theory, as such.
All the arguments about battleships, war plans, carriers, codes and senior naval officers being demoted have been discussed, debated, and dealt with in previous posts.
It all boils down to Brian's comment in his article on Pearl Harbour :
"It doesn't address the much larger question of what President Roosevelt might have known or wanted to happen, or other people in Washington. The reason I don't go into that is that it doesn't matter."
The plain fact is, it DOES matter because the IJN attack on Pearl Harbour was the prime action that galvanised a previously divided US public into unification towards signing up for a full war, and provided Roosevelt with the mandate to declare war on Japan the day after the attack.
That is mainstream historical fact. No argument.
I maintain that with all Roosevelt's naval experience, he certainly knew what he was doing when he committed his apparent military blunder by ordering the Pacific Fleet to Pearl Harbour against the advice of his senior naval staff, and I have provided exactly the same sources of evidence for my assertion as the popular history version of the PH attack, in which Roosevelt was supposedly surprised and/or shocked.
The "day of infamy" Roosevelt spoke of in his speech to Congress the next day after the attack had his hand in it as much as the IJN's.
Macky, Auckland
March 05, 2013 1:04am
a) Macky you said you werent a conspiracy theorist. I have promoted you to conspiracist on that basis.
b) we are actually missing the clear concise story that you have somewhere on this matter.
I know the latter is a bit hard for you to spit out as then we can comfortably start arguing our case against your notion.
I'll draw your attention to Fl 77, chemtrails and etherics.
fter many queries on these matters, we still really dont know what you are presenting.
Maybe its the spectacular idiocies you waltzed in on the LHC taught you a lesson. Keep the Macky cards close to his chest..
Macky, its a virtue to derive, its a shame to be derivative.
Its even worse to be lazy.
Mud, Sin City, Oz
March 19, 2013 6:12pm
Frankly, I don't know why you are bothering to post on this subject, Mud.
After all my posts and evidence on Pearl Harbour, if you don't know what the point is about that I've presented, then I suggest you take an evening course in plain English.
Of course I realise that English may not be your first language, but I'm sure that with a bit of diligent application, you may eventually grasp what I have so clearly laid out for those intelligent people, who while not necessarily subscribing to my assertions, are nevertheless interested enough to at least read and understand one man's alternative view of history.
And yes, I have learnt something from my LHC posts.
I learned how an alleged scientist could be so off the wall with almost every one of his posts containig nothing but ad hominem attacks.
I learned how the same supposedly critical-thinking "scientist" could be whipped up into a frothing frenzy by the merest criticism of the LHC, his pet toy, a 17-mile quoit which "zends petite particles arond and arond, zen bangs zem together to zee what happens"
All from basically posting clear self-evidence of danger of the LHC, followed by an opinion that I took pains to assure readers was only an opinion, one that I hoped would be proved wrong.
As to your "lazy" comment, I'm happy to report I'm certainly not that.
Several times a week I take 6-year-olds for reading, as a volunteer at the local school.
You're more than welcome Mud, seeing as you seem to need help.
Macky, Auckland
March 20, 2013 12:37am
Thanx Macky for confirming my position origininal analysis of your technique.
I am glad I stated it in one of the very first of my repies to your LHC rant.
Macky, you have never had evidence in most of your posts. This is because you do not read the posts you quote or just read the posts you like.
Sure I have attacked you for being vapid when it comes to looking things up, Yes I have made argument gainst your ability to do homework and analyse the very resources you post from time to time.
That isnt ad homnem You should look it up..
The above that you posted is nearly all ad hominem and it further goes that your original statements about scientists that drip with resentment (and continually posted here on skeptoid) were your feelings all along.
This is why I love your "I am offended" posts. Not that they change much.
As to the mutual admission about etherics, greys, acupuncture, Bullshido, god and Harry Potter now firmly fixed in the fantasy realm of yours, Steiner's, Leadbeater's and Kwai Cheng Kane,
Sure I can cope with that.
Bt what are you dong with your other hand? By the level of your home work performance, It sure isnt cherry picking.
Now had I said your arguments and views were invalid because you are a brain damaged victim of poplar culture of the 70's; THAT would be Ad Homnem.
But I havent done that. I have always maintained that your are too lazy to research.
The superbly written "I have been Maligned" posts are eminently enjoyable.
Mud, Sin City, Oz
March 20, 2013 10:14pm
"The superbly written "I have been Maligned" posts are eminently enjoyable."
I'm not sure where you get that idea Mud but I'm not surprised to see yet another figment of your imagination presented as fact on Skeptoid. That's ok, why not ?
It makes for interesting insights into the mind of a particular type of scientist.
Would you like to present some of my posts that didn't have evidence to back my assertions ?
I note upon re-reading through our correspondence that almost everything you post is ad hominem, and further examples proliferate with other posters as well.
Where there are not direct personal attacks, there are fine examples of pronouncements of opinion presented as fact that disparage my sources of evidence as unworthy in some manner, which of course is only another ad hominem by implication.
Your "lazy" accusation of late has not always been maintained at all.
It only started up in the last few months.
Now I would ask you if you are interested in this subject (Pearl Harbour) to present some intelligent debate as to why you may think I'm in error of my prime assertions relating to Brian's remarks in his article.. "It doesn't address the much larger question of what President Roosevelt might have known or wanted to happen, or other people in Washington. The reason I don't go into that is that it doesn't matter."
Macky, Auckland
March 21, 2013 1:28pm
One thing that I can't find in this otherwise interresting report is the fact that Kimmel himself in 1938 simulated an attack on Pearl using only cruisers and a carrier (Saratoga i think), on a sunday early in the morning commong from the Northwest. Basically the same route which the Japanese took. This (alledgedly) would have resulted in the installation of the experimental radar station. Similar fleet exercises using carriers were done as early as 1929, with another example in 1932 (The Grand Joint Army Navy Exercises, led by Admiral Yarnell): successfull attacks with only carrier based aircraft but apparently failing to pass the concept or the value of the carrier force.
This plus the fact that the military claimed torpedo's would not work in shallow harbor waters, making it safe to 'park' the boats in Pearl. Well, there were Japanese observers in attendance during the attack in Taranto in 1940 (the sinking of an Italian fleet in the harbor of Taranto by the Brittish using only naval aircraft equiped with torpedoes adapted with wooden "fins" for use in shallow harbor water, effectively proving the use of aircraft and torpedoes in these circumstances).
It's something that keeps bugging me, I really would like to have some clarification on that.
H, Belgium
May 10, 2013 6:49am
H, Admiral Yarnell's surprise successful mock attack on Pearl Harbour was indeed carried out pretty much under the same conditions as the real attack, as you say.
With much the same thing happening in 1938, I think you may be refering to Vice Admiral Ernest J. King's attack during general naval exercises which Roosevelt himself attended.
Here is a reference http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_C._Kalbfus
Roosevelt overruled his naval staff in order to personally send the Pacific Fleet to Pearl Harbour from San Diego, even removing the Commander in Chief of the Pacific Fleet James O. Richardson for strongly protesting against the deployment of the fleet in Pearl Harbour.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_O._Richardson
Macky, Auckland
May 15, 2013 2:49am
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My argument against the statement of the historians conducting the conference (that they knew that an attack was coming, but they didn't know where it would happen) was a plain rebuttal of their so-called critical thinking, one of the parameters of the conference.
I should have added "from San Diego" for clarity, and replaced "put" with "sent".
E,g, if Roosevelt had sent the Fleet from San Diego to a base in the Philippines, the attack would have happened there.
Apologies Darren for the confusion caused by my unclear sentence.
The IJN would never have attacked the Fleet had it remained in San Diego. Having to cross the entire Pacific Ocean without detection would have been too risky a prospect for the Japanese. It would also increase four-fold the distance required to travel there and back, not a small consideration re fuel.
Roosevelt needed a successful naval attack by the IJN in order to provide mandate for a formal declaration of war against Japan, with a previously divided US public then united.
In the context of a whole war, losing a few battleships and other supporting vessels was a small price to pay for getting the US public onside for the manpower required.
Roosevelt swept aside naval opposition who correctly predicted an attack on the Fleet should it be bearthed at Pearl Harbour.
His order to do so was an apparent military blunder, but in reality it was political master-stroke.
On Dec 7, 1941, the Japanese won a tactical victory, but lost their war.
Macky, Auckland
February 16, 2013 12:56pm