The purpose of this paper is to discuss the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and to analyze the incomplete intelligence by the United States and the divided responsibility for not knowing about the attack in advance and not being able to fight it off when it came.
The rising sun, Japan's ensign, appeared over Pearl Harbor on the wings of hostile aircraft on the morning of December 7, 1941, and bombing with devastating precision, the enemy proceeded to cripple the U.S. battle fleet, damage the base, and kill 2,403 Americans.
The attack can never be adequately explained, because it was an irrational response to a miscalculated provocation--or, more accurately, a series of provocations. The first step in the long process which ended that disastrous Sunday had been taken nearly two years earlier when Congress, at the urging of Senator Arthur H. Vandenburg, ended the U.S.-Japanese trade agreement of 1911. Secretary of State Cordell Hull then informed Tokyo that future trade between the two nations would be on a day-to-day basis. This not only put the United States in a position of challenging a great power, but also it opened the way to a chain of diplomatic moves which made the Japanese nervous, and deprived them of vital imports, including toward the end, the lifeblood of their armed forces--oil (Jensen 12-21).
All that is clear now. It was not so obvious at the time. The administration was too busy following developments on the Atlantic to give the Pacific more than an occasional glance. To President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the issue in Asia was a moral one. The Japanese were aggressors and they should go home. But he regarded Adolf Hitler as the prime disturber of the international peace and dreaded a two-front war. He was always ready to negotiate, and as late as December 6, 1941, he sent a message to Emperor Hirohito urging Japanese withdrawal from Indochina. Had it arrived in time the course of events would almost...