Was the 1941 Pearl Harbor attack avoidable? – Tags: Allies, attack, Axis, bombing, declaration of war, Hawaii, Japan, Japanese forces, Pearl Harbor, Second World War, US, World War 2, WWII, WWII battles, WWII Pearl Harbor

Article | Bite-Size History: A day of infamy. Analysing the evidence of Japan’s declaration on war on the US

Where were you when the Twin Towers were attacked? Where were you when American President J.F. Kennedy was assassinated? Do you know where you were when Princess Diana tragically died?

For certain generations, that pivotal seismic event was the Japanese bombing of the US Naval Station at Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941. And in its wake, and retaining a similar place in historical conscience, was the speech delivered by US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to a Joint Session of Congress on 8 December 1941.

Yesterday, December 7, 1941 a date which will live in infamy the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan…I believe that I interpret the will of the Congress and of the people when I assert that we will not only defend ourselves to the uttermost but will make it very certain that this form of treachery shall never again endanger us…Hostilities exist. There is no blinking at the fact that our people, our territory, and our interests are in grave danger…I ask that the Congress declare that since the unprovoked and dastardly attack by Japan on Sunday, December 7, 1941, a state of war has existed between the United States and the Japanese Empire.

Over 80 years have passed since one of the most significant events in US history. Historians have analyzed the causes and fallout from this attack from every perspective, with the benefit of hindsight and mountains of research, all available records, and personal accounts.

This begs the question —

Could anything have been done to prevent the Pearl Harbor attack, or was it an inevitable consequence of the geopolitics of this dark period in human history?

Let’s examine the political, military, and intelligence dimensions that shaped the tragic events of 7 December 1941.

The “Opening up Japan” Theory

The most important events in history seldom occur “out of the blue” but are the culmination of years of factors finally coming together to devastating effect.

In the case of the historical build-up to Pearl Harbor, the “opening up Japan” theory speculates that Japan’s route to its eventual flash point with the US began on 8 July 1853. At that time, Japanese society had been feeling the cultural and religious influences of the Portuguese, Spanish, and Dutch in their attempts to “civilise” the country according to Western values. In July 1853, American Commodore Matthew Perry arrived in Tokyo Bay with his four ships on a mission to re-establish trade routes between Japan, the US, and the Western world.

Japanese aversion to and rejection of the Western influences in the years to follow sowed a legacy that would fully find its form less than 100 years later. The Japanese army and navy grew, using established Western military doctrine and using international advisors to advance their offensive capabilities.

Successful offensives against their geographical neighbours led to the Japanese colonial acquisitions of Taiwan and Korea. In 1904–05, this emerging power defeated the might of Imperial Russia in the Russo-Japanese War following a surprise attack on the Russian Navy at Port Arthur.

Trade routes and the imposition of Western values on the “small and insignificant” nation of Japan may have been the intention of international relations, but this theory claims a far more menacing outcome that the world felt on 7 December 1941: the vicious attack on Pearl Harbor. This was the catalyst America needed to join the Allied cause in the Second World War.

The Trade Embargoes, Geopolitics, and Political Decisions Theory

The role and actions of the political leaders in the United States and Japan are a critical factor in this debate. With both Japan and the US looking to exploit the commercial potential of China and regional resources in general, the situation changed in 1931.

Attempts to expand the Japanese empire grew with the invasion of Manchuria, and access to the resources of the northern Chinese province. The Empire of the Rising Sun quickly installed a puppet government and renamed the province Manchukuo.

The Stimson Doctrine of 1932 made the US position clear — there would be no recognition of the new regime or “any treaty or agreement between Japan and China that violated U.S. rights or agreements to which the United States subscribed”.

Yet despite this stance against Japanese military expansion, US companies continued to supply the raw materials that Japan needed, such as steel and oil, even after the commencement of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937.

With the growing strength of the Axis powers in Europe, culminating in the Second World War in Europe from 1939, and the signing of the Tripartite Pact in Berlin on 27 November 1940 between Germany, Italy, and Japan, the political decisions of President Franklin D. Roosevelt now became a determining factor.

With Japanese dominance in Asia growing following its invasion of French Indochina in 1940, and the Axis powers collectively flexing their muscles, FDR initiated a series of trade embargoes. Restrictions on US oil imports were followed in July 1940 with a ban on shipments of scrap iron, steel, and aviation fuel to Japan, the closing of the Panama Canal to Japanese shipping, and the freezing of Japanese assets following an agreement with Vichy France relating to French Indochina.

With Japan’s trade, and crucially, oil imports, reduced by 90% and the embargos’ impact on the country’s military expansion, the spectre of a conflict with the US became ever more likely, and predictable.

The Intelligence Failures and Conspiracy Theories Theory

With the deterioration of relations between the US and Japan and the embargoes Roosevelt put in place to curtail Japanese aggression, why was an attack such as Pearl Harbor not sufficiently anticipated?

One prominent theory revolves around the intelligence failures preceding the attack. The United States had intercepted Japanese communications and gathered information hinting at a potential attack, but the pieces of the puzzle were not adequately put together.

On 27 January 1941, Joseph Grew, the US ambassador to Japan was informed by the Peruvian ambassador to Japan that an attack on Pearl Harbor was being planned. Despite this information being shared with the administration and intelligence services, no substantive actions were taken and little faith seems to have been put in the reliability of the intelligence provided, with US military experts anticipating Asia being the more likely location of any future attack.

A related school of thought is that government officials withheld whispers of an impending Japanese attack as a tactic to bring the US into the war on the side of the Allies. This theory is dismissed as “revisionist” and an attempt to rewrite history by some commentators, including Lt-Col. Robert F. Piacine in the paper Pearl Harbor: Failure of Intelligence?

In this paper, Piacine asserts:

Many scholars and writers state that the surprise the Japanese achieved in their attack on Pearl Harbor resulted from a failure of the U.S. intelligence community to provide adequate, accurate information to government and military decision-makers. These historians presume the intelligence community possessed critical information that was misinterpreted or not appropriately disseminated prior to the attack. Some revisionist historians also subscribe to conspiracy theories and believe that key members of the U.S. government purposely withheld this critical information from the military command in an effort to bring the U.S. into World War II against the Axis powers. Both groups cite existing studies and formerly classified information released since 1978 as evidence for their assertions. A review of the evidence available from official, public, and private sources, however, indicates these viewpoints are inaccurate. At best, they reflect a lack of understanding of the collection capabilities and information available to the U.S. intelligence community before Pearl Harbor. At worst, these views are an effort to rewrite history. It is possible to disprove these allegations, however, by examining the history of the U.S. intelligence community prior to the attack, its intelligence collection capabilities, the success or failure of the collection effort, its knowledge of Japanese military preparations for offensive activity, and the utilisation of that information by national and military decision-makers.

The Naval Treaties Theory

Stepping back again into seemingly unrelated events that shaped the course of history is the ‘Naval Treaties Theory’. This explanation makes the case for the influence of the Washington Naval Conference of 1921–22 which in the wake of the First World War brought together the largest naval powers to discuss naval disarmament.

The treaty that emerged sanctioned both the US and UK to have warships of 500,000 tons in comparison to Japan being allowed 300,000 tons. What it did not do was to place tonnage limits on other classes of vessel, in particular cruisers. Subsequent treaty attempts to close this loophole failed with Japan refusing to be a signatory, while the Imperial Japanese Navy separately embarked on a programme of aircraft carrier construction.

The theory argues that had these omissions been identified in 1921–22 when Japan’s territorial aims may have been containable, the military capability to wage a future war, resulting in the attack on Pearl Harbor, may not have been achievable.

The Military Unpreparedness Theory

Critics argue the military unpreparedness of the United States, particularly the lack of readiness of the Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, made the attack more devastating than it might have been. Issues such as inadequate intelligence sharing, obsolete defence strategies, and the absence of a proactive defensive stance are cited as contributing factors in this theory.

At the heart of this view, put forward by historian and Pacific War expert, Richard B. Frank, is the notion of a lack of “unity of command”.

On 7 December 1941, Frank identifies the following deficiencies:

• Army forces in Hawaii were under the command of Lt. Gen. Walter C. Short. This constituted Army Air Force units totalling 234 aircraft; the ground forces of the 24th and 25th Infantry Divisions and anti-aircraft battalions. Their collective role was to guard both army facilities and Pearl Harbor itself. The role of protecting the Pacific Fleet sat with the Army rather than the Navy.
• Naval forces of the US Pacific Fleet fell under the command of Admiral Husband E. Kimmel.
• Importantly, neither Short nor Kimmel had overall command of the combined forces stationed in Hawaii. The concept of “unity of command” became central to US military doctrine throughout the Second World War, but was absent at Pearl Harbor.

If you add into a lack of effective coordination of intelligence between Army and Navy, then the problems from the lack of unity of command were exacerbated. As Frank puts it:

The second huge deficiency in readiness was the failure to create an effective air information (or control) centre. Washington had provided a radar network. But to make the centre effective, it needed close cooperation of the Army and Navy to distinguish hostile from friendly aircraft picked up by radar. Kimmel’s headquarters failed to provide the essential naval liaison staff to account for naval aircraft and make the centre effective. On top of this, Short only authorised limited operating hours for the radar network and the centre.

Could the Pearl Harbor attack have been prevented?

It is easy with historical hindsight, and not facing the pressures of a world plummeting into a global war, to be critical of the actions taken in the build-up to the events of 7 December 1941.

The theories surrounding the avoidability of the attack on Pearl Harbor are multifaceted, encompassing intelligence failures, diplomatic breakdowns, military unpreparedness, and political decision-making. The complexity of these factors makes it challenging to pinpoint a single cause for the tragic event.

We can say with certainty, though, that no single element led to the attack on Pearl Harbor or one action which could have prevented it.

The US may not have been in the conflict in terms of military actions or declarations of war against the Axis powers, but it was on a path supporting Britain’s fight in Europe and the struggle for democracy. The only thing undetermined was the exact way in which America entered the Second World War. If an attack on Pearl Harbor had been repelled, then history tells us another seismic moment would have brought Roosevelt and the United States into the conflict.

There were lessons to be learned from Pearl Harbor, this fact remains undeniable. These both shaped the US approach at the time and continue to shape the military and intelligence strategies more than 80 years later.

 

Thanks for reading!

Jon & Caz Cole

 

This article has also been posted on Medium. 

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