Was it a sneak attack?

[230RN]

WAS IT A SNEAK ATTACK?

For years I've been hearing from Japanese apologists that the raid on Pearl Harbor was not a sneak attack, but simply because the diplomatic process was unavoidably delayed the attack occured "without warning."

Well, since yesterday was Pearl Harbor Day, I poked around a little on it, and I found this interesting passage in Wiki.  I figured I'd better capture it before the Pearl Harbor Apologists removed it from Wikipedia:

For decades, conventional wisdom held that Japan attacked without first formally breaking diplomatic relations only because of accidents and bumbling that delayed the delivery of a document hinting at war to Washington. In 1999, however, Takeo Iguchi, a professor of law and international relations at International Christian University in Tokyo, discovered documents that pointed to a vigorous debate inside the government over how, and indeed whether, to notify Washington of Japan's intention to break off negotiations and start a war, including a December 7* entry in the war diary saying, "Our deceptive diplomacy is steadily proceeding toward success." Of this, Iguchi said, "The diary shows that the army and navy did not want to give any proper declaration of war, or indeed prior notice even of the termination of negotiations ... and they clearly prevailed."[78][79]

In any event, even if the Japanese had decoded and delivered the 14-Part Message before the beginning of the attack, it would not have constituted either a formal break of diplomatic relations or a declaration of war. The final two paragraphs of the message read:

Thus the earnest hope of the Japanese Government to adjust Japanese-American relations and to preserve and promote the peace of the Pacific through cooperation with the American Government has finally been lost.

The Japanese Government regrets to have to notify hereby the American Government that in view of the attitude of the American Government it cannot but consider that it is impossible to reach an agreement through further negotiations.[80]

Scroll to Japanese Declaration of War:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attack_on_Pearl_Harbor

Very interesting, in view of the whitewash of Japanese intentions for so long.

Terry, 230RN

* It's not clear whether this meant "our" December 7th, or "theirs"  from the immediate context.

[RocketMan]

The late naval historian Gordon W. Prange wrote a very interesting book, researched in great detail, "Pearl Harbor: At Dawn We Slept". In it he absolutely destroys the notion of any conspiracy on the part of Roosevelt, et al, to allow the Pearl Harbor attack.  We had all the intelligence necessary to know an attack was coming, but all the various bits and pieces were scattered among the State Department, the US Navy and the Army intelligence agencies, and none of them were talking to each other.  There was no central agency to pull all the information together and make use of it.
He also makes a good case that the attack was supposed to have been a surprise only in effect, but not in a technical sense. The Japanese diplomatic staff intended to deliver their ultimatum to the White House approximately 30 minutes before the attack. This would have allowed the Japanese to say it wasn't truly a sneak attack as they had given us a warning, but it certainly would have provided no time for the US to prepare in the event we refused to cooperate.
The lack of an administrative staff in the Japanese embassy on that Sunday morning did indeed delay the decoding and delivery of the ultimatum from Japan as the diplomatic staff had to perform that work themselves, tasks they were not fully familiar with.
At the end of the day it still would have been a sneak attack as far as the US was concerned, even if the Japanese diplomats had succeeded in delivering their message from their government a half hour before the attack.
If we had had a central clearing house to pull together and analyze the data from the various intelligence agencies, we could have estimated pretty closely when and where the attacks were to take place.  We would have then been much better prepared for the attack and mitigated much of the damage and loss of life.

[K Frame]

I was pretty well accepted that an attack was coming. Most high-level people in the US Government believed that a Japanese attack was imminent.

The problem was... where?

It seems that most believed that the Philippines were the most likely target, followed by other US possessions that would serve to strengthen the defensive ring that the Japanese were building.

Very few people thought that it would be at Pearl Harbor for any number of reasons.

There was also a group who thought that no attack was forthcoming, but that there would be a formal Japanese declaration of war first.

One of the biggest reasons why no one expected the scope of the multiple attacks that came is because there was relatively little concrete information on Japanese naval capabilities. In fact, it wasn't even known how many fleet carriers the Japanese had. IIRC, many thought that there were no more than 5 total carriers, when the Japanese had 12 fleet carriers -- 6 heavy, and 6 light. That assessment had to be dramatically redrawn just by the scope of the attack on Pearl Harbor.

What's inconceivable to me, and to many, is just how badly Douglas MacArthur failed in his initial defense the Philippines given close to 12 hours advanced warning after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Again, it was largely an underestimation of Japanese capabilities. No one expected the Japanese to launch such a coordinated attack, and with heavy fighter cover, from Formosa.

I've never bought the entire conspiracy theory by the US Government. Never explain by conspiracy what can be clearly seen to be poor coordination, poor preparation, and poor execution.

[brimic]

9/11 and Pearl Harbor are very much the same.
Our betters knew that there was a high probability of an attack, and by whom, but not where and when.
Hubris, normalcy bias, and territorial pissing of various agencies only exacerbated the disasters.