Virtual Environments : Firsts weeks Research

Facts about attack on Pearl Harbour by the Japanese

The attack took place on December 7, 1941.
Japansese force consisted of six carriers with 423 planes.
At 6 a.m. the first Japanese attack wave of 83 planes took off.
Three prime targets escaped damage, the U.S. Pacific Fleet aircraft carriers, the Lexington, Enterprise and Saratoga. They were not in the port when the attack took place.
Another target, the base fuel tanks also escaped damage.
Casualties included 2,335 servicemen and 68 civilians.
1178 people were wounded.
The attack was the climax of a decade of worsening relations between the U.S. and militaristic Japan.
The Japanese fleet had 30 ships.
The attack was planned weeks in advance.
The main reason for the attack was over economic issues.
Of the eight battleships, all but the Arizona and Oklahoma were eventually repaired and returned to service.
A U.S. Army private who noticed the large flight of planes on his radar screen was told to ignore them because a flight of B-17s from the continental U.S. was expected at the time.
Pearl Harbor was not in the state of high alert when the attack started, Anti-Aircraft guns were left unmanned.
The main targets for the first wave was the airfield and battleships.
The second wave targets were other ships and shipyard facilities.

• By the summer of 1940, the United States had cracked Japan's top-secret diplomatic code, nicknamed "Purple [wiki]." This enabled U.S. intelligence agencies to monitor messages to and from Tokyo.

• Although several U.S. command posts received machines for decoding "Purple," Pearl Harbor was never given one.

• Messages intercepted in the autumn of 1941 suggested what the Japanese were planning:

› On October 9, 1941, Tokyo told its consul in Honolulu to "divide the water around Pearl Harbor into five sub-areas and report on the types and numbers of American war craft."

› The Japanese foreign minister urged negotiators to resolve issues with the U.S. by November 29, after which "things are automatically going to happen."

› On December 1, after negotiations had failed, the navy intercepted a request that the Japanese ambassador in Berlin informed Hitler of an extreme danger of war ... coming "quicker than anyone dreams."

On the Other Hand
• Although the United States had cracked top-secret Japanese codes several years earlier, "the fact is that code-breaking intelligence did not prevent and could not have prevented Pearl Harbor, because Japan never sent any messages to anybody saying anything like 'We shall attack Pearl Harbor,'" writes military historian David Kahn in the autumn 1991 issue of Military History Quarterly.

• "The [Japanese] Ambassador in Washington was never told of the plan," Kahn says, "Nor were other Japanese diplomats or consular officials. The ship of the strike force were never radioed any message mentioning Pearl Harbor. It was therefore impossible for cryptoanalysts to have discovered the plan. Despite the American code breakers, Japan kept her secret."

• Actually, Washington had issued a warning to commanders at Pearl Harbor a few weeks earlier. On November 27, 1941, General George Marshall sent the following message: "Hostile action possible at any moment. If hostilities cannot, repeat CANNOT, be avoided, the United States desires that Japan commit the first over act. This policy should not, repeat NOT, be construed as restricting you to a course of action that might jeopardize your defense."

• But the commanders at Pearl Harbor were apparently negligent. The base should have at least been on alert, but the antiaircraft guns were unmanned and most people on the base were asleep when the attack came.