Pearl Harbor Essay, Research Paper

The bombing of pearl harbor could have been avoided and many lives could have been saved if the united states didn’t have over confidence in themselves, if the Americans would have kept better tract of Japanese intelligence, and if Roosevelt would of warned pearl harbor of his knowledge of it going to be attacked. Many things led up to the bombing of pearl harbor. The things that led up to the bombing started when japan started to make naval bases all over the territories it controlled. Roosevelt saw this as a threat to the United States so he decided to cut off their supply of natural resources. Roosevelt knew that without natural resources japan would not be able to last economically very long. In 1941 the United States tried to come to an agreement with japan to settle their differences. Japan wanted the untied states to keep supplying oil and for the United States to let japan go to war with china. The untied states refused to lift the oil embargo until japan would back off of their aggression with china. Neither country would agree to a settlement and war seemed like it was inescapable. (Pearl harbor conspiracy, 12)

The many people in the United States knew that pearl harbor was going to be bombed, but nobody in Hawaii knew about the planned attack. Pearl harbor at the time before the bombing was very relaxed. “ Many people in pearl harbor had no clue about the Japanese plotting to bomb it because nobody was informed about it.”( ). “Many people had no idea that pearl harbor was going to be bombed” as Ruth Erickson says who was a nurse at the time of the bombing. She says: “ we did not know what to think when pearl harbor got bombed … We were sitting in the dining room on a Sunday morning having a late breakfast when all of a sudden we heard lots of gunshots and we saw a plane crash on the tennis court. We had no idea what had just happened.”() . Another man who had no idea that pearl harbor was going to be bombed is Lee Soury. He said “I just had breakfast and looked out the porthole window on the carrier I was on and I saw a couple planes flying overhead”. Someone shouted out”” what the hell are those planes doing up there on a Sunday.””…. I thought that they were just practicing bombing targets and I realized that they were dropping real bombs. I said to myself “” what idiot made the mistake of putting real bombs on the planes instead of fake bombs.”” Not long after I realized that they were Japanese fighter pilots who were bombing the aircraft carrier. I wandered what is going on. I had no Idea why the Japanese would be bombing pearl harbor. I thought this was odd. Then I realized that I had to evacuate ship because it had been torpedoed” ( Cavendish,543). Some major officials on the island knew about the plot of japan to bomb pearl harbor, but did not think that japan was capable of a plan like this, so they decide not to spread the word because they felt no major threat from japan.

The united states also showed that they did not fear japan by not listening to the warnings of many people who had proof that japan was going to attack pearl harbor (Cavendish, 547). If the United States would have listened to the warnings and not have doubted the power of japan, the bombing of pearl harbor could have been avoided. There were many warning given by many different people. Here are a couple of the warnings that I found. One of the warnings was one given by the top British agent named Dusko Popov. “ he told the FBI of the planned attack on pearl harbor and that it would be very soon. The FBI told dusko that his information was too precise to be believed. The FBI said that the information he brought spelled out in detail when, where, how and why that they were going to be attacked. The FBI said it sounds like a trap so they didn’t listen to what dusko said (mother of all conspiracies,14.). IF the FBI would have listened to Dusko and examined his theory just a little more they would have noticed that Dusko was right. Another warning that was given was by a man named Kilsoo Haan. Kilsoo was an agent for the Sino Korean People’s League. Kilsoo had told Eric Severeid of CBS that the Korea underground in Korea and japan had proof that the Japanese were going to bomb pearl harbor before Christmas. Among all of this one Korean had actually seen the plans that the Japanese had to bomb pearl harbor. Kilsoo finally convinced the United States senator Guy Gillette that the Japanese were planning to attack in December or January. Gillette alerted the state department, army, and naval intelligence, and Franklin Roosevelt himself (Cavendish, 547). There were many warnings like these told to many important people. If the people would have believed these warnings many peoples lives could have been saved and a battle could have been stopped.

The Japanese were very smart people. They were very good spies . The United States knew that Hawaii was full of Japanese spies but because of the United States constitutional rights we could do basically nothing about it. Japanese spies like Kohichi Seki, who was Honolulu’s consulate’s treasurer. Kohichi traveled all around pearl harbor taking notes about basically everything about the pearl harbor. Kohichi particularly paid very close attention to the United States warships and their aircraft carriers. Kohichi took notes about what times they come in and out of the harbor and were they usually stayed in they harbor. Because of spies like Kohichi the Japanese had a very good idea of what pearl harbor was like and what we be the best way to go for an attack.(road to pearl harbor,4)

The Japanese spies helped out a lot in telling the Japanese counsel were the United States ships were at. The counsel did not think that this was very accurate information. After the Japanese counsel decided this japans naval intelligence asked Japan’s consul general in Honolulu for a grid of the exact location of American warships and aircraft carriers. The Japanese sent this message in code but in about an hour the American decoded the message. The officers who read the message saw this as a dead give away that pearl harbor was going to be bombed. The officers allowed Japan’s Honolulu general to send the message but they made him leave off the warships and aircraft carriers with a note that said “ it is not important right now as to were are warships and aircraft carriers are located (mother of all conspiracies, 17).

The Japanese were also very intelligent in their many different ways of coding messages and making it so that only the other Japanese intelligence could decipher it. The Japanese had over ten codes at one time during World War 2. In the battle of pearl harbor they only used three codes. these three codes were the administrative code, which was for personal matters, the ultra code, which was used strictly for military maters, and the magic code, which was used for instruction on a battle. Luckily the American intelligence was able to decipher the most important of these codes which was the magic code. They deciphered this code using a machine called the purple machine. This machine was very good but took long amounts of time to decode sometimes the simplest of a code. A rumor got to the Japanese counsel that the magic code was being decoded in America but the counsel didn’t believe this because they thought that there code was superior( mother of all conspiracies,13)

Many people believe that Roosevelt was to blame for the bombing of pearl harbor. They believe this because of all the warnings that Roosevelt received about pearl harbor going to be bombed and Roosevelt never acting on them and by how he told his secretary of war that he knew that pearl harbor was going to be bombed. now that most of these facts have been uncovered many people look at Roosevelt as a traitor.

Some people believe that Roosevelt was to blame because of the numerous numbers of decoded messages that he received. Roosevelt’s two right hand mans at this time were naval chief Safford and army chief Friedman. These two men both said in later interviews after pearl harbor got bombed that Roosevelt ignored many of the codes that the purple machine decoded. One of the codes that Roosevelt disregarded as not being important said emperor Togos demands that he wanted or he would bomb pearl harbor. This was a 15-point paper that Roosevelt received of the demands Togo wanted. Once Roosevelt read to the 11th point he said “”this is war”” but never acted upon his statement. In a later interview chief Safford said that the Japanese emperor gave Roosevelt more than one chance to reply to the demands that he wanted (the road to pearl harbor,5).”

Another reason people believe that Roosevelt was to blame for the bombing of pearl harbor was that he knew that it was going to be bombed. Roosevelt knew that pearl harbor was going to be bombed because Roosevelt’s secretary of war had this in his diary. “Franklin D. Roosevelt stated today that we were likely to be attacked soon as Monday…the question though is how we should maneuver them into the position of firing the first shot without to much damage or danger done to ourselves. In spite of the risk involved in letting the Japanese fire the first shot we realized that in order to have full support of the American people. It was desirable to make sure that the Japanese would be the ones to do this so that there should remain no doubt in any ones mind as to who were the aggressors””.(cavendish,643). By Roosevelt saying this it makes him seem like he has control over human life. I think that Roosevelt did have a role to play in causing the bombing of pearl harbor but IM not for sure.

Pearl harbor was an incident that could have been avoided if some of these things that were mentioned were acted upon instead of not being listened to. If the Americans were not so cocky and could have seen that japan was actually more capable than they thought it could have been avoided. If the were able to do something about the number of spies on pearl harbor or if they would have had better machines to decode the coded messages. It also could have been avoided if Roosevelt would have acted on some of the messages that he received from emperor Togo or if he would of warned the people on pearl harbor live could have been saved. These are all things that could have been done to prevent the war from happening or prevent so many human lives from deign. But we can’t change what has passed. We can just look back and learn.