Sign Up Now
Get instant access to over 1 million+ study documents
OR
Already registered? click here to login
By creating your account, you agree to our terms of service, privacy policy and student honor code.
Intelligence Failure at Pearl Harbor
Roberta Wohlstetter (1962) Pearl Harbor: Warning and Decision. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
How could American intelligence failed so consistently? This was a common question in the American news media after 9/11. The answers of Roberta Wohlstetter's 1962 book Pearl Harbor: Warning and Decision may provide some insight for modern readers, in answer to this question. Of course, Wohlstetter's analysis is applicable to a much older historical problem, namely how could America have failed to anticipate the threat of the Japanese bombings on Pearl Harbor. But her approach and answers provides an important warning to conspiracy theorists and intelligence apologists alike.
According to Wohlstetter, the intelligence clues that an attack on Pearl Harbor would take place only seem certain with the foresight of history. Many of the clues were "not merely ambiguous but occasionally inconsistent with such an attack" and only later did the mounting "dangerous" hints seem add up to the incontrovertible fact that there would be a surprise air attack on the naval base (388). Wohlstetter writes in response to those who state that the attack was obvious and a foregone conclusion, or worse that Franklin Delano Roosevelt knew about the planned bombing, but decided to ignore this to motivate Congress to allow him to declare war against Japan and Germany.
However, this is not to discount the fact that there were many human and bureaucratic errors that resulted in the American lack of preparedness, many of which seem quite surprising in light of the fact that the Americans were able to decipher Japanese codes and the Japanese engaged in such militant anti-American rhetoric and military shows of force (170). According to Wohlstetter, because the signals came from such diverse sources and because of the structural lack of communication between different government channels, it was often difficult to make coherent sense of the data that was being received. It was difficult to see the patterns in the intelligence that were emerging regarding the Japanese military movements, and thus the failure to do so was partially the result of human error, partly because of the poor intelligence gathering of the military, and partly because of the accepted fact that hostile enemy movements were often prone to reversal and designed to provoke panic, rather than true harbingers of future attacks.
Pearl Harbor as an Intelligence Failure Several writers and intellectuals express that the shock the Japanese got in their attack on Pearl Harbor was a result from a failure of the United States intelligence community that were unsuccessful to give sufficient, correct information to government as well as to the military decision-makers. As presumed by these historians the intelligence community contained very important information that was misconstrue or in other words
CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS The Cuban Missile Crisis (CMC) presented a different type of military intelligence than Pearl Harbor did. In the case of CMC, military intelligence provided tremendous amounts of valuable and incontrovertible evidence. However, that information has to be viewed in the larger context of the times to understand why the United States government viewed the situation as seriously as they did. The United States had been actively but covertly working
The report mentions that almost 3-4% of the keys could not be resolved. Thereby, it can be argued here that great advantages were gained when Americans decoded Japanese conversation 2. Radio Traffic Unit There is a naval intelligence installed at the Pearl Harbor was using the radio traffic unit and it was working to find out and analyze the location of Japanese ships. In this case, the Japanese messages could not
Though Kimmel himself states that there had been submarine activity around the Islands, there were no actions taken against them as he was waiting for approval from Department of Navy, in the ten days preceding the attack to act decisively. "For some time there had been reports of submarines in the operating areas around Hawaii.... The files of the Commander in Chief, Pacific Fleet, contain records of at least three
It was an unfortunate and tragic event in the history of the United States, regardless of the reasons that it took place. The book itself was very interesting, but Layton makes both commanders that he served under - Kimmel and Short - out to be scapegoats that had absolutely no idea of what was happening. While they were denied the benefits of some important pieces of intelligence information, it does
Short to military dances. The book is riddled with anecdotes such as these that indicate the military was ill prepared for a surprise attack, and in fact were arrogant in their ignorance. In fact, Clausen's investigation showed the American military knew Japanese codes but ignored them in seeking intelligence; the agencies were unprepared for war or a surprise attack. As the author notes, "Although vested with high commands and responsibilities,