Six months before Japan's devastating assault on Pear Harbor came this article concerning how remarkable the Navy's defensive measures were and how unlikely it would be if the installation was ever to be attacked. A large part of the article concerned how overwhelmingly Japanese the Oahu population was, and the many steps taken by the Army and Navy to keep them off-base. How terribly unimaginative of them to think that Japanese Naval Itelligence wouldn't think to farm-out spying to an Englishman like Frederick Rutland - which they did. "Don't believe that the Japanese ordered their dawn assault only yesterday. The fact is that they ordered it not days ago but weeks ago. While Japan's special envoy, Saburo Kurusu, was busy talking in Washington, the ships that were to attack us were already on their way. While he was staling and waiting 'for instructions', they were getting into position. More than that: they had their orders before Kurusu even started talking." "It now becomes apparent that the U.S. Government, long before Pearl Harbor, knew Tokyo's war plans almost as thoroughly as did the Japanese. To all practical purposes, Washington had ears attuned to the most intimate, secret sessions of Japan's cabinet."
A year and a half before the Pearl Harbor attack, Naval Intelligence sold a Japanese agent some bogus plans of the naval installation - more about this can be read here.
Attached is an eyewitness account of the Pearl Harbor attack as relayed to family members in a letter written home a few weeks after the assault:
"The noise was like ten thousand factories gone nuts....Quicker than I can tell you, a bomb blows up the barracks with the gang in it, a ship explodes in front of me, a hangar goes up in flames..."
The very next day President Roosevelt stood before the microphones in the well of the U.S. Capitol and asked Congress to declare war against the Empire of Japan; CLICK HERE to hear about the reactions of the American public during his broadcast...
Pearl Harbor Christmas: A World at War, December 1941
Click here to read about the Battle of Midway.
When this article went to press the Pear Harbor attack was already over a year old - and like the articles that came out in '41, these two pages capture much of the outrage that was the general feeling among so many of the American people. The article serves to give an account as to how the ships that were damaged that morning have largely recovered and were once again at sea (excluding the Arizona).
Five months after the Pearl Harbor attack the United States Navy defeated the Imperial Japanese Navy in the Coral Sea, click here to read about it...
One year after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor the Navy released its report to the press with updates on all the various repairs that were put into effect.
- from Amazon:
Ghosts of Honolulu: A Japanese Spy, A Japanese American Spy Hunter, and the Untold Story of Pearl Harbor
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