Things About The Pearl Harbor Attack That Don't Make Sense

Though World War II was undeniably a complex and world-spanning conflict, for many Americans U.S. involvement comes down to one of the most important battles of the war: Pearl Harbor. On the morning of December 7, 1941, two waves of Japanese planes descended on the U.S. base at Pearl Harbor, on the Hawaiian island of Oahu. After it was all done, five battleships and numerous other craft sank, while 300 aircraft were destroyed or heavily damaged. Over 2,000 people died in the attack.

Yet, it did not bring the U.S. to its knees as Japan had hoped. All of the U.S. fleet's aircraft carriers were away from the harbor, while key sites like repair facilities and fuel depots were largely left intact. On December 8, President Franklin D. Roosevelt delivered his now-famous speech to Congress in which he called December 7 "a date which will live in infamy." Congress approved Roosevelt's declaration of war against Japan shortly thereafter. Three days later, Japanese allies Italy and Germany declared war against the U.S. The Americans had officially joined the war.

Decades later, there are still confusing things about World War II and the Pearl Harbor attack in particular that draw attention. First, there's Japan's decision to strike the U.S. in the first place, which certainly seems like a poor choice considering its later defeat. Moreover, details of the leadup to the attack and U.S. planning (or lack thereof) leave many wondering just what everyone involved was thinking.

Upon first glance, it may look as if Japanese commanders made a stupendously reckless and unprovoked decision to strike Pearl Harbor. Yet Japan's motivations were far more complicated. Its leaders had an eye on imperial expansion and, when the U.S. began imposing sanctions and otherwise blocking the other country, this was poorly received. Japan's attack at Pearl Harbor was an attempt to get the U.S. off its back, allowing Japan to continue its expansion, secure vital resources like oil and metal, and establish itself as a major power.

Even within Japan, part of the attack's disturbing history is that there was much back-and-forth prior to the strike, with war-hungry nationalists favoring action and more moderate voices expressing serious doubts. This last group included the commander in chief of Japan's Combined Fleet, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, who warned that an extended war would destroy Japan. He said the only chance was an intense, sudden attack that so thoroughly destabilized the U.S. it couldn't retaliate. But, after the attack saw the U.S. declare war against Japan and officially join World War II, it was clear to Yamamoto that things had gone poorly and they now faced a seriously messed up aftermath to the war. "I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve," he reportedly wrote in his diary (though the ominous statement may have really come from the screenplay for 1970's "Tora! Tora! Tora!").

The idea that the Pearl Harbor attack was inspired by a work of fiction may seem so nonsensical that you'd immediately dismiss it ... but don't be quite so hasty. The novel in question is "The Great Pacific War," which hit the market in 1925, 16 years before the Pearl Harbor attack. In it, author Hector C. Bywater wrote of what may have seemed downright fantastical to some at the time: a war between Japan and the U.S. It contains what are now eerie parallels with the real-life 1941 attack. In Bywater's work, Japan launches a surprise strike on the U.S. and, while it doesn't take control of Hawaii, it does command numerous other locations in the Pacific that help it establish a serious hold in the region. Yet the U.S. looks to take on an island-hopping strategy of amphibious warfare that could lead to Japan's defeat anyway.

Though this connection is speculative, it's hard to ignore the similarities between novel and real life. What's more, the architect of the attack, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, was stationed at the Japanese embassy in Washington, D.C. at the time of the novel's publication. Just a couple of years later, he was delivering speeches and holding discussions that paralleled many of Bywater's plot points. In fact, Yamamoto met with Bywater himself in 1934 London, where the two spent an evening discussing — what else? — a hypothetical war in the Pacific theater.

The popular narrative of the Pearl Harbor attack is that it took everyone unawares. While many were aware of Japanese expansionism and increasing tensions between Japan and the U.S., the idea of a sudden attack simply wasn't on most minds. Yet, when it comes to at least some military commanders, their high-level picture of the situation makes their relative inaction confusing. Why didn't they read the writing on the wall and more obviously discuss how the U.S. was going to be drawn into the war?

Perhaps part of the problem was that command — and therefore, communication — was often divided. General Walter C. Short was in charge of the Army stationed in Hawaii, while Admiral Husband E. Kimmel commanded the Pacific Fleet. What's more, Short and Kimmel didn't always communicate for security reasons. This meant that, when Kimmel's Navy intelligence lost track of a steadily growing Japanese fleet less than two weeks before the attack, he didn't let Short know. Neither of the two commanders were able to set up an effective cross-department communications network, leaving key radar stations short-staffed and poorly informed of Navy aircraft maneuvers. Even then, surveillance managed to pick up suspicious Japanese activity, including aircraft launches and the appearance of miniature Japanese submarines near Pearl Harbor shortly before the attack, though slow communications and sluggish response times meant these early warnings made little difference.

Even with the major miscommunications between military branches, it's hard to understand why both Army General Walter C. Short and Navy Admiral Husband E. Kimmel didn't do more to prepare for an attack. They were well aware of tensions with Japan, which had been escalating since at least the late 1930s and had grown even more heated in the last year. Shortly before the attack, American intelligence indicated Japanese ships were moving in the direction of Southeast Asia, hinting at a troop buildup.

What's more, Japan had even outright warned the Americans ... kind of. As Japan continued negotiating, U.S. forces had received three warnings from their own government in 1941, on October 16, November 24, and November 27. That last warning, which came barely a week before the December 7 attack, baldly told Kimmel that "This is a war warning." He was instructed to "execute an appropriate defensive deployment," though the missive didn't contain details about dates or potential target sites (via U.S. Naval Institute). Yet Kimmel and his staff declined to put reconnaissance aircraft into action, in part because they interpreted the message as warning of a general attack by Japan somewhere else and not a movement specifically aimed at Hawaii. Meanwhile, Short ordered that Army planes should be closely grouped together at the island's Wheeler Field. He apparently meant to protect them from damage, but this also increased the efficiency of enemy attacks in damaging the craft.

By the time Japanese forces actually began moving across the Pacific towards Pearl Harbor, the attack fleet had grown seriously large. It included six of the nation's best aircraft carriers and more than 420 planes, accompanied by an array of other ships meant for a variety of purposes, from attacking the U.S. to refueling the fleet. All told, it was the largest attack force assembled by Japan. So, how did such a massive group of craft manage to make it 3,500 miles from Hitokappu Bay (now Kasatka Bay in the Kuril Islands between Japan and mainland Russia) to their position 230 miles north of Oahu practically undetected?

Part of the plan involved intense preparation, which included monitoring U.S. communications and military movements. Training areas were also closely guarded, with foreign vessels escorted out of sensitive areas and censoring of navy-related stories rampant.

Extreme secrecy was central, too. Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, the architect of the attack, did not inform many of his military compatriots of the plan. The ships were then sent on a far northern route that was meant to keep them out of shipping lanes. For further security, no radio communications were allowed, leaving personnel on the ships to communicate via lights or flags. It also helped that the ocean is extremely large and contained plenty of room for Yamamoto and his associates to map a route that keep such a large force out of sight. 

There's very little evidence that the U.S. chain of command had any real, concrete indication of a coming Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor until too late. Sure, there were rumblings of conflict, which some higher-ups interpreted as a sign that Japan was likely to strike U.S. bases Philippines or perhaps in Borneo — but not in the U.S., they thought.

There was one key point where a different decision could have changed everything — and it came at a mobile radar unit stationed on the northern coast of Oahu. There, Privates Joseph L. Lockard and George E. Elliott Jr. were told to sit inside the unit van between 4:00 and 7:00 a.m. Though Lockard was in charge of the unit's oscilloscope, Elliott briefly took over near the end of their shift for practice. Just after 7:00, he detected a blip on the scan that indicated a large number of incoming aircraft, perhaps 50 or even more approaching the area from about 137 miles north. But, with such technology still in its infancy (in fact, World War II helped advance radar and other technology), neither private could tell exactly how many planes were approaching and where they were heading.

Lockard called the Army information center, where he reached Private Joseph P. McDonald. When McDonald consulted with the lieutenant on duty, however, the officer repeatedly told him that it was probably just a group of American planes and instructed them to ignore the signal.

The Zeros and other planes that rained munitions down on the U.S. fleet weren't the first Japanese craft to reach Pearl Harbor. That distinction went to the military's newly developed miniature submarines, popularly referred as "midget subs." The craft were about 78 feet long and designed to handle the shallow waters of the harbor. Each carried just two sailors and two supercharged torpedoes, as well as weapons the crew were expected to use on themselves in case of capture.

But some Japanese commanders were nervous about sending the subs ahead of the fleet. If spotted, one could give away the plan. The quartermaster of the U.S.S. Condor did just that when he noticed a periscope peeking out of the water shortly before 4:00 a.m. on December 7. By 6:45 a.m., the destroyer U.S.S. Ward fired on the sub and sank it. The report had barely made its way to Admiral Husband E. Kimmel when the attack began.

The subs experienced near-total failure. Four of the original group of five subs sank in battle that day, due to strikes or mechanical failure. The only one to survive was plagued by malfunctioning equipment — perhaps the ultimate explanation for the defeat. When sailors scuttled it, one drowned while the other, Ensign Kazuo Sakamaki, washed up on a nearby beach and soon encountered U.S. Corporal David M. Akui. Sakamaki became the first prisoner of war captured by the U.S. in the conflict.

Though the Pearl Harbor attack was devastating, it could have been far worse. But why wasn't it? It has to do with flares. Commander Mitsuo Fuchida was in charge of tactical decisions for the first wave. There were two possible plans: one if the Americans were surprised, and another if U.S. forces caught on before the attack. One flare would signal a surprise attack and two indicated a more cautious "no surprise" plan.

Though the U.S. was unaware, Fuchida fired two flares. He later claimed to have fired one but, thinking it was a dud, set off another. Yet, given the complexity of loading and firing flare cartridges from the cockpit, Fuchida may have meant to fire two all along. He certainly never seems to have corrected this mistake. In an even odder detail, this plan was never communicated via radio, though other commands were relayed between Japanese planes in this way.

Perhaps commanders had believed that torpedo bombers, considered key to the success of the attack, would have been left vulnerable in a surprise-style plan. In that scenario, the torpedo bombers would have attacked first, followed soon after by dive bombers. It could also be that Fuchida lied because the attack became an uncoordinated mess that did not strike the Americans as hard as originally intended. In attempting to cover for himself, he may have been trying to shift the blame for the mix-ups that day onto other commanders.

In the Pearl Harbor attack, 2,404 people were killed on the U.S. side, including 68 civilians and 1,177 on the U.S.S. Arizona alone. Five battleships sank in the harbor, as well as three destroyers and a training ship. Many more suffered serious damage.

While some survived the attack, one of the most horrifying details of what happened to the bodies at Pearl Harbor centers on those trapped in wrecked ships. Afterward, some reported hearing the taps and bangs of sailors trapped inside, while the salvage crew that raised the remains of the U.S.S. West Virginia reportedly found the remains of sailors and a calendar indicating that they had marked off a chilling 16 days stuck inside. It took decades for the U.S. Navy to admit the details of this story to the sailors' families.

But how could sailors be left inside a wrecked battleship for over two weeks? While crews worked desperately to save service members in the wreckage, they were presented with some seriously difficult choices. The area was often coated with fuel leaking from mangled ships, meaning attempts to cut through metal decking could spark a deadly blaze. Likewise, creating an opening in the wrong spot could flood the interior. For similar reasons, over 900 bodies were left behind in the U.S.S. Arizona and declared "buried at sea." Survivors of the sinking may also be buried in the wreckage. To date, 44 service members have been interred there after the attack.

If there's one persistent misconception about Pearl Harbor, it's surely the forewarning conspiracy. In its most basic form, this maintains that President Franklin D. Roosevelt and other high-level government officials knew darn well that Japan was set to rain devastation down upon Pearl Harbor. Yet, they said and did nothing, hoping to both bring the U.S. into the war and keep a flagging Britain in the conflict. Plus, with the U.S. officially in the war, it would be able to more overtly aid allies in the fight against the Axis Powers.

But, as much as someone may find conspiracy stories compelling, in this case it's definitely just a story. While there are some elements of truth to it (including evidence that U.S. officials expected some sort of warlike action from the Japanese military), the idea that Roosevelt would allow a highly destructive attack to hit a significant portion of the Pacific fleet simply doesn't make sense — especially if the U.S. planned to join the war afterward. Why wouldn't Roosevelt have just declared war, even if his popularity took a hit? The attack also meant that the U.S. was now effectively engaged in two theaters of war, with a complicated and consuming front on the Pacific in addition to the European side of the conflict. Indeed, American warships were redirected from the Atlantic, leaving some British operations vulnerable as the U.S. shifted a major portion of its focus to the west.