of approaching ships or planes they could not tell whether the approaching ship or plane was friend or foe.“A secret “war warning” had been received from Washington—Japan was expected to hit “the Philippines, Thai, or Kra Peninsula or possibly Borneo”—and the carrier Enterprise was ferrying a squadron of Marine fighters to reinforce Wake Island. Battleships would slow the task force’s speed from 30-17 knots. Yet they were too vulnerable to maneuver alone without carrier protection. The only other carrier, the Lexington, was off ferrying planes to the Midway, so the battleships stayed at Pearl Harbor, where it was safe.” (Lord 3-4) Little did they know Pearl Harbor was not the safe place for the battleships to stay. “On December 2, 1941 Admiral H.E. Kimmel’s intelligence officer, Lieutenant Commander Edwin T. Layton, informed him that there had been no Japanese radio communications regarding the whereabouts of the Imperial Navy’s Carrier Divisions One and Two. Kimmel smiled and said, jokingly, “You don’t know where they are? Do you mean to say that they could be rounding Diamond Head and you wouldn’t know it?” Layton answered abjectly, “I hope they would be sighted by now sir.”” (Arroyo 19) Amazingly enough the joke that Admiral Kimmel made was coming true as they spoke the Japanese were rounding Diamond Head preparing to attack, and they had no idea what would take place only five days later. “But no one in Hawaii seriously considered an attack on Pearl Harbor; the Japs weren’t that stupid. Marshall and Stark agreed. So did their staffs.” (Toland 8)“As the “day of wrath” drew nearer, increasingly the isolationists in Congress appeared to oppose Roosevelt himself rather than just his foreign policy. “Nobody is worrying about Japan coming over here and attacking us,” a...
