Data Bases • Custom Term Papers • Free Term Papers • Free Research Papers • Free Essays • Free Book Reports • Plagiarism? Links • Top 100 Term Paper Sites • Top 25 Essay Sites • Top 50 Essay Sites • Search 97,000 Papers @ DirectEssays.com • Search 101,000 Papers @ ExampleEssays.com • Search 90,000 Papers @ MegaEssays.com Free Essays • Term Paper Sites • Chuck III's Free Essays • Free College Essays • TermPaperSites.com • My Term Papers • Get Free Essays • Essay World • Planet Papers	Search Lots of Essays Back to Subjects - History Other Who Caused Pearl Harbor Who Caused Pearl Harbor Pearl Harbor Day or December 7th 1941, is a day that should live in all Americans minds and never be forgotten. It was the worst single defeat suffered by the United States Navy with losses totaling more than all those suffered in WWI. This attack is of course the fault of Japan, but Americans have to take responsibility for it too. The question is who is responsible for this grave disaster, Washington officials or those in command at Pearl Harbor? Some believe government officials caused Pearl Harbor because of their failure to warn the fleet on time and for withholding valuable information from the commanders in charge of Pearl Harbor. Others, including myself, believe those stationed at the harbor are to blame for this catastrophic tragedy. There was a lack of common sense displayed by the officials, as well as many poor judgment calls. A year before the Pearl Harbor attack, United States government officials cracked Japan’s secret diplomatic code. As a result, these government officials were able to intercept and translate Japan’s secret plans involving an attack against the United States Naval bases located in the Pacific. With this new found information, it was determined that logical Japanese attacks would come to the Malay Peninsula or the Dutch East Indies. On November 27, The Navy Department sent Admiral Kimmel, Commander of the Pacific Fleet including Pearl Harbor, a war warning telling him the dangers of attack in the Philippines, Thai, Kra Peninsula, or perhaps Borneo. They went on to tell him to ‘execute an appropriate defensive deployment.’ This war warning does not specifically mention Pearl Harbor, but common sense should have told Kimmel that when you have a naval base with eight battleships, many smaller ships, some 400 airplanes, and thousands of sailors and civilians sitting on an island in the middle of the Pacific, you should get in a defensive mode and prepare for some kind of attack. To many people the possibility of attacking Pearl Harbor was not some bogus idea thought up by a paranoid sailor. Henry L. Stimson, the United States Secretary of War, in a report giving in the Joint Committee on Investigating Pearl Harbor said, ‘We had spent several million dollars in defense of Hawaii…That Hawaii could be attack if Japan went to war was obvious to everyone…There was a certain part of the pacific Ocean that we called the "Vacant Sea" in which there were practically no ships and in which larger movements of ships could occur without anybody seeing them.’ Stimson’s above statement should have made Pearl Harbor even more alert and prepared. However, they seemed more relaxed and unconcerned with the present danger than ever with General Short in command. One thing Short did that helped make things easier for Japan was keeping the planes in tight formation while they were grounded. He might as well have placed and painted them like a bull’s eye to help the Japanese practice aiming skills. Short said that the reason the planes were packed so close was to help protect against sabotage. (Pearl Harbor Show) Again this only seems to be encouraging damage to navy equipment because if one was to blow up one plane, the explosion and shrapnel would also hurt the planes nearby as well. Another thing Short did was ‘keep his antiaircraft ammunition so stored that it could not be promptly and immediately available.’ Short also set up certain times in which the radar was to be used. For example, the radar was to be turned off after 7:00 am. This seems to be especially senseless and ignorant. The radar can detect things farther and better than the naked eye. By having the radar off during daylight hours, valuable time is wasted from when the radar would see planes to when the gaurd’s eye does. This time could be spent warning the sailors and letting them get to their battle stations. On the morning of December 7th the radar was left on a little bit later to help train a new mechanical worker. The two sailors who were watching the radar that morning noticed what seemed like a huge air convoy heading in their direction a few miles away from the harbor. The two reported it to the command station, however an inexperienced boy posted there picked up and told the sailors that the signal was nothing important and to ignore it. This was around 7:15, the first bomb would not be dropped until forty minutes later. Had Short made sure experienced people were where they needed to be someone might have been able to investigate more into the matter and realize those were not US planes arriving early. (Pearl Harbor Show) After the attack, General Short in a report by the Joint Committee on the Investigation of the Pearl Harbor attack as stated in Document E made what seemed like irrational attempts to put the blame in Washington. Claiming to be ‘singled out (by the War Department) as…the scapegoat for the disaster,’ Short says the reason he was unable to prevent the attack was because the government officials did not include all the information he needed in the war warning. He bellieves had he had more information he would suddenly become a logically man with some sense and go on ‘all-out alert’. However, even with the information Washington did give Short, he should have been able to put the base on more of a defensive than what was done. For example, as Colonel Rufus Bratton, Chief of Army Intelligence for the Far Eastern Section, explains how Short was not supposed to have the fleet doced in the harbor as they were. ‘We all thought they had gone to sea…Because that was part of the war plan and they had been given a war warning.’ Luckily the aircraft carriers had been sent to sea and were not lost during the attack. Regardless of whether or not Japan would be attacking Pacific naval bases, both parties should have been doing more to prepare for the worst. They knew Japan was becoming hostile, and that they were not afraid to harm US boats (think of the ‘accidental’ USS Panay incident of 1937). Almost exactly four years later, the Japanese are again laughing at us, this time for Pearl Harbor. Upon scouting the harbor days prior to the bombing, Japanese scouts made a report back to Tokyo describing how there are absolutly no forms of defense being taken to prevent an attack. Even if Washington did have its screwups in issueing Short have stronger defense systmes, he should have showed the inititive and done it himself. The bottomline is the fact that there was attack and 2400 people did die. We must not forget them or those who were killed the same day at the attackes of the Philippines, Guam, Midway, Hong Kong, and Malaya. Bibliography: Word Count: 1150
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