I am doing my 2nd year of college English Composition paper on FDR and Pearl Harbor. It was suggested by a class mate that I get the take on how non Americans feel about the subject. For non Americans here what is the consensus of the subject of FDR knowing about the attack on Pearl Harbor prior to Dec 7? I'm really NOT trying to rehash the whole thing, just getting some idea if non Americans are as fixated on this as we seem to be. I'd like this to be based, if possible, on how your media handles this. Is it assumed that he knew, or didn't know?

Rodger, my understanding is that the British and Americans had broken the major codes for both Germany and Japan (read some of W.E.B.Griffin's excellent books on the US Marines/Rangers for some of the background). This gave them a lot of information as to the attack on Pearl ,and other major offensives. Such information though has to be used sparingly and very carefully so as not to let the enemy know you're getting his mail!

Couple of points - I would disagree strongly over W.E.B Griffin as any kind of serious source - I own all of his books and although enjoyable enough as works of fiction - they are full of glaring historical accuracies....

Rodger, I honestly think that Pearl Harbor came as a welcome relief to Britain as in the following days Germany also declared war on the U.S.A..

Do I think the codes had been broken? Yes, In that Griffen is correct although the likelihood is they were broken by the U.S. - I doubt if it had been the British. However the sheer audacity of the plan (mirrored in '67 by the Israeli pre-emptive attack on Egypt) was one of the least expected attacks in military history. As someone who has long been interested (obsessed?) with this subject it is truly fascinating...Jim

Did FDR know or not know that is the question.

I believe not! I think that while the US was reading most of the Japanese codes that this one slipped through due to the slow decoding. A similar thing happened with the Japanese ambassadors late declaration of war.

Now Australia was in a real bad position at this time as most of the troops we had were in the desert or Britain, but the belief that the 'bastion of the East' - Singapore would not fall was strong.

I do also know that if it was not for the United States guaranteeing the protection of Australia, Australia would have bought our troops home from the Western Desert and Britain to protect Australia.

Hope that helps mate cause in my humble opinion I believe that if it was not for the good old USA and FDR we would be talking Japanese, that is if any of the men were left alive after the invasion of Australia.

A little known fact is the Northern end of Ausralia, both the Northern Territories and the top of Queensland were declared a war zone and Air attacks on Darwin fiece and heavy.

I always understood the the Japanese used the german 'enigma' coding machine, and it was the Brits that broke the enigma coding system. The info was supplied to the USA and that gave them the 'key' to breaking the Japanese codes. No system is infallible though, so it's always possible that some stuff was missed.
The only person that'll ever really know if FDR knew about the attack isn't here to ask, so all of this is down to how you read the few documents released on the matter.
The attack on Pearl did one good thing as far as we were concerned - it persuaded congress to allow FDR to bring the US into the war, whereas before they had sat on the fence. Without the huge manufacturing base that was provided we would have been really stuffed for tanks especially.

Dave, ENIGMA was not really broken (in a really workable form) until 1942/43. The priority for the (British) codebreakers at that point was Kriegsmarine codes. Cliff made a really valid point regarding the sheer volume of intercepts - while a team was busy breaking laundry lists of Yamamoto, the really interesting stuff was probably waiting in a queue... Jim

Nope, they had their own coding equipment (can't find the name 1-2-3...), although later on in the war the got some enigma machines from the Germans.

The Japanese code was actually cracked very early, but there was another problem that slowed things down... translation.
(interesting literature on the subject: Enigma, the battle for the code by Hugh Sebag-Montefiore; Most Secret war by Dr. R.V. Jones)

On the question of knowing.

IMHO, there were some people around who had some hunches about it. But, as more than once during WW2, were laughed away with the argument: "They (the Japanese) wouldn't dare...

As far as I understand all early signs and warnings were neglected (even on the day itself, remember the radarstation incident...) and the U.S. were caught with their pants down (pardon the expression).

Now, you can start start seeing conspriracies everywhere, like why were the carriers not in Pearl?

But I stil think (again IMHO) it was a full suprise.

Kris

Edit: The Japanese code was known as Purple, but I have no description of the hardware behind it. But it wasn't an Enigma machine.

I am willing to accept that my references (NOT fiction works!) are probably not the best on this sort of subject, we learn something new all the time!

Hi all
I really find the information and the topics discussed on this forum wonderful and informative,but it is sad when it falls into comments on who did this and did that,the bottom line was we ALL fought a common enemy and we did it together,iam a Brit living in the US and i find the comments made by Phantom Major quite offensive, i tend to base my observations on reading but very much on the people who were and the conversations that i have had with them.

THE
Do not say 'THE" French,
'The Americans or the Dutch
'THE" lumps them all together
In a population bunch

And they are not a solid mass,
All the same and all one class
'They' are individuals too,
Who with their own Uniqueness grew.

So if you want to critisize,
One of those awkward foreign guys,
You really ought to play the game,
And use the fellows proper name,

Then we will know that all your spleen
And exactly what you mean,
Is directed at the proper place,
Not "THE" nation or 'THE" race.

Poem written by Dave Edwards infantary 53W/Div
very glad for the US involvement,no date saved his life,
(my dad)
CHEERS Chris tango 20
'

Dave,let me explain... The only books of W.E.B. Griffen I have come across have been his fictional stuff (Brotherhood of War, the Corps etc...) I NEVER realised that he had written any non-fiction at all - in that I stand corrected....

Tango, my sentiments exactly! Only a fool would accept that the U.K. could have stood against Japan and the Nazis singlehandedly - the provision of U.S. materiel and troops was the turning point...

Rodger, I would personally base your paper on the following premise:

The attack on Pearl was psychologically a tremendous blow -militarily it was a failure on the Japanese side. The fact that the U.S.N.was still able to project its power across the Pacific after 12/7/41 indicated to even teh most hard headed Japanese Ultra-nationalist,that they had indeed woken a sleeping tiger.

It also galvanised U.S.public opinion in favor of war -overnight the 'neutralists' were rendered inoperative...The U.S. could now go to war on its own terms...Jim

I agree Jim

My father would be proud of your response,hope the poem was not to much off topic but his words say it better than mine
Regards Tango20 chris

The History Channel's "Conspiracies" program covered this very topic a couple of weeks ago. The show was pretty even-handed overall and gave both sides just about equal time. In the end, the anti-conspiracy side seemed to make the better argument with more and better evidence.
With regards to breaking the codes, one of the researchers interviewed, who wrote a book about the whole US codebreaking/intelligence gathering effort in WW2, had access to the offical monthly Navy intel summaries. As far as the Japanese military codes were concerned, the status report was the same every month in 1941: Unable to break the code or read any intercepts. The Japanese diplomatic code was broken before December 7, but the military code took a little while longer.
Just had to throw that in.

I think the author everyone is trying to dig up is Gordon Prange "At Dawn We Slept" He wrote I believe three books on the subject, but I only purchased this one. I believe quite firmly that we knew an attack was coming.....but it was expected at the Phillipines. An argument could be made in favor of the Japanese as we fired the first shot of the war. The USS Ward fired a shot that has been proven to have sunk one of the midget subs over an hour beofre the attack. They also have the radar sighting. The planes were way to far north and the blip much to large to be the flight of B-17's. The folks at Pearl Harbor blew it totally on their own, not that being alerted would have changed things too much. By the time they got an alert initiated they probably would have had a 10 - 15 minute prep time prior to the commecement of hostilities.

First of all I'd lank to thank everybody for your comments. I may very well include some of them in my paper.

A couple of points.

There were several codes in use by the Japanese prior to Dec 7. Purple was the diplomatic code. It was used to send messages to the Japanese ambassadors in Washington for example. The famous 14 part message was in this code. It's true that the Americans were reading this code pretty well prior to Dec 7, but it wouldn't have given any information on the when or where of any attack. The Japanese navy had it's own codes, such as JN-25A or JN-25B. 25-A had been pretty much broken, but it was superseded by 25-B around November 1940. Many revisionist authors mistake 25-A for 25-B and think that we were reading the Japanese naval code prior to Dec 7. I'm not 100% sure of this, yet, but I'm pretty sure it was 25-B that was cracked just prior to Midway to allow us to catch the Japanese there.

War-Machine that program is actually one of the things that prompted me to choose this topic. It was based quite a bit on the book Day of Deceit by Stinnet. That is specifically one of the books I'm using as an example of BAD history. I don't know what Stinnet's purpose was in writing that book, but just the little reading I've done in it so far makes my blood boil. He seems to concentrate every wacky idea about Pearl into one neat package. If you'd like to see more about Stinnet check out http://boards.historychannel.com/forum.jsp?forum=101 for The History Channel's WWII forum. Look for posts by a guy name PJacobsen. Phil was a navy radioman in WWII and was involved in the code breaking team.