Sept. 24, 1941: The “bomb plot” message from Japanese naval intelligence to Japan’s consul general in Honolulu requesting a grid of exact locations of ships in Pearl Harbor is deciphered. The information is not shared with the Hawaii’s Adm. Kimmel and Gen. Short.
Nov. 27, 1941: Kimmel and Short receive “war warning” from Washington indicating a Japanese attack, possibly on an American target in the Pacific, is likely.
Morning of Dec. 7, 1941: U.S. intelligence decodes a message pointing to Sunday morning as a deadline for some kind of Japanese action. The message is delivered to the Washington high command before 9 a.m. Washington time, more than 4 hours before the attack on Pearl Harbor. But the message is not forwarded to the Pearl Harbor commanders and finally arrives only after the attack has begun.
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Is this sequence of events proof the US government was complacent, or even complicit, in an attack on the US, or were they simply standard operating procedure for a Navy in the middle of a burgeoning world war, awash in deliberately misleading messages from Japan, and completely surprised by an unprovoked attack? Brett and Phil discuss the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor
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