Yeah, there was no surprise attack, many in the government were fully aware of the plan before it was even executed. I mean come on man, you can trust the government it’s not like they try to rig elections or anything like that.
We had cracked the Japanese code and knew about the Pearl Harbor attack far in advance. However, giving alert would have clued the Japs in to this fact, and they would have changed codes. We already knew we were going to war with them, and being able to fully decode any "secret" messages they were sending was too sweet to pass up. So instead of warning the fleet, we just made sure our fancy new aircraft carriers were all out at sea, and that the only ships in the harbor were obsolete old battleships. If this type of command decision seems cold to you, consider that the lives lost in the Pearl Harbor attack were carefully weighed against those that could potentially be killed if we lost the ability to read the Jap cipher. Those men died for the greater good.
Yeah, there was no surprise attack, many in the government were fully aware of the plan before it was even executed. I mean come on man, you can trust the government it’s not like they try to rig elections or anything like that.
We had cracked the Japanese code and knew about the Pearl Harbor attack far in advance. However, giving alert would have clued the Japs in to this fact, and they would have changed codes. We already knew we were going to war with them, and being able to fully decode any "secret" messages they were sending was too sweet to pass up. So instead of warning the fleet, we just made sure our fancy new aircraft carriers were all out at sea, and that the only ships in the harbor were obsolete old battleships. If this type of command decision seems cold to you, consider that the lives lost in the Pearl Harbor attack were carefully weighed against those that could potentially be killed if we lost the ability to read the Jap cipher. Those men died for the greater good.