Pearl Harbor Attack
December 7th, 2022
81 years ago today on December 7th, 1941, Japanese Navy aircraft attacked Pearl Harbor in Oahu, Hawaii, causing the United States to enter into World War II. The next day after the attack, December 8th, President Roosevelt gave his famous December 7th, 1941 Day of Infamy speech, which I have included probably the most famous quote from: "Yesterday, December 7, 1941—a date which will live in infamy—the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan." The Pearl Harbor attack caught virtually everybody by surprise, from the naval intelligence agencies to almost every person the the United States.
The Pearl Harbor attack was nearly caught by the United States government due to the fact that we had broken the Japanese radio code, known as the Purple Machine (see center picture). We caught a coded message from Tokyo, Japan to the Japanese Embassy in Washington, DC around October 1941, but due to the time decoding it and translating it, it was early December before it was sent to Pearl Harbor - but it arrived too late. The telegram to Pearl Harbor stated this: "AIRRAID ON PEARL HARBOR X THIS IS NO DRILL."
Breaking the Japanese radio code had started right after World War I, which was at the time was done using a machine known as the Red Machine (see left picture). We were using that deciphered code to spy on the Japanese until 1929 when Secretary of State Henry L. Stimson learned that the U.S. was spying on other countries. He said "Gentlemen don't read other's mail" and banned all funding to the spy agency which had been known as the Black Chamber.
The Pearl Harbor attack killed over 2,000 people and sank 16 ships including all 8 battleships. Fortunately despite this, the submarine area didn't get hit by a shingle bomb. In another stroke of luck, all three of the Pacific fleet carriers (Enterprise, Lexington, and Saratoga) were not present, which was an extremely rare occurrence. This ended up ensuring that the Japanese would not win World War II. Those carriers slipped away on December 5th at around 1700 hours (in civilian time, 5:00PM).
The Pearl Harbor attack was the start of the Japanese conquest of the Pacific Ocean and within 48 hours of the attack, the Japanese were attacking Wake Island and the Philippines. The Japanese conquest of the Pacific was slowed down after the U.S. Marines liberated Guadalcanal in Solomon Islands, and then was stopped after the marines liberated Midway Island.
