Did America get a warning before the bombing of pearl harbor?

Answer 1

There are more legends about Pearl Harbor than any other event of WWII. None have a shred of evidence, nor even make logical sense. The idea that the Japanese government would have informed Hawaiians of Japanese descent that they were about to attack Pearl Harbor would make no sense, and be an incredibly stupid thing to do. There were absolutely no warnings voiced by them to any US authorities.

There were, however, several "war warning" messages sent to Pearl Harbor by the War Dept. However, they were not specific as to targets, since the War Dept had no specific knowledge. The thinking was that Dutch East Indies and the Phillippines would be the most likely targets, the East Indies because of its raw materials, and the Phillippines because they stood in the way. Pearl Harbor was not considered a likely target because it was so far from Japan and it would be difficult for an enemy task force to go undetected for the long passage, and because the anchorage at Pearl was shallow, too shallow for torpedos dropped from a plane. However, the Japanese had managed to develop a torpedo that would work in shallow water a few months before the attack, and bad weather made it unlikely they would be spotted.

All in all, Pearl Harbor received plenty enough warning to not be caught off guard as it was. The radar picked up the incoming Japanese planes and this was reported to the officer on watch at the central station: "many planes." Unfortunately, that very morning, a flight of B17s was due in, from the same direction and the officer assumed that they were the planes the radar was picking up, and told the radar operator not to worry about it. His big mistake was in not asking the operator what he meant by "many planes," since there were only a dozen or so B17s coming in. The operator's mistake was in reporting "many planes" rather than saying 60 to 70, which is what he saw on the screen.

Also, unfortunately, the egoistic US Army Signal Corps had rejected the offer of IFF (identification, friend or foe) radar from the British.

How much difference the extra 20-30 minutes of warning would have made would be a subject for lengthy debate, but it would be safe to say that the first attack wave would probably have faced the same fairly hot reception that greeted the second wave thirty minutes or so later, since more defending fighters could have gotten into the air and more ships would have had their AAA guns firing.

Far and away the definitive book on Pearl Harbor is "At Dawn We Slept" by Gordon Prange, who spent 38 years researching the event.

i've been told that the Japanese government did declare the war on USA before attacking Pearl Harbour. But the message could not be decoded by the Japanese officials in the USA fast enough - and so the war was started before Japan could make the official notice.

Answer 2

The idea of a surprise attack is that you don't let them know you're coming :P

But some conspiracy nuts would argue that the US Govt. knew about the impending attack before it happened but let it happen as an excuse to enter the war.

Answer 3

No.