"BobMac" wrote in message
...
Keith Willshaw wrote:


There was no definite signals information pointing to
Pearl Harbor for the simple and adequate reason that
the Japanese never transmitted any. Not only did
the fleet maintain radio silence but fake messages
were transmitted from the region around Japan
to make people belive it was still in home waters.


Keith, IIRC, there was a German request to their Washington embassy for
some information on specific topics, which was intercepted several
months before Pearl Harbour (by the Brits, _I_ _think_ - it's been a
while.) About two thirds of the request concerned information about
American facilities and units in the Pacific theatre. It was obvious
that the original writer of the requests did not speak English, and
there was a strong likelihood (based on mistakes in nomenclature) that
the original writer was a native Japanese speaker.


It would be surprising if the Japanese had not been collecting
data on US fleet anchorages, I am sure the US Naval attache
in Tokyo was doing the same thing

(I saw this quoted in a general-audience book on Secret Intelligence.
They used it as an exercise in analysis of data.)

The obvious conclusion was that Somebody was going to do Something
pretty soon to American units or facilities in the Pacific. That
somebody would be an aggressive nation more or less allied with Germany,
and with the ability to mount some kind of an offensive in the Pacific,
where the common language was Japanese. (Hmm... who could it be, who
Could it be?)


That much was known, a war warning had been issued to all
US commands days before the attack, everyone KNEW
a war was coming, the question was where and when and the
smart money was on a joint attack on the Phillipines and
Malaya. Thats why Force Z had been dispatched after all.

As for Pearl I am sure the USN had detailed plans of the IJN bases
in the home islands and Truk, this could hardly be read as a
warning of an early intent to attack them without warning.

The document was dismissed as unimportant by, IIRC, the head of the FBI,
on the grounds that he didn't like the messenger who brought it. Now, I
don't believe in conspiracy theories, but stupid decisions for
irrelevant reasons, I don't just believe in - I've seen it done!


The FBI had no juridstiction in matters of naval policy and
would have been right not to be surprised IMHO. Naval
attaches are supposed to ask questions, its what they are
paid for. The real scandal was how little had been done to put
Pearl Harbor on a war footing even after the war warning
had been released.

Keith