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It was Dec. 5, 1941, and Lt. Ted S. Faulkner’s mission would be delicate and dangerous: fly his B-24 Liberator thousands of miles from Pearl Harbor, sneak over Japanese-held islands in the South Pacific, and take photographs — without starting a war or getting shot down.
Tensions between Japan and the United States were at the boiling point. The United States suspected that the Japanese were up to something, but it didn’t know what or where. It looked as if an attack could come in the area of the Philippines. Faulkner’s task was to photograph the Japanese buildup around islands east of there.
“It was a rather delicate mission,” Army Chief of Staff George C. Marshall said later. If detected, the flight might be seen as a hostile act. But his caution was misplaced. Even as Faulkner’s plane landed in Hawaii to prepare for the mission, the massive Japanese fleet was already closing in.
The attack on Pearl Harbor: Unforgettable photos of the bombing
The would-be mission is detailed in a new blog post by National Archives senior archivist Greg Bradsher. And on the 77th anniversary of the Dec. 7 attack, it is another illustration of how the United States was unprepared and tragically wrong about where the main enemy blow would fall.
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