Question

The japanese attack on pearl harbor began just before 8am on sunday, december 7, 1941. within a short time, five of eight battleships at pearl harbor were sunk or sinking, with the rest damaged. several other ships and most hawaii-based combat planes were also knocked out, and over 2,400 americans were dead. was the devastation of pearl harbor a result of american unpreparedness, or of superior japanese planning? explain your answer.

Answer 1

It was mainly due to our unpreparedness for such an attack. We were totally unprepared and most of our ammo and equipment were stored somewhere else instead of the ships or in safely stored in locked cages, according to peacetime regulations. Prior to Pearl Harbor, intelligence officers suspected that the Japanese might strike the U.S. territory, but they highly suspect it would be the Philippines, not Hawaii, because no one could have thought that the Japanese would come a thousand of miles from their country to Hawaii and bypass our military bases in islands which were near Japan. At the same time, we were negotiating with the Japanese Empire for peace negotiations while the Japanese secretly planned a major airstrike upon U.S. targets behind our backs. Tokyo have always signaled warnings for peace so we took the offer seriously and without conditions, giving us the impression that we were on the right road. 

Many of the military men at Pearl Harbor as well as the civilians in the city of Honolulu were just living there lives as usual as any regular day until the sounds of planes roared over the Hawaiian skies and blast away the ships and other targets, and sent the city's population in fear and anger. We were not at war and we didn't expect that a foreign nation would came in to strike upon our soil.