Pearl Harbor was easily one of the most engaging events to ever happen to the United States. When Pearl Harbor was bombed by Japan, that marked and forced America’s entrance into World War II. Pearl Harbor was where the U.S. kept a major part of their naval fleet which is why the bombing of Pearl Harbor was so devastating. Japan’s only way to have a successful attack on the U.S. like this was a surprise attack, which was exactly what […]
A date which will live in infamy, according to President Franklin Roosevelt has changed December 7, 1941from any ordinary day to the day that the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and reluctantly drew the United States into World War II. Until that attack, the United States was sending reinforcements and supplies to Britain to help with their defense against the German advancing lines. The allies consisted of Britain, USSR, and United States, but the axis consisted of Germany, Italy, and Japan. […]
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On December 7, 1941 Japanese planes streaked across the horizon around eight a.m., over the islands of Hawaii. Shortly after the Japanese arrival, bombs began dropping and explosions and shots rocked Pearl Harbor. Military personnel and troops rushed to action, but it was too late to stop the major destruction and carnage of Pearl Harbor. What seemed to be a Japanese victory over the U.S. turned out to be quite the opposite (Pearl Harbor 2009). Although the outcome and some […]
Although it is known that war is present in society, it was inhumane of Japan to spring a surprise attack with little warning on the U.S. It was assumed that Japan gave the U.S. plenty of clues to prepare them for the upcoming attack which was clearly not the case due to the lack of preparation in the U.S. on December 7. Despite years of warnings of a growing threat, in both 2001 and 1941 the world’s most capable intelligence […]
Was President Roosevelt right to ask congress in the famous Day of Infamy Speech to declare such a war (PPT)? The events surrounding the declaration, mainly the bombing of Pearl Harbor, left such an impact on the forces of American military, I believe that President Roosevelt and Congress had no other choice. In my recent watching of the movie Pearl Harbor, and even though there are historical errors within the movie, I felt as if the movie gave the impression […]
In my opinion, I believe the attack on Pearl Harbor was a surprise. To support my theory, on December 7,1941, two planes came crashing, and the planes were sent at different times on that day. One plane was sent at 8:00 PM while the other was sent at 9:00 PM. By 1:00 PM, the carriers, that launched the planes from 274 miles off the coast of Oahu, were heading back to Japan. Leaving behind, 2,403 casualties, 188 destroyed planes, and […]
A foretime of the experience of Pearl Harbor, Japan and the United States had escalating tenseness for exceptionally most of the decagon. That lead up to the start of World War 2, which Japan permit a consternation invasion on the morning of Sunday, December 7, 1941. America had not enrolled the Second World War; yet, because they were still reeling from dejection expected to the First World War. America did still possess the strongest naval fleets. From that perspective, Japan […]
Pearl Harbor is a U.S. navy base that was attacked in December 7, 1941, the base at the time was a dock for battleships. Just before 8 am on there were waves of planes ready to attack pearl harbor by surrounding the navy base, they managed to destroy or damage nearly 20 American naval vessels, including eight battleships, and over 300 airplanes. Over 2,400 people were killed in this incident and about 1,000 people have been injured. A leader of […]
The Pearl Harbor Address to the Nation was an impacting speech that affected the course of the world’s history. This speech to the members of the Senate and the House of Representatives was a striking response towards the attack on Pearl Harbor by the Japanese Empire. President Roosevelt had been a senator in the New York Legislature, an assistant secretary to the Navy, and the Governor of New York, thus as an experienced politician, Roosevelt knew how to properly address […]
Did you know that Pearl Harbor was one of the causes for the U.S join the war? There is one question that many people ask: What was Pearl Harbor? There are the points of what it was, who planned the attack, what happened, What things were left unfinished, and what is it now. There are many more questions about Pearl Harbor, but if this essay covered them all it may become a book. It will also show what people will […]
The Spanish American war of 1898 ended Spain’s empire in the Western Hemisphere and gave the United States the position as Pacific power. When the United States won the victory in this war it produced a peace treaty that made the Spanish give up their claims to Cuba and to cede sovereignty over Guam, Puerto Rico, and the Phillipines to the United States. The United States also gained Hawaii during this conflict. The United States was interested in Hawaii because […]
December 7th, 1941 marked the day Pearl Harbor was bombed by Japanese bombers. Pearl Harbor would forever be remembered as the day that brought huge hardships to many people in the United States, this attack would also lead the United States into WWII. So why don’t we go back in time before the attack, and look at the reasons why the Japanese decided to attack the United States. Before the attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States had been constantly […]
Imagine your average Sunday morning. For the sailors in the Naval Fleet stationed at Pearl Harbor it was an average Sunday. Everyone dressed in their pressed white shorts, a white t-shirt, and a sailor’s hat. While out in the Pacific the Japanese Armada gathered, the force consisted of six aircraft carriers, two battleships, two heavy cruisers, and many more forces to aid the attack. This was definitely a planned sneak attack, meant to hurt our navy/military. This attack did catch […]
The United States did not want to enter WWII due to the military force being weak after fighting in WWI, general opinion wanted neutrality, and the government did not want to enter unless directly threatened or attacked (Why, 2017). However, on December 7, 1941, Japan forced the hand of the United States by attacking Pearl Harbor at Oahu, Hawaii. President Roosevelt appealed to Congress to declare war on Japan, stating that December 7, 1941 would be a date which will […]
At a time in history when there was tension rising between the United States and Japan because Japan’s military forces had invaded countries aggressively for their resources and told them to stop. It was December 7, 1941 and Japan decided to bomb Pearl Harbor, and defeat the US Pacific Fleet to obtain power and gain resources. This tragedy slightly weakened our military forces, killed a lot of innocent people, and left the U.S. in shock. This triumph event is significant […]
One of the most major events in American history is the bombing of Pearl Harbor. This bombing affected the lives of many American citizens across the nation. Not only were many Americans killed, it served as a major accomplishment for the Axis forces during World War II. The bombing of Pearl Harbor was an important event in U.S. history that affected most of the nation and brought America into World War II. Many American citizens wanted Hawaii to become a […]
Pearl Harbor is a naval base in Hawaii near Honolulu in the middle of the Pacific Ocean in the United States. Pearl Harbor rests closer to the US borders in terms of mileage compared to Japan (Hoyt, 2008). It is 2,000 miles away from the United states mainland but twice as far from Japan. Pearl Harbor came to the limelight after a surprise military attack against the U.S naval base by the Japanese forces on 7th December 1941 (Hoyt, 2008). […]
In December 1941, Pearl Harbor was assaulted by the Japanese. It was the result of a progression of occasions which conveyed strain among Japan and America to breaking point. Japan was a nation developing in power and stature and America before long came to understand that this development could demonstrate a danger to them. America meant to stop Japan’s development in its tracks as they understood that in the event that the circumstance was left to advance any longer, the […]
The 7th of December marked the day that President Franklin Roosevelt described as the date which will live in infamy, the Japanese attacked the U.S naval base in Hawaii Pearl Harbor without warning. The devastating assault resulted in many American casualties that turned the citizens of America furious and that was reflected in the president’s declaration of war against Japan. The unforgettable day in 1941 in which Pearl Harbor was attacked affected the country’s participation in the second World War, […]
The road to war between the United States of America and Japan began on the surprise aerial attack on the United States Navy base in Pearl Harbor on December 7th 1941. This was the first step that brought the might United States into the Second World War Relations between the two countries started to deteriorate in the early 1930’s when Japan started to become aggressive in Asia, mainly in Manchuria in 1931 and tried to start conquering the rest of […]
On December 7, 1941, 361 planes launched from six Japanese aircraft carriers and delivered a surprise attack on the American naval base and airfields at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii (Why Did Japan Attack Pearl Harbor?). Pearl Harbor is a very important event in American History and changed history. The attack made sure that the United States would enter WWII with the Allies against Japan. After the fatal attack on December 7 1941, Americans did everything in their power to save their […]
Throughout many times in history, nations have been challenged with the difficult decision of whether to engage in war with a foreign nation. Not only do these decisions affect the current citizens of the country, but they effect the future generations to come. It is not an easy decision to make. Many nations are often unsure and the decision is usually made too late. This often results in the expense of thousands of lives, shown through the devastation of Pearl […]
What was the attack on Pearl Harbor. Pearl Harbor was a Bombing on the the naval base in hawaii by Japan which led to the entrance of the us in WW11. Japan planned this for 20 years. They had planned to attack Pearl Harbor for 2 decades. It was one of the largest naval bases in US history. If they bombed it they thought they would have all the power and we would just live in a depression. They were […]
President Franklin D Roosevelt, called the attack on December 7th, 1941 a date which will live in infamy(Unity in Congress). The Attack on Pearl Harbor was neither a success nor a failure for Japan and the Axis Powers during World War II. Japanese forces attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7th, 1941. This attack took place on the United States’ Naval Base in Oahu, Hawaii. Despite the significance of the attack on Pearl Harbor to American soil, the information that was […]
The bombing of Pearl Harbor is a day in history that defines our ultimate involvement in World War II. December 7, 1941 was a most unfortunate day as the people of Honolulu were attacked by Japanese Navy Air Services landing bombs on Pearl Harbor just before 8 in the morning. ‘There was no other option,’ Shigenori Togo, Japanese Foreign Minister in 1941, justified the Japanese attack on the US naval base at Pearl Harbor, 78 years ago. An aggression that […]
It’s early morning, almost eight o’clock, when the residents of Pearl Harbor wake up. Walking outside, they hear an odd noise and look up to see Japanese planes dropping giant bombs out of the sky onto their home. The Japanese executed the attack in the midst of World War II. There were thousands of casualties, hundreds of ships destroyed, and the United States entered the war as a result. On December 7, 1941, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, which […]
The attack on Pearl Harbor happened on December 7, 1941, when the president of the United States, President Roosevelt decided to move the U.S navy fleet to Hawaii from California as a move to threaten Japan. The reason why Japan was trying to expand over the Pacific ocean was since they lacked natural resources like oil, minerals and steel. The United States, noticing Japan’s aggression, decided to move further west towards the Pacific Ocean, cutting off all businesses between the […]
The U.S. imposes trade sanctions, followed by an embargo,targeting the Japan’s military aggression in Asia.These actions by the Japanese and the Americans led up to the attack and the later nuclear bombing in 1945. This situation started when Japan were trying to make their empire stronger when they try to take over some part of china. The attack on Pearl Harbor was a bombing on the American by the Japanese on Dec.7,1941.The Japanese bombed the Americans,because the americans was given […]
In the history of war, no event has had quite as much controversy as the dropping of the atomic bombs on Japan at the end of World War II. A world-changing event, they ushered in not only the atomic age, but the nuclear arms race and the Cold War. The bombs were incredibly powerful. In 1952, Hubert Alyea said that ?the atom bomb is an entirely new, revolutionary weapon, 10,000,000 times more powerful than modern high explosives.’ (Alyea 349). The […]
How could a bomb wipe out five-square miles of buildings and kill tens of thousands of people? The Atomic Bomb or nuclear bombs are powerful weapons that use nuclear reactions as their source of explosive energy. Atomic bombs have been used only twice”both times by the United States against Japan at the end of World War II. The Atomic Bomb to date is the deadliest weapon to be discovered so far. When the Japanese Combined Fleet bombed Pearl Harbor, which […]
The United States (U.S.) Intelligence Community (I.C.) is celebrated for a wide range of accomplishments and successes. It has also been defamed by numerous failures and unmet challenges. Two scenarios highlight these challenges. Their final outcomes and/or positioning at the epicenter of critical events that contributed to the evolution of the current U.S. National Security Strategy are part of the historical record, which gives narration to hard-sought and hard-fought lessons in the evolution of adaptive counterintelligence.
Between 1937 and 1941, conflicts between China and Japan continued to grow, impacting U.S. relationships with both nations and “ultimately contributing to pushing the United States toward war with Japan and Germany” (U.S. Department of State, n.d.). The full-scale conflict between the U.S. and Japan had loomed on the horizon for so long that each nation, as early as the 1920s, had developed plans for large-scale combat; however, tensions did not begin to escalate until Japan invaded Manchuria in 1931. The following ten years found Japan maintaining its expansionist thrust into China, leading to a major conflict between the two nations in 1937. Japan spent considerable effort and resources to isolate China and attain a sustainable flow of resources leading to victory on the mainland; the ‘Southern Operation’ was orchestrated to enable these efforts (Barnhart, 1987).
Early in 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt re-positioned the U.S. Pacific Fleet to Pearl Harbor from its previous location in San Diego, CA, and ordered an enhanced forward presence in the Philippines to discourage and turn back Japan’s escalation of force. Japanese senior military leadership incorrectly presumed any attack on the United Kingdom’s Southeast Asian Colonies would draw the U.S. into war, and a crippling preemptive attack seemed the only feasible course of action in order to avoid U.S. Navy involvement. Japanese war planners also considered invading the Philippines as necessary.
On the U.S. side, War Plan Orange, a series of Joint U.S. Army and Navy war plans for dealing with war in Japan in the years following the First World War, envisioned a 40,000-man elite force to safeguard the Philippines. General Douglas MacArthur opposed this plan and felt a force of at least 4000,000 would be necessary. U.S. planners forecasted that the Philippines would be vacated at the outbreak of war, and those same orders were passed down to Admiral Thomas Hart, commander of the Asiatic Fleet, by late 1941 (Barnhart, 1987).
This Philippine focus, coupled with a series of other events, ultimately led to the attack on Pearl Harbor, a major catalyst for World War II. The attack operation on Pearl Harbor was led by the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service against the U.S. Naval Base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941, at 07:48 am. Imperial Japanese Military Leadership referred to the attack under different code names (e.g., Hawaii Operation, Operation A.I., and Operation Z, etc.) during its planning (French, 1999), a testament to prevailing counterintelligence practices of the era (Weiner, 2002).
The attack on Pearl Harbor is still considered one of the biggest intelligence failures in the U.S. Intelligence Community’s history, attributable to complicated counterintelligence challenges at the time, especially from a National Security standpoint. The U.S. military failed to bolster force protection measures associated with the U.S. Pacific Fleet, although it had intercepted/deciphered the Japanese Diplomatic Code, providing an intelligence picture so comprehensive it was deemed unprecedented by the military leadership of this time period (and with a week’s worth of lead time). One of the major factors in this catastrophic counterintelligence failure was the predominant intelligence-sharing practices of this era, a time when information was divided, hoarded, blocked, and or scattered (Friedman, 2012).
Cold War Era
The Tet Offensive, officially titled The General Offensive and Uprising of Tet Mau Than 1968 by North Vietnam and the National Liberation Front, was a major military offensive of the Vietnam War. The military campaign began on January 30, 1968, and included highly-coordinated attacks by forces of the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese People’s Army of Vietnam against the forces of the South Vietnamese Army of the Republic of Vietnam, the U.S. Armed Forces, and their allies (History.com, 2009). The campaign was a coordinated series of North Vietnamese attacks on more than 100 cities and military bases in South Vietnam to promote rebellion among the South Vietnamese population and discourage the U.S. Government’s commitment to the Vietnam War (Nguyen, 2018).
The Tet Offensive is still considered a decisive event in the Vietnam War – “a military loss for North Vietnam but a political victory, as the shock of the attack began to turn American public opinion against the conflict” (Nguyen, 2018). In full breach of a holiday truce allowing both sides to celebrate Tet, thousands of soldiers and Vietcong guerrillas were ordered into cities all over South Vietnam, including Saigon, home of the U.S. Embassy. The North’s strategy was coordinated ambushes of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam and its U.S. allies to inspire a general uprising that would overthrow the government of the South.
Although U.S. and South Vietnamese forces managed to fend off the attacks, media coverage of the massive offensive shocked the American citizenry, resulting in lessening public support for the war effort. The Tet Offensive is recognized as the decisive event in the history of the Vietnam War – a military loss for North Vietnam but a political victory, as the shock of the attack began to turn American public opinion against the conflict. Despite heavy casualties (estimated to be in the tens of thousands), North Vietnam secured a strategic and moral victory with the Tet Offensive, as the attacks marked the beginning of the lengthy, painful American withdrawal from the area (History.com, 2009).
Congressional inquiries shortly after the Tet Offensive concluded that U.S. and South Vietnamese military officers, as well as intelligence analysts, failed to fully anticipate the “intensity, coordination, and timing of the enemy attack” (Nguyen, 2018) despite multiple warnings. Navy librarian Glenn E. Helm notes that disregard for intelligence collection, language barriers, and a misunderstanding of enemy strategy played particularly prominent roles in the intelligence debacle (Friedman, 2012). Still, “Americans almost succeeded in anticipating their opponents’ moves in time to avoid the military consequences of surprise” (Wirtz, 1991).
Throughout history, intelligence and counterintelligence organizations have been created during crises and disbanded during peacetime. While the Attack on Pearl Harbor and the Tet Offensive are vastly different, both incidents forced policymakers to look at counterintelligence not just from a tactical or espionage perspective but from a National Security perspective. Following the attack on Pearl Harbor and with the onset of World War II, the need for a full-time intelligence and counterintelligence organization was identified and brought to fruition finally by the U.S. Congress in the passing of the National Security Act of 1947. However, the ever-changing environment, including new threats to every war-fighting domain, will force the U.S. Defense Strategy to continue to evolve. The U.S. Government’s approach to counterintelligence will be at the forefront of those efforts.
Efforts will inevitably be geared towards not only “deepening understanding of foreign intelligence entities’ plans, intentions, capabilities, tradecraft, and operations targeting U.S. national interests and sensitive information and assets” but a means to disrupt them, as stated in the first and second mission objectives in the National CI Strategy (Hess, 2018).
