I had a bad book that stated that Japan would attack at Pearl Harbor. It was printed in 1934.
Japan was using Pearl Harbor for pilot bombing-attack training for at least that long before the actual attack, they had a full size mock-up apparently. None of this was a big secret.
During war games in 1938, the American Navy “hostile” forces led by Admiral Harry E. Yarnell “attacked” Pearl Harbor just as the Japanese did three years later.
We showed them how to do it.
“I had a bad book that stated that Japan would attack at Pearl Harbor. It was printed in 1934.”
The large population of ethnic Japanese people in the Hawaiian Islands made it natural for many people to assume Japan would have an interest in the Japanese invasion and conquest of those islands. However, those natural assumptions did not go so far as to explain how a Japanese naval invasion fleet was expected to accomplish such an invasion given certain operational limitations. Indeed, all proposals to invade the Hawaiian Islands were rejected on the basis of the operational limitations during the war, but the plan to raid the Hawaiian Islands was adopted given Yamamoto’s assurances the operational difficulties with underway refueling of the strike force and the problems with using aerial torpedoes in shallow harbor waters would be resolved.
Although the Japanese Navy had been experimenting with underway refueling for many years, it had not made actual operational use of such procedures until the Kido Butai embarked on its mission to raid Pearl Harbor and the Hawaiian Islands. Beginning in October 1941, the Japanese Navy prepared to use such refueling methods to make it possible for the shorter-ranged destroyers escorting the strike force to make the full voyage alongside the carriers. Nagumo’s decision to withdraw before launching a third wave attack conserved enough fuel to avoid most of the need to refuel other than about 1,300 tons out of the 70,000 tons loaded aboard the rendezvousing oilers.
Another limitation on the Japanese operational capabilities was the inability to launch aerial torpedoes against target ships in a shallow harbor. Aerial torpedoes normally were dropped and sank to some depth before rising closer to the surface on its run to strike the target ship. The British, however, had just recently used an experimental aerial torpedo to attack the Italian fleet in a shallow harbor. Knowing such an attack was possible, the Japanese Navy conducted its own secret experiments to adapt the aerial torpedoes for use in a shallow harbor without diving too deeply upon launch only weeks before the attack upon the Pacific Fleet in Pearl Harbor.
Given these and other apparent operational limitations, Japanese and American military leaders tended to regard a Japanese invasion or raid upon the Hawaiian Islands as not feasible enough to constitute a likely probability. Yamamoto and his staff disagreed with such assumptions and became determined to secretly develop the means to overcome those operational difficulties, and they did so to the surprise of many military leaders in Japan and around the world.