[BroJoeK]

"I am in the middle of At Dawn We Slept, by Gordon Prange. He describes the war games simulating a Japanese attack on Hawaii in the May 1941. The problem was that General Short saw it as an assault on the islands and not the fleet. He saw his mission as defending against an amphibious attack backed by surface ships. "

I tried googling up reports on US Navy exercises during the 1930s.

According to this link: Admiral Yarnell attacked Pearl Harbor with Lexington and Saratoga, February 1932.

According to Wikipedia there was a 1933 US Navy exercise attack on Pearl Harbor

This report: 1933 & 1939 Naval exercises says: "The Navy held similar games involving a Pearl Harbor attack by enemy aircraft carriers in 1933 and in 1939. In the 1939 exercise, aircraft from the carrier USS Saratoga succeeded in a surprise attack on a Sunday morning. The attacking aircraft “sank” several ships at anchor in Pearl Harbor and attacked Hickam, Wheeler and Ford Island airfields before returning safely to their carrier."

This link says, Admiral Kimmel sent Fleet to find Japanese on November 23, 1941 but was ordered by Washington to return to Pearl Harbor.

Somewhere else I read that the US Navy practiced attacking Pearl Harbor every year during the 1930s. Seems pretty clear that the idea of such an attack was not so far from the thinking of top US officials.

[GreenLanternCorps]

While an attach on Pearl Harbor had been wargamed several times, the US expected the main Japanese thrust to be at the Philippines, Malaya, and the Dutch East Indies, which in fact was what happened.

The Pearl Harbor strike was a one shot given the distance involved. There was opposition to it in the Imperial Japanese Navy. Yammamoto lucked out in having two brilliant officers, Fuchida and Genda, to plan and lead the attack. Under other circumstances it might not have worked.