1) The Japanese code most penetrated prior to the war was the diplomatic code (called Purple), not the naval code. Thus we read the Japanese ultimatum sent to Wahington before before it was presented to the State Dept, but no way were we "reading 90% of Japanese naval messages within hours of transmission in 1941" as quoted in a review at the amazon.com link. I doubt that level of penetration was acheived even in 1945.
2) Every Japanese source I ever read all say strict radio silence was maintained to the point of removing crystals from transmitters. They knew it would have suicidal to transmit any signals that could give away their location.
3) The war Roosevelt wanted was with Germany, not Japan. The Axis was not a formal alliance as we think of it. There was no guarentee Hitler would declear war on us in support of Japan, and in fact he did not until 11 Dec. War with Germany could probably have have brought about just using U.S. merchants to ship Lend Lease material to Britain and letting German subs sink enough to rouse public anger.
4) If we knew the Japanese were coming and when, why not just change our search plane patterns and "discover" them just prior to launch? I think most Americans would have recognized the presense of a Japanese carrier force in our home waters as an act of war. In others words, if we wanted war, there other ways to go without allowing the destruction of the fleet.
5) Roosevelt could not have pulled anything like this off without help from the military itself, and I refuse to believe they would have complied.
The only thing I agree on with this author is that "Pearl Harbor" was a really terrible movie.
Sorry, both the diplomatic codes (purple) and the naval (JN-25) were totally compromised to the US. Our interception of Japanese naval traffic, in compromised Japanese naval code resulted in some telling achievements, such as the victory at Midway, and the (and it cannot be put otherwise) assassination of Admiral of the Combined Japanese Fleet Isoruku Yamamoto. Both these happened well before 1945, or even 1944 for that matter (Midway was in 1942, and the assassination in 1943, I believe...)
the infowarrior
Do ye want to know why I speak with such words? Simple: I'm a Canadian. Not involved one way or the other.
- Cheers!
As to radio signals, there were intercepts of the Japanese warships calling up oilers for refueling, fleet maintenace signals that were intercepted.
Roosevelt arranged the Pearl Harbor attack as surely as Yammamoto. What he did not anticipate, is that the Japanese would do such a fine job.
Regards.