Dimitri’s Reviews > At Dawn We Slept: The Untold Story of Pearl Harbor > Status Update

Few people have ever seen the spectacle of a full admiral and a full general squirming like sheepish schoolboys. Add to them an angry Emperor of Japan and you have a truly memorable scene.

So it went on 5 September, when Hirohito turned his unfanthomable dark eyes upon them about "placing war preparations first and diplomatic negations second".

"With that confidence do you say 3 months?" [About a Pacific conquest]

All things considered, with the closing of Japanese consulats in the balmy month of May, without confirmation on the in-or-out position of the Pacific Fleet on X-Day the whole idea of striking at Pearl Harbor could have passed from the realm of reality back into the shades of fantasy whence Yamamoto had recently managed to lift it.

In dispatches between Tokyo & other adresses than Washington the Japanese came out from behind their fans & showed the real face of agression.
Japan wanted the resources of SE Asia so badly it would fight any combination of powers to secure them: the bear, the lion and the eagle while still entwined in the dragon's tail.
Because the State Department had access through Magic, it had a good idea of Japans intentions.

"Any marked advance by the US Navy would be more likely to deter Japan from going to war than the maintenance of the present very large fleet at Hawaii"
A remarkable British opinion: the Japanese navy danced to no tune of Hitler's & its government was infinitely less concerned about serving German interests than the United States was about bolstering Britain.

The Pacific fleet had only 11 tankers, 4 capable of fueling at sea. To get an idea of the needs: "a single destroyer at full speed went dry in 30-40h"
[ how many carrier group hours can a tanker ship?].

Every teaspoon of oil had to be shipped across 2.000 miles, stored in plain sight above ground. The possibility of a tank catching fire accidentally or by enemy action was a recurring Navy nightmare.

Here was the bedrock of American naval policy at the time. No illusions about the Japanese tiger, but let's not poke him into action while Hitlers killer sharks infest the Atlantic. Keep Britain above water -that was the prime objective.

On the other hand, all things considered, the view from a mountain was much more important than the establishment of an efficient radar screen for the detection of an approach.

The fixation with sabotage was understandable. The Islands population included some 160.000 Japanese of which about 37.000 were foreign-born. The US had seen to what good use Hitler had put the discontent & aspirations of minorities. Below the surface the Japanese on Hawaii presented an entirely different picture from the European minorities, but Marshall & [garisson commander] Short were soldiers, not sociologists.