Did you know that Pearl Harbour was attacked twice by the Japaneses? Yes in March of 1942 two specially designed seaplanes island hopped from Japan to a secret meeting spot 150 miles North of Pear Harbour where they were refuelled by a tanker submarine. The two seaplanes press on their attack in the mist of real bad weather. Yes radar did pick them up and a squadron of P 40s were scrambled, but also got confused. Fortunately, the two Jap pilots had to fly instrument and could not find the Naval Base. One pilot went real low and spotted the ships but had to turn around for a proper bomb run. He missed and all fell into the sea. The other seaplane was so lost that he dropped his bombs onto a wooded area causing little damage. Historian theorised that this was such a great embarrassment that the US could not protect Pear Harbour and that is why little is spoken about this event. Both Jap pilots made it home.
It’s PEARL HARBOR we don’t spell it like the British do.
Interesting topic though and I did not know that Pearl Harbor had been attacked by those no-good cultists twice. Maybe that’s why they got two nukes instead of one 
Check this link
A Japanese submarine was sunk one day before the “attack.”
(Paul Harvey said that.)
And yet it was touted as a “surprise.”
He quotes General La May “If America had lost, I would be a war criminal” He uses first hand evidence in his book. Should be in the Iwo Jima post!
Watch out for the spelling, again.
It probably had more to do with the Americans having only 2 bombs. Fat man and little boy were significantly different designs so this was an opportunity to field test the prototypes.
The American air commander, General Curtis Lemay, excluded Hiroshima and Nagasaki from conventional bomb attacks so they could accurately assess nuclear bomb damage. Dropping two bombs was planned for some time.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki were two Christian centers and had a high ratio of Christian residents; the former was the base for German Protestant missionary activities and the latter traditional Catholic stronghold. Coincidence?
The Freedom of Information Act has since been used by Robert Stinnett to release information not available in previous Pearl Harbor investigations. Stinnett, a veteran of the Pacific War, conducted 17 years of research involving more than 200,000 documents and interviews. Stinnett concludes that: 1) the United States provoked Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor; 2) U.S. intelligence knew that the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was coming; and 3) Adm. Kimmel and Gen. Short were deprived of this intelligence.10
Stinnett states: “Seven Japanese naval broadcasts intercepted between November 28 and December 6 [1941] confirmed that Japan intended to start the war and that it would begin at Pearl Harbor. The evidence that poured into American intelligence stations is overpowering. All the broadcasts have one common denominator: none ever reached Admiral Kimmel.”
In addition, the Jap Naval Code was also being read.
It was the third attack on Pearl Harbor. The first attack was a mock attack by the Japanese conducted by the US Navy itself in 1932. The results of which is what informed the decision to maintain the San Diego harbor as the home of the pacific fleet.
The results of that mock attack were all planes destroyed on the ground before they could even take off (which is what essentially happened in the real attack nine years later) and the realization that the harbor was too shallow, with too narrow a choke point at its entrance.
On many occasions I’ve read that FDR was aware of the impending attack and did nothing to intercept the Japanese. I don’t know how true that is or not. I believe it stems from the days when I was still very much a liberal and would read books and periodicals that I wouldn’t touch now. Is anyone familiar with this theory in greater depth?
Yeah, that’s in part what I was just referring to above.
Admiral Richardson was in charge of the pacific fleet, he was aware of the mock attack in 1932, and the reasoning behind the PF being stationed at San Diego and not PH.
FDR ordered him to move the fleet to Pearl Harbor and Richardson was so incensed by it that he flew to DC and personally confronted FDR and was summarily fired.
The best information on FDR’s provocations to both Japan and Germany, and the reasoning behind providing a soft target can be found in SOW Stimson’s diaries which have been long available.
Btw, this isn’t a liberal conservative thing, FDR is the darling of the liberal democrats, they weren’t out writing books to denigrate him.
PC Roberts sums it up
Although Imperial Japan was allied with Germany, the top echelon of Japan and the Japanese Imperial military were lapdogs of the banksters in Anglo-America. This explains Japan’s behavior since 1868, including its war with Russia (to weaken the Czar), invasion of Siberia (to help Bolsheviks), invasion of China (to let Mao take over China) and you know the rest of the story since 1945.
It was supposed to be a minor harassing attack that would force the US to keep more assets around PH hampering our efforts elsewhere. The other purpose was to attempt to get intel on how successful the PH recovery efforts were and how rapidly the capital ships were being raised and repaired.
It failed miserably which is why it’s given little note in history.
Had they been as successful as Doolittle’s Raid on Tokyo it would be given a great deal of significance in history.
Their naval code was only partially cracked and not until just before the battle of midway.
The crucial part of the diplomatic message that if we’d intercepted it in time could have had our forces prepared for the attack was delayed and not transmitted to the Japanese Embassy in DC until after the attack had actually begun.
The Americans had cracked the Japanese code, while the Japanese never figured out the language used by the Navajo code talkers.
The Naval code was not broken until just before Midway.
Even if we’d completely broken the code before PH once their fleet broke port and separated into the two units, one bound for the Aleutians and the other bound for Pearl, they were running on complete radio silence so there would have been nothing to intercept giving them forewarning.
The diplomatic code was not broken and even if it had been the final message announcing the attack on Pearl was not delivered to the Japanese ambassador until after the attack.
FDR deployed the fleet to PH in hope of blunting Japanese expansion. Richardson objected die to the lack of support resources in the islands compared to San Diego. FDR fired him because no one was allowed to question king Franklin. 
In 1941 the standard naval warfare doctrine was combat between battleships. The Japanese pioneered the application of air power as the deciding factor. This orthodoxy combined with the belief PH’s shallow water made it impractical to air drop torpedoes led to miscalculation of the fleets safety. Under the direction of Admiral Yamamoto the Japanese outfitted their striking force torpedoes with breakaway wooden fins so they wouldn’t sink as much when dropped from aircraft.