The Bomb Plot Message Summary

650 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Espionage in WW 2

“The Bomb Plot message” was a dispatch from Tokyo to its Consulate in Honolulu that the United States intercepted on September 24, 1941. This “strictly secret” message issued instructions to report gridded locations and detailed information on all ships in the waters of Pearl Harbor. The message was translated in Washington on October 9 by Colonel Rufus C. Bratton who found it significant as no previous Japanese intercepts requested or reported gridded positions of ships in the harbor. Bratton shared the message with his chief, General Miles, who interpreted the evidence through the confirmation bias lens and failed to analyze it as anything other than routine Japanese traffic regarding U.S. Naval movements. Still, Bratton routed the message to high levels of the War Department where it garnered very little …show more content…

Prior to the dispatch of September 24, the information which the Japanese sought and obtained about Pearl Harbor followed the general pattern of their interest in American Fleet movements in other localities. One might suspect this type of conventional espionage. With the dispatch of September 24, 1941, and those which followed, there was a significant and ominous change in the character of the information which the Japanese Government sought and obtained. The espionage then directed was of an unusual character outside the realm of reasonable suspicion. It was no longer merely directed to ascertaining the general whereabouts of ships of the fleet. It was directed to the presence of particular ships in particular areas; to such minute detail as what ships were double-docked at the same wharf….These Japanese instructions and reports pointed to an attack by Japan upon the ships in Pearl Harbor. The information sought and obtained, with such painstaking detail had no other conceivable usefulness from a military

Show More
Related

  • World War II Veterans: Thomas Mahoney

    1240 Words  | 3 Pages

    To begin, the attack on Pearl Harbour was devastating to U.S. naval capabilities in the Pacific at the onset of their entry into the war. Japanese officials had grown tired of the U.S. oil embargo, which was meant to limit their territorial expansion and aggression in South-East Asia as well as China, and as negotiations weren’t reaching any conclusions they decided that the only course of action was a first strike on the aircraft carriers at Pearl Harbour to cripple U.S. naval capability in the Pacific (Rosenberg 1). The attack, which lasted about two hours, had resulted in the sinking of four battleships, among ...

    Read More

  • The Influences on the Signing of Executive Order 9066 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

    1472 Words  | 3 Pages

    Previous to the surprise Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour on December 7th 1941, tensions had been forming between the USA and Japan in the pacific. The US had cut of most supplies to Japan with the fear of Japanese expansion. The conflict that had been escalating between Japan and China since 1937 had the US treating Japan with great cautiousness. They had been monitoring Japanese Americans in anticipation of a surprise attack. However the attack on Pearl Harbour still shocked and outraged the American nation and affected the American psyche. After being assured that “a Japanese attack on Hawaii is regarded as the most unlikely thing in the world”(1), the sudden mass destruction of the U.S Navy’s Pacific fleet and deaths of roughly 2400 U.S soldiers and civilians as a result of such an attack undoubtedly lead to confusion and racial hatred amongst many US citizens. The assumption on the War Department’s behalf that Japan’s Navy were incapable of launching a full scale assault on the US Navy’s chief Pacific base was more than inaccurate. As a result, the US Naval base was unprepared and was quickly taken out. A hidden bias would soon become evident in both average civilians and higher positioned government officials. This bias against Japan aided in the formation of the Executive Order 9066, signed by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) on February 19th 1942.

    Read More

  • Reasons for the Attack on Pearl Harbor

    1675 Words  | 4 Pages

    Zimm, Alan D. Attack on Pearl Harbor: Strategy, Combat, Myths, Deceptions / Alan D. Zimm ; Graphics by Matt Baughman. Philadelphia, [Pa.: Casemate, 2011. Print.

    Read More

  • The Inaccurate Events In The Film Pearl Harbor

    388 Words  | 1 Pages

    The movie Pearl Harbor was written based on the historic event that occurred in Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. The movie has many inaccurate events that are misleading but overall the movie does a good job telling the historic event that occurred.

    Read More

  • Pearl Harbor Dbq

    696 Words  | 2 Pages

    The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was one of the most atrocious attacks to have ever happened on American soil, starting with disagreement on the Potsdam declaration. Japan’s greed for more land and industrial materials led the Japanese to make a plan to keep the United States out of the war, which consisted the use of kamikaze pilots and bombs to destroy our aircraft carriers and boats in an attempt to control the Pacific. While leaving the drowning, and dead bodies of thousands of American seamen and battleships at the bottom of the sea, seemed to be a good idea to the Japanese; America joined World War II and introduced the first nuclear weapons as reprisal for the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. Had the Japanese agreed to an unconditional surrender and end to militarism during the agreement on the Potsdam declaration, the introduction to nuclear weapons and the death count wouldn’t have been so high and devastating on both the American and Japanese sides.

    Read More

  • The Munson Report: Pearl Harbor Bombing

    1353 Words  | 3 Pages

    Year’s prior to the bombing of Pearl Harbor the United States Government intercepted and decoded secret messages from the Japanese Islands and the Japanese Government. During that time the relationship with the Japanese Government and the rest of the world, especially the United States, was extremely tenuous. To avoid a war, which had begun to loom in the waters of the Pacific, off the coast of the Hawaiian Islands, a territory of the United States, Great Britain, the United States and other countries of the world called for all trade to the Japanese Islands be halted and assets to be frozen, which ultimately caused a near collapse of the Japanese economy. In the early Fall of 1941 the U.S. Government, knowing a possible war approached, secretly requested that those Japanese immigrants and the large population of Japanese- Americans (those born in the United States) be questioned as to their loyalty. “The President of the United States ordered a special intelligence finding investigation to be conducted” (Armor and Wright, 13-14).

    Read More

  • The Attack on Pearl Harbor Shapes American History

    2445 Words  | 5 Pages

    One of the people who is rumored to have known about the attack was the president. President Roosevelt knew the attack against Pearl Harbor had to have been planned for a while, because of the distance, the organization, and telegrams that had been coming in. Japan was too far for the attack to be an accident or a spur of the moment type plan. The attack was well organized and the Japanese were prepared. The continental United States was receiving telegrams warning them that there would be an attack. Unfortunately, people in Hawaii were not warned; they were living their normal lives, doing things they were accustomed to doing such as going to parties, writing letters home, and just doing things that a man stationed in Hawaii would do. Many men wrote letters home to their girlfriend or parents or kept a journal. The following letter is an example. Doctor Paul E. Spangler wrote it:

    Read More

  • Pearl Harbor Conspiracy

    658 Words  | 2 Pages

    “AIR RAID ON PEARL HARBOR. THIS IS NO DRILL.” This is the message sent out by radioman Kyle Boyer at 7:58 a.m. Sunday December 7, 1941; a date which will live in infamy. The empire of Japan had attacked the United States’ Pacific Fleet based in Pearl Harbor. For months the US Intelligence community, as well as others around the world, had been intercepting and decoding transmissions from mainland Japan to their diplomats and spies in the US. We had cracked their Purple Code, and knew exactly what military intelligence was being transmitted back and forth. The Dutch also cracked Purple and informed our government of the Japanese plan and were shocked to hear reports that we were taken by surprised. Even more disturbing, months before the attack a British double agent, Dusko Popov, codenamed Tricycle, turned over to the F.B.I. detailed plans of the Japanese air raid, which he had obtained from the Germans. The government had the information, and did nothing with it.

    Read More

  • The Battle of Midway

    1041 Words  | 3 Pages

    Over the year and a half between Pearl Harbor and Midway the United States made headway with various technological and military advantages. One of the most important of which was the code breaking efforts of Commander Joseph J. Rochefort Jr. “Most of the U.S’s information [on Japan] came from Rochefort. R...

    Read More

  • Harry Truman: The Atomic Bomb

    924 Words  | 2 Pages

    Under President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration the atomic bomb was being developed. After Roosevelt died, his vice president Harry Truman was appointed President of the United States. Truman was never informed about the bombs development until an emergency cabinet meeting (Kuznick 9). Truman had to make the fatal decision on whether the bomb was to be dropped on Japan. With the idea of going to war, Truman had to think about the lives of the thousand American soldiers. The American soldiers had begun using the method of island hopping, because the bomb was not available. The idea of dropping a bomb was that the war itself could possibly end in its earliest points. The dropping of the atomic bomb could also justify the money spent on the Manhattan Project (Donohue 1). With a quote by Franklin D. Roosevelt “This will be a day that will live in infamy”, Pearl Harbor was a tragic day for Americans. The United States had lost many soldiers, which they had claimed that they will eventually get revenge. The alternates of dropping the bomb was also discussed at the Interim Committee. The American government was trying to get an invitation response from the Japanese government. If the United States did not drop the bomb and ‘Operation Downfall’ ha...

    Read More

  • Pearl Harbor US Intelligence Failure

    959 Words  | 2 Pages

    It was a Sunday morning, on December 7, 1941 when Pearl Harbor, US naval base located on Hawaii, was attacked by the Japanese. They caught unguarded the whole nation, and for that, this attack is considered one of the top ten failures of the US intelligence. The Japanese were able to attack Pearl Harbor by surprise because of the mindset of US officials, whom they saw Japanese as a weak enemy, who wouldn’t risk attacking US territory, caused by a supremacy factor; As well as the not good enough US intelligence efficiency to encrypt Japanese codes, and the handling of such information. After the negotiations between the Japanese and the United States ended, there was no doubt that they would make an attack, but they didn’t know the target of it.

    Read More

  • Pearl Harbor Notification Letter

    575 Words  | 2 Pages

    under those circumstances, the notification letter was sent by regular telegram. On the other hand, Japanese Commander Fuchida lead of air strike airplanes, pick up the Honolulu radio station and use it as a guide to Pearl Harbor, in the same way, U.S. Airplanes B-17s coming from California pick the radio signal too. Hence, the new U.S. Radar located in Opana Point intercept a large group of planes coming through about 140 miles north, three degrees east and notify Lieutenant Tyler in the information center. Lieutenant Tyler assumes the intercept was the upcoming B-17s in flying to Hawaii (Tora! Tora! Tora!, 1970).

    Read More

  • The Battle of the Coral Sea

    2142 Words  | 5 Pages

    In the morning hours of December 7, 1941 the Japanese attacked the Hawaiian islands at Pearl Harbor. The Japanese had been feeling the pressures of World War II (WWII) as did many others. With the resources of the Japanese dwindling, the Japanese decided to attack the U.S. while simultaneously planning the attack during the negotiations of continued peace between our two countries. The Japanese were able to cover up there planning for nearly a year. Planning for the attack and ultimately war in the pacific, started in January of 1941, and was finalized during the war games in November of 1941. The U.S. on the other hand would become a reactive force after the attack on Pearl Harbor. The inability to crack the Japanese code lead, to a lack of intelligence during this time making the plan of attack for the Japanese a successful one. It would seem that the year of planning and the strategies laid out in the “Combined Fleet Operations Top Secret Order 1” of the Japanese navy would become a reality in the pacific, allowing for an easy sweep of the military targets for the Japanese fleet.

    Read More

  • Tora Compare And Contrast Essay

    2275 Words  | 5 Pages

    This paper will compare Gordon W. Prange's book "At Dawn We Slept - The Untold Story of Pearl Harbor" with the film "Tora! Tora! Tora!" directed by Richard Fleischer, Kinji Fukasaku, and Toshio Masuda. While the film provides little background to the attack, its focal point is on the Pearl Harbor assault and the inquiry of why it was not prevented, or at least foreseen in adequate time to decrease damage. Prange's book examines the assault on Pearl Harbor from both the Japanese and American viewpoints to gain a global view of the situation and the vast provision undertaken by Japanese intelligence.

    Read More

  • Pearl Harbor not a surprise

    1098 Words  | 3 Pages

    Introduction – Pearl Harbor was vulnerable to attack because of the obstruction of defense and warning.

    Read More

More about The Bomb Plot Message Summary

Open Document