If we look at the big picture, the sanctions being imposed on Japan by America - which to some extent forced their hand into military action against the US - could really only have meant one thing: The Japanese had to deliver a knockout blow to the US military's ability to wage war across the Pacific, therefore, the carriers had to be the primary target, which of course they were supposed to be. This really was the only chance for Japan to force an agreeable settlement from the US with regard to America's trade embargo and blockading efforts on them.

With the massive industrial base that the US was able to muster, victory in a protracted war was of course a near certainty for the US, although it was certainly going to cost many lives too.

So, if we were doing it all again for the Land of the Rising Sun, then a follow up attack on the carriers (or better intelligence so the first attack hit them) would be the way to go, the threat of further action on the US mainland being all that would be necessary for a favourable negotiation and an end to the conflict before the US could start churning out B-29s at the rate of one every three hours, or whatever it was they managed by 1945 (something close to that I seem to recall).

And here's one for all you fascinating fact fans: The guy who planned the attack on Pearl Harbor - General Minoru Genda - visited California in 1959 to test fly the Lockheed F-104 Starfighter, as Japan were considering it for the soon to be formed Japanese Self Defence Force (i.e. the 'no, we're not going to attack anyone force'). Japan subsequently bought the Starfighter, and it was produced under license by Mitsubishi in 1960, yup, the same company that built the A6M Zero-Sen fighter that took part in the Pearl Harbor attack. This following, Genda's rcommendation that the F-104 was 'The best fighter in the world'. As a result, Genda was awarded the United States Air Force Legion of Merit! Just shows you what a bit of business can do for things, doesn't it?

:D Chock

Off topic, but I have to:

I once heard a lecturer state that Japan's biggest mistake was in not investigating the American character enough. He pointed out all the movies (actually only one, I think) in which a Japanese leader of one sort or another says "Yes, I attended the university at Berkeley (Yale, Harvard, fill-in-the-blank) and Americans are soft and eager to please."

He then pointed out that if they had visited someplace like Georgia or Alabama, "Where people keep their relatives chained up in the basement", they might have thought twice before attacking us.:rotfl:

Just taking out the fuel dumps at Pearl would have been a cost efficient way to increase the impact the attack had on the US Navy...

i might have sailed the entire strike force into the entrance of Pearl harbour...scuttled the fleet.....then surrendered/negotiated for peace... hoping that that utterly bizaare act might have had some sort of impact on the world stage...course it might have helped if the damn declaration of war had arrived on time ...

Even if the IJN had destroyed every ship in the American fleet, they would have still had a hard time with the out-dated IJA.

I would have just spent more time consolidating and/or expanding the territory gains in
the west if I had only military motivations.


It didn't?

My info source is totally unreliable, but it informed me that the declaration was sent and arrived in the USA
before the attack, but did not arrive in Washington and was not translated and read until after the attack had started.
Is there any truth in this?

This is from the Wikipedia and is indeed factual:

"In the days before the attack, a long 14-part message was sent to the Embassy from the Foreign Office in Toyko (encrypted with the Type 97 cryptographic machine, in a cipher named Purple by U.S. cryptanalysts), with instructions to deliver it to Secretary of State, Cordell Hull at 1 p.m. Washington time. The last part arrived late Saturday night (Washington time) but due to decryption and typing delays, and to Tokyo's failure to stress the crucial necessity of the timing, her Embassy personnel did not deliver the message breaking off negotiations to Secretary Hull until several hours after the attack."

The fact that the Japanese were unable to deliver the message until several hours after the attack only further incensed the American public. They not considered the event to be a "sneak attack" without formal declaration of war...

I don't quite follow that.
Just to be clear:
did the decleration enter US soil/US embassy soil in a un-translated, non-decrypted
state before the attack?

If so, how long did the US have to translate and/or decode the message?

Yes. However, the last part of the 14 part message arrived late Saturday night at the Japanese Embassy.

American intelligence had been intercepting coded Japanese transmissions prior to the Pearl Harbor attack for some time. However, this particular transmission was in 14 parts and although US intelligence had some conviction of an impending attack, they didn't have the precise date.
At one point US Intelligence thought the attack was going to be 1 week earlier than planned. When it didn't happen, and because the Japanese Ambassador was still carrying on "in good faith" talks with Cordell Hull, the military "stood down" and relaxed its vigilance.

The declaration was delivered to the Americans in a translated state by the Japanese. They planned to give it only very short before the strike would take place, so that the attack would take place so short after the official declaration of a state of war that the americans had no long time to react to that declaration, and prepare. Thus the timing. The delay in the japanese embassy in 1.) decyphering and b.) translating it into English, while they were not aware of the crucial urgency to get it delivered right on time, led to the declaration being delivered - after the attack had taken place.

To imagine that americans would have been less furious about the destruction of their pacific fleet when the declaration had reached them in time, before the strike on Pearl, is something I have problems with, but I always have problems with purely symbolic stuff. the whole thing is difficult for me to relive. also, american intel was very well aware of those mysterious messages in fourteen parts arriving at the Japanese embassy, and tried to decypher/translate some of it themselves. they knew that something was in the making, and by all reason should have known (I'm sure at least some authorities were aware indeed) that something like the war declaration was in the making. It's not that the hostilities came out of the blue. Hostilities had rasied before since weeks and months, due to the crucial oil supply situation for the Japanese, and the deadlock in negotiations.

Wasn't there something about the British telling the Americans about the attack weeks
before hand?
Or was that common knowledge?

You have to keep in mind that the American public wasn't as aware of the Japanese issue as was the military. We were already "fighting" (not officialy in the war yet) on another front and that kept a lot of people preoccupied.

Pearl Harbor was like a "sucker punch" to the American public. "Damn, he hit when I wasn't looking!" even though I knew I was going to be in a fight...

Drop bombs with poison gas all over hawaii until almost the entire population is dead, then invade. Use Pearl as a base to launch simalier attacks against the US West Coast to force the US not on a defensive of the Pacific but a defensive of its mainland. Imagain this going on the same time as Dumbeat in the Atlantic. :o

If I lost I would be hung for warcrimes but it might just suceed in adding a few years to the war just in time for all those fancy "wonder weapons" to show up in both theaters. At that point who know what why the war might go. :hmm:

What do you do when/if you get naval control and dominance over costal, weststern America?

That was my take on the matter as well. They left the job half-done, and we all know how well that works, don't we?

They delivered a devistating blow to Pearl Harbor, but never completely destroyed it, and without a follow-up raid once-a-week to keep America from using it as a base, it eventually re-grew into a threat. Had they kept pounding on it (and eventually finding the other two carriers), things might have turned out differently.

Of course, the US would eventually have to chase the IJN away so Pearl could be re-built, but the US would have had to have carriers launching from as far away as the West Coast to do this. There really aren't any islands that could be used for bases other than Hawaii.

Keep the remaineder of the US Fleet bottled up and take control of the Pacific. I wouldn't invade the US Mainland (Aside from the occasonal raid), and try to destroy as much of the US ship building on the west coast as possable.