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.

See, that was my thinking as well (the holding Hawaii as a base, not the poison gas thing), since whoever holds it has a huge base at the half-way point across the Pacific. Look at why Hawaii was so important to the US, and you'd understand why it would have been just as important to the Japanese. With no refuling base anywhere decent in the Pacific, the US would have had to base their ships in San Francisco / Los Angeles until much, much later in the war.

Using Hawaii as a refuling point for their ships, the IJN could have pinned the US Navy back to the west coast (at least, until the industrial might of the US managed to re-build the fleet).

Interesting 'what if', isn't it?

Agreed. Once pinned against the wall, rebuilding ships would have been much more difficult, and without carriers, we never could have re-taken Hawaii. Without Hawaii, no taking Midway, and without Midway, no other islands to the west. Sort of like chess, huh?

Blast Pearl and then keep going on to seize Panama.

It must have been hell for Yamamoto to be asked to start a war he himself felt could not be won.

I believe the decision makers in Japan hoped to grab control of the entire western Pacific rim, then sue for peace. They felt America as didn't want a war and didn't have the stomach for a long war.

I'd have stayed around Pearl long enough to find the American Carriers. That was crucial to the follow up of taking Midway.

@Sailor Steve that was hilarious.
:p

Wow, excellent point. Can't run carriers on love.

Not quite true.

In the late 1930's before the "hippys" ever got to hear about it, the US Navy and Army where
conducting experiments with "Flower" power as both a power plant for large ships and as
a explosive weapon of mass destruction.

The experiments stopped because the technology of the 1930s had not caught up to the
theory yet. When (perhaps in 10 years time) the technology is available for a flower
power WMD, it is estimated that the love from just one service man could be removed
and used to power a carrier for 2000 years or to create a bomb capable of killing everything
in a 500 mile radius from the impact point as well as expelling 5% of the earth's atmosphere
into space.

Such is the awsome destructive power of love.

The Combined Fleet website addresses both of these points in a great way and presents a very strong argument, in my opinion, on why it just wouldn't be feasible. It can be found here:
http://www.combinedfleet.com/pearlops.htm

But in summary, there's no real way that the Japanese could have brought enough troops to take Hawaii, as it would have been defended by 75,000-100,000 US troops on the ground. Can you imagine trying to bring an invasion force all the way over from the home islands in numbers necessary to take the island? Don't forget that the Japanese still had their force in China to supply. They did not have an inexhausatble amount of troops to bring to bear on Hawaii. They just did not have the manpower to do it.

Part of Pearl Harbor's success is that it happened suddenly. A task force of carriers going 25-30 knots is a lot harder to find than a fleet of troop transports doing 10-15 knots. The surprise angle would have most likely been lost and the force would have come under attack before reaching Hawaii, and Pearl would have been ready.

Let's assume that they did take Hawaii. How would you keep it supplied? The Japanese couldn't even supply the garrison on Wake Island, how could they have kept men and materiel flowing to an occupying force the size needed to hold a major US possession like Hawaii? They were already working under a shipping shortage in trying to keep holdings in China, Malaysia and the Philippines supplied. Now you want to add Hawaii and its distance all the way across the Pacific into the mix? The transit time alone would exacerbate the situation. Empty ships travelling back from Hawaii are effectively out of service until they make their way back to the Home Islands.

As for the carrier aspect, Combined Fleet addresses it here: http://www.combinedfleet.com/economic.htm

In short, what it says is that the US could build carriers so quickly that they would have caught up with Japan in a relatively short amount of time. Midway and the Solomon Islands wouldn't have happened if we had lost the carriers at Pearl, but the pace at which we could have replaced those losses means that Japan would have bought themself time but that's it. They would have prolonged the war, but definately not have won it. Remember why we won the way we did: we outproduced the other side.

EDIT: Sorry...didn't realize joea had already posted this link. I still think it presents an excellent case though!

With the IJN's familiar strategy of splitting their forces, I'm surprised that they didn't attack the west coast on the same day. How many carriers did the IJN have in late '41? Could've a carrier been placed at major shipbuilding/repair facilities at the same time? Besides the obvious fuel depots, they didn't touch the repair facilities that worked day in and day out during the war. Bremerton was utilized full throttle also.

An American nuclear aircraft carrier and its crew are caught in a classic dilemma when a supernatural storm sends them back in time just before the Japanese assault on Pearl Harbour.

The USS Nimitz, a modern-day nuclear aircraft carrier, is drawn through a time warp from 1980 to a couple days before the Japanese assault on Pearl Harbor, and the crew must decide whether to launch a preemptive strike against the incoming Japanese carrier fleet with their more advanced air wing, or allow history to take its course, which might not happen since they had rescued Senator Chapman, who disappeared shortly before the attack, from his death.

It is 1980 and the USS Nimitz puts to sea off of Pearl Harbor for routine exercises. After encountering a strange storm and losing all contact with the US Pacific Fleet, nuclear war with the Soviet Union is assumed and the USS Nimitz arms herself for battle. However, after encountering Japanese Zero scout planes and finding Pearl Harbor filled with pre-World War II battleships, it is realized that the storm the Nimitz went through caused the ship to travel back in time: to December 6th, 1941.

Why? Pacific coast shipbuilding industries were more than sufficient to make up for the numbers lost in Pearl. Seizing Panama results in the taking of a relatively insignificant facility while dangerously overextending Japan's already overextended forces.

Awesome movie and makes you ponder what would you have done?