Pearl Harbour-Intelligence Failure PDF

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The psychology behind Pearl Harbour Intelligence fiasco....

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Pearl Harbor as Intelligence Failure Introduction The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on 7th December 1941 marked the entry of the US in the Second World War. The attack on the US Pacific Fleet stationed at the southern strip of Oahu Island in the territory of Hawaii destroyed 18 US warships and 190 of the country’s airplanes (Richelson, 1995). On top of this, the clandestine attack killed 2,403 people and around 1,178 got injured (Richelson, 1995). This event forced President Franklin Dwight Roosevelt to break the United States’ policy of isolation and to officially enter the Second World War that started two years earlier. The attack on Pearl Harbor is often seen from the vantage point of how it made the US enter the Second World War which shifted the momentum in favor of the Allied Powers. Hardly any attention, apart from concerned academic circles, is paid to the fact that this attack was one of the biggest intelligence failures in the history of the US1. Intelligence experts have presented many reasons to confirm this thesis. While some hold that it was the lack of intelligence information that kept the US authorities completely unaware of the Pearl Harbor Attack, many of the experts believe that it was the failure to analyze an abundance of information that had already raised sufficient red flags regarding the attack (Kahn, 1991) (Richelson, 1995). There are still some who argue that the attack was due to the lack of intelligence sharing as the British had the prior knowledge of the Japanese aggression (Aldrich, 2008). In addition to this, an underestimation of enemies’ technological prowess and capabilities are also considered by some analysts as the factors responsible for the US intelligence failure (Porch & Writz, 2002). An interesting explanation of intelligence failure at Pearl Harbor comes from John Gentry who believes that inflated expectations from the intelligence community resulted in failure as they were not even capable of

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Intelligence failure is defined as the inadequate collection of information, misinterpretation thereof, and, hence, the lack of proper policy response and action (Gentry, 2008).

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Pearl Harbor: Intelligence Failure pulling what was expected of them (Gentry, 2008). Furthermore, scholars have also accounted the factor of conscious distortion of intelligence for organizational or personal needs as a possible factor that led to the fiasco of Pearl Harbor (Joseph & Levy , 2009). While Pearl Harbor was an intelligence failure on part of the US, the same is also true for Japan. Japan failed to muster intel regarding the placement of critical aircraft carriers and hence was not able to destroy them (Holmes, 2016). Similarly, some of the important carriers and battleships of the US Pacific Fleet were also scattered during the time of attack of which the Japanese had no prior information (Soedarto, 2016). Given that what was left of the Pacific Fleet was later instrumental in defeating Japan in the Battles of Coral Sea and Midway, Pearl Harbor was more of an immediate success and had less strategic value for Japan (Soedarto, 2016). In this way, Pearl Harbor was not only an intelligence fiasco on part of the US, but it was also a failure for the Japanese intelligence. Leading to Pearl Harbor: An Overview of US-Japan Relations The history of tensions between the US and Japan dates to the acquisition of Philippines by the US in 1898 (Kahn, 1991). Japan saw the presence of a power like the US in Far East, close to its shores, as a threat. Afterwards, the tension between the two nations simmered as the US in 1922 forced Japan, as a result of Washington Disarmament Conference, to maintain a smaller fleet than it would have liked (Kahn, 1991). Moreover, in 1931 Hebert O. Yardley, a USbased cryptanalyst, authored a book that unearthed how his country negotiated from a position of strength during the 1922 conference. Japan took the contents of the book as a humiliation and relations between the two nations further deteriorated (Kahn, 1991). Even before the onset of second World War, the US had taken issues with Japan’s inroads into China. Japan’s territorial revisionism into the Second World War brought it under the wrath of American sanctions over trade and munitions. This was happening at a time when the US has officially kept the stance of

Pearl Harbor: Intelligence Failure isolationism even though Germany had already attacked USSR and was threatening to do the same with Britain. While international affairs went through muddy waters negotiations between the US and Japan, just before the attack on Pearl Harbor, were underway as the latter sought relaxation in trade embargo. The negotiations were put to a halt on November 26th, 1941 as the US conditionalized lifting trade embargo with withdrawal of Japan from China (Kahn, 1991). Japan saw the US attitude as a threat to its national interest and foreign policy and immediately afterwards, started to implement a preconceived attack plan. Pearl Harbor and the US Intelligence Failure With the benefit of hindsight, it is now known that Japan made a plan to attack the US in May 1941 and decided to go on war with the US four months later on 5th November (Richelson, 1995). On the exact date when negotiations between the two countries failed, i.e. 26th November 1941, a Japanese fleet comprising 33 ships sailed for North Pacific where it would launch an attack on the American base 11 days later (Richelson, 1995). Since all of this was happening and whether the US did not know any information at all or was unsuccessful in analyzing the information it had, the fact that Japan took Pearl Harbor by a surprise was a sheer failure on the part of US intelligence apparatus. As to what exactly was the cause behind such a negligence, there are many explanations. Different Theories of US Intelligence Failure David Kahn views the fiasco at Pearl Harbor in terms of failure of intelligence gathering instead of interpretation. Kahn maintains that in September 1940, the US cryptanalysts made a machine they called PURPLE that decoded the encrypted Japanese diplomatic communication (Kahn, 1991). This has given the US access to the direct diplomatic conversations that imperial

Pearl Harbor: Intelligence Failure Japan carried out with its embassies and consulates across the globe. In addition to this, the US intelligence officials built a robust system of traffic analysis that allowed them to track the position, speed, and inter-ship communication (Kahn, 1991). This enabled the US to successfully track the imperial navy’s movement between 1930 till the build up to the Pearl Harbor attack (Kahn, 1991). In addition to this, by early December the US intelligence had gathered information that pointed toward Japanese ships moving southward, the US reconnaissance airplanes tracked Japanese submarines in French Indochina coast, and the British aircraft also spotted Japanese convoys near Gulf of Siam (Kahn, 1991). The US Naval Chief, George Marshall, was also aware of this intel as he ordered an alert for fleets near the coast of Philippines (Kahn, 1991). Nonetheless, the Japanese were just too good for concealing the information that mattered the most: the precise target. PURPLE failed because no knowledge of the attack was given to ambassador in Washington whereas traffic analysts were also misled by the incidents that occurred earlier the year of attack (Kahn, 1991). Moreover, even by assessing the information collectively rather than adopting the alleged piecemeal approach, the analysts would not have found any clue about the exact target and nature of attack (Kahn, 1991). For Kahn, therefore, the information was simply inadequate to perform a meaningful analysis and to reach a decisive conclusion. On the other hand, Jefferey Richelson believes there was ample information available before the attack and the officials failed in terms of one aspect of analysis (Richelson, 1995). The office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) knew the information of aggression by Japan as early as July 1941 (Richelson, 1995). Similarly, a day after the Japanese fleet left for Pearl Harbor, the Naval Chief told Admiral Kimmel, the Commander-in-Chief of the Pacific Fleet, about the failure of negotiations and the possibility of an attack by Japan in the coming days (Richelson, 1995). Moreover, the Military Intelligence Division (MID) on the same day also released a report that

Pearl Harbor: Intelligence Failure talked about aggressive intentions of Japan (Richelson, 1995). It is true that none of these intelligence reports were sure of the exact target of Japanese aggression and the only way the US would have known these missing links were through human intelligence resources that the country lacked (Richelson, 1995). While the MID had no human resources placed in Japan at all, ONI had some of them placed. However, the problem was that not a single one of them was able to furnish any information of relevance due to the tight secrecy maintained by the Japanese in their conduct of foreign relations (Richelson, 1995). After noting all the prospects and limitations of intelligence collection, Richelson, however, notes one aspect in which the analysis failed. He holds that the fundamental assumption upon which the gathered information was analyzed was flawed: the postulations that since Japan’s military strength was inferior to that of US, therefore, Japan would not carry a direct attack on the US (Richelson, 1995). This underlying assumption for analysis compromised the efficacy of the entire process that eventually led to the US intelligence failure. Another explanation for failure on part of US intelligence is grounded in British connivance and FDR’s deliberate neglect of available information to keep the US away from the war. James Rusbridger’s book Betrayal at Pearl Harbor is a classic that has the central thesis that Winston Churchill knew about the Japanese attack and deliberately concealed that information from FDR to push the US in the Second World War with an aim to shift the momentum of victory towards the Allied Powers (Rusbridger, 1991). This assertion was challenged by John A. Gentry who holds that the evidence is not enough to believe that Churchill knew about the Pearl Harbor attack (Gentry, 2008). He holds that the claims of authors regarding the British decryption of Japanese fleet communications, JN-25, are erroneous and hence there was no way for Churchill to get hold of that information (Gentry, 2008). Having said that, the author maintains that it does not

Pearl Harbor: Intelligence Failure necessarily mean that the Churchill hypothesis is wrong altogether but that there is not enough evidence to support this thesis (Gentry, 2008). In addition to this, Porch and Writz, while admitting that the Pearl Harbor was an intelligence fiasco, outline three major reasons for what has happened on that ignominious day. First, they identity the failure of US intelligence apparatus in so far that it did not filter “useful information from the plethora of available information” (Porch & Writz, 2002). They maintain that at times relevant information does not make it to the top of bureaucratic food chain merely for the fact that ground officials do not find it important (Porch & Writz, 2002). In January 1941, the ambassador to Japan, Joseph C. Crew, informed the ONI that he had heard from a Peruvian minister that the Japanese are planning a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. ONI disregarded it as unimportant as the source was a Japanese employee of the Peruvian embassy who got the information from her boyfriend —a Japanese chauffer whose source was a novel he was reading (Richelson, 1995). Second, intelligence failure of Pearl Harbor occurred when the capabilities, technological or otherwise, of the Japan were discounted by the US (Porch & Writz, 2002). This is because the US ignored a similar precedent in which Swordfish bi-planes launched from a British career destroyed an Italian fleet (Porch & Writz, 2002). Third, the intelligence failure at Pearl Harbor has to do with the idea of “mirror-imaging” (Porch & Writz, 2002). It refers to the flaw in strategic calculation that given you cannot perform a certain act in a situation, your enemy will not either (Porch & Writz, 2002). This psychological condition impaired the calculus of US intelligence officials who completely disregarded the possibility of an attack like Pearl Harbor. And with such a mindset, no matter what the intel is, mistakes are bound to occur. In addition to this, John A. Gentry also brings interesting insights into what can be the reasons behind a massive intelligence failure such Pearl Harbor. He keeps that intelligence failures

Pearl Harbor: Intelligence Failure are often a product of misplaced expectations or flawed perception of capabilities of intelligence agencies by the general public or the government officials (Gentry, 2008). For Gentry, it is very important for policymakers to know what intelligence apparatus can and cannot do (Gentry, 2008). By not knowing the bounds of intelligence setups, what is often called failure is actually a structural limitation. If the bureaucratic constraints that Gentry talks were also present during the time of Pearl Harbor attack, then Japanese aggression was not an act of intelligence failure but rather a consequence of limitations, structural or bureaucratic, that the US intel apparatus had had. Another theory of intelligence failure explains the phenomenon through the lens of conscious action. Joseph and Levy in their work raise the importance of conscious and politically motivated behavior in the study of intelligence mishaps (Joseph & Levy , 2009). They emphasize on three organizational level variables in their study of intelligence failures: intelligence to please, organizational restructuring, and insubordination (Joseph & Levy , 2009). Intelligence apparatuses often furnish information that pleases politicians or their bosses in a process called intelligence to please. Similarly, different governmental organizations are often reluctant to share information with one another while they compete for scarce state resources (Joseph & Levy , 2009). The lack of coordination between MDI and ONI highlights the organizational tug of war that might have contributed to intel failure that led to Pearl Harbor attack. Likewise, insubordination also leads to intelligence disasters such as the one witnessed during the Japanese attack of Pearl Harbor. Insubordination arises when intelligence officials disregard organizational and constitutional hierarchy and start to think highly of themselves. Admiral Richmond Kelly, the chief of naval war plans division, was considered by some as the man behind Pearl Harbor disaster owing to his preference of decisiveness over debate and myopia over tolerance (Joseph & Levy , 2009).

Pearl Harbor: Intelligence Failure Pearl Harbor: An Intelligence Failure for Japan While the Pearl Harbor attack was indeed an intelligence failure on the part of the US, it was not an intelligence success for Japan either. Although Japan had won an immediate military victory over the US by inflicting her material and mortal losses, the country did not harness long term strategic benefits from its onslaught (Holmes, 2016). Years after the attack, Japan was nuked, defeated, and humiliated by the US. By attacking the US directly, Japan paved the way for the former to enter the Second World War that significantly tipped the balance of war in the favor of Allied powers. Considering state behavior in terms of rational actor model, realist school of international relations suggests that it is the responsibility of all intelligence apparatuses to supply valuable input over the cost-benefit analysis of any governmental decision. To this end, the Japanese Third Bureau failed miserably. Apart from this, the way in which Japan executed its long planned assault on Pearl Harbor was not as per the plan as it failed to achieve its main objective —complete annihilation of the US Pacific Fleet to undermine American war efforts during the Second World War (Soedarto, 2016). Not only did Japan failed to hit the US aircraft carriers, the major targets, docked at Pearl Harbor, but it was also misinformed about the placements of critical carriers and battleships. A number of battleships and some of the aircraft carriers that the Japanese expected to see at the Honolulu coast were simply hundreds of miles away. Carrier Lexington, for example, was 420 miles away from the red zone, carrier Enterprise was 200 miles away, and the cruiser ship Indianapolis was 700 miles away (Soedarto, 2016). This is despite the fact that Third Bureau in its communique with the

Honolulu

consulate

was

recorded

saying,

“In

view

of

the

present situation, the presence in port of warships, airplane carriers, and cruisers is of utmost importance. Hereafter, to the utmost of your ability let me know day by day. Wire me in each

Pearl Harbor: Intelligence Failure case whether or not there are any observation balloons above Pearl Harbor or if there are any indications that they will be sent up. Also advise me whether or not the warships are provided with antimine [i.e., antitorpedo] nets” (Richelson, 1995). Given this, the Japanese consulate either did not furnish the required information or the Third Bureau failed to analyze or plan according to the known information —an intelligence failure in either case. What was more embarrassing for Japan was the fact that the leftover carriers and battleships from the Pearl Harbor episodes later contributed to many Japanese defeats in the Pacific. The missed US carriers —Yorktown, Enterprise, and Hornet— later became the stumbling blocks for Japanese fleets during the May-June 1942 battles of Coral Sea and Midway. The battle of Midway was decisive in a sense that it crushed Japanese sea power as the leftover US battleships and carriers destroyed four of the Japanese carriers. In this way, what started as a failure of intelligence to pinpoint crucial targets, ended in a crushing defeat for Japan in the blue waters. Conclusion On the whole, there are numerous theories that attempt to explain the failure of US intelligence during the Pearl Harbor episode. From a failure of collecting information to poor analysis of adequate information, various explanations exist for one of the biggest intelligence failures in the history of 20th century spying. Apart from this, theory of conscious action, limitations of intelligence agencies approach, affective cognitive bias theories, and the idea of mirror-imaging are often presented as possible explanations for factors that contributed to the failure of US intelligence before the Pearl Harbor attack. While there are many differences between these theories, a common point is that they all, save the conscious action theory, admit the attack was a failure on the part of US intelligence agencies. As to the accuracy of these explanations is concerned, each of them is backed by ample evidence that makes one create a room for the

Pearl Harbor: Intelligence Failure multiplicity of explanations. From the point of view of Japan, the attack was not an intelligence success either. The country failed to gain any strategic advantage from the attack due to shortsightedness of Japanese intelligence community. In addition to this, the Japanese attack missed major US targets, battleships and carriers, that only shows that the operation that was long planned was after all not a strictly intelligence-based operation.

Pearl Harbor: Intelligence Failure

Bibliography Aldrich, R. J., 2008. Conspiracy or Confusion? Churchill, Roosevelt and Pearl Harbour. Intelligence and National Security, 7(3), pp. 335-346. Anon., 2015. Why the Japanese Attack on Pearl Harbor Was Actually a Failure. [Online] Available

at:

https://www.historyhit.com/attack-pearl-harbour/

[Accessed 3 November 2020]. Borch, F. L., 2003. Comparing Pearl Harbor and "9/11": Intelligence Failure? American Unpreparedness? Military Responsibility?. The Jour...