In 1941, one of the largest American military defeats occurred. Almost an entire naval fleet was destroyed, hundreds were killed, all before nine A.M. on a Sunday morning. The US did not have any knowledge of this attack, mostly because of their own ignorance, partially because of the military strategies of their Japanese opponents. The Japanese attack on the US naval base of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, was a classic case of "It will not happen to me!" Although the US suspected the Japanese actions, they were not ready because they believed an attack would never happen on American grounds. Through an examination of military history, tactics and eye witness descriptions, it will be proven that the US had no knowledge of the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, and dealt with Japan negotiations inflexibly and that is what led to the attack.

In the years before 1941, the war saw little American military action. After the collapse of France, American President Franklin Delano Roosevelt promised his county that no American troops would be sent to Europe to aid in the battle against Hitler and his powerful army. These promises caused Roosevelt to be criticized by his closest advis

To the Japanese, under no circumstances would settlement with the United States be acceptable. This put them into quite the predicament. It was the miscalculation of the Americans which put them into this position. They miscalculated the impact of their economic sanctions and warnings on the Japanese as deterrents. Instead, this just reinforced Japanese policy. These policies played into the hands of the militarists who controlled Japan as they argued that the imposition of economic sanctions by the United States necessitated risk and expansion by Japan. The U.S. government believed that Japan's economic dependence upon them for raw materials gave them a decided advantage in restring the Japanese in their quest for expansion. They felt there implementation of such sanctions would create a sobering effect on Japan. However, on the contrary, these sanctions shocked the people of Japan and motivated them for Southern expansion.

The United States of America is the strongest, most powerful country in the world. A country such as Japan, which does not even have the resources to survive a lengthy war, could not possibly attack them . The result of the attack would have been much less serious had the American officers exercised more vigilance. The ignorance was so great that, on the day of the bombing of Pearl Harbor, several major and peculiar instances were noted and ignored by officers on duty. At 03.50 an unidentified periscope was seen and ignored at the entrance of the harbor. Also, the destroyer "Ward" depth-charged and sank an unidentified submarine at 06.37. The contact report was taken up much later and with no degree of urgency. Finally, two radar sightings of a large mass of aircraft 64 kilometers north of the island were dismissed by the commanding officer at 07.02 as a 'probable' flight of B-17s from the US west coast . These events, left utterly unacknowledged, led up to one of the great military defeats in US history. At 06.00, the 2 500 foot anti-torpedo gate that guarded the entrance to Pearl Harbor was opened in a customary morning maneuver unknowingly welcoming the attack. Three-hundred and sixty Japanese planes broke through the clouds above Pearl Harbor at 07.55. The planes attacked in rows of two or three, dropping torpedoes at 100 knots from 70 feet.

At the conclusion of the First World War, an wave of isolationist sentiments arose within the American public. They felt as if they had been deceived and tricked into entering into the war. They blamed the American entry on the nation's failure to remain genuinely neutral and felt that false propaganda and greedy businessmen were responsible for the unnecessary sacrifice of many young American men. To the public, for most of its history, the United States had managed to get along very well without allies. Plus, it seemed that in seeking to build popular support for intervention, President Woodrow Wilson had made promises he could not keep and had mislead the people. He conveyed that an Allied victory would end all wars and make the world safe for democracy. However, the defeat of Germany had no such results and inevitably this failure led to bitterness. "America's distance from Europe, an asset for as long as the United States could afford to ignore the Continent, had enabled them to get along without a significant military establishment, without allies, and without thinking seriously about world politics." (O'Neill 14) This pattern of thought was the reason why avoidance of intervention within the international system had existed throughout America's existence.

Although the destruction was not total, Japanese foremost naval strategist, Yamamoto, found the result better than he had anticipated . Military records state that the attack sank or destroyed 6 ships, all of which were raised and rebuilt , except for the Arizona, Oklahoma and Utah . US casualties included 2 500 as well as over 1 000 wounded. The Japanese lost less than 30 aircraft and about 55

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Approximate Word count = 4072
Approximate Pages = 16 (250 words per page double spaced)