Pearl Harbor

            
            
             On Sunday, December 7, 1941, the Japanese Imperial Navy successfully launched a surprise air attack against United States Army, Navy, and other military installations on the island of Oahu, Hawaii. Twenty-five ships of the American Pacific Fleet were either damaged or sent to the bottom of Pearl Harbor's waters. Of the 394 aircraft stationed at Oahu, 188 were destroyed and another 159 were damaged. The Americans also suffered 2,403 servicemen and civilians killed, and an additional 1,178 wounded. The question still remains to whether or not the United States government had any previous knowledge of the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor.
             On "December 6, 1941, a message that was intercepted by the US navy is placed before Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Sent from Tokyo to a Japanese Embassy in Washington, it was encoded in the top-level Japanese "Purple Code", it stated that the Japanese were going to end relations with the United States. Roosevelt, after reading the thirteen-page transmission said, This Means War." Although Roosevelt supposedly had knowledge of the Japan's intentions, he did nothing to counteract or to inform others about the threat.
             "Some of our readers may be shocked by the mere intimation that the government of the United States in general, and its chief executive in particular, could be capable of criminal conspiracy resulting in thousands of lost American lives" , but it was common knowledge that Pearl Harbor would be the most likely location for the Japanese to attack, if they were even going to attack. The morning after Roosevelt received the message, Pearl Harbor was hit by the Japanese in a surprise attack. Officials, such as Generals George C. Marshall, Leonard T. Gerow, Admirals Harold R. Stark and Richmond Kelly Turner, may not have been so surprised. These men were the military's "top brass" in Washington and the only officers authorized to forward such sensitive intelligence to remote commanders.