The surprise attack launched by Japan on a fateful March day of 1941 is now regarded as one of the major historical events in the history of the United States. The American government’s emergency efforts during the Pearl Harbor tragedy became a subject of nuanced scrutiny from experts and the media. Most importantly, the aftermath of this disaster has made it one of the most influential events although the decision-making process preceding it is no less worthy of examination. Pearl Harbor can serve as an exceptional case study into the failure of the authorities’ intelligence capabilities in risk mitigation and emergency management.
The most common explanations of intelligence mistakes include organizational inefficiencies, external obstacles, analytical issues, as well as leadership weaknesses. When discussing Pearl Harbor, it is important to look at it under the prism of the traditional intelligence cycle. It consists of planning/direction, collection, processing/exploitation, analysis/production, and dissemination. The failure related to the last stage has been critical in the outcome of the Pearl Harbor attack. The U.S. government’s inefficiencies in distributing intelligence through an existing system of communication channels “contributed to the failure to inform ground commanders of the potential attack in a timely manner” (Tagg, 2017, para. 6). Although the American intelligence agencies became aware of the intent of the Japanese to stop negotiations and use force at 5 a.m. December 7, Hawaiian and Philippine departments received the information containing warnings hours after the attack was over.
The Army’s Signal Intelligence Service (SIS) intercepted and decoded the first out of the 13 parts of the message Japan was sending to its delegation in the United States. After the last part of the message declaring the impossibility of the Japanese to reach a peaceful agreement with the Americans was translated, the President and the Army’s Chief of Staff were informed immediately. However, due to the information’s sensitivity, telegraph had to be used, which was slowed down by Sunday office hours. A bicycle messenger received the message at 7.33 a.m. (Hawaiian time) but he had to cover from Japanese aerial attack on his way to Fort Shafter (Tagg, 2017). By the time the critical piece of intelligence arrived to the Adjutant General’s office, it was already 2.58 p.m., with the bombardment being over. Although the message did not clearly state that the attack was bound to happen or clarify that Hawaii was specifically under threat, the Magic decrypts could have given the local authorities the time to engage in minimum preparations for the possible threat.
While the types of intelligence transmission were limited at the time, the authorities could have done a better job at managing the communication channels for Magic delivery to be as efficient and timely as possible. In addition, the dissemination was not the only part of the intelligence cycle, which should be criticized as part of the examination of the Pearl Harbor events. Another contributing reason lies in the fact that the intelligence agencies of the United States in the 1930s and 1940s were sufficiently undermanned. This caused the information collection and processing to be hampered significantly. The message was sent using a special Japanese diplomatic code referred to as the Purple system (Frledman, 2012). To decode and translate such a message into usable intelligence known as Magic, the American agencies had to exhaust its human resources as the number of experts suitable for the job was scarce. Unfortunately, they were unable to fully overcome a shortage of qualified cryptographers and interpreters.
In addition, it is crucial to recognize the shortcomings of American intelligence in regards to its centralization. For example, while the collection of intelligence on the operations of the Japanese Army was the responsibility of the Army’s Military Intelligence Unit (MID), it was the U.S. Navy, which was tasked with oversight of the Japanese naval operations. Thus, the efforts of the United States to gather intelligence on the potential enemy were not centered in one agency or institution. As a result, the intelligence estimates and evaluations of different agencies were disconnected, which led to the U.S.’s risk mitigation efforts lacking any direction. If the intelligence operations and information collection of the United States were to be centralized, the authorities would have increased their chances of predicting Japan’s intentions more accurately, according to Tagg (2017). Most importantly, although MID and the Office of Naval Intelligence were separated, they relied heavily on each other for critical insights, which was, in fact, counter-intuitive. The Navy dismissed the possibility of the Japanese naval operations based primarily on the reports of the Japanese capability to launch an air attack presented by MID.
References
Frledman, U. (2012). The ten biggest American intelligence failures. Foreign Policy. Web.
Tagg, L. S. (2017). Intelligence, Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. U.S. Army. Web.