Pearl+Harbor+1

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=** Could the disaster of Pearl Harbor have been prevented? **=
 * People working on this page: RP-SOTH,** **AW-OS, ES-OS**

**Why is this important to history?** I think this was important to history because it shows that even though the United Sates is a world power that we can still be attack in this way. Also this event in history was the reason that the United States entered World War II. If this had not happend than thousands of lives would have been saved, but if it did not happen than we would still be unprepared.(RP-SOTH)

I think that if the U.S. had paid more attention to the Japanese we would not have had been relaxed during that time. Most of our ships were in the Pacific because we knew the Japanese were up to something. We put ourselves in this position by not being always being at the ready. This cost us a lot of lives. (AW-OS)

The United States is not at all invincible, although we may think that, we are wrong. Pearl Harbor was something that we can learn from. Correcting our mistakes, and making our country safer as a whole.(ES-OS)

**Answers**

Pearl Harbor was a devastating act of war on our country. I picked this question to help explain why the Japanese did it, and than the acts that followed by the Allied Powers. Japan attacked our Navel Fleet in two separate waves. The first wave hit it’s targets at 7:53 A.M; the second 8:55 A.M. By the time it was over it was 9:55. Behind them they left a devastating blow, 2,403 dead, 188 destroyed planes and a crippled Pacific Fleet that included 8 damaged or destroyed battleships.

Battleship Row was a primary target for the Japanese. What happened was as the Japanese were flying, and a radar crew had spotted activity. So they sent it to Fort Shafter. But the inexperienced lieutenant, (finished training four days earlier) said that it must be the B-17s, an American aircraft scheduled to arrive in the main land at 8:00 A.M. Another reason that we were hit by surprise was that the Japanese were flying low in the mountain; there is a dead zone there. A third costly re son was that our American recon planes weren’t flying on that Sunday morning. The Admiral of the said that if they w ere to win the war they would ne ed to win in the Pacific. There are many things in our defence that were at fault. (ES-OS)





The U.S. Navy was a threat to Japan's plan to capture more land in the south. President Roosevelt noticed Japan's hostility towards us and moved The United States Fleet into the Pacific in anticipation of an attack from Japan. The U.S. expected Japan to attack the Indies, Malaya, and probably the Philippines, but we did not plan on them attacking the U.S. The Japanese had planned an attack that had the [|most aerial power across the world's oceans]. After their attack in Hawaii, the Japanese also attacked U.S. bases located in the Philippines. This attack was meant to threaten the United States but this only made us want to fight more.

Many things could have been the cause of the Japanese violence toward America. An American Ambassador believed that if [|President Roosevelt had met with the Prime Minister Fumimaro Konoye personally], the U.S. could have remained at peace through WWII. U.S. diplomats that were in Tokyo noticed different hints around town that they (Japanese military) were preparing for a fight and were not interested in compromises. One piece of information that could have saved the U.S. was probably never sent to the President. on January 27 1941, Ricardo Rivera Shcreiber, a Peruvian Ambassador, told Joesph Grew, an American Ambassador, that the Japanese were planning an attack. In September of 1940 the U.S. refused to send exports of steel, scrap iron, and aviation fuel to Japan.

Even though the Americans were unaware about what was going on; the Japanese didn't do anything to give themselves away. Japanese Admiral Isoruku Yamamoto started planning his attack a year before. They [|avoided commercial routes and it took 12 days to get everything in place.] They had 32 submarines surrounding the island to spy on and report about what was happening. The Admiral planned the attack on Sunday because he thought that all the ships would be there. All these facts were against the United States. It would have been hard for Pearl Harbor to have been prevented.(AW-OS)



Japan did this to the United States because they believed that destroying us, and hurting our army would make the US back down, but they were very wrong. We ended up joining World War II because of this event. Eventually we dropped two nuclear bombs killing many people in Japan. World War II was the most deadly war that America had ever been in.

I do not think that we could have prevented this from happening. I think this because the Japanese did a very good job hiding the fact that they were going to do this.([]) Also we did not have the technoligies back then that we do now. Back then we did not have the same way to know if planes were coming near. I think we had no chance of predicting, what would happen on the morning of December 7, 1941.

When you think about it we were luck that Japan did not do more to us than they did. They had our backs completely against the wall. Japan was so quiet about doing this to us that I think it would have been close to impossible to have stopped this event from taking place. I am sure that the people close to this place when the bombs hit regreted it and though they could have stopped it, but when you look at all of the variables, like the era, the technologies, then way that Japan pulled off the event. I just cannot see any measures that could have been taken by the Unites States to stop this from happening.([]) (RP-SOTH) 

__**Background**__- Atomic Bombs on Japan Cities, Nagasaki and Hiroshima

On August 6, 1945, the United States used a massive, atomic weapon against Hiroshima, Japan. This atomic bomb, the that is the same as 20,000 tons of TNT. This bomb flattened the city, killing tens of thousands of civilians. While Japan was still trying to recover after the first bomb, three days later, the United States sent one more, this time, on the city of Nagasaki. "The atomic bomb was a golden opportunity given by heaven for Japan to end the war," stated Hisatsune Sakomizu, the chief cabinet secretary in 1945 in Japan.

The atomic bombs were meant to destroy the moral of Japan, and make them want to end the war. But before dropping the bombs there was much debate if it was even necessary too. The US Strategic Bombing Survey thought that if Japan knew that we had atomic bombs than they would just surrender, ending the war early. Other people said that the US should just drop one of the bombs on in inhabited island near Japan, showing the power of the bombs but not killing any people. Thus encouraging surrender by the Japanese. Sadly that plan wouldn’t have work. According to military record Japan  still didn’t surrender after both bombs were dropped. August 6, 1945, a B-29 bomber named Enola Gay, took flight off the island Tinian, toward the city of Hiroshima. The city had a civilian population of 300,000 and 43,000 of soldiers total. Colonel Paul Tibbets was the pilot in command, and at about 8:15 A.M. the B-29 bomber "Enola Gay" over the Japanese city Hiroshima released the 9,700-pound uranium bomb “Little Boy”. Forty- three seconds later the bomb exploded 1,900 feet above the ground, finally resulting in a mushroom cloud. This quote stated by the commander "The city was hidden by that awful cloud . . . boiling up, mushrooming, terrible and incredibly tall." Within minutes 9 out of 10 people half a mile or less from ground zero were dead. Less than 10 percent of the building in the city were still standing or unharmed. The second bomb on Nagasaki happened three days after the attack on Hiroshima. The plutonium bomb, was nicknamed “Fat Man”. At 11:02 A.M., at an altitude of 1,650 feet, the B-29 bomber dropped "Fat Man". There were about 200,000 people still in the city as the bomb exploded. Even though the bomb “Fat Man” was a larger bomb the final damage wasn’t as extensive as Little Boy's. (ES-OS)