What Warnings did Our Government Recieve?

The conventional thought in the United States is that the clamity of Pearl Harbor was a complete surprise. Americans are taught to believe that we were hit without warning and that there was no way to prepare a fight against the attacking Japanese. Textbooks and encyclopedias all give the same story of the peaceful Hawaiian harbor being destroyed by the Japanese in a matter of a few hours on a lazy Sunday morning. For instance, in the book The Story of America , the author states that “the Japanese struck Pearl Harbor without warning” and “The Americans caught completely by surprise, could offer only feeble resistance.” Unfortunately, this is not the whole truth. While the average Navy Seaman, Army Private, Airman, Marine and civilian had no idea what was coming, those in authority in America’s government did, starting with the President.
The U.S. had many reports from secret agents in foreign countries that the Japanese were planning to attack the United States. Most of the intelligence information specifically states that the attack would occur at Pearl Harbor. Reports of a planned attack even came from our own U.S. Ambassador to Japan (Persico 2001).
For instance, on January 27, 1941, Dr. Ricardo Rivera-Schreiber, who was the Peruvian envoy in Tokyo, informed Max Bishop, Secretary of the U. S. Embassy, that his spies had told him about a planned attack on Pearl Harbor. Bishop immediately told the U.S. Ambassador to Japan, Joseph C. Grew, who knew Schreiber well and felt that “he would never mislead me in anything he might pass on to me” (Prange 1981). Grew sent a wire to Washington D.C. with the information he had been given. No one in Washington believed the report. They thought it was a wild rumor and that Japan could never “pull off a surprise attack against the United States”(Tweeten 2005).
In July of 1941, a military attaché in Mexico reported to Washington that his sources had seen the Japanese building special small submarines to be used in attack on the American Navy in Pearl Harbor. The Mexican attache’ also stated that the Japanese were practicing surfacing and submerging the small subs (Willey 2005). This report was also ignored.
Also in July, a famous British secret agent named Dusko Popov, whose code name was “Tricycle,” gave information to the FBI that an attacke on Pearly Harbor was coming soon. The FBI told him that his information sounded like a set-up. They said it was “too precise, too complete to be believed,,,it sounds like a trap” (Willey 2005). A meeting wa set up between Popov and J. Edgar Hoover, the Director of the FBI, but Hoover kept the information to himself. (Persico 2001).
In addition, another secret agent told CBS newscaster Eric Severeid that the Korean underground intelligence had positive proof that Pearl Harbor would be attacked before Christmas. One spy had actually seen Admiral Yamamoto’s plans. This Korean spy’s name was Kisoo Hann and he spoke personally to a U.S. senator named Guy Gillette. Guy Gillette then took this information to the State Department, the Army and Navy Intelligence Office and the President. No one did anything with that information either (Willey 2005).
In October of 1941, the Soviet Union’s most famous spy, Richard Sorge told the Kremlin that Pearl Harbor would be attacked within a few months. Moscow informed the United States (Willey 2005). Sorge was caught in Japan and then hung (Prange 1986).
The anti-Nazi German Ambassador to the United States, Dr. Hans Thomsen, on November 13, 1941, gave a report to U.S. Intelligence that the Japanese would be attacking Pearly Harbor (Willey 2005).
These are just a few of the reports the American government received from secret intelligence sources. No one in authority in the U.S. government made these threats against Pearl Harbor known to those stationed at the base in Hawaii.

Sources used:
Persico, Joseph. Roosevelt’s Secret War. New York: Random House, 2001.
Prange, Gordon. At Dawn We Slept. New York: Penguin Putnam Inc., 1981.
Prange, Gordon. Pearl Harbor. New York: Penguin Putman Inc., 1986.
Tweten, Stone. “Road to Pearl Harbor.” 19 Jan 2005.
http://history.Acused.edu/gen/WW2Timeline/RD-Pearl.html.
Willey, Mark. Pearl Harbor Mother of All Conspiracies. 19 Jan. 2005.
http://geocities.com/Pentagon/6315/pearl.html.