Pearl Harbor: Could It Have Been Avoided?

Pearl Harbor was the first serious foreign attack on American soil. Being an attack from a foreign military, carrying out an order from the government. Resulting in large a amount of American casualties and forcing America to enter the war against the Axis Powers. But, could this attack been avoided all together? The Japanese invaded China in 1937, which forced America to take action. To protest, “Japan 's activities in China, Roosevelt had put an embargo on the export of aviation fuel and iron ore to Japan, and had frozen all Japanese assets in the United States” (“Could Pearl Harbor Have Been Averted?”). The Japanese were vulnerable without American materials of oil and metal (80% of Japanese oil and metal were from America). Prince Konoye, Prime Minister of Japan, wished for a meeting in Hawaii with President Roosevelt to resolve their conflicts with one another.

Throughout all of this conflict, Joseph Grew, the American ambassador to Japan, had been collecting knowledge from the Peruvian ambassador to Japan that plans to attack Pearl Harbor were being made. The intelligence were gathered on January 27, 1941, close to full year before the bombardment. Once Grew received the knowledge, “Grew passed this information along, but his information was cursory at best and he seemingly believed it to be unlikely” (“Attack on Pearl Harbor: Could it Have Been Avoided?). If the government took the knowledge seriously and did not underestimate Japanese capabilities, they would have been