i know this has probably already been done, but i didnt see it so :

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."

But then he did something that is a little strange. Absolutely nothing. Yeah, that's right. He knew about the Japanese secret declaration of war, but he never told the people that needed to know: Admiral Husband E. Kimmel, commander in chief of the United States Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, and the unit's commanding general, Walter Short. Pearl Harbor, it was common military knowledge, was where the Japanese would strike. If they struck.

At dawn the next morning, a Japanese squadron bombed Pearl Harbor and the surprise attack was just that, a surprise. At least to Kimmel and Short and the 4,575 American servicemen who died.

It may not have been such a surprise to Generals George C. Marshall and Leonard T. Gerow and Admirals Harold R. Stark and Richmond Kelly Turner. They were the military's top brass in Washington and the only officers authorized to forward such sensitive intelligence to outlying commanders. But the decoded war declaration did not reach Kimmel and Short until the morning, with the attack well underway off in the Pacific.

Marshall and Stark, supreme commanders of the U.S. Army and Navy respectively, later testified that the message was not forwarded to kimmel and short because the hawaiian commanders had received so many intercepted Japanese messages that another one would simply confuse them.

Internal army and navy inquires in 194 held Stark and Marshall derelict of duty for keeping the hawaiian commanders in the dark. But the military buried those findings. As far as the public knew, the final truth was uncovered by the Roberts Commission, headed by Justice Owen Roberts of the Supreme Court, and convened eleven days for the attack. The Roberts Commission appeared to have identified its culprits in advance and gerrymandered its inquires to make the suspects appear guilty. The scapegoats were Kimmel and Short, who were both publicly crucified, forced to retire, and denied the open hearings they desired. One of the Roberts Commission panelists, Admiral William Standly, would call Robert's performance, "Crooked as a snake."

There were eight investigations of Pearl Harbor altogether. The most spectacular was a joint House-Senate probe that reiterated the Roberts Commission findings. At those hearings, Marshall and Stark testified, incredibly, that they could not remember where they were the night the war declaration came in. But, a close friend of Frank Knox, the secretary of the Navy, later revealed that Knox, Stark, and Marshall spent most of that night in the White House with Roosevelt, awaiting the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the chance for America to join World War II.

A widespread cover-up ensued. A few days after Pearl Harbor, reports Historian John Toland, Marshall told his top officers, "Gentlemen, this goes to the grave with us." General Short once considered Marshall his friend, only to learn that the chief of staff was the agent of his frame-up. Short once remarked that he pitted his former pal because Marshall was the only general who wouldn't be able to write an autobiography.

There were multiple warnings of the Pearl Harbor attack concealed from the commanders at Pearl Harbor. The Winds Code was perhaps the most shocking. That was an earlier transmission, in a fake weather report broadcast on a Japanese short-wave station, of the words "higashi no kaze ame". Which means, "East wind, rain." The Americans already knew that this was the Japanese code for war with the United States. The response of top U.S. military officials? To deny that the "winds" message existed and to attempt to destroy all records of its reception. But it did exist, and it was recovered.

Completely apart from the cloak and dagger of cryptography, the Australian intelligence service, three days before the attack, spotted the Japanese fleet of aircraft carriers heading for Hawaii. A warning went to Washington, where it was dismissed by Roosevelt as a politically motivated rumor circulated by Republicans.

A British double agent, Dusko Popov, who siphoned information from Germany, learned of the Japanese intentions and desperately tried to warn Washington, to no avail. And there were others.

Why would Roosevelt and the nation's top military commanders sacrifice the U.S. Pacific Fleet, not to mention thousands of servicemen-an act that could justifiably be deemed treason? They had concluded long before Pearl Harbor that war against the axis powers was a necessity. The American territory would surely bring the public around.

"This was the president's problem," wrote Rear Admiral Robert A. Theobald who commanded Pearl Harbor's destroyers, "and his solution was based upon the simple fact that, while it takes two to make a fight, either one may start it."

"A small group of men, revered and held to be most honorable by millions," wrote Toland, "had convinced themselves that it was necessary to act dishonorably for the good of their nation-and incited the war that Japan had tried to avoid."

But why? Why was FDR so cold-hearted in allowing the bombing at Pearl Harbor to take place? "For the good of the nation...", more like, "I don't care how many of our men die as long as the Japanese are killed." It's really sad that we elected a man as sick and sinister as that as president.

i know its long... it basically says that FDR wanted to lead America into WWII but the public was against it. it continues by saying that he deliberatley ignored info. stating that the japs were leading an attack.. he didnt care how many of us were killlied as long as we got to kill the japanese. also it is interesting how all of our ships (military and trade) were told not to go out in the pacific on the day that would become pearl harbor.

Of course he was looking for an excuse to get into WWII. It was time for the US to flex it's muscles and show the world it was dangerous, and it achieved just that. Naturally, however, he wouldn't want to make the first strike. That's where the Japanese came in, and in the end they got flattened anyways. A president at war doesn't see people, he sees numbers, and as long as he's got enough numbers, he'll do anything to make the enemy numbers go down.

just an excuse to use a nuclear weapon
why you think they started threatening iran?
they know damn well iran dont got nukes yet and americans dont care about arabs

That seems very uneducated. The Americans nuked Hiroshima and Nagasaki to put an end to the war; The Japanese would have fought to the very end, resulting in vastly more deaths on both sides. It's not like they sat in their offices and gleefully said 'Let's kill and injure thousands of civilians just for the hell of it!'

Besides, The US knows that Iran has no nukes; What they DONT know is if they're developing them.

It is interesting to note these few facts...

The Japanese navy leaders had been educated in a time when battleships were thought to be the most powerful thing on the water.
All the battleships in the U.S. Pacific fleet were in one small habor and tied up in neat little rows whilst the U.S. aircraft carriers, which would prove to be far more valuable than battle ships in a mostly ocean war, were off doing manuvers, without any kind of escort. What were they practicing? Certainly not the standard fleet support rolls; they would've done those with other vessels.

The airplanes that the U.S. navy had were of a slower and older design. How could the navy justify replacing it's antiquated airplanes? Line them all up in neat lines with the birds really close together. Not very smart if you plan to use them in case of a suprise attack but, pretty well thought out if you want them all destroyed in short order by an attacker. Then, you have your excuse to buy newer planes, all your old ones are wrecked.

Rather we intended to or not, the U.S. made Pearl the sweetest target in the Pacific. To anyone who studied naval tactics before the war, attacking Pearl would've seemed like a quick way to knock the U.S. out of the Pacific war.

A thought on the use of the nukes in WWII. Not only did it most likely save lives by preventing the need to invade Japan, (Operation Overthrow?), but, it ended the war a lot more quickly preventing and invasion of the northern islands by the Russians who had demonstrated that they were interested in gaining warm water ports for thier navy.
It's also important to note that at the time, most of the world had been involved in the war for a number of years and were weary of stretching it out any longer than it had to be. Most of the world was tired of fighting and most of the more powerful nations before the war were in dire straits after it.

Well, by the time they actually made the message clear and what was going to happen, by the time they got the message down to Hawaii, the attack was already over.

this thread should be called 'the no child left behind" thread.

how many ways can you get a -F in history ?

they need to come up with a grade below -F

Their were no 'nuclear' weapons in 1945. Their were 'atomic' weapons like the A-Bomb which two were dropped on hieroshima and an other city. Anyways, their's no point in discussing something that's already happened unless you've got a plan to go back in history and change it?

Some say that Churchill knew of plans to attack Pearl Harbour, before the attack actually took place.