[Vermont Lt]

There was really no other place to attack. Unless they went for An Diego or San Francisco. But Pearl was the heart of the Pacific fleet.

It would take an actively blind man NOT to see Pearl was at risk.

[tanknetter]

It would take an actively blind man NOT to see Pearl was at risk.

It was a classic "failure of imagination."

There was very much a lack of real-world analysis of the Japanese capabilities. Too much stereotyping of them as buck-toothed, myopic little yellow monkeys flying bamboo airplanes.

Those biases and stereotyping led to a variety of conclusions - including that they didn't have the range for such a mission, that they couldn't make it across the Northern Pacific in late-Fall, that we'd see them coming, that our P-36s and P-40s would sweep them from the skies.

Also, we looked at it from the perspective of what OUR warplans said would happen. Which were based on the assumption that the attack would come in the Philippines and that the US Fleet would gloriously steam forth from Pearl Harbor to smite the IJN in a deep-water duel of battleships.

So, in reality, while the risk was certainly apparent, it was only apparent in hindsight since seeing the true risk would have required abandoning all sorts of deep-seated institutional prejudices and biases.