The Soviets DID spot the IJN during their Hawaii approach and they did radio that discovery back to Moscow.
The Soviets didn’t warn the US, but no one knows why.
They wanted us in the war to fight the Germans would be my guess.
Can you cite a source for that? Not challenging you, just wondering where you may have heard that.
Stalin clearly wanted the U.S. in the war.
Stalin did not trust anyone. He was given timely intelligence, several times during the war, that he could have used to great advantage. He was not told how it had been obtained, or that the Brits, with the help of the Poles, had cracked the German Army codes. He ignored them all.
They figured Hitler would declare war on us, and because Germany's spymaster in Japan was a double agent working for the Soviets, they knew what Hitler was unaware of a secret protocol between the Russians and the Japs that the Russkies would not attack Japan.
That was what was behind Hitler's "inexplicable" decision to declare war on us: he thought the Japs would open an Eastern front on the Soviet Union.
The Soviets didn’t warn the US, but no one knows why.
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One reason is that soon after Pearl Harbor, the Soviets transferred dozens of army divisions to the Eastern Front to help fight the Germans. The Japanese did the Russians a big favor when they attacked Pearl Harbor. They knew they were safe from Japanese attack so they could concentrate on the Germans.
Actually, it is pretty obvious why in 20-20 hindsight. Tokyo had signed a non-aggression pact with Moscow and Russia wanted to bring the United States into the war. Admiral Yamamoto's orders were to abort the attack if the fleet was discovered. Moscow honored their non-aggression pact until the first atomic bomb fell. Then they saw it was in their best interests to invade Manchuria, Korea, Karafuto (southern Sakhalin Island) and the Kuriles, which they promptly did to support ally Mao in the case of the former two and claim their spoils of war in the case of the later two.
“The Soviets didn’t warn the US, but no one knows why.”
How would the Soviets have known the destination of the fleet that they had spotted? Japan wasn’t at war with the United States at that point so why pass the information on to us?
Did a Soviet Merchant Ship Encounter the Pearl Harbor Strike Force?
Marty Bollinger, Naval War College Review (NWCR), Autumn 2007, pages 93-110. Yup, from almost a dozen years ago.