PSSST!--On January 27, 1941, US Ambassador
to Japan Joseph Grew secretly cabled the United States with information
gathered from the Peruvian ambassador to Japan, Ricardo Rivera Schreiber, that
Japan was considering a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor.
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| Ambassador Schreiber |
Grew's
report from Peruvian sources would make it to Admiral Harold R. Stark, chief of
naval operations, and to Admiral Husband Kimmel at Pearl Harbor but the
Peruvian ambassador’s tip was discounted by both naval officers.
Astonishing is a word that comes to mind that
such a cable was sent in the first place and ignored in the second. Seen through the 20/20 lens of history that
advance came much earlier.
In 1940, a
college professor in Japan was the man, who provided the amazing piece of
intelligence. The professor learned of
the proposed attack on United States interests at Pearl Harbor from the head of
housekeeping at the Peruvian Consulate in Yokohama, who in turn was related to
a member of Japan’s warlike Black Dragon Society.
How
different world history would have turned out if the U.S. heeded the tip by in the
least shoring up Hawaiian Island defenses and to better track Japanese naval
forces in the central Pacific.
The tip was
real.
So was the
attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.
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