Author: Ethan Hughart

Interviewer: Joe Funkhouser

Despite warnings of a Japanese attack, somehow the United States was still caught off guard and unaware on December 7th, 1941. This podcast focuses on how the United states military, and the rest of the country, was so blind to a Japanese military attack. When the Japanese dropped the first bomb on Pearl Harbor the U.S. forces were severely understaffed, lacked vital resources, and proper defensive capabilities to protect itself because of the continued German threat in the Atlantic. At Pearl Harbor men were not trained properly, over worked, and did not have the necessary equipment to establish a proper defensive radius. But the most important factor to explain the surprise of Americans was an ego inflated by continued victory and disbelief that a country like Japan was capable and willing to invoke a war with the United States.