At Pearl Harbor, why were the Japenese so accurate on their ability to find the american ships and submarines?

Question

Help me out please!

Answer 1

I don't exactly know what you mean by accurate.

Thee ships were tied to the peer and were not moving at the time of the attack.

It's pretty easy to hit a target that's sitting still.

As to finding them, the location of Pearl Harbor naval base, wasn't a secret.

The Japanese actually didn't know what ships they would find in port at the time,

They were hoping that atleast one or two of the aircraft carriers would be in port during the attack.

Answer 2

They had spies in Hawaii long before the attack; taking pictures of the docks and getting intel from the local population. They had a mockup of Ford Island in Japan, where the coastline was nearly identical to that of Pearl Harbor and they studied the layout of Battleship Row using miniature mockups. They had studied Pearl harbor to the last details and they prepared thoroughly for the attack.

They knew that the ships would be clustered close to each other (a precaution of the period against air arttack) and that most of the Pacific fleet would be at anchor in Pearl harbor as a precautionary move.

Because of this; all Japanese Americans were rounded up and put into resetllement camps in Nevada, California and Arizona; as a precaution, because of American fears that Japanese Americans were collaborating with the Emperor.

Answer 3

They had good intelligence on what ships were in harbor and where they were docked. The only reason thet didn't know about the carriers was that they were observing strict radio silence to sneak up on Pearl Harbor. None of the spies realized the Carriers had snuck out on a secret mission, they expected them to be there all weekend. A lot of Japanese lived on Pearl Harbor, so the Spy's could stay hidden fairly easily. If you do a Google Map of Oahu and click Satellite, you can see the Battleship Missouri, the Arizona Memorial, and a lot of Nuclear submarines in port. They are just south and east of Ford Island.

Answer 4

A Japanese attache with their consulate in Honolulu spent a lot of time photographing the fleet from Aeia Heights above Pearl Harbor for many weeks before the Japanese Combined Northern Fleet ever left port to steam towards Hawaii. The U.S. battleships had been ordered to be home ported at Pearl Harbor from San Diego earlier in the year by President Roosevelt.
Using the photos provided by the attache, Japanese Naval Aviators were drilled over and over with their aircraft in the attack plan. Even during the transit to waters north of Oahu they continued to drill on the hangar decks of the carriers, using aerial photos of the U.S. ships taken by that attache.
The Japanese aircraft approached Pearl Harbor, Hickam Field and the other targeted military installations by flying through Kolekole Pass and arrived over the fleet completely undetected and unchallenged. They could sweep over the U.S. ships at ease and pick out targets to bomb and strafe.
The attack plan was based in large part on the results of a Naval exercise in 1932 which had the U.S. fleet launch a mock attack on Oahu. In short, we gave Japan the attack plan.

Answer 5

There were a lot of people there who were loyal to the japanese,. and they supplied a lot of information.
Plus, how are you going to hide a battleship.
Also, charts would show where the water was too shallow to allow a battleship to go into. They knew where battleships would NOT be.
You mention submarines.? this is thr first I heard anything about submarines at pearl harbor, although I don't deny there were probably at least some there.

Answer 6

It's called "tenacity." That was the key. That is what we have lost as you see that in Iraq. You can have thousands and thousands of reasons post history how it was accomplished but before it happened, tenacity was the key for them.

And even today, you see that in those people. It has worked for them and we should learn from them. China and India (to a lesser extent, but a longer extent) is doing the same. We have lost (USA) the little we have had.

There are "do-ers" and "think-ers." Most get stuck on one or the other. With Japan, once the thinking was over, they completely shifted focus to doing and didn't look back.

As far as "planning"... conranger1 is the most accurate answer that sums it up quickly... you can't beat an inside job.

While later we rounded up a lot of Japanese unfairly, we weren't like the Nazis, as so many of our own countrymen of today try to label us... a big part of it was for reasons that conranger1 stated. IOW, we almost lost our country due to these spies and we overreacted, and probably erred on the right side of survival, however unfairly to many American Japanese. .

Answer 7

Japanese spies actively photographed the harbor from the air while posing as tourists, and also from listening to the talk of military personnel in bars and on the street.

The attack in Pearl was very well planned before hand, their only failure was the fact that the US Aircraft Carriers were not in dock in Pearl Harbor at the time of the attack.

Answer 8

The Japs knew there was an American base there and they were successful because it was a sneak attack, something the US thought they would not do. Probably much like 911. The government knew Osama was plotting against the US, but didn't take seriously that the threat would be carried out.

Answer 9

The Japs also bombed Australian cities, Darwin and a remote mining town called Port Augusta, later we sunk three Jap midgit subs in Sydney Harbour one of which fired upon a US destroyer docked nearby, but missed and sunk a merchant ship instead. My grandmother remembers airraid sirens and floodlights in Sydney, My Grandfather was a navigator with the RAAF and up and down the coast we still have old WW2 bunkers, theres amazing history on the beaches here.

Answer 10

because all the ships and subs were docked at pearl harbor. they knew that was the main naval base for the U S