The

The Welcome from the home of the codebreakers and the birthplace of modern computing.

This is the Bletchley Park podcast.

Welcome to the December 2021 episode of the Bletchley Park podcast.

Easterly Wind, Rain.

On the 7th of December, 1941, Japanese invasion forces landed in Malaya.

An hour and a half later, Japanese aircraft attacked the US fleet

at anchor in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Simultaneous attacks were also made on Hong Kong, Guam,

Wake Island and the Philippines. Since that day, controversy has raged over how much the British and

US governments knew in advance about these attacks,

and why they came as such a surprise to both countries.

In this It Happened Here episode, Dr David Kenyon examines the intelligence background to the Day of Infamy and explores just what British and US codebreakers really knew about Japanese plans.

Music breakers really knew about Japanese plans. This is Bletchley Park.

It happened here.

David, as we're releasing this episode, it's the 80th anniversary of the infamous attack on Pearl Harbor.

But we're going to look at not just Pearl Harbor, but the other events around Pearl Harbor,

because people think that Pearl Harbor was this one event, but it was a whole attack across the Pacific by the Japanese.

But can you give us a bit of background to how we got to where we were on December 7th?

I can. And in a way, the first thing I'm going to say is Pearl Harbor is remembered as an enormous surprise, and it's somehow a treacherous kind of, they haven't declared war or whatever. The first point to make is that the idea that there might be a war with Japan, either by the Americans or by the British, cannot have been a surprise to anybody.

The bigger principle that Japan is likely to attack us wouldn't have been at all surprising.

Everyone was kind of expecting that.

There have been tension in the region for decades almost.

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