November 7, 1937 – Los Angeles Examiner Imagines How Japan Could Attack the West Coast of the U.S.

According to U.S. News & World Report:

Three days before the Dec. 7, 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt was warned in a memo from naval intelligence that Tokyo’s military and spy network was focused on Hawaii, a new and eerie reminder of FDR’s failure to act on a basket load of tips that war was near.

In the newly revealed 20-page memo from FDR’s declassified FBI file, the Office of Naval Intelligence on December 4 warned, ‘In anticipation of open conflict with this country, Japan is vigorously utilizing every available agency to secure military, naval and commercial information, paying particular attention to the West Coast, the Panama Canal and the Territory of Hawaii.’”

This was not even the first time such a possibility was suggested. As Slate Magazine reports:

Four years before the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Los Angeles Examiner published this full-page map by artist Howard Burke, outlining a potential Japanese strategy for attacking the West Coast and ‘demolishing’ its cities.”

 
The Los Angeles Examiner, founded in 1903, was a Hearst newspaper that was notable for employing the phrase “Yellow Peril” to refer to the Japanese.

The U.S. News & World Report article cites historian Craig Shirley, who compares the missed signals leading up to Japan’s attack to the situation before 9/11. Government investigations have since revealed that both the Clinton and Bush administrations missed clear signals that an attack was coming.