J Rusbridger (UK journalist) and E. Nave (top Australian intelligence figure) exposed Allied fore-knowledge of the Japanese Pear Harbor attack in Rusbridger, J. and Nave, E. (1991), Betrayal at Pearl Harbor. How Churchill Lured Roosevelt into World War II (Summit, New York) as summarized by Dr Gideon Polya thus (1998): “Rusbridger and Nave (1991) refer to a communication of Churchill to Roosevelt on November 26 1941 that is so secret that it cannot be released for the best part of 70 years and one of the American Pearl Harbor inquiries refers to critical (but not revealed) evidence received on November 26 indicating impending Japanese attack against Britain and America. Hawaii was warned in a general, as opposed to a specific sense, of the danger of Japanese attack on the same day that the Americans rejected the final Japanese proposal. 2 weeks later British forces in Malaya were at battle stations when attacked by the Japanese at dawn on December 8 1941, having had prior warning of major Japanese naval movements across the Gulf of Siam several days before. The Americans in Hawaii had no warning of the attack to come, although precise information was available to both British and American naval intelligence people the day before the attack.
A coded message sent to the Japanese Consulate in Melbourne on November 19 was intercepted and decoded. It specified warning messages to be incorporated into Japanese broadcasts in the event of the impending commencement of hostilities. The message indicating an impending outbreak of Japanese-American hostilities was “east wind rain” inserted in the text of a weather report (“west wind clearing” was to mean a Japanese-British crisis). The point of this was to ensure timely destruction of documents in Japanese consulates and embassies. The “east wind rain” radio message - indicating an impending Japanese attack on the Americans - was indeed picked up in Melbourne by the Australian Special Intelligence Organisation officer on December 4 1941. That intelligence was immediately passed on to Nave (who had been seconded to SIO) and thence to higher authority - but not to the Americans. The same message was picked up, correctly interpreted and passed on to higher authority by naval intelligence in Maryland - but according to Rusbridger and Nave, this direct warning of an impending Japanese attack on American forces was not acted upon to ensure the preparedeness of American forces in the Pacific.
The attack on Pearl Harbor on the morning of December 7 1941 caused massive damage to the US Navy and Air Force - 5 battleships and 3 cruisers sunk or severely damaged, 177 aircraft destroyed, 2,343 American servicemen dead, 876 missing and 1,272 injured. At that time Churchill was dining with Roosevelt’s special envoy, Averell Harriman, and the American ambassador, John Winant. The butler brought the news and Churchill phoned Roosevelt immediately to inform him that Britain would declare war on Japan. The conclusion of Rusbridger and Nave (1991) is that denial of British naval intelligence information from the Americans allowed the Pearl Harbor attack to happen, turned a potential Japanese disaster into an American one and was “no accident but the deliberate policy of Churchill himself to achieve his aim of dragging America into the war” (“Churchill and Pearl Harbor” subsection in Chapter 15, in Gideon Polya, “Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History”, G.M. Polya, Melbourne, 1998, 2008, and now available for free perusal on the web: http://janeaustenand.blogspot.com.au/ and http://janeaustenand.blogspot.com.au/2012/03/jane-austen-and-black-hole-chapter-15.html ).