Having been stationed in Hawaii, I had a few years to study the attack on Dec. 7, 1941.
For the first point any time the Fleet was in Hawaiian waters is anchored at Pearl for weekends, so the swabs, could have liberty and blow of some steam, normal deployment cruses were in the 60 to 180 day range, and it was always great to get back to port.
The fleet had just returned from a deployment and was in for supply and refit, and this was the normal anchorage, nothing unusual, those births had been established for close to 20 years, and Pearl was the home of the Pacific Fleet.
28 May 1903, the first battleship, USS Wisconsin, entered Pearl Harbor, and in August 1919, the anchorage for Battleship row was opened.
So there was nothing unusual about were the ships were anchored, or the fact that they were in Port.
Hind sight is 20/20, and we were still at peace, and really didn't believe that Japan was ready to attack yet.
We were reading some of the Purple Code, but the Purple Code was not the military code, and we had no capability to read the military code JN–25, at the time of Pearl Harbor, we didn't really start to read the JN-25 code until the Middle of 1942, just in time for Battle of Coral Sea and Midway,.
Now for a fact the 14th paragraph wasn't deciphered until after the time of the attack at Pearl Harbor, it was only fully decoded at 1.25 pm Washington time, which is 7.55 am Honolulu Time, and the attack had already commenced
The last paragraph of the 14th part reads as follows:
"The Japanese Government regrets to have to notify hereby the American Government that in view of the attitude of the American Government it cannot but consider that it is impossible to reach an agreement through further negotiations."
The Message never used the words War, and never declared War as required by Hague convention.
Most authors contend that if part 14 of the message from Japan to the United States had been delivered before the Pearl Harbor attack, the War between Japan and the U.S. would have been "legally declared". Among other nations, Japan, Italy and Germany were signatories to the Hague Treaty of 1907. One of the conditions they agreed to was:
"The Contracting Powers recognize that hostilities between themselves must not commence without previous and explicit warning, in the form either of a reasoned declaration of war or of an ultimatum with conditional declaration of war."
We were very reluctant to be involved in the wars "of the old world." Although of course there were military operations in the Phillippines, we blasted our way into Japan, we fucked about with Mexico...etc.