Posted on 12/08/2004 10:30:04 PM PST by quidnunc
Tokyo – Franklin D Roosevelt famously declared that Japan’s devastating surprise attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 would "live in infamy" as he took the United States to war.
In his address to Congress, the US president raged that he was "still in conversation" with Japan in an effort to maintain the peace in the Pacific when torpedo planes and dive bombers wreaked havoc on the warships at anchor and killed more than 2,000 people on 7 December, 1941.
For years, the blame for what President Roosevelt described as an "unprovoked and dastardly attack" and an act of "treachery" was put on Japanese diplomats in Washington, who had allegedly failed to pass on a message breaking off peace talks until 40 minutes after the attack.
But now the son of one of the shamed diplomats has used newly released documents to prove his theory that the Japanese military was responsible for delaying the "final memorandum" to the US.
Takeo Iguchi, a professor of international relations and a former Japanese ambassador to Bangladesh and New Zealand, spent 12 years combing the foreign ministry’s archives in an effort to clear the name of his father, Sado, who was working at the Japanese embassy in Washington at the time.
Documents released by Japan’s foreign ministry in October reveal that it originally intended to submit a note to Washington that would qualify under international law as an "ultimatum", but that the Imperial Army opposed revealing its hand, instead ordering that the message should simply terminate negotiations.
When the "final memorandum" was cabled to the Japanese embassy in Washington, the military withheld the 14th and concluding paragraph for 15 hours.
-snip-
(Excerpt) Read more at news.scotsman.com ...
bttt
ping
Without a Declaration of War, Japan attacked the United States' Pacific Fleet on Sunday morning, December 7th, 1941. No matter what their intentions may have been, it was sneak attack (in classic Japanese fashion) but in the end was a strategic disaster for them. Pearl Harbor insured that the war in the Pacific would be a war to the death and they learned that the hard way on August 6th and 9th, 1945.
Maybe its time we laid the blame for the attack on Pearl Harbor on the Japanese.The Army didn't do it. The Navy didn't do it. FDR and the federal government didn't do it.
I'll say it again: you post the best articles.
And we should believe this WHY??
Clearly this guy is on a mission to clear his Father's name
in the eyes of the US, (for God knows, the Japanese couldn't give a ratsass about this issue, and never have).
Doesn't the movie Tora Bora make it clear that the message was withheld?
This, of course, put those poor guys on a seat so hot I wouldn't care to contemplate it. You can't get an uglier job than that as a diplomat. The presentation of that declaration prior to any bombs falling was their only real protection under international law, and it is a tribute to Roosevelt's restraint that he didn't have them shot when the bombs fell first.
It is laudable for the son to try to clear his father's name, but I don't think that name was really in question, at least in the United States. Whether the declaration was delayed by his incompetence is entirely irrelevant - he was set up from the beginning, and the bombs would have fallen anyway.
What is new in this article is that the military attachés in the Japanese embassy were responsible for delaying the transmission.
If this information is true then the Japanese ambassadors Nomura and Kurusu have gotten a bum rap.
Yes, but did they have any idea what? My recollection is that the planes were arranged in rows for the purpose of preventing anyone from being able to sneak among them unobserved. Had the Japanese been intending to have bombs hand-planted by saboteurs, this might have been a good defense. Unfortunately, it was ineffective against the threat that actually materialized.
Quaint isn't it. The notion that our government would get riled up by a country not declaring war first. That norm lasted for a few centuries to protect nations from such "sneek attacks." It's long gone now -- along with the rest of codified "international law," which is being plowed under by the terrorists of the International Criminal Court.
BUMP.
Marking place for tomorrow's read.
And we should believe this WHY??
Clearly this guy is on a mission to clear his Father's name
in the eyes of the US, (for God knows, the Japanese couldn't give a ratsass about this issue, and never have).
________________________________________________________
Actually you have it backwards. This guy certainly has a bias, but he is trying to clear his father and lay the blame on the Japanese Army. And as the article points out, another historian was murdered for a controversial WWII opinion recently.
So I would say at least some in Japan "give a ratsass" about this.
This has been common knowledge for years. I can remember being told this story when I was in high school. I graduated in 1959...Japan deliberately withheld the last paragraph. End of story.
So He says.
Why would it matter in the end if it was the Military, the Diplomats, or the Emperor himself?
It matters to him, but not to us. I suspect the message was delivered exactly when it was intended to be.
Very Observant.
Had the message been delivered ahead of time, the impact would have been the same.
These days, we considder ourselves luck if anyone takes responsibility after the fact.
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