Whether this applies to the Administration of 2001 or the Administration of 1941, or both or neither, is up to you.
- Dan the Errand Boy
I was thinking more of a crock of s---.
1) The Japanese code most penetrated prior to the war was the diplomatic code (called Purple), not the naval code. Thus we read the Japanese ultimatum sent to Wahington before before it was presented to the State Dept, but no way were we "reading 90% of Japanese naval messages within hours of transmission in 1941" as quoted in a review at the amazon.com link. I doubt that level of penetration was acheived even in 1945.
2) Every Japanese source I ever read all say strict radio silence was maintained to the point of removing crystals from transmitters. They knew it would have suicidal to transmit any signals that could give away their location.
3) The war Roosevelt wanted was with Germany, not Japan. The Axis was not a formal alliance as we think of it. There was no guarentee Hitler would declear war on us in support of Japan, and in fact he did not until 11 Dec. War with Germany could probably have have brought about just using U.S. merchants to ship Lend Lease material to Britain and letting German subs sink enough to rouse public anger.
4) If we knew the Japanese were coming and when, why not just change our search plane patterns and "discover" them just prior to launch? I think most Americans would have recognized the presense of a Japanese carrier force in our home waters as an act of war. In others words, if we wanted war, there other ways to go without allowing the destruction of the fleet.
5) Roosevelt could not have pulled anything like this off without help from the military itself, and I refuse to believe they would have complied.
The only thing I agree on with this author is that "Pearl Harbor" was a really terrible movie.
Never heard any more about that.
Most students of history are not aware that months before Pearl Harbor, American pilots were flying combat missions against the Japanese in China. US officers were "released" from the US military, and "volunteered" to join the Nationalist Chinese forces to fight the Japanese. They were called the "Flying Tigers". One pilot's memoirs of the days is "God is my Co-Pilot" by Robert Lee Scott.
Kimmel had the fleet out! In spite of everything Roosevelt did to deny him necessary intelligence, Kimmels training and native intelligence told him something was up and he got his fleet to sea. Roosevelt, ordering him back into Pearl Harbor is the final proof for me.
Regards,