[Willie Green]

“It’s the shot that started World War II between the Americans and the Japanese,” said John Wiltshire, associate director of the Hawaii Undersea Research Laboratory, which found the sub.

What's this? A prelude to revisionist claims that Japan then attacked Pearl Harbor in retaliation?

[DocCincy]

No, you don't have to worry about that. A Democrat (FDR) was in the White House, so the mainstream media will be real careful not to point an incriminating gun in that way.

[wattsmag2]

Revisionist is too polite.

[Poohbah]

No, it's correcting a common misinterpretation of history--that NOBODY was awake at the switch on 7 December.

The skipper of the USS Ward deserves credit for having his ship and crew ready for war. And CINCPACFLT headquarters deserves censure for not being on full alert during what intel analysts now call a "state of heightened international tensions" (and, yes, they DO make an acronym of that phrase :o)

[RightWhale]

A prelude to revisionist claims

No, but it should cause one to wonder why Pearl wasn't on full alert at the time of beginning of the air raid.

[KC_Conspirator]

What's this? A prelude to revisionist claims that Japan then attacked Pearl Harbor in retaliation?

LOL! Yes, of course Willie. Americans are bad according to the ACLU and the leftist professors who run the universities. I think reparations for Japan are in order...

[Congressman Billybob]

You got that right. Admiral Yamamoto led a Japanese fleet all the way across the Pacific under great secrecy precisely to attack Pearl Harbor. The fact that the Americans spotted and fired on one of four Japanese midget submarines (advancing toward the port on the surface at the time) before the planes attacked, is therefore the "shot that started it all"?

Puleeeze.

I just finished an excellent book, Paul Revere's Ride, 1994, by David Hackett Fischer. Using all available sources, including depositions -- of both American and British soldiers in the battle -- taken days after the atttacks on Lexington and Concord, he concludes that it is impossible to say who (on which side) actually fired the first shot. It seems that the first shot was fired by someone other than those in the ranks of British Regulars or the Minutemen, who were facing each other about 50 yards apart on Lexington Green as dawn broke on 19 April, 1775.

It is only clear that the first volley was fired by the Regulars at the Minutemen, without any orders to fire from the British commander of that unit. Applying that analogy to the attack on Pearl Harbor, whoever fired the "first shot" is irrelevant. It was the first volley that committed both nations to war. And the first "volley" at Pearl Harbor was the first wave of Yamamoto's Zeros which attacked the American warships.

Congressman Billybob

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[IYAS9YAS]

What's interesting is that the article said the sub had fired both it's weapons...I'm assuming they meant torpedoes. At that point, can we come to a different conclusion as to who fired first? Did the sub fire their weapons after we attacked them, or before?

[11th Earl of Mar]

What's this? A prelude to revisionist claims that Japan then attacked Pearl Harbor in retaliation?

My thoughts, exactly.

This "historian" seems to think that if the US had not sunk this submarine an hour before the Japanese attack, that the hundreds of Japanese Zero's would have all turned around and gone home.

Who does he think he is fooling?

[Junior]

What's this? A prelude to revisionist claims that Japan then attacked Pearl Harbor in retaliation?

Hey, it worked for the Federals at Ft. Sumter.

[Swordmaker]

What's this? A prelude to revisionist claims that Japan then attacked Pearl Harbor in retaliation?

No, they are saying that Pearl Harbor attacked the Japanese...