Posted on 09/04/2011 5:22:32 AM PDT by Homer_J_Simpson
I totally agree with you. My Dad fought in the Pacific theatre during WWII and he spoke less about FDR than his own experiences - and those were rare instances as it was.
My Dad was no fan of FDR - on the foreign front, but especially his domestic policies.
I think the issue with Stinnett is not whether he makes consistently well researched and cogent arguments, but whether anything he says is historically valuable, and if so, what?
CougarGA7: "As to the report on the new configuration in October, even if that report was sent to Kimmel at that time, the CAST report makes mention of the 1st Air Fleet or its possible purpose.
In fact it is mostly about the units that are believed to be slated for action in the Southern Pacific which everyone expected to happen regardless (and did)."
Pal, I need you to take a close look at those two sentences.
In the first, the word "no" appears to be missing, if that is indeed what you intended.
In the second, the word "mostly" could easily hide the First Air Fleet data which your missing "no" presumably denies was there.
In summary, you should re-write those two sentences.
They don't now say what you apparently meant.
CougarGA7: "The key point on this intercept is right there in Stinnett's text itself though.
It was not translated until March 18th 1946, after the war was over.
In November of 1941, this intercepted message didn't tell U.S. officials or military personnel anything of any worth.
This is a deceptive tactic used by Stinnett in several points in this work."
All Pearl Harbor conspiracy authors, and all conspiracy theories are based on claims that US intelligence could decode and translate not just Japanese Purple diplomatic codes, but also various so-called five-number Naval codes, well before December 1941.
And this drives us so deep into the technical weeds that a layman (i.e., yours truly) is not going to figure it all out.
So the answer of people like Stinnet to your words above would be along the lines of: there was plenty of time for that message to have been decoded, translated and reported to higher headquarters.
Therefore: there is no reason to believe that the 1946 translation was the first time this message was understood.
The official version has always been that no one in Washington expected an attack on Pearl Harbor.
But there have always been reports suggesting otherwise.
The question is, how credible, really, are they?
After the fall of France, in June 1940, there was zero possibility that Britain alone could defeat Hitler, while America took care of Japan in the Pacific.
Therefore, all US planning was focused on first defeating Hitler, only then going after Japan.
And I'm hoping I won't have to go digging through books to find references for that... ;-)
But the main point here, in response to beebuster2000's original comments is: from the very beginning (whenever that was), US planners saw the war as another World War, that must be fought victoriously all over the globe.
At no point (that we know of) did President Roosevelt ever contemplate giving Japan everything it wanted so as to avoid war entirely in the Pacific.
Indeed, whether the Pacific was to be the major theater of war, or just an after-thought, may have changed with the fortunes of war in Europe, but at no time did the US seriously plan to buy peace with Japan in order focus on defeating Hitler.
Of course, had Hitler knocked Russia out of the war, that may well have changed things.
But as it turned out, the US always intended a two-front war.
You should go look that up then. As I said before, there was a Rainbow 4 (to be change to 5) plan that took into account a two front war with Japan and Germany/Italy, but it was not accepted as the primary plan by the War Department or the WPD until early 1941. Up until that time most of the attention was placed on Rainbow 1. Even if there were reconsiderations taking place in 1940, none of them came to fruition before early 1941.
As for where to look for this, I would suggest “American War Plans: 1941-1945” by Steven T. Ross, and “Allies and Adversaries: The Joint Chiefs of Staff, The Grand Alliance, and U.S. Strategy in World War II” by Mark A Stoler.
Now none of this means the U.S. was contemplating giving Japan everything it wanted in the Pacific. I don’t think anyone ever felt that was an option. Even if we were dealing with a President Willkie. 1939 should have proved to everyone that appeasement was ineffective.
His research is so poor I wouldn’t say that anything is of any historical value. You just can’t trust what he writes.
Your right, the word “no” is missing there. Glad you could figure that out. And you are reading way too much into the word “mostly” There is nothing on the First Air Fleet. I certain if there was, Stinnett would have mentioned it. And it’s “you’re”, not “your”.
As to the AN-1 code, or 5-num, only the conspiracy nuts think we were reading AN-1 prior to 1942. AN-1 had been implemented in December 1940. It consisted of 33,000 code groups with an additive key giving it another layer of encryption. By Pearl Harbor they only had broken 4,000 code groups which means they could only read 10 percent of any given message. Imagine trying to read a book in a foreign language in which you could only make out every 10th word, and those were the common words at that. You are not going to get much if any information from that book.
As for 1946 translation, that is what it is. To suggest that it was translated earlier and just not notated is only wild conjecture and has no basis in reality.
I guess I'll have to take that as an assignment, and go look up who says the 5-number code was broken, and when, and exactly why they say it.
No doubt the results will consist of: A) examples where the code was reported broken before December 1941 and, B) examples where records were destroyed which would have shown the codes broken & translated.
All of which is so deep into the weeds I'd much rather leave it to someone else to do... ;-)
I'll go with that.
CougarGA7: "Now none of this means the U.S. was contemplating giving Japan everything it wanted in the Pacific.
I don’t think anyone ever felt that was an option."
You may not even realize it, but you're saying the same thing I am in this sense: no American leader asked the question, "what does the US need to do to prevent war with Japan?"
What they did instead was, in effect, draw lines in the sand and tell the Japanese they must stay behind these lines to keep peace with America.
In other words, "peace" was not our major objective; defending our national interests, with force if necessary, was.
And, of course, the Japanese responded accordingly.
Finally, just to make certain no one misunderstands my point of view: I don't disapprove of anything the President did on this in 1941, except to the degree he knew or suspected it, the failure to better warn commanders in Hawaii.
No, I think we are seeing things about the same here. All I’m pointing out is the point in which it really became policy. It would be unreasonable to think that American policy makers did not have the possibility of joining up with the British in a venture against the Axis on their mind. Otherwise Rainbow 4(5) would never had been introduced with the initial Rainbow plans, and Rainbow 2 (which was a variation of Rainbow 4(5) would not have been added later.
As much as I doubt you could do that objectively, especially since you have already listed your preconceived conclusions in the same post, I say go to it.
that’s very valuable analysis, thank you
I haven’t read Stinnett but when I read some of the other conspiracy mongers in the past their work seemed unconvincing.
It’s easy to say after the fact that a whole bunch of people should have been more attuned to what the Japanese might be up to, but to try to put all the blame on FDR or to claim that it was some conscious conspiracy to have the US fleet at Pearl Harbor nearly destroyed is absurd.
I’m no fan of FDR, far from it, but for someone to argue he WANTED the US Pacific fleet to be destroyed in a surprise attack is ludicrous. If his aim was to get the US into the war that would be as well or better served by an initiation of hostilities in which the US fleet was not devastated in a surprise attack. A battle which the US fleet was prepared for and primed to try to win would still get us into the war while having the obvious advantage of not sending a good part of the the fleet to the bottom, perhaps.
Another way of putting my “psychological” point: once the Japanese carrier attack group sails toward Pearl Harbor the outbreak of war is imminent and will commence as soon as the Japanese commence combat.
What possible motive(s) could FDR have had for having the fleet destroyed by surprise, rather than for having all available aircraft and ships ready for the fight?
Of course, it has sometimes been pointed out that the US benefited from not having the only 3 carriers then active in the Pacific on hand for potential destruction, since the Japanese were bringing six carriers with combat-experienced air crews.... but debating the possible force postures of available US forces had we not been surprised on Dec. 7, 1941 is quite different from asserting ala conspiracy mongers that FDR sat around the White House plotting to have the US fleet and Army Air Corps destroyed by surprise at Pearl Harbor.
In reality, the 3 carriers with their aircraft, plus all the aircraft and air defenses at Pearl Harbor, could have put up a tough fight had they been ready and on alert. Still, it was some kind of blessing to have our 3 carriers survive unscathed at that point....
First, please don't imagine the President wanted to see the US fleet at Pearl destroyed.
That could not possibly have been his motive, in any sense.
But what is indisputable is that all American commanders received written orders in the days before December 7 to make sure that Japan, not the US, committed the first overt act of war.
And the reason for that is no mystery at all: politically, Congress would not declare war unless and until the US was directly attacked, in a major way -- some German U-boat in the Atlantic "accidentally" sinking an American ship simply would not do the job.
Politically, it had to be a major unprovoked attack, hence the written orders that US commanders must allow Japan to commit the first over act.
And there is also indisputable proof that US leaders expected a Japanese attack somewhere, most likely against the Philippines.
The question is, did anyone also expect an attack on Pearl Harbor?
And that is the big subject of dispute -- numerous authors have claimed to have evidence showing FDR & company did know the attack on Pearl was coming.
But far more dispute those claims.
So, if you follow Homer's threads daily, you'll see that from time to time I post quotes from some "conspiracy nuts," and CougarGA7 will often respond with detailed explanations on why those quotes are full of... well, nonsense.
I don't know how you could ask for a better education on the subject. ;-)
thx, I was commenting more upon the frequent tenor of the “conspiracy” claims elsewhere than about anything I’d seen at FR (but I’m only here very sporadically these days).....
When I’ve read some of the conspiracy writings or encountered someone in my “real” life who has “heard” that FDR allowed Pearl Harbor to happen as did in order to get the USA into the war, there really do seem to be a bunch of people who will jump to the belief that FDR knew that the “Pearl Harbor attack” as it unfolded was about to happen and that he allowed the US fleet to be surprised.
Yes, it was certain that (for good reason) a variety of US officials and officers did not want us to be cast in any way as the initiator of conflict in the Pacific..... but neither FDR nor anyone else was imagining something like the Pearl Harbor attack, so they were assuming that when/if overt hostilities were initiated by the Japanese that US forces would be able to give a good account of themselves.
Of course, no one at Pearl Harbor (Kimmel and Short, et al) seems to have paid adequate attention to what the Brits had done in 1940 at Taranto with just one carrier and 20 planes in a surprise raid, else there would have been (one hopes) a lot more attention to the details of how forces at Pearl Harbor could monitor and protect against much larger potential raids.
I think that once the Japanese had those six carriers and nearly 400 combat aircraft enroute for an attack at Pearl Harbor the US forces were in for a very tough encounter no matter what.... but of course even with the limited forces available on the scene a much stronger fight would have been possible had there been any forewarning.
Not necessarily true.
You might remember that the weekend before December 7, Admiral Kimmel had scheduled fleet exercises around the very spot (the Prokofiev Mount, iirc) where the Japanese fleet launched its air attacks against Oahu.
These exercises were essentially a dress rehearsal of the actual attack, except that Kimmel did what he would have done on December 7, had he been adequately warned.
Of course, many argue that had Kimmel done on December 7 what he had planned and exercised the weekend before, the losses to the US fleet would have been far greater -- including the irreplaceable US aircraft carriers.
As it happened, in the middle of his exercises, Kimmel was ordered to send both of his carriers (the third was being overhauled on the west coast) on minor errands to deliver aircraft to outlying western islands.
Admiral Halsey was in command of one of those carriers (Enterprise) and he went fully prepared for war.
The other carrier's commander was not expecting hostilities and more-or-less went for a walk in the park.
Neither carrier encountered the Japanese fleet, which was coming in from the North.
Anyway, my point is, had the US commanders been adequately warned, they would have sailed out to meet the enemy, and in the resulting battle would very likely have suffered greater damage & loss of life than actually happened.
So, should they have been better warned?
Cougar
Sorry to have been away from posting for so long, but I’ve been busy on some projects. More on that some other time. But thank you for copying me with your post.
I read your post and your last paragraph really sums up the situation with Stinnett quite well. His work is “popular history” with an agenda, rather than a true scholarly work. Not that I consider myself any sort of historical scholar, but as a general rule I avoid the “pulp fiction” sort of histories out there. Some of you may cringe but that includes Stephen Ambrose; I don’t think I have any of his books in my library. Ambrose is a fine author and I believe he does strive for accuracy in his work, but his type of writing is not my cup of tea. I prefer the dry, turgid stuff like David Glantz. I like lots of maps, appendices and footnotes to authority.
No writer of history is going to be 100% accurate in what they write, and their opinions and conclusions will always be subject to analysis. I don’t agree with all of Glantz’ opinions in his books about the Russo-German war, but I will be the first to admit that he’s probably forgotten more about that war than I will ever know.
To get back to your point, I don’t consider Stinnett to be “history,” probably even less so that Herman Wouk, who I wouldn’t consider an historian at all. A true historian reveals all of his sources and subjects himself to the process of peer review, rather than engaging in concealment and subterfuge. Maybe a better analogy for Stinnett is that he is to history what Al Gore is to the theory of “anthropogenic global warming:” A man who won’t let facts get in the way of an agenda.
I have also commented that the USN was likely benefited by not having the carriers around Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, since the Japanese were bringing such an overwhelming preponderance of force. The chances were greater that we would simply lose our carriers than anything else....
However, what had not been done for Pearl Harbor in the wake of Taranto (I know, hindsight is always too easy but still....) includes:
(1) torpedo nets in the harbor, which would have restricted our own operations but which (as I understand) could have provided much protection against air launched torpedo attacks — this had been discussed since Taranto but never implemented;
(2) much more air and surface patrol to the north and west for early warning — this was a huge problem in terms of resources and personnel, but as I understand it much more could have been done with resources on hand (air patrols) than was done;
(3) adequate use of the radar installation which had been implemented and which did detect the incoming attack flights on Dec. 7 but without result since the alert was not properly transmitted. Of course an hour’s warning would not likely have changed everything, but would have resulted in US planes in the air instead of on the ground and potentially much heavier Japanese losses.
(4) ability to disperse, scramble, and/or hide a lot more US aircraft on the ground — as is notorious, they were sitting ducks.....
All hindsight of course, but had we paid adequate attention to the Battle of Britain (for use of radar warnings) and to Taranto (for understanding the true threat potential for surprise aerial attacks on a fleet) then we should have been better prepared than we were on Dec. 7. This would not have affected the overall course or outcome of the war, but it would have been nice to see the Japanese forces suffer heavier losses and perhaps inflict lesser losses on the US forces.
to say nothing of Musahi. btw miyamoto musashi is one of the more incredible guys in japanese history
All of the actions you list, and many more, would have been taken by the commanders in Hawaii, had they been warned that a Japanese attack was first likely and then coming.
But they were not warned, did not consider such an attack likely and therefore did not take the actions you mentioned.
And there were other reasons.
Both radar and patrol planes were severely restricted in their operations by the lack of repair parts and equipment.
Had the commanders expected an imminent attack, those limitations would have been set aside to achieve maximum coverage.
There were actually two submarine nets protecting Pearl Harbor.
The parking of US aircraft wingtip to wingtip was done precisely because no air attack was expected, but instead commanders were warned to protect against sabotage.
Enchante: "it would have been nice to see the Japanese forces suffer heavier losses and perhaps inflict lesser losses on the US forces."
Some authors suggest that had Americans at Pearl Harbor been fully warned and prepared for the Japanese attack, the Japanese would have called it off and gone home.
Others say that had the US fleet sailed off to meet the Japanese, it would have been destroyed with much greater losses of men and ships, and furthermore, the battle would not be "unprovoked", since our fleet had met theirs on the high seas, and so Congress may not have felt compelled to declare war.
Can you imagine a scenario where the US loses most of its Pacific fleet and then Congress refused to declare war?
These, imho, are the real reasons Kimmel and Short received no valuable intelligence on the whereabouts or intentions of the Japanese First Air Fleet.
Oh, and with apologies, the previous post was from memory (always dubious).
Admiral Kimmel's Pearl Harbor dry run was called Exercise 191 and ran from November 21 to 25 -- two weekends, not one weekend, before the actual attack.
Exercise 191 was called off about a day early due to new orders from Washington instructing Kimmel, as he understood it, not to take provocative action against Japan.
I'd say, first, your criticisms of Stinnett apply to virtually every more-or-less recent Pearl-Harbor-attack author, including even Prange, who did not know of the new data Stinnett uncovered.
Second, when I asked CougarGA7 whom he recommended, the answer came back Henry Clausen's 1992 book, which I bought and read, carefully.
I'd say Clausen is a great lawyer, but not an impartial scholar, and he also did not know of the latest data.
So, I'll ask you to recommend an author who has written on the Pearl Harbor attack after Stinnett's 2001 "Day of Deceit" and who tells the story accurately, while also answering all the issues raised by Stinnett and others.
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