First of all, I appreciate your humorous reference to Klingon -- in concert with my previous suggestion of a Romulan cloaking device to hide the Japanese fleet. ;-)
For those who don't quite get it, you'll remember the "star-ship" Enterprise, under command of Admiral "Bull" H. Kirk, will soon boldly launch into seas where no carrier has gone before, on an officially peace-time mission, but with "Bull" fully alerted and searching everywhere for the enemy -- which unfortunately he only finds on the day of his return to "star-base" home port, Pearl Harbor. ;-)
What, now you'll say I can't keep real history and myth separate?
iowamark: "Very few sober people place any credence in Stinnett’s “Day of Deceit." "
CougarGA7: "I would recommend you find some corroborating data that backs up the individual claims you have listed."
I know of three other authors who make pretty much the same case that Stinnett did: John Toland, George Victor and John Coleman.
Of those, Toland is otherwise considered a reputable historian.
Other, more restrained authors included Gordon Prange (frequently quoted by Homer), Henry Clausen (Democrat) and Percy Grieves (Republican).
All these folks tell basically the same story: Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.
The differences among them have to do with evidence introduced (or merely asserted to exist) showing how much Washington knew, and when did they know, about the coming attack.
Authors like Clausen spread the blame among some well known names -- Short, Kimmel, Layton, Rochefort, Bratton and of course, President Roosevelt -- plus a number of lesser knowns: Dusenbury, Fielder, Bicknell, Turner, Safford, Mayfield, Gerrow, and Kramer.
But to Clausen, their errors amount to basically bureaucratic bungling, not some intentional conspiracy.
And it's most notable the names which Clausen does not blame: Marshall, Stark, Stimson, Knox, McArthur or McCollum.
And those are just the people that -- along with blaming FDR, Rochefort and Layton -- authors like Stinnett take direct aim on.
I think it's very important that genuine scholars like FR's own CougarGA7 and LS consistently and strongly blast Stinnett and other "conspiracy nuts" as just that: nuts.
The nuts' evidence does not stand scrutiny, their charges are ridiculous, and their "theories" are beyond the pale of reasonableness, according to FR's best experts.
So they demand a mere "history buff" such as yours truly must produce documents to support claims by any such "nuts".
Well, I have no more access to original documents than I do to the far side of the moon.
And I marvel at how enthusiastically such normally conservative and skeptical FReepers defend the godfather of modern Liberalism, that most wily of leftist American politicians, Franklin Roosevelt.
So I would ask you to consider this: of all the Pearl Harbor books I know of, none were written by actual working scholars doing what scholars are supposed to do: review and evaluate all the evidence, give proper weight to what's real, reject unfounded claims based on substantial reasons, and arrive at conclusions fair-and- balanced warranted by the data.
I'd be interested in such a fair-and-balanced book.
Toland's claims are widely refuted, respectable historian or not, scholars agree that he is off the reservation with this one. Victor tends to source Stinnett so all we have here is repeating bad information. Coleman sources no one apparently making it completely useless.
As far as asking you to produce corroborating information. All people like LS and myself are doing is trying to keep you from spreading bad information to others. I've shown you time and time again the flaws in Stinnett's method and conclusions, but you still continue to produce him as a source of information on Pearl Harbor. By challenging you to find something to back up Stinnett's claim I'm trying to encourage you, much as a teacher will encourage his student, to look for more reliable sources of information.
It's not a case of the history scholar asking the "history buff" to do his leg work. It's the history scholar trying to make the "history buff" a better student of history.
And I marvel at how enthusiastically such normally conservative and skeptical FReepers defend the godfather of modern Liberalism, that most wily of leftist American politicians, Franklin Roosevelt.
Final thought since I found this statement interesting. So are you saying that because F.D.R. is a liberal, then we should support what are unsubstantiated and probably false accusations against the man? In my experience, that is very liberal thinking.
There's a lot of criticism I can heap on F.D.R. and you will see a lot of it when we get further in this project. But I will not just willy nilly back wild accusations against the man just because he's a liberal. Doing that devalues my own agruements against actions and positions by F.D.R. which are real and had serious consequences.