Posted on 11/29/2011 6:45:45 PM PST by Free ThinkerNY
Three days before the Dec. 7, 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt was warned in a memo from naval intelligence that Tokyo's military and spy network was focused on Hawaii, a new and eerie reminder of FDR's failure to act on a basket load of tips that war was near.
In the newly revealed 20-page memo from FDR's declassified FBI file, the Office of Naval Intelligence on December 4 warned, "In anticipation of open conflict with this country, Japan is vigorously utilizing every available agency to secure military, naval and commercial information, paying particular attention to the West Coast, the Panama Canal and the Territory of Hawaii."
The memo, published in the new book December 1941: 31 Days that Changed America and Saved the World went on to say that the Japanese were collecting "detailed technical information" that would be specifically used by its navy. To collect and analyze information, they were building a network of spies through their U.S. embassies and consulates.
Historian and acclaimed Reagan biographer Craig Shirley, author of the just released December 1941, doesn't blame FDR for blowing it, but instead tells Whispers that it "does suggest that there were more pieces to the puzzle" that the administration missed. The 70th anniversary of the attack is next month.
(Excerpt) Read more at usnews.com ...
The Time Will Come America . . .
Surrealist Revolution ^ | 1925 | unknown
Posted on 5/21/2002 8:05:56 PM by Raymond Hendrix
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/687281/posts
"The time will come, America,
When the hordes of Afghanistan
Will crash your gleaming airplanes
Into the shiny towers of Manhattan."
--Surrealist Revolution (1925)
Translated by Wlad Godzich
BTTT!
“Actually FDR was spoiling to get into the war and he backed the Japanese into a corner.”
FDR embargoed Japan’s supply routes carrying fuel to the Japanese islands - fuel is imported. What was Japan going to do? Obviously, they were going to attack. They were embargoed by Naval ships. Who should they attack? Air bases?
Japan’s military had many problems during the war that were never overcome. Their army had spent years expecting to fight the Russians in the wastes of Siberia, and had honed their fighting skill against a fairly ragtag army in China. In addition, they were heavily dependent on advance intel and scouting before mounting an attack, and had a difficult to impossible time changing plans once the attack had begun and circumstances had changed. In addition, there was no concept of a joint command between the Imperial Army and Imperial Navy.
The Japanese had spent years doing recon of East Asia and Hawaii before launching the successful attacks (against fairly modest peacetime armies) of 1941-42. Once the advantages of surprise and advance scouting were gone, and they were projected into the jungles of the southwest pacific and atolls of the central pacific, they were quite literally out of their element. They fought very well, but without the ability to live off the land (as they had done in China) and effect resupply, they were doomed.
As to the events of Pearl Harbor, as an anonymous Freeper said some years ago, some people just don’t want to accept that, on a sunny morning in 1941, the United States was caught with its pants down.
I think a better way to regard the Japanese Army is that, of all the participants in World War II, they were the only one that had not learned the lessons of World War I. On many levels, from their rifles to their uniforms and tactics, they were reminiscent of a pre-1914 European army.
“In anticipation of open conflict with this country, Japan is vigorously utilizing every available agency to secure military, naval and commercial information, paying particular attention to the West Coast, the Panama Canal and the Territory of Hawaii.”
The US Pacfleet was based at Pearl. Of course the Japanese were going to have eyeballs on it. Same with the Brit, Dutch, and French bases.
“FDR embargoed Japan’s supply routes carrying fuel to the Japanese islands ,,,,,Japan’s supply routes carrying fuel to the Japanese islands - fuel is imported. What was Japan going to do?”
He did no such thing. We did not blockaid or interdict ANY supply routes. We only refused to sell them goods that they would use for their continuing A-hole act in China. Instead of knocking off their crap and acting right, they decided to expand their war and attack and gain the oil, rubber and other resources in Southeast Asia and Indonesia.
But they were not forced into an attack,,,unless of course you agree that they had a right to continue to do their brutal attack in China with free access to American raw materials. Do you argue we SHOULD have kept the oil and raw materials flowing to the Japanese war machine?
“They were embargoed by Naval ships.”
They were not. Unless i missed the USN interdicting ships sailing FROM the USA towards Japan. We merely created a national policy of not selling to them. I know this is crazy, but Japan was still free to buy oil from the Dutch in SE Asia.
Japan wasn’t forced to do anything aggressive by US policy. They did that on their own and got two nukes in return. Now they are good.
But they were not forced into an attack,,,unless of course you agree that they had a right to continue to do their brutal attack in China with free access to American raw materials. Do you argue we SHOULD have kept the oil and raw materials flowing to the Japanese war machine?
What childish logic. The fact is that the Japanese WOULD attack us if we interfered IN ANY WAY with their oil and raw material pipelines, and we knew it. The were imperialistic, murderous and belligerent and waging war in China, and run by an Army hell bent on ruling the entire "Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere." There was NO WAY they weren't going to attack under ANY conditions of being restrained.
So - given that WORLD WAR is the alternative, what "should" we have done? Well, if we WANTED to fight, we certainly did the right thing. If we didn't, then any student of international politics could have come up with several dozen alternatives to what we DID do.
Roosevelt & Co. wanted the war, not just against Japan but also to get into it in Europe. But they needed a reason the people of the USA would go for. Pearl Harbor was the reason, and the idiot Japanese war machine was the perfect target for their trap.
The oil embargo by the US was the major factor; after they evolved into a modern country, they were expected to return to the Stone Age. Indonesia was the solution to that problem; it provided the oil to keep them going.
You can bet that if the US had no oil we would have invaded the Arabian Peninsula during the embargo in the 1970s.
“I think a better way to regard the Japanese Army is that, of all the participants in World War II, they were the only one that had not learned the lessons of World War I.”
The early success against the Americans in the Philippines and the British in Singapore indicate that they had evolved since WWI, but they just “plateaued” in 1941. Few new weapons or tactics, just more of the same; they’d been fighting in China for years at that point, and decided to stick with what worked in 1937.
“The public would not be opposed to protecting our troops and installations through being vigilant.”
At the time the public did not want America in the war. Hindsight is 20/20
All knew war was coming, but they wanted it in 42 some time, when the defense buildup was further along.
Add to this the fact that while washongton was reading Japan's diplomatic code, including the 'bomb plot' message, and NOT sharing the info with Kimmel and Short in Hawaii, and that Hawaii had not received any kind of a war warning for two weeks prior to the attack as events in the Pacific were building towards a climax (except the one sent via commercial telegram and received some hours after the attack), and you have a very good case for criminal incompetance in DC.
I'm certain FDR was not surprised Japan attacked on Dec 7, but I do believe he was surprised at the location of the attack, and obviously its dramatic affect.
Your point, which is correct, doesn’t contradict mine.
FDR embargoed Japan’s supply routes carrying fuel to the Japanese islands - fuel is imported. What was Japan going to do? Obviously, they were going to attack. They were embargoed by Naval ships. Who should they attack? Air bases?
________________________
There are lots of ways to look at things.
Churchill once said, "The truth should always go accompanied by a bodyguard of lies".
Knowing that the enemy would always be able to see what was happening, it was crucial to give the enemy false information concerning things that were not happening.
We did the same to the Germans on D-Day. But to say FDR knew that PH was the target is to fall into that conspiracy black hole where FDR needed the US to be attacked to get out of the Depression. This “story” has been going around for years.
It was certainly the case that the U.S. could not cure all the evils in the world in fighting the Nazis with the Soviet Union as an ally.
What do you think the world would have looked like for the last seventy years if Hitler had not attacked the Soviet Union? Eventually Hitler would have taken on the Soviet Union, but he might have consolidated his gains in Europe and subjugated the British first.
He didn't expect PH to be struck, and spent the rest of the war doing political damage control by blaming the area commanders instead of accepting the lion's share of the blame, which he deserved.
Oil was the short-term problem, but they were heading down to Australia for minerals. Not a lot of oil there. They’ve been proven right. America guarantees their needs to keep industry going, but they’re on a leash.
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