Posted on 12/05/2003 9:31:56 AM PST by Tucson_AZ
This coming Sunday marks the 62nd anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. [Yet] the attack on Pearl Harbor remains surrounded in controversy and mythology.
...there is another controversy that should have been put to rest long ago. That concerns history’s judgment of Admiral Husband E. Kimmel, Commander-in-Chief of the Pacific Fleet at the time of the Japanese attack. The Roberts Commission, formed in December 1941 to investigate the tragedy, pronounced Kimmel "derelict in his duty" and "solely responsible for the success of the Japanese attack." Although ten subsequent official investigations or inquiries would exonerate Kimmel, the verdict of the Roberts Commission would continue to dog him throughout his life.
But two years later, he would learn that the Navy Department in Washington had withheld information from him vital to the defense of Pearl. Over the years, as archives yielded ever more records from the period, the case against Kimmel was effectively demolished.
The [Bush] administration has continued to stonewall the family by claiming that "no new evidence has emerged to consider overturning decisions made more than 50 years." That position defies logic and ignores the mountains of "new evidence" uncovered by historians like Professor Gannon. The action [to restore Admiral Kimmel's good name] has been repeatedly endorsed by the likes of the VFW, the Retired Officers Association, and others. Most significantly, the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association endorsed the action more than 15 years ago. Isn’t it time that this miscarriage of justice be rectified?
(Excerpt) Read more at aim.org ...
It presented a fairly unbiased (imo, at least) story of what happened. I don't believe any one person was solely responsible for the "sneak" attack of December 7th.
Enough warning signs were either overlooked, ignored or just flat-out responded to with flat feet instead of with diligence and immediate action.
Just as FDR & the State Dep't and DoD should get blamed for their somewhat conflicted and confusing courses of action, so to should the commanders in the field be held accountable as well for perhaps not being "better prepared".
Certainly General Short shouldn't have lined up all the aircraft under his command in rows.
Why didn't a detected and sunk Japanese submarine closeby the fleet not make alarm bells go off all over? Why weren't torpedo nets closed immediately?
Why did radar reports of aircraft spotted get passed off as "friendlies" even tho they were coming from a different detection than whence the masses of planes were approaching?
History is written by the winners. Unfortunately, there were no winners that day or in the days leading up to it.
I'd suggest, however, noting a few things about Prange.
Yes, agreed - truly a "Magnificent Obsession." But Prange had a very clear relationship with DugOut Doug (akin to Clausen's fawning because MacArthur was a high degree Mason), and Prange's texts (please note published after Prange's death) have many known and acknowledged factual errors (e.g., the lack of the Brigg's interview in At Dawn We Slept).
The true oddity here however is that even today a myriad of Pearl Harbor documents - say, just as one example, the raw intercepts of the Japanese operational naval coded signals - are beyond public inspection. Why is that?
Imagine, compare the mass of German ENIGMA materials in the public domain and nothing for the Japanese ... [Or the 25 missing pages from the Roberts Commission, or ...]
Very curious that.
From the USS ARIZONA Memorial:
... shall ne'er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world.
But we in it shall be remembered ...
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he that today sheds his blood for me
Shall be my brother.
May they rest in peace and in God's good grace.
King Henry V: What’s he that wishes so?
My cousin Westmoreland? No, my fair cousin:
If we are mark’d to die, we are enow
To do our country loss; and if to live,
The fewer men the greater share of honour.
God’s will! I pray thee, wish not one man more.
By Jove, I am not covetous for gold;
Nor care I who doth feed upon my cost;
It yearns me not if men my garments wear;
Such outward things dwell not in my desires;
But if it be a sin to covet honour,
I am the most offending soul alive.
No, faith, my coz, wish not a man from England:
God’s peace! I would not lose so great an honour,
As one man more, methinks, would share from me,
For the best hope I have. O, do not wish one more!
Rather proclaim it, Westmoreland, throughout my host,
That he which hath no stomach to this fight,
Let him depart; his passport shall be made,
And crowns for convoy put into his purse:
We would not die in that man’s company
That fears his fellowship to die with us.
This day is called the Feast of Crispian.
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when this day is nam’d,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbors,
And say, To-morrow is Saint Crispian:
Then he will strip his sleeve and show his scars,
And say, These wounds I had on Crispin’s day.
Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot,
But he’ll remember with advantages
What feats he did that day: then shall our names,
Familiar in their mouths as household words –-
Harry the king, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester -–
Be in their flowing cups freshly remember’d.
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remember’d:
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother, be he ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition:
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs’d they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap while any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day!
Gordon Prange lived in occupied Japan for a few years after the war and had more than ample opportunity to interview many if not most of the surviving key players in the planning and execution of the attack.
The book was complete, for the most part, at the time of Gordon's death and was finished by a small group of folks that knew him for many years before and after the war.
Douglas MacArthur, while not perfect, was the curmudgeon and genius that more than most saw fit to speak and act as he saw fit, and damn the political consequences. I won't begrudge him for his Mason connection.
Regarding DugOut Doug and his Mason status ... Clausen and not Prange make that point explicitly. But, then, as Wohlstetter has: "... These addidavits taken by Clausen are notoriously unreliable, ..." [See Pearl Harbor: Warning and Decision, Roberta Wohlstetter, Stanford University Press, Stanford, California, 1962, page 35, note 68.]
On Prange and his "intensive interrogations" - a quick scan of And I Was There, Edwin T. Layton, et. al., "Author's Notes" beginning on page 495 might offer another perspective. For example, on page 503 is found:
"This was a distortion of the facts as they had been made available to Prange. But it was also evident to Layton that in spite of Prange's claims the 'my scholarship and credibility are unimpeachable,' that At Dawn We Slept took no account of new documentation from General Marshall's declassified files, ..."
One of Layton's co-authors - Pineau - also interviewed many of the Japanese naval surviving principals ... and offers a much different view than that of Prange.
In closing, the curious thing here remains the amount of Pearl Harbor materials still beyond public inspection.
Thank you again.
Probably owned by Sony, don't want to mess with their lawyers... ;-)
Why does the Bush administration stand by a proven falsehood and not properly take care of this simple matter?
Government’s loath admitting to a mistake unless there is a political advantage to the admission. The People must be made believe in the infallibility of their betters.
If the political party in power could place blame on the opposing party we might learn the truth about Pearl Harbor, the Kennedy assassination and possibly the even the UFO coverup.
As distinctive as that name is, I'd be amazed if it weren't the same person.
How many people have you ever known named 'Notra'? And who also happened to have a last name of 'Trulock'? I can't imagine that it wouldn't be the same person.
Perhaps they, like the other 11 administrations since 1941, just feel they have more important things to do?
More to the point, an admitted and documented deception by the US government in the not-so-distant past would cause the people to look with cynicism on present-day government pronouncements
Starting at the point where Hitler invaded Russia, FDR was trying very hard to get us into the war. Few people are told that in the summer before Pearl, US pilots were flying combat missions against the Japanese ("volunteers" on loan to Chang Kai Sheck's Chinese Nationalist Army -- look up the "Flying Tigers" group). We were giving support to the British in helping sink German U-boats in the Atlantic.
But FDR needed an attack on the US in order to overturn isolationist elements in the US. We had a group in Hawaii (Code-named "Magic") which were intercepting encrypted Jap communications.
And on the "Day of Infamy", our obsolete battleships were parked in rows in Pearl. But our carriers, the decisive ship-type for WW2, were far out at sea.
FDR got the incident he needed, at the cost of only a few thousand US lives and some obsolete ships
I understand that their "Beta" versus "VHS" format suit remains unsettled and that many documents are under seal via a ruling of the Guam courts. ;-}}
I often use the example of the SS LUSITANIA. At the time of her sinking the Wilson Administration denied that part of her cargo was munitions.
Only after a British underseas film crew released photographs of her true cargo ...yup, tons of contraband munitions, did the US government fess up. The "long lost" original cargo manifest pops up ... it was found behind a filing cabinet.
That "truthfulness" took over sixty years to for the US government to materialize.
In the case of Pearl Harbor ... the wait for "Truth, Justice, and the American Way" ... continues.
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