Posted on 12/07/2009 7:25:33 AM PST by oblomov
Introductory Remarks:
On December 7, 1941, U.S. military installations at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii were attacked by the Imperial Japanese Navy. Could this tragic event that resulted in over 3,000 Americans killed and injured in a single two-hour attack have been averted?
After 16 years of uncovering documents through the Freedom of Information Act, journalist and historian Robert Stinnett charges in his book, Day of Deceit, that U.S. government leaders at the highest level not only knew that a Japanese attack was imminent, but that they had deliberately engaged in policies intended to provoke the attack, in order to draw a reluctant, peace-loving American public into a war in Europe for good or ill. In contrast, historian and author Stephen Budiansky (see his book, Battle of Wits) believes that such charges are entirely unfounded and are based on misinterpretations of the historical record.
It’s been often said that “Truth is the first casualty of war.” Historians and policy experts now know that the official government claims, including those made by U.S. Presidents, that led to the Spanish-American War, World War I, Vietnam War, Gulf War, and other conflicts were deliberate misrepresentations of the facts in order to rally support for wars that the general public would otherwise not support. Was this also the case regarding the tragedy at Pearl Harbor and the U.S. entry into World War II—or are such charges false? We are very pleased to provide a debate between these two distinguished experts.
(Excerpt) Read more at independent.org ...
The Navy believed that the fleet was safe at Pearl. Among the reasons was the idea that torpedos couldn’t arm in shallow water, a problem that the Japanese solved.
Wilkie ran in the 1944 primary coming in third behind Dewey and MacArthur. He didn't die until October of 1944.
1 little (Major) problem with that theory. It was Japan that attacked the US, not Germany. If not for Hitler’s declaration of war against the US in the days following Pearl Harbor, FDR would still have had to figure out how to get the US involved in the European fighting. Hitler, in a sense, did FDR a favor by solving that problem for him.
Depends on how much warning & the state of the boilers on battleship row. It ain't like today with gas turbine engines. You don't flip a switch & get immediate full power. You had to 'raise steam' before you could really get underway.
IIRC, only Nevada was able to make a break for it. I don't know that any of the other battleships were anywhere near ready to cast off.
Then you have the problem of where to rally the fleet, and under what protection. The Army Air Forces probably would have been of little value outside of the immediate harbor area. A coordinated air defense between Army fighters & Navy ships? Remember what happened when Army transport planes ferrying part of the 82nd Airborne overflew the Sicily invasion fleet (1943) -- they got wasted by their own Navy's AA guns.
FDR’s agenda was to enter the war in Europe and come to the aid of Britain and France. But Wilsonian crusades were discredited on the left and the right was isolationist. The draft bill in 1940 passed by one vote. The American people weren’t going to go to war without a push. Fort Sumter and the sinking of the Maine might have occurred to FDR as examples of such a push.
There is some evidence that FDR was trying to provoke Japan into a casus belli, with the oil embargo among other things. The idea that he knew of the Pearl Harbor invasion takes the theory to a different level.
Until 6 months before Pearl Harbor Hitler and Stalin were allies.
Really? What we now call WW2 began as a string of somewhat unrelated conflicts. Germany on Poland. Russia on Poland. Russia on the Baltics. Russia on Finland. Japan on China. Russia on Japan (Mongolia). Germany on France & Britain. It wasn't until 1942 that the struggle assumed the full-dimensions that we all think of today.
Prior to Pearl Harbor Japan pretty much ignored it's obligation to the Tri-partite pact to come to the aid of Germany & Italy. It didn't attack the Soviet Union after Hitler invaded in the late Summer of '41 (when it would have done some good). It opted instead to take the easy pickings of the French & Dutch Pacific possessions that were there for the taking. Of course Japan had to deal with Britain (Singapore) and the US (Philippines).
Pearl Harbor was a strategic raid designed to prevent a US battlefleet from coming to the aid of McArthur's forces as they retired to Bataan & Corregidor. Without a relief force it was only a matter of time before the Philippines surrendered.
“Also, if he wanted to enter the European war, why would he encourage an attack by Japan? “
We had already sunk a couple of German ships off of the east coast prior to Pearl Harbor. But Hitler wouldn’t take the bait, he wouldn’t declare war on the U.S.
I found Stinnett's book to be a mess. He confuses terms & therefore draws the wrong concusions. For instance, one tool that intelligence uses is "Traffic Analysis". This is NOT the same thing as reading the actual decrypted message. Stinnett confuses the reader into thinking this is the same thing. It is not. Traffic analysis is simply recognizing patterns of communications between bases & fleet units. You can guess an awful lot by just knowing who is talking to who, how much & maybe having a cross-bearing on the mobile units, without ever knowing what is being said.
It should also be noted that the IJN code was not actually cracked until AFTER Pearl. We were reading their diplomatic code thanks to some Black Bag jobs funded by Naval Intelligence prior to the war.
May I assume your final paragraph refers to the report captured by the German surface raider Atlantis before Automedon was sunk? If so, then the second ‘shot heard ‘round the world’ would surely be the Atlantis shot that went through Automedon’s radio room and killed the marine guard charged with throwing the weighted bag containing the report over the side...
There were no modern battleships at Pearl.
Thomas Fleming’s “The New Dealer’s War” argues that Hitler was goaded into declaring war by a major controversy that raged during the week before Pearl Harbor. An American invasion plan named ‘Rainbow Five’ had been leaked to the Chicago Tribune on December 4, 1941.
Rainbow Five detailed American plans for raising a 10 million man Army for the purpose of invading Europe and defeating Hitler. Congress erupted with the Republican isolationists denouncing FDR for betraying the American people with his secret war plans. FDR’s Democratic opponents in the Senate joined in the attack. But FDR remained silent, not affirming or denying the accuracy of Rainbow Five.
In England Rainbow Five headlined the newpapers. On December 5th the German Embassy cabled the entire Rainbow Five transcript to Berlin. Rainbow Five was in fact our plan for waging WWII. On December 11th Hitler took the bait.
Nimitz had turned down the opportunity to command Pearl saying that whoever got that position would regret it.
Throughout much of the war, a large percentage of Germany's supply lines were horse-drawn wagons.
And on January 16, 1942, the US Army's 26th Cavalry Regiment launched a successful cavalry charge against the Japanese at Morong, on the outskirts of Manila.
It has been a few years since I read the book and do not recall the faults that you refer to. As one of several lines of evidence, Stinnett contended that the Japanese naval code was broken and read by the US in the Philippines before the attack on Pearl. If true, it would force a major revision of our understanding of what we knew of Japanese war plans before Pearl Harbor.
Did we have that many “modern ones”? I was thinking we hadn’t built too many since the 20’s. Maybe in the late 30’s when the whole world was going to war.
Why didn’t we move the “modern” battleships to the Pacific after Pearl? I’m thinking we conducted Midway with just a handful of Cruisers and destroyers (and of course three carriers).
I think about my Dad every Dec 7th. He was a WW II vet, God rest his soul, and he always liked to reminisce about this day when it rolled around each year.
The lack of oil was necessitate a Japanese advance into the East Indies, and hence an attack on the Phillipines. What I have never understood was why MacArthur was unprepared for the attack.
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