Posted on 12/06/2011 3:32:36 PM PST by Kaslin
I can easily believe that he may have considered war an antidote to this problem.
“Did FDR Provoke Pearl Harbor?”
The cruise of the Great White Fleet under Theodore Roosevelt’s administration was partially a message to check Japanese expansionism. The Japanese were determined to dominate Asia- they proved that by thrashing China in 1895, and then Russia in 1905, their seizure of Germany’s Asian possessions in WWI, and then their expansion into China after 1931. Opposition to this expansion- and that was the general thrust of US policy beginning with T.R.- pretty much set Japan against the US, regardless of what FDR thought or did.
Thank you for that. I get so sick of this garbage. I despise FDR, but I think he was in the minority to see the extreme dangers posed by Germany and Japan. The "FDR-Knew-In-Advance" is one of of the lies in my book "48 Liberal Lies About American History" and, yes, it was started by a liberal (a Marxist, actually) Charles Beard.
Had we not faced the Japanese after 12/7/1941 we would have faced them later when they were stronger. FDR was right.
You, and other FReepers who want to make up your own minds would do well to follow Homer_J_Simpson's daily retrospective on the NY Times from 70 years ago. Don't just start tomorrow with the news of the attack on Pearl Harbor. Go back two months and read, and see what you think.
ML/NJ
I think you’re thinking of the RMS Titanic which was rammed by a Russian sub in the Bering Sea in 1952.
The third strike would be to take out the oil storage facilities at Pearl which speculation says would have extended the war by 2 years.
lol. The Japanese had been planning and practicing the attack on Pearl Harbor for a decade. They trained naval pilots with a mock-up of Pearl Harbor.
The Japanese were going to attack sooner or later whether the US did anything or not. The Japanese were planning to conquer the entire Pacific. Or did Borneo, Philippines, Singapore and all those other places also “maneuver” the Japanese into attacking them?
Attack on PH *caused* the Vietnam War.
Umm.....ok. Yeah, right.
Yes, it has been very enlightening. He has been doing this for over a year... maybe two.
I do think that Japans’ invasion and rape of China helped topple the nationalists and bring about Red China. Maybe we should make Japan fix that?
One thinks that they could have done a better job. I wonder what the “Cheney is Evil Agent of Halliburton” crowd thinks about this question. After all, “truth is the first casualty in war”, you know.
The Japanese considered TR to be an honest broker as a result of his efforts to end to Russo-Japanese war. TR was the only statesman with good relations with all the leaders of the WWI beligerents at the beginning of the war. Too bad he wasn’t elected in ‘12, if there was anyone who could’ve brought all sides together and averted the tragedy of WWI, it was TR.
I have often wondered what would have happened if the Japanese had invaded only the Dutch East Indies--the source of the oil they wanted--and maybe Thailand, proclaiming the move a "peacekeeping operation," and not attacked the US or crossed into British territory. Would we have done anything? Or how about if they had invaded the Society Islands, which include Tahiti, New Caledonia, the Marquesas Islands and other French possessions? The French most likely would have surrendered without firing a shot, but would we have done anythng?
Similarly, what would have happened if Japan had attacked only the US and that the air, ground and naval forces used to attack British and Dutch possessions had been used to attack Hawaii, the western Aleutians or other US targets. Could they have knocked us out?
We didn’t start the war —I’m happy we won.
But did FDR *want* to war on Japan with no moral responsibility for STARTING it? Why, yes —that’s absolutely true.
And Churchill very badly wanted FDR in the war, and the two had been working for quite some time on how to manage it, when presto, finally the Japanese threw the solution right into their laps.
Did Japan deserve to get whipped? Oh sure..!
They didn’t attack just the USA —they attacked Hong Kong, Singapore, Malasia, Vietnam, Australia, the British, and others, and ALL AT ONCE.
In fact, in Singapore when they took over the hospitals, they went from bed to bed, simply bayonetting doctors and patients. They even shot nurses and doctors performing surgery.
It also turned out that the IJA had made absolutely NO PLANS AT ALL for provisioning for POWs and conquered peoples —nothing at all.
China invaded by Japan in '37.
Germany invaded Poland in '39.
Lend-lease started in '41.
No doubt somebody at the War Department was taking notice.
but I think he was in the minority to see the extreme dangers posed by Germany and Japan.
Below are two paragraphs taken from, Daniel Yergin’s “The Prize”.
All that day, the reports flowed into Washington from Pearl Harbor disjointed, fragmentary, and finally, dismal. “The news coming from Haawaii is very bad.” Stimson noted in his diary at the end of that long Sunday. “It has been staggering to see our people there, who have been warned long ago and were standing at alert, should have been so caught by surprise.” How could such a disaster have occurred.
Senior American officials had fully expected a Japanese attack, and imminently. But they expected it to be in Southeast Asia. Virtually no one, whether in Washington or Hawaii, seriously considered, or even comprehended, that Japan could - or would- launch a surprise assault against the American fleet in its home base. They believed, as General Marshall had told President Roosevelt in May of 1941, that the island of Oahu, where Pearl Harbor was located, was “the strongest fortress in the world.” Most of the American officials seemed to have forgotten-or never knew-that Japan’s great victory in the Russo-Japanese War have begun with a surprise attack on the Russian fleet at Port Arthur.
I second the recommendation. Very interesting stuff.
Pearl Harbor was intended to keep the US from doing anything about it.
Boy did they screw up.
Now, let's say that didn't happen and we kept feeding them oil. They had an atom bomb program under way ~ not many results at the time but they understood the concepts behind several different possible atom bombs.
It was just a matter of time and it could have been the Japanese making sure we did not achieve hegemony over the Pacific ocean through adroit threats to use atom bombs on us.
Should I say it ~ naw, wouldn't be fair, naw, go ahead, say it anyway ~ the East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere would have included China, Siberia, Yakutia, Manchuria, SE Asia and probably everything East of the Ganges.
You'd seen Harry Truman signing a START treaty with Japan that would make the US a Nuclear Free Zone.
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