Posted on 12/16/2019 6:52:09 AM PST by fugazi
On page 8 is a brief story that has become somewhat of a legend about the defenders of Wake Island. When Hawaii radioed the garrison asking what they needed after defeating the initial assault by the Japanese invasion fleet on 11 December, the response was "Send us more Japs!"
"Send us" and "more Japs" was added to the beginning and end of the message, but that was only to confuse Japanese code breakers. "None of us was that much of a damn fool," James Devereux (commanding officer of the 1st Defense Battalion) said after the war, "We already had more Japs than we could handle."
Navy Frank Knox issues his report on the Pearl Harbor attack, which can be read on page 3. During the Spanish-American War, Knox served in Troop D of Theodore Roosevelt's 1st U.S. Volunteer Cavalry Regiment -- the "Rough Riders." When the United States entered World War I, Maj. Knox rejoined the Army, serving as an artillery officer in France. Knox suffers several heart attacks during the war and passes away while still in office in 1944.
Headlines found in today's edition:
(Excerpt) Read more at victoryinstitute.net ...
Also the draft age at the time was 21. FDR wanted to lower it to 19.
Frank Knox, FDR’s Secretary of the Navy, was the GOP candidate for vice president in 1936. Today, he would be called a RINO.
Fascinating it is. Thanks. BUMP!
(who was the FReeper that used to post a lot of these historical readings. I always enjoyed them.)
“Also the draft age at the time was 21. FDR wanted to lower it to 19”.
During the Battle of the Bulge, manpowerer shortages for infantrymen was so critical that 18 year olds were being drafted. 18 to 64 were required to register.
Those young men were given abbreviated training and sent to the front asap. General Marshall shuddered to think about it.
Maybe, but what would you do if you were in Knox’s shoes? He was a major opponent of FDR, but Roosevelt needed the appearance of bipartisanship when it came to defense policy. Someone needed to build the two-ocean Navy, and national security trumps politics at some point.
I like that ‘Society News’ was just as important then.
The Battle of the Bulge began 75 years ago today
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/3801053/posts
and here:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/3801090/posts
Yes, it did.
Thank you very much for posting these WW II chronicles.
Courtesy ping to post 9.
My father served in WWII, was in the force that broke through the Bulge.
Thanks for the posts. Great job.
Great history:
“On page 8 is a brief story that has become somewhat of a legend about the defenders of Wake Island. When Hawaii radioed the garrison asking what they needed after defeating the initial assault by the Japanese invasion fleet on 11 December, the response was “Send us more Japs!”
“Send us” and “more Japs” was added to the beginning and end of the message, but that was only to confuse Japanese code breakers. “None of us was that much of a damn fool,” James Devereux (commanding officer of the 1st Defense Battalion) said after the war, “We already had more Japs than we could handle.”
I just received a new book dealing with our code breaking before, during and after Pearl Harbor.
The title is: Magic! The untold story of US intelligence and the Evacuation of Japanese residents from the West Coast during WWII, by Donald D. Lowman.
Before Pearl Harbor, we apparently had a long list of Japanese terrorists and the ones spying on us from Hawaii to up and down our west coast to even Arizona.
This was done via Magic, our top secret code breaking of the Japanese embassy code and later their army and navy codes.
The book arrived from Amazon just before dinner last night.
After dinner, I read 70+ plus pages and finally put it away at about 9 pm.
President Roosevelt knew of this decoded list and the decoding that was going on before and after Pearl Harbor.
They avoided targeting the spies and potential terrorists in America and not arresting the identified dangerous people by evacuating every Japanese on the west coast and including the part of Arizona on the Mexican border.
We were still cracking their codes right before and after we dropped our two atomic bombs.
At this time I would recommend this book to anyone with an interest in Code Cracking and how this impacted our war with Japan before and after Pearl Harbor.
Even when he was a Republican, Knox wasn’t all that conservative and neither was his running mate Alf Landon. And by the way, I’m no fan of FDR, who made the Depression great again.
?
I imagine once you get on the side of things where individual liberty is a threat to the power you could hold as a high-ranking public servant, the system weeds out a lot of conservatives.
Not that I am making excuses; it’s just that there must be an incredible draw to growing government when you personally benefit from the power. That would explain how conservatives and libertarians get weeded out — think Justin Amash — and should make us appreciate the relative handful of politicians that make it to the top and hold true to their principles.
Was that from poor planning on our part I wonder?
Part of it was poor planning and part of it was a real manpower shortage. It was a balancing act to meet and properly balance the manpower requirements of industry, agriculture and the military.
The way the replacements was handled toward the end of the war was atrocious. Some of those poor kids went right to the battlefield with inadequate training and were slaughtered. Many were killed on their first day. Many NCO’s and junior officers didn’t even bother to get to know their men because they knew many would die in short order.
Stephen Ambrose spells it out very well in “Citizen Soldiers”.
Another thing: Our air power and artillery saved us. We had the best.
I understand that we got a lot of back door information about the Germans when monitoring the Japanese embassy transmissions.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.