Posted on 12/08/2018 2:26:02 PM PST by rktman
On Dec. 7, 1941, the Empire of Japan bombed the U.S. Pacific Fleet which was stationed in Pearl Harbor on the Hawaiian island of Oahu. In addressing Congress the next day, President Roosevelt called it “a date which will live in infamy.”
But Roosevelt’s reputation should live in infamy too. The line that Roosevelt enthusiasts and left-wing historians have peddled for so many years is that the attack was a complete surprise.
Here’s a sample from The American Pageant, a typical left-wing American history textbook widely used in American high schools:
Officials in Washington, having “cracked” the top-secret code of the Japanese, knew that Tokyo’s decision was for war … Roosevelt, misled by Japanese ship movements in the Far East, evidently expected the blow to fall on British Malaya or on the Philippines. No one in high authority in Washington seems to have believed that the Japanese were either strong enough or foolhardy enough to strike Hawaii.
That’s the left’s version, and it’s in line with the rest of the “fake history” they want American high school students to learn. The Education and Research Institute (ERI — of which I am chairman) has written a critique of The American Pageant, which tells a more accurate story about Pearl Harbor and scores of other events in American history.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailycaller.com ...
And not even beneficial ones at that.
It is not true that we were reading all Japanese coded messages before the attack on Pearl Harbor.
“The highest security diplomatic code, dubbed Purple by the U.S., had been broken, but American cryptanalysts had made little progress against the IJN’s current Kaigun Ango Sho D.”
We knew war was coming, but we did not know where the attack would take place.
“There is always the one-third ready to condemn America and Americans first.” This is a very clever defense of the Roosevelt administration. If you are critical you of FDR you are anti-American. The Roosevelt administration was riddled with Soviet agents and their sympathizers. Americans did not want war. FDR was not interested in what Americans thought. He wanted to save Stalin.
Kimmel and Short did react to the war warning; they moved ships and aircraft away from possible sabotage raids from the periphery on the ground. Given the size of the Japanese community on Oahu this was as prudent a move as they could make, and yes there were spies among them loyal to Tokyo.
A radar warning of approaching aircraft was given low priority & failed to be delivered in time. Again, not their fault.
Were PBY Catalinas available to conduct air patrols of the surrounding sea & sky? I don’t know.
IMO, Gordon Prange’s book tells the most complete story of the intelligence snafus at Pearl; and due to the usual cause: turf wars.
That is not exactly correct. The Russians had much more force on the ground in Europe than we did.
Atom Bombs and effective delivery systems were few. The Soviets claimed ground they had been claiming for years at conferences with Churchill and FDR, where FDR tended to favor Stalin over Churchill, who was trying to keep Europe out of the clutches of Stalin.
FDR mistakenly thought he could roll Stalin. It was exactly the opposite. FDR completely misjudged Stalin and his FDR's own abilities. Stalin took him for a ride.
Thank God, FDR mostly allowed the American military to do the strategic thinking. He still managed to screw up Chinese policy tremendously.
Sometimes I think we won WWII in spite of our leadership, both Churchill and FDR.
But then Hitler started making bad mistakes, and so did the Japanese military.
Churchill's primary strategy for the war was to get the United States involved.
That sounds about right to me, too. If he were willing to knowingly sacrifice Americans en masse for political reasons, he still would not have wanted to sacrifice the entire Pacific fleet. He would have made sure more battleships were out of harbor if he believed they could execute the attack to that degree.
That's when the Japanese dropped the bomb on US forces. -- B. H. Ebola
Probably not. Certainly I despise FDR’s socialist domestic policy. But looking at the geopolitical situation in 1941, everywhere fascist countries were popping up- in South America, the Middle East, and Axis forces were still ascending against the Soviets and had Great Britain on the ropes. If Britain were defeated, the Reich would possess much of the world- including Canada. He also knew that our country was isolationist and would not go to war unless provoked. I think he certainly knew our embargo would provoke Japan, but I also think the disaster at Pearl was more due to on-site errors by an unwatchful military than a deliberate act of FDR’s hanging them out to dry.
“...Roosevelt gave it all away to the Soviets...”
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He was already dead by then.
Roosevelt LOVED the US Navy. And in his younger years he was the Assistant Secretary of the Navy. No way would he have deliberately put the Navy in harm’s way.
FDR made many serious mistakes as president. But to blame him for Pearl Harbor would be like blaming Eisenhower for the Battle of the Bulge.
Both Pearl Harbor and the Bulge were well-planned sneak attacks. Yeah, maybe they could have been avoided had the leadership been perfect geniuses.
> I also think the disaster at Pearl was more due to on-site errors by an unwatchful military than a deliberate act of FDR’s hanging them out to dry. <
Right. See my post #50. Too many conservatives seem to want to blame FDR for Pearl Harbor simply because he’s FDR.
Actually, it is pretty obvious why in 20-20 hindsight. Tokyo had signed a non-aggression pact with Moscow and Russia wanted to bring the United States into the war. Admiral Yamamoto's orders were to abort the attack if the fleet was discovered. Moscow honored their non-aggression pact until the first atomic bomb fell. Then they saw it was in their best interests to invade Manchuria, Korea, Karafuto (southern Sakhalin Island) and the Kuriles, which they promptly did to support ally Mao in the case of the former two and claim their spoils of war in the case of the later two.
“That is not exactly correct. The Russians had much more force on the ground in Europe than we did”
That is correct. We had the atomic bomb and they did not. Our production line was in progress and we could have turned out several a month. Also at that time the Soviet Union was very much dependent on our industrial capacity to wage the war against Germany. In actuality they could have inflicted great loss against us in a short term battle of conventional warfare. They would have been totally destroyed in a few short months using our atomic warfare. As the Soviet Union was a top down control of their army once Moscow and the top generals were taken out by atomics they would have ceased to function as a coherent effective force.
As opposed to our Army the Soviets feared greatly the ability of officers that were not of high rank to command the field of battle if the higher ranks were killed. Take out the generals, and high officers and they cease to function. Take out our officers and a Sergent will lead his men in battle.
The Soviets trusted their officers of high rank as they were political. They greatly feared the officers and Sergents of low rank. That fear was most justified.
In reality all Roosevelt needed to do was say to Stalin, “This is the way it will be or you, your army and nation will cease to exist. He did not! Thus decades of proxy wars between us and the Soviet Union happened. Roosevelt was either a fool or evil. As mentioned I think him not a fool, thus he is evil.
We had the ability to intercept and decrypt part of Japan’s secret PURPLE transmissions in December 1941.
But PURPLE was their diplomatic cable traffic and the Japanese military didn’t trust it or use it. Japan’s military used a different system, JN-25, and they kept all references to to their planned attack there. We didn’t have the ability to spy on JN-25 traffic until some time in 1942.
Pearl was THE place they could hit us hard in the Pacific. It wasn’t like we had huge bases full of battleships and carriers (although they were out of port) anywhere else.
None of this is brain surgery. There was no sense starting a war with the US with our fleet still roaming around. It was Pearl, or nothing.
“The Soviets didn’t warn the US, but no one knows why.”
How would the Soviets have known the destination of the fleet that they had spotted? Japan wasn’t at war with the United States at that point so why pass the information on to us?
One of the funniest conversations at my dinner table was my teenaged daughters discussing dropping the bomb with my mother in law. They started spouting the “school” BS, and she set them straight in a world class education about what it was like to be alive and have brothers fighting.
They learned a little bit of experience is worth a whole lot of theory and book learning.
Except that the Japanese Naval Code wasn’t broken at that point. Their diplomatic code had been but the Japanese military didn’t trust the diplomats or share their plans with them.
“At the successful conclusion of the war when we had the atomic bomb and total supremacy on the field of battle, Roosevelt gave it all away to the Soviets. “
Roosevelt died a month before the fighting ended in Europe. Four months before Japan surrendered.
People who believe that anyone on our side treacherously gave away Eastern Europe are not paying attention to hard facts like supply lines and the disposition of armies at the end of the war.
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