Shattered Sword - Opinions?

[paulrward]

Hello Mr. Wellgunde ;

I would refer you to to John J. Stephan's excellent work, Hawaii Under the Rising Sun, in which he gives a detailed account of the timeline for IJN operational planning. Immediately after Pearl Harbor, Yamamoto gave orders to the IJN to begin planning for a Hawaiian operation. After the Doolittle Raid, the IJA and the Imperial Staff joined in. The Imperial Staff ordered three divisions of the IJA to begin TRAINING for an invasion of Hawaii. Not just planning, but TRAINING !

In effect, their success in the war, and the realization that it might go longer, caused the Japanese military to broaden their operational horizons.

It is a fact that nearly 40% of the population of Hawaii was either 1st, 2nd, or 3rd generation Japanese, and that they had done little intermarrying with the local population. Many, though not all, still had emotional ties to Japan. While they might not have fought against the United States, or even tried to assist the invading Japanese forces, they might just as equally not have been resistant to occupation by Imperial Japan, especially if it appeared that they might get economic or political benefits by doing so.

While it was certainly almost impossible for the Japanese to invade Oahu, they might certainly have invaded and occupied some of the other islands around it. And, if the IJN had defeated the USN at Midway, they might have had as many as 7 CVAs, 3 CVLs, and 2 CVEs to face a USN of 1 CVA ( Saratoga ) 2 CVLs ( Wasp, Ranger ) and 5-6 CVEs ( Long Island, Charger, the 4 Sangamons )

The Japanese had planned to base fighters at Midway, and had arranged for midget submarines to be shipped their to serve as part of the island defence. It is not to great a stretch to imagine that they could have used Midway as a refueling depot for raids by flying boats, as they had already done preliminary tests using H8Ks that were refueled at French Frigate Shoals. Using Midway as the refueling depot would give them the ability to carry out nuisance raids that would make Pearl Harboe untennable as a forward base to the USN.

In effect, if the IJN drove the USN out of Pearl Harbor, and used submarines and the IJN surface fleet to impose a loose blockade on Hawaii, it would quickly be starved into submission. Remember, 85 % of all food consumed in Hawaii at the start of the war was imported by ship, and every ounce of coal and every drop of P.O.L was also brought in by ship.

I know that it is true that the IJN had always devoted the bulk of it's submarine activity to anti warship attacks, but it is equally true that Yamamoto and his staff had enough flexibility of mind to shift that over to commerce raiding if it was necessary.

The result is, with a victory at Midway under their belt, the IJN could have starved and bombed Hawaii into submission, and, with the USN driven back to Panama and San Diego, Pearl Harbor could have been bypassed and left to wither on the vine. ( Does this sound a bit like Rabaul ? Hmmmmmm)

And, Mr. Wellgunde, a defeat of the USN in Hawaiian waters would have ended the war. The USN would have had to wait until the middle of 1944 at least before they were ready to carry out a operation to liberate Hawaii, and that invasion would have had to come from the west coast of the United States, over 2500 miles away. The Japanese could have fortified Hawaii, focussing their strength there, and using it as a shield for the rest of the Pacific Empire. The USN could not bypass it, and, if the Japanese, with no attritive war in the Solomons, no USN submarine campaign in their home waters to deal with, and having made a quick end to the Allied campaign in New Guinea, would have had the ability to place literally hundreds, if not a thousand, aircraft of all kinds to defend the islands.

Hawaii in the hands of the Japanese is like the tip of a pyramid - and we all know how long pyramids can last.......




Mr. Wellgunde, you wrote, " You believe it but that's all it is - just a belief. The historical record certainly indicates otherwise. What you are doing is slandering the authors of a series of books you haven't read and couldn't read if you wanted to by accusing them of lying to save face. Why shouldn't Japanese historians be any less reliable than American or European historians? It appears to me that you have bought into certain stereotypes of typical oriental behavior tinged with a wisp of racial bias and for that reason our discussion is at an end. "


Mr. Wellgunde, In my posting I stated that IJN officers maintained after the war that they had NEVER planned to go to Hawaii, that the Russians maintained after July 1969 that they had NEVER tried to get to the moon first, and that the United States maintained after the war was over that they had NEVER made plans to cut back their support for Britain and the USSR if the war in the Pacific had gone badly.

What I am trying to get across to you is, EVERYBODY tells ex post facto lies. Even Japanese historians.

If you think I am racist, if you want, I can tell you about the ex post facto lies that NASA told about the Challenger and Columbia space shuttle disasters. Or the lies that the USN is STILL telling about the Gulf of Tonkin Incident.

Do you want to hear about the lies that IG Farbenindustrie told about their manufacture of Zyklon B ? How about the lies that Vladimir Putin is telling right now about his invasion of the Ukraine, and his bombings in Syria.....

Mr. Wellgunde: To quote the legendary medical genius Dr. Gregory House, " Everybody Lies " If you spend your life believing everything that one side or the other tells you, you will find yourself in an intellectually very embarrassing position.


Respectfully ;
( But NOT necessarily Truthfully )

Paul R. Ward

[ChristopherPerrien]

Hello Mr. Wellgunde ;

I would refer you to to John J. Stephan's excellent work, Hawaii Under the Rising Sun, in which he gives a detailed account of the timeline for IJN operational planning.

You lose a ton of credibility bringing up Dr. Stephan, He is a far out left wing nut-case.IMO The epiphany of how US liberal arts colleges and professors where military science/history is a field of study of history, cannot AT ALL fathom military science/history given their POV.

[rob0274]

Eric Lacroix's , "The Belgian Shiplover" , IIRC. Looks to be a typo(KINDLE?) in the footnotes.. A rare Belgian periodical, Dr. LaCroix donated to over a period of 30-40? years . La Croix wrote a huge book on Japanese Cruisers and IJN ship construction using such info as he included in this periodical along with 50 years of research he did on the same. La Croix seems to be accepted "gospel" as to his expertise on these matters among scholars of the Pacific war..

Are you suggesting that it is proper documentation practice to list the name of a journal as "source"? It is irrelevant whether you think La Croix is accepted as "gospel" about Japanese cruisers or not. You can't simply throw out his name and the name of a journal and call it a day. If you are claiming that a certain knowledge of a fact can be attributed to a work by La Croix, then you need to cite where that comes from. If it comes from a journal, you state the article name, page numbers if appropriate, volume number, publication date, and other information relevant to locating it. This is something we learn in high school and again in college. Did you simply forget about this, or what?

In any case, considering P&T have falsely attributed things and have shown that they sometimes do not even know the names of books they cite to, it will not surprise me if "Belgian Ship/over" is a typo introduced by P&T themselves and not by Amazon.

Showa Zosensho- History of Naval Construction during the Showa era. A huge accumulation papers and such by many authors/scholars collected over time, condensed into 2 volumes. Yes they might have listed the last assembled date and update date, and Shoto? as "lead?"author/editor, but I don;'t know if that would be correct either. It may be considered impolite to follow English foot note rules for Japanese works. IDK

Do you really imagine that the Japanese are from such an alien culture that they will take offense at a Japanese book being cited in a footnote? There is no reason to resort to such desperate flights of fancy to defend bad writing.

Granted they could have followed perhaps some of the more traditional footnote rules. However I think to give these footnotes true justice, would have demanded a listing of pages and acknowledgements that really could not be more accurate, and would have made the footnotes much longer than these already were.

No, on the contrary a "traditional" footnote practice would have been a simple citation of documents and page numbers, instead of the rambling passage that covered up for the authors' lack of actual knowledge of the fact asserted. Don't forget--the fact asserted was a very straightforward one: Japan spent X amount of money to build and then to rebuild the Akagi and Kaga.

Look at the footnote for the one line of text you are holding as some mortal example. To research the background of this one footnote shows how much is behind it. Also such a figure can really only be an educated guess given defense contracting shenanigans and exchange rates fluctuations over the 30 year time period these ships were modified.

Are we looking at the same text? In the text I am looking at, and I quoted, P&T claim that the Diet voted 90 mil yen to complete Akagi and Amagi in 1922. Care to explain why an educated guess about exchange rate fluctuation or a knowledge of supposed defense contracting shenanigans is needed to state this simple fact?

[rob0274]

Showa Zosensho- History of Naval Construction during the Showa era. A huge accumulation papers and such by many authors/scholars collected over time, condensed into 2 volumes. Yes they might have listed the last assembled date and update date, and Shoto? as "lead?"author/editor, but I don;'t know if that would be correct either.

Let me add that citation rules are more than capable of dealing with this contingency which to you is apparently insurmountable. Seriously, you think a multivolume collection of papers by many authors is so difficult to cite that an author is justified in just throwing out the name?

You might want to work on your googling skills.

Let's begin with this one: http://lmgtfy.com/?q=chicago+manual+of+style

[paulrward]

Hello Mr. Perrien ;

Is Professor Stephan a ' far out left wing nut-case ? " I don't know. I have not met the man. However, from his CV:



B.A in History, ( Magna Cum Laude ) and M.A ( East Asian Studies ), both from Harvard University.

PhD in Japanese History, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.

Life Member of the following organizations devoted to academia and historical studies:
Association of Asian Studies,
International House of Japan
Association for Slavic, East European, & Eurasian Studies
American Historical Association
Canadian Historical Association
National Association of Scholars

Member, Sterling Fellows, Yale University, where he studied Japanese. Professor Stephan speaks Japanese, Russian, French, and German.

Has authored or co-authored at least six books and a number of scholarly articles on both historical subjects and international geopolitics, mainly related to Japan, the Far East, and the Soviet Union's involvement in the Far East. ( One of these books, about Sakhalin and the Kurile Islands, was condemned as " bourgeois falsification" by Soviet authorities )


Mr. Perrien, have you met Professor Stephan ? Can you cite any evidence that Professor Stephan is anything but an intellectually honest scholar who has studied the history of Japan and written well researched works on matters in his field of study ? Do you have any reason to resort of ad hominem attacks and name calling, other than the fact that his published works disagree with those of Messrs. Parshall and Tully ?


And, Mr. Perrien, why is it that whenever someone disagrees with anything contained within the pages of Shattered Sword that some individuals immediately resort to ad hominem attacks, name calling, and vulgar language to try to discredit or silence them ?



The ball is in your court, Mr. Perrien: Exactly what has caused you to refer to Professor Stephan as a " far out left wing nut-case " ?


Respectfully ;

Paul R. Ward

[CharlesRollinsWare]

Hey Christopher;

Congrats - you can now add "writer of ad hominem attacks" to your resume, sir! Frankly, I cannot think of a higher honor for you to have achieved! As one of a founding members of the "ad hominem attack's club, I have for some time proudly added "Instigator of ad hominem attacks" to my resume. I will be happy to print you out a membership card if you want one. Frankly, considering the source, I cannot think of a title that I am prouder of!

Contact me off list and I will be happy to send you one!

Mark

[paulrward]

Hello Mr. Perrien ;

With regards to Professor Stephan, I would like to call your attention to an article he wrote regarding the ' Tanaka Memorial ', which was initially made public by Chinese and Russian sources in 1929, and which allegedly revealed the long term plans of Imperial Japan with regards to China and Manchuria. The article is titled, " The Tanaka Memorial (1927): Authentic or Spurious? ", and a PDF of it is available at:

http://www.personal.psu.edu/faculty/d/g ... 311684.pdf

I feel that a quick, impartial reading of this article could clarify Professor Stephan's knowledge and capabilities as a scholar far more than anything I could say.

Respectfully ;

Paul R. Ward

[glenn239]

With regards to Professor Stephan...

In his book, I seem to recall the conclusion that 3 divisions had been ordered to start training for Hawaii was because the original copies of the orders cut to the divisions in question were recovered in Japan. No sure what accusations of "left-wing nut" have to do with finding actual primary evidence documents - is Chris saying that Stephan lied? I also seem to recall he's cited in Shattered Sword?

[David Thompson]

This thread is locked for continuing poster misconduct.

paulrward -- There have been multiple warnings in this thread about making personal remarks concerning other posters. Do not repeat the mistake again.