Time To Rewrite The History Books

Discussions on WW2 in the Pacific and the Sino-Japanese War.
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Psycho Mike
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Time To Rewrite The History Books

#1

Post by Psycho Mike » 10 Sep 2004, 20:32

How did this story get by me?

Well for one it was written in Japanese.

Turns out the Japanese broke our code before the war.

They knew days before Pearl Harbor that negotiations with the U.S. over them leaving China were about to be abruptly ended. Well folks, they also knew what you have when peace talks are ended.

Its called war.

The day their ambassador was to be thrown out of the White House, Pearl Harbor happened.

There can be no question they were provoked by FDR's manipulations that they could read. Yet are still classified here in the states.

Get him off the dime. Somebody, apologize to Admiral Husband Kimmel. He never had a chance.

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/get ... 1208a8.htm

P.S.- In the years to come, Japan will decide to release the diaries kept by the Emperor before and during the war. I hope they do. It's time we learned the truth.

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#2

Post by Goldfish » 11 Sep 2004, 01:12

Reading the article, I don't get the same impression you did. I do not think, for example, that it was America's plan to declare war on Japan on December 7th. If it had been, US forces (and Allied Forces, who would have to have been in on it as America would certainly not have acted alone) would certainly not have been caught unprepared, not just in Hawaii, but in the Phillipines and China as well.

For example, it notes that on December 2nd, a document was decoded by the Japanese which revealed that the US would drop a proposed China peace plan. Well, countless peace plans had been proposed, negotiated, and dropped in the years since Japan had invaded China. This was just another failed plan. The failure to reach an agreement was one reason that the Japanese had sent an extra negotiator. If I am correct, the US still had a summit meeting between Konoe and Roosevelt on the table as well as other options. Failure of one negotiation did not equal an ending of diplomatic relations. Hull was meeting Japan's negotiation team in Washington on Dec. 7th at their request, not his, and so it is unlikely he planned to sever diplomatic relations although he might have known by then (theough interception of Japan's diplomatic messages) that Japan intended to sever diplomatic relations. Consider also that Grew in Tokyo was not destroying his files so that they would not be captured (as the Japanese were doing in Washington) which means that if the US was planning on severing diplomatic ties with Japan (and, as such, declaring war), Grew must have missed a memo. Also, by December 2nd, Japanese attack forces were already on the move (I believe that they had already received the "Climb Mount Niitaka" message, but I may be wrong). If the dropping of the peace plan was the reason Japan attacked, why were Japanese forces already on the move when the plan was dropped?

Kimmel was surprised, not because he was uninformed, but because he, like many in the US military, did not think Japan was capable of launching the attacks they did or of hitting positions all across the Pacific at the same time. The idea that Japan could sail across the Pacific undetected and then launch a highly skilled and coordinated attack was thought impossible by many in the US military. Consider MacArthur's surprise as well. He didn't think that Japanese aircraft could fly all the way from Taiwan to hit the Phillipines and was caught with his planes on the ground even though he already knew about Pearl Harbor.

Japan has spent the last fifty years trying to blame her victims for her own aggressive expansion. Remember, that China did not attack Japan and it was the China war that created all of Japan's other problems, The idea that the US should have sat passively by supplying the military means Japan needed to ravage China and overrun Europe's abandoned and weakened colonies is ridiculous. If America had had the moral courage to cut off exports to Japan sooner, millions of Chinese, most of them civilians, would not have fallen under Japan's sword.

The Japanese apologists rarely speak of their aggression in China. They say that they acted in "self defense" because the US had cut off their supplies. They don't mention that the supplies were needed to continue to brutally colonize China.

Reading Herbert Bix's "Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan" (published after this article was written), he mentions Hirohito's diaries and the summaries made of them to educate future Emperors. These diaries are, of course, held by the Imperial household and will probably never be made available to researchers. He also clearly shows that the Japanese were not "duped" or "manipulated" into attacking Pearl Harbor, but rather that they knew what they were getting into and thought they could win. After all, their ally Germany was at the gates of Moscow, England was weak, Europe's colonies in Asia were ripe for the picking, and the US Army, though growing, was about the same size as Rumania's. The Japanese, IMHO, gambled on Germany's continued success and I think that Japan's December attacks were not the desperate and suicidal acts that history has portrayed. If Germany had defeated Russia, as it appeared in November 1941 they would, the war would have been much different and Japan would have stood a better than fair chance against a very distracted America.


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#3

Post by Psycho Mike » 11 Sep 2004, 18:39

Hi Goldfish.

I was raised in Japan and was just looking through pictures from the late 1950's. Funny to see a woman in the traditional kimono walking with a young girl dressed like an American teen!

Had you ever heard or read that they had broken our code before? My thoughts on this is that they would have known all our negotiations and intentions.

But the coincidences. A Pearl Harbor newspaper headline the same week predicted a attack from Japan- that weekend. There was a blackout on Pearl the night before. The ships we needed were already gone, just a couple of weeks earlier. The ships in need of upgrading were left behind. A lookout saw the planes approaching and was told to forget about it! The chain of command set up by FDR was if anything did happen the Pentagon was to be informed- BEFORE KIMMEL. Was Japan being goaded into war- so we could enter the European war? We knew the Japanese and Germans had pledged to help each other. ( Americans are still taught that Hitler wanted to take over the world. How come he let the Japanese have Asia?)

We allowed "mercenaries" to enter the frey. The original Hell's Angels came from such a group. They had money, weapons. We were itching to get into war.

Finally we have the son of Thomas Dewey.

Dewey faced running against the most popular President of the 20th Century. He had one ace up his sleeve. He was going to go public with the actions prior to Pearl Harbor. Accirding to his son, he confronted FDR on this- and was warned he would be charged with treason if he released classified documents. Documents which to this day, are still classified.

Why? Why are they?

The myth of FDR began to unravel for me when I looked past what I was being taught about his impact on the depression. I had heard and read he helped avoid a revolution here, that his programs of direct government involvement had saved us. Well, all I had to do was read what non- Marxist economists wrote to discover that we had a depression until the war. That almost all agree that he prolonged the depression by over a decade with his 6 month quick fix plans.

Too bad revisionist historians have destroyed the idea behind the term. History like science should be researched every generation to see if what we think we know is the truth. Imagine if all those people who sit around sifting through pictures of bodies in death camps to guess at how they died went through the papers that have been released in the UK, Russia and Japan about the diplomacy that led to war?

You know we still call Pearl Harbor a sneak attack. What if the Germans had won at Normandy? Wouldn't their propaganda be that we were "too afraid" to face them so we had a "sneak attack" too?

If you know someone is coming at you in a menacing way telling them to back off is not out of line. Nor is punching them first.

That just may be what Japan did.

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#4

Post by Psycho Mike » 11 Sep 2004, 19:00

Our naval losses at Pearl Harbor that resulted from the surprise attack there have become a major item in American and world history primarily because it is almost universally believed that it was the Japanese attack that brought the United States into war with Japan. Actually, the United States had been put into war with Japan by the action of the Dutch authorities at Batavia, approved by the Dutch government, on December 3rd, Washington time, four days before the Japanese struck at Pearl Harbor.
Roosevelt remarked, when, about 9:30 P. M. on December 6th, he read the first thirteen parts of the Japanese reply to Hull's ultimatum of November 26th, that "This means war." He had known by the forenoon of the 6th, if not two days earlier, that we were already involved in war with Japan. How this had come about requires a brief review of the plans, arrangements and agreements whereby the United States could be involved in war without any attack by Japan upon American territory, forces or flag, a situation which was a repudiation of Roosevelt's promises to the American
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people and of the Democratic platform of 1940. They were the ultimate development and implementation of Captain Ingersoll's visit to Europe in the winter of 1937-38.
Unneutral American acts even prior to Roosevelt's election in 1940 on the platform of avoiding war had furnished Germany with a legitimate basis for making war on the United States. Such were the Destroyer Deal of September, 1940, and the allotting of large quantities of arms and ammunition to the British. Immediately following the election of 1940, plans to involve us in war with Japan got under way in real earnest, in case the Axis Powers should not rise to the bait afforded by "Lend Lease" and convoying on the Atlantic. These have been mentioned earlier but may be reviewed here.
Anglo-American joint-staff conferences in Washington held from January through March, 1941, drew up general plans for cooperation in war against the European Axis Powers and also envisaged a containing war with Japan They were known as the ABC-1 plans (land and sea) and ABC-2 (air). In April, another conference was held in Singapore, and the Dutch were brought in more directly through ABD. While still regarding Germany as the main immediate enemy, provisions were also made for joint action against Japan if the latter proceeded beyond the line 100° East and 10° North or 6° North and the Davao-Waigeo line, or menaced British or Dutch possessions in the southwest Pacific or independent countries in that area. This agreement between the United States, the British and the Dutch was known as ADB. Together, the agreements were known as ABCD. Stimson and Knox approved the ABC-1 plan for the United States to make it look good for the record. Although approving them verbally, Roosevelt did not officially sponsor these agreements in writing and they did not call for congressional approval. Marshall and Stark balked at ADB and its inclusion in ABCD because it introduced political considerations in a military program, but they had to play along with Roosevelt and did so to the very end in early December, 1941.
When the joint-staff conferences were over, the American military services drew up specific war plans to implement these staff agreements ending in ABCD. The joint Army and Navy basic war plan was known as Rainbow 5, also usually called WPL 46 in relation to naval operation in the Pacific. The subsidiary part that related to the operations of the Pacific fleet under Admiral Kimmel was known as WPPac 46. It was developed to implement the basic war plan and

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to coordinate the Pacific fleet operations with the provisions of Rainbow 5 (WPL 46).
Roosevelt apparently had indicated to Marshall and Stark that he intended to place the basic war plans before Congress prior to their being implemented, but whether he so intended or not, he had failed to do so when his hand was called on December 5th and 6th. The essence of the matter is that Roosevelt had approved an agreement that the United States would go to war to protect the interests and territory of allies in the Antipodes, thousands of miles from the United States, without even the semblance of an attack on the United States by Japan. On the heels of these ABCD agreements and the derived war plans, Admiral Stark, when promulgating Rainbow 5 (WPL 46), sent word to his admirals in leading outposts that the question of war was no longer a matter of whether, but of when and where. Marshall distributed Rainbow 5 to his field commanders, and Roosevelt unofficially approved it in May and June.
The ABCD agreement and Rainbow 5 hung like a sword of Damocles over Roosevelt's head. It exposed him to the most dangerous dilemma of his political career: to start a war without an attack on the American forces or territory, or refusing to follow up the implementation of ABCD and Rainbow 5 by Britain or the Dutch. The latter would lead to serious controversy and quarrels among the prospective allies, with the disgruntled powers leaking Roosevelt's complicity in the plan and exposing his mendacity.
He apparently took this risk rather lightly until July, 1941, because he had felt confident that Hitler would give him a valid pretext for war on the Atlantic. But when Hitler had failed to provide a suitable provocative act it became apparent that the United States must enter the war through the back door of Japan. When the latter had been consigned to economic strangulation in July 1941, when the back door plan had apparently been definitely implemented at the Argentia meeting, and when the peace efforts of Konoye had been rejected, this agreement to start a war on Japan without an attack on American forces or territory became a pressing and serious political problem for Roosevelt if he wished to have a united country behind him to support his war effort. It became increasingly so when the Japanese began to send extensive convoys of troops and equipment into the southwest Pacific in November. These convoys might pass the magic line specified by the ABCD agreement, and the Dutch, British and Australians might call his hand by invoking the American promise to act jointly

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against the Japanese as envisaged in ABCD and Rainbow 5 (WPL 46). The matter of getting a suitable Japanese attack somewhere now became the most vital of all Roosevelt's political problems. There would no longer be any serious difficulty in inciting Japan to accept war, but Japan had to commit the "first overt act" and it had to be against the United States.
There was always the probability that the Japanese would attack Pearl Harbor because this action had been implicit in Pacific naval strategy for years, but a Japanese task-force attack at Hawaii involved a long ocean voyage and there was always a possibility that it might be intercepted en route. It was this consideration, as well as the fact that this belated plan might also save the fleet at Pearl Harbor, which led Roosevelt to turn to his "three small vessels" stratagem on December 1st, to which reference has already been made several times.
Roosevelt appears to have obtained his inspiration to set up this scheme through reports of the menacing attitude and behavior of Japanese naval ships toward two American Yangtse River gunboats, the Luzon and Oahu, as they approached and passed Formosa on a voyage from Shanghai to Manila on November 29th and 30th (Washington time). Hitherto, the Japanese had not paid any serious attention to routine American ship movements off the coast of Asia But on the 29th and 30th, they all but fired on the gunboats Luzon and Oahu.
On December 1st, immediately after his return from Warm Springs, Roosevelt summoned Admiral Stark and instructed him to order Admiral Hart, commander of the Asiatic fleet stationed at Manila, to select, equip and man three "small vessels" which could move out into the path of the Japanese task forces going southward and draw fire from Japanese planes or ships, thus giving Roosevelt his all-important and indispensable attack, and one that was on an American ship. The ostensible purpose of equipping and sending out the three "small vessels", as explained by Stark to Hart, was to have them carry out reconnaissance operations relative to Japanese ship movements and to reports--to act as a "defensive information patrol".
Admiral Hart, as also did Stark, recognized from the outset that any such operation for these little ships was palpably "phony". Hart was carrying out the needed reconnaissance and reporting the results to Washington. For

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this he had suitable vessels and planes, while for such a role the use of the three "small vessels" was nothing short of fantastic. To retain Hart's respect, Stark had made it clear that the whole conception of equipping and dispatching the three "small vessels" for reconnaissance was Roosevelt's and not his, a fact which Mrs. Wohlstetter characteristically conceals in her treatment of the three "small vessels" episode.
Only two of the "small vessels" had been made ready to sail out into the path of the Japanese convoys and invite attack before the Japanese struck at Pearl Harbor. To get this baiting stratagem under way promptly, Roosevelt had Stark suggest to Hart that he might use the converted yacht Isabel, which had been made over into the dispatch boat of the Asiatic fleet and the Japanese had been acquainted with its identity for some time. Hart realized that on this assignment the Isabel was to be bait for a Japanese attack, which displeased him since the vessel was very useful to the fleet. Yet he did not wish to seem to be defying the President's wishes. He sensibly solved his dilemma by sending the Isabel out as directed but under instructions which rendered it as unlikely as possible to be attacked and sunk by the Japanese. These instructions were directly contrary to Roosevelt's plans and intentions, and Hart knew they were. The Isabel was not even repainted before being dispatched, which assured that the Japanese would be able to recognize it, and the sailing orders given by Hart were such as to make it appear very unlikely to the Japanese that it was a provocative "man-o-war".
These precautions may well have saved the Isabel from attack, the Japanese recognized it and were not stupid or rash enough to fire on it. Although out on its mission for some five days, only one Japanese plane even buzzed the Isabel. Despite his protective directions Hart had feared that the Isabel would be sunk, and he told the commander when he returned that he had never expected to see him alive again after his departure. If the Isabel episode had been handled in the manner that Roosevelt wished and provided the maximum provocation to trigger-happy Japanese pilots or gunners there might not have been any attack on Pearl Harbor and the fleet there could have been saved.



http://www.blancmange.net/tmh/articles/ph25_8.html

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#5

Post by tigersqn » 11 Sep 2004, 21:26

Psycho Mike wrote: The chain of command set up by FDR was if anything did happen the Pentagon was to be informed- BEFORE KIMMEL.
The Pentagon didn't exist in 1941.

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#6

Post by Psycho Mike » 11 Sep 2004, 23:59

Ahhhhh trick question:

The Pentagon—a building, institution, and symbol—was conceived at the request of Brigadier General Brehon B. Sommervell, Chief of the Construction Division of the Office of the Quartermaster General, on a weekend in mid-July 1941. The purpose was to provide a temporary solution to the War Department’s critical shortage of space.The groundbreaking ceremony took place on September 11, 1941. The building was dedicated on January 15, 1943, nearly 16 months to the day after the groundbreaking.
Prime contract awarded 11 August 1941

Mechanical engineering contract awarded 3 September 1941

Construction began 11 September 1941

Grading contract awarded 24 September 1941

First occupants move in 29 April 1942

Should have said the War Department......

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#7

Post by Goldfish » 12 Sep 2004, 05:20

Whatever way one looks at it, Japan was only "threatened" by the United States and the loss of strategic materials because of its aggression in China. Did Japan attack China in self-defense? The Japanese had in fact attacked China, beginning in 1931, because the Nationalist movement, led by Chiang Kai-Shek appeared to be moving the country towards unification and stabilization. In other words, if Japan did not act quickly to take what they wanted from China, China might soon be too powerful and the opportunity to colonize it would be lost. This was nothing but naked aggression. The Japanese justified their war in several ways. They said it was self-defense (like they would later in the Pacific War), the idea being that they needed Manchuria to protect Korea, then needed North China to protect Manchuria, etc. etc. I guess they later felt they needed Southeast Asia to protect their conquests in China. They also claimed to be in China to "protect" the Chinese from communism, but they never really focused the bulk of their armies on anyone but the Nationalists and did not even bomb the Communist "capital" in Yan'an regularly until 1944, whereas they bombed Chongqing (Chungking) from the moment it was made China's temporary capital until they were stopped from doing so by US aircraft.

The Japanese attacks in 1941, IMHO, were also based on the realization that if Japan did not act quickly, the opportunity to seize Southeast Asia would be lost (ie if peace broke out in Europe). With Germany triumphant in Europe, Japan had the opportunity to build an empire from the Indus to the international date line at high speed and with little cost, fighting only colonial garrisons and what forces the US could muster in the interim. Germany would defeat Britain (through treaty or conquest), leaving Japan's conquests in Asia intact, and Germany would also destroy the Russians, giving the Japanese Siberia west of Lake Baikal. Then the US, isolated in North America and facing a world dominated by Germany and Japan, would either sue for peace or be destroyed. Not a bad plan, and very far from the post-war concept of Japan forced into war. The only problem, from Japan's standpoint, was that the Germans failed to keep up their end (Japan did, taking everything but India, which was certainly not in a position to resist a large Japanese attack in 1942). The Japanese also planned to tie everything up with a large offensive aimed at Chongqing (Operation GOGO) to finish off the Chinese (GOGO was to start in late summer 1942, but was scaled back following Midway and the landings in Guadalcanal and was later adopted, in modified form, as Operation ICHIGO in 1944).

In the buildup to Pearl Harbor, the United States was very pro-China and lobbying by the Chinese government and its relief orgnanizations (ie United China Relief), Chinese-American organizations, and pro-China Politicians was intense (these groups, after the war, would constitute the powerful "China Lobby" which pushed McCarthyism and support of the Guomindang in Taiwan). These groups especially focused on the fact that Japan was commiting its atrocities in China with material supplied by the US.

It has been theorized that the United States sought an incident with Japan so that they could enter the European war. It is true, I think, that the Roosevelt administration wanted into the European war, but seeking an incident with Japan in order to enter the war in Europe does not make sense.

For starters, Germany did not have to declare war on the US and there was no guarantee that they would. This would leave the US at war with Japan and out of the war in Europe until another "incident" could be arranged. A declaration of war on Germany without an incident would not have had the support it did with Germany declaring war right after Pearl Harbor. The German declaration of war on Dec. 11th joined Pearl Harbor and the war in Europe in the minds of many Americans, but this could not have been guarenteed by Roosevelt prior to Pearl Harbor.

As for the other points:

The newspaper article. What exactly did the newspaper predict? That the US fleet would be attacked by Japanese aircraft flying from aircraft carriers? Not having read the article I cannot comment on its contents, but without an accurate prediction (ie Japanese would attack with carrier-borne aircraft at dawn, etc.) it would have to be chalked up to coincidental speculation. For example, had terrorists actually decided to attack a shopping mall on Halloween, 2001, would that mean that all those people passing along those internet stories were in on it? The real question is: how many newspaper articles featuring invasion or attack "scares" had there been in Hawaiian newspapers in the six months prior to Dec. 7th? In national papers? If you keep saying the world will end, you are bound to be right one day.

The blackout. How many blackouts had there been in the weeks, months, before Dec. 7th? Was there always a blackout on Saturday night? If blackouts occured all the time, or were regularly scheduled for that day, then it could just be a coincidence.

The missing ships. Much is made of the fact that two of America's precious aircraft carriers, as well as some of the more modern cruisers and destroyers, were missing on the day of the attack, meaning that they might have been sent out to avoid being destroyed or that they might have been sent to scout for the Japanese. The carriers, which were ferrying fighters to Wake Island (these later proved important in the US defense of the island), were sent along with the modern ships, as opposed to the older battleships, because of their speed. Kimmel wanted the ships to complete their mission and get back to Pearl as quickly as possible. Also, these ships were in Hawaiian waters during the attack, and because they were short on fuel (they had not taken any tankers with them), they had to head for Pearl Harbor. Had Nagumo launched a second attack, or a detailed reconnaisance, he might well have found the carriers and sunk them both in deep water. Roosevelt and the Navy could not have predicted that Nagumo would only launch one attack. Furthermore, a second attack could have destroyed the repair yards, meaning all ships sunk at Pearl Harbor would stay sunk and damaged ships would be out of the war for months, or it could have destroyed the oil tank farms, making Pearl Habor useless as a base of operations for at least a year, meaning the US Pacific Fleet would have to retreat to San Diego. All this means that there would have been no Midway and Japan might have had time to knock Australia or China out of the war and consolidate and fortify their Pacific conquests. In other words, that Pearl Harbor was not a complete disaster (as opposed to a bad defeat) was due to Nagumo's failures not Roosevelt's planning. Roosevelt would have to have been an absolute military genius to have planned Pearl Harbor exactly as it turned out.

Radar operators told to stand down. This was simply a snafu of the type that always occurs in war. The Hawaiian defense system was new and radar was new to these men and as many in the US military did not think Japan capable of such an attack, they were not expecting it.. Also, there were the B-17s coming in, which were approaching Hawaii at that time and actually landed during the attack. It was an honest mistake. But, lets say that the US military was in on the attack, which was why the radar operators were told to stand down, why the aircraft were left vulnerable, and why the carriers (above) were out of port. Why were Kimmel and Short left out? If there was a "conspiracy", why were the commanding officers left out? Because they might talk? Then why weren't they replaced with someone more loyal to the "agenda"? Why the "sinister" blackout? After all, was the idea to protect the fleet when the Japanese attacked or to allow the fleet to be destroyed to arouse public opinion?

Kimmel "out of the loop". If the Japanese attacked Kimmel's fleet at Pearl Harbor, Kimmel would not need Washington to inform him that Japan was attacking, he could see it for himself. If the Japanese attacked US forces elsewhere, those forces would naturally pass information up the chain of command to Washington before passing it horizontally to other commands. For example, the "Air Raid Pearl Harbor" message was sent to Washington by Pearl Harbor, then the information, as well as updated information, was passed along to local commands. It would have made no sense, for example, for Pearl Harbor to radio MacArthur in the Phillipines, the US Asiatic Fleet (in China), Panama Defense Command, etc, etc, before informing Navy Headquarters and the War Department that Japan was attacking. As for diplomatic updates, naturally these would go to Washington-State Dept. then War Dept.-before being passed on to the various local commands. There was a chain of command, and although Kimmel's command was an important one, it was still a lower echelon.

Japan "goaded" into war. As was shown by Japan's aggression in China, the only things that goaded the Japanese into action were current weakness and potential future strength. Japan knew that if they delayed in taking what they wanted from China in 1931, they might never get it once China was unified and strengthened. Again, the US (and colonial Asia) was weak in 1941 but getting stronger. Japan struck because to delay would mean that the opportunity was lost. Why was the United States strengthening and increasing aid to China as well as cutting off Japan's strategic materials? Because if anyone was "goaded", it was the US, by the Panay incident in 1937, Japan's rejection of weapons limitation treaties, Japan's massive military expansion (from 17 divisions-250,000 men in 1937 to 51 divisions-2.1 million men in 1941-source Herbert Bix, "Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan."), and Japan's aggression in Southeast Asia beginning in 1940. Under such circumstances, was it unreasonable that the United States should seek to expand its military and move military assets into place to protect its territory? Also, it was not the United States that placed a deadline on diplomatic action, it was Japan who set a date after which "things would start to happen" and sublimated diplomacy to military preparations.

Asia war as "back door" to European war. As I have already argued above, Germany was not bound by the Tripartite Pact to declare war on the US. This was for the same reason that Japan was not obligated to declare war on Russia, because Japan attacked the US and the pact was only applicable if the signee was attacked.

American "mercenaries". The AVG were mostly not mercenaries, they were actually allowed to quit the US military and volunteer for the Chinese Air Force. This might be seen as an act of war, allowing US military personel to fight Japan and supplying them with the means to do so. However, there is an important legal technicality: Japan was not officially at war with China. The war in China was called the "China Incident" by Japan largely because to call it a war would have fully justified an American embargo, as Japan would officially be a belligerent. This allowed the US to continue supplying Japan with military equipment and strategic resources up until the embargo following Japan's occupation of Indo-China. The US had, through private firms, supplied China with military equipment on a contract-by-contract basis throughout the war. Japan complained, of course, but not too loudly because the US was sending them stuff too. By the way, the AVG never saw action against the Japanese until after Pearl Harbor (Dec. 20th, 1941). Also, the postwar "Hell's Angels" motorcycle group had no connection with the wartime AVG 3rd squadron, they probably just liked the name.

As for Dewey's documents, I cannot comment because I do not know what the documants contain or do not contain. I have learned, however, that speculation on such things is never easy to make. Consider all of the classified information that conspiracy theorists contended would break the JFK assassination conspiracy wide open. When these documents were declassified following pressure from these groups, what they actually contained didn't prove anything. It may be that Dewey's documents were like McCarthy's famous list of communists or they could refer to something having nothing to do with Pearl Harbor, New Deal corruption, perhaps. I cannot say for sure, but without them, we cannot assume what they will say.


Japan's attack was a "sneak attack" only because it came without a declaration of hostlilities, not because it was a surprise. The Japanese knew the difference and intended the attack to be a "surprise attack", not a "sneak attack". The "sneak attack" was caused by a slow typist in the Japanese embassy in Washington, who failed to prepare the declaration of hostilities, not by Roosevelt. As for the Germans on D-Day, I am pretty sure that they knew America and Britain were hostile to them by then. By the way, I heard that the slow typist's typewriter is still on display at the Japanese embassy in Washington as a reminder to the staff to plan for things properly.

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#8

Post by Psycho Mike » 13 Sep 2004, 01:02

Hi Goldfish.

Impressive info and eloquent comments. However........

We knew Germany would back Japan on a declaration of war because we had read the MAGIC/ ULTRA documents.

First allow me to explain the way I look at history, my bias so to speak. We all have one, but I realize when I say things often folks sit in shock saying, "Now what the hell is he saying?" and perhaps by explaining my take you can understand what it is I am saying.

Some of us are here because we know how much gas it took to run a German tank.

Some because we understand the troop movements during the war.

Some are here to support one side or another. Often based on where they are born.

I am interested in the Intelligence history. Diplomacy. Dirty tricks. The real history. Why? I'll get to that at the end. Promise.

Was December 7th a massive intelligence failure? Or a provoked attack?

According to the U.S. government to this day, neither.

In 1931 the Secretary of War Henry Stimson is shocked to discover the Army is running an operation called Black Chamber. We are reading Japan's classified documents. A liberal, he thinks such activity is not legal. It wasn't. The Army tells him we know they are breaking the London Naval Treaty and adding weights to their ships to keep us from knowing the actual size and speed. They are also lying about the calibur of their weapons. This is in 1931! To Stimson, we are breaking the law. He doesn't even want to know.

He shuts down the program. Thankfully and troubling for those that say my claim that we lost the original intent of the Constitution and Declaration Of Independence under Lincoln and those original rights are already gone, the Army overruled the United Government. They find the genius William Friedman, lost in history today who continues reading the documents and expands the Signals Intelligence Corps. The White House and the legislature do not know the military is acting on its own.

In 1938 Japan changes its code and in September of 1940 Friedman invents the Purple machine- and we go back to reading the Japanese code.

In 1940 FDR reads the Army documents, which during the war he stopped doing, and tells the UK they should trade documents. From the Germans through the UK, from Japan through us.

The UK insists to this day, they sent dozens of letters outlining the attack on Pearl Harbor to us prior to the event.

Why is the UK lying?

Then Dewey places a spy within FDR's re-election committee. He discovers that FDR was reading these cables before the attack. He threatens to go public.

Marshall contacts him. He explains that Magic won the battle of the Coral Sea, Midway, troop movements near Alaska, location of merchant ships. What Marshall didn't tell Dewey was that in September of 1944 Japan had realized Germany was lost. That Japan was secretly negotiating with Russia for peace! (This is classified here, but open sourced from the UK to Japan now).

In 1941 the Army is shocked to discover that its reports to FDR are appearing in Russia! They begin to censor what he reads.......

In 1943 a secret investigation happens led by Col. McCormack and is classified before it is even read by FDR. McCormack angers the Army by saying intel should not be handled by people based on only having completed college or knowing two languages! He calls for one person to head intel and read through all reports. He predicts we will defeat Rommel in Africa. That Italy will be blamed for the leaks that are actually caused bythe UK reading Enigma codes.

I know why we kept the enigma code secret. We sold those machines all over the world after the war, so we could read third world nations documents. Understood.

But how did we lose the guy that read intel and put it all together? How did we forget to keep our intel full of free thinkers, mavericks, to avoid the plodding nature of intel? The recommendations about 9/11 are all recommendations one by one that were made years ago- over Pearl Harbor. How did we go back to pre- World War 2 intel structure?

By classifying as much as we do, our kids are being taught rubbish at the military schools. The same failures that hampered us, the lessons we learned- have been lost in propaganda. We need the truth. Desperately.

Goldfish
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Joined: 31 May 2004, 14:51
Location: Atlanta, USA

#9

Post by Goldfish » 13 Sep 2004, 15:16

I understand the importance of military intelligence and the role of intelligence in WWII was enormous, but I also know that not all intel work is "dirty", nor is everything that is classified that way because it is hiding something "dirty". Nor does every action by a government, individual, or organization have a sinister "hidden agenda" or other evil purpose. Sometimes, as (I think) Freud said, "A cigar is simply a cigar."

The fact is that it is impossible to know what a document says or why it was classified until its contents are known. Speculation on why a document was classified is just that, speculation. A good way to sniff out a conspiracy theory is to look at how much of it is based on what is not known rather than what is known. By "known" here I mean what can be proven or at least reasonably argued. If this is not the case, then it is not known, it is speculated. Theories based on documents whose contents are unknown, whether classified or otherwise, are based on unknown information and thus speculation. How many theories about Soviet actions, Soviet spies, etc. were exploded when the files in Moscow were actually opened on Lee Harvey Oswald, the Rosenbergs, the Cuban Missile Crisis, etc.?

For example (and to keep this post on topic), you said:
The UK insists to this day, they sent dozens of letters outlining the attack on Pearl Harbor to us prior to the event.

Why is the UK lying?
When you say that the UK "outlined" the attack, what exactly did they say? Did they say that six Japanese carriers steaming east to such-and-such a point would then turn south and launch aircraft at such-and-such time and such-and-such place and that their aircraft were timed to hit Pearl Harbor at about 8am on Dec. 7th? Or, did they say that Japan might launch hostile action against the US at some point in December, for example. The difference between these two is huge. What exactly was said is absolutely crucial. It is also important to know what other "threats" they reported to us in the months prior to December 7th and how many of them proved to be true or or how many turned out to be false alarms. Remember that America's leaders remembered well the "Zimmerman telegram" that many Americans felt had tricked the US into WWI. A true report in a series of false alarms might be easily overlooked, especially if the intel officers were suspicious of the source.

There were many reports of potential Japanese attacks, and quite a few scares and false alarms, prior to December 1941. The Chinese Nationalists have also claimed that their intelligence knew about Pearl Harbor before Dec. 7th, but what exactly they knew, when they knew it, etc. they have kept to themselves and so this cannot be proven. I think it can be said that America knew something was coming but not exactly where, exactly what, or exactly when. It must be noted that Kimmel and Short were both warned that Japan might take hostile action and to prepare themselves accordingly. This is why Short had installed radar in the first place and had positioned his aircraft for defense against sabotage. It is also why both Kimmel and Short were screaming for reenforcements for themselves and their outlying Pacific defenses. They did not have, however, the humility to look at what their enemy was capable of doing rather than what they thought he would do. That is the failing of both them and the US military intelligence system in general. Their failure to appreciate what the Japanese military and Navy in particular were capable of meant that whatever seperate pieces of information the US intelligence community had, unless someone, somewhere, gave an exact description of what would happen, containing at the very least the information that Japan would attack Pearl Harbor at dawn on a weekend using carrier aircraft, then it could be reasonably argued that those reading the information did not believe that Japan would ever be capable of such an audacious and well-planned attack. Any report merely saying that Japan might initiate hostile action sometime in late November or December, depends then on the imagination or experience of the men who read that report to determine where or when. There were other potential targets as well, many more likely. The Phillipines, for example, were highly suspected and were, in fact, attacked on Dec. 7th, several hours after Pearl Harbor. MacArthur was informed, of course, but he took no extraordinary action to protect his command. Why? Because he did not think Japan was capable of hitting him.
Was December 7th a massive intelligence failure? Or a provoked attack?

According to the U.S. government to this day, neither.
Since American forces failed to prevent the Pearl Harbor attack, it must be termed an intelligence failure. The only way it could not have been a failure was if it was exactly what intelligence wanted to happen, and that can hardly be the US government's official position. Whether or not it was a provoked attack or not is subject to your interpretation. Japan certainly stated that they were provoked, but of course it must be remembered that their invasion of China and the atrocities commited there were all "provoked" and conducted for "self defense". This is the same reason the Kamikaze Museum in Chiran, Japan states that the kamikaze pilots died "to preserve peace".

It must be remembered that in 1941, most of the world was at war. The idea that the United States was "provoking" Japan by expanding its armed forces, strengthening its defenses, denying aid to those countries that threatened its territory or interests, or sending aid to those countries that, it felt, shared its values was not at all unreasonable compared to the actions of the Axis, which had not only done all of the above prior to Dec. 1941, but were also engaged in wars of aggression that threatened all nations, not only those already at war. You should know full well from your study of history that nothing provokes another country to attack more than weakness. Sadly, western Europe and China had failed to realize this until it was almost too late. The US was trying to prevent this when they were attacked.

Another important question that needs to be looked at is that, if the United States was hit by surprise at Pearl Harbor and the US military and political leaders lacked exact information regarding the time, place, and nature of that attack prior to its occurance, then why are there so many conspiracy theories about?

Is it so fantastic to believe that Japan, eager to expand its Empire at the expense of Europe, China, and America (as the Japanese, especially the military, had long advocated), would launch an attack at the exact moment when it was most opportune to do so (with Germany triumphant and America and Europe weak), and that due to complacency, confusion (with so many war scares and new departments and technologies), and a certain bit of racial disdain, America would be caught by surprise?

If the above sounds so reasonable, then why the conspiracy theories? Certainly, looking back, the war, as it unfolded after Pearl Harbor, seems to point to Pearl Harbor as the key to American morale and thus to American success in the war. While it seems that Germany and Japan were making foolish mistakes in declaring war on the US and that the US was highly fortunate to be attacked in such a way, it did not seem that way to either the US (which regarded the attack as a disaster) or the Axis (which regarded the attack as yet another great triumph and further proof of their superiority) at the time. A Pearl Harbor conspiracy assumes the US and the Allies knew they would win, to the point that they were willing to risk the entire US Pacific Fleet and a base essential to any offensive against Japan. The war, and the raid, in fact, could have gone far differently.

Let me look at the most common theory, that the US was eager to enter the war in Europe and provoked Japan so that they might get into Europe "by the back door". As I have already stated, it could not be proven that the Germans would act, regardless of what intercepts said (again, do we have the exact intercepts? did they say that Germany would or might or were leaning towards declaring war? the exact words are crucial here when you consider what the US would be risking-the loss of half their Navy and a crucial year of war while tremendously weak). I don't think I have to say that if we do not have copies of these intercepts, and thus cannot know exactly what they say, they might as well say nothing. The fact that this theory is usually associated with the idea that the Jews were behind it in order to ensure the defeat of the Nazis casts a lot of suspicion on this theory as far as I am concerned. I prefer to suspect the well-known and proven imperialistic and opportunisitic ambitions of the Japanese (at that time, of course, not now) over shadowy conspiracies and "hidden agendas", but that is just me.

My "conspiracy theory":

There is also the natural tendency of all defeated armies and nations, especially those defeated in a humiliating fashion by an enemy regarded as inferior, to seek an excuse for that defeat (ie "hippies" and the media in Vietnam). It is hard now, and was harder then, for Americans to believe that they had been so nearly fatally caught with their pants down. It is interesting to note that most conspiracy theorists did not develop their theories about Pearl Harbor until after the war was over and had been very cheaply and, seemingly, easily won by an overwhelming US military. It amazes me that, even today, so many people cannot believe that the Japanese, with all their skill and courage, couldn't have pulled it off without help from shadowy intelligence spooks.

I do not doubt that the US believed that the US felt that war was inevitible and that Europe and China desperately needed America's aid. I also do not doubt that had Sir Arthur Conan Doyle been working for American intelligence at that time (or in the months prior to 9/11) he might have been able to set racial prejudice aside and "see the forest for the trees" enough to piece together what was about to happen. I do not believe, however, that anyone was responsible for the attack on Pearl Harbor, or the surprise that was accomplished there, except the men who carried out the attack-the Japanese.

With that, I most humbly surrender the soapbox.

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