7 Dec. 1941

[BlackAsCoal]

We had not cracked the Japanese code prior to Pear Harbor. We had it cracked prior to Midway and sent a red herring message regarding water shortage on Midway to get the exact location of The Japanese Navy's next strike. They took the bait.

There is no REAL evidence to support "we knew." As has already been pointed out by more than just me, the U S expected that if an attack came it would come in the Phillipines or Guam.

As I also have mentioned, it wouldn't have mattered much if we HAD known. The USAAF's aircraft were obsolete and no match for the Japanese Zero, and it would have been sending young, inexperienced flyers to be butchered by pilots who had been flying combat missions for almost a decade.

Another good point made by RGS is that at the time, the battleship was THE premier weapon of the US Navy. NO ONE in Roosevelt's position is going to take even a calculated by stupid risk of losing his Pacific fleet in the process of rednecking a fight.

And yes, our economic sanctions on Japan WERE asking for a war. Still, I place the blame on blind US arrogance rather than any subterfuge. IMO, it was unthinkable in the minds of most that pesky-ass little Japan would actually have the 'nads to attack "us" (We, the people and all that).

What better source could there be than the words of Churchill himself ...

Churchill wrote in his Nobel Prize winning series on WWII that FDR knew about the Japanese plans to attack Pearl Harbor.

FDR "knew the full and immediate purpose" of the Japanese at Pearl Harbor.

These are the words of Winston Churchill who said this in his six volume account "The Second World War" .. which, by the way, he won the Nobel Prize for Literature for.

Do you seriously believe a man like Churchill would invent or not conclusively know the truth of such statements before he spoke them?

Additionally, even if I took what you say on face value, it makes absolutely no sense. It is exactly that kind of logic that sent me searching for the real truth.

By your own account .. we goaded the Japanese into a fight and we knew an attack was imminent .. yet, when not one, two, or even three .. but FIVE Japanese minisubs were sunk and ran aground in and around Pearl Harbor Bay, we said what? Big deal? .. Not even send out recon to determine where these boats were coming from?

That makes no sense at all. That wouldn't be arrogance .. that would be Keystone Kop buffoonery if it is to be believed.

Additionally, to suggest that there was nothing we could have done about it even if we knew also makes no sense. The FIRST thing we could have done is warn people to get the hell out of the way. How difficult is that?

And, Pearl was not just some dry dock port .. it was heavily defended and all its pilots didn't have pimples.

Your argument is with Winston Churchill sir, not me.

I recognize and respect your service to this country, as I respect that of RGS .. but America has a long ass list of deceptions of war. The deceptions of Iraq were easy to pull off because Americans don't like uncomfortable truth .. don't like the truth that like Hitler and his Reichstag Fire, we engage in the very same deceptions of war.

60,000 dead brave US soldiers in Vietnam and over 300,000 wounded .. dead and wounded for a deception .. THAT DIDN'T WORK.

Tens of thousands of US soldiers dead and wounded in Iraq .. dead and wounded for a deception .. THAT DIDN'T WORK.

The difference with the deception of Pearl Harbor is that it did work, but it was a deception no less.

 

[Luissa]

what do you have planned for this sunday? church, football...family...just doing nothing....yard work or shoveling snow..take a minute for many this will be the annivesary of the most hellish day anyone living thru it could remember.

I will be celebrating my Gandmother's birthday she will be 82 today, I think she was fifteen when the bombing happened. She said she had gone to a movie that day with friends and they stopped the movie due the bombings.

 

[RetiredGySgt]

That's not completely true.

The Depression did indeed play a role in FDR's decision to let Pearl Harbor happen .. but more importantly, England was on the verge of defeat by Hitler .. and Churchill warned FDR that if England fell, the US would be standing all alone whenever we ultimately entered the war.

I have a clearer picture of why FDR allowed it to happen .. and that truth can be found in examining the relationship between Churchill and FDR before December 7, 1941.

Your ignorance astounds me. But then nutters always do.

 

[editec]

We had already cracked the Japanese code and knew exactly where they were going to attack.

Yes, I am informed that we cracked a Japanese diplomatic code, and therefore we knew that a war was coming, but not the time and place of the attack

We knew my brother .. and we allowed it to happen.

No one should be surprised that we would allow innocent people to die for the business of war. We have an entire history of it.

Stop and think about the charge you are making for a second.

You are suggesting that FDR knew a war was coming../

agreed

You are suggesting that FDR knew it would be on Pearl Harbor

Doubtful, unproven as far as I know.

You are suggesting that FDR allowed the attack to happen and did not warn Pearl about the war

False. All pacific forces were put on alert

You are suggesting that FDR wanted the war (true) and needed to ALLOW the Japanese to sink most of the pacific fleet?

Why?

All FDR needed was an attack, not a disaster.

ANY attack would have constituted an act of war.

FDR would not NEED to let Japan sink most of our Pacific Fleet to get his war.

The motive you ascribe to FDR allowing this disasterous attack on our forces makes like zero (pun intented) sense.

 

[BlackAsCoal]

Yes, I am informed that we cracked a Japanese diplomatic code, and therefore we knew that a war was coming, but not the time and place of the attack




Stop and think about the charge you are making for a second.

You are suggesting that FDR knew a war was coming../

agreed

You are suggesting that FDR knew it would be on Pearl Harbor

Doubtful, unproven as far as I know.

You are suggesting that FDR allowed the attack to happen and did not warn Pearl about the war

False. All pacific forces were put on alert

You are suggesting that FDR wanted the war (true) and needed to ALLOW the Japanese to sink most of the pacific fleet?

Why?

All FDR needed was an attack, not a disaster.

ANY attack would have constituted an act of war.

FDR would not NEED to let Japan sink most of our Pacific Fleet to get his war.

The motive you ascribe to FDR allowing this disasterous attack on our forces makes like zero (pun intented) sense.

Your argument my friend is with Winston Churchill and history, not me.

 

[Navy1960]

US signals intelligence in 1941 was both impressively advanced and uneven. In the past, the US MI-8 cryptographic operation in New York City had been shut down by Henry Stimson (Hoover's newly appointed Secretary of State), citing "ethical considerations", which inspired its now broke former director, Herbert Yardley, to write a book, The American Black Chamber, about its successes in breaking other nations' crypto traffic. Most countries responded promptly by changing (and generally improving) their ciphers and codes, forcing other nations to start over in reading their signals. The Japanese were no exception.

Pearl Harbor advance-knowledge debate - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The JN-25 superencrypted code is one of the most debated portions of Pearl Harbor lore. JN-25 is the US Navy's final term for the cryptosystem the Imperial Japanese Navy sometimes referred to as Naval Code D. Other names used for it include five-numeral, 5Num, five-digit, five-figure, AN (JN-25 Able), and AN-1 (JN-25 Baker), and so on.[9] It was an example of the then state of the art in crypto systems and was quite different than modern forms of message encryption in being a code (i.e., battleship = 63982) and further being superenciphered with an additive cypher, taken from a large book. So, for example, 63982 + 12345 = 75227 (using modulo arithmetic, non-carrying addition and non-borrowing subtraction, also called Fibonacci or "Chinese" addition), giving the actually transmitted group (75227); on receipt the additive was subtracted (75227 - 12345 = 63982 (modulo arithmetic again)) and the code group looked up in the current JN-25 code book. The worth of the additive step is that the next time anyone mentioned 'battleship', a different additive would be used. It was based upon the Japanese syllabary (kana), due to the difficulties in using kanji in telegraphy and the fact that electric teletype printers were more or less easily converted (e.g., more characters in the syllabary) to kana from the Roman alphabet.


By late 1941, those organizations had broken several Japanese ciphers, such as J19 and PA-K2, called Tsu and Oite respectively by the Japanese.[3] 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 D code (called JN-25 by the U.S.)

Ten days before the Attack on Pearl Harbor", Henry L. Stimson, United States Secretary of War at the time "entered in his diary the famous and much-argued statement - that he had met with President Roosevelt to discuss the evidence of impending hostilities with Japan, and the question was 'how we should maneuver them [the Japanese] into the position of firing the first shot without allowing too much danger to ourselves.'"Nevertheless, U.S. cryptanalytic work continued after Stimson's action in two separate efforts: the Army's Signal Intelligence Service (SIS) and the Navy's Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) crypto group, OP-20-G. Cryptanalytic work was kept secret to such an extent, however, commands such as the 14th Naval District at Pearl Harbor were prohibited from working on codebreaking by Admiral Kelly Turner as a consequence of the bureaucratic infighting in Washington.

On the surface it appears that the Roosevelt Administration wished to enter into conflict with Japan as a means to support Great Britian and win public support for a War in Europe which was tepid at best by putting Japan into corner in which they had no choice but to strike out. However, when one looks at the the historical facts a little deeper the Roosevelt was only being prudent in regards to Japan, as by that time they had conquered much of East Asia and were on the march in the Pacific and were becomming a threat to US interests and citizens. So it is only prudent tactics to expect that this aggressor would set it's eye's upon territories that the United States protected like the Philippines and Hawaii and the rest of the Western Pacific. Another fact that is often over looked here is that US interests in the Atlantic were being threatened by German U-Boats prior to the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

On September 4, 1941, The USS Greer was the first United States ship fired upon by a German submarine in the war, even though the United States is a neutral power.

On October 31, 1941 The destroyer USS Reuben James was torpedoed by a German U-boat near Iceland, killing more than 100 United States Navy sailors.

So was it prudent of the US to take an agressive stance towards Japan and Germany two countries that had signed a pact.

The Tripartite Pact, also called the Three-Power Pact, Axis Pact, Three-way Pact or Tripartite Treaty was a pact signed in Berlin, Germany on September 27, 1940 by Saburo Kurusu of Japan, Adolf Hitler of Germany, and Galeazzo Ciano (foreign minister) of Italy entering as a military alliance and officially founding the Axis Powers of World War II that opposed the Allied Powers.

Tripartite Pact - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

You bet it was prudent of the Roosevelt Adminstration to be prepared for war , so what failed here? As can be seen in the 10 different congressional investigations on Pearl Harbor the most recent ending in 1995 was a lack of coordination between the intelligence community , manpower to interpret break code, and a failure to properly distribute that information uniformly. While many will blame Gen. Short and Adm. Kimmel still to this day they were acting upon the data they received and were just swept aside IMHO. So in conclusion to blame Roosevelt for Pearl Harbor as a means to end the Great Depression when events leading up to WW2 had been going on for years is simply without merit.

 

[Orange_Juice]

Of course FDR needed the war to get us out, his new deal bullshit policies only put this country more in the hole.

Regardless, it is a day that will live in infamy, and a day that should be honored and remembered

No, the New Deal saved the country. It may not have ended the Depression, but that was only because Conservatives founght to keep it small. The war, with its massive spending--the only thing Conservatives will spend money on--turned things around.

The lasting effect of the New Deal is extremely positive, the TVA, the SEC, FDIC, PWA and many more programs.

 

[Gunny]

What better source could there be than the words of Churchill himself ...

Churchill wrote in his Nobel Prize winning series on WWII that FDR knew about the Japanese plans to attack Pearl Harbor.

FDR "knew the full and immediate purpose" of the Japanese at Pearl Harbor.

These are the words of Winston Churchill who said this in his six volume account "The Second World War" .. which, by the way, he won the Nobel Prize for Literature for.

Do you seriously believe a man like Churchill would invent or not conclusively know the truth of such statements before he spoke them?

Additionally, even if I took what you say on face value, it makes absolutely no sense. It is exactly that kind of logic that sent me searching for the real truth.

By your own account .. we goaded the Japanese into a fight and we knew an attack was imminent .. yet, when not one, two, or even three .. but FIVE Japanese minisubs were sunk and ran aground in and around Pearl Harbor Bay, we said what? Big deal? .. Not even send out recon to determine where these boats were coming from?

That makes no sense at all. That wouldn't be arrogance .. that would be Keystone Kop buffoonery if it is to be believed.

Additionally, to suggest that there was nothing we could have done about it even if we knew also makes no sense. The FIRST thing we could have done is warn people to get the hell out of the way. How difficult is that?

And, Pearl was not just some dry dock port .. it was heavily defended and all its pilots didn't have pimples.

Your argument is with Winston Churchill sir, not me.

I recognize and respect your service to this country, as I respect that of RGS .. but America has a long ass list of deceptions of war. The deceptions of Iraq were easy to pull off because Americans don't like uncomfortable truth .. don't like the truth that like Hitler and his Reichstag Fire, we engage in the very same deceptions of war.

60,000 dead brave US soldiers in Vietnam and over 300,000 wounded .. dead and wounded for a deception .. THAT DIDN'T WORK.

Tens of thousands of US soldiers dead and wounded in Iraq .. dead and wounded for a deception .. THAT DIDN'T WORK.

The difference with the deception of Pearl Harbor is that it did work, but it was a deception no less.

Seems to me Chruchill was fond of saying things happened after the fact, and after Roosevelt was dead and buried. His word is not unimpeachable. HE (the UK) needed us in the war.

There is also the fact that following Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt asked for and got a declaration of war against Japan. The US did not declare war on Germany until Hitler declared war on the US.

The fact that our actions antagonized Japan did not force Japan to declare war on the US. It was STILL there decision. Even so, you keep ignoring the fact that any expected attack was predicted to happen in the Far East, not Hawaii.

You are too willing to believe the US guilty of deception whenever the accusation is made; yet, you have no evidence other than the words of one man who had an agenda. You'll accept THAT with eyes wide open because it suits YOUR agenda where villifying the US government is concerned.

I'm sure I don't see what deception you are referring to about Vietnam. We supported South Vietnam against communist aggression and the only REAL failure was at home on the political front carried out by people like you.

And folks like you STILL have yet to prove your accusations about Iraq, and if you want to talk about deceptions ... the tailored arguments from the left on that regard would make Aesop proud.

There are few people more cynical of our government than I am. I just don't cross the line into the conspiracy theory zone and accept the disjointed implausible rather than the obvious.

 

[Gunny]

Your argument my friend is with Winston Churchill and history, not me.

That's twice you have deflected to a dead man. You are making his argument for him, and using an uncorroborated statement he made to sell a book as your sole means of definitive proof.

No weaseling, dude. Man up or back down.

Editec's explanation that you responded to with this statement is FAR more plausible than your conspiracy theory.

 

[Gunny]

No, the New Deal saved the country. It may not have ended the Depression, but that was only because Conservatives founght to keep it small. The war, with its massive spending--the only thing Conservatives will spend money on--turned things around.

The lasting effect of the New Deal is extremely positive, the TVA, the SEC, FDIC, PWA and many more programs.

Not even a good try. Conservatives at the time were isolationists. Until Reagan, Democrats got us into every war we fought in the 20th century.

Save your revisionist, partisan hackery for another thread, huh?

 

[editec]

Your argument my friend is with Winston Churchill and history, not me.

Winston isn't here to defend his argument...you are.

Please this argument is entirely based on the question of motive.

I believe I have more than sunk your motive battleship, BAC.

ANY attack on a military installation or American soil was good enough to get the USA into that war.

A crushing defeat was surely NOT necessary.

You argument therefore flies in the face of logic.

It is illogical to ALLOW Pearl harbor and much of the Pacific fleet to be destroyed when FDR would have had the SAME outcome even if Pearl Harbor's attack had been repelled.

 

[Orange_Juice]

Perhaps one of the ironies of history is that the attack on Pearl Harbor, and resultant decimation of our Battleships probably saved us from some serious errors later. For, as you state, most still regarded Battleships as the mainstay of naval superiority. The airplane had rendered the real role of battleships to that of mobile artillery for the support of amphibous landings.

I think what happened on Dec 8th did more to convince people the battleship was obsolete. Prince of Wales and Repulse were sunk by torpedo bombers flown from Indo-China.

 

[Gunny]

I think what happened on Dec 8th did more to convince people the battleship was obsolete. Prince of Wales and Repulse were sunk by torpedo bombers flown from Indo-China.

It may have swayed some. Billy Mitchell sank a battleship in the 20s and the military remained unconvinced. The hardline, ship of the line battleship people were convinced the only way they could have been. Their battleships were taken away from them and they HAD TO make do with what they had.

We have since gone 180 degree extreme the other way. NO ship projects American naval power and presence like a battleship and they are THE most cost effective artillery platform we could ever hope yet. It's pennies to dollars to use them instead of multi-million dollar aircraft.

Yet we've retired or mothballed every one.

 

[Luissa]

what do you have planned for this sunday? church, football...family...just doing nothing....yard work or shoveling snow..take a minute for many this will be the annivesary of the most hellish day anyone living thru it could remember.

I know some are arguing right now about what happened over there on this thread today. One thing some could do today is go visit a WWII vet especially one who is in a facility for alzheimer and demensia because some are forgotten by their family and spend much time reliving the War in their head. If you cannot do that and have a little extra money donate it to the care for people suffering from dementia.
Some of my best times at my last job was sitting and just talking with these men, yes they might not be able to talk well or even at all but they still need human contact!

 

[BlackAsCoal]

Seems to me Chruchill was fond of saying things happened after the fact, and after Roosevelt was dead and buried. His word is not unimpeachable. HE (the UK) needed us in the war.

There is also the fact that following Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt asked for and got a declaration of war against Japan. The US did not declare war on Germany until Hitler declared war on the US.

The fact that our actions antagonized Japan did not force Japan to declare war on the US. It was STILL there decision. Even so, you keep ignoring the fact that any expected attack was predicted to happen in the Far East, not Hawaii.

You are too willing to believe the US guilty of deception whenever the accusation is made; yet, you have no evidence other than the words of one man who had an agenda. You'll accept THAT with eyes wide open because it suits YOUR agenda where villifying the US government is concerned.

I'm sure I don't see what deception you are referring to about Vietnam. We supported South Vietnam against communist aggression and the only REAL failure was at home on the political front carried out by people like you.

And folks like you STILL have yet to prove your accusations about Iraq, and if you want to talk about deceptions ... the tailored arguments from the left on that regard would make Aesop proud.

There are few people more cynical of our government than I am. I just don't cross the line into the conspiracy theory zone and accept the disjointed implausible rather than the obvious.

The fact that you don't see the deception that was Vietnam flat amazes me and illustrates why you don't see the deception of Pearl Harbor.

 

[Gunny]

The fact that you don't see the deception that was Vietnam flat amazes me and illustrates why you don't see the deception of Pearl Harbor.

Surely you can do better than some lame, deflective dismissal? Tell me, oh scholarly one .... what EXACTLY is the deception you are calling Vietnam?

The fact that you see deception at every turn just illustrates your willingness to buy off on conspiracy theories. It amazes me someone with your intellect is so easily deceived.

 

[BlackAsCoal]

Winston isn't here to defend his argument...you are.

Please this argument is entirely based on the question of motive.

I believe I have more than sunk your motive battleship, BAC.

ANY attack on a military installation or American soil was good enough to get the USA into that war.

A crushing defeat was surely NOT necessary.

You argument therefore flies in the face of logic.

It is illogical to ALLOW Pearl harbor and much of the Pacific fleet to be destroyed when FDR would have had the SAME outcome even if Pearl Harbor's attack had been repelled.

Churchill's words are still alive today .. words much closer to the event, much closer to the truth.

There is no mystery why no one wants to challenge what he said.

Could you possibly believe that Churchill would make such statements .. essentially accusing the American President of treason, without full knowledge of the facts? This would have caused a reverberation in US/ British relations that would still be reverberating to this day. Additionally, Churchill is the only one who said it .. he's just the most central to the facts.

Your argument is FDR goaded the Japanese .. knew an attack was going to happen .. but somehow and for whatever reason, did nothing when the Japanese fleet showed up at our door.

That is completely illogical .. but I respect your right to believe it.

There had been attacks on US vessels prior to December 7th, but the country still remained solidly non-interventionist. What was needed was a catostrophic event to turn the mood towards war.

 

[BlackAsCoal]

Surely you can do better than some lame, deflective dismissal? Tell me, oh scholarly one .... what EXACTLY is the deception you are calling Vietnam?

The fact that you see deception at every turn just illustrates your willingness to buy off on conspiracy theories. It amazes me someone with your intellect is so easily deceived.

So the Gulf of Tonkin Incident was a real event?

That wasn't a deception that led America into greater involvement in Vietnam?

I'm crazy for knowing this truth .. or is it more curious that you do not?

 

[BlackAsCoal]

That's twice you have deflected to a dead man. You are making his argument for him, and using an uncorroborated statement he made to sell a book as your sole means of definitive proof.

No weaseling, dude. Man up or back down.

Editec's explanation that you responded to with this statement is FAR more plausible than your conspiracy theory.

To "man up" my brother is to speak the truth regardless of it's unpopularity, not buying into what one has been told to believe.

Churchill is not my "sole means" of proff .. but I do believe it is quite definitive. I respect your right to believe otherwise.

And, as I've said to Editec, there had been prior attacks on US vessels, what was needed was a catostrophic event which Pearl Harbor most certainly was .. and one that changed the mood of the country overnight.

I find the argument that FDR knew an attack was imminent but paid little attention to all the obvious warnings before the attack on Pearl began to be totally and completely illogical.

 

[Gunny]

So the Gulf of Tonkin Incident was a real event?

That wasn't a deception that led America into greater involvement in Vietnam?

I'm crazy for knowing this truth .. or is it more curious that you do not?

I see. So the Gulf of Tonkin incident equates to the entire war? Never mind the fact we were already involved in Vietnam up to our ears?

Yes the Gulf of Tonkin incident was a real incident. Ever read the radio reports? My guess would be no, just as I would guess by your opinion that you have never been under fire, nor thought you were under fire.

Be that as it may, equating the Gulf of Tonkin Incident with the entire war; which, was already going on is lame. It was the pretext Johnson used to introduce ground combat units into South Vietnam. If not that, there would have been another. But the fact remains, the war was already going on and US servicemen were already fighting in it.