Misremembering Pearl Harbor

Just because you know nothing about the event other than what the government told you in fourth grade, doesn’t make it lunacy.

Ststists are a dumb lot.

Keep trying to appear sane for your peer group; we wouldn't want you to be a lonely nutjob.
 
In this week's conversation with The International Forecaster, Bob Chapman reflects on the upcoming 70th anniversary of Pearl Harbor and discusses what that incident tells us about the world we are living in today. We also discuss the future of Europe, and the Ron Paul campaign.



Declassified Memo Hinted of 1941 Hawaii Attack​

Blockbuster book also reveals FDR scuttled war announcement against axis powers.
Yes, just ignore the other thousands of messages that didn't indicate any such thing and Wa La, some nutjoobs can twist maybe 8 of them into a Big Giant Conspiracy N Stuff 60 years after the fact.
 
If you want to read a short but eye-opening book about Pearl Harbor, read General Henry Dozier Russell's book Pearl Harbor Story (Mercer University Press, 2001). General Russell was one of the members of the Army Pearl Harbor Board (APHB). He wrote the book in 1946, but it was not published until after he died, after the manuscript was discovered and submitted to Mercer University Press with the permission of Russell's surviving family members.

General Russell provided an inside, up-close look at the shameful machinations of FDR and his War Department cronies to scapegoat General Short and Admiral Kimmel, to suppress the APHB's evidence and findings, and to protect General Marshall from facing the condemnation that he so richly deserved for his lies and actions that directly contributed to the Pearl Harbor disaster.
 
If you want to read a short but eye-opening book about Pearl Harbor, read General Henry Dozier Russell's book Pearl Harbor Story (Mercer University Press, 2001). General Russell was one of the members of the Army Pearl Harbor Board (APHB). He wrote the book in 1946, but it was not published until after he died, after the manuscript was discovered and submitted to Mercer University Press with the permission of Russell's surviving family members.

General Russell provided an inside, up-close look at the shameful machinations of FDR and his War Department cronies to scapegoat General Short and Admiral Kimmel, to suppress the APHB's evidence and findings, and to protect General Marshall from facing the condemnation that he so richly deserved for his lies and actions that directly contributed to the Pearl Harbor disaster.
Thanks. I’ll check it out.

You do know of course, dummies like DudleyDud and those like him refuse to learn. They think what they learned in third grade government school is the truth. They think learning is wrong. The state knows best.
 
Thanks. I’ll check it out.

You do know of course, dummies like DudleyDud and those like him refuse to learn. They think what they learned in third grade government school is the truth. They think learning is wrong. The state knows best.

Dribbling again. Call your nurse.
 
Thanks. I’ll check it out.

You do know of course, dummies like DudleyDud and those like him refuse to learn. They think what they learned in third grade government school is the truth. They think learning is wrong. The state knows best.

Interestingly, General Russell notes that the APHB's chairman, General Grunert, began the investigation with a strong bias against General Short because he accepted the Roosevelt administration's claim that Short had been derelict in his duty. But, as the investigation proceeded and clear evidence of foul play in Washington emerged, Grunert changed his mind.
 
Another valuable piece of information from General Russell's book is Russell's observations about what a lying snake Henry Clausen was. Clausen later wrote the book that has become the bible of traditionalists, Pearl Harbor: Final Judgment. In his book, Clausen, among other things, denies that FDR saw the 24 September bomb-plot message (the JCC established that he saw it) and denies the very existence of the "East Wind Rain" execute message (even though three senior officers confirmed they saw it, and even though Costello and Pineau discovered message no. 7001, which is identified in the message annotation as having been the Winds execute message).
 
I remember a history teacher telling us a story of WWII where an island nation with an overseas empire launched a surprise attack on the docked ships of a former ally to destroy their navy. More than a thousand defenseless sailors were killed as their ships were sunk while still in dock. The island nation did this because they feared what would happen to them, as an island, if they couldn’t control the sea lanes that provided vital resources and protected their empire.

After telling us this story, our teacher asked us which island nation and which surprise attack he was talking about. Naturally we all said he had described Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor.

But he had described the attack at Mers-el-Kébir. In 1940, the British sunk the entire French Mediterranean Fleet, while the ships were in dock with sailors still in them. France was in the process of signing a surrender to Nazi Germany and the British were afraid of the French Fleet (third largest in the world) falling into German hands. 1300 French sailors were killed and it was one of the greatest betrayals in military history.

The point was that it’s the victors who write history. Even the worst crimes can be ignored or glossed over, depending on who’s doing the writing and how you choose to describe something.
While Mers el Kabir was not one of the UK's shining hours, you are explaining it wrong. It wasn't a surprise attack, the French admiral was given the choices of coming over and fighting with the RN or having his fleet interned by a neutral country. He refused both choices and choose to fight instead.
 
The decoding of Japanese diplomatic messages "Magic" gave the U.S. a unique opportunity to predict Japanese planning before the Pearl Harbor attack. Evidence indicates that COS Marshall, who was one of the few who had access to Magic, had the final message that indicated an imminent Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor hours before it happened but he failed to warn Pearl Harbor until it was too late. The old battle ships were conveniently lined up at the dock but for some reason the more valuable carriers were out at sea and conveniently not in the way of the Japanese invasion force. A modern conspiracy theory would be that FDR and the fools thought that the Japanese might put a dent in the U.S. fleet but the prevailing thought was that they would be pushovers in the long run.
There was no information about an attack on Pearl Harbor. There were strong implications about an attack somewhere. Everybody thought that meant the Philippines. Hawaii was far out of range of the IJN, they had to draft every modern civilian tanker in their merchant marine to make the strike possible.
 
There was no information about an attack on Pearl Harbor. There were strong implications about an attack somewhere. Everybody thought that meant the Philippines. Hawaii was far out of range of the IJN, they had to draft every modern civilian tanker in their merchant marine to make the strike possible.

Exactly. Not only that, but Magic was not quite what people often think it is.

Japan did not use just one code, but at least five different codes. The one that gave the US the most trouble was PURPLE, which used a machine similar to ENIGMA to generate messages. It used another code system called BLUE to cypher messages, which was then run through the machines to give PURPLE messages. Essentially coding the message a second time. But these were not reliably decoded until mid-1942, and this was the code that the Japanese Navy used.

The Japanese Foreign Office however was not given PURPLE machines. They were still sending their messages using BLUE. This was a code Japan started using in 1930, and the US had broken in 1932. The US had been decoding so many messages that with BLUE they could actually decrypt them faster than the Embassies could.

In the months leading to the attack, they saw an increase in messages with BLUE, and the pattern indicated that an attack was coming. However, as there was absolutely no need for the Embassies to know when or where the attack was coming, they were never told. For months those foreign locations were doing things like reducing the number of staff, sending personnel home, and things like that. Years later Congress ordered an investigation into if Pearl Harbor was in any of the messages ever sent prior to the war breaking out.

And in a testament to Japanese OPSEC, not a single message (decoded or not) was ever found to have been sent about when an attack was going to happen, or where on 7 December. The closest thing ever found that Japan had transmitted is the infamous "14 Part Message", that was sent early in the morning on 7 December.


In fact, Secretary of State Cordell Hull and President Roosevelt both read transcripts of the message even before it was presented to them. The Navy had decrypted it even before the Embassy had. But nowhere in it did it say where the attack was going to happen. Only that the nations were at war.

What happened in MAGIC was a combination of building even more sophisticated decryption machines than even the Japanese had, as well as bringing in a huge number of translators that could read them. But under instructions hand delivered, all attack orders were hand delivered by courier to the respective invasion fleets (there were three main invasions), and not a single message was ever broadcast. The only messages ever sent was a final one that was not to be acknowledged from Japan telling them to proceed, and then a return message back to Japan once the attacks had started with the initial prognosis of the success of the attacks.

The command to continue the attack from Japan was "Climb Mount Nitaka", and this was sent from Japan to the fleets, and signaled they were to commence "Operation Z", their own code name for the attacks on 7 December. The attacks themselves also went out under radio silence. Never broken until the attack itself commenced, with the repeating of a single word repeated three times.

For an attack starting upon an unsuspecting and unprepared enemy, this was the Japanese word for "Tiger". Hence, the connection of "Tora, Tora, Tora" among historians. This was the message sent from the attacking airplanes to the fleet as the attack started. This was then repeated back to Japan after the attacks were concluded and the fleet was returning home..

It has been confirmed that the "Climb Mount Nitaka" message was received prior to the attack. However, it was so brief that it was ignored until afterwards. And even if it had been decoded in real time, without any context it literally would have meant nothing to the cryptographers. Simply one of many messages that all militaries would use on occasion, simply to ensure that the code systems were functioning properly. It would be like if the US was following similar protocols, and the Germans had broken our codes. And the only thing sent prior to 6 June was a message never acknowledged from Washington that said "Lewis and Clark". It would be completely nonsensical to anybody with that, as it was only the command to do the attack, without any connection to the attack itself.

Because there was not just one attack on 7 December (8 December in Japan), but three. The raid on Pearl Harbor, the Invasion of the Philippines, and the Invasion of British Malaysia. And not a single message relating to any of those three attacks was ever broadcast over the radio. All instructions and orders were hand delivered only.

And the true capability of MAGIC was only fully realized many months later, when through decodes shoed an attack was about to happen on an island they called "AF". But the US had no way of knowing what AF actually was. So a variation of the "Canary Trap" was used, where messages were sent relating to false emergencies at each of the various outposts, each one with a different issue that needed to be addressed immediately. The only one that mattered though was the message requesting emergency water purification at one outpost as their system had broken down.

Hence, to any student of the Battle of Midway, "AF is short of water" is of critical importance. Less than a day after the message was sent by the US Navy, the IJN was telling it's invasion commanders to bring extra water processing equipment as the equipment on their target were not working.
 
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Obviously, the attack on the French Navy after the capitulation of France to Germany was a strategic move. Britain and Germany were at war at the time.
Japan was not at war with America until they began dropping bombs on the Pearl Habor fleet anchored in the Bay.
Funny thing is that Billy Mitchell predicted the coming war against Japan in 1924. "He predicted war between Japan and the US, and a Japanese strike on Pearl Harbor and Clark Field in the Philippines".
Mers Al Kebir was a bad thing. But the British gave the French two alternate choices to being attacked. One was to join with the Royal Navy in fighting Hitler and Mussolini, and the other was to sail to a neutral country, or one of the French Caribbean Islands, to be disarmed and interned for the duration of the war. The French refused both options so the British destroyed their fleet to prevent the Germans seizing it and turning it against England.
 

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