Treason At Pearl Harbor.

[mikegriffith1]

1) The USA also had trade & diplomatic relations with Nazi Germany during the 1930s. With regard to both Japan and Germany the trade started to fizzle out by late 1930s.

Japan bore little resemblance to Nazi Germany. Trade with Japan was still robust until FDR started trying to provoke Japan with sanctions and propaganda.

In Japan's case, the brutality of their attacks against China (Nationalist)* caused increasing displeasure in the USA, Especially after the 1937 'Rape of Nanking' episode.

You didn't read any of the sources I recommended, did you? No, you didn't. You just got on here and repeated the traditional version of events.

How about the brutality of China's attacks on Japanese forces and on each other? How about those actions? FDR didn't care one whiff about Chinese brutality and atrocities, just as he didn't care about Soviet brutality and atrocities.

And why were the Japanese even attacking Nanking, huh? Do you know? Which side shunned negotiations and attacked the other before that? Do you know. Here's a hint: the first letter of the side that started the fighting that led to the assault on Nanking starts with a capital "C."

I'm not going to bother with the rest of your recitation of the traditional pro-FDR/anti-Japanese talking points.

You should read Appendix C in my book The Real Infamy of Pearl Harbor (not Appendix B, as I mistakenly said earlier). It's 60 pages long and is titled "Getting Some Facts Straight About Imperial Japan."

 

[RetiredGySgt]

Japan bore little resemblance to Nazi Germany. Trade with Japan was still robust until FDR started trying to provoke Japan with sanctions and propaganda.



You didn't read any of the sources I recommended, did you? No, you didn't. You just got on here and repeated the traditional version of events.

How about the brutality of China's attacks on Japanese forces and on each other? How about those actions? FDR didn't care one whiff about Chinese brutality and atrocities, just as he didn't care about Soviet brutality and atrocities.

And why were the Japanese even attacking Nanking, huh? Do you know? Which side shunned negotiations and attacked the other before that? Do you know. Here's a hint: the first letter of the side that started the fighting that led to the assault on Nanking starts with a capital "C."

I'm not going to bother with the rest of your recitation of the traditional pro-FDR/anti-Japanese talking points.

You should read Appendix C in my book The Real Infamy of Pearl Harbor (not Appendix B, as I mistakenly said earlier). It's 60 pages long and is titled "Getting Some Facts Straight About Imperial Japan."

defending Germany and Japan in ww2 is so enlightened of you. Crackpot.

 

[mikegriffith1]

Several actions by FDR, General George Marshall, Admiral Harold Stark (CNO), Secretary of State Cordell Hull are obvious giveaways that they knew Pearl Harbor would be attacked and that they did not want Admiral Kimmel and General Short in Hawaii to know about the attack. A few examples:

-- Incredibly, FDR, Marshall, and Stark withheld the bomb plot messages from Kimmel and Short. If Kimmel and Short had seen those messages, they would have easily recognized that Pearl Harbor was being targeted for an air attack. MacArthur’s intel officers were getting the messages and readily recognized they indicated preparation for an air attack, and they assumed, naturally enough, that Kimmel and Short were also getting the messages.

Not only did Kimmel and Short not receive the bomb plot messages, they were not even told of their existence. The key turning point in the Navy Court of Inquiry (NCI) in 1944 came when Kimmel became aware of the messages (thanks to Lt. Cmdr. Lawrence Safford). The NCI members were stunned that Kimmel had not been given a single one of the messages.

By the way, FDR, Marshall, and Stark fought tooth and nail to keep the bomb plot messages from being released to the NCI, but they had to back down when the NCI demanded to see them.

-- On the morning of December 7, after the 14-part Japanese cable and its instruction messages had been decoded, everyone who read them knew they meant war. No one denies this. Yet, FDR did not use any of the options he had to immediately contact Kimmel, nor did Marshall, nor did Stark. They all had the means (two radio phone systems) to contact Kimmel and Short within 15-20 minutes.

Instead, Marshall sent a vague message in the form of a routine telegram. He could have at least sent a priority telegram and flagged it as urgent to expedite its transmission, but he chose to send it as a regular telegram with no importance indicator. No FDR apologist has yet offered a rational, credible explanation for Marshall’s astonishing failure to use his scrambler phone to contact the commanders in Hawaii, and his failure to at least send his telegram as a priority telegram marked as urgent.

-- In 1963, Congressman Martin Dies, chairman of the House Un-American Activities Committee during the Roosevelt era, revealed in his memoir that before the Pearl Harbor attack, his committee, in the course of investigating Japanese espionage, obtained a Japanese military map that clearly indicated a plan to attack Pearl Harbor. Dies, who was a Democrat, contacted Secretary of State Cordell Hull and told him about the map. Hull asked him to please keep quiet about it due to the "extremely delicate" diplomatic situation and to let President Roosevelt handle it. Dies also reported that representatives from the Army, the Navy, and the State Department examined the map. Dies expressed his frustration that this information was not acted upon:

I have never been able to understand why our government did not take the necessary precautions to protect our fleet from destruction after our committee had furnished such precise information on the proposed attack. (Martin Dies Story, p. 165)

Dies' account received corroboration in 1983 when retired journalist and former New Deal official Joseph Leib disclosed that seven days before the attack, Secretary of State Hull, who was a good friend of his, told him that FDR and certain other senior officials knew from intercepted Japanese messages that Japan was going to attack Pearl Harbor, and that FDR was going to allow the attack in order to get America into the war. Leib added that Hull also noted that FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover was fully aware of this information, as fact that Col. Carlton Ketchum confirmed.

Many more examples could be cited. I discuss the bomb plot messages and Marshall’s failure to warn Kimmel and Short in a timely manner on December 7 in Six Myths of the Traditional Pearl Harbor Story.

 

[AZrailwhale]

Japan was not our friend in the 30's you dumb ass. And we objected to their war in China. The Soviets were not our friend either but without them we never would have taken Europe back.

We still could have recaptured Europe. It would just have taken longer and cost more. All the supplies and money we gave the Soviets could have equipped another hundred divisions and a whole additional Air Force equal to the one we deployed. Once we had aerial supremacy it was all over for Germany.

 

[meaner gene]

We still could have recaptured Europe. It would just have taken longer and cost more. All the supplies and money we gave the Soviets could have equipped another hundred divisions and a whole additional Air Force equal to the one we deployed. Once we had aerial supremacy it was all over for Germany.

What you forget is that without the Soviets to pull the German forces east, they would have instead gone west, and that meant finishing the battle of Britain. Which would have eliminated the base from which we could launch an attack against the Atlantic wall, and fortress Europe.

It wouldn't have been a matter of taking longer. It would have become impossible

 

[AZrailwhale]

What you forget is that without the Soviets to pull the German forces east, they would have instead gone west, and that meant finishing the battle of Britain. Which would have eliminated the base from which we could launch an attack against the Atlantic wall, and fortress Europe.

It wouldn't have been a matter of taking longer. It would have become impossible

The Germans had zero chance of invading England. They didn’t have a Navy, the RAF Fighter Command actually out numbered the Luftwaffe’s fighters. In 1941 the UK was outproducing the German aircraft industry by a large factor. By 1941 the British Army had been re-equipped and would have slaughtered the invaders. The Germans had never even experimented with an across-the-beach invasion and envisioned it as a river crossing writ large. The Luftwaffe’s best chance of defeating Fighter Command was in the BoB, by 1941 the Brits were far stronger in every category.

The Germans lacked everything needed for an amphibious invasion. No bombardment ships, no infantry landing craft, no tank landing craft, no assault transports to carry infantry near the beaches, no engineers or UDT to clear beach obstacles for the landing craft, no amphibious tanks, no logistical support capable of supporting the invasion with supplies carried over the beaches. You name it and the Germans lacked it.

if the Germans had tried a 1941 Operation Sealion, it would have been an unmitigated disaster for them, costing them their entire navy, most of the Luftwaffe and all of the invasion troops. Admittedly that would only have been two or three infantry divisions because that’s all they could have improvised barges to land, but they would have to have been the absolute best of the Wehrmacht. Oh and all the Fallschirmjager would be lost, so no invasion of Crete.

 

[DudleySmith]

We still could have recaptured Europe. It would just have taken longer and cost more. All the supplies and money we gave the Soviets could have equipped another hundred divisions and a whole additional Air Force equal to the one we deployed. Once we had aerial supremacy it was all over for Germany.

We could have equipped the Brits' Indian armies with the same aid and fared a lot better with them than with the Soviets, but yes it would take longer and ferrying them around would have taken more time. The few units that served in the ME and the Italian campaign performed very well, as did the units under William Slim in Burma.

 

[forkup]

The Germans had zero chance of invading England. They didn’t have a Navy, the RAF Fighter Command actually out numbered the Luftwaffe’s fighters. In 1941 the UK was outproducing the German aircraft industry by a large factor. By 1941 the British Army had been re-equipped and would have slaughtered the invaders. The Germans had never even experimented with an across-the-beach invasion and envisioned it as a river crossing writ large. The Luftwaffe’s best chance of defeating Fighter Command was in the BoB, by 1941 the Brits were far stronger in every category.

The Germans lacked everything needed for an amphibious invasion. No bombardment ships, no infantry landing craft, no tank landing craft, no assault transports to carry infantry near the beaches, no engineers or UDT to clear beach obstacles for the landing craft, no amphibious tanks, no logistical support capable of supporting the invasion with supplies carried over the beaches. You name it and the Germans lacked it.

if the Germans had tried a 1941 Operation Sealion, it would have been an unmitigated disaster for them, costing them their entire navy, most of the Luftwaffe and all of the invasion troops. Admittedly that would only have been two or three infantry divisions because that’s all they could have improvised barges to land, but they would have to have been the absolute best of the Wehrmacht. Oh and all the Fallschirmjager would be lost, so no invasion of Crete.

At Sandhurst they actually had a wargame after the end of WW2 with some of the German Generals. I know Adolf Gallant was one of them. The landing ships were sunk during a night attack from a British cruiser Squadron on the second day of the invasion if I'm not mistaking.

Sealion was a pipedream. I doubt it was ever seriously contemplated.

 

[DudleySmith]

What you forget is that without the Soviets to pull the German forces east, they would have instead gone west, and that meant finishing the battle of Britain. Which would have eliminated the base from which we could launch an attack against the Atlantic wall, and fortress Europe.

It wouldn't have been a matter of taking longer. It would have become impossible

Hitler was going to war with Stalin regardless of what we did, so Germany would still have been drawn east. They would still have need massive forces to occupy and exploit the conquests as well. The Brits were never far from the Soviet oil fields, as well as the underbelly of Europe after all. We had other options than feeding Stalin, and in hindsight we should have developed those. American forces inflicted nearly the same casualty rates on German troops in our invasion as the Soviets did, with far fewer losses than the Soviets as well. Even without D-Day we had lots of options and several land routes to chose from.. WE had the Navy and air power.

 

[mikegriffith1]

What you forget is that without the Soviets to pull the German forces east, they would have instead gone west, and that meant finishing the battle of Britain. Which would have eliminated the base from which we could launch an attack against the Atlantic wall, and fortress Europe. It wouldn't have been a matter of taking longer. It would have become impossible

Oh, gosh. This is so absurd. For starters, you keep ignoring the fact that the Soviet Union was worse than Nazi Germany. Stalin killed at least 20 million people before the war even began. Nazy Germany was an evil nation, but the Soviet Union was a monstrosity that killed far more people than the Nazis killed.

Hitler would not have been able to finish off England, and there is some doubt that he intended to do so anyway given the Luftwaffe's defeat in 1940. An amphibious assault is usually doomed to failure if you don't control the air and the sea. The German navy was no match for the British navy, and the RAF maintained control of the air after the Battle of Britain from May-October 1940. Germany's U-boat force would have been decimated if it had been compelled operate in the English Channel to try to support an amphibious invasion.

Is there no history that FDR's apologists won't twist and distort to justify his horrible, immoral handling of the war?

 

[RetiredGySgt]

Oh, gosh. This is so absurd. For starters, you keep ignoring the fact that the Soviet Union was worse than Nazi Germany. Stalin killed at least 20 million people before the war even began. Nazy Germany was an evil nation, but the Soviet Union was a monstrosity that killed far more people than the Nazis killed.

Hitler would not have been able to finish off England, and there is some doubt that he intended to do so anyway given the Luftwaffe's defeat in 1940. An amphibious assault is usually doomed to failure if you don't control the air and the sea. The German navy was no match for the British navy, and the RAF maintained control of the air after the Battle of Britain from May-October 1940. Germany's U-boat force would have been decimated if it had been compelled operate in the English Channel to try to support an amphibious invasion.

Is there no history that FDR's apologists won't twist and distort to justify his horrible, immoral handling of the war?

No war in the Soviet Union means all of the German forces would be available for North Africa and the defense of the coast of France. about 30 percent of the German Airforce went east and about 70 percent of its land forces went east.

 

[AZrailwhale]

No war in the Soviet Union means all of the German forces would be available for North Africa and the defense of the coast of France. about 30 percent of the German Airforce went east and about 70 percent of its land forces went east.

The Germans couldn’t supply the forces they historically had in Africa. The more troops they move to France, the more trouble they would have feeding them. As I said, once the Allies achieved aerial supremacy, all the Germans in France could do was starve. Remember, in 1944 the Wehrmacht was largely horse-drawn. It didn’t even have enough trucks to fully motorize the Panzer Grenadier Divisions, let alone the regular infantry. In 1943 and 1944 the WAllies were already facing the majority of the Luftwaffe fighter arm and defeating them over their own airfields in their own radar coverage. If the Luftwaffe tried to provide air cover for logistics in France, it would not only be facing the USAAF, but RAF Fighter Command as well.

 

[g5000]

It is an absolute fact that the Japanese code was broken well before Pearl Harbor

At best, you can only speculate that the Japanese did not send any messages before the attack to defend the notion that FDR did not know the attack was coming. I highly doubt that was the case though.

Trouble is, history tells us that FDR used the same device that broke the code a few months later at Midway to route the Japanese in a victory.

We had most of the code broken, but not all of it. We knew the Japanese were going to attack, but we did not know where or when. And that is because the Japanese assigned code names to their targets.

I'm glad you bring up Midway. As our cryptographers were decoding Japanese messages, they again knew an attack was imminent but did not know where. They only had the code name of the target: AF.

The Navy had several possibilities, and so they directed Midway to send out a message their water purification system was broken.

Shortly thereafter, the Japanese sent a message saying AF's water system was down, and that's how we knew Midway was their next target.


These conspiracy theories about FDR knowing Pearl Harbor was going to be attacked are horseshit.

Our decryption was not 100 percent. If you know anything about the Japanese decryption, you'd be amazed we were able to read as much of their mail as we did.

 

[AZrailwhale]

We had most of the code broken, but not all of it. We knew the Japanese were going to attack, but we did not know where or when. And that is because the Japanese assigned code names to their targets.

I'm glad you bring up Midway. As our cryptographers were decoding Japanese messages, they again knew an attack was imminent but did not know where. They only had the code name of the target: AF.

The Navy had several possibilities, and so they directed Midway to send out a message their water purification system was broken.

Shortly thereafter, the Japanese sent a message saying AF's water system was down, and that's how we knew Midway was their next target.


These conspiracy theories about FDR knowing Pearl Harbor was going to be attacked are horseshit.

Our decryption was not 100 percent. If you know anything about the Japanese decryption, you'd be amazed we were able to read as much of their mail as we did.

What these idiots never realize is the tiny important nuggets of truth are buried in mountains of wrong information, or deliberate misinformation. In retrospect the critical information is usually there, but no one recognizes it. The Japanese went to enormous lengths to hide the attack. They removed the crystals from the Kido Butai’s transmitters and left their main radiomen in the Inland Sea sending false transmissions to mislead allied intercept units. The British and Americans were no where near being able to break JN25, it had just been changed. They were making guesses based upon the volume of radio traffic. No one thought the Japanese could reach as far as Hawaii, after all, the USN with far more experience at underway replenishment couldn’t reach Japan in one hop in 1941.

 

[lennypartiv]

No war in the Soviet Union means all of the German forces would be available for North Africa and the defense of the coast of France.

Yet it was the German leader to decided to invade the Soviet Union.

 

[gipper]

Several actions by FDR, General George Marshall, Admiral Harold Stark (CNO), Secretary of State Cordell Hull are obvious giveaways that they knew Pearl Harbor would be attacked and that they did not want Admiral Kimmel and General Short in Hawaii to know about the attack. A few examples:

-- Incredibly, FDR, Marshall, and Stark withheld the bomb plot messages from Kimmel and Short. If Kimmel and Short had seen those messages, they would have easily recognized that Pearl Harbor was being targeted for an air attack. MacArthur’s intel officers were getting the messages and readily recognized they indicated preparation for an air attack, and they assumed, naturally enough, that Kimmel and Short were also getting the messages.

Not only did Kimmel and Short not receive the bomb plot messages, they were not even told of their existence. The key turning point in the Navy Court of Inquiry (NCI) in 1944 came when Kimmel became aware of the messages (thanks to Lt. Cmdr. Lawrence Safford). The NCI members were stunned that Kimmel had not been given a single one of the messages.

By the way, FDR, Marshall, and Stark fought tooth and nail to keep the bomb plot messages from being released to the NCI, but they had to back down when the NCI demanded to see them.

-- On the morning of December 7, after the 14-part Japanese cable and its instruction messages had been decoded, everyone who read them knew they meant war. No one denies this. Yet, FDR did not use any of the options he had to immediately contact Kimmel, nor did Marshall, nor did Stark. They all had the means (two radio phone systems) to contact Kimmel and Short within 15-20 minutes.

Instead, Marshall sent a vague message in the form of a routine telegram. He could have at least sent a priority telegram and flagged it as urgent to expedite its transmission, but he chose to send it as a regular telegram with no importance indicator. No FDR apologist has yet offered a rational, credible explanation for Marshall’s astonishing failure to use his scrambler phone to contact the commanders in Hawaii, and his failure to at least send his telegram as a priority telegram marked as urgent.

-- In 1963, Congressman Martin Dies, chairman of the House Un-American Activities Committee during the Roosevelt era, revealed in his memoir that before the Pearl Harbor attack, his committee, in the course of investigating Japanese espionage, obtained a Japanese military map that clearly indicated a plan to attack Pearl Harbor. Dies, who was a Democrat, contacted Secretary of State Cordell Hull and told him about the map. Hull asked him to please keep quiet about it due to the "extremely delicate" diplomatic situation and to let President Roosevelt handle it. Dies also reported that representatives from the Army, the Navy, and the State Department examined the map. Dies expressed his frustration that this information was not acted upon:

I have never been able to understand why our government did not take the necessary precautions to protect our fleet from destruction after our committee had furnished such precise information on the proposed attack. (Martin Dies Story, p. 165)

Dies' account received corroboration in 1983 when retired journalist and former New Deal official Joseph Leib disclosed that seven days before the attack, Secretary of State Hull, who was a good friend of his, told him that FDR and certain other senior officials knew from intercepted Japanese messages that Japan was going to attack Pearl Harbor, and that FDR was going to allow the attack in order to get America into the war. Leib added that Hull also noted that FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover was fully aware of this information, as fact that Col. Carlton Ketchum confirmed.

Many more examples could be cited. I discuss the bomb plot messages and Marshall’s failure to warn Kimmel and Short in a timely manner on December 7 in Six Myths of the Traditional Pearl Harbor Story.

As you must know, some Americans like the idiots in this thread will never accept the truth of FDR’s treasonous actions. No amount of facts will change them.

Do you see this pattern continuing today? Many dumb Americans believe Russia invaded Ukraine entirely unprovoked. Just as FDR claimed Japan did, and uninformed Americans still believe FDR’s lies.

 

[mikegriffith1]

Several actions by FDR, General George Marshall, Admiral Harold Stark (CNO), Secretary of State Cordell Hull are obvious giveaways that they knew Pearl Harbor would be attacked and that they did not want Admiral Kimmel and General Short in Hawaii to know about the attack. A few examples:

-- Incredibly, FDR, Marshall, and Stark withheld the bomb plot messages from Kimmel and Short. If Kimmel and Short had seen those messages, they would have easily recognized that Pearl Harbor was being targeted for an air attack. MacArthur’s intel officers were getting the messages and readily recognized they indicated preparation for an air attack, and they assumed, naturally enough, that Kimmel and Short were also getting the messages.

Not only did Kimmel and Short not receive the bomb plot messages, they were not even told of their existence. The key turning point in the Navy Court of Inquiry (NCI) in 1944 came when Kimmel became aware of the messages (thanks to Lt. Cmdr. Lawrence Safford). The NCI members were stunned that Kimmel had not been given a single one of the messages.

By the way, FDR, Marshall, and Stark fought tooth and nail to keep the bomb plot messages from being released to the NCI, but they had to back down when the NCI demanded to see them.

-- On the morning of December 7, after the 14-part Japanese cable and its instruction messages had been decoded, everyone who read them knew they meant war. No one denies this. Yet, FDR did not use any of the options he had to immediately contact Kimmel, nor did Marshall, nor did Stark. They all had the means (two radio phone systems) to contact Kimmel and Short within 15-20 minutes.

Instead, Marshall sent a vague message in the form of a routine telegram. He could have at least sent a priority telegram and flagged it as urgent to expedite its transmission, but he chose to send it as a regular telegram with no importance indicator. No FDR apologist has yet offered a rational, credible explanation for Marshall’s astonishing failure to use his scrambler phone to contact the commanders in Hawaii, and his failure to at least send his telegram as a priority telegram marked as urgent.

-- In 1963, Congressman Martin Dies, chairman of the House Un-American Activities Committee during the Roosevelt era, revealed in his memoir that before the Pearl Harbor attack, his committee, in the course of investigating Japanese espionage, obtained a Japanese military map that clearly indicated a plan to attack Pearl Harbor. Dies, who was a Democrat, contacted Secretary of State Cordell Hull and told him about the map. Hull asked him to please keep quiet about it due to the "extremely delicate" diplomatic situation and to let President Roosevelt handle it. Dies also reported that representatives from the Army, the Navy, and the State Department examined the map. Dies expressed his frustration that this information was not acted upon:

I have never been able to understand why our government did not take the necessary precautions to protect our fleet from destruction after our committee had furnished such precise information on the proposed attack. (Martin Dies Story, p. 165)

Dies' account received corroboration in 1983 when retired journalist and former New Deal official Joseph Leib disclosed that seven days before the attack, Secretary of State Hull, who was a good friend of his, told him that FDR and certain other senior officials knew from intercepted Japanese messages that Japan was going to attack Pearl Harbor, and that FDR was going to allow the attack in order to get America into the war. Leib added that Hull also noted that FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover was fully aware of this information, as fact that Col. Carlton Ketchum confirmed.

Many more examples could be cited. I discuss the bomb plot messages and Marshall’s failure to warn Kimmel and Short in a timely manner on December 7 in Six Myths of the Traditional Pearl Harbor Story.

It occurs to me that I should mention, for the benefit of newcomers to this issue, that the reason it is so suspicious and inexcusable that Marshall sent his "warning" to Hawaii in a routine telegram that was not even marked as urgent is that the telegram arrived too late to do any good.

Marshall could have simply picked up his scrambler phone and told Kimmel and Short that an attack was coming and to put their forces on full alert. He could have done this without saying a word about Japanese intercepts or how he knew an attack was coming. This is one of several reasons that his pitiful excuse that he didn't use the scrambler phone because he was afraid the Japanese were monitoring it (they were not) is ridiculous.

It actually would have been a very good thing if the Japanese had been monitoring it if Marshall had used it, because they may well have called off the attack once they knew that Hawaii was expecting them.

 

[gipper]

It occurs to me that I should mention, for the benefit of newcomers to this issue, that the reason it is so suspicious and inexcusable that Marshall sent his "warning" to Hawaii in a routine telegram that was not even marked as urgent is that the telegram arrived too late to do any good.

Marshall could have simply picked up his scrambler phone and told Kimmel and Short that an attack was coming and to put their forces on full alert. He could have done this without saying a word about Japanese intercepts or how he knew an attack was coming. This is one of several reasons that his pitiful excuse that he didn't use the scrambler phone because he was afraid the Japanese were monitoring it (they were not) is ridiculous.

It actually would have been a very good thing if the Japanese had been monitoring it if Marshall had used it, because they may well have called off the attack once they knew that Hawaii was expecting them.

But you’re forgetting the most important aspect. FDR was desperate for war with either Germany or Japan, to get his worthless ass out of the predicament he put himself in. The Great Depression.

It’s an old tactic used by rulers since the beginning of time. Yet somehow most people won’t accept it.

 

[gipper]

We had most of the code broken, but not all of it. We knew the Japanese were going to attack, but we did not know where or when. And that is because the Japanese assigned code names to their targets.

I'm glad you bring up Midway. As our cryptographers were decoding Japanese messages, they again knew an attack was imminent but did not know where. They only had the code name of the target: AF.

The Navy had several possibilities, and so they directed Midway to send out a message their water purification system was broken.

Shortly thereafter, the Japanese sent a message saying AF's water system was down, and that's how we knew Midway was their next target.


These conspiracy theories about FDR knowing Pearl Harbor was going to be attacked are horseshit.

Our decryption was not 100 percent. If you know anything about the Japanese decryption, you'd be amazed we were able to read as much of their mail as we did.

FDR knew. Accept it.

 

[mikegriffith1]

Few Americans today know that in the days following the Pearl Harbor attack, FDR, through his cabinet members and through his allies in the War Department, Congress, and the press, spread numerous false reports that German planes and pilots had participated in the bombing and that German military personnel were aiding Japanese assaults in other parts of the Pacific. However, these tales were soon abandoned when it became clear that no German military personnel had played any role in Pearl Harbor and that no Germans were advising Japanese units in the Pacific.

FDR may have spread these tales because he could not believe that the Japanese could have done so damage to Pearl Harbor by themselves. Or, FDR may have spread these lies to further inflame public opinion into supporting entrance into the war. Or, both motives may have been behind the brief propaganda campaign.

This is a fascinating chapter of World War II history that few Americans have even heard of. Although some scholars, including Gordon Prange, have discussed this issue, Dr. Richard Hill has offered the only in-depth look at this propaganda campaign and its impact on American public opinion. See his book Hitler Attacks Pearl Harbor: Why the United States Declared War on Germany (Boulder, Colorado: Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc., 2003).