Most Naval officers agree defense of Pearl was inadequate. Plenty of info there - use your Google-Fu.
What does it say if one were to invest their reputation/career along the same defensive posture? If (as a Staff Officer) you were unaware of the global relationships/foreign/defense affairs at that time (and/or obeyed questionable orders), and would allow Pearl to be in it’s defensive situation Dec. 7, 1941, I’d consider that incompetence at best, treason at worst.
Some choose honor and duty, apparently, in 1941 an later in 2012…
a. “commander Admiral Richardson that there was inadequate protection from air attack and no protection from torpedo attack. Richardson felt so strongly that he twice disobeyed orders to berth his fleet there and he raised the issue personally with FDR in October and he was soon after replaced. His successor, Admiral Kimmel, also brought up the same issues with FDR in June 1941.”
b. General Ham at Benghazi strike any notes?
Death trap of base for entry/exit. Port of LA or SD much more defensible from a land base/distance stance.
Plenty of info out there to the incompetence. A competent person would expect an attack after you literally cut off the life line of Japan. If I’m Japanese, this could equate to an act of war. An intentional act meant to provoke war - some say. Not to mention our hypocritical support of the Euros (i.e UK/Frogs) who whined at us to support their imperlalistic claims to (for instance) Indochina/Viet Nam and Indoniesa (all due to bills due from WWI).
Spot on report from James Corbett. False Flag ops come in all variations. Rarely are they going to be simple Black/White affairs. Sometimes the best Lies are not based on what is said, but what is Not said.
It makes our involvement a farce, since you will also find that a certain New York Bank laundered money for the Nazi’s during WWII. The theme of bankers funding both sides of wars, is a recurring one.
I don’t think you appreciate how fully unprepared for war we were as a county in 1941, how much America didn’t want money spent on any “European war” and how much we were still struggling with the Depression despite FDR programs. Ironically it was wartime production that finally got us out of the economic hole.
First I appreciate your knowledge of history… However, here is my take:
I do appreciate how under prepared we were. Soldiers drilling with wooden rifles ( our local HS Flag squad would school them in profeciency - ha) and tank crews drilling with plywood cutouts. I fully get it. How much bank was made off that intentional unpreperdness?
Agreed the average American was VERY much the isolationist after WWI (most people were still living the horror of actual combat or familial stress only 20 year-ish later). However, there is much difference between those “every-day Americans” and those American investment bankers and industrialists who financed Germany’s armament (see Prescott Bush’s financial involvement). Meanwhile, FDR was a major hawk.
Unfortunately, FDR threw all in on the Socialist Keynesian plan and subsequently furthered to tank our economy. Realizing, in advance, (as all intelligent Socialists should, but many do not) that this shxt don’t quite produce, he needed, like others to rely upon a “war bump” to the boost the economy. As a result of Pearl/our-entry-to-WWII, the GDP doubled and about deleted FDR’s failed Keynesian “New Deal” debt and almost erased unemployment.
Oh man did some oligarchs (err - Carpetbaggers) benefit -(oh the memories of how the Northern industrialists benefited from the almost total destruction of the South during the War of No. Aggression).
Geez, thank goodness the Japenese attacked us right when they did!
BTW - It is not at ALL ironic that this got us out of the Great Depression. FDR was drooling over it to save his failed Socialist ass.
I was being condescending of FDR programs but I could see how you might misread it and take it at face value. I’ve actually read a lot of history.
But I have a couple things I’m interested in seeing addressed.
How anyone could have known the target would be Pearl Harbor since the Japanese never mentioned the attack on any of their transmissions that we were decoding.
How anyone could have known the Japanese solved the “shallow water” problem for plane launched torpedoes at Pearl Harbor.
Again, FDR knew war was imminent and he definitely wanted in despite campaign promises to the contrary. I just have never seen any evidence for the “sacrifice at Pearl” conspiracy. I think even if we got President Willkie in 1940, if we continued to embargo oil, scrap metal and other raw material to Japan to try and limit their aggression in China we still would have gotten hit at Pearl.
We also need to remember it was Hitler declaring war on the United States on December 11th that brought us into the European war. Congress gave FDR a declaration of war on Japan ONLY (Dec. 8th). The US declaration of war on Germany came hours later on the same day Dec. 11th in response to Hitler’s declaration of war. Of course we had been in an undeclared war with Germany for several years with the merchant marines fighting German U boats trying to get Lend-Lease supplies to England.
The Military Channel had a great WWII documentary series entitled Secret War. This series was all about the cloak and dagger side of the war. One particular episode (Season 1 Episode 4) was titled The Real 007. During the war Ian Fleming (arthur of the James Bond novels) was a British Naval Intelligence Officer. He based the character of James Bond on Dušan Popov, a Yugoslavian double agent working for MI6 during the war. Agent Popov met with the FBI in August of 1941 to warn them of the impending attack on Pearl Harbor . . . the rest as they say is history. Popov had obtained a Nazi document containing a micro-dot (new spy tech of the day) detailing the attack. J. Edgar Hoover had Popov thrown out of the country and was threated with imprisonment.
This site as a very interesting time-line of events.
•1940 - FDR ordered the fleet transferred from the West Coast to its exposed position in Hawaii and ordered the fleet remain stationed at Pearl Harbor over complaints by its commander Admiral Richardson that there was inadequate protection from air attack and no protection from torpedo attack. Richardson felt so strongly that he twice disobeyed orders to berth his fleet there and he raised the issue personally with FDR in October and he was soon after replaced. His successor, Admiral Kimmel, also brought up the same issues with FDR in June 1941.
It’s late and I cannot find a link right now, but there was another WWII documentary on the Military Channel I remember watching where they talked about and showed proof that the Japanese, Americans, and British met prior to WWII and discussed sea power. They established early on that the carrier would be the future of naval warfare. Guess what wasn’t at Pearl. They knew they needed them to win the war and could sacrifice the battleships in order to gain public support for the war.
There were reports coming in of the Japanese fleet practicing at Ariake Bay, which apparantly resembled Pearl Harbor. I can’t find the link, it may have been a TV show, where Japenese pilots were interviewed and commented something to the effect of “we had practiced so much for the attack on Pearl Harbor, we could have successfully carried out the attack blind folded”.
The link Moose provided above is a very detailed and informative account. From there:
“10 July 1941 - US Military Attache Smith-Hutton at Tokyo reported Japanese Navy secretly practicing aircraft torpedo attacks against capital ships in Ariake Bay. The bay closely resembles Pearl Harbor.”
On 24 September 1941, a message from Japanese Naval Intelligence headquarters in Tokyo to the Japanese consul general in Honolulu was deciphered. It requested the exact locations of all US Navy ships in Pearl Harbor. Such detailed information would only be required if the Japanese were planning an attack on the ships at their moorings. In November, another message was intercepted ordering more drills involving attacks on capital ships at anchor in preparation to 'ambush and completely destroy the US enemy.’ The only American fleet within reach was at Pearl Harbor.
More interesting reading here - yet to fully explore all links though.
OK, it’s a big red flag. But given the woeful state of our intelligence part of the government in 1941 do you really think that got flagged as a credible warning against an attack at Pearl Harbor that made it all the way up the chain of command and then was deliberately suppressed in order to permit it to happen? Moreover, our intelligence also told us torpedoes couldn’t run in the shallow waters at Pearl.
The fleet at Pearl was our Queen on the chessboard, and even I don’t think FDR was stupid enough to take that gamble. Some point to the significance of the “three missing carriers” that were not at port that day. But it isn’t quite the conspiracy many make it out to be, we knew war was coming somewhere and those carriers were deployed accordingly.
But with the losses at Pearl Marines were successfully isolated on Guadalcanal when the Japanese fleet drove off the landing and supply forces. If we had a few more battleships to spare that might never have happened.
I have very little good to say about FDR but I don’t think he knew about Pearl and let it happen. There were other ways into the war that were going to happen and the fleet was simply too valuable.
Our involvement in WWII was inevitable. Regardless of whether or not it could have been avoided at the time we did get involved, we would have fought Germany and Japan at some point. To imply that WWII was nothing more than a needless conflict where U.S. servicemen died for nothing more than a few men’s greed is preposterous. The fact is, the Nazis, Fascists, and Japanese Imperialists were bad dudes, and powerful bad dudes at that. They wanted the world, and everything in it. They wouldn’t have been content to live and let live with us. Had we not entered the war:
Western Europe would likely have been conquered; Britain would have fallen. Then, most of the Nazi forces would have been able to concentrate on the Eastern front.
Japan, not having to fight us, would have been able to then invade the Soviet Union from the East.
They would have cut off all trade and materials being sent to Russia by us. Stalin’s government would have fallen.
We had oil, good soil, an endless supply of deep water ports, clean water, a host of other natural resources, and some of the best manufacturing capabilities and facilities in the world. The Axis would have built even more massive armies, exterminated all they deemed enemies, and would have eventually come for us.
Nothing allegedly about “The Business Plot”. The Special Committee on Un-American Activities (aka the McCormack-Dickstein Committee) acknowledge the existence of the plot yet no charges were brought against Bush or his bed buddies. Being a member of Skull & Bones has its perks.
