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posted by takyon on Thursday December 08 2016, @05:49PM   Printer-friendly
from the gears-of-war dept.

David Swanson, author of "War is a Lie", writes via CounterPunch:

The facts [of the Pearl Harbor story] do not support the mythology. The United States government did not need to make Japan a junior partner in imperialism, did not need to fuel an arms race, did not need to support Nazism and fascism (as some of the biggest U.S. corporations did right through the war), did not need to provoke Japan, did not need to join the war in Asia or Europe, and was not surprised by the attack on Pearl Harbor. For support of each of these statements, keep reading.

[...] Churchill's fervent hope for years before the U.S. entry into the war was that Japan would attack the United States. This would permit the United States (not legally, but politically) to fully enter World War II in Europe, as its president wanted to do, as opposed to merely providing weaponry and assisting in the targeting of submarines as it had been doing. On December 7, 1941, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt drew up a declaration of war on both Japan and Germany, but decided it wouldn't work and went with Japan alone. Germany quickly declared war on the United States, possibly in hopes that Japan would declare war on the Soviet Union.

Getting into the war was not a new idea in the Roosevelt White House. FDR had tried lying to the U.S. public about U.S. ships including the Greer and the Kerny, which had been helping British planes track German submarines, but which Roosevelt pretended had been innocently attacked. Roosevelt also lied that he had in his possession a secret Nazi map planning the conquest of South America, as well as a secret Nazi plan for replacing all religions with Nazism. The map was of the quality of Karl Rove's "proof" that Iraq was buying uranium in Niger.

And yet, the people of the United States didn't buy the idea of going into another war until Pearl Harbor, by which point Roosevelt had already instituted the draft, activated the National Guard, created a huge Navy in two oceans, traded old destroyers to England in exchange for the lease of its bases in the Caribbean and Bermuda, and--just 11 days before the "unexpected" attack, and five days before FDR expected it--he had secretly ordered the creation (by Henry Field) of a list of every Japanese and Japanese-American person in the United States.

[...] On November 15th, Army Chief of Staff George Marshall briefed the media on something we do not remember as "the Marshall Plan". In fact we don't remember it at all. "We are preparing an offensive war against Japan", Marshall said, asking the journalists to keep it a secret, which as far as I know they dutifully did.

[...] Congresswoman Jeannette Rankin (R-MT), the first woman ever elected to Congress, and who had voted against World War I, stood alone in opposing World War II [...] found that the Economic Defense Board had gotten economic sanctions under way less than a week after the Atlantic Conference [of August 1941]. On December 2, 1941, the New York Times had reported, in fact, that Japan had been "cut off from about 75 percent of her normal trade by the Allied blockade". Rankin also cited the statement of Lieutenant Clarence E. Dickinson, U.S.N., in the Saturday Evening Post of October 10, 1942, that on November 28, 1941, nine days before the attack, Vice Admiral William F. Halsey, Jr., (he of the catchy slogan "Kill Japs! Kill Japs!") had given instructions to him and others to "shoot down anything we saw in the sky and to bomb anything we saw on the sea".

The article is very detailed and shows repeatedly the duplicity of those who have claimed that the strike on Pearl Harbor was a "surprise".


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  • (Score: 2, Disagree) by JoeMerchant on Thursday December 08 2016, @06:26PM

    by JoeMerchant (3937) on Thursday December 08 2016, @06:26PM (#438796)

    The concentration of the fleet in Pearl Harbor is the clearest "proof" for any conspiracy theory that the US knew the attack was coming. If we were protecting our sailors and our ships, they wouldn't have been docked, in a vulnerable cluster, in clear view of known Japanese spies; anyone who thought that there were no Japanese intelligence assets in Hawaii at the time was simply delusional.

    Maybe the harbor was safer from German submarines than a deployed position would have been, but, c'mon, the world is at War, including Japan, what would any reasonable tactician think?

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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by tangomargarine on Thursday December 08 2016, @06:37PM

    by tangomargarine (667) on Thursday December 08 2016, @06:37PM (#438798)

    As opposed to what? Having them constantly on patrol without docking? I'm sure that would use up a trivial amount of fuel. /s

    than a deployed position

    I was under the impression that when you have bigass ships like battleships, you can't tie them up just anywhere you want. You need a deep-water harbor. They did a whole thing around the Normandy invasion of having to sink a bunch of ships full of concrete to make Cherbourg usable as a major port.

    --
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    • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday December 08 2016, @08:19PM

      by JoeMerchant (3937) on Thursday December 08 2016, @08:19PM (#438842)

      Yes, the big ships dock at big ports, but what good reason is/was there for having them ALL in port ALL at the same time?

      Send them out in smaller groups, or send them out as a big fleet, but, hell yes, having them on the move on the open ocean, location unknown to the enemy, even if the uncertainty is only a few hundred miles, is a hell of a lot safer than keeping them docked next to a big civilian city with significant foreign population for extended periods of time.

      "Loose lips sink ships" wasn't a sudden post Pearl Harbor realization.

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      • (Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Thursday December 08 2016, @08:29PM

        by tangomargarine (667) on Thursday December 08 2016, @08:29PM (#438853)

        Well, the carriers *were* out on patrol.

        And Hawaii is a decent uniform distance from Guam, Wake Island, and Midway. Keeping them where they can deploy to any keeps you flexible.

        And finally, as mentioned elsewhere, nobody really thought the Japanese could mount an attack at that distance using carriers at the time. You might recall the Dolittle Raid not long after, where the U.S. had to use B-25s, which weren't capable of landing on carriers, and barely had the range to ditch in China/the China Sea.

        --
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        • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday December 08 2016, @08:41PM

          by JoeMerchant (3937) on Thursday December 08 2016, @08:41PM (#438861)

          Underestimation of the Japanese carriers' capabilities certainly weighs in on the "doh!" side of the argument.

          I've had some "bad things" happen in my life, and doing the post-game analysis, I can usually line up three or four (or more) things I did wrong simultaneously that enabled the "bad thing" to take occur. The concentration of forces in Pearl, combined with the lack of radar coverage and lack of air patrols could have just been a coincidence of bad judgement, perfectly timed with Yamamoto's arrival. Usually, large groups of people don't make so many simultaneous oversights all at once.

          The deployment of the relatively newer aircraft carriers elsewhere only lends weight to the "got hit on purpose, now we can kill 'em" side, for me.

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          • (Score: 3, Informative) by tangomargarine on Thursday December 08 2016, @08:54PM

            by tangomargarine (667) on Thursday December 08 2016, @08:54PM (#438867)

            Usually, large groups of people don't make so many simultaneous oversights all at once.

            "Large groups of people?" I would assume it was about a dozen guys in command of the base, and everybody else following orders (well, plus the captains of the ships, I suppose). This is the military we're talking about; you don't go to your commander and say, "Gee I dunno, boss, maybe we should be doing something else instead of these preparations it's your job to be knowledgeable on."

            combined with the lack of radar coverage

            They did detect the first wave on radar; they just thought it was a flight of B-17s that was scheduled to arrive.

            As the first wave approached Oahu, it was detected by the U.S. Army SCR-270 radar at Opana Point near the island's northern tip. This post had been in training mode for months, but was not yet operational.[84] The operators, Privates George Elliot Jr. and Joseph Lockard, reported a target.[85] But Lieutenant Kermit A. Tyler, a newly assigned officer at the thinly manned Intercept Center, presumed it was the scheduled arrival of six B-17 bombers from California. The Japanese planes were approaching from a direction very close (only a few degrees difference) to the bombers,[86] and while the operators had never seen a formation as large on radar, they neglected to tell Tyler of its size.[87] Tyler, for security reasons, could not tell the operators of the six B-17s that were due (even though it was widely known).[87]

            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attack_on_Pearl_Harbor#First_wave_composition [wikipedia.org]

            I could see the argument that any military base should be ready to be attacked at any given time, I suppose. Especially with everything Japan had been getting up to at the time.

            --
            "Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
            • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday December 08 2016, @09:04PM

              by JoeMerchant (3937) on Thursday December 08 2016, @09:04PM (#438871)

              any military base should be ready to be attacked at any given time

              Yeah, that's my basic point of view... especially with the world at war and all that.

              As for the large groups of people, those 12 guys in that room each have 12 more guys that they meet with who are getting all kinds of information fed to them along with discussion of tactics, threats, potential and probably future outcomes, etc. When I screw up big, one of my primary mistakes is doing something dangerous while tired (thereby: relatively mentally impaired) - larger groups of people shouldn't be making mentally impaired decisions - that's why there are 12 guys, even if most of them are mentally impaired the chances of them all choosing to do the same dumb thing at once, in defiance of the better decision makers in the room, should be a rare thing.

              Also, things like the military strategy leading up to Pearl Harbor - that developed over the course of weeks to months. My solo bad decisions usually take place within the space of a few minutes, or less.

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      • (Score: 2) by Thexalon on Thursday December 08 2016, @11:27PM

        by Thexalon (636) on Thursday December 08 2016, @11:27PM (#438924)

        Yes, the big ships dock at big ports, but what good reason is/was there for having them ALL in port ALL at the same time?

        1. They can (and did) support each other in case of attack.
        2. They can easily transfer personnel between ships.
        3. They can take advantage of land-based defenses and the barriers around the port to fight.
        4. They can be easily supplied.
        5. It doesn't require any fuel to leave them in port.
        6. The sailors like shore leave, all other things being equal.
        7. The US was in negotiations with the Japanese at the time, and there was a significant chance of a deal being cut. Having your fleet out and about is a provocation.
        8. Ships sunk in port are much easier to salvage, resurface and repair. 13 of the 16 ships hit would return to service during the war.

        The main reason the US was caught by surprise is that they expected the Japanese to hit them in the Philippines first, not in Hawaii, in part because the Philippines were much closer to their bases of operations.

        --
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        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 09 2016, @02:07AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 09 2016, @02:07AM (#438967)

          the US [...] expected the Japanese to hit them in the Philippines first

          You left out the good part: (Later that day). [wikipedia.org]

          As dawn moved westward across the Pacific (and the International Date Line), daylight airstrikes followed [...] on Wake Island, [...] on Guam, [...] on Davao [in the Philippines], [...] on Baguio [in the Philippines], and on Clark Field [in the Philippines]

          -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]]

        • (Score: 2) by edIII on Friday December 09 2016, @02:12AM

          by edIII (791) on Friday December 09 2016, @02:12AM (#438968)

          Don't forget that the primary reason why it's so easy to believe that our leaders betrayed us, and those soldiers, is hindsight.

          From the Tuskegee experiments and onward, there have been many reasons for us to distrust the U.S military command's commitment to the troops. Those troops were expendable in order to win a larger war.

          It's so easy to believe when you view history as one long running game that the Elite's play.

          --
          Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
    • (Score: 2) by infodragon on Friday December 09 2016, @01:03PM

      by infodragon (3509) on Friday December 09 2016, @01:03PM (#439135)

      So many big ships clustered together except the aircraft carriers. They were vital to the war effort against Japan except not even one was in Pearl Harbor. Too much to be coincidence.

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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by BenJeremy on Thursday December 08 2016, @07:05PM

    by BenJeremy (6392) on Thursday December 08 2016, @07:05PM (#438806)

    Well, for somebody with absolutely no knowledge of naval logistics, you sure knocked that one out of the park, as in, you are willingly ignorant and seemingly proud of it.

    While the US did make motions to provoke the Japanese into action, they did NOT anticipate the attack on Pearl Harbor. There were far less critical targets they'd have willingly sacrificed than pretty much the entire Pacific fleet; the Japanese decision to attack Hawaii was political miscalculation. I'm sure the thought at the time was that Japan would attack somewhere much closer (i.e. more foreign, allowing non-Americans to take the brunt of the attack), which was why the fleet was holed up at Pearl Harbor in the first place.

    As for provocation... they didn't do a lot, and it didn't take much. The Japanese high command was pushing to attack the US far earlier, before any overt provocation. The war was inevitable, and an earlier start put Japan at a disadvantage; Germany sought to get Japan looking west toward the Soviet Union - from their perspective, it was the worst possible outcome, even if the Japanese were successful in their goals of smashing the Pacific Fleet.

    Ultimately, Japan misjudged the US' ability to recover and just what sort of resources it could bring to bear in war. The losses in Pearl Harbor certainly solidified public opinion, far more than a smaller attack on a land farther away might have, but the US government didn't need unanimous support, they only needed to swing a small percentage.

    The seeds of global conflict were sown long before 1941. The mismanagement of Germany's WWI defeat and the rise of Communist Russia meant war would happen. Mismanagement came from both hawks and doves who overplayed their hands in reaction to the other side's actions in diplomacy.

    • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday December 08 2016, @07:38PM

      by JoeMerchant (3937) on Thursday December 08 2016, @07:38PM (#438818)

      Somebody, at some higher level of command, could clearly have divided the Pacific Fleet so that it wasn't pretty much entirely docked in a single harbor at one time - the Pacific is a big place. Not doing so is a simple invitation to something like a "surprise attack." The only tactical reason to concentrate forces that much would be for a surprise assault on a heavily defended target, which clearly wasn't happening anywhere near Pearl Harbor.

      Was there a conspiracy to galvanize the American people into action, get the political support to build a new modernized fleet and enter the War in earnest? That I can't say.

      What I am saying is that: either our Naval command took a willful and needless risk with their concentration of assets, or maybe there is something to the conspiracy theories. With the reliable information I have access to, either option is possible.

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      • (Score: 3, Insightful) by BenJeremy on Thursday December 08 2016, @08:37PM

        by BenJeremy (6392) on Thursday December 08 2016, @08:37PM (#438858)

        You are ignoring one important point: As far as the US was concerned, both militarily and politically, Pearl Harbor was NOT a practical target of attack.

        The US military underestimated the ability of the Japanese (and their willingness to gamble) to commit to such a long range, ambitious attack. On the political side, it was thought the Japanese would move on US territories or allies closer to their own islands; the thought was they'd invade, rather than purely raid a strategic target. Invasion of Hawaii would have involved a lot more buildup and capture of islands to operate from.

        In short, the attack on Pearl Harbor wasn't considered a possibility for very good (even if ultimately wrong) reasons.

        The reason it worked was because it was an audacious, bold move that ran counter to all conventional wisdom. For many reasons, it could have fallen apart... had the US fleet elements been out on maneuver, for example, or the Japanese fleet been spotted and plotted with enough intell (more than one stray report or two) - perhaps things might have turned out differently. Even on a war footing, the idea of an attack on a remote base was unthinkable before Pearl Harbor.

        The insanity of the tactic was the very reason they retaliated with the air raid over Tokyo - using bomber not designed to be launched from Carriers on a one-way mission, sputtering along on fumes before they even finished crossing the China Sea to land on the mainland. The US answered tit-for-tat because the maneuver was so over-the-top, that it demanded a response in kind.

        Tactics changed as a result of both of those raids. The Aircraft Carrier was brought to the forefront as the game changer it was. Naval artillery was no longer the deciding factor in battles between fleets. Before 1941, naval commanders still thought ships would slug it out (witness Germany's and Britain's lack of carriers). As a naval weapon, aircraft were more of an oddity before the 1940s, more of an extension of a ship's crows nest, rather than a means to deliver destruction to a dreadnaught.

        • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday December 08 2016, @08:49PM

          by JoeMerchant (3937) on Thursday December 08 2016, @08:49PM (#438864)

          It was a bold move, and it may be an indication of the Japanese military's tactical brilliance far outshining their strategic/political competence.

          I know there was plenty of second guessing, dissent at the time about the best deployment of the fleet. The question of: "was this particular option taken deliberately as part of a larger political plan?" is probably impossible to answer... I am virtually certain that such plans were formulated and discussed - whether they were ever brought to the President's attention, and whether or not he was acting out one of those plans, there's probably not enough evidence remaining to ever answer that question.

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    • (Score: 2, Informative) by Arik on Thursday December 08 2016, @07:46PM

      by Arik (4543) on Thursday December 08 2016, @07:46PM (#438822) Journal
      Pearl Harbor was surprised, FDR was not.

      Japanese military channels had not yet been broken, but their diplomats had been, and their cables were being intercepted and decrypted in near real time. He knew that they had finally given up on diplomacy, he knew to expect attack that morning. He didn't have the target, no, that was in the military cables, but it was obvious that Pearl was high on the list of likely targets. But this information was not shared with the commanders on the ground in Hawaii.

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      • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 08 2016, @09:42PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 08 2016, @09:42PM (#438880)

        Yup. By Pearl Harbor Day, USA's boffins had unraveled the secret of Japan's diplomatic code machine. [google.com]
        The claim [google.com] by Henry Stimson is simply bullshit.
        USA.gov had a pretty good idea what its adversary was up to.

        The Original Submission was edited down quite a bit for TFS (with the remainder not making this page) and the article is significantly longer that that.
        Those mention USA's interruption of Japan's trade in petroleum and other raw materials.
        Those actions were purposely antagonistic.
        To believe that USA would think that Japan would put up with that for very long is simply naive.

        -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]

    • (Score: 4, Informative) by PinkyGigglebrain on Thursday December 08 2016, @08:20PM

      by PinkyGigglebrain (4458) on Thursday December 08 2016, @08:20PM (#438844)

      one of the things I've heard brought up frequently as proof, or at least a strong indication, supporting that the US knew there was going to be some kind of attack ,and that Pearl Harbor was a prime target, was that the majority of the ships in the harbor were old and no longer state of the art, and there was a strong push to replace them but no money. Another big point is made by pointing out that the newer aircraft carriers in the Pacific were far enough South of Hawaii to be out side the range of a possible attack on PH, so far that they could not have provided any kind of aid even if there had been a days warning of the attack.

      I'll agree that the conspiracy theories linking the Kennedy assassination to the Girl Scouts are beyond credibility but sometimes there is a theory that accounts for more of the facts than the official versions.

      And the more I learn about major events that are used to change National policies and political/military powers the less I trust the official and main stream media reported version of those events.

      --
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      • (Score: 4, Insightful) by BenJeremy on Thursday December 08 2016, @08:49PM

        by BenJeremy (6392) on Thursday December 08 2016, @08:49PM (#438865)

        Everybody loves a conspiracy theory. There is certainly truth that the US was egging on the Japanese, but they expected Midway to be a more likely target than Hawaii.

        It's a simple matter of logic and practicality. Battleships weren't obsolete, either... and naval command would NEVER sacrifice them. They were great ground pounders, able to support sea landings or punish coastal areas (if you know geography, you'd also realize people concentrate near bodies of waters, making them juicy targets in a time of war)

        The US expected invasion, rather than a bold raid at extreme range. For all intents and purposes, no military commander at the time would have given credence to the idea that the Japanese could manage an air raid at such extreme range. As I said in another comment, the Dolittle raid was our response, because an audacious attack called for an even more audacious reply. The Japanese were expected to take islands closer to their homeland, and Hawaii was considered to be safe enough, buffered by the anticipated move to invade (which would have also triggered US declaration of war).

        Two things really...

        1) Pearl Harbor was a purely destructive raid - the US thought they'd see escalation first.
        2) Pearl Harbor was thought to be out of range of potential attack.

        Even given some sort of direct intelligence of a pending attack, it probably would have been ruled out as a false lead, due to the low probability of it.

        In any event, neither the military, nor the White House wanted the Japanese to destroy most of the Pacific Fleet. You don't start a chess game by sweeping away all your pieces except for your king and a few pawns.

        • (Score: 2) by PinkyGigglebrain on Thursday December 08 2016, @11:47PM

          by PinkyGigglebrain (4458) on Thursday December 08 2016, @11:47PM (#438928)

          You bring up some good points worth considering.

          And your right that you don't start a game of chess by sweeping away everything but your King. However, chess is about making strategic sacrifices, and the attack on Pearl Harbor was not the opening moves of the game.

          The truth is the general public will never know exactly what was known and unknown by the governments involved, records have been altered and/or destroyed, witnesses have either died keeping their silence or met with accidents after starting to speak out. It is the same with all the major events of History that changed the direction of the world, The Reichstag fire, the J.F.K assassination, Oswald's murder, Bobby Kennedy's shooting, Oklahoma City bombing, 9-11 and all the rest. The complete truth may be out there but it will never reach the ears of the masses. And the fact is that most of them don't even care.

          --
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        • (Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Friday December 09 2016, @04:26AM

          by AthanasiusKircher (5291) on Friday December 09 2016, @04:26AM (#439015) Journal

          "Battleships weren't obsolete..." Is probably one of the most significant understatements of this thread. The very fact that something like that needs to be said here shows many people are arguing from complete ignorance of what naval tactics were like and the relative perceived value of ships in 1941. Carriers did not yet have the reputation that would make them so much more valuable... Battleships were still thought of as a core part of the fleet. (To be sure, there were some bullish air force leaders who believed that carriers would become the decisive element in future naval warfare, but no navy admiral in 1941 would have just decided to save carriers and give up on everything else.)

          And as for those "missing" carriers, IIRC at least one of them was actually supposed to be in Pearl Harbor the day before attack and was only slowed down by unexpected weather.

          It simply amazes me how much some people just "want to believe" and don't bother to check out whether random rumors can be substantiated or even make any sense.

  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday December 08 2016, @07:27PM

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday December 08 2016, @07:27PM (#438814) Journal

    The concentration of the fleet in Pearl Harbor is the clearest "proof" for any conspiracy theory that the US knew the attack was coming.

    Pretty lousy proof. "Let's put all our stuff together to make it easy for the Japanese to blow it all up." At least, they would have had a bunch of planes in the air and more anti-air defenses on the ground, if they thought the Japanese were attacking Pearl Harbor. In fact, that's the best argument right there against the assertion that there were "reasonable tacticians" in charge of Pearl Harbor at the time.

    • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday December 08 2016, @07:54PM

      by JoeMerchant (3937) on Thursday December 08 2016, @07:54PM (#438829)

      If you follow the logic portrayed in "The Imitation Game" movie, putting "all our stuff together to make it easy for the Japanese to blow it all up" and doing so in clear sight of Japanese intelligence could have been a calculated move in the larger game. Even with the loss of the aging Pacific fleet, the resulting (easily predicted) political backlash in the United States, coupled with the US's economic capacity to rebuild and the vastness of the Pacific Ocean... some people with sufficient control of the armed forces could have cooked the whole scenario up as a plan/conspiracy and set it into motion. Not a plan that would have been shared with a single soul in Pearl Harbor, suspicious defensive movements of US aircraft or other assets could have scared the attacking fleet away.

      I'm not saying that it's impossible to think that we just got caught with our pants down and rallied around the flag for the biggest comeback of the century... it certainly _could_ have happened that way, just like most of the history books / fictional accounts tell it. I am saying that I believe the account of Bletchley Park's decoding of German communications and the measured responses to that information to maximize the chances of winning the war by minimizing the chances that Germany would discover that Enigma had been broken. Some times I like to imagine that the top levels of US government act with similar levels of maturity, foresight and planning, but then things like the 2016 election happen - so, yeah, we probably did just get caught with our pants down.

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      • (Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Thursday December 08 2016, @08:23PM

        by AthanasiusKircher (5291) on Thursday December 08 2016, @08:23PM (#438848) Journal

        I'm not saying that it's impossible to think that we just got caught with our pants down

        It's important to note that there WERE high-level people before December 7th who made precisely the argument you're making here, i.e., that Pearl Harbor was a bad place to have the whole fleet stationed.

        Of course, that fact can be used by either side to support their arguments -- to the conspiracy fans, obviously these warnings went unheeded because these high-level folks weren't "in the game" and didn't know the real strategy. To the "normal history" side, a more rational reading is that there actually WAS dissent on this issue, thus making it clear that views were mixed and those who criticize in hindsight might have valid points.

        "Hindsight is 20/20" and all that. There were all sorts of reasons why Pearl Harbor was convenient logistically for various plans the Navy clearly WAS considering at that time. Was the risk ignored? Maybe. Was it ignored deliberately? That seems to be a REALLY bizarre view (to me), if for nothing else than that the decision to concentrate that you're criticizing PALES in comparison to the military incompetence that would involved in planning the conspiracy plot. The U.S. wants to begin an aggressive war by destroying or disabling almost all of its fleet in the region? The idea that any senior military commander would think that plan was a good one is pretty outlandish. What if Japan failed to make a large enough scale attack on Pearl Harbor to convince the American public to join the war? Then you're facing whatever losses of ships, without public support to necessarily churn out new ones... and you still have a highly aggressive enemy in the Pacific who could plan bigger attacks at any moment.

        If FDR just wanted to get the American public riled up enough to join the war, it seems pretty likely his military strategists could have come up with a much better plan that minimized losses better.

        • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday December 08 2016, @08:33PM

          by JoeMerchant (3937) on Thursday December 08 2016, @08:33PM (#438856)

          The U.S. wants to begin an aggressive war by destroying or disabling almost all of its fleet in the region? The idea that any senior military commander would think that plan was a good one is pretty outlandish.

          There's a reason that a politician is commander in chief of all armed forces.

          --
          🌻🌻 [google.com]
        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 11 2016, @02:28PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 11 2016, @02:28PM (#439974)

          IF the attack wasn't big enough? Simple, wait for a bigger one, try to lose even harder. Or just sink a few by yourself and blame whomever you care to blame.

      • (Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday December 08 2016, @10:55PM

        by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday December 08 2016, @10:55PM (#438904) Journal

        If you follow the logic portrayed in "The Imitation Game" movie, putting "all our stuff together to make it easy for the Japanese to blow it all up" and doing so in clear sight of Japanese intelligence could have been a calculated move in the larger game.

        And as you no doubt noted, I don't follow that logic. My logic is that that is a stupid idea. It's basically circular logic, trying hard to put the best spin on reality ("best" here promoting a particular conspiracy theory). After all, having planes in the air doesn't mean that the Japanese would be alerted and it would have given the US opportunity to bag a Japanese carrier. Having a few more air-air guns around Pearl Harbor wouldn't be a sign that we were aware of their attack. Fleets that suddenly appear on the return to Japan. There are rudimentary preparations that could have been done that wouldn't have made Japan aware of them until carriers started to go glub glub glub.

        What this really means is that the US simply wasn't prepared for this particular attack by Japan. And that's the strongest evidence for the assertion that while the US knew Japan was going to attack somewhere, they didn't know they were going to attack Pearl Harbor.

  • (Score: 1) by Mike on Thursday December 08 2016, @07:54PM

    by Mike (823) on Thursday December 08 2016, @07:54PM (#438830)

    The concentration of the fleet in Pearl Harbor is the clearest "proof" for any conspiracy theory that the US knew the attack was coming. If we were protecting our sailors and our ships, they wouldn't have been docked, in a vulnerable cluster, in clear view of known Japanese spies;

    I find this kind of funny as I think this makes a far more valid argument that the US did NOT expect an attack at Pearl Harbor. Unless you think that FDR and Congress wanted to lose a war by having the Navy destroyed, the idea that the Navy was purposely left as a sitting duck at Pearl Harbor in order to have it destroyed but enable FDR/Congress to start a war is extremely far fetched.

    There are certainly good arguments that FDR thought war was inevitable and that an attack would happen. But I think it's very, very unlikely that anyone seriously thought it would be at Pearl Harbor. I would argue that far more likely places such as the Phillipines, however, were woefully unprepared for a Japanese attack, possibly purposefully, although more likely through hubris/incompetence.

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by bob_super on Thursday December 08 2016, @08:08PM

      by bob_super (1357) on Thursday December 08 2016, @08:08PM (#438836)

      Do you know what I do in many strategy games?
      I put most of my monstrous near-unsinkable assets together right by my strategic logistic waypoint, to protect it and incite anyone with bad intentions to attack less valuable assets and incur devastating counter-attacks. It's usually called "turtling"...
      The US expected an attack and turtled. It turns out that the Japanese had enough firepower (and the US had a broken radar) to make it a bad idea.

      No conspiracy needed.

      • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday December 08 2016, @08:28PM

        by JoeMerchant (3937) on Thursday December 08 2016, @08:28PM (#438852)

        Turtling with a broken radar and leaving the defensive aircraft on the ground - no patrols? That would be reckless negligence. Maybe that's exactly what it was. Somebody, somewhere gamed the scenario and knew (or strongly believed) that Yamamoto would take the bait, and that we would recover stronger than if we just declared war without provocation - whether or not that person had the ear of the chain of command, I don't know.

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    • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday December 08 2016, @08:12PM

      by JoeMerchant (3937) on Thursday December 08 2016, @08:12PM (#438838)

      It is possible that our best tacticians at the time didn't have a handle on the power of aircraft carriers and/or the highest levels of Naval command ignored the wonks that knew what Japanese aircraft carriers _could_ do.

      The US certainly does value and exercise the political influence of Aircraft Carriers today.

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