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Title: Pearl Harbor: The Seeds and Fruits of Infamy
Source:
Ludwig von Mises Institute
URL Source: http://mises.org/store/Pearl-Harbor ... d-Fruits-of-Infamy-P10391.aspx
Published: Jul 17, 2010
Author: staff
Post Date: 2010-07-17 10:35:16 by F.A. Hayek Fan
Keywords: None
Views: 451
Comments: 40
A president faced an economic depression that wouldn't go away, and a deeply disgruntled electorate. Not for the first or last time, the option of entering a war seemed politically appealing. How badly did FDR want a war and to what lengths was he willing to go to get one? The questions have vexed historians for many decades. Pearl Harbor: The Seeds and Fruits of Infamy by Percy Greaves, Jr. (1906-1984), published for the first time in 2010, blows the top off a 70-year cover-up, reporting for the first time on long-suppressed interviews, documents, and corroborated evidence. The first section (the seeds) provides a detailed history of pre-war U.S.-Japan relations, thoroughly documenting the sources of rising tension. The second section (the fruits) shows that the attack on December 7, 1941 was neither unexpected nor unprovoked. Nor was it the reason that Franklin Roosevelt declared a war that resulted in massive human slaughter. Instead, in exhaustive detail, this book establishes that Pearl Harbor was permitted as a public relations measure to rally the public, shifting the blame from the White House, where it belonged, to the men on the ground who were unprepared for the attack. For 70 years, Greaves's documents have been the primary source of revisionist scholarship on Pearl Harbor. These documents were prepared under his leadership as main counsel for the Republican minority on the Joint Congressional Committee that investigated Pearl Harbor from 1945 to 1946. More than any other person, he was qualified to speak on this subject. He possessed encyclopedic knowledge and had access to research available to no one else. He conducted in-person, detailed, comprehensive interviews with all the main players at Pearl Harbor and many people in the security apparatus. The contents of these interviews are further corroborated by military records. However, for many reasons, the documents were not published. He continued to work on this book for many years before his death in 1984. At that point, his wife Bettina Bien Greaves took up the project. The result is absolutely astonishing. Much of Greaves’s research has never appeared in print—effectively suppressed for 70 years. Even the censored minority report did not include it all. But at long last, the fullness of this report is revealed. The result is this monumental book, completed and edited by Bettina Greaves and published by the Mises Institute. Pearl Harbor is a 937-page indictment of the Roosevelt administration, one that finally and devastatingly rips the lid off a case that has been shrouded in mystery for generations. Because of the astonishing source material and thoroughness of the argument, Robert Stinnett, the leading authority on the topic and the author of Day of Deceit, calls Greaves's book "explosive!" Indeed, it is. The author writes in a guarded tone, carefully backing up every statement with massive evidence, provided in a level of depth never before seen. The prevailing consensus is that the fault for Pearl Harbor attack belongs to General Walter Short and Admiral Husband Kimmel, while the major political and military figures in Washington should be completely exonerated. Greaves turns this conventional wisdom on its head. "It is now apparent also that the president himself, even before the attack, had intended to order the U.S. armed forces to make a pre-emptive strike against the Japanese in the southwest Pacific in order to assist the British in southeast Asia. But the Japanese 'jumped the gun' on him by bombing Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941." Greaves's conclusion is dramatic: "It must be said also that the evidence revealed in the course of the several investigations leads to the conclusion that the ultimate responsibility for the catastrophe inflicted on the U.S. Fleet at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, must rest on the shoulders of President Roosevelt.... It was thanks to Roosevelt’s decisions and actions that an unwarned, ill-equipped, and poorly prepared Fleet remained stationed far from the shores of the continental United States, at a base recognized by his military advisers as indefensible and vulnerable to attack.... Thus the attack on Pearl Harbor became FDR’s excuse, not his reason, for calling for the United States’s entry into World War II." Greaves provides comprehensive coverage here on the history of U.S. and Japanese relations, the actions of the Roosevelt administration, the attack and the response on the ground, the investigations and cover-ups that began almost immediately and continue to this day. Today the "back-door-to-the-war" theory has become mainstream historiography, even if those who admit it say that the lies were necessary for the good of the country. That is a difficult opinion to maintain in the face of the fullness of the evidence against FDR. It is a remarkable fact that Greaves, who later became a close confidant of Mises himself throughout the 1950s and 1960s, and who is known mainly for his monetary work, has left us an amazing revelation 70 years after the fact and 26 years after his own death. It is proof that the wheels of justice can grind slowly but also very finely. “Percy Greaves was chief of the minority (Republican) research staff of the (1945-1946) Joint Congressional Committee to Investigate the Pearl Harbor Attack. He attended all its hearings, interviewed many Army, Navy, and Washington principals involved in the attack and in the investigations. He researched diplomatic documents, studied reports and accounts of the event published during the years that followed. This book is not about the attack itself. It is about never before presented pre-attack and post-attack events, from the Washington point of view. Without name-calling, innuendo, or slander, Greaves simply presents the pertinent, significant and relevant facts which led the Japanese to attack and the political administration to want to cover-up its involvement.” - Bettina Bien Greaves
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#1. To: F.A. Hayek Fan (#0)
In 1919, FDR was under secretary of the Navy. It was at that time that the War Dept. promulgated war Plan Orange. The plan envisioned that Japan would one day move south in search for oil in the Dutch East Indies, and that US possessions would come under attack. Guam, Wake Philippines etc. In the 1920s General Mitchell predicted the Pearl harbor attack, even the day of the week and the hour. Roosevelt brought it to fruition in his quest for war.
FDR was trying to start a war with Japan, that cannot be denied. I suspect he thought that would attack in the Philippines and thought the Japanese were near-sighted buck-toothed incompetents and we'd kick them all over the Pacific in a few weeks. 60% of Americans thought the Germans were involved in the attack on Pearl Harbor. They couldn't believe scrawny little nerds like the Nips could fight all. Everyone found out differently but fast.
"A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools." - Douglas Adams
FDR moved the fleet from Washington to Pearl Harbor as bait. The Admiral refused and was canned, Kimmel complied and took the rap. If you look now, we have a fleet stationed at Guam, nuke subs and a carrier flotilla coming, under four hours flying time from Chinese mainland. Bait???
deleted
The relationship between morality and liberty is a directly proportional one.
Interesting. After becoming a full blown cynic on all things political and some historical events, which I must say has served me quite well on prognosticating outcomes, I started to question the "righteous" war with Japan. Without Japan invading and taking over Pearl Harbor it made no sense attacking it. And what was Japan thinking in attacking a large almost totally self sufficient country where the Japs had to import 90% of raw materials? Couldn't they see that would be a disaster in the long run and fighting a losing war? My thinking at this stage was Japan wanted the South Pacific but I couldn't figure out why. You mention oil and I also to some degree suspect land but if FDR was pushing Japan for a war why were they so stupid in taking the poisonous bait?
Well Sir, your thinking was on the right track. An inquisitive mind coupled with a tad of cynicism always looks for the facts and the TRUTH. If you care for history, it is all there, many people saw it coming and most importantly, WHY. Around 1900, many countries of the world had blue water navies, ALL FIRED BY COAL. Most every country had coal so there was no problem of fuel, and then the unthinkable happened. Navies started switching to OIL and the countries with no oil were legion. Great Britain, Germany, France, Spain, Japan, Italy HAD NO OIL. The United States was the worlds largest EXPORTER of oil. That was early 1900s and if one looks and digests, they can see the future. That is how Plan Orange came about. The seeds of WW2 were sown before WW1. Japan was sitting on the sidelines at the beginning of WW1, the allies tried to win them over to their side, the Japanese price was all the German owned Islands of the western Pacific would be ceded to them when Germany was defeated. That cost the allies nothing but cynics wondered why they wanted mostly worthless islands. The deal was made with the proviso that the Islands would never be militarized. Japan entered the war, it was soon over and they did nothing but were given the islands. They at once starting building naval and air bases, southward from Japan towards the Dutch East Indies, an area producing much of the worlds oil. Roosevelt was undersecretary of the Navy when this happened and war Plan Orange became solidified. The thinkers put it all down in black and white that in the near future, Japan would move south to secure oil for their own as the US was their only supplier, AND THAT THEY WERE AT OUR MERCY. The rest is history.
Thomas Fleming has done a great deal to strengthen a standard revisionist contention about America's entry into World War II. Historians opposed to Roosevelt's interventionist diplomacy, such as Harry Elmer Barnes and Charles Callan Tansill, have suggested the following argument: Roosevelt, gripped by strong hostility toward Germany, wished ardently to enter the war on the side of the British. But Hitler had no desire to accommodate the American president, and he instructed his navy to avoid hostile incidents with American ships. There would be no repetition of the Lusitania disaster, if he could avoid it. What was Roosevelt to do? He knew that he could never ram through Congress a declaration of war against Germany, in the absence of German moves against the United States. Most Americans, however hostile to the Third Reich, opposed entry into the European War. According to the revisionists, this situation did not prove too much for the ingenuity of the wily Roosevelt. Japan and Germany were allies; and if Roosevelt could provoke Japan into attacking the United States, was not Germany bound to enter as well? Thwarted by isolationist sentiment for a direct blow against Germany, the president could enter the war through the Japanese "back door." Fleming notes that, after Pearl Harbor, this famous phrase was not long in coming to characterize Roosevelt's strategy. General Robert Wood, a founder of the America First Committee, told Charles Lindbergh immediately after learning of the Japanese attack, "he [Roosevelt] got us in through the back door" (p. 40). In the revisionist view, Roosevelt implemented his plan by provoking Japanese hostility, most notably through an oil embargo that placed Japan in an untenable economic situation. After Roosevelt rejected all Japanese peace feelers, Japan made ready to attack. Of this, Roosevelt was well aware, since the United States was able to decode Japanese military and diplomatic messages. Although information in the days before Pearl Harbor indicated an imminent Japanese assault, Roosevelt refused to warn the Army and Navy commanders at the base. He wanted an attack; otherwise, his back-door ruse would fail. To this daring argument, opponents of revisionism have posed two strong objections: First, was Roosevelt a Japanese agent? If not, surely he would not have placed the United States in a potentially losing situation. But did not the back-door strategy threaten exactly that outcome? A refusal to warn the naval commander of an impending Japanese attack risked major damage to the U.S. Pacific Fleet. Second, suppose Roosevelt's alleged plan "worked," in the sense that the Japanese attacked without inflicting unacceptably severe damage. Why would this get America into war with Germany? What if Germany refused Roosevelt's bait and did not declare war? Then Roosevelt would be no nearer to his goal of American entry into the European War, and he would face a full-scale war with a powerful foe. Mr. Fleming offers persuasive responses to these objections. "If an attack on Pearl Harbor was a surprise only in the tactical sense, what lay behind FDR's decision to base the fleet there? . . . A good part of the answer lies in the race-based contempt for the Japanese that too many Americans shared with their British allies. The Anglo_Saxons were convinced that the Japanese could neither shoot, sail, or fly with the skill of Westerners. . . . This arrogant mindset explains why Roosevelt expected to `get hit but not hurt' wherever the Japanese attacked-including Pearl Harbor" (pp. 44-45).1 If our author has turned aside the first objection, his case survives only to confront a more formidable obstacle. Once more, what if Germany did not respond with a declaration of war? Here, Mr. Fleming responds with his boldest stroke. On December 4, 1941, the Chicago Tribune, under the byline of Chesly Manly, published the Rainbow Five War Plan, a detailed agenda for an American invasion of Europe, in cooperation with the British. Most historians have seen publication of this plan as a grievous blow to the president. Did not the exposé show Roosevelt's constant claims that he sought no war in Europe to be blatant lies? Accordingly, most writers have wondered what dissident isolationist privy to administration plans leaked the documents. Suspicion has sometimes centered on the plan's author, Major (later General) Albert Wedemeyer, a firm supporter of America First, but he satisfied investigators that he was not involved. Mr. Fleming, amazingly, suggests that Roosevelt himself orchestrated the leak. By doing so, he ensured the success of his scheme. The publication of the plan convinced Hitler that war with the United States was inevitable; and in his speech to the Reichstag declaring war, he emphasized the Tribune story. "His final decision, Hitler said, had been forced on him by American newspapers, which a week before had revealed `a plan prepared by President Roosevelt . . . according to which his intention was to attack Germany in 1943 with all the resources of the United States. Thus our patience has come to the breaking point'" (p. 35). Publication of the plan served Roosevelt's interests, but it does not at once follow from this that he bore responsibility for the leak. Our author's case, however, is not yet complete. He notes that, although some evidence suggested that General Henry Arnold leaked the plan, the assistant director of the FBI, Louis Nichols, stated, "When we got to Arnold, we quit" (p. 28). Fleming takes this as an indication that the real source outranked the general; is not the president the most likely candidate? Further, General Wedemeyer, in his later years, inclined to hold Roosevelt responsible. Our author's case, though based on a convergence of several lines of evidence, seems to me no more than an intriguing possibility. But he is entirely correct to cast aside the antirevisionist argument suggested earlier. True enough, Germany might not have declared war. But what had Roosevelt to lose? Given the Axis Pact, he might have been able to force an American declaration of war through Congress. And even if he could not, how would the chances of entering the European war be weakened by a fight with Japan? I have spent a great deal of time on the leak of the Rainbow plan, since Fleming's explanation of it is the most original element of his book. But the volume contains much else. For one thing, it includes a devastating criticism of Roosevelt's unconditional surrender policy. Roosevelt's demand, announced at the Casablanca Conference in January 1943, played into the hands of German propaganda. "Dr. Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's propaganda chief, was in a state of euphoria. He called Roosevelt's announcement `world-historical tomfoolery of the first order.' To one of his colleagues, he admitted: `I should never have been able to think up so rousing a slogan. If our Western enemies tell us, we won't deal with you, our only aim is to destroy you . . . how can any German, whether he likes it or not, do anything but fight on with all his strength'" (p. 176)? Critics might claim that our author's argument overrates the capacity of the German resistance to Hitler, but I think he stands on firm ground. However small the chances of an overthrow of Hitler, what had Roosevelt to gain by unconditional surrender? Had there been no opposition at all to Hitler within Germany, the policy still would have been a mistake, for the reason stated by Goebbels. Further, if the Germans did surrender, they could anticipate an American policy more befitting Genghis Khan than the civilized leader of a modern state, a fact of which Goebbels was not slow to make use. Roosevelt inclined toward the plan of his Treasury secretary, Henry Morgenthau, Jr., for dealing with postwar Germany. The Morgenthau Plan aimed to strip Germany of her industrial capacity, with dire consequences for the German people. "It proposed . . . destroying all the industry in the Ruhr and Saar basins and turning Central Europe and the German people into agriculturalists. At one point Communist agent [Harry Dexter] White . . . feared they were going to extremes. He warned Morgenthau that the idea was politically risky; it would reduce perhaps 20 million people to starvation. `I don't care what happens to the population,' Morgenthau said" (pp. 428-29). Fortunately, the accession of Harry Truman to the presidency brought about the plan's demise. I have had to leave much in this rich book unmentioned-for example, Fleming's depiction of the conflicts between extreme New Dealers such as Henry Wallace and their opponents. But I have endeavored to sketch the main lines of our author's indictment of Roosevelt. He schemed to get the United States into a war that most people did not want. Once in it, he pursued a course designed to ensure an unnecessarily long and bloody conflict; and his postwar plans for the defeated enemy threatened widespread catastrophe. Hardly a record worthy of praise, memorials in Washington to the contrary notwithstanding. The New Dealers' War: Franklin D. Roosevelt and the War Within World War II
he who wants bread is the servant of the man that will feed him, if a man thus feeds a whole people, they are under his control.
American dependents were shipped stateside from several Pacific Islands...WEEKS AND MONTHS...before the Japanese attack. Roosevelt did not want the blood of women and children on his hands.
"On 4 Dec, the military governor of Guam US Navy Captain George J. McMillin was ordered to destroy all classified materials except those essential for current options based on the suspicion that the Japanese military was being mobilized for war. The order was carried out on 6 Dec. All but one of the civilian dependents of the American personnel at Guam were evacuated more than a month prior, starting on 17 Oct 1941."
Than you for that bit of information. It was very interesting and adds to my (limited) knowledge base of Pearl Harbor.
"The Central Intelligence Agency owns everyone of any significance in the major media." ~ William Colby, Director, CIA 1973–1976 Nothing in the State, everything outside the State, everything against the State - Jan Lester, Escape From Leviathan "When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves in the course of time a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that justifies it." - Frederic Bastiat Good order results spontaneously when things are let alone. - Zhuangzi
you'll fit in perfectly here. welcome. ;)
hmmmm. that's interesting. you would think that would have alarmed the army and navy commanders big time?
Given your name, I figured you'd enjoy a book published by the Mises Institute.
he who wants bread is the servant of the man that will feed him, if a man thus feeds a whole people, they are under his control.
Always :}
"The Central Intelligence Agency owns everyone of any significance in the major media." ~ William Colby, Director, CIA 1973–1976 Nothing in the State, everything outside the State, everything against the State - Jan Lester, Escape From Leviathan "When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves in the course of time a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that justifies it." - Frederic Bastiat Good order results spontaneously when things are let alone. - Zhuangzi
Epiphany. Thanks for your impartation of your knowledge concisely written. In reading about Plan Orange there was a little commentary that the Japanese were building better ships, weapons, etc and had a superior navy to the US's. That would help explain why they thought they could pull off grabbing the South Pacific for their own with the implication of keeping it. And like you said they were at our mercy and felt they had no choice but to fight. So they did.
The Japanese also thought that, if they made it too expensive (in blood) for the US to fight back, we would negotiate with them and let them keep their conquered territory.
he who wants bread is the servant of the man that will feed him, if a man thus feeds a whole people, they are under his control.
Thank you. If perfectly goes from Kum ba yah to slice and dice? Yes I will.
Because they felt they had no choice - FDR maneuvered them into a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" scenario. You might find the McCollum Memo interesting reading. It was the blueprint for FDR's actions in forcing Japan into a corner.
"One of the least understood strategies of the world revolution now moving rapidly toward its goal is the use of mind control as a major means of obtaining the consent of the people who will be subjects of the New World Order." K.M. Heaton, The National Educator
A few days after Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt recalled MacArthur to active duty and made him CIC of military forces in the Philippines. When MacArthur opened the latest version of Plan Orange, it said very plainly, "with an invasion of enemy forces, there will be NO relief of any kind forthcoming". "Your mission is to resist as long as practicable". What was MacArthur to tell the thousands of American and native forces??? Nothing,... thus to the last day before surrender the men thought the Navy would come any day to their rescue. Roosevelt and the government had written them off YEARS BEFORE.
FDR was delighted, and certainly not surprised, when the Japanese struck Pearl harbor. England was on the ropes, and the attack awoken a sleeping giant, just as Admiral Yamamoto suggested.
Jethro... Project that scenario to the Middle East.
That's why I watch CNBC. If the DOW crashes to 5000-6000 and remains there, buy more beans.
If China comes across the line into Afghanistan, what do we tell the grunts on the ground, hang on, help is on the way???? In Korea the Chinese could walk to war, same in the Middle East. We have to fly half way round the world. Chinese have us just where they want us, bleeding and dying in the ME for nothing. They must be laffing their butts off. We borrow money from them to fight an non winnable war for the Jews.
Cyni, i swear, that is so hard to internalize, but i'll tell you this. just reading it felt like a punch to the gut. the heartless callousness of it is shocking.
In Churchill's books about WW2, he says up front that when Pearl Harbor happened he went to bed and slept soundly because...ENGLAND WAS SAVED...the US was now in the war.
It is all there in black and white. Perhaps you often read the derogatory term of "Dugout Doug" attached to MacArthur? IN plan Orange, every detail was laid out years in advance for the defense of Manilla and how the war would be fought. The term dugout was actually the Malinta tunnel on Corregidor he used for his HQ, as directed. Mind you the tunnel was started in the 1920s, finished in the 1930s, bored into solid rock complete with a thousand bed hospital..ALL IN PREPARATION FOR FOREIGN INVASION. Pearl Harbor was a complete surprise only to the American people.
Don't care about England no more than Israel, never have, I'm Scots- Irish/Scottihs/Irish/Welsh...England can disappear for all I care. They helped get us in WWI and WWII.
"A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools." - Douglas Adams
The truth. The insidious erosion of the truth begins with questions like this one when the easy way out is a lie. All manner of evil is conceived and grows under a lie until like we have today where the lie is believed as truth. I'm speaking in general overall terms here but I figure you've gotten the same kind of looks I've gotten when I've told people FDR knew about the attack on Pearl ahead of time. We're KOOKS because we believe the truth because it was not told from the very beginning.
The Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and ten months later we invaded North Africa. Even back then, with limited access to the truth, we knew something was amiss. Our men were left to die on the vine in the Pacific and we invade Africa. One did not have to be too intelligent to discern that there was something we were not being told.
This stuff is all history to me because I wasn't around at that time but I've never had somebody put this stuff together like you have. The way you explain it can't be denied by any sensible person and you're the only person I've heard say it. Throughout my life I've read hundreds of books on WWII although almost all were story type books like "The Flying Tigers" etc but at no time was this kind of information brought up. That our government was willing to sacrifice essentially all US military personnel west of and including Pearl Harbor does not surprise me. The fact that this is not widely known in a sense does, but people are limited to what they are taught.
The most startling fact that people saw and heard cannot be denied by anyone, yet is never mentioned in schools, that is, we were NOT at war, our territory was invaded by Japan, thousands of Americans died, we invaded North Africa. I have had countless people say they see nothing of significance there. We saw it in 1941, one need not have been a genius to wonder what was going on. Japan was a way to war, and it was used. They were desperate for oil and reacted as we had expected for many years. General Billy Mitchell in 1924 warned that Japan would one day bomb Pearl Harbor, naming the day of the week and hour. He was off by thirty minutes. Pearl Harbor was a surprise, to American masses.
that's the most astonishing part that you've enlightened me about.
Do you think that MacArthur wanting to take the Chi-Coms down in N. Korea and southern China was his guilty conscience wanting to make up for for having a role in the deception prior to Pearl Harbor??
__________________________________________________________ At the time of egging the Japanese into WW2, MacArthur had been long retired and living in the Philippines. It was about two weeks after Pearl Harbor that he was recalled to duty. The updated Plan Orange was dumped in his lap, and in there it was all spelled out what his duty and order of battle was to be. Plus, there would be NO help or rescue forthcoming from stateside. Do the best you can for as long as you can, then surrender. MacArthur was dealt a losing hand from day one. The government could not allow a former Chief of Staff to be captured by the Japanese so he was taken out of the Islands at the last minute and told to go to Australia to command American forces there. Mac was shocked on arrival to find there were NO forces,none at all, he took command of a rented hotel and a half dozen officers assigned to him as staff. That was his American forces. It happened again in 1950. Serving in Japan, Truman sent him an order to save South Korea. MacArthur asked, "with what". He asked for nuclear weapons to stop the war, that was denied, the order said do the best you can. Mac had been down this road before. Re China...Here is a url for Macs farewell address to Congress. Listen to it and read the printed text, digest it and YOU WILL SEE HE GAVE A BLUEPRINT OF WHAT IS HAPPENING NOW WITH CHINA AND THE NEAR FUTURE. It is so prophetic that it seems he is speaking to us now. http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/douglasmacarthurfarewelladdress.htm Note, he states..."only a fool would wage war on the Asian mainland". That was for Truman.
From your link: "There are some who, for varying reasons, would appease Red China. They are blind to history's clear lesson, for history teaches with unmistakable emphasis that appeasement but begets new and bloodier war. It points to no single instance where this end has justified that means, where appeasement has led to more than a sham peace." Every U.S. POTUS since Nixon has sought appeasement at any price, to the point that we are buying products from what will be our opponent in a future war that they (the Chi-Coms) have already accepted as an inevitability.
__________________________________________________________ China is next, they are preparing, we are paying, and we are also preparing.
Thanks for your knowledge and insight in our discussion. The answers I've gotten have more to do with learning about human nature than the American condition. They both suck.
This is the site for Plan Orange that Cynicom talked about which was the military's contingency plans for Japan. Medium length read. http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/war-plan-orange.htm This was in it, a total surprise to me. Never heard about it. "The west coast actually saw a limited amount of warfare. Submarines of the Japanese 6th Fleet performed reconnaissance and struck the sea lines of communication. Around the middle of December 1941, nine submarines arrived in American waters for the start of what was to be eight months of operations. Four of these boats eventually made attacks on coastal shipping, sinking two tankers and damaging one freighter. On 23 February 1942 the submarine I-17 surfaced near Santa Barbara and used its deck gun to fire thirteen 5.5-inch shells into oil installations, although with negligible damage. On the night of 21-22 June 1942, a submarine rose to the surface at the mouth of the Columbia River in Oregon and fired about a dozen 5.5-inch shells at Fort Stevens, a coast artillery fort. Militarily insignificant, that attack marked the first time since the War of 1812 that a foreign enemy had fired on a military installation in the continental United States. In early September 1942 the final Japanese submarine attack on the American coast during the war took place in reprisal for the Doolittle raid on Tokyo the previous April. The I-25, which carried a float plane, launched its aircraft off the Oregon coast on the 9th of the month. The airplane dropped an incendiary bomb on a forested mountain hill near Brookings, starting a small forest fire that local authorities quickly extinguished. The I-25 then sank two tankers before leaving for Japan."
In fact, one may go way back to Teddy Roosevelt to find the very first thinking that Japan would one day strike this country. Submarines??? Off Los Angeles lies a torpedoed American tanker still holding 75,000 BBL of oil. The government is becoming more worried each day as they know full well it will soon start leaking.
#2. To: Cynicom (#1)
#3. To: Turtle (#2)
FDR was trying to start a war with Japan, that cannot be denied.
#4. To: Cynicom (#3)
#5. To: Cynicom (#1)
The plan envisioned that Japan would one day move south in search for oil in the Dutch East Indies, and that US possessions would come under attack. Guam, Wake Philippines etc.
#6. To: Bill Crowe (#5)
My thinking at this stage was Japan wanted the South Pacific but I couldn't figure out why. You mention oil and I also to some degree suspect land
#7. To: F.A. Hayek Fan (#0)
#8. To: DeaconBenjamin (#7)
Although information in the days before Pearl Harbor indicated an imminent Japanese assault, Roosevelt refused to warn the Army and Navy commanders at the base.
#9. To: DeaconBenjamin (#7)
#10. To: DeaconBenjamin (#7)
#11. To: Bill Crowe (#5)
After becoming a full blown cynic on all things political and some historical events
#12. To: Cynicom (#8)
American dependents were shipped stateside from several Pacific Islands...WEEKS AND MONTHS...before the Japanese attack.
#13. To: F.A. Hayek Fan (#10)
#14. To: DeaconBenjamin (#13)
Given your name, I figured you'd enjoy a book published by the Mises Institute.
#15. To: Cynicom (#6)
#16. To: Bill Crowe (#15)
#17. To: christine (#11)
you'll fit in perfectly here. welcome. ;)
#18. To: Bill Crowe (#5)
You mention oil and I also to some degree suspect land but if FDR was pushing Japan for a war why were they so stupid in taking the poisonous bait?
#19. To: Bill CroweChristine (#15)
(Edited)
#20. To: Bill Crowe, Christine, Jethro Tull (#15)
#21. To: Cynicom (#20)
#22. To: Jethro Tull (#21)
#23. To: Cynicom (#22)
Project that scenario to the Middle East.
#24. To: Jethro Tull (#23)
#25. To: Cynicom (#20)
Nothing,... thus to the last day before surrender the men thought the Navy would come any day to their rescue. Roosevelt and the government had written them off YEARS BEFORE.
#26. To: Jethro Tull (#21)
FDR was delighted, and certainly not surprised,
#27. To: christine (#25)
i swear, that is so hard to internalize
#28. To: Cynicom (#26)
ENGLAND WAS SAVED
#29. To: Cynicom (#20)
What was MacArthur to tell the thousands of American and native forces???
#30. To: Bill Crowe (#29)
The truth.
#31. To: Cynicom (#30)
#32. To: Bill Crowe (#31)
people are limited to what they are taught.
#33. To: Cynicom, Bill Crowe (#32)
(Edited)
General Billy Mitchell in 1924 warned that Japan would one day bomb Pearl Harbor, naming the day of the week and hour. He was off by thirty minutes.
#34. To: Cynicom (#27)
Obama is the miscegenated bastard of a white communist whore. True story.
-Schweizerische Schuetzenzeitung (Swiss Shooting Federation) April, 1941
#35. To: X-15, Christine (#34)
Do you think that MacArthur wanting to take the Chi-Coms down in N. Korea and southern China was his guilty conscience wanting to make up for for having a role in the deception prior to Pearl Harbor??
#36. To: Cynicom (#35)
Obama is the miscegenated bastard of a white communist whore. True story.
-Schweizerische Schuetzenzeitung (Swiss Shooting Federation) April, 1941
#37. To: X-15 (#36)
#38. To: Cynicom (#32)
#39. To: christine, Cynicom (#33)
that's the most astonishing part that you've enlightened me about. (The General Billy Mitchell prediction)
#40. To: Bill Crowe, Christine (#39)
Never heard about it.
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