So you're saying that the United States, more importantly, the President of the United States not only knew about the attacks, but did nothing to stop them? Please, I am stupid, is this what you are saying?
I don't believe Roosevelt knew any specifics about a Japanese attack, especially at Hawaii. But it is fairly clear that he wanted the Japanese to make the first war move. The US public just wasn't prepared to conduct a pre-emptive war on Japan, so Roosevelt had to wait for a provocation. So he imposed an oil embargo and waited for the Japanese to react. Everybody expected that move to be an occupation of the oilfields of the Dutch East Indies, possibly accompanied by an assault on US forces in the Philipines. Instead the Japanese went for the jugular and attacked the main fleet in its home base, far from the war zone. Nobody really expected that. But Roosevelt and his advisors, Admiral Kimmell, and General Short should have been prepared for it, anyway. General MacArthur's failure to be prepared when his command in the Phillipines was always squarely in the war zone, is inexcusable.
The Pacific commanders were warned that war would break out at any moment. They were expected to respond appropriately. Kimmel and Short did NOT respond appropriately. Furthermore, At Dawn We Slept makes it clear that all warnings that Washington and the Pentagon were getting about war were passed on to the appropriate commanders. You have a permanent segment of the American population that will always eagerly soak up any new "facts" on certain conspiracy subjects: who killed JFK; which galaxy the green men found at Roswell, NM were from; that FDR knew about and allowed our Navy to be surprise attacked at Pearl Harbor; a new one is who killed Diana; who killed MLK; who killed Bobby; etc. Publishers know that and are always eager to feed their fantasies. These people will believe anything except the truth. End of story.
In the book that Mike is referring to, that is exactly what the author is alleging, that FDR knew Pearl Harbor was going to be attacked and did nothing to warn the commanders there. The book got national news when it came out, and much was made of the fact that that was the central basis of it. It is opium for America's kooks.
In the years before WWII the US Navy had done exercises to see how vulnerable Pearl Harbor was to a surprise attack from Japanese aircraft carriers. The final report concluded that it was feasible for naval aircraft to attack it from the north early in the morning. That is exactly what happened. The two commanders at Pearl Harbor, Kimmel and Short, were aware of these reports. Although the US Navy was stretched very thin at this time, trying to protect Alaska, the West Coast of the US, the Phillippines, the Panama Canal, Guam, Midway, Wake Island, and other places, along with carrying out our obligations to Great Britain and Australia, Kimmel and Short did not do everything they could have to protect the base from attack. They did have a limited number of long range patrol aircraft, but they did not set up the maximum patrol fence around the Islands even when they were told war was expected to break out at any moment. They could have done a much better job of using submarines, destroyers, and aircraft to patrol hundreds of miles from Hawaii. That was what was needed. They were told war could break out at any moment, but Kimmel kept the fleet on a schedule that kept it in port on Saturdays and Sundays. They did NOT maximize their patrol cordon. Like I have said, what do you have to do, tell them exactly what minute they are coming over the hill? The US did not know Pearl Harbor was about to be attacked. They did tell all commanders to get ready for war, and the commanders at Pearl Harbor did not do that.
Also, I have noticed that there is a tendency among certain people to try and blame the USA for, well, apparently getting America into WWII, as if WE were the aggressors. I will have to admit here that, much to my chagrin, this tendency can be seen in liberal Democrats as well as members of the right wing. Some people are so naive that it astonishes. We would be well advised to remind ourselves what the Japnese Imperial Empire of WWII was and what it had been doing. They had been in China for years, on a policy of plain naked aggression, taking the parts of China they wanted by military force. What they did to the Koreans can be understood by recognizing how much the WWII generation of Koreans hate the Japanese to this day. The same goes for the Chinese. You think some of our POWs hate the Japanese to this day? Go to China and start asking the WWII generation that is left there. Pure hatred. They treated fellow Asians as sub-humans right along with Westerners. They performed horrible medical experiments on captured Chinese. They committed the Rape of Nanking. When you look at Nazi Germany with them, you come to realize that every Allied soldier who fought in WWII was fighting for every decent thought and every freedom and for every bit of human dignity that freedom-loving people had thought about and conceived of and died for, for the past 2000 years. You think the world has problems now? Well, that is nothing compared to the kind of horrible place this would be if the Allies had lost the war.
OK CB, I said I wouldn't make any more responses to this but I want to make sure I understand you. You said that Washington sent out war warnings (which I agree they did) that war was imminent. To my feeble little mind, that means that they had information (which I said they did due to the breaking of the Japanese codes) indicating they knew war to be imminent. If they knew this and subsequently sent this information to PH, then please explain to me how the attack could have been a "sneak" attack! Whether Kimmel and Short took any action or not is irrelevant to this issue. All that would concern is their so-called dereliction of duty. There seems to be some thought that I have a problem with us fighting the war. I said originally that the Axis had to be fought. My complaint is the American people were lied to when FDR made his Day of Infamy speech and called the attack unprovoked. He was lying out of both sides of his mouth! It clearly was, whether you and vfh and others don't want to hear it. He was more concerned with his political career than about the lives of ordinary everyday Americans. And we still see that today in our politicians. None of them is above lying and sacrificing you and me to further their political careers. That is what I object to. In FDR's defense, he was backed into a corner. America was isolationist and determined not to get involved in another foreign war. But he knew the threat that was posed if we didn't so he had to figure out a way to get it done. And that is what he did. I also object to the hypocrisy involved in the reason we got involved. Britain, France, Holland all colonized countries by force of arms, brutalized the people of those countries, certainly not to the extent the Germans and Japanese did, but nonetheless did and the U.S. never voiced a word of protest, in fact supported it, because these countries were our allies. Whether you like it or not, the Germans, Italians and Japanese didn't do anything that those countries didn't do. They just did it with a degree of brutality and oppression the like the world has never seen. And whether you like it or not, race also played a part in our attitude toward Japan. I am sorry if information that has come to light recently exposes much of what you have been taught and believed from the past. And I am sorry if it cast a shadow on your heroes. But the information is there, authentic and real. That's not my fault. Like I said, if you want to go on living like you have, believing what you have, go ahead. I don't care one way or the other. Oh, and let's not forget how we abandoned Eastern Europe to Stalin after the war. I'm sure those people really were grateful to us for that! So much for fighting for freedom. And I agree, MacArthur's negligence in the Phillippines was far worse than anything Kimmel or short failed to do. But he was one of Americas heroes and favorites. He was also a friend of Marshall's and FDR wasn't going to do anything to him.
So let me get this straight. Japan had invaded Manchuria and then China, was planning on invasions of the Phillippines, Southeast Asia, and other countries to exploit those countries resources, and the fault for the war breaking out between the US and Japan is that FDR and America provoked them? I guess you subscribe to the theory that if I walk through a slum area carrying a Rolex watch and I get mugged, I provoked the mugger? So if FDR had just allowed Japan to go on about her merry way, take over any country it wanted, kill anybody it wanted, and take whatever it wanted, then war would never have broken out between America and Japan? I guess you have a point. If FDR had rolled over for Tojo and told them we would not do anything to restrict their ambiitons of a new Japanese empire whereever they wanted one, then war would never have broken out. So I guess you are right. By opposing Japan's ambitions, FDR "forced" Japan to attack Pearl Harbor, and go to war with us. You are right. WWII is all FDR's fault. He provoked it by telling Neanderthal-minded imperialists who wanted the freedom to brutalize anyone they wanted that he objected to it, and that America would not stand in the way and allow it to happen. I am glad we had this discussion.
As for "abandoning" Eastern Europe to Stalin after WWII, it would have taken another World War, World War III, to be exact, to free Eastern Europe from Stalin. So I guess we just told Stalin to take whatever he wanted and allowed him to do it. Yeah, sure. I forgot. That is another "conspiracy" theory these people can't get enough of. That is that FDR, a closet Communist himself, no doubt, "gave" Eastern Europe to the USSR.
