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Thursday, December 7, 2017

PEARL HARBOUR - DO NOT FORGET - DECEMBER 7, 1941

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A DATE THAT WILL LIVE IN INFAMY
-Image result for Pearl harbour
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Dave Israel
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5 comments:

  1. Lanny HoweDecember 8, 2017 at 2:55 PM

    As bad as it was, I heard recently an author being interviewed on C-Span say that Pearl Harbor could have been worse. The author (whose name I forget right now) said that Japan thought that with a knockout blow the US would capitulate and settle for peace with Japan and Germany at the price of not intervening in Europe. First, they misread the resolve of our country. We were a "sleeping giant" and once awakened . . . . Second, which I had not known, they expected to destroy four or five US aircraft carriers at Pearl Harbor, which were NOT THERE.

    Roosevelt himself had NOT been sleeping. He and Churchill were in close contact, and the US had been shipping munitions and materiel to Great Britain for some time. For Roosevelt it was a question of waking up the country, and Pearl Harbor, shameful though it was on the part of Japan and tragic though it was for us, awoke the giant and galvanized the US into action.

    The author also, giving specifics, compared how well the allied powers, to their advantage, cooperated together as opposed to the axis powers (Germany, Japan and Italy), who cooperated with each other very little.

    Alas, I must have been too lazy to note the author's name, or else I made a note of it and forgot where I put it. I'd like to read his book.

    I remember Pearl Harbor, our dad telling me about it (I was five), and his using Roosevelt's phrase, "A day in infamy."

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    1. Lanny HoweDecember 8, 2017 at 4:40 PM

      Whaddya know, I HAD made note of the author's first name, Victor, and that was enough for me to find the book on Amazon. The book is titled "The Second World Wars," the author Victor Davis Hanson.

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  2. UCO PresidentDecember 8, 2017 at 4:59 PM

    Hi Lanny,
    This is an incredibly complex issue -"What did FDR know, and when did he know it"??
    Keep in mind that "we" were reading the Japanese Diplomatic cipher system PURPLE.
    The decrypts were classified at the highest levels of secrecy.

    If you want to understand these issues, you will have to do "in-depth" research on what PURPLE revealed, and what "we" did about it. Once you start, you won't be able to put it down - rig for heavy weather.

    Dave Israel

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    1. Lanny HoweDecember 8, 2017 at 9:19 PM

      Thanks, Dave. My father-in-law believed that FDR knew about Pearl Harbor in advance. The US knew both the Purple (Japanese) and Enigma (German) codes at this point, I think, and in both cases it was of supreme importance we not clue the adversary into the fact we were reading their top-secret code. This meant, of course, accepting rather than taking steps to prevent some heavy losses, which would have tipped our hand. In addition, with Pearl Harbor, FDR would have known Pearl Harbor would provide the impetus needed for the isolationist US populace to declare war. We did declare war—on BOTH Japan and Germany—the very next day. I have known about this "possibility" for a long time but have never researched it sufficiently to have an opinion on whether, indeed, FDR did have the full facts in hand in advance. This is not what interested me in the author, however, and he made no reference to the above in what I heard of the interview with him. So I have no idea if this is explored in his book. The author (new to me but that means nothing) has some pretty impressive credentials: "In 1992 … named the most outstanding undergraduate teacher of classics in the nation"; "A definitive account of World War II by America's preeminent military historian."

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  3. ejs2283December 9, 2017 at 3:59 PM

    Just an unrelated note to the foregoing posts. I watched most of CBS's morning show on December 7, 2017 and I did not hear a mention that it was Pearl Harbor Day. If such is the case, that is too bad.

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