Talk:Pearl Harbor advance-knowledge debate

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Contents


[edit] Coverups

From The Week Before Pearl Harbor by A. A. Hoehling (W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., New York, NY, 1963), in the Epilogue is to be found on Page 200:

“... That panic gripped the second deck of the Navy Department immediately after the attack on Pearl Harbor is beyond reasonable dispute. One officer, then in intelligence, now in a high post in the Navy, told this writer that he went to his office safe one morning to find that a number of ‘magic’ dispatches were mysteriously missing. He never retrieved them. ONI, in fact, had done such a thorough housecleaning of its top-secret and secret as well as not-so-secret files, that, according to another officer on duty at the time, not even a departmental organization chart of November and December, 1941, could ever be found. ...”

And, on Page 204:

“ ... There are a few specialists, circa 1941, who insist that their memories as well must bear the ‘secret’ tag. A leading cryptanalyst, in retirement, hinting at a kind of passive brain-washing, with his pension as a lever, maintains he has been ordered not to discuss those long-ago codes and ciphers. However, the National Security Council, which he indirectly accused, has denied not only the allegations but any interest in the World War II period. ...”

Perhaps of note in passing, within Hoehling’s text (released some 22 years after the Pearl Harbor attack) are interviews with several principals, e.g.,Stark, Kimmel, Bicknell, McCollum, Rochefort, ..., etc. JN25 in any of its variants is not mentioned, while Safford is quoted only using “Operations Code” at the top of Page 76.

From the Knox Report, released on December 15, 1941, one of the early reportings on the damage done at Pearl Harbor.

"... Neither Short nor Kimmel, at the time of the attack, had any knowledge of the plain intimations of some surprise move, made clear in Washington, through the interception of Japanese instructions to Nomura, in which a surprise move of some kind was clearly indicated by the insistence upon the precise time of Nomura's reply to Hull, at one o'clock on Sunday.

A general war warning had been sent out from the Navy Department on November 27th, to Admiral Kimmel. General Short told me that a message of warning sent from the War Department on Saturday night at midnight, before the attack, failed to reach him until four or five hours after the attack had been made. ..."

A. "Neither Short nor Kimmel, ... had any knowledge of the plain intimations of some surprise move, made clear in Washington, ..." [Who knew what and when?]

B. "A general war warning had been sent out from the Navy Department on November 27th, ..." [Not a full alert, but a 'general war warning' - the so called "Do/Don't" message.]

C. "... message of warning sent from the War Department on Saturday night at midnight, before the attack, ..." This message has never been found, and is assumed destroyed. [It is also often confused with the storied Marshall message delivered by RCA messenger after the attack.]

What if this midnight message had been sent as Knox believes it had been when he arrived at Pearl Harbor and asked about it. Imagine if this "... Saturday night at midnight, before the attack, ..." - that is, midnight, December 6, 1941, Washington local time - had been sent and received by Kimmel. The two IJN O-type seaplanes doing their pre-attack fly-over - see and report what?
—Preceding unsigned comment added by 172.132.176.50 (talk • contribs) 06:31, 13 December 2007

This is so incredibly ignorant, I should just ignore it.
"A general war warning had been sent out from the Navy Department on November 27th" Did you bother to read it? It warns of possible attacks in the Philippines, Russia, Borneo, & Thailand; it makes no mention whatever of Pearl Harbor, contrary to what's usually implied by conspiracy loons.
"plain intimations of some surprise move," Ditto. Not against Pearl.
"Imagine" Yes, do. Kimmel sorties the fleet to meet Nagumo, rdv w Halsey en route. Nagumo delivers a crushing blow to the Battle Line. 8 BBs & 1 (perhaps both?) US CVs sunk; Halsey, Kimmel, Spruance, Burke?, Fletcher KIA. Losses top 20000. Nagumo approaches Hawaii & savages the shore installations. Rochefort, Davenport, Jacobs, English KIA. Hawaii is incapable of serving as a repair & replenishment station for a year. US subs congregate in Australia & San Francisco. Japan wins at the Coral Sea, fight to a draw around Fiji. The Soviets enter the war in August 1945, just as the Marines assault Saipan. The Soviets (with reason) insist on joint occupation of Japan & control of all of Korea. MacArthur takes sides in the Chinese Civil War. The Soviets object. LeMay suggests boming them back to the Stone Age with atomic bombs. Truman agrees. The world goes up in flames. Trekphiler (talk) 10:35, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
Or - the China-Japanese war continues; China without aid from US and USSR. Germany and USSR (without Lend-Lease aid) bleed each other to death, Britain is on "Cash-and-Carry" basis ... British Empire falls. Britain, French, and Dutch lose colonies. No communist inspired Korean War, Viet Nam War. No Cold War. ... United States is not policeman of the world. A geo-political world with a re-ordered set of "spheres of influence" with dollar/mark/yen economies ... [No Clear and Present Danger: A Skeptical View of the US Entry into WWII Bruce M. Russett] —Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.247.23.47 (talk) 11:56, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
"China without aid from US and USSR" What fantasy world are you living in? The ChiComs had been getting aid since the '30s.
"No communist inspired Korean War"? On what basis? CCP losing the Civil War when Chiang rolls a six & pillages Beijing? Or does the U.S. just hammer Japan & ignore China? The China she'd been helping for a decade & been trying to open as a market (of about 500 million people) for longer than that, BTW. Fat chance. Can't have it both ways. (Oh, wait, this is your fantasy. I guess you can.)
"Germany and USSR (without Lend-Lease aid) bleed each other to death"? Only in the fantasies of the ill-informed. The Soviets would have won regardless; the question was, how long would it take? With Germany gone, & no really strong power in WEur, there'd be nothing to keep the Red Army off the Biscay coast. (Especially if "British Empire falls", which "Britain is on "Cash-and-Carry" basis" ensures, which would bring more than a little ruin to the U.S. banking system, which is one reason the U.S. joined WW1...never mind WW2.)
"Britain is on "Cash-and-Carry" basis". Well, no, as noted. Also, Hitler was acknowledged as more dangerous than Tojo. And SU's growing power would worry US as much as Hitler, if (when) Hitler attacked SU & brought his own destruction, so propping up Britain made sense in any case. (Why no greater effort was made to resuscitate France is unclear.)
Lose colonies? As I recall, they did anyway; the difference was, how willingly? The U.S. had the power postwar to ensure it was peaceful, & failed to use it in Vietnam, while misjudging the need for SU aid against Japan, whence occupied Korea. "policeman of the world"? No, bad judgement by FDR & his senior advisors.
I'm guessing you'll answer this with more insults, too, seeing how reluctant you are to deal with facts. Gerry Orville 15:23, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
Another of those Trek "I'm guessing ..." remarks - reminiscent of W. H. Auden's O Where Are you Going and its last stanza, which half-thimble no doubt knows to be: "As he left them there, as he left them there." [But perhaps not, as half-thimble admits to an aversion to "researching" ... and struggles with his own and very public errors of fact.] —Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.247.23.47 (talk) 19:44, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

<--I see I was right about you again. So much for "half-thimble". Trekphiler (talk) 14:13, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Merge

Should we merge this with Attack on Pearl Harbor? It seems to cover much of the same ground, and both sides of the coin could be shown in that one article...what actually happened--i.e. an account of what happened--on top and the conspiracy theories after(?) Just a suggestion. the_ed17 15:21, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

The article seems like it is one big statement that 'Pearl Harbor was orchestrated', and Wikipedia is not a place for debate, only to state facts objectively....it just sounds like the people who say that the Halocaust never happened to me..... no matter how bad that sounds. the_ed17 15:33, 14 May 2008 (UTC)
No we shouldn't merge. This question was debated at talk Pearl Harbor in the breakup of that article into the current two. The decision was that there was sufficient material of the alternative type that attempting to include it with the plain article would be too awkward. See the 1st (or 2nd) archive on the Pearl Harbor page for the details. ww (talk) 05:15, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
Alright, it was just an idea. Thanks for replying! the_ed17 01:25, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Imperialism

76.173.230.15 (talk) 09:38, 10 June 2008 (UTC)this is the only wikipedia entry in which the primary author condescends the reader by phrasing the section titles as rhetorical and seemingly intuitive questions for the sake of manipulating the reader in to a conspiracy belief (despite my shared view of the likelihood) and thus diverges from the high integrity sharing of information the venue aspires to.

Secondarily, there is no mention of the regret the Japanese displayed by mass suicides in the high(er) ranking military personnel when they discovered that the US was attacked UNAWARE of the intention of the Japanese to attack. They were humiliated to have attacked an unaware nation.76.173.230.15 (talk) 09:38, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Suicides? Never heard of any. Trekphiler (talk) 14:10, 10 June 2008 (UTC)