OrionWorks wrote:
Here's an old family story: Long long ago, Roosevelt
(bless his heart -- the only one of the allies who gave
a [EMAIL PROTECTED] about China) issued an ultimatum to Japan. An
uncle of mine, who was very smart but slightly cracked
and who would have fitted in perfectly on Vortex, called
my father, who was also a close friend of his. He said
to my dad, "Did you see the paper? Did you read what
Roosevelt did?? Japan's got no choice -- they're going
to hit us, within the next two weeks!" He wasn't
clairvoyant, though; he told my dad that the thought
Japan would hit us in the Phillipines, while they
actually hit Hawaii. But his timing was dead-on: they
bombed Pearl Harbor a week later. Now, the point of
this story isn't that my uncle was brilliant, nor that
he had inside information. He was smart, but he didn't
have inside information, and I'm sure Roosevelt had
folks on his staff who were just as smart as my
Uncle Jack. THEREFORE ..... If Jack could figure it
out, so could Roosevelt. In other words, Roosevelt,
who was anything but dumb, must be assumed to have also
known with a high degree of certainty that Japan
was about to hit us. Forget the intercepted radio
broadcast, the intelligence reports that weren't acted
on -- just from first principles and a knowledge of
their own actions in issuing the ultimatum, the White
House _must_ have known the attack was coming, and must
have known, to within a few days, when it would
happen. But Roosevent didn't do anything to prepare,
and the fleet was a flock of sitting ducks as a
result ... the President knew the attack was coming, but
he ignored it.
(Speculating as to why he did that, is far beyond the
scope of this post.)
You can not make such statements and then claim that speculating as to why [Roosevelt]
did what he did "...is beyond the scope of this post."
Sure I can, because my knowledge of the facts, such as they are, ends at
that point. The tale of my Uncle Jack _apparently_ knowing better than
the President what the Japanese were going to do is pure fact.
Conclusions drawn from such an anecdote are, of course, guesswork, but
none the less the story is something I know. On the other hand, since I
wasn't even born yet and I certainly wasn't following current events, I
don't know enough about what was going on to have more than the vaguest
notion as to _why_ the President might have done such a thing.
Certainly, the notion that a "big disaster" was needed to get us into
the war seems silly on the face of it -- if the fleet had been at sea
when the Japanese attacked it would have gotten us into the war just the
same. Bombing a major port is an act of war whether or not there's a
fleet in the harbor.
And, for that matter, if the Japanese government had simply folded up in
the face of the ultimatum, it would have accomplished Roosevelt's most
likely objective, which was to get Japan out of China and keep them away
from the oil fields they were supposedly hoping to capture.
One rather bizarre bit of speculation I've read is that Roosevelt had
already decided that the Pacific fleet was obsolete, and that the Navy
administration was stuck in the mud, and that faced with an inevitable
war the only way to assure our ultimate victory was to sink the fleet
and start over from scratch. No half-measures would do because the old
guard in the Navy was married to WWI technology and would resist
attempts at replacing it wholesale. But I don't know nearly enough
about the technology of the time, let alone the politics, to assess this
scenario, beyond saying it seems too contorted and diabolical to believe
it could have been part of the plan of any reasonably sane person.
I can't let this sit here.
My dad served as an officer in WWII on a sub chaser in the Pacific "theatre".
Fortunately for me he managed to miss most of the deadliest conflicts. He told me he
occasionally heard late night radio chatter concerning Kamikaze boats that had been
rigged with torpedoes attempting to ram some of their ships. Sometimes they were
successful in detonating, sometimes not.
While my dad is no longer with me I think he would likely say that had
Roosevelt known without a doubt that there would be an eminent Japanese attack
on Pearl Harbor within a certain time period he would have done everything
within his power to move the fleet and personnel to safer locations - out to
sea, other bases, wherever.
Well, if Roosevelt didn't know, why didn't he? Other people with poorer
access to current military intelligence figured it out; why didn't the
White House? Actually a quick Google of "burma oil japan roosevelt"
turns up a number of capsule histories of the time which make it clear
that they _DID_ know that an attack was iminent, but that, for whatever
reason, the possibility that Hawaii might be the target was not taken
seriously enough. Perhaps it was just overconfidence in the results of
trying to outguess the enemy.
My dad's take on the mess was that my Uncle Jack was brilliant and
Roosevelt was a fat-head, but I've always been inclined to think it was
not quite that simple.
I've read claims elsewhere that out of 7 fleet admirals at the start of
the war, all but 1 were replaced within the first ... um ... 6 months, I
think. This was offered as an illustration of how the military must
change from a role-oriented to a task-oriented organization when a
nation goes from peace to war, which may require the replacement of top
people who are inculcated with the peace-time military culture, but it
might equally well have been given as evidence for the claim that most
of the top brass in the Navy was incompetent or out of date at the start
of the war. And that could explain any number of bad decisions, of course.
Any implication (direct or indirect) that he deliberately let his fleet and
crew languish in the harbor - basically as sitting ducks is absolutely
preposterous.
Is it? Did your father know FDR? Was FDR incapable of being so
cold-blooded?
What happened at Yalta, anyway? Didn't FDR have something to do with
handing off eastern Europe to Russia? Maybe he could be a little
cold-blooded on occasion, eh?
OTOH, I also understand Roosevelt was very much interested trying to come up with a
legitimate excuse to get us in involved in the "other" war over in Europe
despite an extremely reluctant congress that wanted to stay neutral. Roosevelt knew
sooner or later we would have to deal with the global situation both over in Europe as
well as in the Pacific. Roosevelt realized that despite congresses' reluctance to act he
knew our nation couldn't just ride it out and hope we could stay neutral forever.
And he also realized that despite the fact that no nation in Europe
could or would show any interest, _somebody_ had to do something about
Japan's actions in China or there was going to be some very bad stuff
coming down for everybody in the future.
Maybe the comparisons with Pearl Harbor are more apt
than Bush would have us realize.
Maybe so. Maybe so... Never the less I suspect I would have felt a lot more
confident had Roosevelt been on watch when 9/11 occurred. At least he knew how
to communicate.
Yeah, and he had a brain in his head, too, and had never suffered from
spending too much time with a glass in his hand.
And he knew how to negotiate, and he knew the value of maintaining
foreign contacts; in short he knew that Americans aren't the only people
on Earth. Maybe there would have been no 9/11 if Roosevelt had been Pres.
Regards
Steven Vincent Johnson
www.OrionWorks.com
