Opinion Question of the Day

[Idealism]

Did FDR willingly ignore reports of a Japanese air strike to be imminent prior to Pearl Harbor, in order to bring the country into war and mobilize the economy out of the Depression? Please state any reasons you have for your answer

[Forkboy]

1. No, I don't think so.

One reason is that in most instances where I've seen the argument made the people are a little out there on many other topics. I've also read quite a few books on not only the topic of Pearl Harbor, but the whole war in general, and none of them have put forward that argument, though a couple mentioned it in passing, but in a rather dismissive tone.

Of course, I could be wrong.

[Idealism]

2. Who writes books on Wars?

Who stood to gain from 40% of our GDP being used for military spending shortly after Pearl Harbor? Dwight Eisenhower in the 50s warned of the military industrial complex that has taken hold in this country, its not a recent occurence. Now I am not prone to these conspiracy theories and fringe concepts, but I have read more than one book on the obscure subject about how telegraphs were intercepted by the US and did not get acted on. Now of course this happens all the time, but when the world is in a war, you would think special attention- or at least consideration of the possibilities- would've been paid to warnings like this. Just an interesting thought to spark some conversation

[Forkboy]

8. Historians, scholars, vets, politicians, etc.

I've read about the intercepted telegraphs. If I remember correctly Gen George Marshall held a closed meeting with members of the press around Nov 14th or 15th in which he announced that they had broken the Japanese codes. He also predicted an attack in the first 10 days of December. It wasn't made public, which is what I think has led to much of the conspiracy stuff surrounding them. However, it makes perfect sense to not announce it, as doing so lets the Japanese know they need to change their codes, not something you want to do.

On the 25th of Novmeber the US Navy detected movement of the Japanese Naval Fleet led by the Yamamoto. The fleet had a screen of submarines and that was what was detected, but the destination was thought to be the Marshall Islands and South East Asia.

On the 27th the whole US Pacific Fleet was put on war alert. The next day SoS Hull sent another secret message warning of a possible attack.

After a bad storm separated much of the Japanese fleet, on the 30th US radio intercepted a message from the Pearl Harbor Attack Force ship the Akagi calling his ships to reform.

On Dec 1, FDR was given 4 "Purple" intercepts, one from the 28th of Nov saying that US-Japan negotiations were about to end...abruptly (the negotiations had been over the topic of Japan's presence in China). The same day Japan changed all their codes.

On Dec 6th the Army and Navy both decrypted the Japanese war plans, and these 13 missives were brought to FDR, at which point he supposedly said the famous words, "This means war!" But there was no destination in the war plans. The 14th part was missing.

Late that night another dispatch was intercepted that said "X-Day" was Dec 8th, Tokyo time, which was Dec 7th for us still. This message wouldn't be deciphered for two days though, a day after the attack.

I may be off on a day or two here, but from this timeline it's hard to see how FDR could have known anything solid enough to really act upon to stop the attack.

And don't worry about reading conspiracy theories and such. I do all the time, with a very skeptical eye, but enough so-called conspiracy theories have been proven correct that keeping an eye on them isn't a bad thing. I just feel in this case it's a wrong theory.

As I said though, I could be wrong. :)

[Idealism]

9. I guess it comes down to

FDRs record of hawking the war or isolationism. Maybe he could've prevented the tragedy, but I'm fairly sure we wouldve been led by events to engage the Axis powers at some point regardless. I haven't read anything on FDRs personal thoughts about isolationism, but what I inferred from reviewing speech notes from Congress in the years leading up to 1941 was that most Congressman wanted us to stay out, and the only reason they were having the debate in the first place was at FDRs urging to reconsider the global implications. Like I said, just a conversation starter, thanks for your contribution on the topic :)

[Forkboy]

11. My pleasure. Thanks for starting the thread.

It touches on two topics of interest. WW2 history and conspiracy theories. I get into both. :)

[vixengrl]

3. LIHOP.

Only a litle kidding, because I just don't have the mad historical skillz to answer that one truthfully. But I understand that the US intelligence, (think about this--what was US intelligence prior to WWII? What agency?) I think it was Naval intelligence that intercepted the codes. (The NSA, The CIA developed out of OSS, there was an explosion in WWII of the art of spycraft--but that's just an observation.)

Let's say a message or two was intercepted that indicated there would be an attack on a domestic military target with a nation that, if unsuccessful, was nonetheless likely to try again. Let's even suppose that the US was looking warily at the war that was occuring on the European front with distress for what our natural allies were undergoing, and knew any action--would bring us easily into that war, as well.

There was no sense in giving up the fact that we cracked the code, because we would need them to repeat it in the early stages of the inevitable war and read it again for advantage. The target was military, and they signed up for this. It was a pity, but our resources far eclipsed that of the enemy if we would only mobilize them--and if we only had the reason to do so. The purpose was not to mobilize the country out of the Depression, but rather to drag the ball of war into our court. We would be playing defense against the ruffians who attacked us first--

(We would send our young men, who would otherwise be unemployed or in factories doing mindless work, to perform their patriotic duty as had their fathers. We would mobilize a rationing and recycling program that put the WWI effort --masterminded by Hoover-- to shame. We'd scoop up nylons and tin. And we'd war-bond our way to epic win. There was a plan.)

It could very well have been LIHOP. But I don't think there's any proof--it only makes sense in post-script--knowing that the Allies won and how we did it. Using 1941 eyes--it's dumb to let the Japs blow up most of our airpower. Duh. Then what are we supposed to do? Yeah, retaliate--with what?

Unless FDR was way smarter than we all suppose--I think it all was about serendipity. Unless he had totally brilliant advisors. :)

[Idealism]

5. The interesting facts about Pearl Harbor are

that the newer, modern battleships were not stationed in Hawaii at the time of the attack: they had been sent away to overhaul supposedly with new sonar technology and AA equipment (even though these things were already on the new ships for the most part). The only ships in Pearl Harbor were all old World War I holdovers and relics that were in no way close to being the majority of our naval power in the pacific theatre, there weren't even any carriers in the harbor. Just odd that the only ships within striking distance had outlived their usefullness

[dana_b]

4. I don't know about FDR and Pearl Harbor

but I've heard a lot about how the War actually made the economy a little worse. It was on the upswing from '37-'39 and the War did improve unemployment but it was military mobilization, not actual jobs being created. Less manufacturing except for the military purposes. Here's a link from Thom Hartmann's take on it:
http://www.thomhartmann.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1077&Itemid=113

[Idealism]

7. Yes, Thom makes a good point

I'm a fan of the show, but some of his thoughts on the subject are a bit skewed I think. The broken windows theory is dead on however, if you recall that part of his commentary. But at the time, during the throes of the Depression, it is possible that war spending and Keynesian defecit spending measures were the only way to stop the economic bleeding, as may have noted FDR noted. Most in the Congress, and in the country at the time were isolationists and believed the war to not involve us or be our problem. Fresh off the "war to end all wars," there were a lot of isolationists and even some nazi-sympathizers in the US. It is possible that FDR knew he couldn't bring the country to war without being provoked first, and if the Lusitania was enough to get us into WWI, how many Lusitania's would it take to bring us into WWI, less 100,000 troops and not a generation yet gone by?

Mobilization from the war, while providing jobs, was not the end of the Depression. Still there was about 12% unemployment before we entered the war, and although down from the 25-30% highs we saw prior to that, it was still a huge number that meant less production and consumption. Ultimately I believe the strict rationing, the WPA that employed over 8 million people in its relatively short existence, and conscription allowed the majority of Americans to save wages at a time when jobs weren't in such a short supply.

[Truth2Tell]

6. I have no idea. But I do think

that our policies in the Pacific vis a vis Japan were pushing the Japanese to war and FDR surely knew that. By the time of Pearl Harbor we had imposed a virtual naval blockade on deliveries of fuel oil to Japan, and were pressing them economically in every way we could. The leadership of both countries knew that war was eventually coming, and the Americans were pressing for it (much like we are today with Iran). FDR may or may not have known the specifics of the Pearl Harbor attack, but we knew that push was going to come to shove somewhere.

Japan was a rival empire and we both wanted to control the resources of the Far East and the Pacific Rim. I don't think our provocations were necessarily directly intended to mobilize the economy, per se. That is simply one side effect of running a militarist empire. We were simply pursuing our Manifest Destiny to be Exceptional and bring Freedom (c) to the world.

[Bigmack]

10. I've studied this topic...

and history shows that the military - particularly the navy - were set in their (old) ways. They were racist, and thought the Japanese couldn't see well with their squinty eyes (I actually read that!) and that Pearl was invulnerable because it was so far east in the Pacific. Besides, battleships were unsinkable.. especially by aircraft. Never mind that the Japanese had sunk the British ships "Repulse" and "Prince of Wales" in the open sea.

My best guess, based on history and my own personal observations of the military, is that Pearl got caught with its pants down because the military simply fucked up. They had warning, but still parked the aircraft wingtip to wingtip. They didn't step up security.

Our current Navy still wants to play with aircraft carriers, the biggest, softest targets on the seas. When - god forbid - one or more of them gets sunk, the Navy will dither just like the Navy of 1941.