(12-07-2018 10:18 PM)BuffaloTN Wrote: I would like to know more about this subject. Obviously, I know what happened, but what does everyone else know? Not the history books BS. I want to know some of the more interesting stories and what you all think.
FDR, what did he know and when? How specific? Did we let it happen to get drawn in?
It really did cause a monumental shift in the way the world is today so I'm curious what everyone thoughts are especially the more seasoned posters here.
Thanks.
What FDR knew:
He knew the Japanese were building “super-battleships”, which were deliberately designed to be superior to any ship the Americans might build. US limits on beam (Panama Canal), height (Brooklyn Bridge), and draft (Southern ports) were well known in the world at the time. He did not know any details about the ships themselves (Naval Intelligence reported them as having 16” guns as late as October 1944, when their guns were 18.11”), but he did know the Japanese could average no better than one ship every 3 to 4 years and that the US could slow construction to an effective stop with an embargo.
He knew the Japanese were planning a move to the South to secure strategic resources. Any such move would involve both the Americans and the British empire, as those nations held territories on the left and right flanks (respectively) of any Japanese drive to the South, and were therefore a direct threat to any such military drive.
He knew whatever Japanese diplomats knew in real time, as US Naval Intelligence had pulled off the brilliant feat of accurately copying the Japanese diplomatic cipher machine despite never having seen the original. Unfortunately, Japan was a military dictatorship by this time, and work had only just gotten under way on the Japanese military ciphers. The diplomats only knew what the military told them, and the military told them nothing about Pearl Harbor until about an hour before the attack happened. Because of delays caused by decoding and translating, FDR received a copy of the Japanese declaration of war only a few minutes before the Japanese diplomats delivered it themselves, which was fifty minutes after the attack commenced. Thus, FDR may have had suspicions, but he learned of the attack the same way every other American did. Despite numerous spurious claims otherwise, there is absolutely nothing in the historical record to suggest otherwise.
He knew the Japanese were almost certainly not going to accede to the demands of the international community. Therefore, after the US froze Japanese assets in July in protest over the invasion of French Indochina, the Americans knew the Japanese were going to attack. FDR’s advisors even came up with a startlingly accurate time frame of “about six months”. In response to these Intelligence estimates, FDR ordered almost the entire US Fleet to Pearl Harbor. This was an unprecedented move at the time, as the US Fleet had always been concentrated in the Atlantic, except for annual exercises in the Pacific.
Thus, we get to the two things FDR did not know: he did not know the Japanese Navy had the range or the daring to attack Pearl Harbor with carriers, and he did not know they would commit the strategic blunder of committing to such an attack.
As for letting it happen, no, we did not allow 2403 people to die just to get into the war, as some conspiracy theorists allege. Intelligence led us to believe an attack was eminent, but did not correctly guess where it would happen nor did it properly track the movements and activity of the Japanese military. We did not even have accurate information on the characteristics of Japanese warships until after we had sunk most of them, and this particular failure cost us thousands of lives by itself. The intelligence failures alone are enough to discard any claim of a conspiracy.
