To Prove A History Teacher Wrong

Japan and Germany were the ones provoking the US by invading countries and threatening key American interests. The US oil embargo was designed exactly to force the Japanese military to reassess its aggressive foreign policy, and the Atlantic campaign was launched to stop Germany from defeating Britain.

The US oil embargo was in response to the Japanese invasion of French Indochina.

I think by "provoking" what we are saying is that the USA was ostensibly neutral, but was not acting in a remotely neutral manner and in so doing was deliberately seeking an incident that would enable it to join in the war.

Lend-lease to both Britain and China whilst embargoing Japan and defending convoys to Britain and operating a 'shoot on sight' policy in the Atlantic is not neutrality by any stretch - the USA was in the war in all but name. As such, being overtly attacked by the countries it was in a covert war with should not be and in fact was not a surprise.

As Secretary of War Henry Stimson wrote in his diary of November
25, 1941: “The question was how we should maneuver them into the
position of firing the first shot without allowing too much danger to
ourselves.”

Having said that the USA is a sovereign country, if it wishes to attempt to provoke other countries into attacking it, that is its affair, Japan and Nazi Germany were not under any obligation to take the bait.
 

Stalker

Banned
I agree completely. I teach world history to American teenagers so it is a struggle to get them out of their comfort zone at times. I always try to show all the sides of the major events in history, especially ones that directly involve the United States so as to show that the American world view isn't the only worldview.
Well, it' so difficult to try to understand the others, really.:rolleyes:
Logically, the Japanese simply had to think ten times before launching a surprise attack on Pearl Harbour. How couldn't they understand that they were not equal economically to the USA? That by launching their attack on the US Pacific Navy they would get a total war with the Home Islands on the receiving end?
I also wandered why. But only until the time I tried to understand the psychology of those who planned that war in the Imperial Navy HQ.
The answer probably lies 35 years before December, 7 1941.
The Japanese started war against Russian Empire and nobody in his right mind at that time could think that a small rising NON-EUROPEAN!!! power could become a victor over the Russian Bear, one of the long-established world powers whose economy was simply incomparable with that of Japan. And the Russians were defeated. We, of course, may name reasons why it happened so but these would have nothing to do with the minds of the Japanese themselves.
My answer to the question posed above is as follows: the Japanese simply didn't think they would get the total war. It was peculiar to their way of thinking that by taking the American fleet out of operation in the Pacific they would show their real Samurai power, the power of real Bushi of the Divine Tenno to those soft-hearted merchants Americans, and those Americans who are not real warriors in their hearts, having tried a few more attempts at striking back the victorious Imperial Japanese Army and Navy would finally ask for peace on Japan's conditions. Even the Russians - the only pink-faced Europeans who had the balls to fight bravely - almost like the Japanese themselves - were forced to ask for peace, and those money-loving Americans are no match to the Russians. They are Merchants - not warriors!
That's how I understand their mentality at the beginning of that war. And then it got such a huge blow...:eek:
 
I'm cruelly skipping all the extra pages and giving my answer to the first post:

When the USA issued the oil embargo on Japan, they all knew it was only a matter of time before Japan would react. Therefore it can't be said to have been a total surprise.
 
(Off-topic: Okay, maybe not career breaker. It was more a fact of that single number moving me out of the top five in my class, and therefore disqualifying me for a certain really nice scholarship. However, it's cause had more to do with calculus than any arguing with a teacher.)

Sorry about that....... :(
 
I'm cruelly skipping all the extra pages and giving my answer to the first post:

When the USA issued the oil embargo on Japan, they all knew it was only a matter of time before Japan would react. Therefore it can't be said to have been a total surprise.

Everyone figured Tokyo would react. Nobody knew said reaction would be the partial destruction of the U.S. Pacific Fleet in Hawaii, not even Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
 
Well, it' so difficult to try to understand the others, really.:rolleyes:
Logically, the Japanese simply had to think ten times before launching a surprise attack on Pearl Harbour. How couldn't they understand that they were not equal economically to the USA? That by launching their attack on the US Pacific Navy they would get a total war with the Home Islands on the receiving end?
I also wandered why. But only until the time I tried to understand the psychology of those who planned that war in the Imperial Navy HQ.
The answer probably lies 35 years before December, 7 1941.
The Japanese started war against Russian Empire and nobody in his right mind at that time could think that a small rising NON-EUROPEAN!!! power could become a victor over the Russian Bear, one of the long-established world powers whose economy was simply incomparable with that of Japan. And the Russians were defeated. We, of course, may name reasons why it happened so but these would have nothing to do with the minds of the Japanese themselves.
My answer to the question posed above is as follows: the Japanese simply didn't think they would get the total war. It was peculiar to their way of thinking that by taking the American fleet out of operation in the Pacific they would show their real Samurai power, the power of real Bushi of the Divine Tenno to those soft-hearted merchants Americans, and those Americans who are not real warriors in their hearts, having tried a few more attempts at striking back the victorious Imperial Japanese Army and Navy would finally ask for peace on Japan's conditions. Even the Russians - the only pink-faced Europeans who had the balls to fight bravely - almost like the Japanese themselves - were forced to ask for peace, and those money-loving Americans are no match to the Russians. They are Merchants - not warriors!
That's how I understand their mentality at the beginning of that war. And then it got such a huge blow...:eek:

Not totally off considering the US had never fought a major naval war before (Spanish American war was so short). Plus even if we did, the US was thousands of miles away and the Japanese thought if they just took out our bases on the Phillipines, Guam, and Wake island, plus the fleet at Pearl, that the US would leave them alone.
 
I think there has already been enough in postings which match my take on Pearl Harbor - Roosevelt wanted Japan to hit first, but did not expect them to hit that hard. A teacher who calls that "cruel, undeserved, and unprovoked" is probably overplaying the facts, but "surprised" is certainly true. I also agree with the consensus that fifteen minutes of "cruel / undeserved / unprovoked" vs. "we knew in advance the attack was coming" probably included about fourteen and a half minutes of "missing the point." Discussing the apparant strategy of forcing the Japanese into war might have been more fun - especially if the teacher picks up his end of it.

To my perception, high school history still places somewhere between "a lot of" and "too much" focus on the facts of history (who / what / when / where / why) and does not make the students judge or analyze the actions of others. College history professors are much better at this, and they don't mind an impromptu debate with a student who came prepared for class.
 
I think it is immoral to spread unsupported gossip. That what the fiction that Roosevelt knew is unsupported gossip. In addition to the lack of proof, it makes no sense to argue that FDR would let the fleet be destroyed
 

Stalker

Banned
Everyone figured Tokyo would react. Nobody knew said reaction would be the partial destruction of the U.S. Pacific Fleet in Hawaii, not even Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
Totally agree. After oil embargo and freezing Japanese accounts it was just the matter of time for Imperial Japan to react. But THAT kind of reaction from Japan even the most high-foreheaded strategists in the naval and army HQ might have not expected preparing themselves for probably a local or limited conflict with Imperial Japan.
 
From what I knew the Japanese had sent the Americans a declaration of war a few days before Pearl Harbour, but it was written in Japanese. The Americans weren't able to translate it before the Japanese attacked.

You could argue that it was possible for the Americans to have known that the Japanese would attack, if only they had translated the declaration of war quicker.

From the American standpoint though Pearl Harbour was a surprise attack.
 
From what I knew the Japanese had sent the Americans a declaration of war a few days before Pearl Harbour, but it was written in Japanese. The Americans weren't able to translate it before the Japanese attacked.

You could argue that it was possible for the Americans to have known that the Japanese would attack, if only they had translated the declaration of war quicker.

From the American standpoint though Pearl Harbour was a surprise attack.

That's not correct. To summarise from the wikipedia article 'Events leading to the Attack on Pearl Harbor':

Part of the Japanese plan for the attack on Pearl Harbor included breaking diplomatic relations with the United States 30 minutes before the attack began.


In the days before the attack, a message to this effect was sent to the Embassy from the Foreign Office in Tokyo with instructions to deliver it to Secretary of State Cordell Hull at 1 p.m. Washington time (which coincided with dawn in Hawaii).



The last part arrived late Saturday night (Washington time) but due to decryption and typing delays, and to Tokyo's failure to stress the crucial necessity of the timing, Embassy personnel did not deliver the message breaking off negotiations to Secretary Hull until several hours after the attack.


However, the United States had intercepted and decrypted the message including the instruction for the time of delivery, the night before the attack. The timing was understood at that point to strongly suggest an attack on Pearl Harbor. A warning was sent, but did not arrive until after the attack.

The Japanese government did not write a declaration of war until hearing the attack on Pearl harbor has suceeded. The two-line declaration of war was finally delivered to U.S. Ambassador Grew in Tokyo about 10 hours after the attack was over.
 
Why didn't your teacher tell you to get a clue?:eek: Have you read Prange, Goldstein, & Dillon's Pearl Harbor: Verdict of History? How anybody can read that & still believe FDR arranged the attack, I'll never understand. Or consider what FDR'd been doing in the Atlantic for over a year trying to provoke Hitler, or Congress, to declare war...:rolleyes:
there is some merit to the allegation
Nonsense! It's a fantasy. It's a joke. It does not stand scrutiny. Everything FDR had been doing was designed to frighten Japan out of attacking in the Pacific. (At Winston's express request, BTW.) It backfired. FDR's major objective was to aid Britain. An attack by Japan on the U.S. did not aid Britain, it aided Germany, & FDR damn well knew it. He'd been informed so by Stark & Marshall, who were aware of Arthur McCollum's memo to this effect, even if FDR didn't see it himself. McCollum pointed out what Hitler had told his senior officers at around the same time: an attack by Japan would distract the U.S. & draw U.S. resources away from Britain. (This is the same McCollum the conspiracy loons falsely claim advocated war with Japan, contrary to McCollum's stated opposition.) In the event, that's exactly what happened, & if you bother to actually think, you'll see why: at war, U.S. forces have to be uniformed, fed, armed, & moved; at peace, not so much.

I'd also ask, if the objective was to provoke Congress to war with Japan, why an alerted Pacific Fleet wouldn't have served just as well. Wouldn't a very warm welcome for the attackers have served? Or just detecting the Kido Butai as it was launching? Or within 500mi of Hawaii? At that time, I imagine detecting of an IJN task force so close would have had Congress saying, "Just who do those little yellow bastards think they are?":eek::rolleyes:
Whether the military knew anything on the other hand is a matter of considerable debate. It is known they had broken Japanese diplomatic and naval codes but the problem with the Americans was that the Japanese naval fleet maintained a strictly enforced radio silence from the time they left their ports ...
Right on Purple, the diplomatic cypher. Wrong on JN-25, the main IJN cypher. There were some breaks in the superencypherment, but the U.S. didn't read JN-25 substantively until after Midway. (There was a lot of luck there.)

Right for the radio silence, which is a biggie in the conspiracy fiction. Unless you think the Japanese were in on it & are lying about keeping radio silence...:rolleyes:;)
Pearl Harbour was warned to be on full alert and to be prepared for a possibility of an attack but the order arrived too late. Even if it had arrived in time it is unlikely they could've done more than inflict heavier losses on the Japanese.
Half right. Short should've done more to ensure there was long-range patrol out of Pearl, which was his responsibility (not Kimmel's, tho most people don't know it). And Short's response was in line with what almost everybody expected for the start of war: a wave of sabotage, not an air attack. (It's only with hindsight we hammer him for that one.)

Could Short have dispersed his fighters & met the Japanese with a strong AA & a/c defense? Certainly, & Japanese losses would have been considerably higher, especially to AA, maybe enough to change the outcome at Coral Sea, certainly enough to save Yorktown at Midway.

OTOH, had Kimmel's ships been on higher alert, USN casualties would have been substantially greater,:eek: since OTL, most sailors were ashore... (Don't even mention an actual sortie against the Kido Butai,:eek::eek: unless you like the idea of 20,000 USN sailors KIA.:eek::eek:)
I think there are several things that are known:
1) FDR wanted into the war
FDR wanted to aid Britain, which is not exactly the same thing.
4) When the Japanese rejected the terms and the US embargo was imposed, FDR knew very well that it would lead to war.
Wrong. FDR didn't intend the embargo to be total. Some hardline nitwit at State (Hull?) denied Japan any exemptions, which the embargo had allowed for, as FDR intended.
6) The US military was expecting war with Japan (there was a 'general war warning' sent on 27th November, so the attack was very far from being a 'bolt from the blue'.)
That message warned of potential Japanese attacks against Russia, Thailand, Borneo, or the P.I. It never mentioned, nor did anybody in DC ever contemplate, an attack on Hawaii. The task force sailing for Thailand had been sighted, recall, & it was believed (wrongly:rolleyes:) Japan was incapable of carrying out two major naval operations at once. (Yamamoto had a hell of a time getting all the CVs for Operation AI even so.)
5) The US knew that Japan was going to attack US interests on the 7th Dec because the declaration of an end to diplomatic relations was intercepted and decoded the day before before it was presented by the Japanese ambassador.
Wrong. It was decrypted overnight 6/7 Dec & in the hands of U.S. intelligence the morning of 7 Dec. Nor did it say anything definitive about Japanese actions, since the diplomats (even in Tokyo) didn't know war was imminent.:rolleyes:
The evidence that FDR knew of the attack on Peal Harbor and deliberately sacrificed it is thin at best
It's a patchwork of rumors, deceptions, misunderstandings, & lies.
but the theory at least has a basis of fact in that the generally held 'bolt from the blue' legend isn't true.
Wrong. Japanese action was expected somewhere. Pearl Harbor was the last place anybody on the U.S. side expected it. Consider: MacArthur had the Purple machine, the Purple codebook, & the JN-25 codebook. Pearl was denied them. MacArthur had more B-17s than anywhere outside CONUS. Short had a handful of B-17s (IDK the number offhand) & orders to keep his aircrews on a training regimen. So did Kimmel. Do the math.
By December 1941 the USA was expecting an attack aimed at most at Guam, Wake, and the Philippines. To the point of the Battle of Pearl Harbor a trans-oceanic assault with a carrier fleet had not been done, and it was something completely without precedent. If FDR was angling to get into the war with anyone it was with Nazi Germany and they weren't biting at the bait.
Well said. Correct on all points. To date, an attack of this nature was still mere theory, & don't forget, Pearl was shallower than Taranto, so even the Brit torpedoes wouldn't have worked.

Something else to think about: the conspiracy theorists, by giving the "credit" to FDR, are fundamentally racist.:eek: They don't believe Japanese were capable of achieving surprise & scoring a victory of this magnitude on the U.S. on their own...:rolleyes:
It's not a conspiracy theory that the United States foreign policy at the time was one of provocation to Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan.
Nonsense! The objective was not to provoke Japan, it was to intimidate Japan into not attacking, & to pressure Japan to stop fighting China. (The "let Japan make the first move" you often hear is because the FDR wanted to blockade Japan, to aid China, but couldn't without Japan doing something sufficiently provocative, first. He wanted to avoid actual war over China, since over 60% of the public was against it...)
The undeclared war in the Altantic, which had been going on for months, and the US oil embargo against Japan was designed exactly to provoke the 'bad guys' into drawing first blood.
Wrong. It was designed to provoke Germany. The total embargo, as noted above, was a gaffe. Positioning the Pacific Fleet at Pearl, also intended as intimidation, was also a mistake: Japan took it as an opportunity, not a threat.:eek::rolleyes: I daresay, had the fleet been at San Diego, the attack would never have happened.

Bear in mind, also, IJN may have encouraged attacks on the U.S. in a mistaken belief attacks on Britain would inevitably bring the U.S. into war regardless.
Not to mention if the US was really upset about China they would have done something in 1937 when they first invaded as opposed to 1940-1 some 3-4 years after the fact, only when Germany is starting to become a threat.
Not that simple. Public opinion, & Congressional opinion, had moved some since '37, but while there was strong support for "doing something" about Japan in China, there was almost equally strong opposition to war, meaning the bulk of the public did not understand the issue.:rolleyes:
I never said the later(about PH or 9/11), I just said US policy was encouraging some sort of preemptive strike from either Germany or Japan at the time.
Half right: from Germany, not Japan, as noted above.
FDR didn't "know" about Pearl Habor, but he did provoke Japan into making the first move with coercive diplomacy.
Wrong.
I think pretty much he didn't realize how much Japan had at stake that they -were- backed into the proverbial corner.
Right. That was what happened, at bottom, in the Pacific: U.S. diplomacy boobed in a major way,:eek::eek: not seen again until more/less giving Saddam the OK to invade Kuwait.:eek:
As Secretary of War Henry Stimson wrote in his diary of November 25, 1941: “The question was how we should maneuver them into the position of firing the first shot without allowing too much danger to ourselves.”
This does not by any means prove the U.S. intended to be at war with Japan. As noted, the U.S. needed a provocative (hostile) act by Japan to justify a defensive blockade, in aid to China, without going to war.
... Japanese simply didn't think they would get the total war. It was peculiar to their way of thinking that by taking the American fleet out of operation in the Pacific they would show their real Samurai power, the power of real Bushi of the Divine Tenno to those soft-hearted merchants Americans, and those Americans who are not real warriors in their hearts, having tried a few more attempts at striking back the victorious Imperial Japanese Army and Navy would finally ask for peace on Japan's conditions.
Doubtless there was some of that at play. More to the point, Japan had never fought over an essentially unlimited geographical area, against a united & determined enemy. The Russo-Japanese & Sino-Japanese Wars were both geographically narrow, against opponents rife with corruption & internal conflicts, & even against Russia, Japan only narrowly won. (More accurately, Russia lost, due to political chaos in 1905.) Japan was nearly bankrupt at war's end...:eek: Moreover, Japan's senior military & naval leadership had no grasp of genuinely strategic warfare, or they'd have known they had no capacity to interfere with U.S. production, & would have done far more to protect Japanese SLOCs. Or not have attacked the Brits & U.S. in the first damn place.:rolleyes:
Roosevelt wanted Japan to hit first
He most assuredly did not.:eek:
I think it is immoral to spread unsupported gossip. That what the fiction that Roosevelt knew is unsupported gossip. In addition to the lack of proof, it makes no sense to argue that FDR would let the fleet be destroyed
Amen.
Crackpot conspiracy theories are not welcome here.
LOL.:D:D:D:D

My thoughts exactly. (P.S. CalBear, I'd be interested in your comments on mine, one resident expert to another.:))
 
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In the event, that's exactly what happened, & if you bother to actually think, you'll see why: at war, U.S. forces have to be uniformed, fed, armed, & moved; at peace, not so much.

More to the point, think of the assault and merchant (supply) shipping that had to be used to supply the US fleets and armies in the Pacific that could instead have been used in the Med or in Europe. Or the pilots, aircraft, and ordinance which could have been used to bomb German factories and infrastructure and been fighting and destroying the German air force, instead of doing the same to the Japanese. Etc. etc. The assault shipping one in particular is a biggie, since it drove a lot of the scheduling for amphibious assaults.
 
I believe phx summed up my thinking nicely.

Just so you know: According to Kennedy, an accident of fate. It was announced just prior to FDR's departure for Argentia, and in his absence the committee which was charged with thawing Japanese assets to pay for purchases simply kept them frozen.

He identifies the "nitwit" as none other than Dean Acheson, though Hull, Ickes, and Stimson certainly favored a hard line with Japan.
 
What did Japan think was the point of going to war over an oil embargo?

After all, even they must have realised that the US would not supply oil to a country with which it was at war, and the US oilfields were hopelessly beyond Japan's reach, however successful she might be.

If they were going to do a surprise attack anywhere, why not Borneo, where the nearest oil fields were? In theory, I suppose, Congress might declare war over it, but the chances of their doing so were probably slim to none.
 
Yeah, in my experience it's more of a "well here's the reasons they had for doing it" way that doesn't excuse Japan's attack (and it was most certainly pretty inexcusable) but at least makes the attack more understandable from the Japanese PoV, they had interests in the region, we threatened them, they needed us out of the way.
Indeed.
"well, if the Americans are in our way to the Europeans, might as well declare war on them all!"
 
What did Japan think was the point of going to war over an oil embargo?

After all, even they must have realised that the US would not supply oil to a country with which it was at war, and the US oilfields were hopelessly beyond Japan's reach, however successful she might be.

If they were going to do a surprise attack anywhere, why not Borneo, where the nearest oil fields were? In theory, I suppose, Congress might declare war over it, but the chances of their doing so were probably slim to none.

Problem is, the Phillipines sit right on top of any Japanese supply line to Borneo, so attacking Borneo is not really practical while a hostile power holds the Philippines.
 
Today in class, my teacher was teaching World War 2 to the class and came to Pearl Harbor. He talked of the attack and how we were innocent Americans totally surprised by such a cruel, undeserved, and unprovoked attack. I preceded to argue in front of the whole class with my teacher for 15 minutes about how Roosevelt knew of the attack before and allowed it to happen to bring the United States into war. The only thing that stopped us was the class ending.

How much did Roosevelt know about the impending attack?
What are some good sources of useful information to show that there was just some foreknowledge?

Sounds like your teacher was laying the propaganda on a little thick, but Roosevelt didn't specifically know about the Pearl Harbor attack. Though the fact that he/she let you argue with them for 15 minutes about it makes it seem like they isn't all that bad.

I had a social studies teacher who didn't really know what he was doing, but he always let the students have discussions which often were interesting.

The overall issue here should be the propagandization of American history. It takes away almost all the value of learning it, other than for quoting in further propaganda. Just look at Helen Keller and Woodrow Wilson. Our history books cut, paste and outright lie about our nations story. They think it makes us patriotic, but it just makes us stupid (and bored more often than not).
 
What did Japan think was the point of going to war over an oil embargo?

After all, even they must have realised that the US would not supply oil to a country with which it was at war, and the US oilfields were hopelessly beyond Japan's reach, however successful she might be.

If they were going to do a surprise attack anywhere, why not Borneo, where the nearest oil fields were? In theory, I suppose, Congress might declare war over it, but the chances of their doing so were probably slim to none.
The reason Japan went to war with the USA was because at the time it was very strongly believed in Japanese political and military circles that in the event of a war with Britain it was only a matter of time before America joined in. With that logic in mind it was decided that their best option was to try for a knockout blow out of the gate or at the very least damage the Pacific Fleet to such a degree that they would have time to fortify their gains in the Dutch East Indies and Malaysia before a counter attack could be launched and hopefully negotiate a ceasefire.
 
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