Sixty-nine years later, there aren’t many survivors of Pearl Harbor left. The war itself is passing out of living memory. And sadly, many of the lessons learned from it will probably have to be relearned, at the cost of how knows how many more innocent lives.
[Update a few minutes later]
Bing remembers. But it’s just another day to Google. You’d think it a significant date even to a “citizen of the world.”
[Update a while later]
When Japan attacked.
My wife’s grandfather was 14 and watched the attack from his porch steps on the hillside behind Pearl Harbor.
A really good read on the Pacific War and the run up to the war from the vantagepoint of Japanese documents and interviews is “Rising Sun” by John Toland. It’s about a thousand pages but really excellent.
I found this on Reddit today:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig/trask1.html
It is now clear that FDR did know the Japanese attack was coming. He knew more than a year in advance of Japanese plans to bomb the United States’ Pacific fleet at Pearl, and he knew more than a week before that the attack would come early Sunday morning. He knew because American naval intelligence had cracked the Japanese naval codes in the early fall of 1940, 15 months before the fateful attack.
Has anyone here heard of this particular book (not conspiracy theories in general) before?
Hadn’t heard about this. Wish I’d known about the McCollum Memo:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCollum_memo
to ask about it during my Pearl Harbor tour I took earlier this year! Lots of information (with all the appropriate caveats) at Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pearl_Harbor_advance-knowledge_debate
During the tour, the guide talked about Admiral Kimmel’s desire not to stage at Pearl, and about several (I think it was three) “Betty Crocker” (flour bags dropped instead of bombs) air raids done by various groups on the harbor in the years leading up to the attack. I’m one who thinks ineptitude and lack of vision makes a convincing case for conspiracy in hindsight, but don’t rule anything out. In the end, I’m glad things turned out as they did.
Read the John Toland book. He researches American documents as well. The Roosevelt administration knew that a Japanese attack on the US or US interests was imminent. Though, they had no prior knowledge where, exactly, it would be.
Very interesting, M. My first inclination is to dismiss it, but…I’m not sure. I just finished Amity Shlaes interesting survey of aspects of the Depression (“The Forgotten Man”), and two things stand out: (1) the extreme ambition of FDR’s fellow travelers. These are people who longed for a Communist revolution in the United States, or something like it, and certainly for a very large role for themselves allocating resources. They’d bided their time for years, and wanted so badly to take action they could taste it, and (2) FDR himself seems to have been surprisingly cynical, even vicious at times.
What we learn from history…
FDR _knew_ the Japanese would attack Pearl Harbor weeks, or even a year in advance, and deliberately did not prepare in advance because of the left wingers in his cabinet.
Thanks, guys. And George Bush knew in advance that Al Qaeda had plans to attack the World Trade Center in September 2001, and deliberately did nothing to prepare because….
This is the sort of lesson I absolutely INSIST be taught to American kids in the decades to come. Thank you all for displaying such wisdom.
The commenter Walt at Belmont club has a nice poem about the resurrected battleships of Pearl Harbor.
Link
I suggest that everyone compliment Bing in its comment section. And trash Google, which prefers to pay great tribute to the insignificant.