Was a land invasion of Hawaii really an option? Just because the Japanese were able to establish air superiority, that doesn’t necessarily translate to land superiority. I would imagine that the land forces would have been heavily fortified, and the rest of the islands would have had to be taken over as well. It seem like this operation would be something on the order of D-day, except over several thousand miles instead of a few dozen. Could the Japanese really pulled it off?
Even if Germany had not declared war. Couldn’t the US have attacked Germany just because they were an ally of Japan? I don’t recall Italy or North Africa declaring war on the US.
On the contrary, both Germany and Italy did declare war on the U.S. North Africa was a battlefield, not an enemy. It was already occupied by the Axis.
John Corrado wrote:
How about:
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US-Panamanian freighter “Sessa” sunk by a German submarine (8/17/41)
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US freighter “Steel Seafarer” sunk by a German submarine (9/5/41)
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US destroyer “Greer” attacked by a German submarine
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US freighter “Montana” sunk by a German submarine (9/11/41)
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US-Panamanian freighter “Pink Star” sunk by a German submarine (9/19/41)
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US-Panamanian oil tanker “I.C. White” sunk by a German submarine (9/27/41)
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US oil tanker "W.C. Teagle and US-Panamanian freighter “Bold Venture” sunk by a German submarine (10/16/41)
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US destroyer “Kearny” torpedoed by a German submarine (11 killed) (10/17/91)
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US freighter “LeHigh” sunk by a German submarine (10/19/41)
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US-Panamanian tanker “Salinas” sunk by a German submarine (10/30/41)
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US destroyer “Reuben James” sunk by a German submarine (115 killed)
Andrew Warinner
The Ryan wrote:
Not according to this page: http://www.combinedfleet.com/pearlops.htm
Three words: logistics, logistics, logistics.
Andrew Warinner
This is correct–didn’t the Soviets declare war on Japan, (and not Japan on Russia)–two days after Hiroshima and one day before Nagasaki? In other words, Russia declared after the handwriting was already on the wall.
I agree. It would have been incredibly difficult for Japan to conquer, and maintain possession of, the Hawaiian islands. If I recall correctly, they were far more interested in expanding their possessions in China and Indonesia.
reply
I can see that being the case on the 2nd go at Midway/Hawaii (since we had fortified like crazy) but why not on their first attack? I think everyone is in general agreement that the U.S. was caught thoroughly flat-footed on Dec. 7, 1941. Chances are very good the Japanese could have pressed the attack and taken Hawaii with a little luck and brass-balls on their part.
If not Hawaii then why not nab Midway on the first go? From there they could have continued raids on Hawaii making resupply/fortification of Hawaii a nightmare for the U.S.
Just to play Devil’s Advocate on the page linked above as to why taking Hawaii would be so difficult, if not impossible:
What about Iwo Jima? Part of the argument on the linked page compares Malaya and Luzon to Hawaii (Malaya and Luzon being much larger overall and thus harder to defend than a tightly knit ‘little’ ball like Hawaii). Iwo Jima was an even more murderous little ball than Hawaii probably ever was and it is MUCH closer to Japan than Hawaii is to the U.S. Yet it WAS taken (albeit at murderous cost). Hawaii was one of the most valuable pieces of real estate in the whole Pacific war (tactically…not because nice hotels were there ) and thus worth considerable effort. Don’t forget that while Hawaii is closer to the U.S. than Japan it’s still practically in the middle of the pacific (maybe 3,400 miles to Japan and 2,500 to the U.S. mainland or so [I’m guessing at the distances but they’re something like that]). Midway is truly smack-dab between Japan and the U.S… Had Japan taken Midway for good measure while they were out there in addition to Hawaii the war in the Pacific would have been far different. Japan might have even had a shot at a negotiated peace in this circumstance. The ‘Logistics, Logistics, Logistics’ comment, while very true, cuts both ways and would have been exceedingly tough for the Americans in this scenario.
Finally, back to one of my earlier posts, I’m still a bit confused as to what Japan thought would happen after attacking Hawaii? I mean, what did they think would happen? As I’ve just pointed out taking Hawaii or at least Midway would have been prudent in the initial surprise attack had they thought war was imminent. Add to that that they failed to take out the oil storage and ship yards which would have been even more worthy targets than the Battleships if you’re looking at a protracted war. While the surprise attack was a huge success by most measures it could have been far worse (as others have pointed out in this thread). To be fair I think the U.S. industrial capacity even surprised the heck out of Americans. Arguably the best in the world at that time those shipyards in Hawaii still pulled off miracles by anyones standards.
(Between Pearl Harbor and Midway the USS Yorktown was damaged in the Battle of Coral Sea and returned to Pearl Harbor for repairs estimated to take 3 months yet the ship sailed in 3 days! Granted the ship sailed with workmen still aboard but remarkable nonetheless.)
To be fair to the Japanese Admirals it is easy to armchair quarterback with the benefit of hindsight. The Japanese expected 1/3 to 1/2 casualties in their Pearl Harbor attack. Given those estimates they probably never thought an invasion of the island to be feasible. Then to be able to sail home with nary a nick and a seemingly great victory must have been pretty attractive. Military planning is rarely flexible enough to take advantage of such unexpecterd opportunites. As already pointed out our industrial capacity made their victory a hollow one but it’s scary to see how close history could have changed for the worse (from our point of view) on decisons made in moments.
The Japanese expected (hoped? wished?) that the U.S. would be rocked back so hard by the initial victories, that it would sue for peace. Yamamoto tried to warn the military coalition that was running Japan that they were facing long odds, but they ignored him and ordered him to organize an attack on the U.S. Hence his famous quote
Yamamoto was a brilliant strategist who had forseen war with the U.S. years earlier and had spent years considering a plan to eliminate Pearl Harbor. Both the U.S. and Japan had expected to fight the sea war east of the Philipines, perhaps in the Carolines. Therefore, when Yamamoto got the grudging approval for his plan to destroy the U.S. fleet, no further plans were made for taking or holding Hawaii. The immediate goals of the Japanese war was the capture of the oil and rubber resources available in the Dutch East Indies. Without that materiél (that the U.S. had denied them) they did not have the resources to wage a long war.
The sole purpose of the attack on Pearl was the elimination of the fleet. The Japanese carriers were needed immediately to support the conquest of the Philipines and the lands to the South.
Why did the Japanese not make a third assault on the oil fields? Most likely Nagumo. He was a very competent officer, but one who lacked the killer instinct needed to pursue risky ventures. While luck played an enormous role in the U.S. victory at Midway, Nagumo’s uncertainty when facing the unknown played a significant part in setting up the conditions that the American “luck” exploited to the fullest. At Pearl, Nagumo interpreted signals that the U.S. had a good number of undamaged bombers as a threat to his carriers. Since he already knew he would not catch any U.S. carriers, he decided that further attacks on Pearl were not worth the risk of being discovered and attacked by the land-based aircraft of Hawaii and he retired from the area rather than destroying the tank farms and repair facilities.
I recently read a book entitled Betrayal at Pearl Harbor: How Churchill lured Rooseveldt into WWII, co-written by Eric Nave, an Australian who played a key role in the Royal Navy’s breaking of the Japanese naval codes. In it he provides comelling evidence that Churchill indeed knew the Japanese were going to attack Pearl Harbor, but kept that information from the Americans. The reason for that was perhaps that Churchill feared the Americans would “blow it” in their response and the Japs would turn back.
So did Churchill also hide the news from his commanders in Hong Kong, Singapore, and the Prince of Wales and Repulse?
sqweels wrote:
The British did not break into any high level Japanese codes, the US did. However, Britain and the US did agree to exchange a great deal of intelligence, including both Enigma and Magic replica machines. The US and Britain routinely exchanged radio intercepts from their listening stations, including the British stations in Singapore and Hong Kong.
John Prados discusses ‘Betrayal at Pearl Harbor’ in his book ‘Combined Fleet Decoded.’ There are several problems with Nave’s account.
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Nave wasn’t in the signals intelligence unit he claimed he was at that time.
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If I recall correctly, Nave’s claimed evidence rests on the broadcast of the ‘winds’ message. The ‘winds’ message supposedly indicated the targets of attack for December 7 in the event that US-Japanese negotiations broke down. It was disguised as a weather report broadcast from Radio Tokyo. The problem is, there is no record of the message being broadcast, or intercepted, or US or British analysts knew how to interpret the message.
There are two ways to interpret this lack of evidence: 1. the message never existed -or- 2. THAT JUST PROVES THERE WAS A CONSPIRACY (don’t forget to put on your foil-lined hat to keep out the mInD KOntRoL RAyZ).
Andrew Warinner
sqweels wrote:
Britain or Australia never broke into high grade Japanese codes independently of the US.
John Prados discusses ‘Betrayal at Pearl Harbor’ in ‘Combined Fleet Decoded’ and points out several problems with the claims.
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John Nave was not serving in the signals intelligence unit at the time he claimed he was.
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The main evidence rests on the ‘winds’ message, supposedly broadcast from Radio Tokyo indicating the targets of Japanese attack in the event of US-Japanese negotiations broke down. The problem is, there is no evidence that the message was ever broadcast, there is no evidence that the US or Britain intercepted it and there is no evidence that US or British analysts knew its meaning.
There are two ways to interpret this lack of evidence: 1. there was no message -or- 2. THIS IS JUST SHOWS A CONSPIRACY EXISTS!!1! Don’t forget to put on your foil-lined hat to block the MiNd kONTroL RAyz.
Andrew Warinner
Read a post above that mentioned Roosevelt wanting to ‘stop Japanese aggression in Manchuria’.
Bullshit.
The US (and every other European country, for that matter, plus Russia to boot) wanted Japan out of the race to carve up all of Asia. Japan was about 100 years late to the colonization game, and when it finally joined the party the guests there first decided they didn’t want any more gate crashers.
Not to ignore or downplay the nasty things that happened in the war (on both sides–and don’t even get me started on Hiroshima/Nagasaki) but one point is clear: Japan was not doing anything that other countries (the US, Russia, France, the UK, etc etc) hadn’t or weren’t doing - Japan was just doing it later. Japan got slapped down for trying to play a Westerner’s game. I don’t believe for a minute that Roosevelt had the woes of the Manchurian populance on his mind.
Now: the question at hand: did he know about the Pearl Harbor bombing? Whether FDR wanted war or not aside, I think we agree that he at least thought war was inevitable. As such, he didn’t really have to know about it: his assumptions and plans pretty much ensure that he would not be actively looking for a way to avoid war. I think he would try to save his troops, so I doubt he knew exactly when and where the attack would take place. But he may have subconsciously not been as keen to avoid contact in the South Pacific–as such, he may have not given too much thought to the build up of activity. He would have given PH some thought, but–honesly–probably would have let the Phillippines or Singapore get bombed to snot. It served his purpose, was far enough away and didn’t really hurt the US directly, and would probabl sway the popular vote (er, sorry, opinion).
I believe FDR would have taken action if indeed he had known ahead of time of the actualy time/place of the attack.
I would also note that Japanese press has given lots of space to recent news from the US that FDR may have simply allowed the attack to happen…
a) FDR either wanted war, or believed war was in
but agent webmastr was silenced before he was able to reveal the full truth ]
I disagree. Western powers had initiated several aggressive wars against China and were generally bullying the Chinese around, but nowhere near on the scale Japan was. After more than a century of meddling in Chinese affairs, Britain had Hong Kong and concessions in Beijing, Shanghai and Canton (Guangzhou). Japan, in considerably less time had grabbed two entire provinces - Manchuria and Formosa! All the European concessions combined would have fit into either one of Japan’s acquisitions. And that was just in 1937, before the real Japanese invasion began. By 1941, Japan had conquered more of China than any foreign power since the Mongols.* No European or American power had come anywhere close to this.
This I agree with. Japan’s puppet state in Manchukuo was an established fact years before Pearl Harbor, and the U.S. reaction was nothing more than glorified hand-wringing. The oil embargo and the freezing of Japanese assets - the immediate causes that prompted Japan to go to war with the U.S. - were not responses to Japanese aggression in Manchuria, but in French (Vichy) Indochina. FDR correctly perceived the Japanese takeover of Indochina as a direct threat to British, Dutch, and American possessions in the South Pacific. That was what got him off his behind and persuaded him to impose the embargo, which in turn gave the Japanese militarist faction the stick it needed to beat Kunoye and his “diplomatic solution” faction into submission.
*Unless the Chins are considered a foreign power.
I just dropped in for two reasons.
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For God’s sake, don’t let Monty see this thread, he’ll have an anuerysm.
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He and I had this discussion a year and a half ago. It was in a three page thread about people hunting, and was a big fat hijack.
Here’s the pertinent bit:
This was the address I used 18 months ago to get this, I have no clue if it still works:
ftp://ftp.purdue.edu/pub/Liberal-Arts/History/pha/pearl.harbor/
stoid
It appears to come from Top Secret hearings?
Right.
The quoted and bolded statements indicate a summary conclusion that the U.S. knew war was imminent with a further (unsupported) claim that the U.S. knew how, when, and where. Where is the supporting information? Where is any document that was clearly known to FDR that targeted Pearl Harbor?
Of course, FDR knew we were going to war! Look at the communiques sent to General Short and Admiral Kimmel: they expressly say, beginning at the end of November, that the administration and the military command expected war very soon.
(I’d be willing to bet you could find the same information in Time Magazine or any other serious periodical at the same period.)
The question concerning FDR is whether he knew that Pearl Harbor was a military target (as opposed to a target for saboteurs). I could not make the link work, today, but I remember reading that link or a similar one last year.
At no point in the document was there any evidence that knowledge of the Pearl Harbor attack was in the hands of any U.S. official. What the committe did, was look at the fact that the Japanese attack followed the plans outlined by various U.S. military war games between 1927 and 1937 and concluded that if we knew it could be done, we should have known that it would be done.
For whatever reasons, the U.S. command felt that an assault on Pearl was unlikely while an invasion of the Philipines was the most likely choice for the opening hostilities.
Unless you can turn up documentary (or eyewitness) testimony that the U.S. had copies of the Japanese plans, the most you can claim is that we were grossly negligent in studying the Japanese options. Any suggestion that FDR or the military command treasonously allowed the attack to go forward when they knew it was coming is merely rabid conspiracy-mongering.
As has been pointed out on several occasions, using Pearl Harbor as a trap to bait the Japanese into an attack against which we defended ourselves would have gotten us into war just as surely, without the risk of actually losing the war.
Without documents and a better motive, the “FDR knew” story is simply silly.
And things are always what they appear to be, aren’t they?
An actual cite for this document? The link you posted has a rather large index of documents, and I’m unlikely to go through them all. Without any evidence to corroborate this quote as authentic, I think the rest of the evidence presented in this thread speaks loudly against the notion that this quote is accurate.
…Oh, wait, but you didn’t want to bother with any evidence already discussed in this thread did you?
Which part of “war warning” were Short and Kimmel not supposed to understand? The directions given to the commanders in Hawaii were sufficiently vague that the threat of sabotage was better addressed than that of air attack, but I’ve seen no evidence that the flexibility allowed to the commanders on the scene was delibrately planned to permit the success of an air attack.
…and the Japanese aircraft were detected by the Opana radar station, yet they were misidentified and disregarded. The disaster still occurred. Not only am I not convinced that Washington knew about the raid before it occurred, I’m not convinced that the military officers in Hawaii believed that such an attack was possible, much less on the way, until the Japanese arrived.
the book:
rule by SECRECY by Jim Marrs
contains the greatest list of data i’ve seen leading to the conclusion that he knew or strongly suspected. personally even if he intended to get us in the war, if he had sent a warning soon enough for the ships to get out of the harbor tho too late for the japanese to call off the attack we still would have gone to war and he’d have looked like a hero. could the japanese send a recon plane to make sure the ships were there?
what bugs me was his keeping Truman in the dark in the middle of the war. stupid ego trip. Trumn didn’t know about THE BOMB until roosevelt died.
Dal Timgar
OK. I finally got the Purdue ftp site to come up.
I haven’t read the whole thing (obviously), but I did find the minority (Republican) dissenting report laying out all the reasons why the FDR administration failed in their duties. Including:
Pearl Harbor Minority Report, part 4
Pearl Harbor Minority Report, part 5
Every single one of the assertions, (some of them quite accurate, others quite partisan), amounts to a simple “Monday morning quarterback” view of the events. They harp constantly on the fact that the Japanese were obviously going to attack (duh!) and that the administration “should” have known that the target was Pearl Harbor “because it just makes sense.”
There is not s single piece of information that I have yet found that indicates that the administration was given good information that the Japanese fleet would attack Pearl Harbor rather than concentrating its initial assault against the Philipines where the majority of the U.S. military expected it.