It was not today’s left/right divide, no. However, a divide between the conservatives of the day and the progressives of the day certainly existed throughout the Roosevelt administration, with the conservatives far more likely to be isolationists. This is crucial for all understanding of the run-up to WWII and I don’t understand why you would minimize it.
I agree, although our emphases are entirely different. The entire Army was a pitiful nothingness in the overall scheme of national concerns. The Navy paid somewhat more attention to Japan but we know now that it was insufficient internally and meaningless externally. It didn’t matter what they focused on because no one was paying them serious attention.
Since I said specifically that Japan was far more of a concern in California and the West Coast, how does this refute me? California was both paranoid and increasingly bigoted against Japanese. Of course they looked to every move their enemy took militarily. What I want is evidence that this attitude was reflected in national circles.
Let’s specify that the time period I am writing about was the time period the OP was about, c1937. The breakout of the war in Europe in 1939 made a difference, although it hardened rather than softened isolationist attitudes, so the government sought every avenue to prepare for a possible war. But Roosevelt spent 99% of his time looking toward Europe and Hitler and so did his top generals. Japan was, as I said, a footnote. You can’t do history by hindsight.
You mean after landing over 200 miles north of Singapore and spending two months advancing down the Malay peninsula Singapore fell aftera week of fighting in which the coastal batteries were entirely moot? Entirely the same situation, excepting the part where Oahu isn’t attached to a 200+ mile long peninsula but is in fact a rather small island where any attempted landing would be murdered by the coastal artillery. Hell, the 155mm divisional guns of the 24th and 25th Infantry Divisions could hit any part of the island from Schofield Barracks.
So I guess by this reasoning the IJN’s planning focus on the USN was meaningless because we now know it was ultimately completely defeated? Really doesn’t make much sense either way. You can easily read about USN interwar planning and exercises and this easily answers the actual question: the USN was mainly focused on Japan as adversary, so if it didn’t take Japan ‘seriously’ it must have not taken anything ‘seriously’. The USN had flaws in its material and training readiness ca. late 1941, and was specifically not expecting a carrier raid directly from Japan against Oahu in early December. That’s not the same as ‘no evidence the War [and Navy] Departments never took an attack by Japan of any kind seriously’.
This whole line of argument is just changing the subject. People on the West Coast California were more conscious of Japanese and often to hostile to them because there were fairly numerous Japanese immigrants there but hardly anywhere else in the US (except also HI). Not really relevant to my comment pointing out the error of ‘War Department never’, nor did anti-Japanese feeling on the West Coast particularly focus on a military threat from Japan until the war actually came. Just a different topic, pretty basically.
Again it’s shifting focus to the general public’s attitude which isn’t what the original comment was about. In terms of the relevant discussion, military planning and attitudes, it’s if anything the wrong way around. Ca. 1937 the USN’s pretty much sole focus was a possible war with Japan. The fleet was almost all in the Pacific, where the only plausible adversary was Japan. After the outbreak of the European war the USN had to shift focus, and eventually deployments, more toward the threat from Germany. By the time of PH some battleships, carriers and cruisers, even besides destroyers escorting British convoys, were in the Atlantic, vs basically none except ships completing trials etc., in 1937.
Likewise from 1940 the Army focused back on repeating the mobilization of a large force to send to Europe, so again if anything less on Japan than ca. 1937 where the US Army contingents in HI and PI, whose only plausible opponent was Japan, were a bigger relative portion of the small US Army.
I think your reasoning and argument here is hampered by a basic lack of reading on the actual topic you first commented on, and maybe just a general tendency to shift everything to bigots, conservatives, etc. Believe it or not on some specific topics that’s actually not relevant.
Believe it? Not. Seriously not. There is no universe in which isolationism is not relevant to WWII. You don’t suppose it’s you that has the tendency to ignore real-world political and social reality in favor of meaningless behind-the-scenes minutiae, do you? I see a tremendous difference in our areas of interest and expertise, since I’m an actual working historian and social scientist and you seem to have no awareness of any structure outside of a narrow focus on the military. The military in the 1930s, of all times. Need I point out what a bastion of bigotry, exclusion, and general hatred the military of the 1930s was? I probably do need to. You certainly haven’t done that reading. It doesn’t involve pretending to blow things up.
One important thing to keep in mind is that isolationists weren’t necessarily part of a peace movement. Some of them didn’t object to a military build-up; they objecting to American-made military equipment being sent to Britain and the Soviet Union. They felt we shouldn’t be sending military equipment to other countries when our own armed forces were short-handed on that same equipment.
It’s true that whatever money the military could scrape up was used mostly with the intention of defense of the coasts and secondarily protection of the rest of the Americas. It’s not the case that were preparing for an active war with Japan during the 1930s. Most of the buildup did not start until after the War began in Europe.
It’s interesting - and I think instructive - the look at what the military itself says about this period. You can find a look at the interwar years here, a chapter from a military history textbook. It’s as positive a history as possible, but others can read between the lines.
Its over 20 miles from Schofield to Waikiki. Even the long Tom has a rang of only 14 miles.
Defending Waikiki was Battery Randolph which had two WWI period 14 in rifles mounted on disappearing carriage.
Battery Dudley had two WWI period 6 in rifles mounted on disappearing carriage.
All gone within seconds due to a sustained fire from eight IJN battleships. http://www.northamericanforts.com/West/hi-north.html
Most of the coast defenses of Hawaii were built in 1942.
Probably filed in the 13,043th draw (section b(xxiv)) of the filing cabinet entitled: “Examples of Military Authorities Ignoring Intelligence Advice They Didn’t Like”
See further posts in that thread for an explanation of why land based artillery has a huge advantage over ship based artillery, among other things you can’t sink coastal artillery. See for example"Big Willie",a 340mm (13.4 inch) battery controlling Toulon which the Allies spent 9 days trying to destroy with three battleships, several cruisers and aerial bombing. There’s a picture of the moonscape surrounding it here.
Landing would have been extremely problematic, but the distance and logistics couldn’t be gotten around. It took most of the Japanese tanker force to support the carrier striking force that historically attacked on Dec 7th. Coming up with enough tankers to get a multi-divisional landing force and 8 battleships there to be able to perform the fantastic feat of destroying the coastal artillery “in seconds” simply wasn’t going to happen.
And Mitchell ended up court-martialed for his outspoken advocacy of air power. The role of the air services was strictly limited between the wars because it threatened every conventional military doctrine - and the reputations of countless senior officers.
He was court-martiales for insubordination. Accusing senior officers of “almost treasonable administration of national defence” is not about air power per se. It is an officer accusing other officers of treasonable conduct.
The court martial found that the truth or falsity of Mitchell’s position on air warfare was irrelevant to the charges of insubordination.
Everyone knew it. It was filed away as “bleedingly obvious, and we’d better ensure grabbing the central Pacific area is a bad path for the Japs to take”.
So what is this to do with the tragedy of Pearl Harbour ?
They didn’t have the fleet of air craft carriers at pearl harbour as sitting ducks. They wouldn’t trap the air craft carriers in where they had less manoeuvrability, various take off /landing headings were blocked by land … and certainly didn’t amass them all in one place.
They did have disposable resources sitting at pearl harbour but at the time they were quite busy for the purpose of readying the fleet of air craft carriers, and the defense force was there to defend Hawaii. Neither function could be interrupted .
You do realise that there was a second possible attack ?
Cruisers, Destroyers, pocket battleships and other fast boats make a landing, while the air craft defend them ? The regular navy was in pearl harbour to prevent pearl harbour being taken by a land force.
The aerial attack on Pearl Harbour may have been predicted, but serves as no evidence that the USA military didn’t think about the japanese attacking the USA directly… Pearl harbour’s tragedy occurred here "The first wave was detected by U.S. Army radar at 136 nautical miles , but was misidentified as USAAF bombers … ". There’s the tragedy there. They trusted the radar and with little experience with radar, that was a mistake. They could have carefully analysed flight plans and worked out no flights were expected… but didn’t. it was a busy place and multiple sections of the military working there… no coordination to that level…
I suspect the general thought was that Hawaii was too far for a successful invasion, and that any full-on invasion force would be so big that it would be noticed well before it arrived. Maybe the younger, more savvy and flexible-minded officers could see other alternatives; but don’t forget that the savage and innovative warfare of WWI was only two decades before, and that seemed to rely on fairly hefty, more immobile weapons; not a lot of naval work outside of submarine warfare. The true potential of bigger and more capable aircraft was not yet demonstrated to the west before WWII started.
I assume in the minds of the more elderly admirals, and less savvy civilian government types, an attempt to take out the fleet at Pearl Harbor would start with the IJN sailing up within bombardment range. Aircraft might do some damage, but… for real effect, you need those massive guns. Why would they do that when we have these massive shore batteries? As for submarines - we’re sheltered inside the harbor.
Plus, they were probably instead thinking, like Patton, in terms of full invasion and assessed that as too much of an overreach for the Japanese to attempt.
Mitchell was also pretty much wrong in his claims as well. He was arguing that bombers could sink ships by dropping bombs on them. His opponents argued this was almost impossible; bombers were less accurate than Mitchell claimed and ships could move around and shoot at the bombers.
Mitchell was able to demonstrate that a bomb could sink a battleship. But the demonstration didn’t prove his larger point. The ships in the demonstration were unmanned and were anchored in place.
When WWII started and people began dropping bombs in actual battle conditions, it was found that Mitchell had been wrong. Bombers routinely missed their targets by miles. Ships were sunk by planes, but it was torpedo bombers and dive bombers that were sinking them not the conventional bombers Mitchell had argued for.
