Pearl Harbor--Historical Revisionism?

Great Debates
41

I many be presuming, but this line makes me wonder if shagadelicmysteryman hasn’t allowed himself to be taken in by a false dichotomy that is often set up by a type of rhetoric that I have run into a time or two: either you are an angel or you are a Nazi. Having grown up with the idea that we were the uncontested “good guys” of WWII, the discovery of the internment camps comes as a shock, and there is a tendency to wonder if the whole damn war was realitive and if we were any better than the Nazis. When you are thinking like that it feels like any admission that America behaved poorly is a tacit acknowledgement that we were hypocrites to invade Germany when we had concentration camps to our own.

There are levels of evil, and the internment camps were bad, but no where on the scale of hte concentration camps of Germany. That doesn’t mean that we are off the hook–we shouldn’t have intered U.S. citizens and it is important that we remember what we did wrong so that we can do the right thing next time–but you don’t have to worry that our concentration camps meant we were every bit the “bad guys.”

42

I can’t think why that part of the film would be all that offensive. The dentist was portrayed as receiving a call from someone he didn’t know, asking for general information: “Can you see the ships and/or the base from your window?” After bewilderedly answering, he turns back to his patient and comments about what an odd call it was. He wasn’t explicitly shown to be a spy, or at least that’s the way I saw it. They might have meant to imply that, but I just picked up that they called someone they knew was of Japanese descent to answer some questions.

I could have easily missed something, though. The film was a major yawn-fest execpt for the pyrotechnics in the middle, and I kind of tuned in and out during the first and last hours.

43

That’s exactly what the Movie Geek (our own Cervaise) said about it.

44

Thanks for the plug, jab1. :slight_smile: And just to confirm, Kate_W, your memory of the film is correct; its version of events indicates the dentist doesn’t know what the phone call is about.

45

“Pearl Harbor’s Historical Inaccuracies”:

http://www.theonion.com/onion3720/infograph_3720.html

46

Cervaise:

Great site! I’ve bookmarked it and will consult your excellent reviews whenever I consider seeing a film.

47

Okay, I slightly misremembered the quote from the book. I have the incredibly huge paperback version of Truman by David McCullough and on page 460, 3rd paragraph, it reads:
“[Truman] had ordered no further use of atmoic bombs without his express permission. (One more bomb was available at the time.) The thought of wiping out another city was too horrible, he said. He hated the idea of killing ‘all those kids.’” The date cited for him giving this order is on page 459 and is given as Friday, August 10th.

Also, the possibilty of someone building an atomic bomb was first discussed, I believe, by H.G. Wells. In any case, I know for a fact that E.E. “Doc” Smith mentioned an atomic bomb as such in his Skylark of Space novel which was written in the early 1920s.

48

Tuckerfan wrote:

Weeeeellllllll … “Doc” Smith described something he called “X-plosive bullets”, artillery rounds of various sizes that used copper and a mysterious metal called “X”. When “X” and copper were in contact with one another, and a source of X-rays was applied, the “X” would convert the copper directly from matter into energy.

While an atomic (fission) bomb does in fact convert a measurable amount of the mass of its reactants into energy, the amount of mass so converted is very small, and is achieved through nuclear processes that are nothing like the process “Doc” Smith described.

49

No one has yet mentioned the absence of smoking in a crowded bar full of servicemen in 1941, I mean, c’mon!
As for Japanese internment, imagine today if Bin Laden (sp?) organized a mass destruction of Newport News where your son was stationed? And we then entered war with Afghanistan or Iraq, or a combined Middle East force of nations? and Europe refused to be involved? I know people who lived in Calif. at the time, and they were scared
sh–less!

50

Which in no way justifies the rounding up of all persons of Japanese descent and putting them in concentration camps.

We were at war with Germany and Italy, too, yet we generally took the time to actually investigate German and Italian nationals (and generally left the children of such immigrants alone). Since most of the fear was inspired by racism, anyway, that hardly justifies our actions.

51

"As for Japanese internment, imagine today if Bin Laden (sp?) organized a mass destruction of Newport News where your son was stationed? And we then entered war with Afghanistan or Iraq, or a combined Middle East force of nations? and Europe refused to be involved? "

Europe refused to be involved? What? At the time, all of Europe was either Germany, German occupied, German puppet states (Vichy France, Norway), German sympathizers (Spain), German allies (Italy), steadfastedly neutral (Switzerland), being invaded by Germany (Soviet Union), or the UK. And the UK did try to help, actually declaring war on Japan before we did, I believe.

dude:
"With the industrial might the USA had over Japan would it really have mattered if all the battleships had been sunk ?

You can always make more of them. "

Do you have any idea how long it takes to build a battleship? Even the slightest clue?

52

In “Plain Speaking, an Oral Biography of Harry Truman” by Merle Miller–the author asked Truman if he had any regrets, and decisions he would change in his presidency; expecting to hear a comment on Hiroshima. Truman’s swift and unequivocal response: appointing Tom Clark to the Supreme Court. Sounds like he didn’t lose any sleep over Hiroshima.

53

to TomnDebb
I certainly didn’t mean that it was justified - it is only that none of us understands the feeling at that time with no foresight at all. As now, Mosques all around NY were unfairly monitored after the WTC bombing.

54

Slight clarification, here. I should have stated that ol’ “Doc” didn’t actually refer to an atomic bomb, but a nuclear type explosion (he describes the explosion from an X-bullet as being unlike an “atomic explosion,” which to my mind implies that the concept of the atomic bomb was being tossed around a bit in some circles). Should have known somebody’d find me out when I was trying to cut corners.

55

I would like to provide some statistics on ship construction. The Missouri was the last battleship ever completed by the United States, and (aside from the Arizona) is probably the most famous. The hull was first laid down on January 6th of 1941, nearly a year before Pearl Harbor. It wasn’t commissioned until June 11th, 1944. The other three battleships of the Iowa class were:

Iowa – construction started June 27th, 1940; it was commissioned on February 22nd, 1943.
New Jersey – (specific data not available from the source I am using).
Wisconsin – construction started January 25th, 1941; it was commissioned on April 16th, 1944.

As you can see, building battleships was no easy task. Taking approximately three years each to build, had we lost our carriers as well, the Japanese would have had a full year to run around unopposed in the Pacific. Only four battleships were commissioned in 1942 (of an older class than the Iowa), so there would be no serious naval opposition until a full fleet could be built, probably not until 1945 at the earliest.

On a slightly different tack, several planned carriers did start construction before the war. The first of these new ones, Essex, was commissioned December 31st, 1942. By the end of 1943, CV-9 (Essex) through CV-12 (the second Hornet), CV-16 (the second Lexington) through CV-18 (the second Wasp), and a host of “jeep” carriers were constructed. Still, I think that their length of construction (also about 3 years each) demonstrates that building major ships, even in the height of war, is not a quick task. For a modern day comparison, our most recent carrier (not counting the as yet unfinished Ronald Reagan), is the Harry S Truman which was started in November of 1993, and was commissioned July 25th, 1998.

By the way, “Fat Man” and “Little Boy” were the only two bombs we had at that time. We didn’t have one more; we didn’t have any more. Not that we couldn’t make them if given time, of course, but you never have the luxury of time in a war. Tuckerfan, I notice you have a book cite for claiming we had an additional bomb. I’m afraid that I haven’t turned up a reliable cite from the internet yet. I also have book cites of my own, but then it comes down to my word against yours. I have no doubt that your book does say that, I just believe it is mistaken

-Psi Cop

Source for Battleship information: The Battleship List at the official Navy site. Click on each ship name for more detailed information on specific dates, statistics, and history.
Source for Carrier information: The Carrier List, also at the official Navy site.

56

Psi Cop, this is hysterical. I attempted to find a cite by going to the Harry Truman ring at Bomis, only to discover that it’d been shifted to Whitehouse.gov, so I go there and there’s not much on Harry, but there’s a link to the Harry Truman Library, click on that and you get the following message:

WTF??? I mean, I knew politicians could be pissy little fellows, but yanking a Truman link off the official White House site is really petty. Anyway, I’ve poked around there and haven’t anything which confirms there was another bomb ready to go, so I dunno.