Pearl Harbor Day… an excellent reminder that a) stuff can happen when you least expect it, and b) nuclear fission can be air delivered.
FDR gets credit for ‘getting us out of the Depression’, but if you look at the numbers he presided over a Depression economy and a war economy. The only way ‘he got us out’ is if you believe he let Pearl Harbor happen so as to get us into WW2. And, of course, once the war was declared that pesky Depression was gone faster than you can say “Well take five million Garands and all the bombers you can build.”
This was also the catalyst for the forced internment of American citizens into concentration camps. Another lesson there.
And, of course, the end of the war brought about massive changes to American life and culture as everyone came back from the war.
But, for America, it all started on that December 7 day. Years ago I met a guy who was at Pearl Harbor when it all went down. Like an idiot, the only question I could think of was “What was it like?”. “Terrifying”, was the response.
[yop_poll id=”16″]
Funny or rather should I say fuzzy ideas of the end of the depression. While I had always thought that it had ended under FDR, I later learned in a college second semester Economics that the depression didn’t end until the late 40’s?
I had a battery commander give us our good night talk once when we in the field and a cold front moved in. He said for all squad leaders to make sure their soldiers were taken care of because “there was going to be a nip in the air just like Pearl.” Of course that was way before the political correctness and snow flakes had taken hold of our country.
I digress, the survey would not tally my vote and I say YES, FDR knew it was going to happen and he let it.
Little nip, only took me a couple of hours to pick up on that…been a slow thinking kind of day I guess
Little nip in the air… and here I thought the Japanese launched a spacecraft… 😀
All joking aside. Our government knew this was coming. We cracked their diplomatic codes well before Dec 7. It was only a couple of moths later where we cracked their naval codes and had a huge advantage at Midway.
FDR knew. Dirty rotten so-n-so.
Day of Deceit: The Truth About FDR and Pearl Harbor
https://amzn.to/2QKrDQ0
As with all such polls, one doesn’t have to know any facts in order to have an opinion.
For those who voted yes, saying that FDR knew about the attack in advance, I would have preferred that several foundational questions had been asked that would indicate that the respondent actually had some crude understanding of the situation in the early 1940s, e.g., “Who was the American Secretary of State in 1941?” “What country was the subject of an oil embargo in 1941?” “What was the reason for the US declaring an oil embargo?”, etc.
I could go on and on, but I think that you get the point.
All you need to know was that Hawaii was under a “invasion alert”-50%on duty50%off duty for 6 weeks previous to Dec7,the standdown came directly from FDR along with the order for the carriers to be at sea. Without these orders the attack would of been a disaster. I confirmed this with several survivors and all agreed the Japanese would of been destroyed if they were on their guns and a combat air patrol was up. It was admitted the Japanese code was broken and we decoded faster than the Japanese.
For FDR, deception was a way of life.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mj2sy0WXNIk
Within days of becoming Prez, FDR made gold illegal and devalued the Greenback 40%. But of course, he was a HERO and never could have false flagged Pearl ( sarcasm ).
Agreed! All Japan wanted was a hug and FDR said screw you. (more sarcasm)
I have read numerous books on events that lead up to the bombing of Pearl Harbor, events throughout WWll and events during and after the surrender of Japan as well as Germany. All suggest that FDR did know it was imminent and did nothing to prevent it. He was by far, in my humble opinion, one of the most vile and manipulative presidents ever,. With the exception perhaps the era of Obama, who by his actions alone did more to subvert America and our Constitutional Republic than any other single president.
Of course FDR knew. We had broken the Japanese diplomatic code known as the Purple code. We had been reading their traffic between the embassy in Washington DC and Tokyo for about a year and a half.
Ten months before Dec 7 we also were able to break JN 25. The primary Japanese naval code. The code breakers knew something was going to happen soon because the Japanese changed to a new code three weeks before the attack. JN 26 was not broken until after thge attack. The attack was used to get us into the war. As soon as Congress declared war on Germany thge primary emphasis turned there. We fought in the South Pacific on a shoe string. I had uncles with the Marines and with Patton’s 3rd Army. I have been a military historian for most of my life.
The depression actually ended when we started taking orders for war goods 1936. We just had soo much idle capacity and a one way policy(all GB,no Germany) it took a while to be recognised. Don’t forget the reason Bush was sent to the pacific was he and his family were Nazi supporters(Prescot Bush almost went to jail for his violation of embargos against Germany) and it was known if Bush was in ETO he would of defected.
My suspicion is that he was expecting SOMETHING, but if he’d known how big it was going to be, there would have been some air defence.
Nevertheless, it had the effect he needed.
Without America entering the war at that point, how long would it have been before Japanese (and German) forces landed on American soil?