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Day of Deceit: The Truth About FDR and Pearl Harbor

Day of Deceit: The Truth About FDR and Pearl Harbor

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: It's All There!
Review: Since I've already wrote a review of this excellent book, I just wanted to challenge some posters who are either ignoring what is available from it, or ignoring other sources.For those that ask..."how could FDR be sure that Germany would make such a blunder and declare war on the US," the answer is clearly laid out here and in other sources. As part of the Tripartite Pact, Germany...as with each other country, had an agreement to come to the defense of the other if they were declared war upon. While no one could be certain this would happen, there was further corraboration of this on pg. 409 of the governments decoded "Diplomatic Conversations" (re: Magic). Intelligence intercepts from Germany to Japan decoded this message from Hitler: "should Japan become engaged in a war against the United States, Germany, of course, would join the war immediately."Other questions I hear asked are..."why would FDR sacrifice the Pacific Fleet and especially the lives of those stationed there. As Stinnett...and others have rightfully noted, what was left at Pearl after the weeks earlier departure of the heavy ships, was nothing more than the old WWI relics that were planned on being replaced. And while no one wants to think that FDR would sacrifice the lives of others to get us into this war, the fact is, he made a similar suggestion early in 1941 to Admiral Stark. According to Charles Beard in his book, as it is in Stinnett's, FDR "wouldn't mind losing 1 or 2 Cruisers" in Manila to get into this war. As Stinnett points out, these "pop-up" Cruisers could hold up to 900 men per ship. Ironically, it was Admiral Kimmel who objected to this procedure saying..."it is ill-advised and will result in war if we make this move." Fortunately, it was never implimented...and one of the reasons why is because there was never enough American outrage over the loss of US escort ships to German subs in the declared war zones. As many isolationists said at that time, if the US doesn't want to lose lives and ships, stay out of the war zones. This is why PH became that more important.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Strong evidence, but not the smoking gun
Review: Stinnett constructs a strong but circumstantial case that FDR knew in advance of the attack on Pearl Harbor. Copious footnotes refer back to the extensive research underlying his claims -- I don't know why another reviewer claimed the book is based on "discredited sources" when 90% of the footnotes are to declassified military documents obtained via FOIA.

The book does have a couple of weaknesses. First, the evidence as to FDR's knowledge is circumstantial. Clearly, Navy officers knew or had every reason to know that Pearl Harbor was to be attacked, and for whatever reason the Navy failed to warn Adm. Kimmel and in fact actively discouraged him from shoring up his defenses. Clearly, FDR's intention as of 1940 (at the latest) was to provoke Japan into attacking the US, giving him the excuse he needed to enter the war. What is not as clear is whether Roosevelt knew specifically of Pearl Harbor in advance. Stinnett builds a strong circumstantial case that FDR knew, but it's not a smoking gun.

Second, Stinnett lays out reams of documentary evidence, but he often fails to satisfactorily explain and interconnect the evidence to the reader. Compounding that problem is Stinnett's failure to tie all the evidence together in a closing chapter. Having read the book, I feel as if I were a juror who sat through 6 months of detailed testimony about a murder, but was denied hearing a closing argument from the prosecutor to "connect the dots". I know he's guilty, but I'm not exactly sure why.

Despite these weaknesses, Stinnett's work is a valuable contribution and gives enough evidence to justify the commonly-held belief that FDR, for better or worse, is responsible more than any other party for getting the US into WWII.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: A very dishonest author
Review: Stinnett widely misrepresents hundreds of his documents Earlier this year he had to shut down his OWN message board at his website because of MANY angry readers demanding answers for his sloppy research. The biggest 3 mistakes are, 1 misrepresenting the McCollum document, also Stinnett imcorrectly states that McCollum's office was as "an element of Station US (by which he means OP-20-G), a secret American cryptographic center located at the main naval headquarters" in an poor effort to tie McCollum closer to OP-20-G before WWII.Second, he lumped both the simple code JN-25A that was in effect until 1 Dec 1940 with the a much more complicated code JN-25B a code that provided no significant decrypts until early 1942. And third he makes the mistake about radio silence. The Japanese never did transmit. The sworn statements of 11 Japanese officers, diaries of a DD XO and the official BatDiv 3 and CarDiv 5 logs that all agree to this well known fact.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: FDR played Japan like a vituoso.
Review: That the president had fore knowledge of Japan's attack has been an open secret for many years. Mr. Stinnett leaves no doubt. FDR may have not been prepared for the magnitude of the Pearl attack. He may even have felt that only Guam, Wake the Phillipines & ships at sea would be attacked, but he knew. With
85% of Americans opposed to war, Japan had to fire the first shots. Germany played her part too by declaring war on us first. Germany was after all FDR's primary target.
Of special interest & the heart of the book (tape) were the eight points authored by LtCdr. Arthur McCollum. These were recommendations of actions to be followed to provoke Japan into war, It is unclear that FDR actually saw them but everyone of the eight points was followed. That is the real story of this book. Rafael Ferrer is a fine dramatic reader.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: I Strongly Disagree: Scholars Disagree.
Review: The claim that FDR knew about Pearl Harbor is a little far fetched. He did pressured Japan through economic sanctions, possibly provoking Japan, but he did not know about the attack.

The United States had broken the diplomatic code but not the Japanese naval code broken yet. Plus, the military, government, and technology were not as well advanced organized as they are today.

Probably the most scholarly account of World War II was written by Gerhard Weinberg (thousands of footnotes of scholarly research) and he states that the naval code was not broken yet.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: It's All There!
Review: The magnitude of what this book has revealed is unspeakably great to anyone who researches on wartime history of Japan and to any Japanese who is desperately trying to debunk terrible false accusations Japan received from the victorious Allied Powers in the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, a.k.a. Tokyo Trial after the World War 2 ended.

The McCollumfs Eight Action Proposal to gprovoke Japan to commit overt act of warh suggested so-called gABCD Encirclementh: Economic encirclement of Japan by America, Britain, China and Dutch.

In May 1951, General Douglas MacArthur stated before the Committee on Armed Services and the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate; gThere is practically nothing indigenous to Japan except the silk worm. They lack cotton, they lack wool, they lack petroleum products, they lack tin, they lack rubber, they lack a great many other things, all of which was in the Asiatic basin.h And most of those were being imported from abovementioned four countries. Then MacArthur concludes; gThey feared that if those supplies were cut off, there would be 10 to 12 million people unoccupied in Japan. Their purpose, therefore, in going to war was largely dictated by security.h

At the court of the Tokyo Trial, the Prosecutors actually failed to prove Japanfs evil intention to go for the war with China, the U.S.A. and the British and other Allied countries, let alone to gconquer the worldh. They had to admit that the world famous forged document; Tanaka Memorial, which allegedly announced Japanfs cunning plan of conquest of the world, was in fact a forgery.

As for Japanfs starting war against China, the defense counsels almost succeeded to prove Japan had been provoked and harassed by the Chinese Communists with Red Russia behind them, if the trialfs final judgments of guilty verdicts on all defendants had been already fixed from the first. Japan was not Aggressor there, either.

According to some judges who presented dissentient judgments to the trial, like Judge Radhabinod Pal of India and Judge Bert V.A. Roling of Holland, all the verdicts of guilty charges, including Death by Hanging to seven men, was gpresumed guiltyh being against the decent law practice. With no perjury applied to the prosecutorfs side, the trial accepted all evidences presented by the prosecutors even though most of them were in fact groundless hearsay or even mere rumors, while the evidences that would work in favour of the defendants were plainly dismissed altogether.
The trial was just a gvictorfs justiceh.

I have no intention to jump to the conclusion that Japan was pure innocent with all those warfare in the past, but, having seen those undeniable evidences of provocation of Japan by the U.S.A. that Stinnett has revealed before us, I think it is sensible for us all to, at least to say, re-examine whole issue of the war in the light of truly decent International Laws of War and history studies. This is about Calumny made against Japan by the Allied Powers under the name of the gInternational justiceh. Does the International community recognise the responsibility towards the defamation on a country for half a century long? At least, I think, the false accusations on the Japanese individuals should be recognised and in that light true history should be re-studied to see if any other gtrueh aggressors have been overlooked for the sake of the worldfs peace seeking.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: It don't make sense to think this without that.......
Review: The reviewer from Southern California on 26 Sept 2001 make an interesting statement that FDR knew from intercepted dipomatic message that Germany will declared war on US when Japan attacked the United States. Funny that I didn't see that in the book anywhere and for sure, its not in the index. I wondered where that reviewer got his information since I never heard of it. If such thing were true, then FDR may had a case for covering up and allowing the Japanese to attacked.

But since I haven't seen it on paper yet, I have to go along with the fact that if FDR wanted a war with Germany, Japan would be the last source. Did FDR knew that Germany would declared war on US? Did FDR knew that Hitler would make such a stupid blunder that will caused Germany repeat the mistakes of 1917 and if so, how come no one has written about such foresight? Becuase if all the answers to these questions are "NO", then this book don't have a purpose despite of all the nice writing and evidences provided by the author. Without war with Germany, there was no sense in having war with Japan, in fact that would be the exact opposite of what FDR wanted!! Japan's alliance with Germany did not gurantee Germany's declaration since such alliance was of a defensive nature. Why would anyone think that FDR wanted a war with Japan without Germany? If there is an evidence of prior knowledge that Germany will entered the war against the United States with Japan, I would like to know about it. That would be a real conspiracy worth reading about. But I doubt that the Japanese dipomatic corps knew anything about Pearl Harbor planning while Germany was still kind of hoping that Japan would help them against the Russians. But this book does not show such revealing evidence and in the end, its all second guessing, hindsight analysis and conjectures based on very good research but pointless without the real prize.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Great information, good writing
Review: This book is an important one to review as we move into a new period of international unrest. I was suprised to hear from an 84 year old friend that most of what is in this book was commonly discussed during WWII. Perhaps this book will be old news to the WWII generation, but it was fascinating to me. A great companion to have at hand when listening to the latest dispatches from "The War on Terror".

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Essential reading
Review: This is it -- the soup-to-nuts, apolitical expose of the clever trickery used by FDR (in cohoots with Churchill) to get and isolationist US into WWII. Thank God FDR did what he did... it's called leadership, and sometimes it hurts.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: What Did They Know and When Did They Know It?
Review: To the many uninformed, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was a devastating surprise. To those knowledgeable, it was not. The author claims that the US Government carefully orchestrated a series of moves to create this attack. Historians learned that some knowledge or warnings of this were known in advance. Dusko Popov's 1972 book tells how he and Ian Fleming visited J. Edgar Hoover in July 1941 to tell of Axis interest in the defenses of Pearl Harbor. The author served in the Navy under Lieutenant George Bush, and earned ten battle stars and a Presidential Unit Citation. After he retired as a photographer and journalist in 1986, he devoted his time to research and writing this book.

Appendix A has Lieutenant Commander Arthur McCollum's proposed eight actions of October 7, 1940 designed to provoke Japan into attacking. Allying with Britain, Holland, and China; sending heavy cruisers and submarines to the Orient; keeping the fleet in Hawaii; refuse selling oil to Japan; and a trade embargo with Japan. Stinnett does not question America's entry into the war, or even the manipulation to force the Japanese attack. He just wanted to reveal what actually happened; a scoop by a reporter. During 1941 a Japanese spy surveyed Pearl Harbor as a target. His last message on December 6 said it was ready for a surprise attack (p.85). All the time he was watched by Naval Intelligence! The FBI wiretapped the telephones of the Japanese consulate (p.86). But Admiral Kimmel was not informed (p.95). In August 1941 this spy established grid coordinates to prepare for the attack. Their transmissions were intercepted and decoded (p.99). Yet Admiral Kimmel and General Short were not informed (p.107). Did a Rear Admiral leave his ship Saturday to be safe at home Sunday (p.111)?

In early November 1941 Ambassador Joseph Grew warned that Japan decided on war with America (pp.143-4). After Admiral Kimmel ordered a search for Japanese forces north of Hawaii, the White House countermanded his order (p.145). This book is so rich in details that is can't be easily summarized here. Except to note that if Kimmel and Short were kept in the loop, the attack on Pearl Harbor would not have been a surprise. The imperialist conflicts between Japan and Britain, China, and Holland spread like a forest fire. But "the United States desires that Japan commit the first overt act" (p.282). The 'Epilogue' summarizes this book.

"The Wrath To Come" is the title of an E. Phillips Oppenheim novel written in the mid 1920s. Reflecting the politics of that time, this novel suggested a plan for a Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, and attacks by Germany and Russia along the Atlantic seaboard.





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