|
Posts:
1
Registered:
2/21/07
|
|
(1 of 4)
Three main causes of Pearl Harbor
Feb 21, 2007 9:13 AM
|
|
I am wondering what the three main causes of Pearl Harbor are. I am working on a paper on Pearl Harbor.
|
|
|
Posts:
9,202
Registered:
10/27/01
|
|
(2 of 4)
Re: Three main causes of Pearl Harbor
Feb 25, 2007 10:21 AM
|
First the USA and Japan had been planning war with each other since 1900, the US had War Plan Orange which thought Japan would attack the Philippines.
Japan had the Tanaka Memorial as it is now called first published in 1927 that declared Japan's intentions to conquer all of Asia and the Pacific ocean islands including the US west coast, Panama and much of Pacific Latin America!
Japan wanted to be a world power and control all of Asia and all land that touched the Pacific and Indian Oceans. She had no resources and to get resources she was prepared to conquer the world or part of it. Also the Shinto religion demanded that Japan's emperor as the son of the Sun Goddess accept the Sun godessess mission to rule the world.
The US in contrast favored open and free trade not spheres of influence in places like China and while we did have a colony in the Philippines it was being prepared for independence, to be granted in 1944, when Japan attacked us in 1941.
Japan began to carve out colonial territories as early as 1895 in Taiwan. In 1905 She fights the ZRusso-Japanese war against Tsarist Russia and ends up with a bloody stalemate. The US brokers a peace deal called the Portsmouth Treaty which did not allow Japan nor Russia to keep their conquests in what was then called Manchuria, today north China. Both sides pull back to their pre-1905 positions. Russia did not pay Japan any money as Japan demanded and Japan kept control of Korea.
Japan saw this as a US sell out and begins planning a war to take over much of China. After WW1 when Japan fights Germany she is allowed to keep her conquests of the German colonies in China and the Central Pacific islands.
In 1932 and again in 1937 Japan embarks on a bloody war of conquest in Manchuria (1932) and China (1937) the US opposses this by diplomatic pressure and an arms build up. Both sides have been planning for a war at this point for 30 or more years. The US begins to arm the Chinese.
In June 1941 Japan occupies French Indochina to cut the Chinese supply routes, todays Laos Cambodia and Vietnam which the US has said will result in an oil and raw materials embargo. The US is Japan's biggest source of oil, we are the worlds largest oil exporter in 1941!
To Japan this sanction is the final straw and she begins war planning to start the war after the fall rice harvest is done in November-December 1941. The US moves the fleet from San Diego to Pearl Harbor.
Ok the three causes in my view are:
1) US desire for free trade with China directly clashes with the goals of Japan both religious and economic to create a Pacific empire and control China.
2) Japan and the US see each other as potential enemies whose differences will not be settled by diplomacy after the 1905 Portsmouth Treaty because the US rejects the idea of empire and announces it will leave the Philippines in 40 years. Japan who wishes an empire cannot allow this because to justify her claims to empire she needs the Euro-American colonial powers as a scape goat. If the US frees the Filipinos then perhaps the British might too leave India or the Dutch their colonies. Japan wants to appear as liberators to the peoples of Asia not new colonial conquerers.
3) Japan invades China and US-Japanese relations sour, the US imposes economic sanctions on Japan after she invades Indochina and Japan rather then loose face, that is be humiliated and leave Indochina and China chooses war.
|
|
|
Posts:
19
From:
NW PA
Registered:
5/14/07
|
|
(3 of 4)
Re: Three main causes of Pearl Harbor
May 16, 2007 6:34 PM
|
DenaliWolf67:
No doubt there were many issues that the US had with Japan, but none of that had anything to do with the immediate attack on the US by Japan. FDR maneuvered Japan into attacking us for one reason: HE NEEDED TO GET INTO WAR WITH GERMANY IN ORDER TO SAVE BRITAIN from iminent defeat.
Although the mutual defense treaty of Germany with Japan did not necessitate Hitler coming to Japan's aid in case Japan attacked, Hitler could not resist the possibility of tackling the US while we wopuld have been involved in a 2 front war. So Hitler took the bait.
Most people fail to recognize that Japan's attack was not a surprise. FDR had recruited Frank Knox, one of my Grandfather's old comrads who TR and his "Western Musketeers" had fostered and eventually used to convey TR's orders to my grandfather to sink the Maine back in the Spanish/American War. TR had told FDR of Frank's role at a dinner one night while TR and FDR were still trying to get the US into the first world war. FDR passed on the advice to Winston Churchill who got it just wrong enough to risk civilian deaths on the Lusitania. But FDR remembered Frank's role as a young whipper snapper who proved his ability to keep a secret for 40 years. Since Knox was also a hawk who wanted to go to war with Hitler, FDR knew he could use Frank to get us into WWII by making sure that Japan's attack was sufficiently successful that she could not break it off without doing enough damage to get our people ready to go to war. I don't need to go into all the details Frank shared with my Grandfather--by then the only one of the original Western Musketeers still alive (other than the Frankie come lately, Mr. Knox.
Of course I knew that from private access to my grandfather's stories. I did not even know there was any proof other than the highly secret radio intercepts that will probably never be released. But while working on my book, The Doppelganger Galaxy, I came across a copy of the original memo prepared for FDR on the morning of the attack on the basis of intercepts during the last few days. It was photocopied in Joseph Alsop's book TR about Joseph's uncle--or cousin?
Anyhow, at first it does not appear to be remarkable. But when I copied it under various degrees of light and contrast to get the best copy I could, I saw just enough of the text that was under the scratching out to make clear what corrections FDR needed to make for FDR's "Infamy" speech.
I went ahead in my text to show that at first FDR had been going to say that "Japanese air squadrons had commenced bombing in Oahu and in the Phillipines." That was corrected by subsequent developments, the facts that the Japanese attack could be more specifically located in Honolulu, and had not taken place in the Phillipines at all in spite of the radio chatter that had led Knox to predict that in his "Proposed Message to the Congress."
Toward the end of that short speech, Knox had proposed pointing out, "...the distances to Manila, and especially, of Hawii, from Japan make it obvious that these attacks were deliberately planned many days ago....."
But once FDR knew that there had not yet been an attack on Manila by the time he had to deliver the actual message to Congress the next night, the sentence structure had to be changed from plural attacks on Manila and Hawaii to the distance of Hawaii from Japan makes it obbvious that the attack was deliberately planned many days or even weeks ago."
The correections were made in FDR's own hand. Luckily, he apparently was too hurried or saw no need to fully obliterate any possibility for an intelligence sleuthe such as I was trained to be to get a clear picture of a man at the last minute realizing that he had to correct the original text about the dual attacks when one of them had not happened.
But the crucial point is that he had sufficient belief that both were going to happen that he left them both in the speech until the last minute.
The crucial question is what had made him and his advisor, SecNav Knox so sure the Japanese were going to attack Manila or somewhere in the Phillipines? The answer is in the chatter in encrypted messages that we were not supposed to have been able to intercept during our later claim that the Japanese fleet was on Radio Silence. Granted, that held mostly. The Japanese fleet might even have tried to mislead us into expecting the attack to be in Manila. But the fact remains, that at the same time that our officials were supposedly playing keystone cops with getting a general alert to the commanders in Pearl Harbor and Manila, our SecNav had sufficient intercept to confidently inform FDR of a two pronged attack in the proposed message to Congress, a mistake that had to be corrected at the last moment when the attack had failed to materialize in spite of the original claim that the attacks had commenced.
It is not a great deal of evidence. And if I had not known about what actually happened ahead of time I might not even have noticed the evidence of FDR's beliefs about Japan's attacks before they took place. But now that we have evidence of that fact, we have grounds to demand that any evidence from the intercepts before Dec. 6, 1941 be released. I don't claim that this bit of evidence makes the whole case. It may already be too late to create any great certainty based on this fact that FDR had tried to bring about Japan's attack so he could get to war with Hitler. But every little modicum of evidence contributes to the likelihood of the truth of the piucture--or at least my estimate of the situation that thios scenariao is more likely than any other one.
Feel free to investigate my claim, and to spread it around. I would like to be blamed for it since it is part of my Doppelganger Galaxy and it is an original observation (at least as far as I know).
|
|
|
Posts:
9,202
Registered:
10/27/01
|
|
(4 of 4)
I've heard this theory before and while FDR was devious enough to
May 19, 2007 4:02 PM
|
do it on that I'll agree. But Britain was not in danger of an imminent defeat! Hitler had no navy to convoy his invasion fleet of old barges and small craft from the French and Belgian Channel ports to the British invasion beaches in the face of the Royal Navy in the summer of 1940 much less in late 1941. He had also failed to destroy the RAF in the summer and fall of 1940.
I have seen plans for the German invasion, Operation Seelowe or Sealion and they are a joke in the face of the Royal Navy and the RAF.
Hitler wanted a peace deal with London along the lines of the one he gave Vichy France so he would have a free hand in the east against Russia.
By the fall of 1941 Hitler is in a quagmire in Russia, his failure to manage the 70 miles from Smolensk to Moscow in July 1941 due to his interference with Army Group Center dooms the German invasion of Russia to failure. Hitler had 205 divisions in Russia and about 2/3rds of his air power by October 1941 and had no interest in Seelowe the planned invasion of Britain.
Britain was in no danger of defeat by June 1941 as Hitler had turned east into Russia. In North Africa Hilter's failure to destroy Malta in the summer of 1941 and his leaving the North African theatre to Rommel and the Italians in favor of the Russian invasion also gives Britain a rest. The new offensive by Rommel at Gazala will not begin unitl June 1942 well after we are at war.
There is simply no evidence of a British collapse in the summer of 1941. FDR's moves, cutting the oil supply to Japan in June 1941 will be seen as an act of war by the Japanese and War Department and State Department as well as FDR knows it! The movement of the Pacific fleet from San Diego, it's main base to the advanced strike base of Pearl Harbor is the final straw in Japanese eyes.
Hitler did not want an American war, he did want Japan to tie down the well trained, winter war equipped Siberian divisions of Russia which in December 1941 make the Russian victory before Moscow possible. Japan had other ideas and from declassified documents about Richard Sorge Soviet master spy in Japa, Stalin knows Japan will strike south into the Pacific not north into Siberia and he moves the critical Siberian army westward to Moscow only in October 1941.
There is simply no way to predict that a war between Japan and the US in 1941 would lead to Hitler going to war with the US too. Hitler's treaty of defense was just that a paper defense pact and it was aimed at the Soviets not the USA.
The road to war between us and Japan began in the early 1900's as both pre-war US and Japanese documents show. Both of us wanted a show down with the other and planned for it.
Britain was only in danger of defeat from the end of May 1940 unitl about October 1940 when bad weather doomed any German cross channel assault and the Germans failed to achieve air supremacy over southern England and the potential invasion beaches.
By Christmas 1940 the defeat of Britain was left to the U-boat arm and the night bombing of the Luftwaffe as Hitler turned his eyes east to Moscow.
Did FDR want war with Germany and scheme to get one, I have no doubt about it. But a war with Japan doesn't get him that unless Hitler's ego and vanity get the better of him. That it did makes FDR and cronies the luckiest gamblers in history.
--
Edited by DenaliWolf67 at 05/19/2007 4:05 PM
|
|
|
|
|
