Did FDR know about Pearl Harbor in advance?

Yes, thank you for correcting me, I did mean to write "Bombing for Peace"

Also, what cracks me up is how my opinions are those that assume literacry of the american government, where are those who oppose the idea that the higher government had prior knowledge to the attacks simply couldn't read the signs (iliteracy).

So which is it? Is out government actually incredibly smart and playing the card of one that makes mistake after mistake? Or are they all just stupid and can't figure out what's really going on. You know, with all the secret Intelligence commities out there for the US, I'd be amazed if we had no knowledge of ANYTHING. Do you really believe what the media tells us??? Maybe I'M WRONG for assuming people were smart enough to figure this out!

How could he? He was in a whellchair, you moron!

I betcha they all drive Toyotas now.

just because one historian has "debunked" a book, it doesn't mean that what happened didn't happen. what were his motivations for "debunking" in the first place? have you read the declassified documents? they couldn't be more straight forward. it's like saying that the watergate tapes don't actually prove that nixon did anything wrong. it's there in black and white. and as far as the u.s. participation in ww2... the voting public was HUGELY isolationist at the time. 1.5 million jews had already been killed by the time we entered the arena. in 1941, 80 percent of the u.s. population didn't want to get involved, regardless of what military buildup was happening. any good politician knows that to get the tax dollars necessary to run a war campaign, you have to have a willing public. and you are totally wrong about ww1 too. wilson had a HELL of a time garnering public support for the war... you must remember, this is during the period when the socialist party was a legit third party in the U.S., and the public campaigns AGAINST going to was were hugely popular. the sinking of the lusitania was the pretext event which gave wilson the public leverage to dive in, even though we find years later that this was NOT a "passenger ship" as first claimed... it had falsified logs and was actually carrying munitions. is the pattern clear yet? need we go into the gulf of tonkin incident too?

Since Today's The Date wrote:

What do you think? I don't think FDR was a runner prior to his illness, to keep it on topic.

It sounds like the declassified documents reveal that FDR was aware of the threat. Whether you believe they all knew for sure or not, I think there is no doubt that there was enough information available to have prevented the attack.

Here's another question- what's the best PH movie ever made? Is there any competition for "Tora! Tora! Tora!"?

or better, Mitsubishi

it was, after all the Mitsubishi Zero

You forgot The Great Zionist conspiracy and the Knights Templar

Didn\'t Louis Farrahkhan or some NOI minister say something like

Today, there are 49 White and 1 Japanese controlled states in the United States. Who won WWII ?

In case people are curious, here's the portion of the memo people are talking about. Please also note that all eight steps (A-H) were put in place before Pearl Harbor.

___________________________________________

9. It is not believed that in the present state of political opinion the United States government is capable of declaring war against Japan without more ado; and it is barely possible that vigorous action on our part might lead the Japanese to modify their attitude. Therefore, the following course of action is suggested:

A. Make an arrangement with Britain for the use of British bases in the Pacific, particularly Singapore.

B. Make an arrangement with Holland for the use of base facilities and acquisition of supplies in the Dutch East Indies.

C. Give all possible aid to the Chinese government of Chiang-Kai-Shek.

D. Send a division of long range heavy cruisers to the Orient, Philippines, or Singapore.

E. Send two divisions of submarines to the Orient.

F. Keep the main strength of the U.S. fleet now in the Pacific in the vicinity of the Hawaiian Islands.

G. Insist that the Dutch refuse to grant Japanese demands for undue economic concessions, particularly oil.

H. Completely embargo all U.S. trade with Japan, in collaboration with a similar embargo imposed by the British Empire.

10. If by these means Japan could be led to commit an overt act of war, so much the better. At all events we must be fully prepared to accept the threat of war.

Funny how the Best Laid Plans backfire always. The Crusade in Iraq, French in Vietnam, U.S. in Vietnam., Japanese is China, Europeans in Asia. Good thing Asians kicked out the wimpy British, U.S., French, Dutch, Russians, etc. after WWII, Else there\'d be no Beijing 2008 Olympics.

Childers is just one of the prominent historians that comes to mind.

What the evidence shows is that FDR believed war with Japan was inevitable (he was right) and that the U.S. would be better off initiating it on our terms, but that he could never do that for reasons of popular opinion, etc.. He did not know on the evening of 6 December 1941 that the next day the Japanese were going to attack Pearl Harbor. If he did, why wouldn't he have tipped off the Navy? An attack well defended that saved American lives would have been just as good a pretext for America's entry into the war as an attack that kicked our ass and killed over 2,000 Americans.

FDR, like everyone else in America at the time, knew that the United States would inevitably be drawn into the war. In case you were not aware, the draft was initiated in September 1940, 15 months before the Pearl Harbor attack. The US government had certainly considered the possibility of Japan declaring war and even the possibility of Japan launching an attack without declaring war in advance. NOBODY, however, had the foresight to see Hawaii as the target. The Phillipines, Borneo, or Malaysia were viewed as potential targets. Nobody dreamed the Japanese would reach two-thirds of the way across the Pacific to strike Hawaii. FDR had no more prior knowledge of the attack than Admiral Kimmell or General Short.

2,000 dead at PH was minor. Nothing to cry over. 9-11 was 3000 dead. China and Russia lost tens of miliions in WWII. 20 million Vietnamese were murdered by the U.S. in Vietnam most in a cowardly manner using airplane bombs. Iraq and Dafur seems minors atrocities in comparison. Israel murdered thousands of innocent women and children in Lebanon in the 1980\'s and again in 2006.

Don't Re-write History wrote:

2,000 dead at PH was minor. Nothing to cry over. 9-11 was 3000 dead. China and Russia lost tens of miliions in WWII. 20 million Vietnamese were murdered by the U.S. in Vietnam most in a cowardly manner using airplane bombs. Iraq and Dafur seems minors atrocities in comparison. Israel murdered thousands of innocent women and children in Lebanon in the 1980's and again in 2006.

Yes, I know, the United States is the worst country in the history of humankind. The world would be so much better off if the U.S. never existed.

By the way, would you please cite your source for the U.S. killing 20 million Vietnamese.

Yes, the other targets seemed more likely. In fact, they were 'likely' as a number of them were hit at about the same time or soon thereafter.

On another point, my father-in-law cites the date as the happiest of his life. He was newly interned in northern Italy and was strongly of the opinion that having the US in the war would result in Germany's defeat. He escaped to Switzerland when the Nazis took over control of Italy after the Italian surrender/change of government. When tallying up fatalities, the generally accepted number is 6 million Jews.

Roosevelt was a Doper. His familiy made a fortune in China trading opium. Too bad he didn't live to see China kick the U.S. ass in 1949, and again in 1953 in Korea. Vietnam kicked out the U.S. with Roosevelt's imperialist policies in 1975. It's great to have so many War Gold Medalists in Asia !

Hold on a second running dad, Wilson most assuredly did NOT want the US involved in WW1. It took the "Zimmerman Telegram" (Germany offering to help Mexico with arms and money in exchange for them declaring war on the US. Absurdly they [the Germans] said they would let Mexico 'take back' Texas, N. Mexico and Arizona). The British had intercepted the telegram and decoded it, thereby learning of the German offer before the US government.

Read Barbara Tuchman's excellent book by the same title. Wilson wanted the US to remain an 'honest broker' for world peace at the time. One Admiral Sir Reginald Hall was responsible for creating the codebreaking group in Britain that was able to break the German Diplomatic Code, which was the code use by Foreign Secretary Zimmerman to make the offer to the Mexicans.

I strongly suspect that the majority of posters on this board have NO CLUE about this chapter in US and World History.

The allies, it is believed, were perhaps six weeks away from giving in and settling for an Armistice with Imperial Germany. (for those who sleep in History class, this was BEFORE Hitler, the year was 1917)

Once the telegram was revealed in the US, public opinion went against Wilson, exacerbated by the sinking of the Lusitania, a passenger ship, by the Germans. (the circumstances of THAT have been brought into question, too, by modern historians, claiming that the Lusitania may have been carrying armaments to Britain)

It is suspected by some historians that the Brits knew about Pearl Harbor in advance, too. This would lead those who are prey to conspiracy theories to believe that the Brits conned us into BOTH world wars.

Chew on that for a while.

mikeinboston:

that's the McCollum memo that outlined methodologies for getting the US geared up for war

McCollum had lived in japan as a youth as I recall and was in the upper echelon of the Navy's ONI (Office of naval intelligence)

Hey, 2008 is two years off. A lot can happen, there may not BE an Olympics then.