The Story Ends

AGAIN AND AGAIN in my mind I have reviewed the events that preceded the Japanese attack, seeking to determine if I was unjustified in drawing from the orders, directives and information that were forwarded to me the conclusions that I did. The fact that I then thought and now think my conclusions were sound when based upon the information I received, has sustained me during the years that have passed since the first Japanese bomb fell on Pearl Harbor.

When the information available in Washington prior to the attack was disclosed to me I was appalled. Nothing in my experience of nearly forty-two years service in the Navy had prepared me for the actions of the highest officials in our government which denied this vital information to the Pearl Harbor commanders.

If those in authority wished to engage in power politics, the least that they should have done was to advise their naval and military commanders what they were endeavoring to accomplish. To utilize the Pacific Fleet and the Army forces at Pearl Harbor as a lure for a Japanese attack without advising the commander-in-chief of the fleet and the commander of the Army base at Hawaii is something I am wholly unable to comprehend.

While I am still able to do so, I feel that I must tell the story so that those who follow may fully realize the imperative necessity of furnishing the naval and military commanders at the front with full and clear information. Only in this way can the future security of our country be preserved.

– Husband Kimmel, former commander of Pearl Harbor’s naval forces

This is the difference between ambitious politicians and true patriots, Book. Patriots don’t mind that you are out to enrich or acquire power for yourself, so long as you don’t weaken America’s security and the safety of her men and women because of it.

On this level, Democrats have always treated their subordinates, military or civilian, as tools to be used and then discarded. It is not surprise the tactics used by Democrats in 2003-8 concerning Iraq and Bush.

And the moral point remains: sometimes you do it because there’s no choice, and it’s the right thing to do.

The Left has no conscience and neither does the Democrat leadership. They don’t even have the excuse of Roosevelt, that their actions were both by intentions and by the actual reality, centered towards defending America. Roosevelt, for all of his love for Stalin and the Soviet revolution, at least got the stance on Hitler and Japan correct.

Tell me where the Democrats have their ethics and head screwed on straight concerning a threat facing America? North Korea, is that where the Democrats and Left have got it right? Traffic in human beings occuring down south, have the Democrats got their heads screwed on right about that issue? What about Iran and Hizbollah, are Democrats morally and ethically justified in their policies against them? What about Syria and Saddam’s Baath, now defunct, party? Israel? Palestine? The Left and the Democrat leadership, not to mention the Democrat masses, couldn’t do something positive for humanity if you paid them.

But some of my progenitors were interesting…

But it was also what Roosevelt had been angling for. Churchill’s remarks are instructive. He was sitting home at Chequers in England with – surprise, surprise, what a coincidence! – Averell Harriman and Joe Winant (US Ambassador to England) on Sunday evening, December 7th, knocking back the brandy after a late dinner. (There was also a relative of mine at Chequers that weekend – he was surrounded by Americans.) Churchill turned on his radio shortly after the nine-o’clock news had begun. He himself said later (in “The Grand Alliance,” among other places) that he did not “sustain any direct impression” from what he heard on the news – (probably owing to the brandy) – but Harriman said there was “something about the Japanese attacking the Americans.” Churchill’s butler, (servants weren’t allowed into the booze: somebody has to notice if the house catches fire), a lovely and patient guy named Sawyer, came in and confirmed it.

Churchill immediately put in a call to Roosevelt, and the deal was instantly done: “Germany first.” Churchill wrote in his diary: “So we had won after all! After Dunkirk; after the fall of France; after the horrible episode of Oran; after the threat of invasion… Hitler’s fate was sealed. Mussolini’s fate was sealed.” That’s pretty prescient, isn’t it? Mere hours after the attack and long before anybody had declared anything on anyone, Churchill knew America was coming for Germany.

On December 8 the Japanese Ambassador to Germany met with Ribbentrop at one-o’clock in the afternoon in Berlin (6 AM in Washington) and demanded that Japan’s allies, Germany and Italy: “issue formal declarations of war on America at once.” (Source: Ribbentrop’s diaries.) Ribbentrop told him Hitler was out of town (in, I believe, Rastenberg), but he’d get in touch with him. He did, later that night. “Both Hitler and his Staff were astonished,” Ribbentrop reported. From Jodl: “Hitler came in the middle of the night to my chart-room in order to transmit this news to Kietel and myself. He was completely surprised.” And not very happy with the Japanese.

Hitler declared war on the US on December 11. He doubtless didn’t know it, but the “Germany first” strategy was already fully operational, and the US, openly or not, acknowledged or not; had been at war with him for four days.

Would we have gone fully ahead had Hitler not declared on us? Yes, we’d have declared on him and done it anyway – just because it was the right thing to do. But it would have been a lot more difficult – guys like Joe Kennedy (ex-Ambassador to England), Lindbergh, and a whole bunch of others – particularly in the Senate – were fed up picking up after Europe’s problems, and made the point repeatedly that Germany had done nothing to us. Hitler made it simple and above-board for Roosevelt, but make no mistake: he would have taken it difficult and sleazy had there been no other way.

Private information (relatives) has always made it perfectly clear that it was not a coincidence Churchill was surrounded by Americans on the weekend in question; and further makes clear that it was not a coincidence the carriers weren’t at Pearl, and most of the Navy was on shore leave. The terrible casualties at Pearl could very easily have been ten times as bad had everyone been aboard and the ships fully manned. (The debate about whether Pearl Harbor was a put-up job or not has raged since the day it happened. I grew up surrounded by people who knew it was. At this point I doubt it’ll ever be admitted more than it already has been – which, to an extent, among the scholars, it has been.)

War is clearly bad, but not always avoidable. There are times there is no other moral choice, and even times when you have to manipulate the choices (and maybe the morals) in order to end up where you should be. That Hitler had to go is not,and was not, a question, but it was a convoluted trail to get us into a position to do it. He only assisted at the last instant, by swallowing his misgivings, being faithful to his ally, and declaring war on us at that ally’s behest. (Horror that he was, he wasn’t stupid. Whatever he said in public was for public consumption. He knew as immediately as Churchill did that America’s entry into the war was the end.)

All of which wanders off the point of your post, BW, for which I apologize – but it is, I think, interesting. And the moral point remains: sometimes you do it because there’s no choice, and it’s the right thing to do.

SGT Dave – “Peace is the singing of the bird on the bloody wires in no-man’s land, proclaiming that, for this moment, man has decided to lay aside his arms and rest his weary soul. And like that bird, peace flies from us the instant one man, any man, makes his ill intent known.”

Actually, there wasn’t a reason in the world to go to war with Germany.

JJ’s point is still valid, given that the first troops America fought in WWII were the French in Africa. The French would surrender to the Germans when they asked, but when we asked, they told us to shove off. That’s the French for you. And if Europe was the target and if Germany had declared war on us, what exactly is America and Roosevelt the Democrat doing fighting in Africa against the French? Course, the Left don’t really care about that since they can’t derive any benefits from the corpses in a long ago war.

Dave, for curiosity’s sake, did you write your 7 after or before reading my 6?

SGT Dave – “A true soldier’s fondest dream is to awaken one day and find that he is without work for lack of need.”

It has very simple explanations of tactics and why they matter in warfare. They also explain the ethics involved, political problems that occur, and they accurately portray the reckless disregard some acquire in war compared to the careful husbanding of resources that others have in war.

Their treatment of planetary insurgency was also original.

To make a long story short, most stories or documentaries about warfare or wars are inadequate in the portrayal of both sides, their motivations, and the strategies employed by each side’s commanders. Those of us that study warfare as a personal field of interest eventually realize that warfare is pretty inefficient so long as you are seeing things only from your own perspective. By understanding the enemy’s point of view, you can outmaneuver him, predict his next actions, and prepare your defense against his attacks.

This requires not only the comprehension of an alien culture and an alien mindset, but an accurate perception of basic human nature as well. Thus it may be said that to know one’s enemy, one must first know oneself.

I drew in a breath, and mentally collected my arguments that no one likes war

That’s not exactly true, Book. While no warrior or good soldier likes killing, they do find a personal satisfaction in being a professional at warfare. For the Marines and the general officers that can find no better test than the cauldron of warfare, they are drawn to it. In a sense, it is the same paradox concerning why human beings love life but dislike death. Having a life means you will die. War is the same way. Its advantages only exist because of the horror of war. The forge has to be really hot to produce quality metal. The heat is the price for the temper of steel. So it is very easy for people to like war, as it is easy for people to like death. They will probably still dislike death and the horror of war, but it is the price one must pay for the benefits.

It has been said that some soldiers get the “command bug”. Which is a micro-scale example of the macro issues of life in warfare. The command bug is the attraction of an individual to leading men and women into combat. It is not that they wish to play god, it is that they are at their best when fighting and leading others in the fight. And they believe that another commander would not be as good and thus would kill more of the troops. The anime series Naruto gave an exposition of that, actually, in one episode. You won’t ever see that kind of explanation in an American show, except by chance.

Btw, I recommended LOGH because it would be a good educational experience for your children, Book. The same issues brought on by Vietnam and political infighting is also presented very accurately and justly in LOGH. You know what my views are, so you can gauge the show’s quality by my claim that it accurately portrays the military, civilians, tactics, strategy, and human nature.

I would summarize it briefly as an incredibly stupid anti-War, anti-American movie that cannot be salvaged by Taymor’s really beautiful and imaginative staging of lots and lots of wonderful Beatles’ songs.

This is pure speculation but if you can get your husband to watch the first 15 episodes of LOGH for at least 50 times in a row, maybe he’ll understand something about why the jane Fonday Complex is so mistaken.

Like three days or something. But that was because Hitler had once admired the plucky Americans because he saw the most adventurous of Aryans had come here. After Hitler saw the race mixing and what not going on in America, he assumed that America would be too weak to put up a strong fight.

This is called trying to fight wars based upon ideology. Assuming Americans can’t put up a fight on two fronts because their blood lines aren’t pure. Coincidentally, Roosevelt got a two front war that ended up sapping the resources from the West to go to Europe. But the only war the left talks about in this context is Bush sapping critical resources from Afghanistan, that attacked the US, to Iraq, which didn’t.

Given the ignorance of many Leftists to true history, this should not be surprising. What is surprising is that these folks think they know something about warfare when they don’t even know or acknowledge the history of their own party. The Democrats has historically been America’s war party. The Civil War being only one example of that.

Should they begin to pull back the buildup on the Atlantic? Roosevelt, who wanted war with Germany, particularly worried that the European war, a far greater threat in his estimation, would be seen in the United States as a European problem and Japan as the Americans’ sole concern. Within days, Hitler would alleviate his concerns.

In Berlin on December 8, 1941, Adolf Hitler was elated. “We have ally that has not been defeated in 1500 years!” he told Minister of Propaganda Josef Goebbels. On December 11, 1941, Hitler gave a speech to the Reichstag. Confused and rambling, he compared his own childhood of poverty to that of the wealthy Roosevelt. He declared war on the United States.

In doing so, he ensured his own destruction. UK Prime Minster Winston Churchill, when he heard of Pearl Harbor, remarked, “so we have won after all!” The American public would have been quite content with dealing with Japan and leaving the European War to the Europeans. The treachery of the Japanese attack burned bright in the minds of most Americans, and they wanted revenge. If not for the declaration of war by Germany, Roosevelt would have had a hard time justifying declaring war on Germany until Japan was destroyed. But Germany did declare war, and the U-boats moved the Eastern seaboard in January 1942.