Admiral Nimitz: Three Mistakes Japan Made At Pearl Harbor

Discussion in 'All Things Boats & Boating' started by brian eiland, Jun 21, 2011.

  1. bntii
    Joined: Jun 2006
    Posts: 731
    Likes: 97, Points: 28, Legacy Rep: 1324
    Location: MD

    bntii Senior Member




    Forgive me Frosty- that is a remarkable distortion of the truth.
     
  2. Frosty

    Frosty Previous Member

    No need to ask for forgiveness Bintii---but can you explain why it is a distortion-- Im sure a Canadian will be along too that knows History.

    Do you have google? I understand your shock.
     
  3. troy2000
    Joined: Nov 2009
    Posts: 1,738
    Likes: 170, Points: 63, Legacy Rep: 2078
    Location: California

    troy2000 Senior Member

    Frosty, the most ridiculous thing about your posts is that even if you were telling the truth, it wouldn't change the fact that the United States was in no way obligated to pull England's nuts out of the fire. We could simply have let you reap the harvest you sowed with the Treaty of Versailles, while we went after the Japs -- who were the ones who actually attacked us. There wasn't a single swastika on those planes at Pearl Harbor; they all had the Rising Sun painted on them.

    Instead we concentrated on the European Theater first anyway, to help save your sorry freckled butts. I guess it's true that no good deed goes unpunished....
     
  4. bntii
    Joined: Jun 2006
    Posts: 731
    Likes: 97, Points: 28, Legacy Rep: 1324
    Location: MD

    bntii Senior Member

    Where to start...

    As GB's cash assets ran down, Churchill petitioned Roosevelt for ships and war material, not Truman.
    Roosevelt responded by supplying Great Britain with munitions and 50 destroyers in direct violation of the United States neutrality acts restricting arms sales to the European theater.
    Such was his commitment that he circumvented the will of our congress to accomplish this necessary task.
    Following this he (Roosevelt), initiated the Lend lease act of March 1941 which guaranteed the materiel support to Great Britain's war effort.

    You paid for the initial war material with long term leases for military bases by the way.. After the establishment of Lend lease- the material was provided at virtually no cost.


    As for the rest of it- the only man you can measure is yourself.
    Claiming an-others cowardice 'should be' beneath you...
     
  5. Frosty

    Frosty Previous Member

    Dismissing your first sentence the rest I agree with. I was dragged across to Europe and dragged from China and all over the place.

    Hi Bintii nearly getting there are'nt we?

    My what was it--distortion of the truth is holding some water now after you google it. keep googling.

    Historical background

    Following the fall of France, Great Britain became the only European nation actively engaged in war against Nazi Germany. Britain had been paying for its materiel in gold under "cash and carry", as required by the Neutrality Acts of the 1930s but by 1941 it had liquidated so many assets that it was running short of cash.[3]

    During this same period, the U.S. government began to mobilize for a possible war, instituting the first-ever peacetime draft[4] and a fivefold increase in the defense budget (from $2 billion to $10 billion).[5] In the meantime, as the British began running short of money, arms and other supplies, Prime Minister Winston Churchill pressured President Franklin D. Roosevelt for American help. Sympathetic to the British plight but hampered by the Neutrality Acts, which forbade arms sales on credit or the loaning of money to belligerent nations, Roosevelt eventually came up with the idea of "Lend-Lease". As one Roosevelt biographer has characterized it: "If there was no practical alternative, there was certainly no moral one either. Britain and the Commonwealth were carrying the battle for all civilization, and the overwhelming majority of Americans, led in the late election by their president, wished to help them."[6] As the President himself put it, “There can be no reasoning with incendiary bombs.”[7]

    In December 1940 President Roosevelt proclaimed the U.S. would be the "Arsenal of Democracy" and proposed selling munitions to Britain and Canada.[7] Isolationists were strongly opposed, warning it would lead to American involvement in what was seen by most Americans as an essentially European conflict. In time however, opinion shifted as increasing numbers of Americans began to see the advantage of funding the British war against Germany, while staying out of the hostilities themselves.[8]
     
  6. bntii
    Joined: Jun 2006
    Posts: 731
    Likes: 97, Points: 28, Legacy Rep: 1324
    Location: MD

    bntii Senior Member

    I have never had much attraction to this business of describing an others failings but prefer to understand accomplishments.

    I just read Bungay's The Most Dangerous Enemy: A History of the Battle of Britain
    It describes this remarkable conflict in detail.
    I read the book in simple awe at the struggle and ultimate success the British accomplished in this lone battle.
     
    Last edited: Jul 6, 2011
  7. Frosty

    Frosty Previous Member

    Thats very nice Binti but it doesnt help to move forward, dwelling in the past or when things were good is distortion of the truth, you can not build on that.
     
  8. Dave Gudeman
    Joined: Nov 2009
    Posts: 135
    Likes: 27, Points: 0, Legacy Rep: 359
    Location: San Francisco, CA, USA

    Dave Gudeman Senior Member

    This one made me laugh out loud. This is a thread about a military action and its military consequences, but you wanted to talk about the morality of a military action. And not the same military action that the thread is on, no. That military action involved an unprovoked sneak attack by Japan against a United States naval base that had no idea that we were at war. In that action, taking place by surprise and without formal notice of hostilities, there is a good case to be made that what the Japanese did was morally no different than mass murder. But that's not what you wanted to talk about.

    Nor did you want to talk about any of the other horrors perpetrated by Japan during that time period, from the **** of Nanking to the Bataan death march --all great material for your moralizing-- you had nothing to say about Japan. No, you wanted to take a conversation about a Japanese sneak attack on the US as an opportunity to talk about how bad the United States behaved in an entirely different action.

    You don't have an axe to grind? Seriously? Have you ever met Frosty? Let me introduce you: Frosty, meet Frosty. Frosty, in case you don't know, Frosty here hates America. He can't let a conversation go by that seems even remotely to make America look like the good guys in any situation whatsoever without butting in to tell everyone how mean and scary and evil America is. He hates Jews even worse. He'll bring them up when they have nothing to do with nothing just to say how much he hates them. Now that you've met, I hope you will be happy together.
     
  9. Frosty

    Frosty Previous Member

    Quoted for no other reason than so you cant delete it. when you sober up you can crawl under you sofa in embarrassment.
     
  10. troy2000
    Joined: Nov 2009
    Posts: 1,738
    Likes: 170, Points: 63, Legacy Rep: 2078
    Location: California

    troy2000 Senior Member

    Why should he be embarrassed?
     
  11. Dave Gudeman
    Joined: Nov 2009
    Posts: 135
    Likes: 27, Points: 0, Legacy Rep: 359
    Location: San Francisco, CA, USA

    Dave Gudeman Senior Member

    Actually, I was stone cold sober when I wrote that. Right now I'm a little buzzed and I've got to say, it still looks like a great comment.

    I'm a sappy drunk, so I'm going to say it, even if I'll be embarrassed after I sober up: I don't hate you, Frosty. I'm sure you're a good guy that doesn't beat his wife or cheat his customers and we could probably be buddies if you weren't a damned Redcoat.

    Happy Independence Day!
     
  12. brian eiland
    Joined: Jun 2002
    Posts: 5,067
    Likes: 216, Points: 73, Legacy Rep: 1903
    Location: St Augustine Fl, Thailand

    brian eiland Senior Member

    Excerpts from those referenced documents

    Thanks for those postings Bntii

    ....from that first diary I excerpted these quotes....
    "Because of the importance of the atomic mission against Japan, the detailed plans were brought to me by the military staff for approval. With President Truman’s warm support I struck off the list of suggested target mine. We determined the city of Kyoto. Although it was a target of considerable military importance, it had been the ancient capital of Japan and was a shrine of Japanese art and culture. We determined that it should be spared.

    I approved four other targets including the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Hiroshima was bombed on August 6, and Nagasaki on August 9. These two cities were active working parts of the Japanese war effort. One was an army center; the other was naval and industrial. Hiroshima was the headquarters of the Japanese Army defending southern Japan and was a major military storage and assembly point. Nagasaki was a major seaport and it contained several large industrial plants of great wartime importance. We believed that our attacks had struck cities which must certainly be important to the Japanese military leaders, both Army and Navy, and we waited for a result. We waited one day.



    The two atomic bombs which we had dropped were the only ones we had ready, and our rate of production at the time was very small. Had the war continued until the projected invasion on November 1, additional fire raids of B-20’s would have been more destructive of life and property than the very limited number of atomic raids which we could have executed in the same period. But the atomic bomb was more than a weapon of terrible destruction; it was a psychological weapon. In March 1945 our Air Force had launched its first great incendiary raid on the Tokyo area. In this raid more damage was done and more casualties were inflicted than was the case at Hiroshima. Hundreds of bombers took part and hundreds of tons of incendiaries were dropped. Similar successive raids burned out a great part of the urban area of Japan, but the Japanese fought on.

    On August 6 one B-29 dropped a single atomic bomb on Hiroshima.
    Three days later a second bomb was dropped on Nagasaki and the war was over. So far as the Japanese could know, our ability to execute atomic attacks, if necessary by many planes at a time, was unlimited.

    As Dr. Karl Compton has said, “it was not one atomic bomb, or two, which brought surrender; it was the experience of what an atomic bomb will actually do to a community, plus the dread of many more, that was effective.”

    The bomb thus served exactly the purpose we intended. The peace party was able to take the path of surrender, and the whole weight of the Emperor’s prestige was exerted in favor of peace. When the Emperor ordered surrender, and the small but dangerous group of fanatics who opposed him were brought under control, the Japanese became so subdued that the great undertaking of occupation and disarmament was completed with unprecedented ease."


    "In the light of the formidable problem which thus confronted us, I felt that every possible step should be taken to compel a surrender of the homelands, and withdrawal of Japanese troops from the Asiatic mainland and from other positions, before we had commenced an invasion. We held two cards to assist us in such an effort. One was the traditional veneration in which the Japanese Emperor was held by his subjects and he power which was thus vested in him over his loyal troops. It was for this reason that I suggested in my memorandum of July 2 that his dynasty should be continued. The second card was the use of the atomic bomb in the manner best calculated to persuade that Emperor and the counselors about him to submit to our demand for what was essentially unconditional surrender, placing his immense power over his people and his troops subject to our orders."

    I sometimes wonder if many of the posting members bother to take the time to read some of another's researched documents :?:
     
  13. CPORet
    Joined: Jul 2011
    Posts: 0
    Likes: 0, Points: 0, Legacy Rep: 10
    Location: Virginia

    CPORet New Member

    PAR, I believe the USS Utah AG-16 was also a total loss with 58 souls onboard. Good thread here, picking up alot of info.
     
  14. PAR
    Joined: Nov 2003
    Posts: 19,126
    Likes: 498, Points: 93, Legacy Rep: 3967
    Location: Eustis, FL

    PAR Yacht Designer/Builder

    I tried to get them all CPO, welcome aboard . . . Utah was a nearly useless bombing target by the time the attack took place, so her significance was minimal at best. The Japs just did what was slated for her in the next few months anyway.
     

  15. jehardiman
    Joined: Aug 2004
    Posts: 3,762
    Likes: 1,152, Points: 113, Legacy Rep: 2040
    Location: Port Orchard, Washington, USA

    jehardiman Senior Member

    Actually, as a bombing target she was decked over and was mistaken as a carrier. The Japanese directed a lot of attention to her and claimed to have sunk a carrier.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sunken_battleships#USS_Utah
     
Loading...
Forum posts represent the experience, opinion, and view of individual users. Boat Design Net does not necessarily endorse nor share the view of each individual post.
When making potentially dangerous or financial decisions, always employ and consult appropriate professionals. Your circumstances or experience may be different.