Ask A Historian

[TheRocketSurgeon]

I very much enjoyed Toland's The Rising Sun, as well as Infamy which, while I did not agree with his conclusion about foreknowledge of the attack on Pearl Harbor, shocked me into how much about the leadup to Pearl Harbor I did not know, where the Brits, Dutch, and Americans did practically everything in their power to get Japan to hit us somewhere as a way to incentivize the isolationist American people to enter WW2. The more likely explanation, to me, has always been racism: we didn't think the Japanese were intelligent enough to hit us as hard and as thoroughly as they did, and as a result made a lot of stupid errors that compounded the damage. I also wanted to read his book about Hitler, but unfortunately it was in high demand among the Nazi sympathizers that are rampant in the Missouri prison system, and I never got a chance to pick it up.

[Minimalist]

I'm going from memory here but as I recall in The Rising Sun, Toland dismissed the Pearl Harbor conspiracy nonsense for the very reason that the US and UK were tracking the Japanese invasion fleet on its way to Malaya and anticipated an assault on the Philippines.  They were still working on the theory that an attack on the fleet at Pearl Harbor ( similar to what the British had pulled at Taranto) was not possible because the water was too shallow for aerial torpedoes to be dropped without hitting bottom.  The Japanese found a solution to that problem.

The UK sent Repulse and Prince of Wales to intercept the Jap fleet but it was 1941 and the lesson about capital ships operating without proper air cover had yet to be learned.

By December 8, everyone had gotten that message.

[TheRocketSurgeon]

We're discussing various conspiracies, now. That we knew they were going to hit us, that we very likely set things up to where they had to hit us, somewhere (yes the Philippines was the obvious choice), seems little in-doubt. It's also probable that they felt that even if the Japanese managed to hit Hawaii, the damage done at Pearl, even if the Japanese fleet could get close enough, would be minimal, since they expected to have enough warning to get the planes off the ground, and thought the harbor too shallow for torpedoes and the battlewagons impervious to the carrier aircraft bombs. (The lesson of the lethality of the dive bomber hadn't been yet learned, either.)

I think they expected a general attack against numerous military targets, with the Japanese fleet spread out to attack each, and that would be damage we could weather. They didn't anticipate Yamamoto's plan to make a "decisive" strike against our seemingly-impregnable forward fleet base with practically every ship he had, and to successfully cross half the Pacific Ocean undetected. We (our politicians and Generals/Admirals) simply didn't think they were smart enough to come up with something that good.

It's not quite simple American racism or idiocy; despite their reputation as fierce warriors, and their surprise attack on Port Arthur in the previous decades, the Japanese Admiralty were known for being cautious/conservative, and not wanting to stick their necks out much.

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The UK sent Repulse and Prince of Wales to intercept the Jap fleet but it was 1941 and the lesson about capital ships operating without proper air cover had yet to be learned.

By December 8, everyone had gotten that message.

It's a damned shame, too. Those were such beautiful ships. The Brits could build 'em!

By the way, M, you should know that most people (at least in the USA) consider "Jap" to be a racist epithet against the Japanese. I know you don't mean to use it in a derogatory fashion, but it makes me cringe each time I see it.

[Minimalist]

They also had a plan to convert battleship shells into aerial bombs by fitting them with fins.  The Aichi's couldn't lift them but the Nakajimas could. 

Yeah...I'm a product of my upbringing.  Every war movie referred to them as Japs and it stuck.  For the record I have a Nissan and a Mazda in my garage so it's just jargon.

The only problem with the conspiracies to make Japan attack us is that Roosevelt wanted to get into the European war with his pal, Winnie.  Pearl Harbor guaranteed that on 12/8/41 every American was ripping mad at Japan and no one gave a fuck about Germany.  Roosevelt could not have know that Hitler would save his ass by being so stupid as to declare war on us.  Greatly simplified Roosevelt's life but for a few days he must have been shitting bricks.

[Wyrd of Gawd]

I very much enjoyed Toland's The Rising Sun, as well as Infamy which, while I did not agree with his conclusion about foreknowledge of the attack on Pearl Harbor, shocked me into how much about the leadup to Pearl Harbor I did not know, where the Brits, Dutch, and Americans did practically everything in their power to get Japan to hit us somewhere as a way to incentivize the isolationist American people to enter WW2. The more likely explanation, to me, has always been racism: we didn't think the Japanese were intelligent enough to hit us as hard and as thoroughly as they did, and as a result made a lot of stupid errors that compounded the damage. I also wanted to read his book about Hitler, but unfortunately it was in high demand among the Nazi sympathizers that are rampant in the Missouri prison system, and I never got a chance to pick it up.

The US government knew in the 1920s that we would have a major war with Japan.  In the 1930s the US was too poor to fully arm up for the coming fight but it did fund the B29 long range bomber to be the primary weapon system to attack the Japanese islands.  

Believe it or not that history is in the New York Times archives.  The paper needs money so it charges for some articles.

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.ht...838A629EDE

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.ht...838C639EDE  
The thinking was that the US would be fighting a Japanese/British team instead of a Japanese/German/Italian team.

BTW, we had some great propaganda posters against the Germans and Japanese during WWII.  They got the troops in the mood to burn people alive.
https://www.google.com/search?q=wwii+pro...14&bih=898

[Minimalist]

I think you mean the B-17 Wyrd.  The B-29 program dates to 1938 and, as a precision high-level bomber it was something of a flop.

[Wyrd of Gawd]

I think you mean the B-17 Wyrd.  The B-29 program dates to 1938 and, as a precision high-level bomber it was something of a flop.

As I said, the US did fund the B29 as the primary weapons system to be used against Japan before the war started.  Germany & Japan did not have a similar bomber.  They thought that they were fighting a war like WWI.  The B29 was very effective against Japan, which was its purpose.

[BrokenQuill92]

Do you think American history books are whitewashed or too Eurocentric?

[BrokenQuill92]

Who's your favorite figure in history?

[Minimalist]

I think you mean the B-17 Wyrd.  The B-29 program dates to 1938 and, as a precision high-level bomber it was something of a flop.

As I said, the US did fund the B29 as the primary weapons system to be used against Japan before the war started.  Germany & Japan did not have a similar bomber.  They thought that they were fighting a war like WWI.  The B29 was very effective against Japan, which was its purpose.

That's not what the Office of Air Force History says:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_B-2...v5p11-2-41

Boeing began work on pressurized long-range bombers in 1938, in response to a United States Army Air Corps request. Boeing's design study for the Model 334 was a pressurized derivative of the Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress with nosewheel undercarriage. Although the Air Corps did not have money to pursue the design, Boeing continued development with its own funds as a private venture.[4] In April 1939, Charles Lindbergh convinced general Henry H. Arnold to produce a new bomber in large numbers to counter the Nazi production.[5] The Air Corps issued a formal specification for a so-called "superbomber", capable of delivering 20,000 lb (9,100 kg) of bombs to a target 2,667 mi (4,290 km) away and capable of flying at a speed of 400 mph (640 km/h) in December 1939. Boeing's previous private venture studies formed the starting point for its response to this specification.[/url]

And then,

In September 1941, the Army Air Forces plans for war against Germany and Japan proposed basing the B-29 in Egypt for operations against Germany as British airbases were likely to be overcrowded.[url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_B-29_Superfortress#cite_note-AAFWW2_v1p145-9-39][35][36] Air Force planning throughout 1942 and early 1943 continued to have the B-29 deployed initially against Germany, only transferring to the Pacific after the end of the war in Europe. By the end of 1943, however, plans had changed, partly due to production delays, and the B-29 was dedicated to the Pacific Theater.

When it was transferred it was a mainly morale-building exercise for China as some B-29s were based in China.  There were no Pacific bases within range of Japan until the Marianas were taken in mid 1944 and even then bases had to be developed for the B-29s to be launched.

Finally, general LeMay in command of the B-29s determined, for a number of reasons, that high-altitude, daylight, "precision" strikes against Japan (what the B-29 was specifically designed to do) were  and would continue to be ineffective against Japan.  His solution was low-level, nighttime, incendiary raids, which were highly effective and, frankly, more deadly than the atomic bomb strikes. 

By the time this tactic was worked (March-1945) out the Japanese navy had virtually ceased to exist and the army in China and the Philippines was thus effectively isolated from the homeland by allied subs and marauding carrier groups.  The shortages of food and fuel and raw materials would have condemned the civil population to extreme hardship in the winter of 1945/46 if Japan had not surrendered.  The war was decided militarily long before the B-29s began to make any meaningful impact.  In fact, Tokyo had begun putting out peace feelers through neutrals ( including the fucking pope!) in January of 1945.  This is not to say that there were not firebrands ready to fight to the death but the government understood that they had lost the war with the battles of the Philippine Sea and Leyte Gulf.