TELECOM Digest OnLine - Sorted: Re: Hiroshima Marks 60th Anniversary of Atomic Bomb Attack

Re: Hiroshima Marks 60th Anniversary of Atomic Bomb Attack

John Levine (johnl@iecc.com)
19 Aug 2005 16:06:43 -0000

> ..., but for Pearl Harbor, the U.S. would /never/ have entered the war.
> I suppose that's possible, but it's equally possible that some other
> provocation would have been found, even if it had to be manufactured.

No question about that. Germany declared war on us, after all. But
if we'd waited another year to get into the war, it would have been a
much harder war to fight, and the war in western Europe might well
have been lost.

> warnings of the approaching attack force were provided long in advance,
> but that the "top brass" decided not to repel the attack, but rather
> just to "ride it out",

These theories have been around since about 8 Dec 1941. The standard
book on the topic is "At Dawn We Slept," which goes through just about
everything you could possibly imagine. The Pearl Harbor disaster was
as much as anything a failure of the imagination. A long range
carrier based air attack was unprecedented in the history of warfare,
and it was quite a trick for the Japanese to pull it off. The US Navy
expected ground based sabotage, and that's what they were set up to
repel. Oops, that's not what the Japanese did. From the Japanese
point of view, Pearl Harbor was a success insofar as it took us quite
a while to get the Pacific Navy back up to a point where we could
fight them, but it was a disaster in the long run because they greatly
underestimated our ability to mobilize a really, really BIG Navy.

R's,

John

[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I am glad at least you do not claim
like some that 'Pearl Harbor came as a complete surprise'. If you did,
I would have told you to check the _Honolulu Advertiser_ newspaper for
*Friday, December 5, 1941* (two days before the attack!) when the
headline that day was, "Japs May Attack Over Weekend". It was known by
the newspaper at least. PAT]

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