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The Myth of Pearl Harbor

10 False Flags that Changed the World: #5

On Sunday morning, December 7, 1941, the Japanese launched a sneak attack at Pearl Harbor that decimated the U.S. Pacific Fleet and forced the United States to enter WWII. That’s what most of us were taught as school children…

But, except for the date, everything you just read is a myth. In reality, there was no sneak attack. The Pacific Fleet was far from destroyed. And, furthermore, the United States took great pains to bring about the assault.

Because the United States manipulated Japan into attacking, purposefully allowed their operation to proceed, and then played the victim for all it was worth, the Pearl Harbor Attack makes it into the top 5 of HDotW’s 10 False Flags that Changed the World.

The Sneak Attack Myth

Pearl Harbor Attack On January 27, 1941, Joseph C. Grew, the U.S. ambassador to Japan, wired Washington that he’d learned of the surprise attack Japan was preparing for Pearl Harbor. U.S. intelligence, which had broken every major Japanese code, also deciphered many Japanese dispatches.

In May, Japanese Adm. Nomura warned his superiors that Americans were decoding his dispatches. However, nobody in Tokyo thought the Japanese codes could be broken, and the transmissions continued.

On September 24, a dispatch from Japanese naval intelligence to Japan’s consul general in Honolulu was deciphered. The transmission was a request for a grid of exact locations of ships in Pearl Harbor. Surprisingly, Washington chose not to share this information with the officers at Pearl Harbor.

Then, on November 26, the main body of the Japanese strike force—consisting of six aircraft carriers, two battleships, three cruisers, nine destroyers, eight tankers, 23 fleet submarines, and five midget submarines—departed Japan for Hawaii.

Despite the myth that the strike force maintained strict radio silence, U.S. Naval intelligence intercepted and translated many dispatches. And, there was no shortage of dispatches: Tokyo sent over 1000 transmissions to the attack fleet before it reached Hawaii. Some of these dispatches, in particular this message from Admiral Yamamoto, left no doubt that Pearl Harbor was the target of a Japanese attack:

The task force, keeping its movement strictly secret and maintaining close guard against submarines and aircraft, shall advance into Hawaiian waters, and upon the very opening of hostilities shall attack the main force of the United States fleet and deal it a mortal blow. The first air raid is planned for the dawn of x-day. Exact date to be given by later order.

Even on the night before the attack, U.S. intelligence decoded a message pointing to Sunday morning as a deadline for some kind of Japanese action. The message was delivered to the Washington high command more than 4 hours before the attack on Pearl Harbor. But, as many messages before, it was withheld from the Pearl Harbor commanders.

In addition to the US-decoded radio transmissions from the attack fleet, there were many specific warnings delivered to Roosevelt via non-American sources: a Yugoslav double agent named Dusko Popov, a dispatch decoded by the Dutch Army, a message from Kilsoo Haan of the Sino-Korean People’s League.

Despite repeated denials, it’s clear the Roosevelt administration knew full well of the “sneak” attack long before it arrived.

The Destroyed Pacific Fleet Myth

Although many ships were damaged at Pearl Harbor, they were all old and slow. The main targets of the Japanese attack fleet were the Pacific Fleet’s aircraft carriers. But, Roosevelt made sure these were safe from the attack: In November, at about the same time as the Japanese attack fleet left Japan, Roosevelt sent the Lexington and Enterprise out to sea. Meanwhile, the Saratoga was in San Diego.

The Myth of U.S. Reluctance for War

Avenge Pearl Harbor It’s true the American public, still nursing an anti-war sentiment leftover from the first World War, was reluctant to jump into a second World War. There were also many members of Congress backed by wealthy Americans who had significant financial ties to the fascist powers of Germany and Italy at the time.

But, Roosevelt wanted a piece of the war pie. Having failed to bait Hitler by giving $50.1 billion in war supplies to Britain, the Soviet Union, France, and China as part of the Lend Lease program, Roosevelt switched focus to Japan. Because Japan had signed a mutual defense pact with Germany and Italy, Roosevelt knew war with Japan was a legitimate back door to joining the war in Europe.

On October 7, 1940, one of Roosevelt’s military advisors, Lieutenant Commander Arthur McCollum, wrote a memo detailing an 8-step plan that would provoke Japan into attacking the United States. Over the next year, Roosevelt implemented all 8 of the recommended actions.

As with recent wars, it all boiled down to oil. In the summer of 1941, the US joined England in an oil embargo against Japan. Japan needed oil for its war with China, and had no remaining option but to invade the East Indies and Southeast Asia to get new resources. And that required getting rid of the US Pacific Fleet first.

Although Roosevelt may have got more than he bargained for, he clearly let the attack on Pearl Harbor happen, and even helped Japan by making sure their attack was a surprise. He did this by withholding information from Pearl Harbor’s commanders, and even by ensuring the attack force wasn’t accidentally discovered by commercial shipping traffic. As Rear Admiral Richmond K. Turner stated in 1941: “We were prepared to divert traffic when we believed war was imminent. We sent the traffic down via the Torres Strait, so that the track of the Japanese task force would be clear of any traffic.”

It worked.

Speaking as someone who has personally stood on the USS Arizona Memorial and watched the oil still leaking from the wreckage, I can say that the Pearl Harbor Attack was one of the greatest false flag operations of all time.

* * *

Go to the next article in this series:
Israeli Terrorist Cell Uncovered in Egypt.

Go to the previous article in this series: Fake Invasion at Gleiwitz.

Go to the original article in this series: 10 False Flags that Changed the World.

Related Articles

10 False Flags that Changed the World
Fake Invasion at Gleiwitz
UFO Parks Over Downtown Los Angeles
Have a Poignant Oil-based Memorial Day!
Israeli Terrorist Cell Uncovered in Egypt

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 6th, 2007 at 1:18 am and is filed under History, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

25 Responses to “The Myth of Pearl Harbor”

PETE says:

Tuesday, February 6, 2007 at 8:12 am

It is amazing how easily it keeps being perpatrated over and over again. And how many young people die and are maimed because of it.

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JoeC says:

Tuesday, February 6, 2007 at 8:35 am

Pete: All it takes is a new generation of cannon fodder (nod to P.T. Barnum and suckers everywhere…), almost a rite of passage now. The good news is there’s usually eight to ten years between large-scale conflicts to reload with fresh naivete, so hopefully after the coming Iran fiasco is resolved, there will be a few years of peace before the military industrial complex picks a new vacation spot and turns it into the next super enemy.

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PETE says:

Tuesday, February 6, 2007 at 6:06 pm

They are shure trying hard to expand this fiasco into Iran. Every week a new shot is fired across the bow to see what the public will swallow, and when they find it, all hell will brake loose.

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kill yankee says:

Sunday, March 4, 2007 at 9:22 am

of course Iran has a use by date……Israeli military sources expect that Iran will be past the point of no return(of nuclear bomb building capabilities) sometime around the middle of this year……Israel, is so worried/incensed that it will more than likely attack Iran if it can’t use the U.S as it’s patsy.The U.S, of course loves money and power,so they will move into the biggest natural gas/oil plateau on earth.
and continue the rape of a culture begun by the poms 100 or so years ago.

but if a government is willing to fly planes into their own buildings and murder it’s own citizens in cold blood, it will do and say anything to anyone,anytime,anywhere.

WE ARE ALL PRETTY MUCH FUCKED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
thanks 2 ameriKKKa…….land of the free??????

kill yankee
international slave

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Anna Nimus says:

Sunday, March 4, 2007 at 9:42 pm

Follow the money trail… the real perpetrators and terrorists are those paying for the bombs and military hardware… ie. bankers and financiers who want a “one world government” and a “new world order” (based on facism and paper money power) … the people who organize all the war financing, media brainwashing propaganda and spread of lies and deception…

These people will grow old and die, just like everybody else. Power, grandeur, wealth and importance… these ideas and feelings that they worship… are all illusions… inventions of the human mind… Everybody dies, but not everybody leaves something good behind… And these “puppet masters” know that they too will die, and because they are too dumb to create a new invention, or a new scientific discovery, they want to be famous for their stupidity, dastardly deeds, mass murder and infamy.

Stupid, stupid elites… why do we bother even using their paper money for trading useful goods and services, when these bankers want to kill or control us all as their slaves? Wake up people. War = Mass stupidity and legalised MURDER…

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| Outlaw News says:

Monday, March 5, 2007 at 2:26 pm

[...] 5. The Myth of Pearl Harbor [...]

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buh says:

Monday, March 5, 2007 at 8:27 pm

I have mixed feelings. I don’t like war and want to avoid it if possible; think the Iraq, Afghanistan and Viet Nam wars were crimes, not to mention the invasion of Iran and the other five countries Wesley Clark said this admonistration wants to invade. We should have stayed out of WWI as well. But WWII, well, this was despicable and my wife’s 18 yr. old uncle was killed because we allowed the Pearl Harbor attack. In a fair world, FDR would have been tried for treason after the war, had he lived.
But still, this one time, what would have happened if the U.S. stayed out of the war? Would there have been a U.S./Axis war later after the Germans won and their side controlled the entire ” old world?” Roosevelt may have been right that we needed to enter this war, but it was unconscionable the way he went about it.

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kill yankee says:

Tuesday, March 6, 2007 at 6:21 am

what would have happened if the U.S. stayed out of the war? Would there have been a U.S./Axis war later after the Germans won and their side controlled the entire � old world?� Roosevelt may have been right that we needed to enter this war, but it was unconscionable the way he went about it.

what makes you think Germany would have won? b/c AMERIKKKA ISN’T THERE……..how arrogant are you? thinking you the only people who can fight,and win, a war,against a strong opponent.i hate this assumed arrogance,that you are better than everybody else…….fuck you. you are not.
the truth is,Hitler was making terrible tactical decisions as early as 1940 when his decided to stop tactically bombing u.k air factories/planes/munitions and begun to bomb London itself.
Then,in 1941,he broke the Brest-Litovsk treaty and invaded Russia.This was probably the dumbest tactical/(syphillis?) decision of the whole war and by the russian winter of 1942, it was just a matter of time untill Russia took Germany out…….
ameriKKKa just could not allow this development to develop……Germany contained a lot of right wing money from Wall Street,business’ such as Brown Brothers Harriman(who employed Prescott Bush,the ” president’s ” grandfather.) or Sullivan and Cromwell(John Foster Dulles,WHO PREVIOUSLY HAD ATTENDED THE VERSILLES PEACE NEGOTIATIONS AS COUNSEL TO THE U.S REPARATIONS COMMITTEE AND WAS PREV EMPLOYED BY THE U.S WAR TRADE BOARD.BECAME SERATARY.OF.STATE AFTER THE REPUBLICAN ELECTION RESULT OF 1952,WHILE BROTHER ALLEN(ALO @ SULIVAN AND CROMWELL) WAS APPOINTED C.I.A DIRECTOR @ THE SAME TIME.)
it was critical from a wall street perspective that this money was caught up with.
if russia got there first, with a different economic philosophy,amerKKKa would have to trade with russia to get @ it’s rich right-wing citizens money.or miss out/fight if stalin had of kept it.

ameriKKKa,really only appeared in the European theatre after D-day and by then it was fighting a different German Army,fighting a war on 2 fronts,low morale,economy wearing thin,alongside the French/English etc….
D-day was like a publicity stunt, a stepping stone to the eventual cold war,as well as a practical one that would have helped AmeriKKKa get into Germany.I dont rate the AMERIKKKAN ARMY……..they have lost EVERY war it has fought since WW2……if Germany won? NO FUCKING WAY!!!!!!!
WE’D STILL BE @ WAR! and Naomi Klein’s exceptional NO LOGO would chronicle slavery/sweatshop conditions in the first, rather than the third world.but it would be a sacrifice for the war,the war,the war.if germany won????? no way.with or without you,the job would have been completed.

love and peace
kill yankee
mykelb
kAR-120 c
in league with snowball
international slave

Reply
support Bsh says:

Wednesday, April 11, 2007 at 5:11 pm

We (American top administration officials) said that we don’t care how many American die as long as US dominated in the world. We can recurit
immigrants to US if American die out.

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JoeC says:

Wednesday, April 11, 2007 at 6:06 pm

There’s currently about 2 million people in the U.S. Prison system…I figure if things get really bad, the Bush administration can start making deals with a few hundred thousand of these guys. After a few years in the prison system, getting to go half-way around the world to kill people would probably seem like a good deal to some. Boredom and lack of freedom is really tough, or so I’ve heard.

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Xman says:

Friday, April 13, 2007 at 10:16 am

Wow! Good rants!

Sometimes I like to view everything at the cellular level. You know, the various cells types in the human body (or any other life form). Each have their own function. Some build, Some destroy, some are passive, some aggressive. Some warlike. some peaceful. Some with great defenses, some with none. Some protect others. With the introduction of certain chemicals, hormones, stimuli or impulses, some cells can change and perform other duties.

Our civilization is just like that:
Go deep deep into space, now turn around and train your microscope back on earth and zoom, zoom, zoom, in until you see the various life forms scurrying around performing their functions.
Some build, Some destroy, some are passive, some aggressive. Some warlike. some peaceful. Some with great defenses, some with none. Some protect others. With the introduction of certain stimuli or impulses, people can change, alter behavior and perform other duties.

Yep, I was getting high in high school first time I thought of that.
I just said “Fuck!” “WTF!?”

So, sometimes I just go to the track and forget it all.
Any track. Horses, drags, ovals, road, dogs, skiing, bobsled, etc.
I haven’t seen a parallel in the cellular body yet…that fucks me up, so at least I have someplace to go that at least to me, appears to be free of “programming”. Of course I know I’m in denial and am not looking for…and hoping I don’t stumble on the details of the answer.

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deadissue says:

Saturday, April 14, 2007 at 12:29 am

I wasn’t disappointed - good writeup on this caper right here. My first exposure to even a word that contradicted what I’d learned in school on Pearl Harbor was in an essay by Gore Vidal…knocked me on my ass. The history books we’re given as children go too light on public opinion and the need to inject a heavy dose of anger/fear in order to get a war effort up and running, supported, etc.

Off topic, but I’ve been reading up a lot on insurgencies in war, trying to figure out exactly how much of Gen. Patraeus’s manual is wishful thinking…as my theory is the only way to gain the support of people with the enemy’s gun to their head if they provide anything to the occupying force…I think you’d have to be inhumanely brutal, so they fear crossing you worse than they do the insurgents among them. It’s most likely impossible to “win” in a situation like Iraq, because we’re not cruel enough to start executing mothers in front of their children and everyone else in the neighborhood…thankfully we’re not at that level yet.

But anyways, the piece I located a couple days ago was from Harpers in the 1895 on the French empire in northern africa and how things really haven’t changed much since then…I posted an excerpt I think you’d find interesting:

http://deadissue.com/archives/2007/04/13/french-fighters-in-africa-feb-1895/

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JoeC says:

Saturday, April 14, 2007 at 3:06 am

That is interesting…instead of funding railroads leading to the middle of a desert, looks like we’ll be funding huge embassies and military bases. And instead of the oil funding all of this (like was promised) Exxon, Shell, and BP are set to get the oil profits that our tax dollars are paying to “liberate.” Of course, the Iraqi people are losing their homes, their oil…they’re losing all the way around.

I think you’re right in looking at history…when we’re repeating all the mistakes the French made, we are doomed to their end result, which was wasting massive amounts of money and running up a huge war debt. for naught.

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10 False Flags That Changed the World « infowars says:

Wednesday, June 27, 2007 at 5:27 am

[...] 5. The Myth of Pearl Harbor [...]

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KPetrov says:

Thursday, July 12, 2007 at 6:27 pm

Fascinating pieces of writing. But why do you not leave any citations?

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JoeC says:

Thursday, July 12, 2007 at 11:16 pm

KPetrov: Hey, thanks for dropping by and commenting!

Throughout the False Flag series, I tried to insert links in the text to sources for anything that isn’t a pretty verifiable fact of historical record, even if it’s not seeped out into the public mythos yet.

For instance, there is no argument that Joseph C. Grew sent the January message to Washington, because it’s been verified enough by reputable historians to be considered a fact. So, I didn’t provide a citation link for that.

Still, I guess I should have included the following NPR link, because much of the factual information originally came from it, then got included after cross-checking the facts with other sources:
NPR’s Pearl Harbor Timeline.

I think the big debate is not that the informative dots were discovered, but whether anyone at the top connected them. Since Roosevelt wanted the US in the war, and since he followed the eight step memo to try to get us in the war, I believe he had his eyes so peeled for dots that there’s no way he couldn’t have connected so many of them. But that’s just my opinion.

A good starting point for digging even deeper is at: Wikipedia — Pearl Harbor Advance Knowledge Debate. Lots of citations and links there.

Thanks for the comment!
-JoeC

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Sean says:

Wednesday, August 1, 2007 at 10:54 am

Great article, but i’m a bit critical

One- you said

“nobody in Tokyo thought the Japanese codes could be broken, and the transmissions continued”

while it is possible, it seems unlikely that absolutely nobody in Tokyo thought they could be broken, do you have any more knowledge on this facet??

Two- What about radar in Pearl Harbor? I’ve heard that a few insiders had complete control over the radar and said before the attacks that everything was a-ok- is this true?

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JoeC says:

Wednesday, August 1, 2007 at 7:44 pm

Sean: Ok, maybe it’s not literally true that “nobody” thought the codes could be broken; I am repeating that thought from the May 1941 entry on the National Public Radio Pearl Harbor Timeline.

What does seem to be true is this, from The Codebreakers:

…on May 20, Nomura told Tokyo: “Though I do not know which ones, I have discovered the United States is reading some of our codes.”

So you can argue that somebody in Tokyo did actually think the codes could be broken, but there wasn’t enough faith in that belief to cause the Japanese to switch codes…they kept right on using the old ones.

Second, about the radar, the best info I’ve found suggests that the guys operating the radar really thought the incoming planes were a flight of friendly B-17s. From this pearl harbor page:

Pvts. Eliot and Lockard were manning the radar at Opana Point. They noticed a large blip on the scope and call in to the as-yet not fully functional Fighter Information Center. Pvt. McDonald took the call and located the sole officer at the Center and asked him to call the operators back. Lt. Kermit Tyler, having ending his first tour of training at the newly established Fighter Control Center, received the report and, thinking it was a flight of B-17s due in from the mainland, told the operators to “forget it.” The report went no higher than that. Interestingly enough, the new radars tracked the planes coming and going, but the Army did not tell the Navy about this pointer to the Japanese carriers until the 8th, a fact which quite possibly saved our carriers.

There are only a few people who were actually involved in either the sighting or the establishment of the Figher Information Center. Privates Lockard and Elliot were at Opana Point, Pvt. McDonald and Lt. Tyler were in the FIC. Other “interested parties” were Col. Bergquist, who with Col. Tindal established the FIC, and Cmdr. Taylor, USN, who was in Hawaii to teach the Navy how to use radar (and was on “loan” to the Army for the same purpose on Dec. 7th.) All of their testimonies are now vailable.

One thing that needs to be considered is that there have been a lot of documents released through the Freedom of Information act in the last 10 years, damning information that wasn’t available to historians only a decade ago. And there are still tons MORE documents being withheld. So, while it used to be questionable whether the codes were broken or not, some of the newly released documents makes it pretty clear FDR and the boys knew exactly what was going down: Do Freedom of Information Act Files Prove FDR Had Foreknowledge of Pearl Harbor?

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Robert V. Marceau says:

Wednesday, August 15, 2007 at 6:36 pm

My stint in U.S.M.C. Provided me with some of the comments made. While serving from early 1942 through 1845. I heard many stories such as previously read. I never figured them to be totally and completely true? This piece certainly gives the rumors back then a stronger base.

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AllRoadsLeadToRome says:

Thursday, November 29, 2007 at 6:31 pm

The American people were DECEIVED into fighting the POPE’s war against the Japanese People during World War II, the consummation of the JESUIT GENERAL’S SECOND THIRTY YEARS WAR waged from 1914 to 1945. For the attack on Pearl Harbor was no surprise to the nation’s most visible Shriner Freemason, President Franklin D. Roosevelt (a Jesuit puppet).

President Roosevelt (a Jesuit puppet) provoked the Pearl Harbor attack, knew about it in advance and covered up his failure to warn the Hawaiian commanders. Roosevelt needed the attack to sucker Hitler to declare war, since the public and Congress were overwhelmingly against entering the war in Europe. It was his backdoor to war.

President Roosevelt blinded the commanders at Pearl Harbor and set them up by:

1. Denying intelligence to Hawaii (HI).
2. On November 27 and later, misleading the commanders into thinking negotiations with Japan were continuing to prevent them from realizing the war was on.
3. Having false information sent to HI about the location of the Japanese carrier fleet.

Pearl Harbor was not about war with Japan - It was about war with GERMANY.

War with Japan was a given because they had to attack the Philippines. If Japan’s fleet were destroyed, it would defeat the purpose. It would have been obvious suicide for Hitler to declare war if Japan were crippled - it would allow the US to attack him without even the possibility of a two-front war. That was what he had just been avoiding for months. The plan could only work if Japan’s attack succeeded. The lure of a weakened US in a two-front war focused on Japan seemed to make a German war declaration cost-free. But it was all a trap - Roosevelt was always going to ignore Japan and go after Hitler, for his ultimate goal was to save his beloved Soviet Communism.

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Thinker says:

Monday, March 10, 2008 at 6:51 am

I love this stuff!

You rail and rail against alleged plots and the people that blindly accept them, then your sycophants turn around and butt-smooch you and blindly accept that what YOU write is the gospel truth.

I especially love the response where you defend not giving citations on things because they are accepted knowledge.

Isn’t accepted knowledge what you are bitching about?

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JoeC says:

Monday, March 10, 2008 at 7:02 am

Thinker: You make a good point. I have been bad about referring to “knowledge backed up by little-known but proven facts” and “Commonly-held-as-true but actually false American myths” as “accepted knowledge.” I’ll try to make a better clarification in the future, because there IS a big difference. Thanks for pointing that out. By the way, it’s the Commonly-held-as-true but actually false American myths I tend to bitch about.

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Pearl Harbor says:

Monday, May 5, 2008 at 10:06 pm

Pearl Harbor is really a place no one whould miss while visit Hawaii. No matter who’s fault was it but a fact is more than 2400+ were killed on December 7, 1941 and this is a sad fact itself.

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JoeC says:

Monday, May 5, 2008 at 10:45 pm

I agree, Pearl. When I visited Pearl Harbor, I was struck by the lack of blame anywhere in the presentation. Both sides thought they were right at the time. I was also struck by the fact that at least half or more of the visitors were from Japan, and that it was amazing we were all there together without being angry at each other even though the two countries tore each other apart sixty years ago. I was also struck by the beauty of the location, which made the hell of December 7, 1941, even more hard to fathom.

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Amanda says:

Friday, April 2, 2010 at 11:42 pm

My uncle, who passed away last year, was the radio operator on a navy ship stationed in the South Pacific on Dec. 7th, 1941. He swore that he, as well as every other guy on the ship, saw a huge fleet of Japanese planes fly right over the top of them, heading towards Hawaii. They freaked out when they saw them, and they immediately sent word to everybody they could think of, and got basically, “Uh, ok, thanks for letting us know” as a response.

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The Myth of Pearl Harbor

10 False Flags that Changed the World: #5

The Sneak Attack Myth

The Destroyed Pacific Fleet Myth

The Myth of U.S. Reluctance for War

25 Responses to “The Myth of Pearl Harbor”

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