Five Years On, Unanswered Questions About December Seventh Remain

In honor of tomorrow’s sixty-fifth anniversary of Pearl Harbor, I’ve dredged up a sixty-year-old Routers piece on who was really behind it…

December 7, 1946

HONOLULU (Routers) Five years after the sinking of the battleships in Pearl Harbor, many still question the official government story of what happened on that fateful day, and who was responsible. Some believe that the Roosevelt administration did it themselves, deliberately, making it look like Japanese religious fanatics were responsible, in order to drag the country into a war that they could get by no other means, to benefit arms merchants and the Jews.

The controversy has been renewed by a recently released film documentary, titled “Loose Ships.” It makes a compelling case against the Shinto extremist theory, citing inconsistent eyewitness reports, mistaken radar readings, and structural analysis of the sunken battleships.

“It makes no sense to think that Japanese Shintoists could have done this,” explains one of the film’s producers. “Shinto is a deeply spiritual religion, derived from Buddhism, worshiping nature. A Shintoist would never have desecrated Pearl Harbor with all of that leaking and burning diesel fuel and oil. It is fundamentally a religion of peace.”

He points out that many eyewitnesses saw American planes in the air that day, and that the radar images that many claim, preposterously in his view, were of the attacking Japanese aircraft, were actually a squadron of American B-17s on its way to Hickam Air Force Base, perhaps to take part in the plot. The Truman administration itself has admitted that there was a group of bombers in the area that morning, on its way from the mainland, though a War Department spokesman claimed that it was too far away and in the wrong direction to appear on radar at that point in time.

The documentarian went on to expand on his theory. “We don’t think that Japanese aircraft would have the range to get here all the way from Japan, but if by some miracle they did, it was probably to protect Honolulu, in which many Japanese live, from the administration plot. That’s probably what people were seeing.”

Some have examined the wreckage of the Arizona, and claim that it wasn’t brought down by aerial bombs, but by charges planted on the ship beforehand.

“Look at those two huge circular holes in the front and rear of the sunken ship,” he said. “No bomb is big enough to make a hole that size, and do it so cleanly. It was obviously a shaped charge of some kind. It’s just not possible to take down ships that big with the little bombs that are carried in those little Japanese airplanes.”

“They killed thousands of sailors for their filthy war, and many of them died a long and horrible death in air pockets. And take a look at the roster of the people who died on the Arizona. How many Jewish names do you see there? I think they were warned ahead of time. And how do they explain the radio transmissions that were picked up with cries of ‘Torah, Torah, Torah’?”

“It was all part of the Zionist neo-liberal conspiracy to drag America into a needless war of choice.”

In response to suggestions that the Japanese used aircraft carriers, and that many of the Japanese planes were torpedo bombers, and that the large holes were the empty sockets for the gun turrets, that were removed afterward, he scoffed. “That’s all just Franklin Delano Rosenfeld administration propaganda,” he sneered knowingly.

Some enterprising and innovative people have carried the analysis further. In one sequence shown in the documentary, a man built a wooden model of the ship in his pond, and filmed himself dropping lit firecrackers on it from above, to demonstrate how preposterous was the notion that ships could be sunk by bombs. They seemed to have no effect other than a slight scorching of the deck, and the sturdy little toy remained afloat.

He was proud of his own small part in uncovering the cover up. “Other than the fact that the ship is wood, which is much weaker than steel, and I used firecrackers instead of iron bombs, and that there was no ammunition magazine aboard to explode, this is a perfect simulation of what the Roosevelt administration claims happened to the Arizona. But there the ship floats, to show to one and all the administration’s lie. And how convenient of Roosevelt to die a year and a half ago, so he can avoid having to answer these questions.”

[Copyright 2006, by Rand Simberg]

Now That’s Marketing

Now these are what I call hot rockets. Question is, which are the rocket geeks going to pay more attention to, the rockets, or Sheri?

It reminds me of the old engineer joke. An engineering student sees one of his buddies, a fellow engineering student, riding a bike toward him.

“Hey,” he says. “When did you get the bike?”

“It’s a weird story,” he replies. “I was just walking on the quad, and this girl rides up to me, gets off, drops the bike, takes off all her clothes and lies there, saying ‘take what you want.'”

“Good choice,” says his friend. “The clothes probably wouldn’t have fit.”

Now That’s Marketing

Now these are what I call hot rockets. Question is, which are the rocket geeks going to pay more attention to, the rockets, or Sheri?

It reminds me of the old engineer joke. An engineering student sees one of his buddies, a fellow engineering student, riding a bike toward him.

“Hey,” he says. “When did you get the bike?”

“It’s a weird story,” he replies. “I was just walking on the quad, and this girl rides up to me, gets off, drops the bike, takes off all her clothes and lies there, saying ‘take what you want.'”

“Good choice,” says his friend. “The clothes probably wouldn’t have fit.”

Now That’s Marketing

Now these are what I call hot rockets. Question is, which are the rocket geeks going to pay more attention to, the rockets, or Sheri?

It reminds me of the old engineer joke. An engineering student sees one of his buddies, a fellow engineering student, riding a bike toward him.

“Hey,” he says. “When did you get the bike?”

“It’s a weird story,” he replies. “I was just walking on the quad, and this girl rides up to me, gets off, drops the bike, takes off all her clothes and lies there, saying ‘take what you want.'”

“Good choice,” says his friend. “The clothes probably wouldn’t have fit.”

More From Houston

Keith Cowing continues to live blog the Exploration conference today:

Cooke is going through a standard recitation of why we explore, why go back to the Moon, etc. It is fine for NASA folks do this once or twice at a meeting of the faithful (such as this), but I have to wonder why NASA folks feel compelled to spend so much time on this with an audience that is already convinced – except, perhaps, to serve as cheerleaders, I suppose. This is the fourth time the VSE story has been told here.

…Tony Lavoie is speaking now. He opened by making sure everyone knew that these architectural depictions in the fancy graphics were “notional” (NASA’s favorite word to make sure they can wiggle out of something later), “points of departure”, “Point in the sand” a “Point at which to engage” etc. This is one of NASA’s odd habits – on one hand they wave this new architecture around so as to demonstrate to the external world that they have done something and that they can make decisions – and then they turn around and warn people that what they see on the screen (to illustrate the very same architecture) is not what they may get. Hardly what you do to inspire confidence among external observers.

Yet More On Liberaltarianism

From La Postrel, here and here:

On the old political spectrum, socialism defined the left. That meant that the more you opposed socialism, for whatever reason, the further right you were. On the old spectrum, therefore, classical liberals were on the right, which makes us the right wing of the dynamist coalition.

It matters a lot whether we define our central challenge today as opposing socialism or as protecting dynamism. If we declare “the left” our enemies and “the right” our allies, based on anti-socialist assumptions, we will ignore the emerging left-right alliance against markets. We will miss the symbolic and practical importance of such cutting-edge issues as biotechnology, popular culture, international trade, and Internet governance. We will sacrifice whole areas of research and innovation to stay friendly with people who’ll agree to cut taxes just a little bit, and only for families with children. We will miss the chance to deepen the appreciation for market processes among people who lack the proper political pedigree. We will sacrifice the future of freedom in order to preserve the habits of the past.

Ex-Presidential Mendacity

A noted historian has resigned from his long-time association with the Carter Center over Jimmy Carter’s Middle East fantasies and lies:

President Carter’s book on the Middle East, a title too inflammatory to even print, is not based on unvarnished analyses; it is replete with factual errors, copied materials not cited, superficialities, glaring omissions, and simply invented segments. Aside from the one-sided nature of the book, meant to provoke, there are recollections cited from meetings where I was the third person in the room, and my notes of those meetings show little similarity to points claimed in the book. Being a former President does not give one a unique privilege to invent information or to unpack it with cuts, deftly slanted to provide a particular outlook.

A lot of people can argue over who is the worst president, but Carter has to be the worst former President, hands down.

Biting Commentary about Infinity…and Beyond!