Israel Knew Hamas Attack Plan More Than A Year Ago
Did FDR Know About Pear Harbor?

These words flashed across the crawl at the bottom of my television screen. Wow, I thought. Confession: I am not following the conflict (war?) very much. Everyone has their areas of interest in the news and following endless fights in the Middle East has never intrigued me.

Then my brain did something odd, even in my head. I immediately reverted to a history class at Indiana University at South Bend sometime in the 1980s. I took a class on World War TWO, maybe two (no pun intended), and I could check if I could recall where my transcripts may be. As my BFF loves to say, ANYWAY, I was intrigued by Dr. Charles Tull’s comments on Pearl Harbor, December 7th is coming.

I hope you can hear FDR’s iconic words from the capitol “December seventh, nineteen forty-one, a day that will live in infamy” in your head if my colleagues did their job. I can do a decent impersonation of that.

At 7:48 AM (local time) 353 Japanese planes from six aircraft carriers conducted a surprise attack at Pearl Harbor (and other sites) in Hawaii. The two nations were not (yet) at war. 2,403 Americans died in the attack.

Did FDR know the Japanese were going to attack Pearl Harbor? That piqued my interest, and I will share a story I told many students many times. Dr. Tull taught that two books were written about this. In a nutshell, two historians produced contradicting books in 1982 on Pearl Harbor.

Gordon Prange’s (who died before finishing- completed by colleagues) At Dawn We Slept: The Untold Story of Pearl Harbor. The book was published posthumously and was originally a 3500-word manuscript for thirty-seven years. The collaborators pared it down to 873 pages which is still a scholarly doorstop. One reviewer called it a more orthodox version of history.

John Toland’s offering was Infamy: Pearl Harbor and Its Aftermath. Toland offers that FDR, General George Marshall, Secretary of State Cordell Hull, and Secretary of War Henry Stimson ALL knew the attack was coming and allowed it. We live in a world where many people believe in such ‘conspiracy’ theories. This book is 366 pages, published two years after another Toland work. The same reviewer called this book revisionist.

I did read several articles and reviews, which awakened Dr. Tull’s words in my mind. In terms of sheer quantity, pages, and years, Prange’s book is a far more scholarly assessment of what happened that morning, and before, than Toland’s. At some point, I am reminded of one of my favorite quotes by Daniel Patrick Moynihan, “you are entitled to your opinion. But you are not entitled to your own facts.”

Like many events in history or things happening in the new daily, things are complicated. Very complicated. With that many people dying in an ‘unprovoked’ attack, it’s hard to compliment the planner, Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto’s brilliant plan and unfortunately (for us) success.

Pre “Mr. Heinz” Cary was very intrigued by Dr. Tull’s words and these books. As I recall, I drove out to the University Park Mall in Mishawaka to a then B. Dalton Books. Barnes and Noble bought out the chain in 1987. I bought both books and decided I needed to read them but never did. Why? Life.

I detest the term “I didn’t have time.” Wrong. “You didn’t MAKE time.” I didn’t take the time to read either. Teaching World War II, I repeatedly took both books out of a cupboard, discussed them, and said I would read them once I retired. I have been retired for a couple of years and have not thought of them until I saw the Israel/Hamas line. They are now within arm’s reach, and I should read them. Since the eighty-second anniversary is upon us and there isn’t time to read them in concurrence with the actual date, this Cubs fan can “wait till next year.”

Expect it.

As Clint Eastwood famously quipped a half-century ago as Inspector “Dirty Harry” Callahan, “I know what you are thinking.” What about the movie???

I was sitting in a movie theater in 2001 and saw a preview for Pearl Harbor. I was intrigued by the cinematic techie tricks following a bomb from the sky onto the target. Maybe, I thought. Then reviews came out. Well, here is another quote from Inspector Callahan. Do you want to make a war movie or a love story? There are certainly audiences for both, but this film tried to satisfy both audiences, in my humble opinion, you have a three-hour disappointment. 347,000 people rated it a 6.2 out of 10 on imbd.com in a society that clicks ‘like’ on a cat chasing its tail. There you go.