Japanese archives: Japan broke US, UK, ROC and Can codes!

[witpqs]

ORIGINAL: el cid again

ORIGINAL: YankeeAirRat

ORIGINAL: el cid again
Possibly the most interesting pre war intel coup was that of the KMT - which archives reveal it successfully manipulated the US and Japan into war "as the last, best hope for China." [China and the Origins of the Pacific War, Stansford University Press, Yaouli Sun working from declassified ROC archives]

SHENNIGANS!

The Americans knew that a war was going to break out between the US and Japan post 1898 and the siezure of the Philippines, Guam. That combined with the actions of the post Meji restoration Japan with the first Sino-Japanese war and the Russo-Japanese War; everyone who was even remotely paying attention knew that Japan was gunning for either the US or Britain as the Japanese became more and more sunk into the war in China. I seriously can't see that either the Communists of China or the Nationalists of China having a strong enough lobby, even with all the missionary types and folks like Pearl S. Buck telling a romantized version of China. In reality it was a minority that cared or enamored for China here in the US, remember that there was still a very big "yellow scare" and it wasn't until post-WW2 that our attitudes towards the Chinese change. Add in some of the policies that were being passed in the early part of the 20th century like the Alien Land Law excluded both Chinese and Japanese citizens from owning land, which also caused a major diplomatic row between the US and Japan. This law was passed only a year after the Nationalist Chinese Party formed. So I seriously discount that the KMT tried to manuver us towards war with Japan. Heck, according to numerous sources from well before the book quoted; talked about how Asiatic Fleet Commander Rear Admiral Thomas Hart was already talking with the the British as early as late 1940 and early 1941 on plans in case war with Japan would start. Hart was hoping to use Singapore as a planned refit base for any fleet units that came from the Atlantic to him or even a bug out place if the PI became unteniable. Add in he was also trying to coordinate plans of actions that the British would want to do with thier fleet units in Singapore and India. Most everyone in the Far East could see a potential conflict and for the Americans it was hopes that the Rainbow/War Plan Orange would hold together long enough to save the PI or at least allow for a quick recovery of same. As for the British they expected that Singapore would be able to hold out long enough for the Fleet and Army to come from India to same the British Far East. No one in either DC, 10 Downing, Cavitie, Singapore, or even the DEI expected any of these places to have fallen as fast or as quickly as they did.

Even more so if you read Tuchman's book aboiut Stilwell and the Chinese experience with America, you can read about how the KMT was more divided then any of the typical European courts at the time of knights. Various warlords and other folks were trying to make angles and plays to become the big dog to either be next to or replaced the Generalissmo. So I really can't see how the KMT could have manuvered the US into war with Japan when there was plenty of other background well before the KMT even exsisted .

Shennnigans it isn't - but I do agree Tuchman's treatment is very revealing about ROC politics, divisions and policies. I find her presentation important confirmation Yauli Sun is on the right track - at so many points do they agree. But her treatment isn't nearly as based on archival materials - not yet available - as his is. To assume you understand what happened and ignore the actual archival material is a mistake.

"Actual archival material" that is "not yet available"???? That is the kind of crap the wackiest of conspiracy theories are composed of.

[JWE]

ORIGINAL: witpqs
"Actual archival material" that is "not yet available"???? That is the kind of crap the wackiest of conspiracy theories are composed of.

That is the fundamental premise of all sensationalism. "Secret" stuff, that only "I" know..."

In the world of historical journalism, there is no such thing as "unavailable archival materials". When things become available, they become available to the entire world community at the same time. The scope and extent of peer review (for legitimate historical claims) is quite significant. The absence of specific cited sources (book, chapter, verse, and page) means the claim is canard. A reference to secret unavailable archival materials sources means the claim is a bogus fraud.

So if you see something that references that kind of fewmets, or read something from people who are unwilling (unable) to cite a single source but rather vomit another 1000 words that say nothing, I refer you to Erich Anton Paul von Däniken. It's not worth even answering this kind of nonsense. All it does is generate more text that wastes space, and depletes the charge of another trillion innocent electrons.[8D]

[witpqs]

ORIGINAL: JWE

ORIGINAL: witpqs
"Actual archival material" that is "not yet available"???? That is the kind of crap the wackiest of conspiracy theories are composed of.

That is the fundamental premise of all sensationalism. "Secret" stuff, that only "I" know..."

In the world of historical journalism, there is no such thing as "unavailable archival materials". When things become available, they become available to the entire world community at the same time. The scope and extent of peer review (for legitimate historical claims) is quite significant. The absence of specific cited sources (book, chapter, verse, and page) means the claim is canard. A reference to secret unavailable archival materials sources means the claim is a bogus fraud.

So if you see something that references that kind of fewmets, or read something from people who are unwilling (unable) to cite a single source but rather vomit another 1000 words that say nothing, I refer you to Erich Anton Paul von Däniken. It's not worth even answering this kind of nonsense. All it does is generate more text that wastes space, and depletes the charge of another trillion innocent electrons.[8D]

You bet! I just wanted to point that out for those innocents who might have been distracted by all the hand-waving bovine scatology.

[dwg]

ORIGINAL: el cid again
WE knew enough to delay delivery of the message - which is a kind of political slight of hand. But in war, all is fair

You're missing the point, that you're not being sceptical enough in reporting these things. As others have pointed out, it is an old story, long since debunked, and the pieces you quoted themselves include sufficient context for pretty much any regular here to recognise that they were grinding a clear revisionist axe, i.e. the attempt to portray the declaration of war as a warning, not an excuse. And once you see that revisionism, you essentially have to throw out anything in the article not explicitly confirmed by reliable sources.

During WWII we believed the "scrambled" phone calls between FDR and Churchill were "secure" because it was "virtually impossible" to unscramble them. But the Transatlantic Cable ended in occupied Holland. German Naval Intel had a real time unscrambler on that end, and every single call was understood and converted to a transcript as it occurred.

And there you go again, not being sufficiently sceptical. 30 seconds with Google will give you this: http://www.americanheritage.com/content ... -forgeries (and also http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v20/v20n2p40_Douglas.html ) Which point out that though there are major elements of truth to the story you report, it includes very significant errors (even better, it's an article about the need to be sceptical). The number one error here is that we aren't dealing with submarine cable, the Atlantic circuits were telegraph only until 1956 (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Submarine_ ... _telephony) , we're actually dealing with radio-telephony. Problem number 2 is that the RN cut the German cables as one of the first acts of the war. Problem number 3, the Germans only managed occasional intercepts. Problem number 4, while there is some legitimate Germany Army archive data on the interception, several books ('Gestapo Chief' and 'Deceit at Pearl Harbour') have been built around the forgeries discussed in the American Heritage article. There's what seems like a reasonably plausible description of the decryption effort at http://chris-intel-corner.blogspot.co.u ... abs-3.html

What all this adds up to is a need to carefully evaluate the information you come across. I immediately knew there was a credibility issue with this as I was aware of the cable-cutting operations, but I would have suspected problems even without that due to the reliance on incompetence and the purported cable not being consistent with what I know of the technology (in both cases the idea that the US-UK cable terminated in Holland). And the allegation, even though it turns out to be largely factual, is still startling enough I would have checked before passing it on. (Unlike JWE I have a lot of time for the net as a research tool, particularly for those of us with limited budgets, but that's because I usually have enough background in the areas I'm looking at to recognise when something smells).

Now because your source on this has repeated parts of the story we know are factually incorrect, you need to reevaluate just how much trust to put in anything else it has told you. You haven't given us anything to suggest it's based on the forgeries rather than the real data, but something is clearly a problem, and enough of a problem you can't trust your source document alone and need to get confirmation before passing it along.

For various reasons, we hear more about our successes than we do about enemy ones. It hardly would sell a movie to glorify an Axis codebreaker, after all.

I can think of several movies revolving around German intel ops, for instance The Eagle Has Landed (let's assassinate Churchill), or The McKenzie Break (major PoW breakout by U-Boat officers), or Enigma (German spy at Bletchley Park). But if you're getting your information about codebreaking from movies then you really need to sit down and think through how much attention you give to the credibility of sources.

[dwg]

Heck, according to numerous sources from well before the book quoted; talked about how Asiatic Fleet Commander Rear Admiral Thomas Hart was already talking with the the British as early as late 1940 and early 1941 on plans in case war with Japan would start. Hart was hoping to use Singapore as a planned refit base for any fleet units that came from the Atlantic to him or even a bug out place if the PI became unteniable.

I thought the entire Asiatic Fleet op-plan was 'bug-out to Singapore'? c.f. Marblehead's orders to Tarakan.

[YankeeAirRat]

ORIGINAL: dwg

Heck, according to numerous sources from well before the book quoted; talked about how Asiatic Fleet Commander Rear Admiral Thomas Hart was already talking with the the British as early as late 1940 and early 1941 on plans in case war with Japan would start. Hart was hoping to use Singapore as a planned refit base for any fleet units that came from the Atlantic to him or even a bug out place if the PI became unteniable.

I thought the entire Asiatic Fleet op-plan was 'bug-out to Singapore'? c.f. Marblehead's orders to Tarakan.

I can't remember if it was reading Edward Miller's book on War Plan Orange or it is was a book about the Asiatic Fleet by either Tolley or Winslow that talked about how Hart had only a week before the 8th of December just returned from a meeting with the Royal Navy representatives in Hong Kong and Singapore about potentially using Singapore as a bug out station or as a station for elements of th Atlantic fleet to refit/refuel/rearm prior to going into combat around the PI like the Rainbow War Plans had called for.