Today in Supreme Court History: December 7, 1941

12/7/1941: Pearl Harbor is attacked.

Comments

[Frank Drackman]

and woke up a Sleeping Giant and filled him with terrible resolve

[Dr. Ed 2]

FDR knew that the Japanese would hit either Pearl or Midway and warned neither. Churchill manipulated the US into both wars.

What's also not widely known is that there were men in the overturned battleships banging away for help for days afterwards. They were abandoned because the USN wanted to refloat the (obsolete) battleships and their decomposed bodies were found when it eventually did.

[Joe_dallas]

Only partially true.

Most of the military intelligence knew the japanese were going to strike, just didnt know where and when. Most of the intelligence supported an attack on the phillipines. Kimmel could be excused for missing it, though McArthur should have been sacked immediately. He had more that 8 hours warning,

As far as men banging the inside of the sunken ships, that was reasonably well known, though they were not rescued due to the inability to access the men.

[Mr. Bumble]

Notwithstanding the deaths of almost 300 men and the destruction of so many ships we got lucky.
The aircraft carriers were at sea and thus were saved (battleships were already obsolete). Also, the Nips missed the fuel storage dump on the first wave and cancelled the second planned attack. If they had destroyed the fuel supplies out aircraft carrier would have been operating out of Australia and getting Pearl back on line would have been severely hampered.
I the long run we would still have defeated Japan because they could not match the industrial capacity of the US. It just would have been harder and taken longer.

[Mr. Bumble]

That would be 3000 men.

[Joe_dallas]

Bumble - I concur with your comment. The japs had the opportunity to do considerably greater damage.

There are a lot of conspiracy theories that FDR knew about the attack beforehand, with little evidence. I personally doubt it (extreme doubts). My personal guess is that there were likely sufficient pieces of intelligence that the time and place were known, though because those pieces of information was scattered among different stations and agencies, no one was able to put enough pieces together to figure it out.

I also think having the carriers out to sea at the time of the attack was pure luck. Though carriers out to sea is the only thing that remotely suggests to me that time of the attack was known beforehand.

[Dr. Ed 2]

They were all ferrying airplanes to more distant venues and at least one was supposed to have returned on the 6th but was delayed because of bad weather.

U.S. Admiral Chester Nimitz said the Japanese made three critical errors in the attack -- Attacking on Sunday morning, when most U.S. crewmen were on leave. Focusing on bombing battleships while ignoring repair docks. And failing to destroy storage tanks of military fuel.

I agree with the fuel -- and setting a few of those tanks on fire would have touched off the rest because they neither had the firefighting gear we have now, nor the pollution control requirements (which would have segregated the fire(s).

I'm not sure about the docks -- seems that they could be repaired quicker and easier than refloating ships, and remember that you can live with one Arizona, but several of them would severely restrict your berthing and/or channel space need by OTHER ships.

What Nimitz clearly didn't understand is that a sailor's bed is aboard ship, so after a wild Saturday night, he's going to somehow get out to his ship and to his bed to sleep it off. The Japs killed over 3000 sailors -- they clearly were aboard the ships at the time. The 900 interred with the Arizona probably never got out of their beds.

But FDR had appealed to the Japanese for peace on the 6th and received no reply.

The Japanese ambassador was supposed to give the notice that war was declared a half hour BEFORE the attack, but they screwed up the time zones between Hawaii and DC. DC had turned the clocks back an hour when daylight savings time ended, Hawaii doesn't have daylight savings time and hence the Ambassador arrived a half hour AFTER the attack.

[Noscitur a sociis]

What Nimitz clearly didn't understand

Yeah, that Nimitz was a real yo yo. If only he’d spent some time in the navy, he might have been as smart as you!

[Dr. Ed 2]

Wiki says:
Nimitz was the leading US Navy authority on submarines. Qualified in submarines during his early years, he later oversaw the conversion of these vessels' propulsion from gasoline to diesel.... He also, beginning in 1917, was the Navy's leading developer of underway replenishment techniques..."

The only things he ever commanded were submarines, which (then) had fewer bunks than men -- the men had to share them so they didn't (couldn't) come back early to sleep aboard ship. I knew someone who served on a WWI submarine, they didn't sleep aboard when in port. Battleships did.

[Noscitur a sociis]

Did you try reading the rest of the article (I ask as if I didn’t know)?

Nimitz joined the battleship Ohio at San Francisco, and cruised on her to the Far East. In September 1906, he was transferred to the cruiser Baltimore; on January 31, 1907, after the two years at sea as a warrant officer then required by law, he was commissioned as an ensign. Remaining on Asiatic Station in 1907, he successively served on the gunboat Panay, destroyer Decatur, and cruiser Denver.
…
After the United States declared war on Germany in April 1917, Nimitz was chief engineer of Maumee while the vessel served as a refueling ship for the first squadron of US Navy destroyers to cross the Atlantic, to take part in the war.
…
From May 1919 to June 1920, Nimitz served as executive officer of the battleship South Carolina. He then commanded the cruiser Chicago with additional duty in command of Submarine Division 14, based at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.
…
In June 1931, he assumed command of the destroyer tender Rigel and the destroyers out of commission at San Diego, California. In October 1933, he took command of the cruiser Augusta and deployed to the Far East, where in December, Augusta became the flagship of the Asiatic Fleet.
…
In April 1935, Nimitz returned home for three years as assistant chief of the Bureau of Navigation, before becoming commander, Cruiser Division 2, Battle Force.

How many naval vessels have you served on?

[David Nieporent]

How many naval vessels have you served on?

Hey, Dr. Ed knew someone who served on a WWI submarine (by which I mean he did not in fact know anyone who served on a WWI submarine).

[Joe_dallas]

A brief summary of Nimitz position on Dec 7 1941

He had absolutely nothing to do with Pearl Harbor .

Nimitz was serving as Chief of the Bureau of Navigation when the Japanese Imperial Navy attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. President Franklin D. Roosevelt chose Nimitz from among 28 flag officers, all of whom were senior to him, to take over command at Pearl Harbor.

[Jerry B.]

“battleships were already obsolete”

Nope. See, for example, the Battle of Surigao Strait. Not to mention their use in bombardment during island assaults.

[Joe_dallas]

True the battleships were quite effective for shore bombardment. Though by the time time of syrugao strait/leyte, oct 1944, air superioty and the depleted jap navy made the Ud Iowa class battleships seem superior to the japanese battleships at the time

[Dr. Ed 2]

I suggest that Pearl Harbor shows how a carrier v. battleship conflict would have come out. A battleship could fire 24 miles while an aircraft carrier could be 100 miles away.

The biggest problem the Japanese had was their stupid decision to keep pilots on the front line until they inevitably were shot down. What we did was rotate pilots back to train new pilots so by about 1943, our front line pilots were much better than the depleted Japanese ones were.

And the Bismark was sunk by airplanes (at least to the point where her rudder was jammed).

[Krayt]

In the recent Midway movie beginning, they note in passing, people with torches cutting holes in the bottom of overturned ships to rescue trapped sailors.

Unless solid evidence, I have to believe "Stop doing that!" is BS. The ability to patch what is a fairly small hole existed at that point.

[Absaroka]

There were trapped sailors banging as a signal who weren't rescued. The bit about being unwilling to cut hulls to rescue is bogus - in fact if my memory serves (usual disclaimer!!) some were rescued by cutting through the hulls, but whether that was possible depended on exactly where in the ship you were trapped. Given that torpedoes had blown great honking holes in the hulls already, the notion that cutting a nice 3 foot hole was going to slow down salvage is pretty silly.

This is a fascinating history of the salvage effort, which was superbly done.

[David Nieporent]

As far as men banging the inside of the sunken ships, that was reasonably well known,

You've got to remember that when Dr. Ed says that people have forgotten such-and-such, roughly 73% of the time he made such-and-such up, and the other 48% of the time everyone knows it.

[Dr. Ed 2]

"Most of the military intelligence knew the japanese were going to strike"

The appropriate thing to do under such circumstances would be to send out a worldwide alert, i.e. go from what is now DEFCON 5 to DEFCON 4 and have at least a few folk standing watch with loaded AA guns. Not *everyone* either in church or asleep.

Radar was little more than a toy then, but had this been done the radar report might have led to a greater effort to identify the incoming aircraft, and the Japanese sub sightings taken more seriously.

[Dr. Ed 2]

And the US Ambassador to Japan explicitly stated that he had heard rumors of a Jap attack on Pearl -- which US intelligence discounted.
Husband had been told of this rumor. And two years earlier, with just one carrier, a war game showed how easy it would be for a carrier 100 miles offshore to attack both Pearl and Hickum.

[David Nieporent]

The appropriate thing to do under such circumstances would be to send out a worldwide alert,

You and Joe_dallas should consider setting up a think tank.

[Hugo S. Cunningham]

> and woke up a Sleeping Giant and filled him with terrible resolve

Nice quote, but there is no evidence Yamamoto actually said it. It first appeared in the 1970 Hollywood film "Tora! Tora! Tora!".

It would have been irresponsible for Yamamoto, as commanding officer, to say something so likely to demoralize his subordinates, especially since the Pearl Harbor surprise attack was his idea.

[Dan Schiavetta]

Campbell v. Holt, 115 U.S. 620 (decided December 7, 1885): new Texas constitution (which went into effect after Texas was readmitted into the Union) validly abolished statute of limitations as to suit for value of plantation (which included value added by pre-manumission slaves)

Michigan v. Fisher, 558 U.S. 45 (decided December 7, 2009): “emergency aid” exception to warrant requirement applied when man was seen screaming and throwing things in his house even though he pointed a gun at officer and demanded a warrant before entry and police didn’t know if anyone else was in the house (in dissent Stevens said trial judge’s impression of witnesses should be given deference and Court should not “micromanage” in a close case)

Lockhart v. United States, 546 U.S. 142 (decided December 7, 2005): Social Security benefits can be withheld to pay student loan debt (this holding will become important as this generation of college students gets to retirement age still in debt)

[Dr. Ed 2]

If I'm not mistaken, Lockhart also includes PARENTS who took out the parental loans for their children. Social Security also includes SSDI (Disability) which someone who started working at 16 qualifies for at age 26.

[Krayt]

This seems odd because IIRC Congress exempted SS from debt attachment, because, after all, that's money to solve the eating cat food problem, not pay off debts.

[Dr. Ed 2]

If they exempted student loans from bankruptcy protection, is it a surprise that they also from SS attachment, although memory is that they can only take a portion of the check, not the whole thing, as they do with IRS refunds.

And this isn't a traditional attachment because they don't have to go to court, the Federal Govt just does it.

[Commenter_XY]

Pearl Harbor Day....RIP. You are not forgotten.

[Frank Drackman]

Unfortunately they mostly are

[F.D. Wolf]

A few years ago, I read David Alan Heller's As Good as It Got: The 1944 St. Louis Browns (2003). If you like baseball, I think you would enjoy this book. It chronicles the surprise 1944 season in which the Browns, perennial doormats, won the American League pennant for the only time in their history. This was during World War II, when the talent in both leagues had been severely depleted by the draft. The Browns lost the World Series to their crosstown rivals, the Cardinals, in six games.

The franchise was a charter member of the American League, playing the inaugural 1901 season as the Milwaukee Brewers. They relocated to St. Louis the next year and became the Browns. In 1954, they moved to Baltimore, becoming the Orioles, where they remain to this day.

The Browns, with perpetual poor records and poor attendance, were perennial second-fiddles to the much more successful Cardinals. Team owner Donald Lee Barnes, who had purchased the team in 1936, realized very quickly that he was never going to make any money in St. Louis. In 1941, he reached a deal with the city of Los Angeles to begin play there in the 1942 season. The only thing left to finalize the deal was the approval of the other American League owners, regarded as a mere formality. The owners would vote on approving the move at their annual Winter Meeting after the season. That vote was scheduled for December 8, 1941. The move was not approved.

It is interesting to imagine how history might have been different if the Browns had moved to Los Angeles in 1942. For one, it seems extremely unlikely that both the New York Giants and Brooklyn Dodgers would have moved to California in 1958.

[Dr. Ed 2]

I doubt that baseball would have that great an attendance during the war, with people working double shifts and such. By 1958, people were married and had kids old enough to take to the ballgames.

LA had doubled in size in the 1920s, what surprises me is that was its peak growth decade and not later.

[F.D. Wolf]

There is no need to speculate about MLB attendance during the war. In 1942 and 1943, attendance dropped by about one million to about 7.4 million. In 1944, it returned to pre-war levels, and 1945, the last war season, had a record high attendance of 10.8 million, despite the sub-par talent on the field. (And it wouldn't have mattered much to Barnes anyway, as part of the deal was the local Chamber of Commerce guaranteeing a minimum attendance, that is buying the tickets if they weren't sold).

[Noscitur a sociis]

There is no need to speculate about MLB attendance during the war.

I see you’re unfamiliar with Dr. Ed.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Who was suggesting that the population of LA, circa 1942, was a wee bit different from the population of more established cities.

I don't know the age, but as a boy I knew someone who had been just one year too old to get drafted, and I'm told that he twisted his hair everytime the news reported that Hitler had done something out of fear that the age would be raised -- I've seen references to 38 and 44 but there was an age above which people weren't drafted.

And what I am suggesting is that there were fewer of these people, neither in the military nor working defense jobs, in LA. And that adult men was a major cadre for baseball attendance back then.

[Frank Drackman]

1945 Browns had a 1 armed Player, Pete "Lefty" Gray, not a real Lefty, but what was he gonna do after he lost his dominant arm? Played in 77 games, with an OPS of .520, 45' was his only year in "The Show"

Frank

[bernard11]

Very interesting.

Thanks.

[JoeFromtheBronx]

The link goes to Korematsu v. United States.

Trump v. Hawaii declared:

"Korematsu was gravely wrong the day it was decided, has been overruled in the court of history, and—to be clear—“has no place in law under the Constitution.” [quoting Justice Robert Jackson]

Nice words. How much the dark spirit has been removed is unclear. The majority did not go far enough in my view.

https://bjconline.org/travelban/

I'd add that Justice Jackson's clerk, William Rehnquist, wrote All the Laws but One: Civil Liberties in Wartime. I recall finding the book interesting. He covers the WWII cases. He argues the government had a stronger case regarding first-generation Japanese.

[Dan Schiavetta]

"Korematsu was wrongly decided, and we in effect affirm it today."

[Frank Drackman]

The Korematsu Maru scenario is a no-win sitch-you-asian

[Dr. Ed 2]

People forget that persons of German ancestry were interred during BOTH wars -- and unlike those of Japanese ancestry, never received compensation or even an apology. "A total of 11,507 people of German ancestry were interned during the war, comprising 36.1% of the total internments under the US Justice Department's Enemy Alien Control Program."

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_German_Americans

Logistics forced this to be done on an individual basis, but it included interning the BSO for not playing the Star Spangled Banner as often as a newspaper editor thought it ought to be played.

[Malika the Maiz]

“The japs had the opportunity”

“heard rumors of a Jap attack”

That HRC really was intolerant calling people deplorable!

[Jerry B.]

Vance was wrong about the Japanese attack.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

Enemies in war, in peace friends.

Japs in war, in peace awesome anime artists.

[Seamus]

Strange thing is they make such bloody good cameras.

[Hugo S. Cunningham]

A date that will live in infamy for Syria's Assad family-- but will anyone else care?