Bill O’Reilly’s No Spin News and Analysis - A "Shock and Awe" Special: Pearl Harbor

Episode Date: December 22, 2023

In observance of Pearl Harbor Day, Bill takes an extensive and historical look at the attack that changed the world. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Now this week is Pearl Harbor Week. So everybody's heard of Pearl Harbor. Everybody knows the Japanese dropped bombs in 1941, December 7th, and World War II began for the USA. But after that, people really don't know how much that day has affected you this very minute. Everything changed in the modern world on that day.

world on that day. So let me give you some background on it. There was tension between Japan, the United States, because Japan wanted to conquer Asia, pretty much all of it. They needed the resources, the oil on and on. The Japanese were like the Germans in the fact they thought they were the elite race. They went in and devastated China, slaughtering maybe a million or more civilians there? It was horrible. And of course, America objected to all of that. So relations between the USA and Japan deteriorated quickly in the late 1930s, early 40s. Now, in response to that, President Roosevelt, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, squeezed Japan economically just as we are squeezing Iran and Russia now by placing oil embargoes.

And Japan doesn't have any oil, so they need to get it from abroad. That pretty much set the tone for the war. So Japan said, hey, we're going to have to go. We're going to have to fight these people, these Americans. We're not going to take over America. Nobody ever thought they would do that. But we're going to fight them to a stalemate, so they'll surrender and let us dominate all of Asia and we'll get the oil and other resources we want.

That was Japan's point of view. So on the morning of December 7, not only was Pearl Harbor, which is on the island of Oahu and Hawaii attacked, but the Japanese attacked other American-held territory, Philippines, Guam, Wake Island, also attacked the British in Malaya, Singapore, Hong Kong. So it was a big frontal, we're coming,

taken over. That's what it was. In response, after 2,000 American dead, 2,400 American soldiers and civilians killed in that, and sailors attack, and then, you know, 300 airplanes destroyed, ships, 20 American naval vessels, either disabled or badly damaged. So it was a massacre, is what it was. It was total out of the sky. Here they come. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. So FDR says today we'll live in infamy. We all know that. And then declares war in Japan. Japan was allied with Hitler because they were both fascist countries and they both said we're the master race of our own sphere and what we want. Okay, that was basically it. So they signed an alliance. So as soon as America had declared war on Japan,

and Hitler declared war on America, and there's World War II. Now, as far as the Pearl Harbor attack goes, I wrote a book called Killing the Rising Sun, which was a whole overview of the Pacific conflict in World War II. And I got into Pearl Harbor, but not in a micro way, and that's what I want to do this evening. So our first guest is Dr. John Mauer, and he works at the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island.

He is a distinguished professor of Sea Power and Grand Strategy. Graduate of Yale and Fletcher School of Diplomacy at Tufts University in Boston, which is very prestigious. But why I wanted Dr. Maur here is that he has a little different point of view of Pearl Harbor. So he joins us now from Newport. What would that difference be against the conventional wisdom, doctor? Let's face it, the U.S. economy is under stress. National debt rising, trade war, shaking the markets.

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Please call 866-326, 5576, or text B. Bill to 998899. Again, that's 866-326-5576-5576 or text bill to 998899. Hey, I'm Caitlin Becker, the host of the New York Postcast, and I've got exactly what you need to start your weekdays. Every morning, I'll bring you the stories that matter, plus the news people actually talk about. The juicy details in the worlds of politics, business, pop culture, and everything in between. It's what you want from the New York Post wrapped up in one snappy show.

Ask your smart speaker to play the NY Postcast podcast. Listen and subscribe on Amazon Music, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Well, I very much subscribe to your views in this regard that Japan was an aggressor state. It was aiming for leadership, hegemony, control of Asia, wanted to supplant the United States and Great Britain in the Western Pacific

and what is important to remember is that what happened in Asia wouldn't stay in Asia that Japan, as you highlighted, was allied to Nazi Germany. So Japan's actions against Britain or against the Soviet Union would have a big impact on the war in Europe and could tilt the war in Europe in favor of Hitler. So Franklin D. Roosevelt was

a global strategist and he recognized that there had to be put some break on japan to prevent them from enabling hitler to do better in europe okay but he was also reluctant to really get ahead of the ongoing problem which most people saw for example the peruvian ambassador to japan tipped off the Roosevelt administration about a year before the Pearl Harbor attack, a little less, that the Japanese were coming, militarily going to hit you. Yet Roosevelt was unprepared at our biggest western air base, Hawaii. And some people criticized Roosevelt for that. Yes, the eyes of the United States were on the Western Pacific, and in particular, looking, as you said, an attack on the British Empire.

Japanese transport ships were already at sea, carrying a Japanese army across the South China Sea toward Malaya and Singapore. So our eyes were focused on the Philippines, the Western Pacific, and Malaya. Now, it always had been played out as a scenario that the Japanese might begin the war by an attack on Pearl Harbor.

That had been gained. Exercises had been played about that. But at the time, time, it was not thought likely. Instead, American war planners were thinking, how do we sort our fleet from Pearl Harbor to the Western Pacific to try to relieve the Philippines, given that Japan is striking there? So our focus was more toward how do we undertake an offensive against Japan in response to their offensives in the Western Pacific. All right. So why didn't the U.S. Intel take more seriously a military?

military attack on Pearl Harbor? Well, they looked at it and said the distances were so great, and it would require the Japanese carrier force to refuel at sea. And this is something that is today very common, but in 1941, few navies had mastered the skill of refueling ships at sea. And so the distance involved seemed to indicate that it would be too difficult of a proposition for Japan to launch a car. carrier strike on Pearl Harbor.

And U.S. Intel was wrong. That was, you know, we never got, in my opinion, and, you know, I've written three books about World War II, never got really first-rate intelligence about our adversaries until much later on in the conflict. In the beginning, the USA, we weren't really on top of it. Was that because of the, they didn't have CIA at the time? We just weren't looking outward at all to those threats? Well, the problem with all intelligence is that there are some things you can be fairly certain about.

Again, we were certain that Japan was going to war. We knew that from breaking the Japanese diplomatic cipher, that we knew Japan was going to war. We also knew that the Japanese were going to attack Hong Kong, the Philippines, and Malaya. On that, we were very clear. But in war, there's a fog. There's a lot you don't know. There's uncertainty. And indeed, leaders have to hedge against uncertainty.

And it was thought that that was the focus would be of American actions, which is to try to roll back Japan and the Western Pacific. So we got some things right. But as you say, we certainly miscalculated Japanese aggressiveness and capabilities, their ability to strike Pearl Harbor. Do you think that the critics of FDR, that he wasn't aggressive enough, not only in Japan, but in the Holocaust situation and other things like that, is valid? Roosevelt was a global strategist.

He looked at how Europe and Asia fit together. He saw how these two theaters work together. And as you said, Germany and Japan are both these aggressive powers. They're allied to each other. Roosevelt at this time, by the way, was fearful not just of Japanese aggression, but the Germans were doing very well on the Eastern Front. In December of 1941, they came very close to taking Moscow. So he's concerned about the Russian front as well as what's going on in Asia.

And there's another big fear that Roosevelt has, a fear that Nazi Germany might get nuclear weapons. And so it's in the fall of 1941 that Roosevelt and Churchill agree, that there has to be a joint combined effort of Britain and the United States to make a crash program to see the feasibility of developing nuclear weapons. So Churchill and Roosevelt have a great deal on their plate, a number of worries that they have to face. Okay, I understand that. But I think there may be some valid criticism in the sense that Roosevelt was not a war guy.

He wasn't General Patton. He didn't really want to involve America into foreign wars because 50% of the American people didn't want it. I mean, the polling at the time shows that before the Pearl Harbor attack, probably a majority of Americans went anything to do with Japan or Germany, correct? The polling is very interesting at this time. The American people recognize that Japan and Germany are a danger, but they would want to avoid war if they can. Hence, the whole idea that the U.S. is the arsenal of democracy, supplying arms, weapons, supplies to Britain and the Soviet Union and China, nationalist China, under Shanghai Shaq, that they would bear the burden of fighting these wars.

As it turned out, of course, that you needed to be able to project American military power across the Atlantic, across the Pacific, to defeat these two very powerful, aggressive states. Yes. Roosevelt understood the danger from these two countries. He did understand it. Was he reluctant, though, for political reasons to be more aggressive? I wouldn't say reluctant. In fact, I think he tried to push the envelope, given the state of American public opinion at this time. Americans were a firm consensus that the Western Hemisphere had to be defended.

And so the buildup of American naval power before 1941 and also military power, air power, there was a great deal of agreement that the United States had to build up its military power to defend the Western Hemisphere. Where the big debate occurred was how much the United States should intervene in Europe and Asia. How much should the United States, the new world, come to rescue the states of the old world, both in Europe and in Asia? And Roosevelt went about as far as I think he could go, given the state of public opinion, in supporting those states fighting against the Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. Now, is there any doubt that both countries, Japan and Germany at that point, had no morals at all,

that they were going to do whatever they wanted to do to take over as much of the world as possible? And if millions and millions of people died, that was too bad. Is there any doubt that they had any morality at all, those two enemies? No, these are two regimes captured by extremists who, as you said, are willing to walk over a number of corpses to achieve their ends. And as you mentioned, the Japanese atrocities in China, the so-called Rape of Nanjing, the capital of nationalist China, was meant to terrorize the Chinese people.

And this history is not history to the people of China today. The communist regime in Beijing likes to highlight these Japanese atrocities to spur Chinese nationalism behind the communist regime. So these memories of the Second World War have not gone away. They are indeed momentous events, as you said in your introduction. Right. Well, Doctor, we really appreciate it. I think everybody's got to know as much as they can.

And I said in the beginning that this influences everybody today, right this minute, because the whole world changed on December 7th, 1941. And we entered hostility on the globe, never before seen, catastrophic loss of life. And that hostility still remains with different players. So the more you understand about history, the less chance you have of repeating it. Isn't that what they say?

I couldn't agree with you more. Okay, Doc, thanks for helping us. We really appreciate. Happy holidays. I hope you enjoy the season. Thank you. Happy holidays to you, too. Okay, so there are many points of view about American history. Revision is history, conservative history. It's all over the place, which is why I got involved in the killing books. You know, we have 12 of them out now. The latest killing the legends, a lethal, dangerous celebrity, which is a cultural history. But I began with killing Ray Lincoln, and then I wrote killing Kennedy, killing Jesus, killing Reagan, up and up and up and up. And I wrote three books on World War II. As I mentioned, killing a rising sun, killing Patton European Theater, and killing the ESS after the war.

And what happened there. But I respect and like different points of view when I know they're not held because of politics. That I hate. So I don't bring ideologues on this program to see. discuss history. All right. So one of the smartest guys around is Craig Shirley. He wrote a book called December 1941, 31 Days of Change America and Save the World, big, big bestseller, and you should pick it up if you're interested in history, modern history. But also a reoccurring theme is that Mr. Shirley understands what happened on December 7, 1941, influences us to this day.

All right, the way we live to this day started on Pearl Harbor Day. So, Mr. Shirley, Craig Shirley joins us now from Virginia. FDR, did he do everything he could or should have to prevent war with Japan? Hey, it's Sean Spicer from the Sean Spicer Show podcast, reminding you to tune into my show every day to get your daily dose inside the world of politics. President Trump and his team are shaking up Washington like never before and we're here to cover it from all size, especially on the topics the mainstream media won't. So if you're a political junkie on a late lunch or getting ready for the drive home, new episodes of the Sean Spicer Show podcast drop at 2 p.m. East Coast every day. Make sure you tune in. You can find us at Apple Podcast, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcast. Power, politics, and the people behind the headlines. I'm Miranda Devine.

New York Post columnist and the host of the brand new podcast, Podforce One. Every week, I'll sit down for candid conversations with Washington's most powerful disruptors, lawmakers, newsmakers, and even the president of the United States. These are the leaders shaping the future of America and the world. Listen to Podforce One with me, Miranda Devine, every week on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcast. You don't want to miss an episode. That's a great question to start with, Bill.

We have put yourself back in December 6, 1941. The FDR administration had done almost everything it could to avoid war with Japan. We had offered them cash. We'd offer to lift the oil and steel embargoes We had imposed after Japan and invaded China and, of course, resulted in the rape of Nanking. We did, we had diplomatic chains open. We were meeting with Japanese diplomats almost daily in Washington.

We were doing everything, but everybody knew that war was coming, or everybody believed that war was coming. But nobody knew where it was going to take place. Was it going to be Singapore or the Philippines? Was it going to be Hong Kong? There were lots of speculation, but there were a few facts. My research, who's actually my son, Andrew, back to the FDR Library, he uncovered a memo that was dated April 4th, 1941. Dusted off had been classified ever since World War II

and been laying around the FDR Museum and Library for many, many years, until it was declassified in the 70s. And then it lay unnoticed until my son found it. And it was a memo, 17-page memo outlining Japanese from the Naval Office of Naval Intelligence stamped top secret for FDR's eyes only. That outlined in 17 pages possible Japanese intentions in the Western Pacific, including the Panama Canal Zone. And in it, this memo mentioned a possible Japanese attack on Hawaii. I mentioned it 17 times in that, some of that 70 times in that memo. No action was taken except a war warning was sent out to all of our commanders in the field in the Western Pacific.

But it was very vague. It was almost, it said be prepared for war, but don't expect war. Something like that. Yeah, yeah. But what I'm trying to get behind is the Peruvian, ambassador to Japan, sent a cable to FDR to the White House, warning them months before, almost a year

before, that the Japanese were going to attack Pearl Harbor. They were going to come. And some of the other intel indicated the same thing. So why then were we totally unprepared for that attack? Because, Bill, it was a failure of imagination. We didn't simply believe the Japanese could move in silence six of the top line aircraft carriers through 4,000 miles of open sea, lay off of Hawaii, then launched 300 planes to attack our vulnerable fleet in Hawaii and sink of the Arizona, sink to the Oklahoma and damage to the Nevada and so many other ships

and 300 ships, 300 planes on the ground were obliterated. just didn't believe they could go, nobody in America, we believed war was coming, but we didn't imagine that they were going to attack an American outpost at Hawaii. Even though, even though everybody knew that this war, that Japan was itching for it, that Hitler was allied with Japan, and they were expanding the World War II in Europe had been on for two years. And the devastation was unbelievable. You would think that your main fortification, U.S. territory, would have been put on high alert and then reinforced with protection. You would think, I mean, failure of imagination, I understand. But it was almost like the Roosevelt administration

didn't want to think this. Well, don't forget, don't forget, too, is that there were lots of domestic political pressures. There was the America First Committee, which was a huge political operation in America in 1941. It was founded after Germany invaded Poland in 1939, prominent Americans of the left and the right, from Charles Lindberg to Herbert Hoover to everybody in between, Lowell Thomas, everybody of the left and the right were members of the America First Committee. And FDR had just, you know, just, one re-election by promising mothers of America that their boys would not die in another European war. We had a terrible taste in our mouth after World War I. Sure. And we did we had no

interest in getting involved in another European conflict. You know, there was a saying going around after World War I was that all we got was death and debt and George M. Cohen. And that was on the lips of many Americans for many years. We had many bills passing in the 20s that strictly prohibited Japanese from emigrating in the United States. And of course, we had the three or four neutrality acts passed in the 30s, asked by Democrats, signed by a Democratic president that included prohibiting U.S. soldiers from leaving North America and bans on importation from certain foreign government. So we were very much in isolationist country so much so that the American First Committee

out that in the 42 election, that if any Republican or Democrat made any move toward internationalism by their eyes, they would run a primary candidate against them in their congressional or center. And then the primary candidate would win. So politics did enter into Americans' defense. Absolutely. No doubt about it, right? Right.

Yeah, domestic political pressure was great. Now, FDR himself, my reading of him, is that, He was the consummate politician. I mean, maybe JFK and Barack Obama just on the way their skill level of how to present and how they saw what was good for them and their party. Those are the top three in this century. But I don't know whether Roosevelt was wishing that this day. didn't happen because if it were me or you or anyone who's just looking at objective information,

you got to know these guys are coming, already invaded China, all right? You got to know that we're their biggest enemy because we cut off their oil. So you do everything across the board to defend yourself. You don't attack, but you got a wall. We didn't have one. We did not have one. No, we didn't have a wall. I don't. You, you know, you. You know, I don't know if you are, you know, he never in any diaries or conversations or anything said anything of the, or any of his cabinet said anything of the, to the extent that he wanted to get into the war. You know, that would have meant the death of thousands of American boys. I think like all of us, he wanted to avoid war, but it was, I think it was, if we'd been there, if you'd been there, if I'd been there, it was simply forced upon us. And we had, also, we had, you know, all these pressures.

Don't forget Winston Churchill was pressuring FDR greatly to, you know, for armaments and supplies. That's why we instituted Len lease, which was giving them used battleships and used guns and uniforms and munitions and things like that to help the British as they were fighting off the Nazi onslaught. So you had, you had Churchill on one side pressuring FDR, to get involved in the European war, and then you had the domestic pressures on him to not get involved in a European war. And then, you know, we were isolationist country, and then the mess going,

it would drive any man crazy. Yeah, I mean, it's... I think FDR must go down in history as one of our four greatest presidents because of his and Churchill's leadership during World War II. Not because of the New Deal. That was a failure. That was economic and social failure.

But because of his leadership, in World War II. He was, basically, he was, I discovered Bill that he was essentially president of the world in those four or five years. He was supplying the United States fighting man, the British fighting man,

the Australian fighting man, the Russian fighting man, and we were doing it all with the arsenal of democracy what we were churning out in America to arm and feed all these millions of men. Yeah, and people don't understand that now. They don't know. You know, how much.

I have FDR in my top five as well. Last question for you. When I say that Pearl Harbor Day influences how you live today, some people go, what? Do you believe that? Sure, absolutely. I mean, it forever changed us from an isolationist country to an internationalist country. Now, in those intervening years, those 80-some years,

we've been more or less internationalist, but we've never gone back to being isolationist. That's one. I think two is that we've always had a military preparedness that we didn't have. You know, we almost took apart the U.S. Army in October of 1941. We almost dissolved it. We would never consider that today with any of our military. is that we have stronger diplomatic ties and negotiations with countries both hostile and otherwise to us, so we can try to talk out our differences.

So there's, and there's economic concerns that didn't exist in 1941 that exist today. There are billions of dollars, as you know, that flow between Russia and the United States, between Japan and the United States, between Great Britain. And so that kind of tends to bind us together. Yeah, the globalism on the economic front. But I think one of the things that changed was the American mentality that we don't need anybody else. We can do it all ourselves. Well, of course, that was the formation of the United Nations right after World War II.

Right. And now we know that you can't do it all. We can't. We've got to have an order, and we can impose the order, the USA, but we've got to have backup. We've got to have most of the people buying the imposition of the order. Or the planet goes up in flames because of the nukes. And the nukes came directly out of World War II.

Oh, yes, the heavy water experiments by the United States. That never would have happened without World War II. I don't think it wouldn't happen that quickly. No, wouldn't it? And so now... And then project came right out of World War II. Right. So now we're a totally different world, and people are in the modern world, but I don't

think they understand how they got there. Anyway, fascinating conversation. The book again is December 1941, 31 Days of Changed America and Save the World, Craig Shirley. And I hope you enjoy the season, Mr. Shirley. It was very kind of you to talk to us today. Thank you, Bill, very much. Merry Christmas. Same to you.

Okay, so there you have it. another, I think this is the 12th, shock and all we've done. And I think they're all top flight. If you disagree, bill at bill o'Reilly.com, that's where we live. Bill at bill o'Reilly.com. If you see something you don't like or something you'd like to chime in on, I would absolutely want to hear from you. So again, we have Christmas coming.

Everybody is, I hope, get in a good mood. But, you know, I think we need to think about. the 80 million people who lost their lives during World War II and the horrendous evil that was perpetuated on the world by Japan and Germany that led to 80 million people being killed and the tremendous good that the United States of America elevated to defeat that evil and we're not a perfect country. We're divided now, but that's our legacy. We save the world from Hitler and Tojo, okay?

Believe me. So once again, you want to know more about this, Killing the Rising Sun, My Book, Killing Patton, about the European theater, and killing the SS. All right, they're all about World War II and post-World War II. Thank you for watching Shock and Aw. I'm Bill O'Reilly. We'll see you next time.