Just 23 short years ago the U.S. was plunged into World War II at Pearl Harbor.
In January, 1942, all news was bad.
Read, in this eye-opening article, the one reason WHY the Allies were
allowed to win that war — and why they have not won a war since!
CAN YOU believe it now? In January, 1942 — just 23 years ago — the U.S. Army and Navy lacked even the power to stop a Japanese invasion of the West Coast of the United States.
The Pacific Fleet was all but destroyed. The Army was untrained, ill equipped.
It was America's blackest hour.
Secret plans, known only to President Roosevelt and a few selected advisors, called for the evacuation of the entire United States west of the Rocky Mountains should Japan invade the mainland.
Just how — and why — almost-certain victory was miraculously wrenched from the hands of the German-Japanese Axis is a startling, never-before-told story. It involves The WORLD TOMORROW broadcast, and why you are able to hear it today!
The time has come to reveal this story in the pages of The PLAIN TRUTH.
An "Invited" Bombing?
One month before the bombing of Pearl Harbor by Japan, the American troopship, the Hugh L. Scott, made a strange, unscheduled three-day stop in Honolulu. I was on that ship.
We of the 5th Air Base Group, who were on board, wondered, "why?"
After we were once more steaming toward Manila, our intelligence officer, Colonel Tally, revealed to us highly secret information when he said, "We were detained for three days in Honolulu because the Army and Navy High Command expected Japan to bomb Pearl Harbor on November the 6th."
The Colonel startled us: "The U.S. has been trying to goad Japan into attacking us for some time."
"WHY?" we asked in astonishment.
"The American people hate war," he said, "but if Japan will just declare war first, the U.S. will then become aroused and will be willing to fight back."
"Otherwise," he said, "the complacent American public will not wholeheartedly support a war to stop Hitler and Japan."
The Colonel warned, "If the U.S. doesn't get into the war to help Britain and Russia, our only two possible allies will be conquered by Hitler."
This West Pointer's cold-blooded analysis sent shivers through us. "After Hitler conquers all of Europe, he will then invade the United States. But the American people are unprepared for war," he concluded.
How right he was!
The Colonel divulged more top-secret information as he went on to say that the danger of war was so great that the Army and Navy brass in Honolulu debated whether to send the Hugh L. Scott and its cargo of troops back to San Francisco or on to Australia.
"The decision," he said, "was finally made to send us on to the Philippines because the Hugh L. Scott has on board tanks and airplanes which MacArthur's army in the Philippines will need if Japan launches an attack against Manila."
Safe Arrival but . . .
After the few tanks and airplanes we had on board the Hugh L. Scott were delivered to the American forces in Manila, we of the 5th Air Base Group were told to board an inter-island steamer. There wasn't room on the small boat for both us men of the "5th" and all our equipment, so we left our guns and ammunition on the dock to be shipped later.
We arrived at the Del Monte airstrip on the island of Mindanao in the southern Philippines, the first of December, 1941.
World War II began for the U.S. six days later when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, and Clark Field on the island of Luzon.
When the Japanese invaded Luzon, the equipment we left sitting on the dock in Manila was sent to the fighting men on Bataan, who desperately needed every gun they could get their hands on.
Even though we were unarmed and unprepared for war, we still expected the mighty U.S. Air Force to fly in from the United States.
In preparation for their arrival, we began feverishly building airstrips. The island of Mindanao became a complex of thirteen top-quality, heavy-duty airfields. We built high-quality bomb shelters, and blasted out a large airplane hangar in a mountainside.
The American planes did not arrive, but the Japanese army did! We, our airstrips, our hangars, and our bomb shelters were all captured on May 10, 1942.
We had been prisoners for more than a year when we heard one of the most astounding stories ever told, the story which revealed the truth about the "Miracle of Pearl Harbor."
"Stranger Than Fiction"
Only a few of the group who heard this story are still alive to tell it.
We heard this astounding story from an English-speaking interpreter, a cousin of the Emperor. This Japanese officer startled us by revealing, "The Imperial Japanese High Command now realizes that we will eventually lose the war." He said bitterly, "The Germans have let us down."
According to the Emperor's cousin, two weeks after Pearl Harbor, Japanese spies in Moscow sent a secret report to Tokyo warning that "our German allies have suffered a disastrous defeat in the battle of Moscow."
This report from Japanese spies in Russia revealed how Nazi armies were hurled back by a surprisingly well-equipped warmly clad Siberian army which Hitler and his generals did not know existed. But the "die" was already cast! This Japanese spies' report from Moscow came to Tokyo two weeks too late. By the time the full magnitude of the colossal defeat suffered by the German armies on the Moscow front became known, the Japanese High Command had already bombed Pearl Harbor. They had already committed themselves to fighting a losing battle.
Many of our Japanese guards, who were unaware of German defeats in Russia, were constantly telling their American captives that they expected to live in California after the war was over.
The cousin of the Emperor was not deceived. He had been listening to the news. He admitted that Japan's German allies had just suffered another major disaster at Stalingrad, where the entire sixth German army was either killed or captured by the Russians.
That is why he said, "The Japanese now realize that it is only a matter of time until Germany is defeated. Without the help of Hitler, the Japanese army cannot hope to conquer the U.S.
"We made a fatal mistake in bombing Pearl Harbor without attacking the U.S. West Coast at the same time. Had we invaded the West Coast early in the summer of 1941, you would never have sent thousands of tanks and airplanes, countless guns and ammunition to Russia. You would have been forced to use these weapons to defend your own country.
"It's obvious now," he said, "that without large-scale American help; the Russians could not have kept Hitler from annihilating both their army and their entire population.
"It's too late now. We have already scattered our troops all over Southeast Asia and the islands of the Pacific where they are dying like flies from malaria, gonorrhea, and syphilis."
He then made the alarming statement, "After conquering Russia, the Germans planned to spend a few days conquering England; then they planned to blitz across northern Greenland on into Canada, while we Japanese were invading Alaska and the West Coast."
The Emperor's cousin said, "If everything had gone like we planned, we would have struck you before you had time to arm and train an army."
With astonishing frankness, he revealed top-secret Japanese plans. After all, we were "American pigs," (as the "Japs" called us) — doomed to die.
Cold-bloodedly he said, "Germany had promised us the western half of the U.S. for our part in the war. In order to inflame all Asia into backing our propaganda slogan, 'Asia for the Asiatics,' the Japanese army had been instructed to kill every white man and woman in the Orient and in the western half of the United States, just as soon as victory was certain."
Thinking we would never live to tell the story, and that nobody would believe us if we did, he boasted, "After destroying the U.S. nation, we Japanese planned to conquer the rest of China, marshal the millions of Chinese into a fighting army and then after Hitler relaxed in a world at peace, the Japanese Imperial High Command planned to strike Germany a surprise blow."
Regretfully he added, "If we just hadn't made a tactical mistake, we could have conquered the world."
Almost apologetically, the Japanese lieutenant went on to explain the Japanese tactical mistake. "We could have destroyed the United States if we had just landed our forces on the West Coast of the U.S. in a surprise attack. Army intelligence now realizes that the Japanese army could have taken much of the Rocky Mountain region before you Americans could have equipped and trained your peace-loving people to fight."
But he was wrong. The Japanese should have attacked the Russian flank in Siberia, and forced Stalin to fight a two-front war and helped Germany conquer Russia before they attacked the U.S. Hitler urged the Japanese to attack Russian Siberia, and leave the U.S. alone. But the Japanese had their own plan to conquer the world.
Why Japan Bombed Pearl Harbor
Admittedly, Japan had long wanted to have as part of their empire the entire North American continent, but the wily Japanese military strategists decided against trying to fight both Communist Russia and the U.S. at the same time.
The Japanese had always been afraid that if they invaded the U.S., the Russians would stab them in the back by invading Manchuria. That is why, as part of their preparations for war, the Japanese Foreign Minister, Matsuoka, signed a treaty of neutrality with Stalin on April 13, 1941. The Japanese hoped this treaty, coupled with Russian fear of Hitler, would keep them from having to fight a two-front war.
This treaty of neutrality aroused the American government, but not to action. Washington was content to merely wonder if the Japanese signed this treaty of neutrality with Russia as preparation to attack British and American possessions in the Pacific.
The Japanese preparations to attack the U.S. were suddenly intensified on June 22, 1941, when at 3:30 in the morning, German blitzkrieg struck Russia a surprise blow.
The German attack overran the border at most places before the Russians could organize a defense. In fact, most of the 3,800,000 Russian prisoners taken by the Germans were taken in the first few weeks of the campaign (William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, pp. 952-953).
Because this attack on Russia appeared to be fantastically successful, the Japanese no longer feared a Russian "stab in the back" after they had begun attacking the U.S. The Japanese war lords began gleefully preparing to launch their long-planned attack on the U.S.! Japan hastened its preparations to capture needed raw materials in Southeast Asia before they and their ally, Hitler, launched a direct invasion of the United States' shores.
General Tojo, the Japanese Prime Minister, instructed his ambassador to Washington, Admiral Nomura, to secure from the American government approval to conquer Indonesia and all of Southeast Asia and India.
The American government refused to be frightened by thinly veiled threats of war, by what amounted to an ultimatum.
The Japanese suddenly began throwing threats of war at the U.S.
That these threats of war were not idle threats was made evident when Secretary of State Hull's cryptographers, on November 19, 1941, deciphered the notorious "winds" message to Admiral Nomura from Tokyo. Tokyo warned Admiral Nomura that when the Japanese newscaster on the short-wave Tokyo broadcast said the words, "East wind, rain," Japan was about to attack the United States.
Unknown to the United States, on November 25, 1941, the Japanese carrier task force sailed for Pearl Harbor.
The Japanese were further encouraged to attack Pearl Harbor when last-minute reports out of Russia stated that on "December 2 (1941) a reconnaissance battalion of the 258th (Nazi) Infantry Division had penetrated to Khimki, a suburb of Moscow, within sight of the spires of the Kremlin . . ." (William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, p. 863).
Assuming their potential enemy, Russia, had already been defeated by their German allies, the Japanese government gave the command: "BOMB PEARL HARBOR."
Now, they thought, was the time to capture the Philippines and Southeast Asia as preparation for a German-Japanese invasion of the American homeland.