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Post by oldpop2000 on Apr 5, 2019 18:00:24 GMT -6
That is probably a good idea... in his position. But when do you stand your ground and make your point? I had the same issue during the Vietnam war with my college professors. I did not agree with their summations and I wrote what I believed to be the truth. Time proved me correct. It depends. If you're going into engineering, and need a history credit... the professor has literally all the power. Is it worth taking a chance that he's spiteful? If history is your calling.... maybe a different story. Might not be quite what you were intending for your angle, but you might check out "A Matter of Honor" by Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan, about the investigation post-attack and jow Husbamd Kimmel came to bear most/all of the blame. It's interesting, it's horrifying in the sense of watching a good man get railroaded, and it may fit your professor's anti-establishment bent. I understand your point and its a personal decision for all of us. I have read some of that information. There was plenty of blame all around for that event. The information about the midget submarine sunk by a US destroyer almost one hour before, went completely unnoticed since no one believe them. The Army commander was prepared for a sabotage so all of his mobile AA guns and ammunition were stored in the crater on the island. But Kimmel should have deployed the torpedo nets as per naval requirements but he was a battleship man and want get the information about the coming attack and sail out for a battle. Our fighters and other aircraft especially the PBY's should have been deployed in such a way as to allow them to be separated. The bottom line was, war was coming and we were prepared for peace. The on-scene commanders are always the sacrificial lambs, it goes with the job. Was he a good man? Maybe, but he did not do his job, even though he had been given warnings by his intelligence group about Japanese movements. Let me give you an example of our unpreparedness. My dad's ship the USS Saratoga sailed into Pearl Harbor, I think about a week after the attack at night. she had had to wait outside the harbor because only one carrier was allowed in the harbor after the attack and Enterprise was already there. He told me that all the lights were out in the city however, they had light on the ships that had been hit by the attack and you could see those lights 30 miles out at see. Why? If you are trying to go into a war mode of operation, then all the lights should be out. But they were not. That is a just one aspect of the problem. Why didn't the fighter director officer when notified by Opana Point Radar of an incoming aircraft formation, make some kind of attempt to determine if it was, in fact, a flight of B-17' s coming from San Francisco. He did nothing. It was, in fact, the first wave of the Japanese attack. Again, we were not prepared for war, although war warnings had been sent.
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Post by garrisonchisholm on Apr 5, 2019 18:03:33 GMT -6
... It sounds to me more like your professor is trying to push the advance knowledge conspiracy - especially since you mentioned that many of the other readings for the class have used Day of Deceit as a source - than anything else. That was my first thought to. "Ok, so a conspiracy theory is a"primary source for the required reading. Boot a great sign." Write what the prof wants, get your credit, and then get on with your life. Preferably with legit history. I have to say your quip quite amused me, as I was lectured frequently on "giving the prof's what they want". I didn't, which is why I never made Dean's List. :]
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Post by oldpop2000 on Apr 5, 2019 18:09:45 GMT -6
That was my first thought to. "Ok, so a conspiracy theory is a"primary source for the required reading. Boot a great sign." Write what the prof wants, get your credit, and then get on with your life. Preferably with legit history. I have to say your quip quite amused me, as I was lectured frequently on "giving the prof's what they want". I didn't, which is why I never made Dean's List. :] I didn't either, probably for the same reason. I did after I returned from the service and went back to school. However, I still did not go with the flow, as they say.
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Post by oldpop2000 on Apr 5, 2019 20:00:35 GMT -6
I wanted to add one more bit of information that I had forgotten about the prelude to the Pearl Harbor attack. Admiral Kimmel withheld vital important information from General Walter Short on at least eleven occasions and that information might have given Short the reason to go on full alert. The Naval Command at Pearl Harbor had withheld information from Washington. I hope this discussion will be allowed to continue, but I don't think so.
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Post by cwemyss on Apr 5, 2019 20:11:14 GMT -6
I wanted to add one more bit of information that I had forgotten about the prelude to the Pearl Harbor attack. Admiral Kimmel withheld vital important information from General Walter Short on at least eleven occasions and that information might have given Short the reason to go on full alert. The Naval Command at Pearl Harbor had withheld information from Washington. I hope this discussion will be allowed to continue, but I don't think so. Agree, tons of blame to go around, and a lot of it came down to classic, stupid, interpersonal and interservice rivalry. Navy vs Army, Navy-DC vs Navy-Pac, Kimmel vs Short, Stark vs Kimmel, you name it. The sort of bull that sometimes fades into the background a little bit (though never entirely) when bullets start flying. One thing that's always amazed me is how MacArthur wasn't tarred with the exact same brush for an equal lack of preparedness at Manila. And for that matter, 10 years later when he ignored the intel about China... though that's a different war. Somehow he's still largely lionized as 'the great general'.
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Post by avimimus on Apr 5, 2019 22:53:13 GMT -6
If the prof is a good academic then (an academically valid) critiquing/refuting of the book should still get marks. If the prof has personality issues to not be acting like a good academic... then do the minimum required to survive the course?
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Post by director on Apr 6, 2019 0:32:11 GMT -6
Just an opinion here, from someone who is not a MacArthur fan. The Japanese air-raid on Manila did destroy a number of aircraft (including the B-17s that MacArthur had counted on to deter their attack) but could not and did not do anywhere near near the amount of damage as the Pearl Harbor attack did. The lesser raid on Manila was, to a degree, simply forced to the back page by the other bad news.
And, frankly, given MacArthur's WW1 war-record and prominent career tween-wars (chief of staff, commander during the Bonus Army incident) and his perpetual pursuit of good press, Roosevelt was probably smart to keep him on (and smart not to give him supreme command in the Pacific). MacArthur had political ambitions and it was better to keep that particular person 'inside the tent' rather than letting him criticize from the outside.
I agree with other opinions here: how you respond will depend on how badly you need the course credit and how the professor is likely to react to dissent. Little good ever comes from bringing politics, religion or sex into a work environment, and this sounds like that sort of situation. You might be on safe ground to simply report what you find: does 'Day of Deceit' actually contain information on Japanese strategy, operational doctrine and tactics, or not? And if so is that consistent with other sources, or not? Stick to the topic the class is ostensibly about, in other words...
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Post by marcorossolini on Apr 6, 2019 4:20:20 GMT -6
I'll admit as a guy in this person's position (student going through university doing history) - history as a field has so many different specialisations that it is entirely possible that the professor, who may well be knowledgeable about particular aspects of say... Nazi Germany, mightn't have much of an idea about the PTO beyond perhaps basic survey histories of the period. It may well also be the case that he isn't a specialist in WW2 at all and instead is given the job because WW2 history is popular and a subject on WW2 is guaranteed to have a large number of people attending from a broad range of disciplines within and without of history and arts generally. It could simply be that he picked up a book from a shelf and read it and that was that as opposed to being an active conspiracy theorist (I'm unfamiliar with the book so cannot comment on how blatant its conspiracy theories are for example). That said, if the history professor is any good then he will, or should, accept any essay that is well argued and is firmly grounded in primary and secondary source material. That's the modern approach where, so long as your sources back you up, you can say what you like - it's almost like literature in fact (except Literature has no requirement for the essay writer to remain within the bounds of tripe like evidence and reality, but I'm saying too much ). I have a Classical Mythology assessor who says that: she can disagree with what I might write all she likes, but if it's well sourced and backed by evidence then she'll give me a good mark - though I suspect she'll be harder on me nonetheless! I in some ways disagree with that approach, BUT I suspect that that should be the expectation. I'd strongly recommend you go onto your university library's website and go digging for reviews of this book, if there are any. The more academic sounding the journal they're from, the better. For example, I have never read a particular book by a particular author on WW1 (a certain popular one where everything is blamed on Britain...) One review from a solid WW1 scholar whose name I recognised later and I was pretty damn confident when I said: "avoid". Most of the work, however, I think has been done for you, your library should have some or all of those works available and you'll be free to go from there. As your essay is (I assume) not a PHD, I suspect that an essay on Japanese naval doctrine maybe a little broad, so I would recommend tightening that sucker up if possible. Good luck from one military history nerd to another.
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Post by director on Apr 7, 2019 0:04:59 GMT -6
Or... you could simply approach the prof and ask how he feels that book contributes to the topic of Japanese strategy, operational doctrine and tactics, as you have read it and don;t see the connection?
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Post by oldpop2000 on Apr 7, 2019 8:31:47 GMT -6
Or... you could simply approach the prof and ask how he feels that book contributes to the topic of Japanese strategy, operational doctrine and tactics, as you have read it and don;t see the connection? Good idea.... and do it in front of the class to nail him to the wall.
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Post by ieshima on Apr 7, 2019 8:37:36 GMT -6
Or... you could simply approach the prof and ask how he feels that book contributes to the topic of Japanese strategy, operational doctrine and tactics, as you have read it and don;t see the connection?
Unfortunately, he revealed his hand this past Friday and went fully overboard with crazy ideas about the Pearl Harbor attack. He referenced Operation Snow by John Koster repeatedly, as well as an "Anglo-American establishment" that somehow was responsible for WWI and WWII, and continued to push everyone in class to read Day of deceit. When I brought up some of the issues with Stinnett's work he got very snippy, and is now flooding my school email's inbox with links to several questionable sources and authors.
I looked some of said authors up, at least one is an accused Nazi-sympathizer and another is a noted Holocaust denier. Even more terrifying is that both of them are sources for all of the assigned reading books from the class.
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Post by oldpop2000 on Apr 7, 2019 9:32:16 GMT -6
Or... you could simply approach the prof and ask how he feels that book contributes to the topic of Japanese strategy, operational doctrine and tactics, as you have read it and don;t see the connection?
Unfortunately, he revealed his hand this past Friday and went fully overboard with crazy ideas about the Pearl Harbor attack. He referenced Operation Snow by John Koster repeatedly, as well as an "Anglo-American establishment" that somehow was responsible for WWI and WWII, and continued to push everyone in class to read Day of deceit. When I brought up some of the issues with Stinnett's work he got very snippy, and is now flooding my school email's inbox with links to several questionable sources and authors.
I looked some of said authors up, at least one is an accused Nazi-sympathizer and another is a noted Holocaust denier. Even more terrifying is that both of them are sources for all of the assigned reading books from the class.
I deleted my original post here, and will stay out of the discussion except when it moves toward Pearl Harbor. I've been out of college formally for fifty years.... things have moved on, I am sorry to say.
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Post by noshurviverse on Apr 7, 2019 9:43:44 GMT -6
an "Anglo-American establishment" that somehow was responsible for WWI and WWII While that sounds a bit out there, remember that most "crazy" ideas generally have a grain of truth to them, just often overblown or over focused-upon. War is such a complex thing that it's very easy to get funneled alongside a particular avenue of thinking to the exclusion of all other thoughts, which sounds a bit like what he might be on. Just to take a guess from what you've said, I'd think he looks at the UK/US/France alliance as being responsible for WWII in the sense that the support of the US was a major factor in keeping the UK supplied after the Fall of France. Had this not been the case, perhaps "WWII" would have been a short conflict on the mainland before a negotiated peace treaty went through, concluding with some territory ceded to Germany and Europe spared half a decade of all-out war.
I'd be interested in looking into the specifics of each claim, because (depending on where you live) nowadays it seems that practically anything can get someone labeled as a Nazi-sympathizer and the definition tends to shift from person to person. For some people, believing that there was any nuance to the lead-up to WWII and that the Allies weren't literal angels determined to uphold Liberty and Freedom counts as being a Nazi-sympathizer. Similarly, the Holocaust is an extremely touchy subject that tends to discourage discussion in many cases except for the most simplistic.
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Post by director on Apr 7, 2019 12:17:10 GMT -6
I had a similar experience when I went back to college for my second degree: the Computer Science department had 2 degree tracks, one math heavy and one programming heavy. A professor in one class decided that everyone on the second track had to do a massive project (emulate a chip in software then write an operating system to run on that chip - in two weeks) while the first track did not. I complained to the assistant dean and she got the requirement voided.
So you have a couple of choices: stand your ground (you are already targeted it seems), shut up and soldier or take it to an administrator (and have the admin person change your course to Audit for you - they can still count it toward requirements if they want to protect you from retaliation). Believe it or not, you can fight City Hall - the administrators will already know about this prof.
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Post by JagdFlanker on Apr 7, 2019 16:20:09 GMT -6
Or... you could simply approach the prof and ask how he feels that book contributes to the topic of Japanese strategy, operational doctrine and tactics, as you have read it and don;t see the connection?
Unfortunately, he revealed his hand this past Friday and went fully overboard with crazy ideas about the Pearl Harbor attack. He referenced Operation Snow by John Koster repeatedly, as well as an "Anglo-American establishment" that somehow was responsible for WWI and WWII, and continued to push everyone in class to read Day of deceit. When I brought up some of the issues with Stinnett's work he got very snippy, and is now flooding my school email's inbox with links to several questionable sources and authors.
I looked some of said authors up, at least one is an accused Nazi-sympathizer and another is a noted Holocaust denier. Even more terrifying is that both of them are sources for all of the assigned reading books from the class.
knowing the truth yourself is good enough - if people have so called facts i know are wrong i let them keep talking while smiling and nodding, because everybody is entitled to believe what they want and i'm not interested in wasting my own time convincing them otherwise it's a shame that he is in a position to push his own propaganda on the unsuspecting and uneducated, but the people who are truly interested in the subject already know or will learn the truth, and because you asked us it seems like you are truly interested so keep it up!
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