End Time: The Pearl Harbor Trap
Japanese Culture and dominant ideology of the time, had tap roots that went back centuries, and features that appear odd, to the western mind. One being a devoted obedience to the Emperor, and Emperorship, in which he, always a he, has the status of a demi-god. Which made him the pivot point for Japanese politics, useful for those social, political elites in their contention for power. For another, an almost death-cult acceptance of self sacrifice.
MI2, Canada’s military signal’s intelligence service, Directed by Colonel Edward Drake, and its closely associated British MI2, with similar duties, which was closely associated with GC&CS and MI6, took a more pragmatic view. As did the unique brilliance of Winston Churchill, focused 0n the growing existential threat posed by German fascism, under a leader who early who personified pure evil, Adolf Hitler.
He had, however, a second focus, which had emerged in the 1930’s in the Pacific, on Japan, which Churchill recognized as a threat to Britain’s life line, to her Empire in the Pacific.
In a complex manner, into this nest dropped a third pole, the United States, personified by FD Roosevelt. A ‘ navy man’, having been Secretary of the US Navy, accutely aware of the strategic dimensions of the changes that were in rapid, dangerous, flux.
With the German invasion and victory over France, the picture became even more complex. France had the largest empire after Britain, with holdings in Africa, the Mediteranean, and the Pacific. Those concerns greatly magnified with Japan’s 1931 invasion of M, and grew larger with her occupation of France’s colonies in Africa,
A large and complex Chess Board into which dropped the US, and FD Roosevelt, with his accute awareness of the threat Japan posed in the Pacific, and the threat posed to Europe, and to Britain – the linchpin to, let us say, to the Western Democratic impetus – of the world.
A linchpin that, in the 1930’s, became aware of the rising threat to her and her empire posed by Japan. Which brought awareness of the importance of Hitokappu-Wan, the bay on the island of Iterup, and its potential as a staging waters for the Imperial Japanese Navy. How this insight first appeared is unknown, except to say that the need for a secret staging area was obvious. That meant a necessity for a navy distributed, as the Imperial Japanese Navy was, across the Four Home Islands, at risk of detection of her vessels immediately as they left those islands in any aggresive, threatening move. Such a movement would have to be masked by stealth. That, in turn, reqired a staging area – remote, distant, beyond suveillance notice or watch – in this case, identifiable to the clever officers of the RCN’s Naval intelligence, an island in the remote Pacific, distant from the trade lanes of the Pacific, virtualy unpopulated, with almost nonexistant communications, comprised of one easily controlled radio link, a large, quiet bay, ideal for holding a large fleet, that, to the intelligent observer, meant Hitokappu-Wan.
Which, in 1936, brought the attentions of JSM Stratton, Cambridge astronomer an astrophysicist, and radio intelligence officer, who took it upon himelf to lead an expedition to study the total eclipse of 19 June of that year. For which he set up his telescope, and other istruments, on the heights of Hikkaido, at a point with a good view of the island of Iterup, and of Hitokappu-Wan.
Hitokappu Wan
What is most interesting is how the information from the interview of my source, the Lieutenant who led the the MI2 team that tracked Kido Butai, coincided with what I learned from the documentary sources from the Library and Archives Canada. there was one little contradiction that raises a sigificant question. So lets turn to the matter in our next post
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