Mark Dankof is the former 36th District Chairman of the Republican Party in King County/Seattle. He was an elected delegate to Texas State Republican Conventions in 1994 and 1996 and entered the United States Senate race in Delaware in 2000 as the nominated candidate of the Constitution Party against Democratic candidate Thomas Carper and Republican incumbent William Roth.......
The event that involved my life with Roosevelt’s legacy, and the tragedy of December 7th, 1941, occurred in late 1971 or early 1972, during my sojourn in high school at Iolani School in downtown Honolulu, near the Ala Wai Canal, Diamond Head, and Waikiki Beach.
There was a fantastic American history teacher at Iolani in those days, the late, salty retired American Navy Captain R. C. Sleight. He had been a destroyer skipper in World War II. His politics were Right of Center, but he had plenty of room in the class for anyone who disagreed with his views with their own academic and political perspective, if it was credible.
His sardonic humor, Sea Captain’s expressions, and wit would be ruled out-of-bounds in American education today. His brute frankness which cut through canards, shoddy thinking, and superficial analysis, would be intolerable to the Minions of Political Correctness (Jewish Political Correctness) that control what passes for education in the United States now.
It was my privilege to have one last conversation with him by telephone, when visiting Honolulu for my parents’ 50th wedding anniversary in 1991, 20 years after I left Iolani School as a student. I shall never forget him. I have thought of him many times in all the years since.
When we got to the subject of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and World War II one morning at Iolani School, Sleight became especially serious. He made it clear that he did not agree with the Establishment Consensus on FDR, or the events that led up to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
His reasons for this statement were not entirely elaborated upon with the class, but I noticed that the bibliography he distributed on these subjects included a section entitled Revisionist History Books on Roosevelt and Pearl Harbor.
When I returned to my home at Hickam AFB in Honolulu on the Pearl Harbor Channel Entrance on Julian Avenue that evening, I began looking at this particular section of the bibliography. The titles told me something about the contents of the books. (I have recently gone back into this fine but dated bibliography, at the suggestion of Dr. Paul Sheldon Foote of Cal State-Fullerton, to add the Hamilton Fish volume entitled “Tragic Deception: FDR and America’s Involvement in World War II.”
Did President Franklin Delano Roosevelt really know in advance that the American Pacific Fleet was going to be attacked at Pearl Harbor on the morning of December 7th, 1941? Was that information deliberately withheld from the American Commanders at Pearl Harbor, Admiral Husband Kimmel and General Walter Short? If so, why? The mere thought of something like this alternated in my mind between the preposterous and the monstrous. Could anyone really seriously entertain this idea who was sane?
I could not sleep in my bedroom at Hickam AFB that night. My night thoughts would not allow my mind a nocturnal peace, despite the Pacific Ocean breeze and the sound of rustling palm trees outside my window. The American Air Force planes that constantly overflew my home on Julian Avenue, headed toward a landing strip at Hickam’s Military Airlift Command (MAC) terminal, also punctuated a sleepless night.
I made a private appointment to see Captain Sleight in his academic office at Iolani School. When I arrived, he pointed to a chair in front of his desk. He had the same demeanor as other military men I had grown up around in the Air Force, when serious conversation was imminent. He told me to sit down.
Sleight asked me why I had come in, what the nature of my concern was. I was just as much to the point. Basically, I indicated I’d like to know what Revisionist History was. And whether or not he thought there was any truth to what I was picking up on in the bibliography he had passed out to the class, regarding President Roosevelt having advance knowledge of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the American Pacific Fleet.
He lit his infamous pipe and looked at me with a seriously piercing examination I had never quite seen before. His question to me, before proceeding, was one I have heard a thousand times: “Are we speaking totally off-the-record here?” I indicated that we were. Sleight then proceeded. I will never forget what he said, and how clearly and powerfully he said it, while continuing to pierce me with the penetrating focus he always had when zeroing in on something that was pivotal. What he said was simply this:
“Roosevelt not only knew about the attack in advance, he deliberately provoked it, from October of 1940 onward. And the United States not only had the capability to intercept Japanese diplomatic communications, as the Tora! Tora! Tora! movie (1971) depicts, but had the network and the active Naval Intelligence operation going on throughout the Pacific, to intercept Japanese military communications.
“We were listening in constantly on [Admiral] Yamamoto’s radio communications with [Admiral] Nagumo, after Nagumo departed from Hitokappu Bay in Japan in late November of 1941 with the six (6) aircraft carriers which comprised the task force which ended up 200 miles north of here, launching the attack on Pearl, Wheeler, Schofield, Hickam, Shafter, and Kaneohe on December 7th. If you want to know why, you have to find out about the [Arthur] McCollum memorandum to Roosevelt in October of 1940. That’s the Rosetta Stone.”
How, I asked, do I find this stuff? Answer:
“Presently, you won’t. I know about it from classified Naval Intelligence materials I’ve seen, and my conversations with a couple of the guys doing the cryptology and the intercepting in the project which was intercepting Japanese military communications. That stuff, and the very existence of the program, is still top secret. Maybe in your lifetime, you’ll be able to see the evidence on paper.”
My last remark was that I had just seen a documentary film on Roosevelt’s speech to the 1940 Democratic National Convention, assuring Americans he would keep their kids out of any European, or foreign war, period. Captain Sleight cut to the chase:
“Roosevelt was a duplicitous, lying son of a bitch. He lied this country into a war that was totally avoidable. If he’s the model of the American Presidency in the world we live in now, God help us. The Mythology that surrounds this guy is enough to make you puke. And don’t ever forget it.”......
The aggressors against Iran are the same despots who have destroyed the economy, the culture, and the Constitutional Bill of Rights of the United States, especially since the advent of Franklin Roosevelt and World War II.
And in closing, with God’s help, we shall win, for our families, our friends, our communities, our churches and mosques, our respective cultures and histories. The final victory is ours. Be sure of this. You and I are on the winning team.
