My case for lionizing Mitsuo Fuchida and canceling Jonathan Parshall FOREVER

[This started as a reply to this but got out of hand: https://rdrama.net/post/306631/marseysailor-marseyclapping2let-marseyclapping2-womenmarseyclapping2-sink-marseyclapping2/7138627#context Also this is a specific disagreement I have with Parshall very specifically about the intentions of Fuchida, I 100% believe him about everything else, including Fuchida being wrong about the sequence of events at Midway.]

Imagine you're doing a bombing run and the jet engine catches fire because they [the Chinese] cheaped out on the fuel and used gutter oil instead.

They would do that.

There's a rumor that at the Battle of the Yalu River against the japs in 1894 their shells were filled with sand because corrupt officials had stolen the money for explosives. (This is likely one reason for the recent tard rumor that Chinese ICBMs are actually filled with water so nuclear war will be fun.)

On that note, Mitsuo Fuchida, who led the aerial part of the attack on Pearl Harbor among other things, related some things after WW2 that made a lot more sense in hindsight. One was that the old guys who'd fought in this war and the one with Russia kept trying to tell the kids that they were not like what you saw in the media. Japanese propaganda (and western pop historians) put out this bullshit that these were really easy fights where the Japanese with their superior intelligence and bushido spirit trounced their opponents without breaking a sweat. The old-timers tried to explain that no, these were tough fights against smart, determined enemies. The wars could have ended up going the other way if a few shells landed a few meters in another direction. And they were scared out of their fricking minds the whole time. But Fuchida's generation didn't want to listen to old boomers warning them that war might actually be bad.

He's a fascinating guy. After the war he was converted to Christianity by, among other things, missionary work by a guy who had been on the Doolittle Raid and got captured and tortured by them. And chose to return to Japan as a missionary. As a guy who legit believed in bushido, Fuchida had to hear out his fellow warrior. !christians

There's been a lot of shit flung at him in the last couple decades. Insinuations that he lied about stuff, that he was part of some huge conspiracy by a certain faction of the Japanese Navy to make Nagumo the scapegoat for Midway. Personally, I don't buy it. He gives us a bunch of caveats himself if you actually read the book. He was writing entirely from memory about events that happened several years earlier while he had a high fever. And then the whole fricking ship exploded and he was seriously wounded, breaking his ankles. Foot pain can confuse you.

So when certain, I'm not gonna say the word because I'm trying to lay off it, when certain individuals like Parshall make up all this schizo shit, I can't take him seriously as a historian. He makes a lot of claims that just throw up huge red flags that I'm being told bullshit. Most importantly, making claims that nobody could possibly know. He claims he knows what was going on in Fuchida's mind. I don't know that he ever even talked to the guy. Then he makes claims about Fuchida being in this conspiracy with a bunch of old Japanese Navy dudes to write his book in a very specific three-dimensional chess way as part of their scheme. And Parshall somehow can understand all of it.

Neighbor pls.

You're not Japanese. You will never be Japanese. This isn't like most countries where if you have a positive attitude you're accepted in a couple hours. You will never be Japanese. It's one of those countries where you can live with these people for years and you're never let in. They will never tell you what's really going. This part is obvious. The next part is a little more subtle and a little more darning:

You're not in that generation. How in the frick can you also read the minds of all these older navy officers running the conspiracy? Spock couldn't mind-meld with these guys fast enough to figure it out, but somehow you know? How do you somehow have this special insight into the minds of people from my great-grandparents' generation? No Japanese people alive in the world today know how the frick these peoples' minds worked. But you brazenly declare that you know all about it?

Parshall is a HACK FRAUD.

!historychads